The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A few days ago, a friend alerted me to an interesting development: In its Perspectives section, New Scientist - the National Enquirer of popular science magazines - had published a hit piece on the non-materialist neuroscientists, including Mario Beauregard, my lead author on The Spiritual Brain. ("Creationists declare war over the brain" Amanda Gefter, 22 October 2008)

Non-materialists, essentially, think that your mind really exists; it is not simply an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in your brain. In fact, your mind is one of the key factors that shape your brain. On the medical side, non-materialist neuroscientists use this fact to alleviate illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias. They have good evidence for their case, and that is addressed here in an introduction to a recent symposium at the UN in New York. This post, however, will focus on the hit piece.

For me, the New Scientist piece was a gift. I sometimes teach non-fiction news writing. And it struck me as an excellent teaching opportunity ("the structure and function of the irresponsible hit piece, unpacked"). Of course, I mean to discourage my students from investing time or energy in such enterprises.

This piece is especially useful for two reasons: As Beauregard's co-author, I happen to know about non-materialist neuroscience already. So I need no research project to uncover the misrepresentations. Second, this piece is a very conventional example of the "hit" genre. That means I don't need to keep stopping and saying, "But, students, please note that this particular feature is rare."

Best of all, if I unpack this story now for interested Mindful Hack readers, I can save time in June by just dusting it off for Write! Canada. So, let's have a look.

Sections

1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline

2 Reveal that a popular villain is behind it all (cue "evil" music)

3 Haul out the goblins that scared them before Haul out the goblins that scared them before

4 Context reduces fear. So get rid of context

5 Finally, an idea! Wow, a real idea! But wait ...

6 Scare their pants back on again and send them out to raise hell about stuff they know nothing about

Next: 1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based. ~Author Unknown

Oh boy. Here we go again. About once a year some science organization trots out a token "religious person" to insult the public by insisting that Darwinism and "faith" can coexist. This time it's Scientific American under the title The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist. Without exception Scientific American and other institutions of mainstream science driven to such patronizing spend the intervening 364 days bemoaning every mention of intelligent design and demeaning every true scientist not afraid to infer the logical inference of design in nature. With genuine abhorrence in every word, institutions of science criticize intelligent design as nothing more than "creationism warmed over" and those who support it as guilty of . . . well, letting faith and science coexist. And yet these high-minded low downs who will ruin the career of any teacher even attempting to hint at intelligent design in the classroom nevertheless have the impudence to lecture the rest of us on the topic of their faith.

Before getting too exercised over the effrontery displayed by today's closed minded free thinkers, consider that the same logic used by Scientific American could be used to support the following headlines: How the Killing of Unborn Babies and Faith Can Coexist or How the Killing of Races We Don't Like and Faith Can Coexist or How Ruining Lives and Careers of Darwin Doubters and Faith Can Coexist or even How the Sacrifice of Virgins and Faith Can Coexist. You see, for every abhorrent practice and dangerous idea there is a "faith" with which it can co-exist. The question is simply which faith. And must we all be subject not only to the suffocating science but also to the offensive faith of those who deny intelligent design?

Scientific American's token de l'annee is Francisco J. Ayala, smiling from the page as one who has made a career of "proselytizing about evolution to Christian believers," and shamelessly proffered to us as a living example of the critical "how" of a Darwinism-faith coexistence. Never mind for the moment what one who lives to proselytize Christian believers would have to say about faith that has any true meaning; the thing speaks for itself. But consider from the atheist's perspective what a fantastic find is this pawn Ayala. More than a garden-variety tare among wheat such as the many prominent yet otherwise unremarkable "religious people" who deny that creation points to a creator, Ayala is an ordained Dominican priest. Such an abstruse status offers little more than token value to Darwinists but holds a certain esoteric panache among Christians, making Ayala a more curious catch, something akin to the oddity of a figless fig tree.

Not surprisingly, Ayala's "reconciliation" of faith and science is no more than an arbitrary requirement that both be strictly naturalistic, that is, letting neither be informed by the strong inference in nature of true, intelligent design. With that kind of reconciliation it's also not surprising that Ayala is "unwilling to affirm or deny a personal belief in God" and refers instead "to science-savvy Christian theologians who present a God that is continuously engaged in the creative process through undirected natural selection." Such tenuous wordplay satisfies only those taken captive by hollow philosophy because theologians of this kind are unlikely to be truth-savvy and cannot be Christians. Material evidence points unmistakably to a creator, not away, and Christians by definition are followers of Christ, who is the very creator God that nature attests to but which they deny. Just how are God- and evidence-denying theologians "savvy"?

And Christian or not, anyone who swallows Ayala's "science-savvy" line of reasoning lacks rational thinking ability. Like referring to an artist "continually engaged in the creative process through an undirected paintbrush," such a thought is pure sophistry, disconnected from any rational reality. The foisting of such silliness upon us all is exactly why, as the Scientific American article states, "convincing most of the American public [of the ability for Darwinism and faith to coexist] remains the challenge." Despite the best of Darwinists' exoteric ramblings, most Americans still think right. You might say we are designed that way.

One thing is for certain: faith in a creative God who created man in His image ex nihilo cannot coexist with a science that demands belief only in an unguided, purposeless process to miraculously turn nothing into something, and something into someone. And it's that faith that Darwinists ridicule and it's that faith that threatens the faith belief of every Darwinist--a faith belief for which there is no evidence--that an unintelligent process produced from eternal matter the requisite voluminous genetic information to build every new and useful feature of every living being. Richard Dawkins, a man admirable only for his consistency and right thinking on this point, would agree: there is simply no argument to be made that Darwinian faith and a faith in the creative God of the Bible can be rationally reconciled. And to humbly adapt phraseology from this source of limited admiration, it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims that faith can coexist with naturalistic (unguided, purposeless) Darwinism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

The tragic irony is that it's that faith that aligns best with the material evidence in nature; there is simply no scientific reason to deny the creative work of a creative God. All of nature cries out intelligent design, and acknowledging such does nothing to hinder science or scientist. But insisting on denying intelligent design by saying (as did DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick) ignorant things like "biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved," only serves to widen the divide between dogmatic materialist scientists and an open-minded, reasonable public.

It's time to drop the artificial "faith versus science" debate, and face the true conflict: science in the service of naturalism versus science in the service of truth. After all, everyone has faith. And either one's science will inform faith, in which the unmistakable material evidence of design in nature will lead to a natural faith consideration of an intelligent designer, or faith will inform science, in which a non-belief in a creative God will lead to stupid statements about a creator creating through undirected processes.

