The ID Report

"One who claims to be a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs." - Phillip E. Johnson

Virgin birth. Abiogenesis. Resurrection from the dead. Random mutations producing the raw material for new organs. Intelligent creation ex nihilo. Eternal matter. Eternal mind. Heaven. Multiverses. Speciation by unguided, natural selection. Hell. Natural DNA information generation. Adam. Panspermia. Angels. No immaterial soul. Miracles. Space aliens. God. No God.

What do every one of the above have in common? Each is a closely held belief of zealous defenders of some theory of origins or another. And for each belief there are counter-zealots who can discern not one whit of convincing evidence. Take abiogenesis, for example. There is no evidence--just a lot of "must-have-happened-because-we're-here" certainty among the atheistic faithful in need of such belief; and believe they do. Ironically, the atheistic faithful like to think they are free of faith and suppose others to be, well, full of it. But in fact faith abounds on all sides with only two things certain: everybody believes something unbelievable and only certain unbelievable beliefs can actually be true. In fact, certain unbelievable beliefs must be true, and others must be false. But how can we know?

Darwinists often belittle the arguments of anti-evolutionists as "arguments from incredulity" as if there is something fundamentally flawed with such a position (even while they make the same arguments against intelligent design!). While the charge is almost always leveled in error (very few of the anti-evolutionary arguments are based on bare disbelief), there is some basis to draw exactly this charge: the evidence at hand makes naturalistic evolution truly unbelievable to the reasonable person. Consider: Materialists (which is what all atheists and most Darwinists are) must believe in abiogenesis, the faith belief that life arose accidentally from non-living matter. In spite of a total lack of evidentiary basis they are stuck with no choice, they must necessarily believe that a past chance agglomeration of all the right stuff, like cosmic Tinker Toys without a Tinkerer, was scattered, pressed, heated, cooled or otherwise accidentally treated just so, to make life appear out of nowhere. Excuse those of us not so thought-limited, but without any evidence to give a reason to believe or even a reason to suspend disbelief, abiogenesis is simply unbelievable.

Less well understood for all the bluffing that goes largely unchecked is the fact that Darwinists have absolutely no evidence to prove the crown jewel of Darwinism, that undirected physics and chemistry alone (so-called Natural Selection) can "select" from random mutational errors to produce a single new species. Darwin himself offered only an imaginary example of natural selection, an admitted indulgence on his part. But modern Darwinists continue the imaginations without the admission. Look it up--there is no evidence that natural selection has produced (or can produce) one new species. In fact, the evidence compels the opposite conclusion--even with extensive un-natural selection (i.e., breeding), no new species are possible. Are we really to believe on the word of men alone that purposeless, unguided chemistry and physics magically drove the origin of every species? Unbelievable.

Because most people don't have the faith of Darwinists, the evidence-induced unbelief among approximately 90% of the population drives evolutionists and other theophobic no-godders crazy. Referring to Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, president of The Darwin Loving God Haters Club (known to one another as "skeptics"), wonders how "such a powerful idea [can] go still largely unabsorbed into popular consciousness." And to show how powerfully a false idea can take even smart people captive, Dawkins fails to comprehend the irony of his own words when he blindly blathers, "it is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe." Designed? (Heh, heh), yes. Misunderstood? No. Hard to believe? Only to the reasonable mind.

What about the legions of other skeptics and self-styled free thinkers? Aren't they free of all belief in the unbelievable? They would like to think so. But consider "free thinkers", as they call themselves. As captives to a deception, none of them are permitted to think freely about God's existence; atheism is the required belief imposed on free thinkers, and they hold slavishly to its dictates. They are free thinkers like a prisoner is a free walker; they are free to think all they want within the bounds of their little cages. And very few, if any, mind-slaves to atheism have ever thought freely about the logically necessary conditions for their atheistic materialism. Free thinking atheists must believe one of two things: either matter, i.e., the cosmic Tinker Toys, has existed eternally, or matter spontaneously appeared out of nothing. Both of these are, frankly, unbelievable. No great thinker in all of history has thought seriously on this topic and found either of these two starting places to be possible, much less believable. Why should we?

And those claiming the mantle of "skeptic"? This group is sadly comical in their smug naivety. When it comes to the biggest questions of all, they are the least skeptical of all. A recent sampling of some of the skeptic faithful showed a pathetically belligerent insistence on proudly proclaiming that they know, they know, that they personally are not intelligently designed. Aside from the predictable show of shallow ignorance in the self-defeating intensity of their admission (why would an accidental, purposeless thing, like a bump on a log, care?), where is the skepticism? As anyone who has crossed paths with so-called skeptics knows, this group is made up of nothing more than un-skeptical, run-of-the-mill, dogmatic atheists and materialist dullards. They are skeptical only of God and the supernatural. But otherwise they are true blue believing mind-slaves to the atheistic party line, including the above-mentioned logical absurdities, e.g., that matter magically appeared out of nothing. One moment there was nothing, and then "poof" everything. The sad thing is that most skeptics, because they are not true thinkers but mental bond servants along with the free thinkers, do not even know their skepticism demands such absurdity.

Every serious thinker contemplating the implications of eternity past has wrestled with the fact that, as unbelievable as it might seem, because something is, something must always have been. And that something must be either material or immaterial. Necessarily, either matter somehow created mind, or mind somehow created matter. There is no other option. And know this: whether one believes the one or the other dictates every other otherwise unbelievable thing he or she believes. It's that simple.

And it is the simplicity of a necessary faith that makes everyone both believer and skeptic. God-believers rightly demand evidence for theories of matter-only self-organization of complex information, and until then will remain skeptical of materialistic Darwinism. Atheist skeptics are not merely skeptical; they are firm believers in a thought system that requires staunch unbelief regardless the lack of supporting evidence; and they cannot even see the abundance of contrary evidence. In the end, what one finds is that skepticism lies more in the who than with the what, because, as thinker Leo Rosten so ably observed, "We see things as we are, not as they are." How true.

Atheists and theists will always see reality differently, not because of what is, but because of who they are. And this explains why each will always believe things deemed unbelievable by the other. So the question of origins for a person not already committed to atheism and all its necessary supporting theories amounts to this: on balance, whose belief in the unbelievable is the more reasonable in light of the evidence made plain to all?

And beyond being simply reasonable, is there a way you can know which unbelievable beliefs are true? Yes, but the key to understanding lies not in the facts (after all, we all have the same facts), but in you and what you permit yourself to see. Think freely about it, and don't be bullied by truth suppressing atheists. Because allowing yourself to see things freely as they are will result in a freeing change of who you are.

And then you will know.

Roddy Bullock, a skeptic of Darwinism, is a freelance writer, engineer, lawyer, 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) 2009 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

Publisher and agent inquiries welcome.

References:

Phillip Johnson quote from the audiotape "Exposing Naturalistic Presuppositions of Evolution," at Southern Evangelical Seminary's 1998 Apologetics Conference. Tape AC9814. Posted online at http://www.impactapologetics.com/product.asp?P_ID=205&strPageHistory=search&strKeywords=johnson&numPageStartPosition=1&strSearchCriteria=any&PT_ID=all

Richard Dawkins quotes, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), pp. 39, xv.

Skeptics adamantly admitting that they are not intelligently designed, LINK HERE, and scroll down to March 05, 2009 blog entry and comments.

Leo Rosten quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Rosten

Let the Whining Begin!
by Kevin H. Wirth
ARN Director of Product Development and Media Relations

On Friday the Texas School Board voted 13-2 approving the language that will be used in Texas textbooks (and potentially other states - though not as strongly as in the past thanks to recent advances in publishing technology) for the next decade after 2011. I expect the standards will be posted online in the coming week, and it when they are, I will update this post to reference them.

