The ID Report

"Gould supposes what he has to suppose, and Dawkins finds it easy to believe what he wants to believe, but supposing and believing are not enough to make a scientific explanation."
-- Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial

We all know how the giraffe got its long neck, right? Yes, the poor short-necked versions ate up all the leaves on the low branches, and only their lucky longer-necked brothers and sisters could eat. And eating leads to survival to reproduce. Not eating rarely aids in living long enough to reproduce, so voila!, "evolution" preserves the lucky and kills the unlucky, who are never to be seen again (including, incidentally, in the fossil record). So we are regaled with many such "just so" stories to "explain" evolution. When examined closely, almost any account of evolutionary development, such as that of the wing or the eye, involves mostly "supposing" to get from point A to point B. Supposing is fine for imagining; but supposing falls short of explaining, much less proving.

The fact that Darwinists are quick to presume elaborate imaginations to be akin to factual accounts for the origin of something as complex as a working eye is both amusing and troubling. On the one hand, like ancient andabatae, Darwinists make great spectacle as they thrash about in their imaginations (imagination being their only guide). Formidable in appearance only, alternating probes and thrusts in impressive form, Darwinists seem oblivious to the futility imposed by their armored helmets of philosophy. On the other hand, unlike the ill-fated andabatae (all of whom no doubt would risk removing the helmet for the ability to see), the groping blindness of today's Darwinists is self-imposed, evoking a certain pity. What purpose can be served by steadfastly insisting on a view of reality that does not admit certain lines of scientific inquiry, regardless of the evidence?

Unfortunately, the answer to the question above is that science has evolved to the precarious predicament of being guardian of a worldview. Changes in scientific understanding often trigger a change in worldviews. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn includes a chapter entitled, "Revolutions as Changes in World View" which explores how worldviews change with scientific developments. Simple examples such as how Aristotle and Galileo understood the motion of pendulums can illustrate how fundamental shifts in scientific understanding affect how one views all of nature, i.e., one's worldview.

But the change in worldview brought on by understanding the difference between one view or another with respect to pendulum dynamics hardly rises to the level of change that theories of origins require. Discussing theories of origins may make for wearisome academic debates, but the truth of the matter (i.e., the actual, unchangeable, historic happening of the origin of living beings) has profound implications with respect to all areas of life--legal, political, and ethical--to name a few. At bottom, the fact of our existence means the truth of our origins must be either that we are matter-caused, i.e., matter is all that exists and energized matter alone produced everything from rocks to rocket scientists through unplanned, unguided motion, or we are intelligently created, i.e, matter was intelligently manipulated to create the cosmos and everything in it. There are no other choices, and theories built on one of these assumptions must necessarily be false.

Mainstream science has chosen to stake its flag squarely and immutably in the worldview associated with the matter-only assumption of philosophical naturalism, requiring all theories to assume matter is all that exists, or, at least, matter is all that matters. Such a stance is understandable and relatively harmless when the object of study is applied science, like studying pendulums or building rockets. But with respect to origin of life theories, science is championing the cause of naturalism unnecessarily. Contrary to the oft-repeated rhetoric, naturalistic Darwinism is not necessary to study and understand any area of science any more than is intelligent design, or even special creation. For example, photosynthesis, planetary motion, life cycles, even genetics, can each be studied and understood, as well as applied to solve practical problems, without recourse to any theory of origins, including the study of Darwinism. In fact it's done in laboratories everyday.

Why, then, do mainstream scientists guard Darwinism so fiercely? First, it seems that, almost by definition, one can't be a mainstream scientist without paying public homage to Darwin. Second, it must be appreciated that many people are convinced that Darwinism represents the truth with respect to origins. Not ever having been exposed to contrary evidence, such scientists are under the impression that there is no contrary evidence. Even more so, Darwinism has a symbolic value as the defining discipline dividing science and religion, and any attack on Darwinism is an attack on science itself. The attacks are all the more threatening because they always seem to come from "religious" people. Finally, like other religious people and their beliefs, many people who believe in Darwinism have never studied their chosen dogma; they believe it because that's what they've been taught and to think otherwise not only requires work, but is likely to make them look like charter members of the flat-earth society.

Obviously, objective scientific considerations are insufficient to explain the religious ferocity with which the evolutionist elites protect their Darwinian domain. There is more in play here than a simple scientific controversy, such as whether light is a particle or a wave, to give another example of a question that divided the scientific world for a time. No, the question of origins brings into play the question of ultimate worldview--which philosophy is correct for understanding reality? If naturalism is not the correct philosophy, i.e., matter is not all that exists, then weighty questions arise as to just what else may exist. The "what else" implies an intelligent "who else" that leads to a "why else" which causes one to see the world very, very differently from what naturalism would require.

Like surviving andabatae removing their unduly restrictive helmets, scientists willing to consider alternatives to philosophical naturalism can remove blinding restrictions on the mind and can see the world in an entirely different way. Such a paradigm shift has its professional risks, but those who are willing to honestly consider the alternatives to naturalism will no doubt find that the new way of seeing permits new ways of solving problems--solutions with fewer anomalies than those provided by naturalism. New theories of origins that consider intelligence, even God, can, then, join other scientific paradigm shifts, where, as Kuhn says, "Scientists then often speak of the 'scales falling from the eyes' or of the 'lightening flash' that 'inundates' a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution."

As long as science is held hostage by the philosophy of naturalism, however, the scales on most eyes will remain, the puzzles will remain obscure, imaginations will continue, and "supposing" will have to suffice for explanation. Sophisticated "just so" stories will have to carry the evidentiary load, feebly substituting for scientific reasoning. That such "just so" stories go unchallenged from the mind's eye of Darwinists to the reading eyes of an unwary public is unfortunate. But that science would condone such behavior, risking its reputation for the honor of a philosophy, is tragic.

Let him who has eyes to see, see.

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.

This month's essay adapted from End Note 79 of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science.

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.

Publisher and agent inquiries welcome.

References:

Opening quote from: Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downer's Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991), p. 42.

"Just so" stories refer to Rudyard Kipling's book, Just So Stories, originally published in 1902. The book is a collection of fanciful tales with titles such as "How the Whale Got His Throat," "How the Camel Got His Hump," and the like.

Andabatae were Roman-era gladiators that were heavily armored, but their helmets had no eye holes; they fought without the benefit of their eyesight.

Kuhn quote from: Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 111.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

If you got money for Christmas, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: and 5 Others That Didn't Help would be a good use of your dime. Therein, Ben Wiker, senior fellow at St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, relates - among many other useful stories - the curious case of the canals on Mars.

Canals on Mars?

A number of prominent scientists, beginning in 1877 with Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, were convinced that they saw through their telescopes an intricate system of canals on Mars. These canals were all very geometrical and hence obviously carried water for the great Martian civilization. The certainty of intelligent life on Mars was trumpeted (with the aid of businessman and amateur astronomer Percival Lowell). Books were published. Major newspapers declared the evident certainty to the astounded (and gullible) public. Helping to whip the public into a frenzy was alien enthusiast H. G. Wells, whose War of the Worlds seared into people's minds the dire fate that awaited Earth once the Martians stopped boating around their canals and launched their inevitable attack.

By 1930, this certainty was exploded by another astronomer, E. M. Antoniadi, who pointed out that the "canals" weren't canals; they weren't nice geometrically drawn lines of precision traced on the surface of mars, but just fuzzy shapes.

The lesson is simple enough. Schiaparelli, Lowell, Wells, and a host of other scientists and popularizers wanted to see life on Mars. The alien enthusiasts just wanted to see what was fuzzy as straight and geometrical because they wanted Mars to be populated with aliens. It is often our desire to have something be true that makes us clearly and distinctly see the false as true, the imagined as real. This is as true in the history of science as it is in our everyday life. In either case, reality is the appropriate test of our everyday beliefs and scientific theories. (pp. 25-26)

In describing this story, I would have used terms like "design inference" (in this case, no), inference to the best explanation, and following the evidence wherever it leads. Qualities absent from the Big (materialist) Science of the day.

Antoniadi was lucky, I suppose, to live when he did. He could have been a Guillermo Gonzalez, exiled to a Christian college for speaking the truth about Earth's location and qualities, in relation to the solar system. Remember that Gonzalez's key point is that Earth is an unusual planet, but the materialist agenda needs to show that there are zillions of Carl Sagan's "pale blue dots" out there.

And just now Call Display is asking me to accept a call from a planet orbiting the Alpha Centauri star system, from an alien who knows there is no mind or free will and thinks that everyone should be genetically planned and ... hey, wait a minute, buddy! Aren't you just a fundraiser for Ivy League U's? Get offa my line and get ME offa yer list!!! you people will go bankrupt before you smarten up, but you are just so not my problem!

