The ID Report

"Destroy the Author of Things in order to Understand the Infinite Universe."
-- Daniel C. Dennett, "noted atheist" and professor of philosophy at Tufts in a January 2009 Presidential Lecture at Stanford University. The words are his translation of an acrostic he authored in Latin for the letters D-A-R-W-I-N substituted for the letters I-C-T-H-U-S in the popular "Jesus fish" symbol.

I don't want my child being taught religion at school! Oh, really? Then you better get down there right away, because if he or she is in any public school science class he or she is being taught religion in school. From grade school on, and especially in high school, government established science classes have become a safe haven for teaching your child religious doctrine. But not for all religions, mind you; only those with certain views on the "author of things". So, again, if you really don't want your child being indoctrinated with the religious views of those religions, go now, quickly, and file a complaint with your local school board. Or don't ever again complain about "religion" being taught in science class.

Surprised? Didn't you know that materialistic evolution, preached publicly as "evolution" or "Darwinism", is the religious belief of many major religions? Take Unitarian Universalists, for example, the religion close to that of Charles Darwin himself for much of his life. Those "non-creedal" believers of nothing in particular and everything natural in general find Darwinism perfectly consistent with their "free faith". I'm sure they are perfectly pleased to have your Johnny taught (on the public dole) beliefs which they find agreeable. Refusing to be "bound by a statement of belief", the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, a self-described "liberal religion" embraces the naturalistic/materialistic beliefs of religious favorites such as Humanism, Paganism, Atheism/Agnosticism, and "other beliefs" all of which hold some form of materialistic evolution consistent with their beliefs about the "author of things". And all of them, you can be sure, are delighted that your school is teaching your sweet baby Jane their beliefs about where she came from.

And Unitarian Universalists are just the tip of the religious iceberg floating in your child's science waters. Learning about the Darwin fish courtesy of the U.S. government gives your student a head start on the road toward full-fledged Atheism, Secular Humanism, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation and Wicca, all of which have all been held by U.S. courts to be religions according to the U.S. Constitution. It seems those atheist/humanist/wiccan/what-but-no-who believers who wished to claim the mantle of "religion" for the purpose of dodging the draft or getting "churches" into prisons have spoiled it for the rest of you no-godders; U.S. courts correctly look at religion functionally, as opposed to whether or not God is involved. So even though God is not involved in Darwinism, Darwinism is involved in religion.

Evolutionists agree. Take the Darwinists at the University of California at Berkeley. Wishing to comfort you that it is a "misconception" that "evolution and religion are incompatible", those government actors are spending your tax dollars to assure you that "most religious groups have no conflict with the theory of evolution or other scientific findings." In fact, according to these state-sponsored theology advisors, "in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution." Yes, there are no doubt thousands of atheists, humanists, pagans, and maybe even a wiccan or two, all of which, like Daniel Dennett, are devoutly religious in their own godless way and accept evolution. But why is this government organization acting under the Constitution of the United States openly admitting this? Is it constitutionally permissible to teach science consistent with only certain government-approved religious beliefs?

No, one would think not. Consider: why is it OK to teach Darwinism, which Darwinists insist is "compatible" with "most religious groups", but it's not OK to teach material, observable, testable evidence of intelligent design, a theory which is compatible with other religious groups? Hmmm? Is it because regardless of the material evidence intelligent design theory necessarily invokes a supernatural agent? But doesn't the question of a supernatural agent, let's just say God, play both ways? How is it that science consistent with a "no God exists" religious belief is permissible under the Constitution, but science consistent with a "God exists" religious belief is not? Yes, your Johnny's definitely being taught religious beliefs in science class.

Ever since Humanism was introduced as "Religious Humanism" in the first Humanist Manifesto, the cat's been out of the bag on the dogmatic nature of the "no God exists" crowd. Consider the very first religious affirmation of Humanism: "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." Having conveniently disposed of a "beginning" to explain, Humanists follow with the religiously necessary second tenet: "Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process." And what might that continuous process be? Might it be the process taught to your child in the name of science, perhaps with Dennett's atheist fish as a visual aid?

Funny, isn't it, how it's the intelligent design crowd that's censored because their beliefs are "religious"? Like housecats hearing a can opener, dogmatic Darwinists jump into action at the first faint sound of intelligent design in the public schools. Failing to appreciate their cat theology of indifference to an otherwise all-providing master as just one religious view that stands in stark contrast to the theology of those who are the master's best friend, they hiss and scratch to protect the hegemony of a science "compatible" only with their religious views. Labeling any attempt at introducing any non-Darwinian evidence as "creationism in disguise" only serves to force the issue: what is Darwinism disguising?

No matter how the question "where did we come from?" is answered, the answer will be "compatible" with one religious view or another. Why is it, then, that only a certain class of religious views are permitted in the public school science classroom? Whether it's the views of "non-theistic" Friends (Quakers) or Gaia enthusiasts, or the Society for Universal Immortalism, why are our children being indoctrinated in the religious views of certain religions? And why is it that it is only the liberal, godless religions that merit special accomodation in the classroom?

Maybe you think it's OK if your child is prepared by the U.S. government with the requisite religious beliefs to be Unitarian Universalist. Or fully fit to be a Buddhist. Or amenable to the ideas of the Non-Theistic Friends. Maybe you are fine with the government sending your child on his way toward being a run-of-the-mill atheist. If so, why is it not also OK for the U.S. government to influence your child for theistic religious beliefs with observable, testable evidence of intelligent design?

Because in the science class it doesn't matter if it's also religious as long as it's true!

Oh, really?

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

Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.

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

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

Publisher and agent inquiries welcome.