I've noticed that the initial news reports generally tend to praise the vote as either a mixed bag or a victory for evolution. I'm seeing remarks like "split outcome", "compromise," and the state still has the creationist "Camel's nose under the tent." Few have called the vote a victory for advocates of academic freedom. Either way, I'm not seeing much in the way of a declaration of victory for our side. However, I expect in the coming days we're sure to see a spate of wonderful blog commentary decrying the loss of progress to science education because advocates of critical thinking managed to sway some influence. In fact, the whining has already begun with the post by Jerry Coyne and others (see the links under "COMMENTARIES..." below)

I won't be offering much in the way of opinion here, but I do want to refer my readers to an excellent summary post by David Coppedge over at "Creation Evolution Headlines." Here's a sampling:

"It is a sad measure of our cultural demise when getting a vote in favor of fairness and critical thinking requires a herculean effort against a dogmatic establishment. Much as we celebrate with those who won, consider what a small advance this is. The Darwinist totalitarian regime has imposed such thought control on the scientific and educational institutions they can hardly think straight. This should have been common sense. In what other branch of inquiry is it normal for students to have predigested conclusions poured down a funnel into their skulls? Of all subjects, science should be the most open to critical thinking. Not so with the Darwinism."

You can read the rest of his excellent post by going to his site:
http://creationsafaris.com/crev200903.htm#20090327a

TEXAS SCHOOL BOARD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Also, the audio recordings of the Texas Board of Education Meetings can be reviewed here: http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/sboe/audio_archived.html

Video of Eugenie Scott testifying before the Texas Board
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3BhqRi3_co

SCIENCEINSIDER
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/04/in-full-intervi.html
Three weeks into his job as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presidential science adviser John Holdren has laid out clear positions on myriad issues facing the Obama Administration. He shared his views on the recent decision in Texas with ScienceInsider.

EDUCATION WEEK
Evolution Debate Remains Vexing for Texas Board
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/04/01/27brief-b1.h28.html

HOUSTON CHRONICLE
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6346723.html
Texas ed board approves science standards
Portraying the vote as a "compromise"
Quoting Eugenie Scott as saying ""I think we've seen some classic examples of politics interfering with science education"
(poor Eugenie...)

SALON
http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/03/28/texas_evolution_case/
Texas on evolution: Needs further study
".. in a compromise that alarms and dismays many science education advocates, the board did adopt language that attempts to cast a shadow of doubt over the validity of the central evolutionary concepts of natural selection and common ancestry."

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, Calif.-based organization dedicated to protecting
the integrity of science education in the public schools, says that once McLeroy and his allies failed to pass the "strengths and weakness" language, "they had a fallback position, which was to continue amending the standards to achieve through the back door what they couldn't achieve upfront."

CNN
Texas board comes down on 2 sides of creationism debate
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/27/texas.education.evolution/

DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Conservatives lose another battle over evolution
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-evolution_28tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a87415.html

Read a critique of the DMN's report by the Discovery Institute
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/03/dallas_morning_news_offers_alt.html

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Texas Opens Classroom Door for Evolution Doubts
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123819751472561761.html
"Critics of evolution said they were thrilled with Friday's move. "Texas has sent a clear message that evolution should be taught as a
scientific theory open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned," said Dr. John West, a senior fellow at the
Discovery Institute"

Kathy Miller, president of the pro-evolution Texas Freedom Network,said "The board crafted a road map that creationists will use to pressure publishers into putting phony arguments attacking established science into textbooks."

USA TODAY
Texas scraps school anti-evolution requirements
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/03/texas-may-end-s.html

SEATTLE TIMES
Texas Upholds Teaching Evolution
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008932356_texas27.html
Supporters of evolution hailed the vote but were critical of amendments adopted by the board that they said could create new paths to teaching creationism and the similar notion of intelligent design in public schools.

NY TIMES
Defeat and Some Success for Texas Evolution Foes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/education/27texas.html?hp

EL PASO TIMES
Board of Education OKs Science Change: State Curriculum to consider 'all sides'
http://www.elpasotimes.com/education/ci_12015289

NATURE
Texas Deadlocks on evolution standards
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/03/texas_deadlocks_on_evolution_s.html

NEWSWEEK
The Texas-Size Debate Over Teaching Evolution
Sure, discuss Darwin's 'strengths and weaknesses.' Just not in biology textbooks.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191400

DISCOVER MAGAZINE
Texas Wrapup: Yup. Doomed.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/28/texas-wrapup-yup-doomed/
So the vote was made, the standards were set, and now the dust is settling. And what do we see? I see Texas being the laughing stock on a world stage, finally replacing the Kansas fiasco from the 1990s.

"...creationists are using this as a wedge to lie about evolution. And yes, I mean lie: they hammer away with old, outdated, and easily-disproven ideas in an attempt to make evolution look weak. But let’s be clear: evolutionary ideas are the very basis of modern biology, and are as solid a fact as gravity is. If you think otherwise, you are wrong. This is not just a theory. It’s fact."

THE CHRISTIAN POST
Texas Board approves new standards requiring critique of evolution
http://www.christianpost.com/Education/Creation_evolution/2009/03/texas-board-approves-new-standards-requiring-critique-of-evolution-28/

MY SA NEWS
Evolution Showdown pits critcs and supporters
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/Evolution_showdown_pits_critics_and_supporters.html

ScienceInsider
Creationists Notch Win in Texas Showdown
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/03/creationists-no.html
According to NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott ..."What the creationists got was a bunch of heavily compromised standards that will allow them to go to textbook publishers and ask for content for teaching of intelligent design."

PHYSORG.COM
Texas education board approves science standards
http://www.physorg.com/news157356139.html

TEXAS CITIZENS FOR SCIENCE
http://www.texscience.org/

NSTA Comments before the vote
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/nsta-issues-statement-regarding-revised-texas-state-science-education-standards/

More News posts can be found at the Discovery Institute's web site:
http://www.discovery.org/csc/texas/

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

COMMENTARIES/OPINIONS/BLOGS

NOTE: Some of these were published before and after Friday's vote:

NCSE
A Setback for Science Education in Texas
http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/04/setback-science-education-texas-004710
This piece summarizes key commentary from many of the articles appearing in this post, lambasting the "flawed" standards, and offering quotes from many who oppose them.

"The board majority chose to satisfy creationist constituents and ignore the expertise of highly qualified Texas scientists and scientists across the country," Scott added. Among the organizations calling upon the board to adopt the standards as originally drafted by a panel of Texas scientists and educators were the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the Paleontological Society, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Texas Association of Biology Teachers, as well as fifty-four scientific and education societies that endorsed a statement circulated by NCSE. The board's chair, avowed creationist Don McLeroy, responded by crying (video is available on NCSE's YouTube channel), during the meeting, "Somebody's got to stand up to experts!"

NPR
Talk of the Nation - featuring Eugenie Scott
April 10, 2009
Eugenie gives her impressions of what happened in Texas (audio)
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=102964799&m=102964792

EDUCATION WEEK
Retooled Texas Standards Raise Unease Among Science Groups
By Sean Cavanagh
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/04/08/28evolution.h28.html

GO SAN ANGELO.COM
Charles Garner and David Klinghoffer
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2009/apr/05/charles-garner-and/
Texas has been the scene of a stirring illustration of democracy at work...Lobbyists for strict enforcement of Darwinian theory as sacred dogma fought hard. In testimony given before the vote, scientists in favor of strengthening the requirement of critical analysis kept their remarks focused on the relevant scientific issues. Darwinian activists, however, sought to scare everyone with hysterical warnings about Biblical literalist "creationism" run amok-a grossly dishonest red herring, often waved about in the Darwin debate, and one that the board as a whole saw through and dismissed. The new science standards are about science, not religion.