See also: Alfred Russel Wallace on why Mars is not habitable

Also just up at Colliding Universes, my blog about competing theories of our universe:

Nuclear weapons: Certainties we are safer without

Astronomer vs. pop science TV

Coffee break: From Dolly the embraceable ewe to a fully downloadable you?

Origin of life: Alien origin taken seriously? Ghost of Francis Crick smiles wanly

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

Steve Fuller, Warwick University sociologist and author of Dissent over Descent will comment at Uncommon Descent in 2009, the Year the Darwin Cult Tops Itself. He starts today with this:

First, stripped of its current scientific scaffolding, Darwinism is a 19th century social theory that has been turned into a ‘general unified theory of everything’, and as such belongs in the same category as Marxism and Freudianism. The big difference is that Marxism and Freudianism – throughout their existence – have been contested (many would say decisively) by several alternative ways of organizing and interpreting the same body of data. In the case of Darwinism, this largely ended by 1950. However, it doesn’t mean that Darwinism has somehow turned into something other than a 19th century social theory. No, it’s simply a 19th century social theory with unusual clout. Indeed, Darwinism is really no different from Marxism and Freudianism in using its concepts as rhetorical devices for associating intuitively clear phenomena with rather deep and mysterious causes. I hope to draw your attention to examples of this in the coming weeks.

Agnostic Fuller also wrote a very entertaining play based on the idea of Darwin and Abe Lincoln appearing on a talk show. He has debated theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander and has replied to conventional Darwinist Sarkar Sahotra. He appears in Expelled.

Rte the Darwin cult: Go here and here for links to ridiculous hagiography of the old Brit toff - along with appropriate antidotes to splitting a gut.

See also: Intelligent design and popular culture: Population crank is now U.S. science and technology policy director

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 Kevin Wirth
ARN Director of Product Development

I guess this year's top 10 Darwin and Design news stories are blindingly dull for some folks. I got a rather silly email from someone today, and thought I would share his thoughts and my response. I won't reveal his actual name here...so I'll call him Smitty.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hello Kevin, happy holidays. I just read your list of top ten news stories and listened to the podcast on "ID the future." It looks like another year and absolutely nothing has been learned about the intelligences behind intelligent design, nor anything new about the process of design. I've been saving these for the last few years and as I look them over, I see that the trend continues. There are no discoveries about either intelligence or the design process. Instead, the subjects you've selected are either intelligent design PR, intelligent design persecution, the politics of ID versus evolution or genuine science stories that you re-interpret to somehow imply support for ID.

For yet another year, there is absolutely nothing new that's been discovered about the intelligences or about the process of design. Is there anyone even working on those subjects? Even the Biologic Institute doesn't seem to be working on those topics. Their most newsworthy result is publishing software! How can anyone claim that ID is a science if no one is working on proving the central claims? If it were really a science then wouldn't the major share of the research funding be spent finding out who the intelligent designers are? I can't imagine there would be a more interesting question to answer. But after years of following this field, I can find no evidence of anyone past or present who's conducting any research to identify the nature of the intelligences. How do you explain that?

Regards,

Smitty

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Ah Smitty,

Happy Holidays right back at you. Thanks for reading our Top 10 stories and also for listening to our podcast recap.

If you'll permit me to be a bit brash, your questions don't indicate to me that you've been seriously thinking very hard about the implications of what we reported in our Top 10 news stories.

No new discoveries? Sure, we included all the usual suspects you identified. But you need to think about this a bit more. We gave you far more value than you claim. Part of what we do with these stories is underscore and remind folks that we need to be looking at evidence, not just speculation. Your tweaking shows how shallow your powers of analysis are, and it deserves a response.

1) I think the clutch feature of the flagellum (news story #6) was pretty nifty (you didn't include that one in your list...). The discovery of a clutch system isn't impressive to you? Wow, then I guess if we could somehow make the whole state of Alaska disappear that wouldn't be a very big deal for you either. I think we should continue to feature a new characteristic for this poster child every year until the expanded explanation of this little organelle is pretty much an overwhelmingly obvious example of a mind behind the scenes. Don't know how much more complicated it needs to be before you'll get the point, because if it's not convincing now, there's not much more that could be said.

This is a great example of what many Darwinians would call "Apparent design," only, it's pretty obvious to most observers that trying to explain how the flagellum came about via purely naturalistic processes has yet to be DEMONSTRATED by science. Until that time, you can claim IDers are chasing the "God did it" theme all you want, but most reasoning people recognize that the Darwinian answer (ie, "Evolution did it") is not compelling evidence either. Neither explanation can be presented empirically, and both are based on faith. Not only that, but if one must choose between chance and intellgence being the cause, then logic dictates that the flagellum was engineered by a brain. Chance has no chance of looking very convincing in this matter, no matter how much time you allow.

2) If you were paying attention, you'd see that the focus of many of our Top 10 stories revolves around the common thread of of cellular complexity. The movie "Expelled" (our #3 story) features one of the most amazing animation sequences of the cell one could imagine. And it barely scratched the surface. Go rent the movie and look at that sequence again, and then come back and explain to me how evolutionary processes demonstrate that all of those cellular components could originate with their specific functions and interrelationships via evolutionariy processes.

3) Continuing with molecular biology and the theme about the impressive complexity of the cell is our #8 story about the Ribosome. We provided a link, did you actually READ the transcript? No? I thought not. Consider the new paradigm shift proposed by John Brockman in his opening remarks:

"We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species other than our own will no longer exist, and the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented." (Life: What a Concept!, EDGE Foundation, 2008, p. 6)

The lofty goal of creating molecular machines is heralded here as the next big deal. That would be nice, except to achieve this requires synthesizing (among other things) ribosomes. Contributor/participant Dyson refers to the ribosome as the "central mystery" to the explanation for the origin of life. He talks about the ribosome as being "invented," which is hardly a Darwinian concept, since evolution cannot possibly be called on to "invent" anything. It makes much more sense to theorize that a brain invented something as complicated as a ribosome. You don't need to know HOW something was invented by a brain to deduce that it was. So far there is no evolutionary explanation for the origin of the ribosome, but Darwinists are confident, even without any evidence, that it somehow evolved.

Venter notes (p. 51)

"The lay press likes to talk about creating life from scratch. But while we can create and develop new species, we're not creating life from scratch. We talked about the ribosome; we tried to make synthetic ribosomes, starting with the genetic code and building them - the ribosome is such an incredibly beautiful complex entity, you can make synthetic ribosomes, but they don't function totally yet. Nobody knows how to get ones that can actually do protein synthesis."

This might not be particularly newsworthy to most Darwinians, or even the "lay press," but it is worth pointing out to folks who care to think about the issue. Dyson notes that "Once the ribosome was invented, then the two systems, the RNA world and the metabolic world, are coupled together and you get modern cells."

There is no evidence, and no compelling explanation for HOW this specualtive evolutionary development all took place, only the specious confidence that it somehow did. Sounds about as "God of the gaps"-sensical as any ID explanation, right? This is a great example of where we remind folks that evidence is not the same as speculation. Brilliant conjecture, no matter how well endowed with persuasiveness, is never a good substitute for compelling evidence. Yet this is the stock and trade of Darwinians.

Aside from that, your critique about a focus on those other issues is really rather hollow, considering that evolutionists put a pretty big stake in those same topics you rattled off ("intelligent design PR, intelligent design persecution, the politics of ID versus evolution or genuine science stories that you re-interpret to somehow imply support for ID.").

You really should re-examine each of these items, because I can provide you with a bunch of examples of how Darwinists focus on these very same targets all the time.

So, I don't understand what your objection is. If Darwinians can talk about these issues, why can't IDers? What's good for the goose should be good for the gander, unless of course, you're suggesting that we should be playing by a different set of rules than our critics. In which case I'll be waiting for your explanation with great anticipation. We think it's newsworthy stuff, and you don't. Fine with me. You say we're guilty of hijacking "genuine science stories that you re-interpret to somehow imply support for ID."

AS IF Darwinians never do this.

Ha! They do it EVERY SINGLE TIME they find a new fossil. Every new fossils find is assumed to be evidence for evolution, even if they can't figure out how just yet. Talk about who hasn't been coming forth with the evidence! I've been waiting all my life for Darwinians to explain how fossils provide overwhelming evidence for evolution. All I keep reading about from the expert paleontologists is speculations piled upon conjectures surrounded by extrapolations. They "think this happened", or "we suppose that occurred", and "we can't imagine (yet) what critter preceeded this one," and so forth. So, please spare me your prattle about how ID isn't producing any answers. Darwinians haven't been doing such a great job either. So let's just call it a draw, shall we?