References:

Daniel Dennett quote: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january21/prezlecsr-012109.html

Religious affiliation of Charles Darwin: http://www.adherents.com/people/pd/Charles_Darwin.html

Unitarian Universalism Association of Congregations beliefs: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml

University of California at Berkeley stating that Darwinism is consistent with some religious beliefs, but not others: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IVAandreligion.shtml

Humanist Manifesto: http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/n-Ch.7.html
Non-theistic Friends: http://www.nontheistfriends.org/

Society for Universal Immortalism: http://www.universalimmortalism.org/

Views of L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology) found here: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:I4HYUDhNZ6EJ:www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest59.htm+scientology+darwin&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us. Here is a quote: Moreover, Hubbard religiously adhered to the Gnostic myth of Darwinism. In Dianetics, he writes (emphasis in original):
It is fairly well accepted in these times that life in all forms evolved from the basic building blocks: the virus and the cell. Its only relevance to Dianetics is that such a proposition works--and actually that is all we ask of Dianetics. There is no point to writing here a vast tome on biology and evolution. We can add some chapters to those things, but Charles Darwin did his job well and the fundamental principles of evolution can be found in his and other works. The proposition on which Dianetics was originally entered was evolution. (69; emphasis added)

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

The history books certainly agree on the events that lead up to Darwin's momentous journey to South America. In particular, many of them record the day of departure as a much-awaited blessing given the fowl weather conditions that had prevailed in the preceding weeks (The ship that Darwin was planning to sail on, the Beagle. had twice been forced to return to harbor after gales had made sailing impossible). Fate certainly seemed to be against the young Darwin. Indeed, as Darwin himself wrote in his autobiography, he might never have made it on board had it not been for some much-needed help from his uncle (Ref 1, pp.71-77). Under the command of its captain, Captain Fitz-Roy, who almost rejected Darwin's application on account of the shape of his nose, the Beagle set sail on its voyage on the 27th of December 1831 (Ref 2). This was in fact the second of three surveying voyages that were undertaken by the Beagle between 1826 and 1843 and it would of course be the voyage of greatest significance.

On board, Darwin would have found a library that would later help him in his research (Ref 3). Being a naturalist, Darwin would of course have wanted to take with him a suitable microscope for analyzing specimens that he encountered on his journey. On the advice of none other than the botanist Robert Brown, famous for the discovery of the random movement of particles better known as 'Brownian Motion', Darwin took with him a single lens microscope (Ref 3).

After his return to England, Darwin's views on natural selection continued to develop. In October of 1838, two years after the Beagle had docked back in port from its momentous voyage, he read a historic paper on population and food distribution written by the 19th century economist Thomas Malthus. By his own admission, Darwin's interest in the paper was purely for his own leisure although he was clearly captivated by its apparent relevance to his own theory of evolution (Ref 1, p.120; Ref 4, p. 28) As he wrote:

"I happened to read for my own amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species" (Ref 1, p.120).

Malthus became a household name, known for his essay on the expanding global population and the expected food shortages that would follow from a geometric population growth (Ref 5). As the rate of population growth out-paced the arithmetic increase in food supplies, the price of food and supplies would, according to Malthus, also increase as more and more people struggled for the limited resources available (Ref 5). The Malthusian prediction seemed to fit very well with the ideas that Darwin had been cultivating on his journey back to England (Ref 1, p.120).

Indeed, what was attractive to Darwin was that these predictions presented an example for how favorable variations within a population could be preserved under extreme selectable pressures (Ref 1, p.120). Such variants would over time produce new species. The Malthusian social model corroborated the premises of Darwinian theory in that the struggle for survival to which all species were subjected would in the long run preserve, by natural selection, variations that were beneficial. So convinced was Darwin of the Malthusian model, that he wrote favorably about its relevance to his own theory (Ref 6, pp.90-94).

When Darwin returned to England, he did not have his evolutionary theory mapped out (Ref 7, p.63). Indeed, the formulation of Darwin's thesis was not an inductive process that he gleamed as his journey through South America progressed. Nor was it a Eureka-type discovery that came in a sudden burst of genius (Ref 7, p.64). Rather, it was the inevitable end point after a "conscious and productive search" (Ref 7, p.65).

In the end, Darwin's theory of natural selection became "an extended analogy...to the laissez faire economics of Adam Smith" (Ref 7, p.66). That society evolves "without a designing and directing mind" was a mantra that influenced Smith's own thinking and, in this regard, overlapped with the heartlessly mechanistic biology that Darwin's special theory promulgated (Ref 7, p.67).

References
1. Charles Darwin, The Autobiography Of Charles Darwin, Copyright held by Nora Barlow in 1958, W.W. Norton and Company Inc, New York

2. Keith Thompson (2002), Darwin's Personal Voyage, Nature, Volume 418, pp.277-278

3. Janet Browne (2000), Observations Of A Travelling Naturalist, Nature, Volume 408, pp.405-406

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

5. Lauren F. Landsburg, The Concise Encyclopedia Of Economics, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), See http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html

6. Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or The Preservation of Favored Races In The Struggle For Survival, Modern Library Paperbacks Edition (1998), New York

7. Stephen Jay Gould (1992), The Panda's Thumb- More Reflections In Natural History, Published by W.W Norton and Company, New York

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

No one in recent memory has ever questioned modern neo-Darwinism and got away with it.

Remember that when you read "The Sins of the Fathers, Take 2 At tributes to Darwin, Lamarckism—inheritance of acquired traits—will be the skunk at the party" (Newsweek, Jan 17, 2009):

Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but their mothers' experiences. If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets, an effect one wag called "bite the mother, fight the daughter." If mom lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. Same DNA, different traits. Somehow, the experience of the mother, not only her DNA sequences, has been transmitted to her offspring.

I keep wondering why Darwin's heirs decided to hold a big blowout at exactly the point when we had ever more reasons to doubt. (But religious fanatics never think of things like that, do they?)

Also, here's some info on the Cambrian explosion (of life forms) which shows why long, slow Darwinism is nonsense. Believe it if you want, sucker, but I would not take your money out of principle.

See also (since you are here anyway):

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy

Financial Times of London: If you must be wrong, why must you also be just plain stupid and out of date?

Canadian columnist David Warren takes on a Darwinoid, on the subject of whales

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

Apparently so.

Here's a cool site from the University of Toronto. It features stuff like:

These days astronomers aren't just picking up signals from a time shortly after the universe began - they're creating maps of those signals to answer some of our deepest questions about the cosmos.

An old-fashioned TV with rabbit ears is designed to pick up very high frequency radio waves. When the TV is tuned to a channel for which there is no nearby broadcaster, the screen shows a lot of static. The static – also known as noise – is caused by random radio waves coming towards the TV from various manmade and natural sources, including deep space.