WIRED.COM
Reporting from the Front Lines of the Texas Evolution Debate
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/texashearing.html

PHYSORG.COM
Science Setback for Texas Schools
http://www.physorg.com/physics-news/

"The final vote was a triumph of ideology and politics over science," says Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). "The board majority chose to satisfy creationist constituents and ignore the expertise of highly qualified Texas scientists and scientists across the country." NCSE presented the board with a petition from 54 scientific and educational societies, urging the board to reject language that misrepresents or undermines the teaching of evolution, which the board likewise ignored.

NY Times
Evolutionary Semantics, Texas Style
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/opinion/31tue3.html
The Texas Board of Education gave grudging support last week to teaching the mainstream theory of evolution without the most troubling encumbrances sought by religious and social conservatives. But the margins on crucial amendments were disturbingly close, typically a single vote on a 15-member board, and compromise language left ample room for the struggle to continue.

Creationism in the Classroom
By Jerry Coyne
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/mar/26/evolution-science-texas-school-board
No list of commentaries would be complete without reference to Jerry's invective...(KHW)

Enlisting in the Culture War
in the Austin American Statesman
By Don McLeroy
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/03/25/0325mcleroy_edit.html

ARS TECHNICA
New Texas Science Standards saddled with incoherent changes
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/mixed-results-for-science-in-texas.ars
The Texas State Board of Education managed to keep the "strengths and weaknesses" language out of the science education standards, but passed a series of small amendments that provide guidance that is, at times, scientifically incoherent.

NEWSWISE
Science Setback for Texas Schools
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/550595/
After three all-day meetings and a blizzard of amendments and counter-amendments, the Texas Board of Education cast its final vote Friday on state science standards. The results weren't pretty. The board majority amended the Earth and Space Science, and Biology standards (TEKS) with loopholes and language that make it even easier for creationists to attack science textbooks.

"What we now have is Son of Strengths and Weaknesses," says Josh Rosenau, a project director for NCSE. "Having students 'analyze and evaluate all sides of scientific evidence' is code that gives creationists a green light to attack biology textbooks."

DISPATCHES FROM THE CULTURE WARS
Good news and bad news in texas
Ed Brayton's Blog
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/03/good_news_and_bad_news_in_texa.php
The Texas Board of Education passed the new science standards on Friday. The good news is that an amendment to add back in the "strengths and weaknesses" requirement failed. The bad news is that a more specific amendment with the same effect passed and was added to the standards, where it will now be used to shoehorn creationist propaganda into science classrooms.

DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Jarstfer and Coghlan: Don’t censor questions of evolution
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-jarstfer_25edi.696396e1.html
In January, the evolution lobby convinced a slim majority of the board to tentatively remove the required teaching of “weaknesses” from the standard. Now the same activists are demanding that the board cut the words “analyze and evaluate” from the high school biology standards dealing directly with evolution. It is the Darwinian activists who are picking the fight.

Evolution activists have raised a string of phony issues. They claim that board members are trying to insert creationism and a “young earth” into the science standards. Completely false. Remember, it is the Darwinian extremists who are attempting to change the existing science directives. Under the existing standards there has not been a single reported case of a teacher using the standard as a pretext to teach religion, creationism, or anything other than science.

GIZMODO
TEXAS Decides Evolution Needs More Study, I Decide I Need Less Texas
http://i.gizmodo.com/5188521/texas-decides-evolution-needs-more-study-i-decide-i-need-less-texas

HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Board of Education Evolves into a Sideshow
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/falkenberg/6334924.html
The human brain seems not to have changed since homo sapiens first appeared 150,000 years ago. That means evolution is false. We don’t have every bone, so the fossil record undercuts the theory of evolution. A few scientists have fudged proof of evolution, so that calls into question all the other evidence.

EXAMINER.COM
Texas Science education debate over -- but the win is a loss
http://www.examiner.com/x-2430-Science-Examiner~y2009m3d27-Texas-science-education-debate-over--but-the-win-is-a-loss

There is the possibility that all the text books in the nation will include information that fulfills Texas standards requirements. If this were to happen, the entire country would fall even further behind the rest of the world in certain areas of science education. Further, student would be woefully behind when entering college when the time came for them to take prerequisite science classes.

SOFTPEDIA
Texas Votes for Evolutionary
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Texas-Commission-Votes-for-Evolutionary-107929.shtml

But scientists argue that the theory of creation or Intelligent Design would make kids question even well-established scientific truths, and could create a generation of citizens that is unable to tell real scientific facts from fiction.

They also pinpoint that creationists and ID adepts twist scientific facts to fit their claims, by questioning techniques such as carbon dating. Scientists tell that they are puzzled at this tactic that creationists employ in their actions, because even the Pope, the supreme ruler of the Catholic Church, has admitted that the theory of evolution is not incompatible with the Christian belief, as long as people accept that, at some point, God gave soul to our common ancestors.

POLI GAZETTE
Texas School Board Rejects Scientific Method
http://www.poligazette.com/2009/03/28/texas-school-board-rejects-scientific-method/

TEXAS OBSERVER
And So it Ends

EXAMINER.COM
TEXAS Fundamentalism bites a little dust
http://www.examiner.com/x-3346-Minneapolis-Church--State-Examiner~y2009m3d27-Whats-with-Texas-anyway

But I choose to look at this Texas school board decision the way God intended; the glass is indeed, half full. Enough, all ready, with the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific hypothesis. These are to be tested, proven or disproven and not debated. I always get a kick out of the question, "do you believe in evolution?" How can a person "believe" a fossil-based, scientific theory? It's like asking someone if they "believe" in gravity.

QUOTES

"Through a series of contradictory and convoluted amendments, the board crafted a road map that creationists will use to pressure publishers into putting phony arguments attacking established science into textbooks."

- Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network

"Somebody has got to stand up to these experts. Why does evolution have this lofty status? It's all about ideology."

- Texas Board of Education Chairman Don McElroy

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 "Free to Think," (Leafcutter Press) which addresses her critics and relates her experience as an Expelled University professor. Her book is currently scheduled for release sometime in June 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 Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In response to this post ("Quantum theory: Finally facing up to its threat to special relativity"), friend Malcolm Chisholm writes to say:

I have been wondering when you would blog about Bell's inequality.

Bell's Inequality has its foundation in traditional logic (stuff developed by the scholastic guys of the Middle Ages). It states the following

The number of objects which have parameter A but not parameter B plus the number of objects which have parameter B but not parameter C is greater than or equal to the number of objects which have parameter A but not parameter C.

So for instance, if you have a class of students, then

The number of girls who are not blond plus the number of blond students who are under six feet tall must be greater or equal to the number of girls who are under six feet tall.

This will always be true. It is amazing. You can do it for all kind of populations that possess 3 attributes in the macroscopic world that we inhabit. And yet it can be applied to the domain of quantum entanglement to prove that everything in the universe is utterly connected at a very fundamental level. It really is the most profound fact ever discovered in science

Here is a link for more (and it's Canadian!).

Well, he knows how I will love that!

If Bell's inequality is indeed the most profound fact ever discovered in science, it is interesting (at least to me), that Bell started out wanting to disprove it. He was a follower of Einstein and shared the Einsteinian suspicion of quantum physics.

I read his book and toward the end he finally concedes defeat, in the nicest possible way. I recall it as somewhat touching.

Here's more about Irish physicist John Bell. Here are his collected works, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.

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

Plasma theory: An alternative to the Big Bang?

Cosmology: If the universe has free will, where do I go to file a claim for damages?

Origin of life: Life came from dwarf planet Ceres?

Dante's Proton

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 Intro Psych 101, you probably studied (or will study) Phineas Gage, the 19th century railroad worker whose personality completely changed after a tamping rod went through his skull - thus demonstrating the frontal lobe theory of personality.

Or, is this just another of the many things we know that ain't so?