Please, dogmatic science institutions, until you are ready for real dialog on true faith and true science, spare us your tokens.

Roddy Bullock is a freelance writer and the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by and available from Access Research Network. Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.

If you like this essay, go here for many more.

Copyright (c) 2008 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

References:

The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist, Scientific American, October, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-christian-mans-evolution

Richard Dawkins quote: Richard Dawkins, review of Blueprints by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34. http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1989-04-09review_blueprint.shtml

Francis Crick quote ("Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved.") from Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit (New York: BasicBooks, 1988), p. 138.

by Kevin Wirth
ARN Director of Product Development

It looks like the fallout from the movie "Expelled" is stimulating many critics to rehash the same old baloney I've been reading in other sources, which includes some rather spectacularly vacuous comments. Take for example the 10+ page hatchet job Michael Shermer and friends are peddling in their latest issue of SKEPTIC magazine (Volume 14, No. 2). In that issue, Shermer and his minions downplay the significance of the ongoing discrimination dished out to Drs. Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Guillermo Gonzalez and others. For today, I'm just going to focus on SKEPTIC's coverage of Caroline Crocker.

Carrie Sager and Andrea Bottaro team up on page 59 with their skim-the-surface journalism skills to let readers know that Caroline Crocker shouldn't have been so disappointed to find her contract terminated because, after all, "the facts show that her contracts were allowed to continue through their natural terms and simply were not renewed." Sager and Bottaro sympathetically put on a sad face with a nearly audible "awww" and remark that "Although this indeed must have been disappointing for Dr. Crocker, it is certainly not uncommon."

True enough. However, these two reporters appear to have missed the most important aspect of what actually transpired with at least one of Crocker's employers.

Dr. Crocker was evidently the victim of a bait-and-switch ploy in which, according to Crocker, her employer presented her with a new contract for one year after she had already signed a 3-year deal with them. The new contract, she was told, simply made an adjustment in what she was going to teach, however, the timeframe of the new contract had also (unknown to Crocker) been reduced from three years to one year. Crocker signed the new contract, assuming that the three year term that had been offered to her previously was still in place. So, while what Sager and Bottaro reported was technically true, it appears that they may have fallen far short of informing their readers about the whole story. If the terms of her contract were changed in the manner claimed by Dr. Crocker, then it was not a simple matter of her suffering a small dose of disappointment. In fact, if Crocker's version of these events are accurate, it dramatically changes the entire account of what happened from a simple contract expiration to a much more sinister example of deception and discrimination. Which tale are we to believe? I've spoken with Caroline Crocker about this, and she sounds pretty credible to me.

If this presumptive style of fact gathering and reporting holds true for whatever else Shermer and Co. put together in this issue of SKEPTIC magazine, then I shudder to think about any additional "facts" that managed to escape their notice. I guess it's easy to write an article where the "facts" conveniently seem to align with their presumptions of Crocker's naivete. No need to dig further if it looks like she was simply disappointed because her contract expired. Happens all the time, right?

Meanwhile, as Shermer and other critics continue to dismiss the claims of discrimination as unsubstantiated, thousands of competent and qualified scientists, professors, and students continue to be harassed and discriminated against all across the USA for the crime of being a Darwin Doubter.

For readers who would like to find out more about what happened to Drs. Crocker and Gonzalez, and many others who have suffered discrimination for being Darwin skeptics, I recommend grabbing a copy of "Slaughter of
the Dissidents," which can be ordered here.

Seattle area writer and Darwin skeptic Kevin Wirth is a founding member of ARN (formerly Students for Origins Research). He is also the Senior editor and publisher of the book "Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth About Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters" by Dr. Jerry Bergman (2008). This is the most comprehensive book published to date documenting the extent and types of discrimination against Darwin skeptics.

Can the Catholic Church believe in God and Darwin?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I am shortly going to be writing several posts about the Catholic Church, Darwinism, and intelligent design. But first, a note about the stories you may hear in the Catholic press: Caution is well advised.

Few Catholic press reporters know much about the actual arguments and evidence in the intelligent design controversy. Most get stuck on fatuities like "There's no conflict between faith and science" and ambiguities like "The Catholic Church supports evolution." So they seldom have any idea what the critical issues really are.

Two of the most critical issues are, "What does it mean to believe in God" and "What does it mean to believe in the soul, as our immaterial and immortal nature?" Thus, you will hear truly staggering statements like along the lines of "The Church can believe in God - and Darwin too!"

Anyone who says that - or anything like it - simply doesn't understand the issue, and you can safely forecast that anything else you hear from them will be a timewaster.

Can the Church believe in God and Darwin too?

Darwinism is an attempt to explain of how the human being, including the human mind (and religion, of course), can come into existence without any purpose at all, let alone input from God. That is the nub of Darwin's theory, a point that is emphasized repeatedly in the evolutionary biology literature.

Now, suppose the Church decides that Darwin and his modern day fans are right. Can Catholics go on believing in God? Yes, but what belief in God means becomes radically different in that case. As Logan Gage says, the explanation for religious beliefs is that

They must have had survival value at some point in the past; or, alternatively, .. , religion does not have direct survival value but is a by-product of something else that does have survival value. (Note: - from a review of Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue, Journal of Lutheran Ethics, October 2008.)

So religion evolved either because it has survival value or because it is associated with other types of behaviour that have survival value. That is the explanation for it.

Of course, you may hear a pundit crow happily that "our wonderful God worked through evolution! He gave religion survival value! Thus we evolved to know that religion is true!"

Talk about missing the point ...

The Darwinian explanation does not explain religious belief, it explains it away . It removes any reason for supposing that the reason that we believe in God is that God actually exists and has revealed himself to us. From Gage again:

arns that particular religious belief X came about because we used to run from lions on the savannah, X loses its justification. I did not come to believe X by any sort of rational or designed process; rather, I believe X because my evolutionary history gave me a tendency to believe X.

Darwin himself grasped this problem:

... the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Can you still believe in God or revelation? Yes, but your belief becomes the intellectual equivalent of smoking pot. You evolved in such a way that belief turns you on. That, in sum, is the reason for the strong appeal of Darwin's theory to atheists.

And what abut the existence of the soul?

The evidence for the Darwinian theory of the origin of the human mind or of religion is very poor, as Mario Beauregard and I noted in The Spiritual Brain. Nonetheless, some Christians in science would very much like the Church to embrace it. I don't think that likely because the Catholic Church is not well suited to the radical materialism that would result. Here, for example, is a must-read New York Times article spelling that out exactly:

That is the nub of the issue, according to Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary who has written widely on science, religion and the soul. Challenges to the uniqueness of humanity in creation are just as alarming as the Copernican assertion that Earth is not the center of the universe, she writes in her book “Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies?” (Cambridge, 2006). Just as Copernicus knocked Earth off its celestial pedestal, she said, the new findings on cognition have displaced people from their “strategic location” in creation.