In the 1960's, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two researchers at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, began searching for sources of static for the purpose of improving satellite communication. They were searching in the "microwave" part of the radio spectrum, which lies at a somewhat higher frequency than a typical TV receives. What they discovered was that no matter where in the sky they pointed their special antenna it always picked up some microwave noise that could not be accounted for. Astrophysicists eventually realized that this noise was a predicted side effect of the birth of the universe billions of years ago.

Just remember that when deciding how to dispose of Grandpa's old TV in an environmentally friendly manner.

Also Also, just up at Colliding Universes:

Mars TV: Oh, you knew this had to come, didn't you?

Why the Hugygens probe probably won't, sadly, tell us much

Big Bang: God found guilty of existing due to Big Bang evidence?

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

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

In January of 2005 a space probe called Huygens arrived on the surface of the Saturnian moon of Titan. Four years on the landing continues to draw interest within the scientific community, one reason being that the atmosphere on Titan is believed to resemble the atmosphere that existed at the inception of life on our own planet. When the probe landed, the hope held by many was that Titan's surface would reveal some of the molecules that might have been important to get life started. One review of the Huygens mission wrote of Titan as "a world with much of the preorganic chemistry that Earth had 4.5 billion years ago" later calling Titan "a one-of-a-kind window into our vanished past"(Ref 1). The same review went on to speculate on how a similar atmosphere on the early earth might have provided a life-seeding platform:

"Rich in nitrogen as well as ethane, methane and other carbon-based gases, the Titanian air contains the raw chemical material believed to be needed to give rise to life and just the kind that probably existed on the primordial earth...over time the candlelike heat of the distant sun may have slow-cooked some of the organic materials forming more complex molecules...if there is lightning in Titan's atmosphere, the random jolts could have shocked even bigger molecules into existence"(Ref 1)

Likewise Jack Lissauer from the NASA Ames Institute wrote of a possible Titan-like early earth in which photochemical reactions would have created conditions for life-critical molecules (Ref 2).

Tethered to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, the Huygens probe was launched on October the 15th of 1997 from Cape Canaveral (Ref 3). The entire Hugens/Cassini mission was touted as "the most ambitious and expensive planetary expedition ever mounted" by Nature journalist Tony Reichhardt- not a surprising revelation when one considers the 3.3 billion dollars that both NASA and the European Space Agency invested in the mission (Ref 4). For Cassini's spectacular departure from earth, NASA used a state-of-the-art launch vehicle called the Titan IVB/Centaur- made up of a booster rocket and two additional rockets (Ref 5). Clearly NASA did not overstate the mark in its assertion that Cassini had been one of the largest, heaviest and most complex interplanetary spacecraft ever built (Ref 6). Together with the intricacy of Cassini's 1,630 interconnecting circuits and just under 7 .5 miles of cabling it was easy to see the basis upon which NASA was making its claim (Ref 7).

Because Titan is held as a model for the conditions of our earth before life began, much of the equipment aboard Huygens was designed to study Titan's chemical and physical properties (Ref 8). Not only did the Huygens probe carry extensive gas chromatography and spectrometry equipment on board for measuring the gas composition of Titan's atmosphere (Ref 8) but it also carried sophisticated devices for detecting complex organic molecules (Ref 9). Today, scientists claim to have found evidence for lightning in Titan's atmosphere as they probe for energy sources that might have provided the 'spark' upon which such molecules were formed (Ref 10).

News of the arrival of the 319 kg Huygens probe on Titan generated a great deal of emotion. "I've seen people with tears in their eyes" European Space Agency scientist Mike McKay told reporters (Ref 11). David Southwood, the director of the European Space Agency, told of the high hopes that he held for the Huygens mission (Ref 12).

After a journey that had lasted 20 days and had covered 4 million kilometers from the Cassini spacecraft, Huygens descended through the Titan haze decelerating as it went to a final speed of just 300 kph (Ref 12). The first results to come back were met with excitement. Photographs revealed a Titan moon with mountains and river channels perhaps not unlike the water-eroded features we see on earth (Ref 13). Toby Owen from the Honolulu Institute for Astronomy called Titan "a flammable world" in clear reference to the abundant methane that, in the intensely cold temperatures of Titan's surface, formed a liquid not unlike water here on earth (Ref 13). Elsewhere, photographs of channels, ridges and gullies taken by Huygens provided evidence for precipitation- maybe a methane rain- that would have fallen recently on the harsh terrain of Titan's forbidding surface (Ref 13).

As discussions began to heat up on the significance of these first results, it became clear just how little we really did know about Titan (Ref 14). Because Titan has an atmospheric haze that scatters sunlight so effectively, scientists had had little opportunity to study its chemical makeup (Ref 14). Now, with Huygens probe having penetrated Titan, scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were obtaining some impressive radar data that indicated the possible existence of oozing river-like flows of organic compounds (Ref 13). Chris Mckay from the Ames Research Center re-emphasized his belief that the presence of organic compounds might signal the existence of bioreactors similar to those that are thought to have existed on the early earth (Ref 14). Even before the Cassini/Huygens mission, radar studies had revealed that as much as 75% of Titan might be covered by huge lakes of methane some spanning areas several hundred kilometers in diameter (Ref 15).

And yet while the initial photographs of Titan suggested the existence of a sea of methane complete with its own islands and coastline (Ref 16), we were still a long way from obtaining even a sketch of how life might have arisen on our own planet. Rather than being a 'golden spike' event as biologists Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada might have hoped for, in which primordialists and evolutionists finally united the animate with the inanimate world (Ref 17) , the landing of the Huygens probe served only to widen the chasm between simple organic compounds and complex biotic polymers. After all, the methane lakes, channels and open seas on Titan that had initially generated so much euphoria, provided no clues as to how the simplest biochemical processes might have arisen or even as to how a primitive membrane, needed to separate such processes from the damaging and disruptive forces of the surrounding environment (Ref 18), might have been formed.

In September of 2005, Francois Raulin from the International Space Science Institute in Switzerland made some astounding announcements on the chemical content of Titan's atmosphere (Ref 19). According to an in-depth chemical analysis, the Titanian air contained Tholins- a reddish 'goo' that could contain biologically-relevant molecules such as amino-acids and nucleotides. Raulin claimed that all the components for the emergence of life were present in Titan's shrouding haze including water and essential organic compounds (Ref 19). Raulin went one step further by suggesting that life itself may have been able to gain a foot hold on such seemingly inhospitable conditions as those observed on Titan, citing the existence of 'extremophiles' here on earth as evidence for his assertions.