For the story go to The Mindful Hack, here.

The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality, which supports The Spiritual Brain

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

As Lee Pullen tells it at Space.com in "Dwarf planet may have survived early cataclysmic asteroid impacts", Joop Houtkooper from the University of Giessen argues that life could have originated on the dwarf planet Ceres:

"This idea came to me when I heard a talk about all the satellites in the solar system that consist of a large part of ice, much of which is probably still in a liquid state," says Houtkooper. "The total volume of all this water is something like 40 times greater than all the oceans on Earth."

This reminded Houtkooper of a theory about how life originated. Organisms may have first developed around hydrothermal vents, which lie at the bottom of oceans and spew hot chemicals. Many icy bodies in our solar system have rocky cores, so they may have had or still have hydrothermal vents. Houtkooper realized, "if life is not unique to the Earth and could exist elsewhere, then these icy bodies are the places where life may have originated."

There are so many counter-factuals here, I hardly know where to begin.

1. Let's begin with "hydrogen peroxide" life. The theory starts with hydrogen peroxide being an antifreeze, and suggests that life built upon it could survive the cold. But then so is fuming sulfuric acid. This is hardly a place to start. And is contrary to all experience that says hydrogen peroxide is a potent oxidant and anti-biotic. I mean it destroys hydro-carbons extremely efficiently. The man who invented this theory, and amazingly got his paper published, was invited to the Astrobiology conference, where he was unable to answer any specific questions on his hypothesis. It is just another junk science PR.

2. Ceres is cold. There wont be any liquid water outside the orbit of Mars, simply because Mars average temperature is -60C. Ceres is colder by a factor 4.

3. Ceres has no atmosphere. So why would liquid water stay liquid? It would all boil off.

4. Ceres has no gravity to speak of. What would have ever held the atmosphere in place at any time in the past?

5. Ceres is made of stone, matching the stony meteorites observed on earth. Why would it have any water on it ever?

6. Ceres has no magnetic field. What is to keep the solar wind from removing any putative atmosphere it might never have had, just as solar wind denuded Mars?

7. Why would a cold, dry, stony, asteroid with no magnetic field be a better place for life to start than a wet, atmospheric, warm place like Earth?

He could go on, but it is only an e-mail, not a paper.

I think he is claiming the water is under an icy crust, like at Europa.

The rocky core might contain short-lived radionuclides that would heat the rock and produce hydrothermal vents. At least that is what planetologists surmise may be happening at Europa.

The whole hypothesis started when Houtkooper decided Earth was a dangerous place to live during the Late Heavy Bombardment (another one of their mythical tales of yore). Ceres would have been a smaller target for the life-prohibiting impacts.

These considerations don't make the hypothesis any less crazy.

I guess we would all like to believe that there is life on planets other than Earth. What we don't have is the evidence.

With a diameter of about 975x909 km, Ceres is by far the largest and most massive (9.5 x1020 kg) body in the asteroid belt, and contains approximately a third of the mass (0.2 x1021 kg) of all the asteroids in the solar system. However, it is not the largest solar system object besides the Sun, planets, and their moons. Larger bodies have been found in the Kuiper belt including Pluto, 50000 Quaoar, 90482 Orcus, 90377 Sedna, and Eris. Recent observations have revealed that Ceres is nearly spherical in shape, unlike the irregular shapes of smaller bodies with less gravity. Having sufficient mass for self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces is one of the requirements for classification as a planet or dwarf planet.

[ ... ]

Ceres has a very primitive surface and like a young planet, contains water-bearing minerals, and possibly a very weak atmosphere and frost. Infrared observations show that the surface is warm with a possible maximum temperature of 235 K (-38ÌŠC). Ceres ranges in its visual brightness magnitude from +6.9 to +9.. At its brightest point it is just barely too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

[ ... ]

More will be know about Ceres when the Dawn spacecraft visits the dwarf planet in 2015. The Dawn mission is set for launch in September 2007. It will explore asteroid 4 Vesta in 2011 before arriving at Ceres.

Although it is unknown whether or not Ceres has liquid water oceans, Joop Houtkooper believes that if it does, basic life forms may be thriving around hydrothermal vents in the hypothetical Ceres oceans. However, it is not clear how these proposed oceans can stay in a liquid state, as it seems unlikely there is significant tectonic activity (as it has very little mass to sustain a long-term molten core) and it is not orbiting a tidally disruptive body (like the icy moon Europa around Jupiter - extreme tidal forces maintain sub-surface oceans in a warm state). However, the idea remains as Ceres has a lower escape velocity than any other planetary body, meaning that microbes (hitch-hiking on fragments of Ceres) could have been kicked into space with more regularity than other planets, such as Mars.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Who do voodoo? They do - Social neuroscientists, that is," (January 20, 2009), I talked about the new paper, "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience," in press at Perspectives on Psychological Science (key author Edward Vul) which makes paper dolls out of social neuroscience.

Discover Magazine seems to have picked up the story, calling it a "pugnacious" paper - which it is, sort of. But the thing is, if social neuroscience is as silly as it sounds, it's better to admit that it is all a sort of joke now, rather than have others point it out later, when something decidedly unfunny has happened. From Discover:

At the very least, though, Pashler's paper [pdf] illuminates pitfalls in the interpretation of fMRI scans. In an interconnected network of billions of neurons, it is unlikely that any single brain region is responsible for an experience - even if media coverage touting the "love center of the brain" suggests otherwise. Cunningham maintains that fMRI is gradually helping scientists make sense of the human mind, but he admits that "there's a tendency for the data to be oversold, so it ultimately doesn’t live up to the hype".

It's nice to see Discover acknowledging that pop science writing has done much to spread simplistic ideas about the mind and the brain.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Also just up at The Mindful Hack, my blog on neuroscience issues:

Consciousness: Where does consciousness come from?, paper asks

Near death experiences in the news

Cognitive science: The glad, sad, mad computer - or anyway, merry chrysanthemum!

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 Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity (Scientific American, February 18, 2009), David Z Albert and Rivka Galchen discuss, with commendable frankness, the implications of the fact that the universe is non-local. You are there and I am here, and that's all there is to it, right? Well, not among elementary particles:

... according to quantum mechanics one can arrange a pair of particles so that they are precisely two feet apart and yet neither particle on its own has a definite position.

Furthermore, the standard approach to understanding quantum physics, the so-called Copenhagen interpretation - proclaimed by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr early last century and handed down from professor to student for generations - insists that it is not that we do not know the facts about the individual particles' exact locations; it is that there simply aren't any such facts. To ask after the position of a single particle would be as meaningless as, say, asking after the marital status of the number five. The problem is not epistemological (about what we know) but ontological (about what is).

[ ... ]

But entanglement also appears to entail the deeply spooky and radically counterintuitive phenomenon called nonlocality - the possibility of physically affecting something without touching it or touching any series of entities reaching from here to there. Nonlocality implies that a fist in Des Moines can break a nose in Dallas without affecting any other physical thing (not a molecule of air, not an electron in a wire, not a twinkle of light) anywhere in the heartland.

Albert and Galchen focus on the problem quantum theory poses for special relativity, pointing out that the problem has long been evaded.

But it strikes me that quantum theory poses other problems as well.

One frequently encounters claims that action at a distance cannot happen when it might be more wisely described as statistically improbable, if you arre not an elementary particle. That is the basis on which lottery fraud is detected, for example. No one believes that the lucky rabbit's foot did it.