The consensus about Darwinism isn't as tight as Darwinists claim, and the supporters of ID are not all a bunch of Bible thumping religious nuts. Let's see, Antony Flew is a good start. Then we have David Berlinski, and others in story #2 indicating that hmmmm, maybe there IS a rational way to look at ID if these agnostic and atheist folks can see it. This IS news for many Darwinians who somehow missed this story.

You say that "For yet another year, there is absolutely nothing new that's been discovered about the intelligences or about the process of design. Is there anyone even working on those subjects? Even the Biologic Institute doesn't seem to be working on those topics."

Hmmm. Let me ask you something: Have you contacted the Biologic institute and asked them if they're working on this stuff? And if YOU were an IDer, what peer-reviewed journal would you tell them to submit their research findings to?

The process of design isn't important to ID research. You don't need to explain HOW something was designed or engineered to detect that it was. Nor is it really important to know anything "about the intelligences" to detect design. So maybe that's why you haven't heard anything about that from Biologic lately.

You asked a spate of other questions, so I'll respond to them in turn:

You: Their most newsworthy result is publishing software!
Me: OK, did you indicate the same level of surprize when the Darwinians publish their little evolutionary software tools? And we never said that the software story was the "most newsworthy result," you did.

You: How can anyone claim that ID is a science if no one is working on proving the central claims?
Me: Who says no one is working on this? Not ARN. Not me. Not anyone I know within the ID community. Oh, let me add that I'd be delighted to accept any research funding on behalf of the ID movement -- we can produce lots of research on this problem with a little more coin.

You: If it were really a science then wouldn't the major share of the research funding be spent finding out who the intelligent designers are?
Me: So how do you know anything about who and how much research funding is or is not being spent? And anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the research wouldn't focus on who the "intelligent designers are." ID doesn't seek answers to that. What ID does is postulate that we can detect whether something was designed or not, period. It's agnostic about Who might have done the designing. You don't need to know anything about the designer to detect engineering or design.

Let's not overlook the fact that Darwin waited 20 years to publish his Origin of Species. ID hasn't been doing research anywhere near that long. Be a little more patient. If you
just can't wait any longer, I suggest you look a little deeper. If our Top 10 news stories don't get you excited, then heck, who are we to stand in your way? I'm pretty sure if you cared to, you could find even better stories. We don't own the market on 'em. If you can find a better one, I'll consider publishing it.

On the one hand I'm tempted to say you'll get your nickel's worth if you just hang in there a little longer. But on the other hand, if you continue to wait for someone else to show you the light, you'll never find it. I sugges that you stop "following" our Top 10 stories and start digging for a few on your own. Go find the answers yourself instead of waiting for others to "prove" it to you. ID isn't a cosmological vending machine for answers you think ought to convince you. It looks to me like you think others are responsible for providing you with the compelling evidence, and if none of it pleases you, that lets you off the hook, right? Sorry, but I don't think it works that way. If you're not convinced, then start digging. And if you're really serious, you won't be sending us any more of your prattle and tweakage about how disappointed you are (oh really?) that ID hasn't come up with anything convincing for you this year, or in previous years. Heck, I've met some pretty glorious pontificators who could learn volumes from your subtle approach.

You: I can't imagine there would be a more interesting question to answer.
Me: And, I would agree with you on that point. Meanwhile, Behe and Dembski should have given you plenty to chew on for now. Have you written any critiques about their work yet? I'd love to read it. If not, then start there.

You: But after years of following this field, I can find no evidence of anyone past or present who's conducting any research to identify the nature of the intelligences. How do you explain that?
Me: ID isn't concerned about the "nature of the intelligences" as you put it. It is only concerned with demonstrating that intelligence is a reasonable explanation for what many Darwinians refer to as the "apparent design" found throughout nature. IDers would suggest it's not "apparent design" at all, but rather evidence of "actual" design. Obviously engineered structures imply that a mind was at work, and is a logical and rational explanation.

I guess you didn't think any of those poor dissenters in the recent HIV-AIDS controversy over the past 25 years had anything useful or convincing to say either, right? I'm thinking of the dismissal of those darn pesky dissidents who've been insisting that HIV doesn't cause AIDs. How dare they challenge the findings published in a peer-reviewed journal! The refusal of Big Science to even take a whiff of their concerns was based on an article in that mainstay of scientific empiricism, Science magazine. And of course, no research funding was spent going down that rabbit hole of an idea. Big Science is hesitant to fund irrational notions that go against established findings.

But gee, this must be old hat for many Darwinians who already knew IDers like Phil Johnson never saw that one coming.

NOT!

You need to read my blog post at:
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/12/25/big_science_takes_a_huge_hit_for_snubbin

Big Science took a Big Hit on this one, and you KNOW they're never going to say "Gee, that silly old Berkeley Lawyer/Dissidenter/Philosopher Phil Johnson knew it all the time and we dismissed him so cavalierly. Maybe he has some OTHER ideas we ought to listen to."

As if that'll ever happen.

Regards,

Kevin

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, contributor, 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 Dissidents. He is also the publisher of Caroline Crocker's upcoming book about her experience as an Expelled University professor which is scheduled to be released sometime in early 2009. He is also the publisher of Caroline Crocker's upcoming book about her experience as an Expelled University professor which is scheduled to be released sometime in early 2009.

To read more essays by Kevin Wirth, click here.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Kevin H. Wirth, all rights reserved. Quotes and links are permitted with attribution.

By Kevin Wirth
ARN Director of Product Development

In a stunning announcement earlier this month it was revealed that the seminal papers outlining the probable cause of AIDS as published in the journal SCIENCE in 1984 were almost certainly falsified. SCIENCE, which is often cited as one of the most important peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, will most likely be forced to retract the falsified papers it published (so much for the claim that peer-reviewed papers in leading science journals are the invincible bulwark of scientific investigation).

A letter submitted on December 9, 2008 to SCIENCE by the group Rethinking AIDS, stated in part:

"What prompts our communication today is the recent revelation of an astonishing number of previously unreported deletions and unjustified alterations made by Gallo to the lead paper. There are several documents originating from Gallo's laboratory that, while available for some time, have only recently been fully analyzed. These include a draft of the lead paper typewritten by Popovic which contains handwritten changes made to it by Gallo. This draft was the key evidence used in the above described inquiries to establish that Gallo had concealed his laboratory's use of a cell culture sample (known as LAV) which it received from the Institut Pasteur." [1]

The letter was signed by more than 40 Senior scientists.

But what is even more important is what happened during all those intervening years to the dissidents (now vindicated) who did everything they could to call attention to the problems related to flawed AIDS research. This behind-the-scenes story reveals much about what I consider to be the Achille's heel of science: Intolerance of Dissidents.

Dissent is concept many folks in the scientific community really don't want or care to hear about on issues where there seems to be an established consensus (and in fact, the very notion of the importance of consensus among scientists often creates additional stumbling blocks and challenges to scientific advancement). In fact, dissent is just the thing that creates confusion in the minds of students, the public, and especially those who control the purse strings for NSF and other major research funding grants. Unfortunately, if you challenge Big Science, you can quite often expect to get shut down.

Take the case of University of California at Berkeley retrovirus expert Peter Duesberg and Nobel Prize winner Walter Gilbert, who have been warning us for years that there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS. Their amazing claims challenged the most basic assumptions of the medical community in evaluating the cause of AIDS and is in direct contradiction to conventional wisdom about the disease.

Dr. Duesberg earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1963 from the University of Frankfurt in Germany. His work on retroviruses resulted in the isolation of the first cancer gene in 1970, and soon after proceeded to map their genetic structure.

"On the basis of his experience with retroviruses, Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis in the pages of such journals as Cancer Research, Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, Journal of AIDS, AIDS Forschung, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapeutics, New England Journal of Medicine and Research in Immunology. He has instead proposed the hypothesis that the various American/European AIDS diseases are brought on by the long-term consumption of recreational drugs and/or AZT itself, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS. See The AIDS Dilemma: Drug diseases blamed on a passenger virus." [2]

The 1984 papers published in SCIENCE, were used as evidence that Duesberg and those who agreed with him must be wrong.

