The ID Report

The basic theory of evolution has been confirmed so completely that most modern biologists consider evolution simply a fact. -- Ernst Mayr

"This changes everything." Those words summed up the sentiment when, hardly able to contain their ecstasy, scientists this month unveiled what could very likely be their single most important find ever: a virtually complete fossil of a 47 million-year old lemur nicknamed Ida. The panting media hype surrounding Ida's introduction to the world was justified, if for no other reason because Ida was found "on the ground." Deemed "the eighth wonder of the world" by one enraptured scientist, Ida should silence once and for all those who doubt the fact of gravity. "This fossil rewrites our understanding of gravity," gushed one glassy-eyed paleontologist who described how Ida is thought to have "fallen" into the water of a volcanic pit. The "falling" aspect of Ida's instantly legendary saga was reinforced by another scientist who, with raised hands compared Ida's impact on gravitational science to "an asteroid hitting the earth." Still another, seen with head bowed reverently, compared Ida to the Mona Lisa, noting both have existed undisturbed for years under the influence of gravity. Wait, maybe it was Ida's impact on evolution that inspired such breathless declarations; statements on these two settled facts of science are easy to confuse.

For those mercifully spared from the recent carpet bombing of media-driven science propaganda, Ida, officially named Darwinius masillae, is merely the latest in the protracted drip of "now (and-this-time-we-really-mean-it!) we have a missing link" fossil finds. Ida is different because, unlike Tiktaalik, the last celebrity fossil thought to finally put to rest all doubts about evolution, Ida is being reported as THE missing link. Yes, Ida is reported to hold the key to indisputably proving human evolution. Reported, of course, is an understatement, as the news about Ida was blared, trumpeted, and generally shouted from media rooftops in what appeared to be one of modern secularism's rare hallelujah moments. Holy Grail. Rosetta Stone. Scientists tried, but no superlative seemed adequate to the task. Even Google, the only thing starting with G-o that most people consult daily, succumbed with the ultimate tribute by yielding its iconic logo to the image of Ida.

But before science pronounces us all made in the image of Ida, consider two questions. First, why does Ida change anything? We the less presumptuous of the world have been berated for years by overbearing and generally arrogant Darwinists for not accepting that Darwinism is an unassailable fact. Darwinism stands, they shout, so well confirmed by evidence that it is a fact on par with other facts, such as gravity. Yes, we have been abused for years with the ignorant spoutings of belittling know-it-alls that anyone who questions Darwinism may as well be questioning the fact of gravity. And to prove the point, we are lectured like children on how "scientists" use words like "theory" and "fact". The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), for example, assures us that when speaking of evolution scientists use the word "fact" to mean "something that has been tested or observed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing or looking for examples." Oh really? And evolution is a fact? Why, then, the continued mad frenzy to look for transitional fossils, and the public ejaculations of joy when a so-called missing link like Ida is found? Are any NAS scientists still looking for examples of gravity? Why not?

Secondly, and more importantly, isn't the hyperventilating media reporting the trumpery of smugly irreverent scientists evidence of a disturbing intellectual undercurrent? Is there not in every glowingly smirky sound bite a tincture of "Ha! This will shut up the stupid creationists!" Why the unfettered joy at reporting what is surely destined to become simply another ordinary fossil? It's as if a humanistic (read "God-free") Paradise of Science is being held back from the masses, groaning under the oppressive weight of pesky "intelligent design creationists" and their simple-minded, unsophisticated reliance on plain evidence of design. And many in the media, convinced that the sooner the Enlightened Kingdom of Humanistic Science comes the better, stand ready to rush any news of scientists finally finding the smoking gun evidence to silence the Christians once and for all.

Here's the obvious truth that the Darwinian junta and their media mouthpieces don't get: if Darwinism is truly a fact, all of nature, fossils and all, should be nothing but evolutionary smoking guns. To paraphrase Darwin himself, "we should be up to our ears in transitional fossils." There should be innumerable quantities of indisputable transitional fossils, so that finding one should be as newsworthy as finding that another dropped ball went down instead of up. But rather than being engulfed in a world of smoking guns, we are subjected to a whirl of smoke and mirrors, and told we are fools for suspecting we are being made fools. Is this really science? How long are the real fools to be suffered?

If Ida "changes everything", then clearly evolution was not the settled fact we were previously led to believe. Knowing that evolution is not what Darwinists demand we must unquestioningly accept should be freeing to the free thinkers of the world. Just what does Ida mean in the big picture of things? For one, Ida appears to have more perfectly an attribute that all fossils exhibit: design. Is it intelligent design? Can we know? Are we allowed to even make the hypothesis?

Ironically, therefore, saying Ida is scientific evidence supporting the inference of intelligent design cannot be disputed, but saying Darwinius masillae is clear evidence to prove Darwinian adesign goes too far.

Ida. She simply goes one letter too far.

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.

References:

Mayr quote: Mayr, Ernst, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (1988, Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

NAS quote: Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition (1999), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy Press, Washington DC, 2006.

Evolution/Gravity fact-equal exposition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact#cite_note-Mayr-6

For more on the concept of "adesign" go here: http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2009/02/28/darwinists_on_design_jumping_to_confusio

For a compilation of Ida's media hyperbole, see Ida: The Holy Grail of Missing Links?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's a classic in advocacy posing as research: "Humans may be primed to believe in creation" (Ewen Callaway, New Scientist, 02 March 2009):

Religion might not be the only reason people buy into creationism and intelligent design, psychological experiments suggest.
No matter what their religious beliefs, college-educated adults frequently agree with purpose-seeking yet false explanations of natural phenomena - finches diversified in order to survive, for instance.