The authors discuss the work of Irish physicist John Bell, who wanted to know whether non-local behaviour was real or only apparent. (One way of dealing with the conflict between special relativity and quantum theory has been to say, with Einstein, that quantum theory is incomplete.) However,

Bell seems to have been the first person to ask himself precisely what that question means. What could make genuine physical nonlocalities distinct from merely apparent ones? He reasoned that if any manifestly and completely local algorithm existed that made the same predictions for the outcomes of experiments as the quantum-mechanical algorithm does, then Einstein and Bohr would have been right to dismiss the nonlocalities in quantum mechanics as merely an artifact of that particular formalism. Conversely, if no algorithm could avoid nonlocalities, then they must be genuine physical phenomena. Bell then analyzed a specific entanglement scenario and concluded that no such local algorithm was mathematically possible.

And so the actual physical world is nonlocal. Period.

For the most part, work that demonstrated that fact was ignored, but Albert and Galchen argue that that is changing:

It took yet another 30 years after the publication of Bell's paper for physicists to finally look these issues squarely in the face. The first clear, sustained, logically flawless and uncompromisingly frank discussion of quantum nonlocality and relativity appeared in 1994, in a book with precisely that title by Tim Maudlin of Rutgers University. His work highlighted how the compatibility of nonlocality and special relativity was a much more subtle question than the traditional platitudes based on instantaneous messages would have us believe. Maudlin's work occurred against the backdrop of a new and profound shift in the intellectual environment.

One hopes that this shift will lead to open-minded examination instead of reassertions of truisms.

See also: Physics: A peek behind the veil of reality earns physicist Templeton Prize

Origin of life: Researchers claim life could have existed 4.4 billion years ago, before Earth cooled

Origin of life: Doubt cast on oldest trace of life - not so old, new research says

Multiverse: Comic vid mocks the paradoxes

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

Just when claims for Akilia, as evidence of life at 3.82 billion years ago have not held up, some researchers are even more ambitious.

As reported in New Scientist, Oleg Abramov and Steve Mojzsis of the University of Colorado in Boulder suggest that life could have existed on earth as early as 4.4 billion years ago:

... hardy life-forms could have survived if they were buried underground.

They were using a computer model and they assumed that these primeval life forms were extremophiles (simple, extremely hardy life forms).

... heat from the impacts would not have penetrated very deeply into the underlying solid crust. The layer heated to the sterilisation point, about 110 ÌŠC, would be only about 300 metres thick. High-temperature 'extremophile' microbes, like those in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, would have survived at greater depths, down to their limit of about 4 km.

Mojzsis argues that the Late Heavy Bombardment of Earth by asteroids "pruned, rather than frustrated, life."

That conclusion is reasonable, says Kevin Zahnle of NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

It certainly is, if you are looking for an argument that God created the first life on Earth. I wonder if either he or New Scientist have thought this one out ....

Abramov and Mojzsis will present their research to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas on March 23. Her's the .pdf.

In fairness, I must warn you that I consider New Scientist the National Enquirer of popular science magazines, and I am also wary of computer models in these situations. So I would just wait and see.

See also: Podcast: Chemist Charles Garner on chemical evolution; Why the Huygens probe - sadly - probably won't tell us much; Mars red but not dead?; NASA says, could be life on Mars, could be rocks; Origin of life: What can the Saturnian moon Titan tell us?; Origin of life: Alien origin taken seriously? Ghost of Francis Crick smiles wanly; Origin of life: A meatier theory? Or just another theory?; Origin of life: There must be life out there vs. there can't be life out there; Origin of life: Oldest Earth rocks may show signs of life, in which case ... ; Origin of life: Positive evidence of intelligent design?; Origin of life: But is being greedy enough?; Origin of life: Ah, that "just so happens" intermediate series of chemical stepsWhy should the search for Darwin's "warm little puddle" be publicly funded?

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Darwinian evolution mob struck recently, in Canada, against Minister of Science Gary Goodyear, in Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

But it is a confused story, and the motives are unclear.

As the photo caption in 24 Hours (the Toronto subway's biggest free source of litter), put it,

A group calling itself the Disgruntled Dinosaurs held a protest outside the Intercontinental Hotel yesterday to call attention to Science Minister Gary Goodyear's refusal to confirm he believes in evolution. Goodyear - who was at the hotel to deliver a speech - clarified Tuesday that he does believe in evolution and initially refused to answer the question because it was "irrelevant" since his beliefs have nothing to do with government policy.

Fancy that.

A Minister of the Crown who does not believe in treating his office as a personal fiefdom from which he can dictate his beliefs to us serfs?

To the stake with him, right! When a guy becomes Science Minister, he gets to impose his personal beliefs on all the rest of us, regardless of public policy. Right?

Oh, you don't like that? I don't like it either. Neither, it seems, does Gary Goodyear.

So ... what really happened here?

The intelligent design controversy has had little impact in Canada, principally, in my view, because the way the public is divided on the subject is not on political lines.

Mike Strobel for the Toronto Sun had, I think, the right take on the controversy. Many were upset due to funding cuts to science and technology:

Scientists roasted Goodyear. Is this why the feds have cut research funding? Does Ottawa figure it's cheaper to read the Bible?

Fumed one: "It's the same as asking the gentleman, 'Do you believe the world is flat?' and he doesn't answer on religious grounds."

No, it's not the same. We can bloody well see the world is round. But I can't look at an ape and see myself. Except some Sunday mornings.

Anyway, at Front and Simcoe, the protest evolves into two college kids in Barney the Dinosaur outfits.

An unsuspecting Goodyear is in the InterContinental Hotel, telling the Economics Club how the Tories are boosting research in these tough times.

Warily, I approach the puff dinos. They identify themselves as the Disgruntled Dinosaurs. Man, I know how you feel, fellas.

They are U of T science students Adam Tempiy, 23, and Yves, uh, Smith, 24.

Hmmmm. Adam and Yves, eh? What a revelation.

You aren't Young Liberals by any chance?

"No, no," says Adam. "We just feel a creationist shouldn't be science minister. It doesn't jibe with his mandate. Does it start to skew his view?"

Wow, a dino-poet. I look around. The hotel swarms with TV trucks, cops and men in black with wires in their ears. For a couple of kids in Barney suits?

Puff dino fashion parade can be viewed here.

Goodyear, deciding to be the adult yesterday, told the Canadian Press (quoted in the CBC, the government broadcaster):

"We're evolving all the time," Goodyear said in an interview. "Of course I believe in evolution."

Wow. Now we know what really caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Puff Barney suits and wasting time on worthless causes, when you are a science student.

(Presumably, if you have really been accepted as a science student at the University of Toronto these days, you have a heavy course load, no?)

Local media sensed what was happening here, to their credit, and have largely failed to bite.

Some thoughts:

- The intelligent design controversy has not been politicized much in Canada, principally due to the fact that - as a recent Decima poll confirmed - views don't break out on predictable political lines here:

In a trend that also departs very much from the American scene, the people who intend to vote Liberal were much more likely than those who intended to vote either Conservative or NDP (leftist) to choose a "theistic" option - God either created humans or guided the process. Only 22% of Liberals thought God had nothing to do with it, but 31% of Conservatives thought that, as did 31% of leftist voters.

So what does this mean?

It means that if I were the campaign manager of a politician running for any party likely to have a chance at electing a member, I would whack him silly if he suggested politicizing the issue: "It's not an issue we need, and it won't bring us any votes. And I will quit the next time you say another word about it."

Things are quite different in the United States where the Democrat-Republican divide predicts views on this question to some extent. And therefore evolution vs. creation (or design) is politicized. Every important politician will be asked for his or her view.

However, some would doubtless like to politicize the controversy hre. The activism business is slow these days. So a brand new controversy would be like the day they first struck oil in Leduc, Alberta, in 1948 ... I am told that a bank branch opened the next day. So if activists could just get the Minster of Science fired over something that doesn't relate to urgent present day concerns, maybe they could screw funds loose for ... who knows what?.

- Fortunately, as mentioned above, few seem to be taking the bait. (But then how many people run around Toronto in puff dino suits anyway?) The Canadian Press report explained,

The Globe and Mail had reported that some scientists suspect Goodyear is hostile toward science, "perhaps because he is a creationist."