Still, Raulin's imaginings supplied no avenues for explaining the origins of specified information found in biological systems. DNA and proteins are after all more than random assemblies of nucleotides and amino acids. They are in fact molecules rich in informational content. DNA itself is organized into genetic sequences that do not show the repetitious ordering found in, say, ice or clay. In fact the aperiodic, information-carrying assembly of DNA, RNA or proteins is analogous to complex sentences such those that make up human language. How natural processes could have brought about such information through de novo chemical synthesis is a question that challenges our deepest sense of logic. Natural selection is a case in point. Since there would have had nothing to select until genetic information had been built up, it is easy to understand why natural selection would have been powerless to arrange nucleotides into an information-rich code on a prebiotic earth . As Discovery Institute philosopher Stephen Meyer wrote,

"natural selection can do nothing to help generate new functional sequences, but rather can only preserve such sequences once they have arisen, [so] chance alone-random variation- must do the work of information generation- that is, of finding the exceedingly rare functional sequences within the set of combinatorial possibilities. Yet the probability of randomly assembling a functional sequence is extremely small."(Ref 20)

Natural selection needs something to select, something that is already functional. To appeal to chance as an alternative and to thereby assume that the random assembly of nucleotides and amino acids could generate functional strings of information-rich code is to appeal to the miraculous.

Even before Huygens landed, astrobiologists were adamant that whatever was found on the surface of Titan it would not be "life as we know it" (Ref 21). Such a statement should not be allowed to steer us away from the fundamental conundrum of life's origins- that is, how the genetic instructions that form the blueprint for the existence of every organism on earth simply emerged. Science journalist Denyse O'Leary sent a cautionary note to those eager to formulate an answer, warning of "the risk of seeing things that are not really there, because we want them to be there so badly" (Ref 22). We should take stock of O'Leary's words and follow the evidence wherever it leads. That applies as much to origin-of-life studies as it does to any other field of science.

References
1. Dan Cray (2004), Secrets of the Rings, Time Magazine, July 12th, 2004, Volume 164 (2) pp. 52-61

2. Jack J Lissauer (2000), How Common Are Habitable Planets? Nature Volume 402, C11-C14

3. Ring Word 2: Cassini-Huygens Mission To Saturn And Its Moons, A joint production by the National Aeronautics And Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

4. Tony Reichhardt (1997) Cassini mission blasts off for Saturn, Nature Volume 389, p. 769

5. Cassini-Huygens Launch, See http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/files/launch.pdf

6. Cassini Mission to Saturn, See http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/59910main_cassini.pdf

7. The Cassini Spacecraft, See http://cassini-huygens.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features/saturn-story/spacecraft.cfm

8. Huygens Probe Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, See http://huygensgcms.gsfc.nasa.gov/

9. NEWS Titan: tapping the flood of data, Nature 438, 538-539 (1 December 2005)

10. Rebecca Carroll (2008), Electricity Found on Saturn Moon--Could It Spark Life?, National Geographic News, October 28th, 2008,
See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081028-titan-lightning-life.html

11. Stephen Battersby (2005), Huygens beams back first discoveries from Titan, NewScientist, 14th January 2005, See http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6881

12. NEWS Europe reaches new frontier - Huygens lands on Titan, See ESA website at http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/SEMQ1QQ3K3E_0.html

13. John Leicester (2005), It's raining methane on Titan, Wisconsin State Journal, January 22nd, 2005

14. Science Hopes Ride On Huygens, See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4164587.stm

15. Stuart Clark (2003), Radar reveals Titan's methane lakes, NewScientist , October 2003, See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994227

16. Sharp images show methane haze on Saturn's moon, See USAToday, January 15th, 2005, See http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2005-01-15-titan_x.htm

17. Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada (2000), The Spark of Life- Darwin and The Primeval Soup, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp.57-58

18. Fazale Rana (2000), Biotic Borders: Cell Membranes Under Scrutiny, Facts for Faith, Issue 10, Reasons To Believe, See http://www.reasons.org

19. F. Raulin (2005), TITAN: HABITABILITY AND GENERAL ASTROBIOLOGICAL ASPECTS, International Space Science Institute Workshop on "Geology and Habitability of Terrestrial Planets", Bern, Switzerland, 5 - 9 September, 2005,
See http://www.issi.unibe.ch/workshops/Geology/Abstracts/Raulin.pdf

20. Stephen Meyer (2004), The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington Volume 117, no. 2, pp.213-239

21. Jean-Pierre Lebreton (2002), ESA to search for life, but not as we know it, 19 September 2002, See http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/ESAV5SPV16D_0.html

22. Denyse O'Leary (2008), Origin of life: What can the Saturnian moon Titan tell us?, See http://collidinguniverses.blogspot.com/2009/01/origin-of-life-what-can-saturnian-moon.html

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Hey, you've heard it all from the fashion mag at the local clip shop, ... so, like, what can I add, really?

Neuroscience shows why women love shopping, why gay guys read maps like women, why jealous guys ... come to think of it, why does neuroscience only tell us what we already heard from that high school drop-out cousin, shooting pool down in the rec room between his split shifts at the loading dock?

Is this really science? Probably not, say a team of statisticians, who took a look at some of these studies. Basically, many of the claimed correlations were simply too high to be possible. That was because the "social neuroscience" people were cherry picking the data.

Here's the paper, "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience," in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science. The lead author Edward Vul is one brave MIT grad student, along with Christine Harris, Pietr Winkelman, and Harold Pashler.

Taking aim at Social Neuroscience, they said,

The newly emerging field of Social Neuroscience has drawn much attention in recent years, with high-profile studies frequently reporting extremely high (e.g., >.8) correlations between behavioral and self-report measures of personality or emotion and measures of brain activation obtained using fMRI. We show that these correlations often exceed what is statistically possible assuming the (evidently rather limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality/emotion measures. The implausibly high correlations are all the more puzzling because social-neuroscience method sections rarely contain sufficient detail to ascertain how these correlations were obtained.