"The very fact of belief in purpose itself might lead you to favour intelligent design," says Deborah Kelemen, a psychologist at Boston University, who led the study

And her point is what, exactly? That belief in purpose is irrational? Why so?

It is a shame that such studies are funded, but I would imagine that funding will increase, not decrease, as materialism takes a nose dive, and profs attempt to protect their tenure.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Ida? I dunno. I wish I had bet a whack on the pop science press dumping all over that fossil

Theistic evolution: New site challenges tenured Christian profs' homage to atheism

Human evolution: Neanderthals as snacks?

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Post-Darwinist posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

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 "Does Dark Energy Really Exist? Or does Earth occupy a very unusual place in the universe?" physicist Timothy Clifton and astrophysicist Pedro G. Ferreira argue just that: If we give up the Copernican principle, we do not need dark energy to explain the composition of the universe. (Scientific American, March 23, 2009)

Copernican principle? Dark energy?

Copernican principle: That's the idea that Earth does not occupy any unusual position in the universe. Indeed, the point was driven home in a recent talk I attended at a science writers' convention. The Copernican principle is widely believed, to be sure, but that tells me nothing one way or the other about whether it is well supported by evidence. And I already know good reasons for doubting it. (Note: It has nothing whatever to do with Copernicus, who wouldn't likely have agreed with it.)

Dark energy? "Dark" means we are in the dark about it. According to the current model, we don't know what 70 percent, approximately, of the cosmos comprises. Whatever that 70% is, it does not respond to light. It also does not answer e-mail, phone mail, or letter mail. Bummer.

Many physicists believe that maybe 25% of this unknown substance is dark matter. The rest is dark energy.

Actually, we don't even know what dark matter is, according to the cautious SNO Plus physicists who are building a huge underground facility in the Creighton Mine in Sudbury, Canada, to trap a particle a year of the stuff. So they hardly wish to give tell-all interviews on dark energy.

Anyway, here are some excerpts from Clifton and Ferreira on whether we need assume that dark energy even exists:

... the existence of dark energy is still so puzzling that some cosmologists are revisiting the fundamental postulates that led them to deduce its existence in the first place. One of these is the product of that earlier revolution: the Copernican principle, that Earth is not in a central or otherwise special position in the universe. If we discard this basic principle, a surprisingly different picture of what could account for the observations emerges.

Most of us are very familiar with the idea that our planet is nothing more than a tiny speck orbiting a typical star, somewhere near the edge of an otherwise unnoteworthy galaxy. In the midst of a universe populated by billions of galaxies that stretch out to our cosmic horizon, we are led to believe that there is nothing special or unique about our location. But what is the evidence for this cosmic humility? And how would we be able to tell if we were in a special place? Astronomers typically gloss over these questions, assuming our own typicality sufficiently obvious to warrant no further discussion. To entertain the notion that we may, in fact, have a special location in the universe is, for many, unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is exactly what some small groups of physicists around the world have recently been considering.

[ ... ]

In the conventional picture, we talk about the expansion of the universe on the whole. It is very much like when we talk about a balloon blowing up: we discuss how big the entire balloon gets, not how much each individual patch of the balloon inflates. But we all have had experience with those annoying party balloons that inflate unevenly. One ring stretches quickly, and the end takes a while to catch up. In an alternative view of the universe, one that jettisons the cosmological principle [a generalization of t he Copernican principle], space, too, expands unevenly. A more complex picture of the cosmos emerges.

[ ... ]

The possibility that we live in the middle of a giant cosmic void is an extreme rejection of the cosmological principle, but there are gentler possibilities. The universe could obey the cosmological principle on large scales, but the smaller voids and filaments that galaxy surveys have discovered might collectively mimic the effects of dark energy. Tirthabir Biswas and Alessio Notari, both at McGill University, as well as Valerio Marra and his collaborators, then at the University of Padua in Italy and the University of Chicago, have studied this idea. In their models, the universe looks like Swiss cheese uniform on the whole but riddled with holes. Consequently, the expansion rate varies slightly from place to place. Rays of light emitted by distant supernovae travel through a multitude of these small voids before reaching us, and the variations in the expansion rate tweak their brightness and redshift. So far, however, the idea does not look very promising. One of us (Clifton), together with Joseph Zuntz of Oxford, recently showed that reproducing the effects of dark energy would take lots of voids of very low density, distributed in a special way.

Does Guillermo Gonzalez have clones? Is this legal?

Well, never mind that for now. For a free copy of the Privileged Planet DVD, here's the question: To what extent is the Copernican or cosmological principle held for emotional reasons, and not because the evidence supports it? In 400 words, would we be better off or worse off without it?

(Note: I recommend that you read the whole SciAm article before commenting.)

Here are the contest rules.

You must go to Uncommon Descent to comment. Your name will not be put on a mailing list, or sold or given away for any purpose. There is no mailing list. However, if you win and do not send me a mailing address of your choice at oleary@sympatico.ca, I cannot send you your prize.

I will shortly be judging Contest 3.

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).