But Goodyear, a self-described Christian, said religious beliefs — his or anyone else's in government — have no bearing on federal science policy.

"Our decisions on the science and tech file are not based on what one reporter wants to have people believe, which is that religion somehow forms a part of our policy," he said.

He said science policy is developed by "a multitude of people," in consultation with scientific advisory bodies, research granting councils and other stakeholders.

Well, uh yes. That is how we do it here. It's taxpayers' money, after all.

Essentially, thousands upon thousands of people are losing their jobs. In this environment, researchers - in my view - are well advised to aim their research at a clear and obvious public benefit, rather than start rumours about the Minister of Science. Hoping for what? To get him dumped in favour of a wimp who will vote money for whatever anyone happens to want? Grow up guys. It's not gonna happen. Revisit your priorities.

- I don't know who suggested the puff dino suits, but they were actually a political statement because, as the Canadian Press report points out,

Creationist beliefs have caused trouble for the Conservatives and their predecessor parties in the past. In the 2000 election, Stockwell Day, then leader of the Canadian Alliance, was ridiculed for suggesting the Earth was 6,000 years old and that humans once shared the planet with dinosaurs.

During a TV panel, Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella held up a stuffed purple dinosaur and reminded Day that, "The Flintstones was not a documentary."

Kinsella, who will head up the election war room for current Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, used his blog Tuesday to draw parallels between Day and Goodyear. Borrowing from The Flintstones theme song, he referred to Harper's "modern stone-age government" and called Tories "kooks right out of history."

However, the Liberals' official science critic was kinder to Goodyear. While he criticized funding cuts to research granting councils and the government's fixation on commercializing research, Marc Garneau said there doesn't seem to be any religious motivation to the decisions.

"With respect to science policy, I can not honestly say I've seen a direct link - so far," said Garneau, a former astronaut and onetime head of the Canadian Space Agency.

So basically, this was a political move on the part of some individuals that isn't even being seriously supported by the Official Opposition, the Liberal Party of Canada.

- I was supposed to be on the Charles Adler show Tuesday (out of Montreal), but I expressed reservations about what I was sure would turn into a stupid and irrelevant circus. The researcher must have agreed, because she kindly wrote back to say that they had decided to put the show on hold.

So I guess we can all send our puff dino suits back to the costumers now.

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

">Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousnessby Alva Noë. Hill and Wang, 2009

Alva No, a University of California, Berkeley, philosopher and cognitive scientist, argues that after decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers "only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious ... has emerged unchallenged: we don't have a clue." The reason we have been unable to explain the neural basis of consciousness, he says, is that it does not take place in the brain.

Consciousness is not something that happens inside us but something we achieve it is more like dancing than it is like the digestive process. To understand consciousness the fact that we think and feel and that a world shows up for us we need to look at a larger system of which the brain is only one element.

Consciousness requires the joint operation of brain, body and world. "You are
not your brain. The brain, rather, is part of what you are."

I must get this book and read it.

The typical materialist, of course, wants to understand consciousness as like digesting, not dancing - and that position has been a total flop that makes the American auto sector look prosperous.

Here's a review:

Although Noë is a philosopher, his argument is carefully built on scientific evidence, as he considers everything from studies of cells in the visual cortex to examples of neural plasticity. In each instance, he interprets the data in a startlingly original fashion, such as when he uses experiments showing that ferrets can learn to "see" with cells in their auditory cortex as proof that "there isn't anything special about the cells in the so-called visual cortex that makes them visual. Cells in the auditory cortex can be visual just as well. There is no necessary connection between the character of experience and the behavior of certain cells."

Certainly, many of the scientists cited by Noë would disagree with his interpretations, but that's part of what makes this book so important: It's an audacious retelling of the standard story, an exploration of the mind that questions some of our most cherished assumptions about what the mind is.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack:

Neuroscience: Your local marketing research pest is getting into the action ...

Psychology: Intelligence does not lead to better judgement, decision-making

Religion on the decline? Maybe, but then again maybe not

The latest on God neurons: There ARE no God neurons

Mind: Yet another effort to explain to materialists why minds are not like computers

The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality issues, which supports The Spiritual Brain.

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

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

According to Ron Baker's review on AccountingWeb, in Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates, University of York prof David Wootten recounts,

The history of medicine begins with Hippocrates in the fifth century BC. Yet until the invention of antibiotics in the 1940s doctors, in general, did their patients more harm than good.

In other words, for 2400 years patients believed doctors were doing good; for 2300 years they were wrong.

That fact is, of course well known, but here is the interesting part:

We all assume that good ideas and theories will drive out bad ones, but that is not necessarily true, especially in medicine. Historically, bad medicine drove out good medicine.

As Wootton explains:

We know how to write histories of discovery and progress, but not how to write histories of stasis, of delay, of digression. We know how to write about the delight of discovery, but not about attachment to the old and resistance to the new.

[ ... ]

The discovery of the circulation of the blood (1628), of oxygen (1775), of the role of haemoglobin (1862) made no difference; the discoveries were adapted to the therapy [bloodletting] rather than vice versa.

...if you look at therapy, not theory, then ancient medicine survive more or less intact into the middle of the nineteenth century and beyond.

Strangely, traditional medical practices — bloodletting, purging, inducing vomiting — had continued even while people's understanding of how the body worked underwent radical alteration. The new theories were set to work to justify old practices.

The resemblance of this to much current evolution theory is uncanny. New discoveries are adapted to old claims; the claims are not reevaluated.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose.

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 writes to draw my attention to New Humanist wondering what is happening at New Scientist:

Last week we had Turkey's leading science magazine being forced to spike a story on Darwin, but could we now have a similar story somewhat closer to home? The blogosphere is awash with news that the New Scientist have pulled a piece from their website entitled "How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda", in which their book reviews editor Amanda Gefter explains the key signs she looks out for when deciding if a "science" book is in fact a creationist tract. At the URL where the article was, all that remains is the message, "New Scientist has received a complaint about the contents of this story. It has temporarily been removed while we investigate. Apologies for any inconvenience", along with the 643 comments the article must have received before it was pulled.The Skepticism Examiner give details of what was in the article, including what must have been the opening paragraph:

The rest is http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2009/03/whats-going-on-at-new-scientist.html" target="another">here.

Oddly, the blog post mentions me:

Some general sentiments are also red flags. Authors with religious motives make shameless appeals to common sense, from the staid - "There is nothing we can be more certain of than the reality of our sense of self" (James Le Fanu in Why Us?) - to the silly - "Yer granny was an ape!" (creationist blogger Denyse O'Leary). If common sense were a reliable guide, we wouldn't need science in the first place.

Well, I think Gefter should try a litttle common sense, and maybe she wouldn't be in this mess.

I presume that Gefter is annoyed with me for accurately describing New Scientist as the National Enquirer of pop science mags, principally based on this performance by herself.