Another theologian who has written widely on the issue, John F. Haught of Georgetown University, said in an interview that “for many Americans the only way to preserve the discontinuity that’s implied in the notion of a soul, a distinct soul, is to deny evolution,” which he said was “unfortunate.”

The solution, in some folks' view, is to affirm "evolution" and deny the soul. Making clear to Catholics that there is no such thing as a soul could be bad PR, however. But there is another way: To define the soul in such a way that there is no reason to believe that it really exists. That is Ken Miller's strategy here:

For scientists who are people of faith, like Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, asking about the science of the soul is pointless, in a way, because it is not a subject science can address.

“Everything we know about the biological sciences says that life is a phenomenon of physics and chemistry, and therefore the notion of some sort of spirit to animate it and give the flesh a life really doesn’t fit with modern science,” said Dr. Miller, a Roman Catholic whose book, “Finding Darwin’s God” (Harper, 1999) explains his reconciliation of the theory of evolution with religious faith. “However, if you regard the soul as something else, as you might, say, the spiritual reflection of your individuality as a human being, then the theology of the soul it seems to me is on firm ground.”

That will go over better with Catholics who do not like to think much.

As a matter of fact, materialist Christians will need to fudge a lot over the next few years to make their case because the younger generation of John Paul II Catholics are not even modernists, let alone materialists. So don't be surprised if you seldom hear the conflict set out clearly in the Catholic media.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

In 'Heaven And Earth', a pictorial exposition of the natural world, photographer David Malin emphasized the astounding fact about man's unique position in nature- half way between the very smallest and largest things we know (Ref 1). When the world's largest particle 'smasher'- the Large Hadron Collider- is finally completed next year, it may provide a way of expanding our knowledge of the very small by unifying the two disparate realities defined by quantum physics and gravity. At least that is what String theorists hope for.

The world of quantum physics tells of a past and a future that is definable in terms of statistical probabilities and not the certainties that we attribute to a classical reality. For larger entities such as the human body, this quantum nature is lost because such objects continuously interact with the environment. The resulting so-called 'decoherence' causes larger objects to lose their quantum properties (Ref 2). But for much smaller objects such as electrons, things are rather different. Electrons become "criss-crossing waves of probability" rather than particles taking singular paths (Ref 3, p.179).

The simplest experiments in support of the quantum realm came from the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman who showed how wave functions and interference patterns could be produced on detector screens whenever a beam emitted by a laser was split in two- an observation that could only be explained by assuming that, upon splitting, both routes had been taken by the beam (Ref 3, p.179). We now know that even when the intensity of the laser is lowered sufficiently such that single photons are emitted (one every few seconds), the interference pattern is still generated (Ref 3, p.181). Two possible histories for the path taken by the photon become reality. What we also know is that the moment some form of measuring device is placed in either of the two pathways, the interference pattern vanishes (Ref 4, p. 102). In 1997, the renowned physicists Dik Bouwmeester and Anton Zeilinger wrote of this rather strange state of affairs:

"In our everyday world, things have properties whether we care to look at them or not. Whether a given apple is red or green is independent of our checking its colour. And although most people acknowledge that quantum mechanics is very strange, thy often feel that quantum objects still have their properties- it seems to be just the clumsiness of our tools that invariably disturbs quantum objects in such a way that we cannot observe all their properties. But any seasoned quantum mechanic knows this not to be true" (Ref 5).

Expressed very simply, it is as if the photon somehow 'knows' that it is going to be measured and consequently 'decides' to go down one of the two possible pathways. As play write Michael Frayn described,

"any act of observation that attempts to determine which of the two paths the particle actually follows necessarily destroys the interference pattern phenomenon, so that the interference pattern vanishes" (Ref 4, p. 102).

One of the primary goals for modern physics is to find a theory that unifies this quantum level with the classical world defined by Newton, Maxwell and Einstein. Physics is making great strides towards a unified theory that may soon encompass these two seemingly disparate worlds under one theoretical umbrella. This theory has everything to do with the smallest unit of matter- a unit called a 'string' (Refs 6,7). The term 'string' in a cosmological context is certainly an enigmatic one and entails a rather bumpy history of excitement and disappointment for those brave physicists who have engaged in trying to realize Einstein's dream of unification. Ever since the 1920's several scientists have laid the ground work for this ambitious goal and while their efforts have so far been largely unfruitful, many believe that these efforts present us with a promise of things to come (Ref 6). According to Scientific American editor George Musser, it has been the integration of gravity into the quantum mechanistic framework that has been the greatest challenge (Ref 7).

If physicists are ever to explain what happened right at the moment that our universe came into being- a moment in which the large and the small existed together in the tiny space of the early cosmos- then a path to reconciliation of these two aspects of our physical reality must be found. In the 1970s and 80s, the unification of both of these realms became the focus of two respected scientists- John Schwarz and Michael Green- who saw string theory as, "the quantum mechanical theory of the gravitational force"(Ref 3, p. 341). Earlier studies with Schwarz' collaborator Joel Scherk, had lead to the finding of a massless particle which, they later proposed was none other than the elusive graviton (Ref 3, p.341). With the graviton- a particle that united quantum mechanics and gravity- String theory seemed poised for success.

Today String theory proposes that the vibrational patterns of strings are what determine the nature of all sub-atomic particles (Ref 8). As Princeton cosmologist Juan Maldacena elaborated, "[just] as a violin string can vibrate with different frequencies, these strings could oscillate in different ways, corresponding to the 'zoo' of particles that was observed" (Ref 8). CERN physicist John Ellis similarly described elementary particles as being different "modes of oscillation of a string" (Ref 9) while Brian Greene pictured our universe as "a string symphony vibrating matter into existence" (Ref 3, p.347). But String theory also requires the existence of space dimensions outside of the three that we experience in our everyday lives. These additional space dimensions are thought to be so small that they would have escaped detection from even the most powerful particle accelerators to-date (Refs 7; 9). Physicists to this day do not fully understand what these additional dimensions actually look like. While there have been attempts to formulate String theory within the three dimensions of space that we know of (Ref 9), most of its protagonists today concur that additional dimensions are required. Because the strings of gravity's graviton particles are thought to be free to move between these extra dimensions (Ref 3, pp.394-398), gravitons may some day soon present physicists with a window into the extra dimensions of space that String theory requires. The reason is conceptually simple and has everything to do with what scientists call the inverse square law.