As long ago as 1993, Robert Root-Bernstein wrote an article titled "Rethinking Aids" in the Wall Street Journal (not in one of those really important peer-reviewed science journals) that echoed many of the same findings as Duesberg. [3]

In 1994, another paper (co-authored by Philip Johnson)titled "What Causes Aids," challenged many of the then standard assumptions concerning AIDS research in exquisite detail, and was published in the June issue of Reason that year. [4]

Fast forward more than ten years to a 2007 interview with Dr. Duesberg and we see that he was still challenging scientists to reconsider the causes of AIDS. Moreover, the interview reveals what Duesberg has been made to endure as a result of challenging the scientific establishment over the nature, cause, and future direction of AIDS. One of his critics referred to him as "nuts" and he has lost much of the funding he had enjoyed earlier in his career before he began publishing his heretical views.

Regardless of whether Duesberg's claims are accurate, his challenges seem credible enough and are certainly worthy of investigation. Fortunately, he's not alone: many other scientists agree with him.

"...other scientists think differently and strongly respect Dr. Duesberg's ideas - including Nobel laureates in chemistry Kary Mullis and Walter Gilbert. Duesberg, Mullis, and Gilbert all point out that there is no direct experimental evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and that there are numerous problems with the HIV-AIDS theory. For example, not everyone infected with HIV gets AIDS, and not everyone with AIDS symptoms is infected with HIV. In fact, the symptoms of AIDS vary from continent to continent, and a medical diagnosis of AIDS is often made simply by testing positive for HIV antibodies in the presence of a disease such as tuberculosis or cancer. However, instead of engaging in scientific debate, according to Dr. Duesberg, the only response from the scientific establishment has been to cut off funding to further test his hypothesis."

ANALYSIS

Unfortunately, Duesberg's ideas were met with tremendous resistance over the years from within the medical community, which has resulted in a series of responses that mirror the way Darwin skeptics are also treated. That pattern speaks volumes about the nature of bigotry and discrimination directed towards dissenters.

Duesberg makes a comment in his interview that provides some hard-learned insight on the treatment dished out to dissenters:

"Scientists are selected for instincts that help them to get funding, recognition, invitations to meetings, access to publications and awards. None of these are available to scientific minorities. On the contrary, minorities are excommunicated at many levels from the consenting majorities, even from personal contacts with mainstream colleagues. Those are strong incentives for scientists not to "examine" unpopular ideas."

So much for scientific integrity.

The question I'm asking my readers to consider is this: could the same treatment towards dissidents exist in other areas of science? More importantly, could science be WRONG about other sacred cows in their orthodoxy corral?

Like, for instance, Darwinism?

The takeaway lesson from the treatment meted out to Duesberg and other dissidents is that the AIDS-HIV issue is just symptomatic of what goes on in the scientific and medical community whenever someone challenges orthodox views. The sad part is, many scientists don't seem to be learning the key lesson here about the value of dissent. Instead of closing ranks around orthodoxy, you'd think scientists would figure out after incidents like the AIDS fiasco that that if they could be wrong about something as big as the AIDS-HIV connection, perhaps they could be wrong about a few other cherished notions as well.

And let's not forget that the AIDS-HIV error was promoted in a peer-reviewed journal. And not just any Journal, we're talking about one of the most prestigious science journals on the planet. This is one of the issues Darwin critics are faulted for - it is widely claimed that their views should not be tolerated because they don't publish in the same circles as everyone else who dutifully follows the orthodox scientific bandwagon. The AIDS blowup demonstrates that the argument for heavy reliance on peer review as a defining factor of reliability is subject to enormous failure. Sure, it may serve science well in most instances, but it's certainly not infallible. What this incident does is show us just how clearly peer review is used as a mechanism to maintain control of an idea regardless of other data that contradicts the orthodox view.

When dissenters are slapped down by self-styled Saviors of Science, regardless of the venue, it's amazing how the same patterns of behavior emerge, indicating that it might just be the peer review process and resulting discrimination that should be investigated rather than the alleged stupidity or warped conclusions of the dissenters.

Consensus and unity about the cause of AIDS, or the reality of evolution are far more important to many scientists than listening to the persistent nagging of those pesky dissenters who keep raising their hands and insisting that there are problems with how we view the scientific data. Amazingly, it matters little how qualified a dissenter may be. The treatment of dissenters within the scientific and academic community is quite often so politically motivated that one wonders how anyone manages to conduct good science in the first place. And the treatment of dissenters ranges from censorship, turning them into "outsiders," denying them funding, to slaughtering their careers.

The best thing we can do, according to the scientific dogmatists, is marginalize dissenters as pseudoscientific idiots with improper motives, and dismiss them as crackpots for being so stupid as to dare challenge what every other qualified expert already knows and takes for granted.

And there's the rub.

This seems to be a familiar refrain no matter what the context of dissent might be where Big Science is concerned. Since it's unlikely that the leadership in the scientific and academic communities are going to acknowledge that their distaste for dissent is not appropriate, it's up to the "misinformed" and largely "ignorant" public to put the pressure on. We need to take aim at intolerance of dissidents by nipping it in the bud.

How do we do that?

If you have a child who attends a university where dissent is either not allowed, or where any form of discrimination against those who dissent is tolerated, perhaps you might consider sharing your thoughts with the appropriate administrators. Let your views be known. Don't let it pass. Academic freedom is a precious right, and it can be underscored by the insistence of Parental Patrons who subsidize universities through tuition payments. I'm firmly convinced that money is a language most university officials understand (especially these days...), and if you organize enough parents to challenge behaviors that should not be tolerated, it will have an impact.

Meanwhile, it's time to consider the staggering results of the refusal of the scientific community to listen to the voices of dissent. How many lives have been lost, damaged, or otherwise put at risk over the AIDS fiasco, and how many millions of research dollars flowed in the wrong direction? One can only begin to wonder how many other research programs are similarly flawed, despite the overwhelming evidence of "peer-reviewed" findings.

For more info, please be sure to read Dr. Duesberg's FAQ list and papers.

Science, to its credit, did post the following articles at no charge to the public:
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/cohen/cohen.dtl

REFERENCES

[1] Press Release dated 12/9/08 from the group "Rethinking Aids"
http://rethinkingaids.com/Content/QA/tabid/146/Default.aspx

[2] http://www.duesberg.com/

[3] Robert Root-Bernstein, "Rethinking AIDS"
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rrbrethinking.htm

[4] Johnson, et.al, "What Causes AIDS"
http://www.duesberg.com/articles/kmreason.html

For readers who would like to find out more about what happens to Darwin Dissenters, 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, contributor, 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 Dissidents. He is also the publisher of Caroline Crocker's upcoming book about her experience as an Expelled University professor which is scheduled to be released sometime in early 2009.

To read more essays by Kevin Wirth, click here.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Kevin H. Wirth, all rights reserved. Quotes and links are permitted with attribution.

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Together with Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist Niles Eldredge is known for having exposed the predominance of an evolutionary phenomenon called 'stasis' or 'non-change'. For Eldredge, his moment of realization came while studying the fossilized fauna of a period in the earth's history that paleontologists today call the 'Devonian' (Ref 1, Chapter 2). Today we know of the Devonian mainly because of a smattering of rock formations throughout the eastern United States. One particular Devonian animal, a trilobite by the name of Phacops rana, captured Eldredge's interest because of the apparent lack of morphological variability between species (Ref 1, Chapter 3). Eldredge noticed for example that, regardless of where he got his specimens from, they always had a similar arrangement of eyes. Not only were the individual lenses of their compound eyes arranged into columns but, regardless of the geographical locale from which he had obtained his trilobite specimens, the number of lens columns never appeared to deviate from 16-18. Eldredge's observations were telling. As he wrote,

"We climb up those rocks and check those samples, over what must be, in some total, a 3-or-4-million-year period, we see some oscillation, some variation, back and forth-but no real change at all, and no change especially in the anatomical feature, those columns of lenses in the eyes....This is the first element: simple lack of change. Stability, or stasis, as Gould and I began to call it" (Ref 1, p.70)

Many more cases of stasis have since been documented in the fossil record although in many of these, the reality of stasis has not been accepted with enthusiasm. In Eldredge's own assessment, evidence for stasis in the fossil record has become, "something of a professional embarrassment to be politely ignored, so alien did it seem to what evolution ought to look like in the fossil record" (Ref 1, p.120), Unwilling to simply sweep the evidence under the carpet, Eldredge and Gould decided to accept the fossil record for what it showed- long periods of morphological stasis interrupted only every few million years by sudden moments of morphological change (Ref 1, p.120). Science writer David Quammen has since also drawn attention to this rather striking phenomenon:

"Anyone who considers the biogeographical data...must be struck by the mysterious clustering pattern among what [Darwin] called "closely allied species"...Paleontology reveals a similar clustering pattern in the dimension of time...closely allied species tend to be found adjacent to one another in successive strata. One species endures for millions of years and then makes its last appearance in, say, the middle Eocene epoch; just above, a similar but not identical species replaces it" (Ref 2, p.12)