We surveyed authors of 54 articles that reported findings of this kind to determine the details of their analyses. More than half acknowledged using a strategy that computes separate correlations for individualvoxels, and reports means of just the subset of voxels exceeding chosen thresholds. We show how this non-independent analysis grossly inflates correlations, while yielding reassuring-looking scattergrams. This analysis technique was used to obtain the vast majority of the implausibly high correlations in our survey sample. In addition, we argue that other analysis problems likely created entirely spurious correlations in some cases.

We outline how the data from these studies could be reanalyzed with unbiased methods to provide the field with accurate estimates of the correlations in question. We urge authors to perform such reanalyses and to correct the scientific record.

Vuh's team suggests specific statistical means of rescuing the questionable "red list" studies' findings, if the authors wish to perform them.

The authors of the "red list" (= highly questionable) studies have responded, denouncing the voodoo claim.

Very well, but here are some good reasons for taking "social neuroscience" with a really huge bag of sidewalk salt (not hard to find here in Toronto these days, due to a recent cold snap):

1. Brain studies should usually be somewhat imprecise because everyone's brain is different. Perhaps only a few situations will genuinely produce a high, predictable finding (extreme pain?). That isn't a criticism of the field; quite the contrary, recognition of inevitable limitations is a hallmark of good science. As Vuh's team puts it,

Although it is possible for voxels registered to the ‘average brain’ to be functionally matched across subjects, the variability in anatomical location of well-studied regions even in early visual cortex (V1, MT) and visual cognition (FFA) suggests to us that higher-level functions determining individual differences in personality and emotionality is not likely to be anatomically uniform across individuals (Saxe, Brett, & Kanwisher, 2006).

2. The correlations really were just too good to be true. Cashing a winning lottery ticket is one thing. Cashing a number of them could lead to suspicion (and in one case I know of, criminal charges).

3. Suspiciously, social neuroscience tells us what we already believe to be true, and puts a "science" spin on it. As Sharon Begley points out, quoting mutuallyoccluded, the skewered studies "vindicate the crudest of stereotypes." Real science, by contrast, often challenges popular ideas and forces us to think harder than we normally would.

4. Pop culture theories or prejudices must be distinguished from common sense inferences. Pop culture theories are typically based on pop psychology fads. Common sense, by contrast, is based on millennia of observation. Suppose, for example, someone claimed to "prove" through social neuroscience that most crack addicts are healthy and happy. Well, the parade of misery through emergency rooms, court rooms, jails, and police morgues would certainly suggest otherwise! It's not prejudice that makes us doubt that finding, but rather the weight of contrary evidence from other sources. Common sense tells us to believe the weight of the evidence, not some novel finding.

5. The papers Vuh's team has trashed were published in prestigious journals. That suggests that science, in this area, is in a rut. The most likely reason is that the scientists are seeking a certainty that just isn't there. And it is never going to be there. We live in a universe where indeterminacy is built in, and that won't change.

Social neuroscience, in my view, is just the latest instance of - in Bruce Thornton's phrase - "the things we know that ain't so."

Some other resources:

In "The 'Voodoo' Science of Brain Imaging," (Newsweek blog, January 09, 2009) Sharon Begley, co-author of The Mind and the Brain offers well-justified skepticism of the transparent pop science agenda. She thinks it's physics envy. A desire for precision in a field that studies the restless sea of the brain. Could be. How much easier to deal with predictable particles than constantly shifting brains!

British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog, Do you do voodoo?

By analogy with a purely behavioural experiment, imagine the author of a new psychometric measure claiming that his new test correlated with a target psychological construct, when actually he had arrived at his significant correlation only after he had first identified and analysed just those items that showed the correlation with the target construct. Indeed, Pashler and his collaborators speculated that the editors and reviewers of mainstream psychology journals would routinely pick up on the kind of flaws seen in imaging-based social neuroscience, but that the novelty and complexity of this new field meant such mistakes have slipped through the net.

Here's Neurocritic's view ("Deconstructing the most sensationalistic recent findings in Human Brain Imaging, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Psychopharmacology")

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

A friend sends me these quotations from Leonard Susskind's book, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design:

"Let me be up front and state my own prejudices right here. I thoroughly believe that real science requires explanations that do not involve supernatural agents. I believe that the eye evolved by Darwinian mechanisms. Furthermore, I believe that physicists and cosmologists must also find a natural explanation of our world, including the amazing lucky accidents that conspired to make our own existence possible." (Page xi)

"In the past most physicists (including me) have chosen to ignore the elephant--even to deny its existence. ... Evidence has been accumulating for an explanation of the 'illusion of intelligent design' that depends only on the principles of physics, mathematics, and the laws of large numbers. " (Page xi)

"On one side are the people who are convinced that the world must have been created or designed by an intelligent agent with a benevolent purpose. On the other side are the hard-nosed, scientific types who feel certain that the universe is the product of impersonal, disinterested laws of physics, mathematics, and probability--a world without a purpose, so to speak. By the first group, I don't mean the biblical literalists who believe the world was created six thousand years ago and are ready to fight about it. I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent people who look around at the world and have a hard time believing that it was just dumb luck that made the world so accommodating to human beings. I don't think these people are being stupid; they have a real point." (Page 6)

"Unlike the debate between 'Darwin's Bulldog' Thomas Huxley and [Samuel] Wilberforce, the present argument is not between science and religion but between two warring factions of science--those who believe, on one hand, that the laws of nature are determined by mathematical relations, which by mere chance happen to allow life, and those who believe that the Laws of Physics have, in some way, been determined by the requirement that intelligent life be possible." (Page 6-7)

Of course, one possible explanation - assuming we are allowed to consider it - is that the elephant really is there.

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

Quantum theory and popular culture: Hit job on, of all people, Paul Dirac

Extraterrestrial life: NASA says could be life on Mars- or could be rocks

Science fiction: What if God resigned? What would change?

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

In "World's First Computer Rebuilt, Rebooted After 2,000 Years", Charlie Sorrel reports (Wired, December 16, 2008),

A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the Antikythera mechanism was used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games.

The original 81 shards of the Antikythera were recovered from under the sea (near the Greek island of Antikythera) in 1902, rusted and clumped together in a nearly indecipherable mass. Scientists dated it to 150 B.C. Such craftsmanship wouldn't be seen for another 1,000 years - but its purpose was a mystery for decades.

A replica has been created that is said to work perfectly:

Go here for a demonstration.

See also here for more.