The inverse square law of force tells us that a mass (A) at a distance of radius(r) from mass (D) will experience gravitational (G) and electrical (E) forces that are proportional to 1/r2 (Ref 3, pp.394-398). So for a universe many dimensions larger, this proportionality would simply increase such that in four dimensions G and E would be proportional to 1/r3, in 5 dimensions, to 1/r4 and so on (Ref 3, pp.394-398). Today the race is on to probe distances smaller than a 10th of a millimeter with the aim of detecting any deviation from the inverse square law that might indicate the presence of the additional space dimensions predicted by String theory. As astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Steven Giddings have noted, the spilling over of gravity into adjacent dimensions may provide the avenue through which String theory can truly be tested (Ref 10)

For now, no measurements on gravity have revealed any deviation from the inverse square law. But the Large Hadron Particle Collider, scheduled for completion in 2009, may change this (Ref 10). If the gravitational force really is much stronger than we observe in our three dimensional space and it is leaking out into adjacent dimensions of space as predicted, the production of tiny black holes- objects whose immense gravitational hold trap anything including light- would require much smaller amounts of energy and matter. Such a scenario would be achievable through the high-energy particle collisions that the Large Hadron Collider will be capable of (Ref 10). While Hadron has recently suffered some major technical difficulties (Ref 11) it promises much when it is finally up and running. If the planned experiments do provide evidence for gravitational spilling, we may be one step closer to achieving the String Theorists' dream of unification.

References:
1. See David Malin's discussion in Heaven and Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye, Phaidon Press, UK, 2004

2. Michael Nielsen (2002), Rules of a Complex World, Scientific American Vol 287 (5) pp. 66-75

3. Brian Greene (2004), The Fabric of the Cosmos- Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1st Edition

4. Michael Frayn (1998), Copenhagen, Methuen Publishing Limited, London, United Kingdom

5. D.Bouwmeester and A. Zeilinger (1997), Quantum Mechanics: Atoms that agree to differ, Nature Vol 388 pp.827-829

6. Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski (2004), The String Theory Landscape, Scientific American Vol 291 (3) pp. 78-87

7. George Musser (2004), Forces of the world, Unite!, Scientific American Vol 291 (3) pp. 106-107

8. Juan Maldacena (2003), Into The Fifth Dimension, Nature, Volume 423 pp. 695-696

9. John Ellis (1987), Strings in four dimensions, Nature Vol 329 pp. 488-489

10. Bernard Carr and Steven Giddings (2005) Quantum Black Holes, Scientific American, May 2005

11. Geoff Brumfiel (2008), LHC meltdown before first collision, http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080922/full/455436a.html, Volume 455, pp. 436-437

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Expelled DVD releases today, distributed by Vivendi. When I checked early this morning (around 3:30 am), Not bad for a documentary about the intelligent design guys that almost every film pundit knew he had a duty to trash. So far, there are 241 comments, and the vast majority of the ones I scrolled through are attacks, voted up by hundreds of people. But the film was also #30 in DVDs Amazon.

Clearly, Darwin's fans feel threatened, and customers are just letting them rant while they themselves buy the film and move on.

Lesley Burbridge-Bates of Motive Entertainment Partnership/L.A.B. Media, the publicity firm, tells us,

It opened in the Top 10, achieving the #5 position on a per-screen average. It has already made its place in history as the #12 Top Grossing Documentary of all time and the #1 Conservative Documentary. The initial buzz about the film was so intense that it became the #1 most popular blog on the Internet (3/24/08), the #6 Top search on Yahoo (4/8/08), and received over 2 million web hits, more than any other movie's website during this time.

Part of that was Yoko Ono's doing, to be sure. Her lawsuit over the use of a couple of bars from the late John Lennon's song Imagine resulted in millions of people learning about the film who had never been remotely interested in the intelligent design controversy.

The biggest problem for anyone introducing a new idea is to get that kind of name recognition. The legal trouble was very expensive for the producers, but they couldn't have bought that kind of publicity at any price.

Eventually, Ono dropped the case, but meanwhile, the producers had decided not to use Imagine anyway. The producers were defended by the Stanford Fair Use Project.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Following up on the Brit media story about the Church of England's faux apology to Charles Darwin, I note where Jonathan Petre (Daily Mail, September 13, 2008) quotes

Former Conservative Minister Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic, said: 'It's absolutely ludicrous. Why don't we have the Italians apologising for Pontius Pilate?

'We've already apologised for slavery and for the Crusades. When is it all going to stop? It's insane and makes the Church of England look ridiculous.'

Yes it does, because as I observed earlier, there is no evidence that the Church of England ever wronged Darwin particularly.

On this phenomenon of "false apology syndrome", psychiatrist and essayist Theodore Dalrymple notes,

Guilt, by its very nature, ought to be connected to responsibility; it ought, moreover, to be in proportion to the wrongdoing that is its occasion. To assume a guilt greater than the responsibility warrants is actually a form of grandiosity or self-aggrandisement. The psychological mechanism seems to be something like this: "I feel very guilty, therefore I must be very important."

In some case, it is a substitute for importance, or for a loss of importance.

That diagnosis would certainly apply to the Church of England, which has suffered significant declines in attendance in recent decades.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Darwinism and popular culture: Why so many conservatives won't vote for Darwin

Darwinism and popular culture: Still not clear how mind emerges from mud

Darwinism and popular culture: Fish story evolves in pop science media

Morning coffee: Are you a redneck? A red diaper baby? And does it matter?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"Don't be fooled by their reputation for altruism and free love – bonobos hunt and kill other monkeys just like their more vicious chimpanzees cousins, according to new research," Ewen Callaway tells us in New Scientist (13 October 2008), revealing that

"Bonobos are merciless," says Gottfried Hohmann, a behavioural ecologist at Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He witnessed several monkey hunts among bonobos living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and says, "they catch it and start eating it. They don't bother to kill it".

Yet unlike chimps, bonobos live in female-centred societies where sex, not aggression, settles differences and enforces social order.

I'd wondered when all that "bonobos could teach humans a thing or two" stuff would finally hit the bottom of the vast circular file of pop science.

The rest of the article is basically people talking around an inconvenient discovery. My favourite line: "Some anthropologists suggest that in the million or so years that separate bonobos from chimps, bonobos lost their appetite for violence."

Gentle reader, remind me of that if they are ever ripping us both to pieces, eating as they go.

See "A defense of Apes r us - an insider look at the pygmy chimpanzee enthusiasts" for the "loving ape" view and "Apes R Not Us, and we have to get used to it, revisited!" for the skeptical view.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack:

Language: Students cannot form logical position about television's impact?