Writing in his opus The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Gould presented a detailed treatise of his theory on punctuated equilibrium that, as he outlined in one of the key chapters of this work, describes the fossil record not as a continuum of graduated forms connecting related species but rather as a series of intermittent punctuated changes that occur between long periods of morphological 'stasis' (Ref 3, pp. 875-885). One of Darwin's contemporaries, the paleontologist Hugh Falconer, wrote a monograph to Darwin about the great mammoth and drew attention to, "the persistence in time of the distinctive characters of the European fossil elephants" (Ref 3, p.747). Falconer's realization was critical for not only did it reveal how specific observable characters were morphologically constant within given species of mammoths but also how such constancy existed in spite of great climatic variations. The mammoth's existence through the ice age was Falconer's primary example:

"If we cast a glance back on the long vista of physical changes which our planet has undergone since the Neozoic Epoch, we can nowhere detect signs of a revolution more sudden and pronounced...than the intercalation and subsequent disappearance of the Glacial period. Yet the dicyclotherian Mammoth lived before it, and passed through the ordeal of all her extremities with it involved, bearing his organs of locomotion and digestion all but unchanged" (Ref 3, p. 747).

Even in the face of major environmental change- the very fodder that was supposed to drive natural selection- morphological constancy appears to have prevailed. The predominance of stasis of form in the fossil record without any intermediate links that connect disparate forms to common ancestors is a reality that paleontologists are today having to come to grips with. Contravening a dogma founded on expectations rather than on what the fossil record revealed, it was both Gould and Eldredge who took on the scientific establishment by bringing to public attention not a continuum of graduated forms connecting related species but instead the presence of intermittent punctuated changes between long periods of morphological 'stasis' during which species remained unchanged for millions of years. At the very least, the predominance of stasis should be prompting us to execute a radical 'face lift' to the way we consider evolution.

References

1.Niles Eldredge (1985), Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian, Evolution and the Theory of Puctuated Equilibria, Published by Simon and Schuster, New York

2.David Quammen (2004), Was Darwin Wrong?, National Geographic Magazine, November 2004, pp.4-31

3.Stephen Jay Gould (2002), Punctuated Equilibrium and the Validation of Macroevolutionary Theory, pp.745-1022 in, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From Dolly the embraceable ewe to a downloadable you? A story available in a variety of formats from Jason Rennie's Science Fiction and Philosophy journal offers you a chance to discuss a man's plan to cheat death by getting his brain transplanted into a cloned body. Did it work? Could he prove it?

Also, I had no idea t hat, at the end of his life, Robert Frost had written a poem, "Accidentally on Purpose" that might make him the first ID poet.

Oh, and "Science fiction must be anti-ID, mustn't it?

Plus, Steve Fuller's comedy on the intelligent design controversy (Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin, born the same day, on a modern talk show.)

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

Recently, one of my professional associations, Canadian Science Writers' Association, invited me to write an article for our newsletter, ScienceLink (Vol 28, No. 4, 2008), explaining the intelligent design controversy as I understand it. Here it is, as it appeared:

Muslim, Christian, atheist science views: A writer on the front lines weighs in

by Denyse O'Leary

I stumbled on the intelligent design controversy in 1998, when my editor at ChristianWeek was on vacation. He had laid down instructions that I was not to create controversy, so of course I tried. I headed my column Hush ...

A reader had recommended that I read Lehigh University (Pennsylvania) biochemist Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (1996). I came away, thinking that Behe is either very wrong or very important. I decided to try to find out which.

Behe's basic argument was this: A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. (Dembski, No Free Lunch, p. 285)

There are two other intelligent design hypotheses: Mathematician William Dembski argues for a slightly different concept, specified complexity: Life shows evidence of complex, aperiodic, and specified information, and the only other examples we know of are artifacts designed by intelligent agents. A chance origin of life would exceed the universal probability bound (UP pegged at the life of the universe; hence design is a factor in the origin and development of life.

Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, an expert in exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our sun), advances a related privileged planet hypothesis: Taking aim at the late Carl Sagan, he argues that Earth is a very unusual planet, situated in a very fortunate position for astronomy, as well as for life - and that that is design, not chance.

I discovered from talking to Behe that he is not a creationist. He has no problem with assuming that everything in the universe was encoded at the Big Bang. But he does not see how it could all be accounted for by natural selection acting on random mutation, as Darwin postulated in On the Origin of Species . There must be some prior design to account for the swift development of the intricate machinery of living cells.

Behe is a Roman Catholic Christian. But as I started to study the question, I heard similar ideas from scientists who were Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and agnostics or atheists. The latter, of course, do not assume that design means God; it just means that there is an organizing factor in the universe that has not been accounted for in current theory. Some of them argue for self-organization as the factor.

When I first started monitoring the controversy in 1999, I heard that it was dead every six months. Then every three months, then every few weeks ... . I was fascinated by the difference between what pundits said and what I knew was happening. So in 2003, I ducked lucrative education writing contracts and wrote a book ( By Design or by Chance?, 2004) exploring the controversy. In 2005, I started a blog, Post-Darwinist, to log its continued development.

Now I hear that the controversy is dead every other day ... That's some dead.

My private view was - and is - that Darwin himself would not agree with the ultra-Darwinists today. Individual cells are not like bricks in a building (as scientists of his day supposed) but are as intricately organized as supercomputers. Had he known that, he would likely have sought a different theory to account for the origin and development of life than the one that is so zealously defended in his name today. New Zealand journalist Susan Mazur has done a formidable job of starting to explain the problems to a wide audience, in her coverage of the Altenberg meeting of evolutionary biologists last July.

While many dismiss the intelligent design theorists' and their sympathizers' views as politically or religiously motivated, keep in mind that current frontiers in science are proving stubborn. There are, for example, serious problems with the origin of life as a random event. For one thing, unicellular life got started soon after the planet cooled. Multicellular life developed very swiftly about half a billion years ago (the Cambrian period). Human consciousness also seems a swift, unique development - and it is not called by neuroscientists the hard problem of consciousness for nothing I have found the intelligent design controversy to be the most interesting beat I have ever covered, and as Mario Beauregard and I said in The Spiritual Brain (2007), this is a time for exploration, not dogma.

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

Last night, the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. offered a panel discussion on the theme of the book, edited by an old friend Paul Marshall, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.

In the book, which covers a wide range of issues, one of the listed author contributors, Roberta Green Ahmanson, talks about what happens when journalists morph into censors of the news that involves the intelligent design controversy.

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet argued that intelligent design did not deserve to be covered at all. Their concern was not whether any reporters had implied that intelligent-design arguments were true; rather, he argued that some journalists had actually reported what the arguments were. Mooney and Nisbet insisted that such arguments were really religious arguments and were, therefore, not only nonscientific, but could not be counted as arguments at all. They concluded that intelligent design is "a sophisticated religious challenge to an overwhelming scientific consensus." Therefore, "journalistic coverage that helps fan the flames of a nonexistent scientific controversy (and misrepresents what's actually known) simply isn't appropriate."(p.168)

In their view, journalists are not to report what is happening but only what they have decided it is "appropriate"for their readers and listeners to know.

Wow. Why move to a surviving communist regime when you can have the same censorship services at home in the West ...

See also:

Popular media and the intelligent design controversy: When reporters write what they "know"

Religion and the media: Why it doesn't pay to be just plain vindictive

The intelligent design community and the media revolution - an old hack's thoughts

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

When assessing media coverage of the intelligent design controversy, the first thing you should do is forget what defenders of legacy mainstream media say about their media.

You've already heard it all anyway: "We're objective." "We're not biased." "We only report the facts." Et cetera.

Not only isn't that true, but it couldn't possibly be true, as I will explain below. And it wouldn't be a good thing if it were true.

Modern media grew up self-consciously aware of their key role in promoting materialist ideas. You know the sort of thing: "Science has shown/research has demonstrated/studies have shown" .. what? The Big Bazooms theory of human evolution? The fact that it is completely ridiculous would make no impact on them.

Due to the rise of citizen-directed, Internet-based, new media, they currently face a crisis of sinking readership and advertising revenues.

They may respond by trying to keep control over who defines what is news and who reports it. In that case, citizen-directed media - the sort that most of the intelligent design community uses now - might have to fight for their existence.

Having given some thought to these matters, I offer some reflections and recommendations:

Part: 1: Here is what happened up to about 2000: Believing that materialism is the truth, many journalists assume that their role is to promote materialism at the expense of traditional, spiritually oriented ideas about human nature.