Two thousand year old computer rebooted- and you thought you had to wait long for tech service?

In "World's First Computer Rebuilt, Rebooted After 2,000 Years", Charlie Sorrel reports (Wired, December 16, 2008),

A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the Antikythera mechanism was used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games.

The original 81 shards of the Antikythera were recovered from under the sea (near the Greek island of Antikythera) in 1902, rusted and clumped together in a nearly indecipherable mass. Scientists dated it to 150 B.C. Such craftsmanship wouldn't be seen for another 1,000 years — but its purpose was a mystery for decades.

A replica has been created that is said to work perfectly. Go here for a demonstration.

See also here for more.

People often wonder why ancient Greek technology was so largely lost later. In the centuries following the collapse of Rome, Europe - which might have been expected to retain the technology - was fragmented and under constant siege from pirates and bandits, who destroyed irreplaceable manuscripts. In fact, as Thomas Cahill explains in How the Irish Saved Civilization,

Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost ... [so that when] the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated.

The main thing to see here is not where they were, but where they weren't . For many centuries, most people simply did not have access to things like antikythera or the writings that were part of the same ancient civilization. Gradually, by the early Middle Ages, national governments started to get the problem of bandits and pirates under control, at which point universities became possible.

See also:

Origin of life: What can the Saturnian moon Titan tell us?

Science fiction: Remake of Day the Earth Stood Still supports Rare Earth hypothesis? (= and not Carl Sagan?)

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

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

During cloudless nights, the winter months provide an unusually good time for making detailed observations of the night sky. For the amateur astronomer, the Geminids meteorite shower is just one of the celestial highlights in the month of December. While last month's show was disappointing, the 2004 Geminids shower was spectacular as streaming meteorites skimmed over the earth's atmosphere. Perhaps not so well known is the fact that many of the annual meteorite showers are caused by debris from comets that have left 'dirt trails ' as they hurtle through space. The resulting split-second streaks of light are a sight to behold. Nevertheless some fear that it is only a matter of time before a major collision from something much bigger will wipe out all but the smallest forms of life on earth. A review by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Ref 1) on the probability of such collisions noted that on planetary bodies lacking an atmosphere such as Mercury and our own moon, craters are everywhere to be seen as reminders of collisions-past.

There are of course reports of meteorites that have hit relatively recently in our earth's history. In 1947 for example fragments of a 10-meter diameter meteorite crashed into the ground in the remote mountains of Sikhote-Alin in Eastern Siberia (Ref 1). Elsewhere, the 1219 meter-long crater in northern Arizona is believed to have been created around 50,000 years ago by a meteorite spanning 60 meters in diameter. As it impacted it would have produced an explosion equivalent in magnitude to 15 million tons of TNT (Ref 1). And yet the geological record clearly records that ever since an initial pounding of the earth 3.9 billion years ago, the rate of collisions has decreased very significantly (Ref 2, p. 202).

There is no denying that our own atmosphere is an effective shield and, were it not for our atmosphere, the pelting of our earth's surface with cosmic debris might threaten our very existence (Ref 1). In fact most meteors up to about 10 meters in diameter are broken up on contact with the upper regions of our atmosphere. According to the NASA report, there is no recorded case in the last 1000 years of anyone ever having been killed by a meteorite or its fragments (Ref 1). Moreover, the biggest impactors- about 1 mile in length- are a rarity, occurring only about once in every 50-100 million years (Ref 1). While still contentious, one popular model of planetary interactions shows Jupiter providing earth with significant protection from asteroids and comets (Ref 3). The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, which blasted and badly bruised Jupiter in 1994, demonstrated the pounding of our Jovian neighbor in spectacular fashion (Ref 4-5).

NASA knows of no comet or asteroid currently on a collision course with earth and, as far as current estimates are concerned, there is no threat of a collision in the foreseeable future (Ref 1). Astronomers are continuously scanning the heavens and making trajectory predictions on bodies that might pose a theoretical risk to earth's habitat while engineers think of ways to prevent the devastation of such impacts. One supercomputer developed by scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories for example, has been able to simulate the effects of a 1 km-wide meteorite hitting the earth's oceans (Ref 3) . Oklahoma State University mathematician Hermann Burchard speculated on the idea of using giant airbags to deflect the trajectory of an oncoming threat (Ref 6).

On a much broader scale, we can begin to truly appreciate the claim that the universe possesses narrowly defined characteristics that makes the existence of life on our earth possible. World-renowned cosmologists Marek Abramowicz and George Ellis have drawn attention to this salient fact. They commented,

"The natural constants in our Universe not only allow for the existence of stable atoms from which matter is formed but also (together with proper initial conditions of the Big Bang) lead to the formation of galaxies and stars, apparently vital features of life" (Ref 7)

Astronomer and theologian Hugh Ross has amassed an impressively long list of 'coincidences' that can only lead us to the conclusion of a purposeful tailoring of our cosmos that is ultimately destined towards our very own existence (Ref 2, pp. 188-193). Everything from the size of our galaxy to the frequency and relative positioning of supernovae explosions, from the number of planets in our solar system to the earth's gravitational pull, from the thickness of the earth's crust to the carbon dioxide, oxygen and water vapor content of our atmosphere and even the rate of tectonic and volcanic activities on our planet seems to fall within narrow permissible windows (Ref 2, pp. 188-193). The number of parameters now extends to over 125, some admittedly more tightly constrained than others.