Commentator Dinesh D'Souza challenges "Religulous" documentary producer to a debate

Spirituality: Addiction as a false spiritual quest?

The Mindful Hack supports The Spiritual Brain.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Writing over a decade ago, UCLA biologists Laura Maley and Charles Marshall noted how genetic sequence comparisons carried out between different animal phyletic groups can lead to significantly different interpretations of evolutionary relationships depending on which species is chosen to represent each group (Ref 1). Such a finding should raise concern amongst protagonists of molecular systematics who today use sequence data to determine evolutionary relationships. Yale University's Gavin Naylor showed just how inaccurate such comparisons could be in the context of the vertebrate evolutionary tree (Ref 2). Mitochondrial DNA sequence analyses of 19 different taxa generated an astounding result- frogs and fish were clustered in the same clade as chickens even though "strong morphological and fossil evidence" did not show these as being in any way related by a common ancestor (Ref 2). The same mitochondrial DNA sequences placed echinoderms- which include starfish and sea urchins- in closer proximity to the vertebrates than amphioxus even though, being a chordate, we would expect amphioxus to be closer (Ref 2). That is, if we give the evolutionary tree any credibility.

Given such anomalies, one should be cautious about stating what we really do know about the evolutionary relationships between different classes of vertebrates. Nevertheless molecular biologist Thomas Sakmar and his colleagues from the Rockefeller University seemingly threw caution to the wind several years later when they redesigned the rhodopsin molecule- a visual, light perceiving pigment that is ubiquitous throughout nature (Ref 3). By taking DNA sequences from rhodopsin in alligators, birds, frogs and fish, Sakmar and his colleagues used what we supposedly know about evolutionary relationships between these animals to construct a theoretical 240 million year-old form of rhodopsin. Belinda Chang, one of Sakmar's collaborators, summarized the research

"Using our knowledge of how these vertebrates are related to each other, the sequence alignment and a model of how often certain types of genetic changes occur over time, we calculated the most likely gene sequence"(Ref 3).

A review on this controversial work drew the following conclusion

" [Chang et al provided] a statistical method to work out what the ancestral archosaurs' rhodopsin was like by using knowledge about the evolutionary relationships between living animals related to the archosaurs, and what we know about how sequences of chemicals in a molecule change over time"(Ref 4)

What Sakmar and his team demonstrated was that the novel rhodopsin protein was functional in monkey cells and that it was light sensitive when bound to vitamin A (Ref 3). Moreover it responded to light in the red region of the visible spectrum. This in itself was a masterful achievement. What they did not show was that archosaurs- the supposed evolutionary ancestors of birds and reptiles- would have carried this particular genetic sequence of rhodopsin. Yet this was heavily implied from Chang's conclusion that birds, which also carry a red-light sensitive rhodopsin pigment- had "retained more of the ancestral characteristics than some of the other vertebrates" (Ref 4).

Other similar studies have been carried out aimed at trying to ascertain what ancestral genes and genomes would have looked like. Speaking at the 2004 Genome Sequence Analysis Conference (GSAC), genome diversity biologist Stephen O'Brien described work currently in progress to decipher an ancestral mammalian genome (Ref 5). The common ancestor that O'Brien described is believed to have existed some time before the catastrophic demise of the dinosaurs in the so-called K-T event- one of the greatest extinction events the earth has ever known. Small mammals are thought to have roamed the earth before the K-T event running beneath the feet of dinosaurs (Ref 5). With the dinosaurs' demise, there arose a new ecological background in which a plethora of evolutionary niches were made vacant. So the story goes, mammals filled these niches by evolving into the many forms that we see alive today (Ref 5).

At the same conference, biologist Dario Boffelli told of how humans are distantly related to Ciona- a sessile filter feeder more commonly known as a sea squirt that is today believed to lie at the base of the vertebrate evolutionary tree (Ref 6). The predominant evolutionary mechanism assumed to have operated in bringing about all diversity from the sea squirt is that of natural selection. So it is that within this context we can understand evolutionary biologist Leo Goodstadt's assertion that "genomes are lab books of giant evolutionary experiments" as meaning evolution through undirected, natural causes (Ref 7). Such an assertion is stymied by the fact that not only do we not have any evidence for a common natural ancestor for all vertebrates but we do not have any evidence that natural causes can bring about gross-level evolutionary diversity be it through natural selection on gene fusions and gene duplications, the appearance of pseudogenes, frame shift mutations or any other genetic mechanisms that were identified at the conference (Ref 7).

The take-home message from such a conflict is that in addition to critically scrutinizing current theories on how mammals and archosaurs supposedly coexisted we should also be carefully examining what we do and do not know about the vertebrate sequence. We seem so intent on placing all of life within an assumed evolutionary framework that, even when genetic differences are inconsistent with supposed taxonomic proximity, we explain away these differences simply on the basis of different rates of evolution. Indeed Goodstadt finished his list of bold claims by asserting that "high or low rates [of genetic change] say it all" (Ref 7). With such sweeping generalizations, who can refute anything?

References
1. Laura E Maley and Charles R Marshall (1998), The Coming of Age of Molecular Systematics, Science Volume 279 pp.505-506

2. Michael Balter (1997), Morphologists Learn To Live With Molecular Upstarts, Science Volume 276 p.1032

3. Dinosaur ancestor's vision possibly nocturnal Researchers recreate 240-million year old protein in test tube
http://runews.rockefeller.edu/index.php?page=engine&id=118

4. Sanjida O'Connell, 'What the dino saw', The Guardian Thursday November 28, 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2002/nov/28/dinosaurs.research

5. Stephen O'Brien (2004), Landscape of Comparative Genomics in Mammals, Genome Sequencing & Analysis Conference, 2004

6. Dario Boffelli (2004), Phylogenetic Shadowing to annotate the Human Genome, Genome Sequencing & Analysis Conference, 2004

7. Leo Goodstadt (2004), Gene Evolution and Our Place in the Phylogenetic Tree, Genome Sequencing & Analysis Conference, 2004

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Great Debate: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God will be held November 7-8 in Fort Worth, Texas ( east of Dallas) - and the people who are debating are not who you might think ...

Here's the basic idea:

.... four world renowned participants who will address this significant issue from different viewpoints; specifically, a Pro-Intelligent Design Theist and Atheist, and an Anti-Intelligent Design Theist and Atheist.

Remember the born-again physics nerd versus the atheist religion prof? Locked in endless debate about design in the universe? Well, forget them. They ran out of gas somewhere ...