Part 2: Now, what changed after 2000? New findings that don't support materialism became common, and so did new media that bypass old media. Old media contemplate restrictions on new media.

Part 3: What forms could restrictions on new media take? (Basically, any form that could possibly slow them down, but some are discussed here.)

Part 4: Recommendations for the next decade. For example, "Start new media now, before you need a licence. (When new laws are introduced, people who are already key players on the scene are usually "grandfathered.")"

Next: Part 1: Here is what happened up to about 2000:

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

Sociologist Richard Flory notes that, beginning in the late nineteenth century, journalists began to see themselves as the natural successors to traditional religious or spiritual leaders.

Journalism was the ideal successor to religion because it alone could provide the appropriate guidance for both individuals and society.

- Richard W. Flory, "Promoting a Secular Standard: Secularization and Modern Journalism, 1870-1930," in Christian Smith, ed., The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), p. 413.

Materialism, briefly, is the idea that the material cosmos is all there is, has been, or ever will be. In the materialist's view, the mind and free will are an illusion created by Darwinian natural selection. Key modern thinkers take this for granted. Post-modern thinkers do not - by definition - challenge that view with rational arguments, though they sometimes challenge it by denunciations or other rhetoric.

So how did journalists see their role?

Believing that materialism is the truth, many journalists assumed that their role was to promote materialism at the expense of traditional, spiritually oriented ideas about human nature.

Journalism consciously modelled itself on science, with "objectivity" as a new standard. Journalism would provide trenchant criticism of the religious outlook that it replaced.

To the extent that religion was presented as having any positive role, it was in purely functional terms, in the sense that moral precepts from religion might be a source of strength for some individuals, but had no authority for modern society.

- Richard Flory "Promoting a Secular Standard," p. 427.

In other words, churches earn the right to continue to exist because they help the poor. But their traditional idea that the universe has meaning and purpose is warm-hearted, well-meaning bunk that will be superseded by far more effective social engineering strategies.

What about this business of "objectivity"?

An obvious tension developed in journalism over the notion of "objectivity." Objectivity, in the scientist's sense, is not a reasonable goal for the journalist.

Responsible journalism must be accurate, honest, courageous, empathetic, balanced, and free of conflict of interest.

But the journalist is a subject who writes about the activities of subjects for an audience of subjects. There is no place to stand, while covering a story, that eliminates subjectivity.

So a journalist cannot really be "objective" in the sense that a scientist who makes a career of testing new insecticides on potato beetles can be objective about the beetles' fate.

So what did objectivity actually come to mean? Among other things, it came to mean hostility to a nonmaterialist approach to life and the universe.

Thus, the science journalist's tradition is skeptical of everything except materialism. Of that, no skepticism is permitted - or even thinkable!

He or she simply assumes that the universe cannot be intelligently designed. No contrary evidence is admissible, and none is seriously considered. The response to every difficulty raised, even at the most fundamental level is, "Science (= materialism) will come up with an answer some day." Only the details about why the universe isn't intelligently designed need filling in.

But there is never a date on that promissory note.

So the science journalist's mission is to keep writing up any evidence at all that might fill in some details.

Hence all the ridiculous stories you have heard in the pop science media: Computers will soon think like people; people today think like chimps, there are a zillion flopped universes out there, life originated in clay or silicon or ....

Next: Part 2: Now, what changed after 2000?

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

Two things changed a lot. One was public awareness of the state of the evidence for design in nature, and the other was the state of media technology.

First big change: The state of the evidence

Massive evidence is accumulating against materialism: This is true in cosmology (fine-tuning of the universe) , in biology (cells as supercomputers, inexplicable origin of life), neuroscience (the hard problem of consciousness), and so forth.

Darwinism - the creation story of materialism - began to run into really serious problems. Seeing that cells are like supercomputers, a number of biologists, including the Altenberg 16, are now arguing against Darwinism, though they are not arguing for design.

But most science journalists are not really aware of this stuff because their template for understanding issues is simply to reinterpret all problems as support for materialism, with Darwinism as its creation story.

For example,

Fine-tuning of the universe = That proves that many flopped universes exist!

Cells as super-computers = That just shows what Darwinism can do!

Origin of life? = Harvard will spend $50 million on "the answer"!

Hard problem of consciousness = Science (materialism) will solve it [no end date for evaluation of project suggested]

Almost all coverage of the intelligent design controversy in major media is provided by people who cannot acknowledge any problem with materialism. They think you must be a fraud or just plain stupid if you raise problems that cannot even exist, in their opinion. And remember, as far as they are concerned, their opinion is science.

Evidence plays very little role in the matter. Only evidence that supports Darwinism - no matter how ridiculous - can be admitted by definition. All other evidence is kicked into the Attic of Unsolved Problems that materialist ideas will supposedly solve some day. But that's a pretty big attic now ...

Summary: Current legacy media journalism is founded on assumptions that prevent the recognition that materialism is not true. Any idea that might rescue materialism, no matter how ridiculous, will be entertained and promoted first.

A classic case

An excellent example of the legacy media's handling of information that is not friendly to materialism is Amanda Gefter's recent article in New Scientist on the September 11, 2008, Mind-Body conference at the United Nations.

Materialist neuroscientists believe that your mind is an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in your brain. Non-materialist neuroscientists believe that your mind is a real fact of nature and affects your brain and body in important ways. Not surprisingly, most of the non-materialists who spoke at the conference were involved in one way or another with medical research.

Gefter assumed, without evidence and contrary to fact, that non-materialist neuroscience was concocted by "creationists" and that its principal backer was the ID-friendly Discovery Institute.

Her claim is completely erroneous. The Discovery Institute played no role in the recent UN conference. Non-materialist neuroscience is supported in a number of research environments, including the University of California - Berkeley ( Jeff Schwartz's research) and the Universite de Montreal in Canada (Mario Beauregard's research).

Gefter and her audience would not be able to grasp that materialism might not provide useful explanations for their work, especially in medicine. So she and they readily believe that the conference is a conspiracy involving the Discovery Institute, even though it had nothing to do with that Institute. (Go here for the facts.)

Summary: A legacy media environment full of rumour-mongering, in which few bother to do any serious research, is how most of your unplugged neighbours get news about the intelligent design controversy.

Second big change? (I promised you another one, didn't I?)

Major media have been disastrously impacted by the growth of the blogosphere, starting when blogging software came out in 1999.

They are impacted two ways: One is professional and the other is financial.

Professional impact: Bloggers scoop major media for news.

I did that several times myself. For example, I scooped the New York Times on the showing of The Privileged Planet film at the Smithsonian, and was the first to report (at my blogs) on the making of the Expelled film.

Increasingly, people do not need to buy a newspaper or sit through sixteen TV advertisements to find out what they personally want to know. A specialist blogger can tell them sooner and more accurately.

The specialist blogger is not cleverer than other people, but he or she learns a particular beat intensively. No general print or broadcast medium can afford to give much space or time to specialist interests. But the blogosphere is limited only by the space the blogger wants to allot to a topic and the time that a viewer wants to give to it. The two find each other via search engines.

Financial impact: Obviously, the financial impact of the new media on the legacy media is disastrous. The market is fragmenting into thousands of small, specialized groups, for whom the legacy mainstream media no longer decide what is news or what the news means. So the advertising dollar must pursue specialty markets, not mass markets.

The results? The New York Times slashed its dividend recently:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co slashed its dividend by almost three-quarters and plans to cut spending and reevaluate its assets to cope with an advertising decline that is gouging U.S. newspaper publishers. (November 21, 2008)

And the Chicago Tribune has just filed for bankruptcy protection. But those are only straws in the wind. Virtually all major media are hurting financially, with cuts and layoffs throughout the industry. Commentator Mark Steyn jokes that the Miami Herald's principle asset is the lot the building is on.

Perhaps the most significant new development is U.S. President-Elect Obama's intention to prioritize the new media for communication. That's no surprise; he was most popular among younger voters; and younger people primarily use new media, not old media.

As I pointed out in a recent post at Future Tense*

Essentially, young people are not reading much print media. That should not especially surprise anyone - travelling the Toronto subway, I often see young people listening to music or texting each other, but almost never see them reading newspapers or listening to regular radio. Now and then, I see a young woman flapping swiftly through a fashion mag, but the fashion writers are kidding themselves if they think that she is reading their work closely.

If anyone in a given subway car is reading a book, chances are it is a Bible or a Koran, or else it is "on the lit course."