For the record, I was not the one who complained, although I am not in fact a creationist in any meaningful sense of the word. People like Gefter typically just say whatever they want anyway; it's better not to get into it with them. I am pretty sure that, in any event, the blogosphere isn't really awash with a tsunami of news about this. These people all take themselves way too seriously.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Catching up here: But remember, there isn't a debate over Darwinism; No end to the evil, I guess; Also from the evil Discos - Debate over Behe's Edge of Evolution; Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy; Intellectual freedom in Canada: Fire. Them. All. News Roundup - Hey, spring hasn't been cancelled after all! Gotta hand it to the ol' boy; Science has a future after all - but it isn't Darwinism; Gene, gene, the meadow is green - and where are you when I need to blame you for something?; Intelligent design and popular culture: Biomimicry So you acknowledge that Darwinism is in fact a cult?; Poll: In Darwin's birthday year, people want to hear alternatives; From my mouth to God's ear: Ben Stein gets a bore-free evening at home!; The Dino-Birds land ... again?; Attempt a zillion to one to exonerate Darwin of racism; Intellectual freedom in Canada: Stephen Harper: Maybe
not just a dish rag?; Honour killings - why we don't accept it here

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

"When I looked under the microscope for the first time I saw the absolute need for humility in the face of Nature. I do not know if there is a God but what I do know is that man is no substitute". These were the words of Professor Challenger in Tony Mulholland's and Adrian Hodges's screen adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, as he prepared for an adventure that would take him into the deepest parts of the Brazilian Amazon in search of prehistoric life (Ref 1). Conan Doyle's The Lost World proved to be a resounding bestseller in its first year. With the Random House edition published on the centennial anniversary of On The Origin Of Species, this action packed adventure clearly caught the public's imagination. Although much has been made of this year's Darwin bicentennial, it is a lesser-known fact that this month many are also celebrating the 150th anniversary of Conan Doyle's birth through public readings of his iconic book (Ref 2).

Set in early 20th century Britain, The Lost World tells a story of four men who ventured out on a voyage of discovery in search of a plateau that, as Professor Challenger unswervingly maintained, harbored a multitude of dinosaurs (Ref 3, p.56). Challenger's claims were initially met with utter disbelief and ridicule as he presented his case to the Zoological Institute in London. He began to set forth his plans for an expedition to the plateau amidst jeering and accusations of scientific misconduct (Ref 3, p.72). Challenger knew that his claims would have to be rigorously tested and that his whole career as a publicly-respected scientist was very much at risk were he to return from such an expedition empty-handed.

So it was that, amidst an air of total distrust not only from the scientific establishment but also from the members of his expedition (Ref 3, p.93, pp.102-103), Challenger set off on the adventure of a lifetime. He was determined to bring back the empirical evidence that in his eyes would win him a position as one of the 'prophets' of science alongside the likes of Galileo and Darwin (Ref 3, p. 73). As his fellow travelers reminded him, "he was a man whose veracity was upon trial", a man who, "walked among his own judges" (Ref 3, p.122). His moment of triumph came as the expedition discovered "the most terrible beasts that have ever walked the earth" (Ref 3, p.214). With the Iguanodons, Megalosaurs, Plesiosaurs and Pterodactyls that Challenger and his judges observed (Ref 3, pp.174-216, p.261), the expedition had amassed the evidence it needed.

If Challenger's expedition had returned without the slightest shred of observable evidence after having scoured the entire Amazonian jungle for the prehistoric plateau, his claim would have been classified as non-proven. As it was, the intrepid travelers came back triumphant. The expedition was met by an excited crowd of journalists and reporters eager to be the first to see the evidence that the travelers had brought back (Ref 3, p.291). As the Zoological Institute reconvened to hear the full details of the expedition, with the heavyweights of science conspicuously present in the audience, the four men - Professor Challenger, Professor Summerlee, Lord Rockston and Mr Malone - made their entry, accompanied by a standing ovation from the crowd (Ref 3, pp.292-294).

Summerlee began with an apology for his skepticism over Challenger's claims on the existence of such a mysterious world. He then proceeded to give a detailed account of the incredible diversity of prehistoric wildlife that they had encountered (Ref 3, pp.295-297). Still, the audience made the hard but reasonable demand for solid proof in support of Summerlee's accounts- science after all needs solid empirical data to test its hypotheses, not just ideas and inferences based on personal desires: "human nature was very complex. Even Professors might be misled by the desire for notoriety" (Ref 3, p.299).

As Challenger brought forward a packing case from amongst his most prized possessions, there appeared a creature so "malicious, horrible, with two small red eyes as bright as points of burning coal"- a prized pterodactyl from the Amazonian plateau (Ref 3, p.295). With panic setting into the crowd, those who had regarded Challenger with contempt could do nothing but stand in awe. The expedition members had not after all fallen prey to the desire for notoriety but had come back with hard evidence in support of their accounts. Challenger's closing remarks were poignant: "No use to raise hopes and let them down again. But it's facts, not hopes, with us now" (Ref 3, p. 315).

We learn many a lesson from Conan Doyle's thriller perhaps the most important being the absolute need for strong evidence and empirical rigor in science. Ironically such a lesson is entirely relevant to discussions on the apparent solidity of the 'facts' of Darwinian evolution. While Darwin's theory has been famously described as "one of the most illuminating scientific ideas of all time" (Ref 4), there is a growing body of respected scientists who are today skeptical about its macro-evolutionary aspects (Ref 5). Recently lawyer and geologist Casey Luskin summed up two areas of Darwin's thesis that remain hotly contended (Ref 6). Concerning the fossil record, Luskin wrote:

"Many evolutionists accepted that the fossil record did not contain Darwin's predicted transitional forms. David S. Woodruff, an evolutionary biologist who studied under Gould, implored his colleagues, "Evolutionary biologists can no longer ignore the fossil record on the grounds that it is imperfect". Another article explains, "The fossil record in giving a clear account of evolutionary history has been questioned because of its incompleteness"...Rather than finding a record showing the slow evolution of organisms, the fossil record consistently shows a pattern where new fossil forms come into existence abruptly, which many have dubbed "explosions" in the history of life." (Ref 6, p.96)

On the subject of molecular and morphological phylogeny, Luskin's attack was equally emphatic:

""Despite increasing methodological sophistication, phylogenies derived from morphology and those inferred from molecules, are not always converging on a consensus". As the consensus becomes harder and harder to reach, Darwinian systematists have tried to construct phylogenies in which data from many genes are averaged together to produce a single tree. In this approach evolutionists construct phylogenies only after assuming common descent. They do not follow correct scientific method in trying to falsify the hypothesis by determining if trees based upon separate characteristics match one another. If they were willing to test their hypothesis, their method would be very different. With the advent of the biotechnology revolution and DNA sequencing it is now clear that conflicts exist not only between morphology-based trees and gene-based trees, but also between different types of gene-based trees." (Ref 6, p.92)

Clearly there is much to be debated. It seems somewhat ironic therefore that the births of both Darwin and Conan Doyle should be brought together in a co-celebration of scientific and literary achievement (Ref 2). After all unlike Conan Doyle's Challenger, Darwin quite clearly continues to walk amongst his own judges.

References
1. The Lost World, A BBC/A&E Home Video Co-production, distributed by New Video, c2002, Producer, Christopher Hall, Adapted by Tony Mulholland & Adrian Hodges

2. See The Lost World Read 2009 at http://www.lostworldread.com/

3. Arthur Conan Doyle (1959), The Lost World, Published by Looking Glass Publishers, Distributed by Random House

4. See Darwin 200 at http://www.lostworldread.com/darwin_200.htm

5. See Darwin Skeptics at http://www.rae.org/darwinskeptics.html

6. Michael Behe, Eddie N. Colanter, Logan Paul Gage, Phillip Johnson, Casey Luskin, J.P. Moreland, Jay W. Richards (2008), Intelligent Design 101: Leading Experts Explain The Key Issues, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My big question: Come to think of it, why does "social neuroscience" only tell us what we keep hearing from that high school drop-out cousin who listens to a lot of TV while shooting pool down in the rec room, between his split shifts at the loading dock?

The world today is drowning in false knowledge -- the things we know that ain't really so. The false knowledge is often bolstered by apparent - but not real - science, typically driven by wicked new toys.
Social neuroscience is a major contender in the current false knowledge industry. This "discipline" depends on statistics derived from current brain imaging techniques.

Also at The Mindful Hack:

My interview at Skeptiko - a bit of a wild ride!

Animal minds: One way that animals teach ...

Society and values: Forget teaching about right and wrong where sex is concerned?