Here's the lineup:

Faraday Institute head Denis Alexander - he believes in God but not in design in the universe

Mathematician David Berlinski - he doesn't believe in God but entertains the idea of design in the universe

Physicist Lawrence Krauss - he doesn't believe in God or design

Philosopher Bradley Monton (From his site: "One of his main research areas nowadays involves science-based arguments for the existence of God.")

I'm glad someone had the wit to see that questions about whether God - the Western monotheistic God - exists are different from questions about whether patterns in nature, like the fine tuning of the universe, are best interpreted as evidence of design.

Of course some advocates have a massive interest in confusing the two questions, but they are actually separate.

Here are the venues:

Friday November 7, 2008
7:00 – 10:00 p.m.
Will Rogers Auditorium
3401 W. Lancaster Ave.
Fort Worth, Texas
Tickets: $10 Adults; $5 Students

with follow up the next morning
Saturday November 8, 2008
9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
917 Lamar St., Fort Worth, Texas
www.st-andrew.com
Tickets: FREE

I certainly hope this morphs into an online video.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Darwinism and high culture: "Exactly why we do things this way is never a question that is asked"

Intellectual freedom in Canada: Post-modernism the key threat?

Michael Behe and Darwin's big theory

Christian mathematician John Lennox vs. former Christian science writer Michael Shermer, on God, design, and all that

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's a podcast by Casey Luskin, one of the evil Discos, on whether the study of evolution has any practical benefits for science:

Does evolution have any practical benefits for science? In this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin reveals that the answer, surprisingly, is no. Listen as Luskin discusses past biological discoveries, reviews recent surveys of biologists, and quotes several scientists, including noted Professor of Biology and intelligent design critic Jerry Coyne. All three sources agree: the theory of evolution has yielded few practical benefits for scientific discovery.

Actually, that's not really very surprising.

The study of evolution is the study of - to use the vernacular - what used to was and ain't no more. It is necessarily heavy on speculation and interpretation. That's okay, as long as it doesn't become a cult.

Fast forward to Darwinism, which - unfortunately - has become a cult, big time.

Plus, I have been meaning to post this for months - Catriona J MacCallum (PLOS Biology, April 2007 | Volume 5 | Issue 4 | e112) argues for the alleged importance of evolution in medicine. She complains,

One reason that evolution doesn’t figure prominently in the medical community is that although it makes sense to have evolution taught as part of medicine, that doesn’t make it essential. ... , medicine is primarily focused on problem-solving and proximate causation, and ultimate explanations can seem irrelevant to clinical practice. Crudely put, does a mechanic need to understand the origins, history, and technological advances that have gone into the modern motor vehicle in order to fix it?

Crudely put, medicine is about saving lives and limbs today in the real world.

MacCallum thinks that evolution can help us understand epidemics, and this may be so if we mean the evolution of bacteria in a test tube. Not that they evolve much, if you go by Edge of Evolution.

Apart from that, what if the lemur-like creature from which humans are said to descend never had heart attacks? What if it usually did, under stress? How does such information help the medical interne whose patient presents with cardiac arrest? Whatever the interne decides to do must work in half a minute, not half a billion years.

Yes, evolution is very interesting - like any other type of ancient history - but no, it is not essential. I think it should definitely be studied, along with the cave paintings, ancient Egypt and theories about the origin of life and the universe and all that. But the burden of pretending that it is useful in a concrete way is tiresome and avoidable.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Michael Reiss, you sinned against the wrong god

Further to a friend's comment on how intelligent design is applied to crime detection ...

Intelligent design: Chance cannot do all that atheists (and theistic evolutionists) hope

Darwinism and politics: A really bad mix?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

In "Faith Beyond the Frontal Lobes" (Washington Post, September 27, 2008) Michael Gerson offers a common sense corrective to rampant materialism in neuroscience. Reviewing Andrew Newberg's work with meditators, which Mario and I discussed in The Spiritual Brain, he notes,

Human beings routinely have experiences that are not commonly associated with normal consciousness yet seem more real than normal consciousness. "There is something in the brain that facilitates and rewards that type of experience," Newberg says, "and our brain desires to make sense of it."

This leads some, of course, to reductionism -- the assertion that a physical basis for transcendent experience proves there is no such thing as transcendence. It is an evolutionary joke on humanity -- perhaps useful, but not accurate -- because everything explainable is thus illusory.

But this view is not more "scientific" than other views. It involves a philosophic materialism that is entirely faith-based. We know, for example, that a complex series of physical, hormonal changes helps bond a mother to her newborn child. Does this mean that parental love is a myth? Only according to the philosophic claim that chemicals exhaust reality. Is it not equally possible that a cosmos charged with transcendence might organize itself in such a way that human beings can sense transcendence?

Yes, it is equally possible. And that is a better explanation than reducing ideas to chemicals. Put another way, the chemicals that help mothers bond to newborn children don't help us understand why there is a black market in babies for infertile women who have never experienced such chemicals. Nor do they help us understand Mother Theresa and her Missionaries of Charity, who provided homes for thousands of children, even though she became a nun and never tried to have any children herself.

Neuroscience can help us understand some important things about human beings, but it will be the most use if it is treated as one source of information, rather than as a reductionist explanation - especially of subjects like spirituality.

For example, Gerson notes that some people's genes might not predispose them to spiritual experiences. Perhaps, but many spiritual traditions do not emphasize personal experiences; they are viewed as a gift that can become a distraction from the main business of learning to live as a whole human being.

See also:

"Neuroscience: Getting beyond the mind-body problem

"Neurotheology": Bad neurology and bad theology?

Neuroscience: Meditation really can change the brain

Also, Just up at The Mindful Hack:

Altruism: Can mathematics, with a dash of faith, explain altruism?

Artificial intelligence: Conversing with computers? ... or with their programmers?

Spirituality: Is this a trend? Guy tries Judaism "on spec" - discovers 7-day no-refund policy, ends as famous pulpit rabbi

Psychology: Picture yourself deciding you actually like the way you look!

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Michael Gelb, renowned for his thought-provoking ideas on what made great minds such as those of Leonardo da Vinci and Einstein just so great, identified the incessant quest for scientific knowledge or "curiosita" as one of the outstanding features of these historical icons (Ref 1). Gelb has become one of the great visionaries of the business world because of his idea that, by tapping into our innate curiosity, we can all realize our full potential in life. One of Gelb's much used axioms sums up his view point: "If you want to compete in the challenging world of international business, you can't just rely on half a brain" (Ref 1). And yet within the context of science, the curiosity that drives us towards a deeper knowledge of our world needs to be defined within the bounds of moral limits. With this in mind, it is deeply concerning to read zoologist Richard Dawkins' call for the unrestricted march of scientific enquiry.