I think books like the Bible and the Koran will survive, because to those who read them, they aren't just books, they're Books. Ritual surrounds their reading. At my own (Catholic) church, for example, an elaborate procession bears the Bible to the lectern and everyone stands as the priest reads (and kisses the book). Similarly, at Simchat Torah, Jews dance with the Torah. That kind of thing hasn't changed in thousands of years and I don't expect it to. But typical print culture - tabloids and fashion mags, for example - is going the way of all mere culture - into oblivion.

And as Wendy Elaine Nelles writes in the same venue,

We already know that the key to New Media is less structure, less formality, more personalization, more authenticity, more dialogue. We're already struggling for terms and definitions. What is now called "New Media" is quickly become established media, the go-to source and the first choice for obtaining news and information by increasing numbers of people.

With the leader of what is still the most powerful nation on earth tapping into New Media's capabilities, we will be sure to see major effects on all spheres of media and publishing.

Very well, but old media have a lot to lose, and are fighting back. Like the banking and auto sector, they will want the government to bail them out. In their case, however, bailouts would probably mainly take the form of restrictions on new media, such as blogging and talk radio.

* Future Tense is a blog operated by The Word Guild, an organization of Canadian writers who are Christian. Its purpose is to provide information and help to all interested writers during this historic transition to new media.

Next: Part 3: What forms could restrictions on new media take?

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

Restrictions could take at least two specific forms - there are doubtless others, but the following two are the most obvious candidates:

1. Vast, vague, and highly punitive laws against "offending" anyone on blogs. This is already a huge current problem for bloggers in Canada, and the idea is gaining popularity among US bureaucrats.

2. Demands for "equal time" (a renewed Fairness Doctrine) in private radio

Essentially, the idea of a Fairness Doctrine is that - to be fair - everyone gets equal time to make their point in each privately owned medium. Historically, the outcome of such a requirement is that media avoid controversy.

The "Fairness Doctrine" was in force in the United States from 1949 to 1987. It was intended to compel radio and TV stations on which someone voluntarily expressed a political opinion to broadcast the other side as well, for "balance." Its general effect was to greatly reduce political discussion.

That's because determining who should have equal time - and under what circumstances - becomes a source of unaffordable litigation. (For example, who says there are only two sides to a question? If 17 groups think they are entitled to equal time, the audience will be long gone and the medium will be very sorry to have ever permitted anyone to speak on any controversial issue.)

In 1987, Congress eliminated The Fairness Doctrine, as a perceived violation of the First Amendment - which of course it was. The First Amendment says nothing about a requirement to present both sides, whether in religion, media, or politics. Here's what it actually says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Washington Post editorialized on June 24, 1987:

The truth is ... that there is no 'fairness' whatever in the 'fairness' doctrine. On the contrary, it is a chilling federal attempt to compel some undefined 'balance' of what ideas radio and television new programs are to include. ... The 'fairness doctrine' undercuts free, independent, sound and responsive journalism -- substituting governmental dictates. That is deceptive, dangerous and, in a democracy, repulsive.

However, faced with a shrinking readership or looming bankruptcy, legacy mainstream media like the Post might incline to a different view today. This file must be watched carefully. See here for example, on how easy it would be to reinstate such a doctrine.

George Will comments:

- these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly.

See also Austin Hill here.

Are they worrying unnecessarily? I've heard enough about the revival of a so-called "fairness doctrine" from enough different sources that I don't discount it.

The heart of the problem is that many legacy media people are poorly equipped to even understand the changes they are facing, let alone respond to them effectively. Some will respond by demands for government bailouts, or even government control.

The costs of getting into blogging, podcasting, videocasting, or social networking are so low now that almost anyone can just make their point online. Some bloggers even make money through Adsense and PayPal. All these new independent media compete with legacy media for viewer time and advertising dollars - among viewers who are free to roam cyberspace planetwide. A far cry from the days when most news came through local sources and was filtered by local opinion leaders.

The culture gap between old media and new media was strikingly described by Canadian civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant, recounting an incident at a conference in Halifax, Canada, earlier this year:

There was a weird moment during the panel when [pro-censorship journalism prof] Miller said that [commentator] Mark Steyn simply wasn't a good journalist -- compared to him, one presumes -- because Miller couldn't find corroboration for one of Steyn's quotes ...

I went to Google as Miller was talking, and found a ton of references for it. ...

It was pretty sad: an ageing journalism professor, looking down his nose at Steyn and accusing Steyn of sloppiness (and disparaging mere bloggers, too), while half the kids in the room could have found what Miller couldn't in about five minutes on the Net. Some "expert" witness.

But that expert witness teaches in a journalism school, and is a legend in his own lunch room.

This incident helps to demonstrate that the partisanship of old media (glaringly evident in the ID controversy) is driven in part by their growing irrelevance.

To sum up: New media are extinguishing old media's monopoly on the gathering and dissemination of news. And - in a symbolic gesture - the old media pundit demonstrates that he cannot even use the most basic tools of the new media!

One thing that many critics of old media fail to grasp is that people are not abandoning old media because they are partisan so much as old media are partisan because people are abandoning them. Abandoned people become emotionally irresponsible.

Legacy mainstream media may well morph into government media (for a government that is sympathetic to their problems, of course). They may defend heavy censorship laws against new media, in the name of "human rights" or "economic recovery." However, incompetence and irrelevance do not magically turn into competence and relevance once government gets behind them.

There is a very good chance that an updated version of a Fairness Doctrine would simply not be viable in the new media environment. But increased regulation of those allowed to broadcast, podcast, blog, et cetera, "in the public interest" is another possibility.

If this is the form the legacy media response takes, it will likely be preceded by a sudden vast run of stories about all the "crises" created or exacerbated by "irresponsible" or "biased" independent news sources like blogs, podcasts, or videocasts. We will be told that "it is best left to the experts" (= legacy media).

Of course, any medium can potentially create a problem, but the heart of the issue is that legacy media are simply losing the ability to either define what is news or control viewer time - and they cannot be expected to see that as a promising development.

Here is one very promising development: French Nobel Prize winner (Literature) Le Clezio recently argued that the Internet could have stopped Hitler. It's very hard to step back in time, and be sure what could have stopped Hitler (or Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or the Rwanda massacre). But in principle, Le Clezio's point is worth considering:

Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded - ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.

This much is true: Fascists then and now have always depended on control of media messages to ensure that the story the public hears is the one they want.

Next: Part 4: Recommendations for the next decade

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

So what should the intelligent design community do about media in the next decade?

1. Do not wait and hope for legacy mainstream media to understand the intelligent design controversy. They will likely go under first.

2. Start new media now, before you need a licence. (When new laws are introduced, people who are already key players on the scene are usually "grandfathered.")

3. As much as possible, use Internet-based technologies for communications. They are cheap, and easy to adapt and move around as necessary. Also, many old media pundits are not as efficient with them as you may be.

4. Blogs are the new magazines. Because the blogosphere is growing, growth is easy. But later, when most people are using the blogosphere, you must persuade people to go to your blog instead of some other one. Now is the time to start building a readership, not later.

5. Denormalize the Darwinists. That is, cover the out-of-control, stupid stuff they are forced to do in order to maintain their position, and ask people, "is this normal?" (This tactic is being increasingly used in Canada to start to disempower unaccountable and out-of-control government agencies. )

6. Don't be narrow. Cover the inroads that self-organization theorists, for example, are making against Darwinists, even if you don't personally think they have the answer. They do have some pretty good questions, after all.

7. Be aware of and defend any legal rights you may have to free speech or choice of reading/viewing material. Do bear in mind, however, that constitutional statements can be reinterpreted by judges so that they do not mean in practice what they appear to mean at face value - and certainly not what was intended by the people who wrote them. Anyone remember the Fairness Doctrine?

Conclusion: Legacy mainstream media, whose roots are in a materialist view of the world, are suffering from two problems: Their view of the world is increasingly disconfirmed by evidence and their audience is moving to a variety of specialty media. Circumventing their likely efforts to retain a captive audience will require courage and resourcefulness.

Back to top: The intelligent design community and the media revolution - some thoughts from an old hack

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).

Why Science Lost Big At Dover

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

As we approach the end of a year, it is customary for us to look back at the events that have shaped and changed our lives. Big news items, major sporting occurrences, funniest moments and the achievements of science and medicine are just some of the categories that help us define the success or failure of a year that has passed. For evolutionary science, things are no different. Indeed one notable event this year was the 6th International Bioethics Forum which brought together scientists, ethicists and lawmakers for a two-day 'melding of minds'. The auspicious title of the forum was captivatingly simple: Evolution in the 21st Century. But at its heart was a subject matter that today draws people towards passionate debate- the ongoing conflict between Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design (I.D for short). Surprisingly then, the speakers list did not include anyone representing those who are openly critical of Darwinian evolution.