Spirituality and popular culture: Amazon's #1 atheist book wasChristian?

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

I am pleased to announce that a friend will be writing a book on the Alberta eugenics program in Canada (= why the world will be a better place if the government decides who can and can't have children*). Jane Harris Zsovan's publisher is the excellent Gord Shillingford of J. Gordon Shillingford Publications of Winnipeg, who kindly published my own first book, Faith@Science, a collection of my faith and science writings, in 2001. I wrote to Jane to say, "Yours is a needed book, I think. We must get PAST this eugenics thing, but that means confronting it first."

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Intelligent design and popular culture: Chucking Johnson?

Science and popular culture: Guy pays for recommending vitamin D, finds new job

Intellectual Freedom in Canada: Fire. Them. All. News Roundup (Thanks to all who have discouraged me from apologizing for the fact that I love my country, which is why I started the Fire. Them. All. News Service, to help restore civil rights in Canada. Which we will.)

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

Each year about 100 million Monarch butterflies from Canada and northeastern United States make their journey to the Mexican Sierra Madre mountains in an astonishing two-month long migration (Ref 1). They fly 2500 miles to a remote area that is only 60 square miles in size (Ref 1). No one fully understands what triggers this mass movement of Lepidopterans. But there is no getting away from the fact that this is a phenomenon that, as one review summed up, "staggers the mind", especially when one considers that these butterflies are freshly-hatched (Ref 1). In short, Monarch migrants are always "on their maiden voyage" (Ref 2). The location they fly to is home to a forest of broad-trunked trees that effectively retain warmth and keep out rain- factors that are essential for the Monarchs' survival (Ref 1).

With a four-inch wingspan and a weight of less than 1/5th of an ounce, it is remarkable that the Monarchs survive the odyssey (Ref 1). Making frequent stops for nectar and water, they fly approximately 50 miles a day avoiding all manner of predator. Rapidly shifting winds over the great lakes and scorching desert temperatures in the southern states provide formidable obstacles (Ref 1). Nevertheless the Monarchs' finely-tuned sense of direction gets most of them across.

It was not until 1975 that scientists first uncovered the full extent of the Monarch's migration (Ref 1). What has become clear since then is that only Monarchs travel such distances to avoid the "certain death of a cold winter". According to University of Toronto zoologist David Gibo, soaring is the key to making it to Mexico (Ref 1). Indeed flapping wings is about the most energy inefficient way of getting any where.

Other aspects of the Monarch's migration-linked behaviors, such as the reproductive diapause that halts energy-draining reproductive activity during its journey, continue to fascinate scientists worldwide (Ref 2). Both diapause and the 6-month longevity characteristic of Monarchs are caused by decreased levels of Juvenile Hormone which is itself regulated by four genes (Ref 2).

Exactly how Monarchs navigate so precisely to such a specific location is a subject of intense debate. One theory suggests that they respond to the sun's location, another that they are somehow sensitive to the earth's magnetic field (Ref 1). Recent molecular studies have shown that Monarchs have specialized cells in their brains that regulate their daily 'clock' and help keep them on course (Ref 3). Biologist Chip Taylor from the University of Kansas has done some remarkable tagging experiments demonstrating that even if Monarchs are moved to different locations during the course of their journey south, they are still able to re-orient themselves and continue onwards to their final destination (Ref 1).

A study headed by Stephen Rappert at the University of Massachusetts has elucidated much of the biological basis of the timing-component of Monarch migration (Ref 3). Through a process better known as time-compensated sun compass orientation, proteins with names such as Period, Timeless, Cryptochrome 1 and Cryptochrome 2 provide Monarchs with a well-regulated light responsiveness during both day and night (Ref 3). While Cryptochrome 1 is a photoreceptor that responds specifically to blue light, Cryptochrome 2 is a repressor of transcription, efficiently regulating the period and timeless genes during the course of a 24-hour light cycle (Ref 3). Investigations using Monarch heads have not only provided exquisite detail of the daily, light-dependent oscillations in the amounts of these proteins but have also revealed a 'complex relationship' of molecular happenings.

Indeed, the activities of both Cryptochrome 2 and Timeless are intertwined with at least two other timing proteins called 'Clock' and 'Cycle' (Ref 3). Preliminary results suggest that Period, Timeless and Cryptochrome 2 form a large protein complex, with Cryptochrome 2 being a repressor of Clock and Cycle activity. Cryptochrome 2 is also intimately involved with an area of the Monarch's brain called the Central Cortex that likely houses the light-dependent 'sun compass', so critical for accurate navigation (Ref 3).

Rappert's team have speculated that the Monarch's dual Cryptochrome light response system evolved into the single Cryptochrome systems found in other insects through a hypothetical gene loss event (Ref 3). Furthermore they have suggested that the dual Cryptochrome system itself arose through a duplication of an ancestral gene (Ref 3). Biologist Christopher Wills wrote of gene duplication as a 'rare occurrence' in which "an extra copy of a gene gets placed elsewhere in the genome" (Ref 4, p.95). Seen from an evolutionary perspective, these two gene copies are then "free to evolve separately...shaped by selection and chance to take on different tasks" (Ref 4, p.95).

While experiments have shown that transgenic Monarch Cryptochrome 1 can rescue Cryptochrome deficiency in other insects such as fruit flies, what still remains elusive is how exactly gene duplication could have lead to two proteins with such widely-differing functions as those found in the two Monarch Cryptochromes. Indeed biochemist Michael Behe has been instrumental in revealing the explanatory insufficiencies of terms such as gene duplication and genetic shuffling within the context of molecular evolution. As Behe expounded:

"The hypothesis of gene duplication and shuffling says nothing about how any particular protein or protein system was first produced- whether slowly or suddenly, or whether by natural selection or some other mechanism...In order to say that a system developed gradually by a Darwinian mechanism a person must show that the function of the system could "have formed by numerous, successive slight modifications"...If a factory for making bicycles were duplicated it would make bicycles, not motorcycles; that's what is meant by the word duplication. A gene for a protein might be duplicated by a random mutation, but it does not just "happen" to also have sophisticated new properties" (Ref 5, pp.90, 94)

When it comes to supplying a plausible mechanism for how gene duplication and subsequent natural selection led to two distinctly functioning Cryptochromes and how these then integrated with other time-regulatory proteins in Monarch brains, there is a noticeable absence of detail. Each successive slight modification of a duplicated gene would have had to confer an advantage, for selection and chance to get anywhere. Furthermore the newly duplicated Cryptochrome would have had to have become successfully incorporated into a novel scheme of daylight processing for migration patterns to begin.

Evolutionary biology must move beyond its hand-waving generalizations if it is to truly gain the title of a rigorous scientific discipline. In the meantime, protein systems such as the Monarch's Cryptochromes will continue to challenge what we claim to know about evolutionary origins.

References
1. NOVA: The Incredible Journey Of The Butterflies, Aired on PBS on the 27th January, 2009, See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/butterflies/program.html

2. Haisun Zhu, Amy Casselman, Steven M. Reppert (2008), Chasing Migration Genes: A Brain Expressed SequenceTag Resource for Summer and Migratory Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus), PLoS One, Volume 3 (1), p. e1345

3. Haisun Zhu, Ivo Sauman, Quan Yuan, Amy Casselman, Myai Emery-Le, Patrick Emery, Steven M. Reppert (2008), Cryptochromes Define a Novel Circadian Clock Mechanism in Monarch Butterflies That May Underlie Sun Compass Navigation, PLoS Biology, Volume 6 (1), pp. 0138-0155

4. Christopher Wills (1991), Exons, Introns & Talking Genes: The Science Behind The Human Genome Project, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK

5. Michael Behe (1996), Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge To Evolution, A Touchstone Book Published By Simon & Schuster, New York