Dawkins ponders on such questions as why it is that we do not reconstruct prehistoric man while also voicing his support for a Dinosaur Genome Project that might bring past life forms back into the realm of reality (Ref 2, pp.114-115). These 'hoped-for' encounters with prehistoric man and dinosaur illustrate his call for an unlimited scope for scientific investigation. While the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was highly critical of the idea of human-chimpanzee hybridization, calling it the most ethically unacceptable scientific experiment imaginable, Dawkins was almost encouraging of it writing that "a chimp/human hybridization would provide exactly the come-uppance that human dignity needs" (Ref 2, p.191). Such an unethical audacity should awaken our deepest reservations. We carry an enormous responsibility to ensure that our scientific enquiry is kept in check by constant probing of our own moral duties as humans on this earth. We are perhaps reminded of the solitary shepherd Santiago, the principle character of Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist', who sets of on a journey to discover the world (Ref 3). Guiding his sheep through danger, he knew of the need to tread carefully with the flocks that, under his guidance, relied heavily on his best judgment (Ref 3).

Theologian John Polkinghorne wrote of an 'ethical snare' that causes scientists to become so excited about their discoveries that they have little or no time to question the moral limitations of their work (Ref 4, p.92). Biologist Drew Endy from MIT, has voiced his concern for a need to "discuss the current state and future of biotechnology" while adding that the key to dealing with potential risks associated with the mis-use of biological technology lies in "creating a society that can use the technology constructively" (Ref 5). Worthy of note are the comments of Royal Society President Martin Rees who warned of how science and technology are creating "new threats" with increasing unpredictability leaving civilization "more vulnerable to misadventure as well as to disaster by design" (Ref 6).

Ironically it is not the creationists that position man apart from the rest of life in some inaccessible, irrational way but scientists such as Dawkins who see their own realms of investigation as licenses to do what they see fit all for the cause of science. The late theologian John Buttrick was so right to point out the nihilistic undertones of a materialistic philosophy in which we are ready to listen to the scientist who tells us that we are nothing more than "a midge breed" living on a planet that is destined to vanish (Ref 7 p.179). Polkinghorne similarly expressed a hope that "revolts against such a nihilistic conclusion" (Ref 4, pp.21-23). Dawkins would do well to heed the warnings from his contemporaries.

REFERENCES
1. Janet Rae-Dupree (2008), Da Vinci, Retrofitted for the Modern Age, New York Times, June, 2008, http://www.michaelgelb.com/ArticlesDefault.php?art=davinci_retrofitted_article

2. Richard Dawkins (2003), A Devil's Chaplain, Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London

3. Paulo Coelho (1995), The Alchemist, Published by Harper Collins, London

4. John Polkinghorne (2003), Belief in God in an Age of Science, Published by Yale Nota Bene, Yale University Press, New Haven

5. W. Wayt Gibbs (2004), Synthetic Life, Scientific American, Volume 290 (5) pp 74-81

6. Julie Wakefield (2004), Doom and Gloom by 2100, Volume 291 (1) p48-49

7. George A Buttrick (1966) God, Pain and Evil, Abingdon Press, Nashville Tennessee

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

That's St. Edward's University's Stephen Craig Dilley's view in a recent edition of Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (Vol XX, 2008, whose theme this year is globalization).

Dilley is responding to Larry Arnhart, who has been promoting Darwinian conservatism (= why traditional Christians and others should embrace survival of the fittest).

His book-length efforts have been contested, and have prompted a book-length rejoinder from John West.

Here's the abstract:

ENLIGHTENMENT SCIENCE AND GLOBALIZATION
by Stephen Craig Dilley

Abstract
An important intellectual challenge posed by globalization is how the Enlightenment interacts with traditional non-Western worldviews. This essay analyzes a key facet of this challenge: the union of Darwinism with traditional conservative values. Political scientist Larry Arnhart argues that Darwinism provides a biological foundation for conservative notions of human nature, traditional morality, family values, private property, limited government, and the like. A foundation for his view is an Enlightenment claim that the laws of nature and material causes are sufficient to produce "emergent" human minds capable of the kind of free will consistent with moral responsibility. Yet Arnhart's stance implies determinism of the mind and the disintegration of morality. As such, members of the global community who hold conservative values ought to re-examine the parameters of Enlightenment science in light of a more traditional view, which has a richer understanding of the human mind, will, and moral responsibility.

Of course, Darwinian conservatism means the disintegration of morality. The money shot is destroying the reputation of anyone who suggests that before the fix is in, and it doesn't matter any more.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Darwinism and popular culture: Only trolls would carry out Gallagher's orders, but for some reason he wants them carried out by gentlemen.

Theistic evolution: Straw men forked? Arguments for intelligent design addressed? Pigs fly?

Science and society: Here a tic, there a tic, everywhere a heretic ...

Darwinism and popular culture: Taking the fun out of fundamentalism - no hope for the one who does not accept ...

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The recent USA Today op-ed fantasy that Britain does not suffer from controversies over intelligent design (because "theistic evolution" has brought such harmony to Brit land) is an instructive example of just what’s wrong with legacy mainstream media in general. The problem for Mark I. Pinsky's "Science and Faith the British Way" was its timing: The puff piece ran just as the Michael Reiss affair was blowing through the independent blogs.

Synopsis: The Royal Society attracted attention across the globe by firing education director Michael Reiss. As of October 4, 9:00 am EST, the Google search "Michael Reiss" "Royal Society" turned up 71, 500 hits, and blogging on the subject abounds. And the people who drove Reiss from his job (the sinner in the hands of an angry god affair), have earned condemnation on both sides of the controversy over evolution and intelligent design. (Reiss, a Church of England clergyman, is a convinced Darwinist, and his sin was suggesting that terms like "creationism" and :"intelligent design" be spoken aloud in class in order to tell students that they are wrong and that Darwin is right. But the fact that he is a clergyman caused prominent scientists to question his right to hold the education director's post anyway.)

Many Americans and Canadians found out about Reiss's sacking through blogs, and many lively public discussions ensued. But along come the editors and author at USA Today and make clear their assumption that North Americans know nothing about the world that’s not on prime time Boob Tube. So they publish a blog column that – in the context – would be outrageous if it were not so obviously and ridiculously false to the true situation in Britain.

Just being on the Internet does not transform legacy media into new media. The basic legacy media principle is that you have no access to information apart from what they tell you.

It is a three-stage process: 1. They talk. 2. You listen. 3. You believe.

Only one problem: It doesn't work that way any more. This is not the early 19th century. North Americans do not wait six weeks to find out what is happening in London; we know as soon as Brits do. And we now have lots of independent sources of information. So legacy media - online or not - are spinning tales for a shrinking population, as their plummeting circulations show.