The albedo- the amount of light that our earth reflects back out into space- is one of the more tightly constrained parameters in Ross' list. If this amount were any greater than it actually is, rapid glaciation of the earth would ensue; any smaller and we would have rampant global warming (Ref 2, p.190). In both cases, the earth would no longer be able to support complex multicellular life. In fact, on the basis of albedo and the distance and size of the parental star (in our case the sun) we can exclude 99.9% of all known planets from the list of potential life-sustaining harbors. The implications of this fact alone are far reaching for it places the probability of finding a planet anywhere in the universe with the precise conditions to support life at 1 in 10 exp144 (Ref 2, p.194). Ross concludes,

"Even with a hundred billion trillion stars in the observable universe, the probability of finding... a single planet capable of supporting physical life is much less that one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. The odds actually are higher that the reader will be killed by a sudden reversal in the second law of thermodynamics" (Ref 2, p.194)

The 'just right' assessment of our cosmos seems to be the best assessment when one is presented with such evidence. Physicist Leonard Susskind was right to ask why it is that the laws and constants of nature are so well-tuned for the existence of life. As Susskind wrote,

"At least one constant of nature, the so-called cosmological constant, is absurdly fine tuned (to more than one hundred decimal places) to be in the range where galaxies, stars and life can form"(Ref 8)

Theologian and physicist John Polkingthorne likewise spoke of the deep teleological foundations upon which our cosmos is constructed,

"If you examine the early relationship between expansion and contraction forces in the early picoseconds of the Universe, you will see that the exactitude was so precise that the margin of error and the precision required would be like taking aim at a 1 square inch object, 20 billion light years away on the other end of the Universe and hitting it bulls eye"(Ref 9)

Along side such a feat, the arrow-shooting achievements of Swiss folklore hero William Tell pale into amateurish insignificance. Instead we glimpse the apparent works of a cosmic archer who fashioned our earth and the universe with us in mind.

References

1. The Probability Of Collisions With Earth, See http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/back2.html

2. Hugh Ross (1996), Beyond the Cosmos, Navpress Publishing Group, Colorado Springs, CO

3. Ron Cowen (2008), Sniping at Jupiter, ScienceNews, November 8th, 2008; Vol.174 #10 (p. 9), See http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37551/title/Sniping_at_Jupiter

4. Alan Hall (1997), Bang and Splat A supercomputer anticipates the catastrophic impact of a giant comet, Scientific American, May 1997

5. The Science Book, Edited Peter Tallack, Published in 2003 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, UK pp. 508-509

6. Hazel Muir (2002), Cosmic airbag could save the planet, NewScientist, 29 August 2002, See article on http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2730-cosmic-airbag-could-save-the-planet.html

7. Marek Abramowicz and George Ellis (1986), The Elusive Anthopic Principle, Nature Volume 337, pp. 411-412

8. Leonard Susskind (2005), 'A Theory of Everything?', Nature 433, 257-259

9. Ravi Zacharias (2005), The Anatomy Of Faith And The Quest For Reason, From the Let My People Think radio series, see http://www.rzim.org

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Driving back with friends from Ottawa to Toronto recently, I managed to catch this program where a CBC journalist interviewed humanist neurologist Oliver Sacks on the subject of music. Sacks disagrees with Harvard's Steve Pinker, who claims that music is evolutionary cheesecake but then he stops midway through the program and makes a big pitch for materialism that completely goes against everything else he has said. And of course music could just be an earworm after all ....

The only thing music cannot be, apparently, is a hint that there is more to life than nature red in tooth and claw.

Here's the interview. Funny, these people would pick the Year of Completely Ridiculous Darwin Hagiography to just fall apart intellectually. Some big changes are obviously happening.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues, which supports The Spiritual Brain:

Are people starting to get the fact that the high tech hucksters are - well - hucksters?

Neuroscience and criminal justice: Voodoo, for example

Recently, a friend sent me this Google alert for "evolutionary psychology"

Religion: There is atheism, ... and then there is materialist atheism ...

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

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

The notion that the universe was purposefully designed for the advent of life, if confirmed, would contradict orthodox Darwinism. After all, a life-directed universe and more particularly one that invariably leads to intelligent beings such as us that are able to look back through cosmic history and make scientific discoveries, by definition contravenes the random, goal-less ends inherent in a natural selective process. Darwin's success came from his convincing rebuttal of a guided, goal-directed evolution of life through a thesis that amassed evidence, albeit circumstantial, in support of his macroevolutionary model. Through his claims of colonization and subsequent adaptation of island archipelagos by mainland fauna (Ref 1, pp.528-546), Darwin saw no reason why small adaptational differences could not, given enough time, result in the large differences observed between all life forms. His triumph came in proposing that natural selection was the mechanism by which the branching of the evolutionary tree, from a few common ancestors, could occur (Ref 1, pp.107-108).

Darwin's observations on homologous resemblances (Ref 1, pp.577-578) and the origins of varieties through animal breeding (Ref 1, pp.24-49) only served to strengthen his conviction that all forms of life could be traced back in history to a few common progenitors. With the Malthusian predictions of famine and plague (Ref 2, p.120) and Ernst Haeckel's claim of unity of form during embryonic development (Ref 3), Darwin found the sociological and biological ammunition he needed to do away altogether with the typological framework that defined the Special Creationist world view (Ref 1, p.247). For Darwin, the entire notion of a designer who had fashioned life with the culmination of man as a creature made in His own image, directly contradicted what he saw as the apparent toil and suffering readily visible throughout nature (Ref 4, pp.12-13). A benevolent designer such as the biblical God, Darwin concluded, would not have wished such depth of suffering upon His creation. And so Darwin's theory of evolution became a theory of 'His volition' the principle tenet of which was that life seemed too haphazard and pitiful to be a willful act of divine love. An unplanned struggle for survival appealed more closely to the status quo (Ref 2, p.90).

Darwinism and later its more contemporary equivalent neo-Darwinism seemed scientifically and philosophically indisputable. In 1953, all that changed. The elucidation of the DNA double helical structure by James Watson and Francis Crick signaled a new era of scientific discovery that would eventually lead to the molecular biology revolution. One fundamental revelation that emerged was that not only are different genes involved in the formation of apparently homologous structures in different species but supposedly related genes also code for structures that are dissimilar and would not be categorized as homologous under the Darwinian definition (Ref 5; 6; 7). Together with the lack of a viable explanation for how complex organs such as the eye supposedly evolved (Ref 8) and the absence of intermediate forms needed to unite the diversity of life, which Darwin conveniently explained away by resorting to the idea of an imperfectly kept fossil record (Ref 1, pp. 213-214), the Darwinian paradigm faced a formidable onslaught from conflicting data.

In his testimony to the United States Commission on Human Rights, philosopher Stephen Meyer argued that there is scope for consideration of another theory, that of Intelligent Design, as an alternative to Darwinian evolution (Ref 9). Intelligent Design theory does not aim to identify the designer in any metaphysical or theological sense but simply looks at aspects of the natural world that, "reliably signal the action of an intelligence, whatever that intelligence might be" (Ref 10, p.314). What Intelligent Design theory does not allow for is the idea that Darwinian descent with modification can account for the transformation of a single-celled ancestor into the full panoply of life that we see today. Within this limitation, philosopher William Dembski argues that natural laws cannot explain the origins of the highly specified genetic instructions found in DNA (Ref 10, p.149).