For what could be considered as the blue-ribbon talk of the forum, the event organizers had pulled in three of the biggest names in the modern Darwinist movement- NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott, Georgetown University theologian John Haught and Michigan State Philosophy Professor Robert Pennock to give a talk about the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial. This historic trial centered on a small Pennsylvania town school board's decision to teach ID as part of the science curriculum. Together with Haught, Pennock was pulled in as an expert witness during the trial to argue that it would have been unconstitutional to teach ID in any high school science class. In Scott's account of the proceedings, the main argument put forward by the ID camp was that even if ID theory had religious overtones, there would still be a valid pedagogical, secular reason for teaching it. And yet in the end, Kitzmiller was able to win the case for the prosecution by claiming not only that there was no scientific evidence against evolution but that there was no credible evidence in support of ID. In Scott's words, "we were able to sink them both".

But who really lost out? In Pennock's estimation, the arguments of ID are nothing more than an extension of what was said by the much-celebrated theologian William Paley in his opus Natural Theology with terms like irreducible complexity and specified complexity being merely 'jazzy names' for saying the same thing that Paley proclaimed centuries ago. And yet Pennock clearly ignored critical differences. Paley after all argued on the basis of analogy, claiming that the design of instruments such as a watch was analogous to the complexity of biological systems (Ref 1, pp. 30-33). Since the watch had been designed, so likewise biological systems had to have been designed. ID theorists on the other hand provide an additional component to their argument inferring that information- that is complex, specified information- in biological systems is inaccessible to natural causes (Ref 1, p.150). Pennock evidently misconstrued the ID case. To make matters worse, he was unable to demonstrate how Darwinian evolution supplied a viable alternative (Ref 2). As philosopher William Dembski had previously commented, biologists to this day lack a clear view of how the Darwinian mechanism could have contributed to the history of life (Ref 1, p.41). Darwinism is silent about the details even though Darwinists stubbornly insist that millions of contingencies must have lead to the differences in form we see throughout nature (Ref 1, p.41).

Pennock proceeded to counter the claims that ID is not 'creationism through the back door' by presenting sketchy evidence showing that an initial draft of the textbook Of Pandas And People had contained creationist language. Of Pandas And People was chosen by the Dover school board as their main resource for presenting ID in their science classrooms. But one may rightly ask why it is that the scientific merits of a textbook should be decided upon by considering unedited drafts and not the finalized product? A quick review of Of Pandas And People reveals the usual but nevertheless valid ID material in the case against evolution. The implausibility of prebiotic synthesis experiments, the questionable evidence used in support of macro-evolution, the genetic data that contradicts structural homology, the fragmented picture of the fossil record and the absence of clearly defined ancestors to modern man are all presented as examples that contradict the basic tenets of Darwinism (Ref 3, pp. 8-148). The scientific case supporting ID is also presented with the rich informational content of genes and the irreducible complexity of biochemical systems appearing as the foundational pillars of the ID movement (Ref 3, pp. 19-20, 63-69, 85, 88-89, 141-149).

None of the science in support of ID was ever discussed at this year's International Bioethics Forum. So it was that world-renowned speakers such as John Haught were able to get away with their dismissal of ID as a discipline that represents neither good science nor good theology. Of course ID proponents have always distanced themselves from any theological claims (Refs 4-6). But that fact alone did not appear to affect the audience's enthusiasm for what Haught had to say. He also addressed some of the faith-based push-backs against evolution. According to Haught, much public concern today centers around the idea that if Darwinian evolution is readily embraced then the notion of a Biblical creator must be repudiated since if evolution is true there was no fall and if there was no fall there could not be a redeemer (eg: Jesus Christ). And yet while such anxieties might be real, they should not detract from the sound scientific arguments against evolution.

Both Darwinists and ID theorists readily agree that science should never have to deal with questions relating to divine purpose. Haught repeatedly emphasized that science and theology should be kept apart as two separate, non-conflicting ways of explaining the reality we experience as human beings. 'Explanatory Pluralism'- the term that Haught coined to define such separation- should of course be maintained. But contrary to Haught's claims, the ID movement emphatically distances itself from any questions of divine purpose or designer intention. While Haught cited ID as an example of 'Explanatory Monism'- an attempt to bring together both theological and scientific explanations of reality into a single framework- a quick review of the ID literature reveals such an assessment to be unfounded (Refs 4-6).

Right at the end of the forum, I managed to catch Eugenie Scott just as she was leaving and asked her whether she thought the aim of the ID movement was to teach ID along Darwinian evolution or to exclude the teaching of evolution altogether. Her answer was that texts such as Of Panda's And People unequivocally reveal that they are only out to teach everything that is wrong with evolution. When I then asked whether the ID camp proposed also teaching the merits of evolutionary theory she replied with an air of irony "there aren't any". Of course, the facts speak for themselves. The introduction of Of Panda's And People for example brings the true intentions of the authors to the fore:

"We have given a favorable case for intelligent design and raised reasonable doubt about natural descent. But used together with your other text, [Of Pandas And People] should help to balance the overall curriculum" (Ref 3, p. ix).

A balanced and not an exclusionary curriculum was all that was being asked for. I only wish I had had my own copy of the text as I spoke with Scott. Maybe then, I would have been able to set the record straight.

References
1. William Dembski (2002), No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, Lanham, Maryland

2. Robert Deyes (2008), AVIDA As A 'Teleo-LOGIC' Model Of Life. See:
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/08/09/avida_as_a_teleo_logic_model_of_life

3. Percival Davis, Dean H. Kenyon (1993), Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd Edition Published By The Foundation for Thought & Ethics; Richardson, Texas

4. For more information on the distinction between Intelligent Design And Creationism see http://www.intelligentdesign.org/faq.php

5. Stephen Meyer (2006), Intelligent Design is not Creationism The Daily Telegraph (London), January, 29th, See http://www.discovery.org/a/3191

6. John West (2002), Intelligent Design and Creationism Just Aren't the Same, Research News and Opportunities in Science and Theology, December 1, 2002, http://www.discovery.org/a/1329

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Michelle Malkin, whose guts I admire, echoes my own view of proposed media bailouts:

I launched a Newspaper Bailout Countdown Clock on my blog after The New York Times Company's bonds plunged into junk territory in October. A few weeks later, columnist Jon Fine published a tongue-in-cheek memo in BusinessWeek outlining a federal newspaper rescue proposal.

The jibes were meant to be facetious critiques of for-profit enterprises demanding massive taxpayer expenditures under the guise of preserving the "public interest." But now, in a rather unfunny turn, the newspaper bailout push has actually come to pass.

I expect we will hear many proposals like the one she documents, as various media find the new online world too much to cope with. Malkin concludes,

How "free" can a "free press" be if it is leveraged with government funding? How free would they be to criticize other corporate enterprises seeking local, state or federal help to keep them afloat in hard times? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? A press beholden to the ruling class -- a press that cannot stand on its own two feet and the strength of its product -- is a press better off dead.

Yes, I would say so. It is merely another burden to the taxpayer.

The original purpose of media was to be a permanent critic of government. That is why we are called the fourth estate. We have privileges, we can display our press cards and rush into newsworthy venues. We also have some serious duties = go to jail rather than name a source to whom we have promised anonymity. That is a classic form of civil disobedience.

The two biggest changes in my lifetime have been

1. The growth of private citizen media

and

2. The way so many big time media have morphed into government media.

In explaining this change, two factors seem key to me:

1. The materialist worldview in which legacy mainstream media grew up is collapsing of its own unpersuasiveness - for a variety of reasons.

Example: When science media are reduced to trying to explain why Texan Marilyn Mock bought a house for Tracey Orr based on selfishness, they are really reaching.

Such views are not renounced, so they can never be retired. They are part of the belief system of the journalist who has bought into materialism. That is why you will hear them recycled in pop science media, again and again = ancestral cave men spread their selfish genes by behaving this way (whatever that way was), so that is why Mock does it today. Yuh. Right. Big enlightenment, that.

2. We will not likely get anything better out of popular science media in the foreseeable future. The critical problem is, as Malkin noted above, media companies may want to force the taxpayer to fund their nonsense, thus delaying a transition to a more responsive media.

For what it is worth, I blog regularly at Future Tense, which covers these issues in detail. If you found this post helpful, you might find this one even more so.

Don't worry, we are not a cult, and you will not be asked for money. We are a group of Canadian Christian writers who are finding a way through the transitions, and we have lots of good links.

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).