Those circulations are never coming back. And this little vignette is a window into one reason why.

The following stories will give you some idea of recent developments in the intelligent design controversy in Britain:

How angry is the Brit God of Science? Pretty angry, it seems ...

So they actually need to explain this? Britain's Royal Society is considering casting out God ...

Intelligent design and popular culture: The BBC spin on British creationism

Will Brit "faith and science" heavyweights speak up after education director’s firing?

Failed Brit Darwinist Michael Reiss: "A Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God": Synopsis of a Play in Three Acts

Intelligent design and high culture: Philosopher says teaching students about intelligent design should be okay - with qualifications (Here in evil, backward North America, the atheist philosopher was not driven from campus for his views.)

Darwinism and popular culture: The Anglican Church's non-apology to Darwin

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Both explained by Dr. Jeff Schwartz.

The easiest way to understand the difference between the mind and the brain is - the brain is a piece of biological matter (protoplasm) in your skull. That's the brain. It's a thing; you can hold it in your hand. The mind is your experiences, and especially for scientific purposes your attention and attention focusing capacity so they aspect and the way in which you focus attention on your experiences.

and put to music by Marcia Bauman!

Also just up at The Mindful Hack

Social psychology: "Only the lonely"? Yes, abstract concepts can generate physical sensations - for better or worse

Near death experiences: Large project to study up to 1500 cases - possible new insights into relation between mind and brain

Evolutionary psychology: Do people see faces in cars?

Spirituality: A conventional sad tale does not transform into a spiritual memoir just because God is hat tipped

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Two studies in immunology published early in 2008 attracted much media coverage because of the elegant way in which the organisms under study had defied each others immune defense and attack responses. The first came from a group at Stanford headed by Charles Hanifin that reported on how Garter snakes had developed 'super-immunity' against a deadly variety of newt (Ref 1). So deadly in fact that Hanifin claims these newts to be the most dangerous amphibians on the planet. It turns out that the secret behind the Garter snake's success resides in a single mutation in a gene that encodes for a cellular receptor called TTX (Ref 1). The mutation, which causes a loss of function (Ref 2), is enough to take the strength out of the newt's lethal toxin (Ref 1). This case has been touted as a prime example of an 'evolutionary arms race' in which the Garter snake has emerged victorious. Perhaps not so dramatic but equally impressive was Munich Immunologist Thomas Miethke's demonstration of how certain strains of bacteria manufacture duplicate forms of human proteins that allow them to avoid detection by the body's immune system (Ref 3). In a functional immune response, specialized cells in our bodies are able to identify invading microbes by using cell-surface receptors that bind to foreign proteins (Ref 3). And yet certain bacteria such as Salmonella are able to inactivate this response by using molecular decoys that 'jam up' immune cells (Ref 3).

The question that naturally arises from both these studies is whether or not one can claim that herein lies the fodder from which immunity supposedly evolved? Can we simply assume that an evolutionary arms race could eventually give rise to the molecular orchestration so visible in, say, the mammalian immune system? A brief examination of the literature reveals significant challenges for the evolutionary picture. Much has been learned in recent years regarding how the various parts of our immune system work together towards the common goal of fighting off invaders. One aspect of the immune response uses the henchmen of the immune defense- our antibodies- to recognize the enormous repertoire of shapes (epitopes in technical jargon) that exist throughout nature (Ref 4, p.14). Stuart Kauffman was absolutely correct when he described the enormous number of possible shapes that these antibodies can latch onto (Ref 4, p.14). Indeed for more than 20 years, many immunologists puzzled over this enormous shape 'repertoire'- a repertoire so large that we now know that as many as a million antibody molecules can be made by combining the different subunits that make up the antibody (Ref 5, p.851).

It is now known that antibodies are not simply floating haphazardly around in the body waiting for an invader to strike but rather are produced by specialized cells called B cells (Ref 5, pp.834-835). Each B cell produces only one specific antibody and carries it on its surface. By recognizing foreign molecules B cells are triggered to proliferate, the result being of course a predominance of B cells that recognize the invading aggressor (Ref 5, p.837). These B cells then secrete their antibodies into the blood stream thereby making the response against the invading aggressor that much more effective (Ref 5, p.838). Foreign antigens are subsequently internalized within cells, chopped up into smaller pieces and presented on the outer cellular surface by a protein complex called the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) (Ref 5, p.881). One recent paper described the diversity of MHC proteins and their role in maintaining immunity in amphibians (Ref 6). This 'fusion' of antigens and the MHC is further recognized by other specialized cells called T lymphocytes- the foot soldiers of the body's own defenses. Molecular messengers called Interleukins signal the T cell to further grow and divide while B cells manufacture more copies of their specific antibodies (Ref 5, p.987).

Antibodies by themselves do not destroy or even harm their targeted aggressors. They are simply signals that mark the spot upon which subsequent reactions act so as to finish the job. Like the action scenes of Hollywood in which enemies are destroyed by explosive-carrying carts that follow tracking devices underneath cars, the antibody provides a signal with which molecular attack complexes can find their target. These complexes form part of the Complement System which, as the name suggests, a system that 'complements' the initial antibody response (Ref 7, p.1031). The proteins of the complement system form a battering ram of sorts that punctures holes into the outer cell membrane of an invading cell destroying it in the process (Ref 7, p.1031). There are a total of 20 different complement proteins all of which are produced in the liver and remain inactive until called into action either by the immune response (the classical pathway) or through recognition of sugar molecules called polysaccharides on the outer surface of the invading cell (the alternative pathway (Ref 7, pp.1032-1034). These complement proteins act cooperatively and in a highly specified order in so far as the binding of one complement protein at the correct place is essential for the binding of the next.

With the eventual demise of the foreign invading cell, the complement system provides a truly masterful mechanism for killing foreign invaders, with each part playing a role in the invader's demise. While not every protein in the complement system is essential (Ref 7, pp.1035-1036), the question that arises is how an integrated immune response that targets foreign bodies while leaving its own cells intact might possibly have evolved? It becomes clear as one considers the complexity of not only the complement system but also the repertoire of antibodies available to the immune response that the origin of such systems severely challenges the idea of a step-by-step evolutionary construction. As science writer Rodney Phillips wrote,

"nearly 150 years after the publication of the Origin of the Species, we are still laboring to understand evolution and selection in many biological systems" (Ref 8).

Of course there should not be total despair for those who wish to stick to the Darwinian framework; for it is easy to see where natural selection may be the driving force that 'improves' the body's defenses in response to selective pressures. Such pressures ar