Central to the scientific argument of Intelligent Design is the notion of irreducible complexity which, as biochemist Michael Behe has famously demonstrated, exists in many biological processes (Ref 11, 12). Behe's observation is that for such processes a critical set of interacting components is required before they can work properly to achieve a specified function. That is, if any component were to be removed, these processes would cease to work (Ref 11, 12). The intricacies of blood clotting, the motion of the bacterial flagellar motor, the beating of cilia and the co-operative elements of the immune response fall central to Behe's argument. More recently the activation pathway of enzymes involved in programmed cell death has been shown to display irreducible complexity (Ref 13). Hypothetical precursors to such processes would have been by definition non-functional, lacking the components that give at least a minimal level of functionality. Irreducible complexity defies the piece-meal assembly inherent in a Darwinian selective process.

Today perhaps more than ever before, we have a responsibility to look at the scientific theories that we hold dear and reassess their validity in light of the latest evidence. Darwinian theory should not be excluded from the rigorous questioning of objective discourse. Those who choose to elevate Darwinism to the level of an unquestionable 'fact' that is universally applicable to all aspects of biology do so at an enormous cost to the enterprise of scientific debate. Intelligent Design proponents do after all present their own cogent arguments in support of their assertions (Refs 11-14). Such arguments go against the random directionless tenet of Darwinism and present us with new avenues for scientific research into the existence of life.

So it is that I end on a personal note. Well known throughout the world are the colorful festivities of the Brazilian carnival where the 'Sambadromo' sets entire cities dancing on the streets during the month of February. 2009 will be no different. Perhaps less well known are the traditional, remembrance celebrations in June for Saint John who, according to folklore, is responsible for the good harvest that Brazil reaps every year. So strong is lure of St John that, even when the harvest is poor, his contribution to the harvest is whole-heartedly acknowledged. One of the many ways that children celebrate the event is by releasing and chasing small hot air balloons through the cities, the aim of this game being to catch them wherever they land. Having grown up in Brazil, I remember chasing these balloons over six-lane highways, across bridges and through neighborhoods in the hope that I would be the first to arrive at their point of landing and, in the process, discover what mysterious mechanism kept them airborne.

Needless to say disappointment always followed when, arriving breathless at the landing spot, I discovered not only that a crowd of kids had arrived long before me but that the balloons had entered someone's backyard. Like navigators on a voyage of discovery, we would peer through tall impenetrable fences at the balloons beyond, filled with the realization that we would have to wait for another day to uncover their secrets. Reflecting on these experiences, I somehow think that Darwin must have faced a similar predicament when confronted with the black box of the inner workings of life. This black box would have been Darwin's own 'balloon of the backyard'. Peering across the fence that was the limited knowledge of molecular biology at the time, Darwin must have hoped that this black box would not upset his grand theory. He was nevertheless able to brush off the lack of knowledge by filling in the gaps of knowledge with the apparent power of natural selection. As he wrote in his autobiography

"The old argument of design in nature...which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered...There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows" (Ref 2, p.87)

Unfortunately for Darwin we now know that such generalities regarding his grand theory were premature (Ref 9). What we see emerging today is a gradual disquiet and dissatisfaction with Darwinian orthodoxy. Like the beat of a distant drum that is getting louder, the rumblings of unrest are making themselves increasingly known throughout the scientific community. Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter points out why such a state of affairs is unremarkable given the "vague explanations" put forward in evolutionary literature which rely on "such dubious mechanisms" as "chance" or "opportunism" (Ref 4, p.75). We can thus understand the cries that call out for a radical upheaval in the way that we view biology not only in its form but also in its complexity. Indeed, the inner makings of life are threatening to topple the 'house of cards' that is modern evolutionary biology.

References
1. Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection Or The Preservation of Favored Races In the Struggle For Survival, Modern Library Paperbacks Edition (1998), New York

2. Charles Darwin, The Autobiography Of Charles Darwin, Copyright held by Nora Barlow in 1958, W.W. Norton and Company Inc, New York

3. Michael K. Richardson, James Hanken, Lynne Selwood, Glenda M. Wright, Robert J. Richards, Claude Pieau, Albert Raynaud (1998), Haeckel, Embryos, and Evolution, Science Vol 280, p.293

4. Cornelius Hunter (2001), Darwin's God, Evolution and the Problem of Evil, Brazos Press, A division of Baker Book House Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan

5. Philip W. Ingham and Andrew P. McMahon (2001), Hedgehog signaling in animal development: paradigms and principles, Genes and Development Volume 15, pp.3059-3087

6. Patrick Callaerts, Patricia N. Lee, Britta Hartmann, Claudia Farfan, Darrett W.Y. Choy, Kazuho Ikeo, Karl-Friederich Fischbach, Walter J. Gehring and H Gert de Couet (2001), HOX genes in the sepiolid squid Euprymna scolopes: Implications for the evolution of complex body plans PNAS Vol 99, pp.2088-2093

7. Sean Carroll (2005), The Origins of Form Natural History Magazine, November 2005. Article can be found at http://www.naturalhistorymag.com

8. Walter J. Gehring and Kazuho Ikeo (1999), Pax 6 mastering eye morphogenesis and eye evolution, Trends in Genetics, Volume 15, pp.371-377

9. Stephen Meyer (1998), Testimony to the United States Commission on Civil Rights Concerning the Teaching of Biological Origins, http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_uscommcivrights.htm

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

11. Michael J Behe (1996), Darwin Under the Microscope, Appeared in the New York Times October 29, 1996, Section A, p.25

12. Michael Behe, Eddie N. Colanter, Logan Gage, and Phillip Johnson (2008), Intelligent Design 101: Leading Experts Explain The Key Issues, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 115-129

13. Robert Deyes (2008), The Disarming Cell: Taking The Wind Out Of The Sails Of Darwinism, ARN, http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/09/11/the_disarming_cell_how_cellular_biology

14. Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards (2004), The Privileged Planet, How Our Place In The Cosmos is designed for Discovery, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington D.C, New York