The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Evolution in the light of intelligent design: How would intelligent design advocates answer various questions about human evolution? Read here:

British physicist David Tyler, one of my co-bloggers at Access Research Network, blogs on a number of issues raised in the science literature that impact the intelligent design controversy. Here's an alphabetized list of the ones he's discussed to date. You will also find some of my own compilations from the media (animations, columnists discussing the issues, et cetera.).

The goal of this compendium of links is a one-stop shop if you are trying to track down information in the growing controversy, that is written from a design perspective.

Acritarchs - oldest known protists (Tyler)

The picture emerging of the Late Archaean is one that includes prokaryotes and eukaryotes, photosynthesis, an oxygenated atmosphere and lots of biological activity. This is a big contrast from the picture even 10 years ago. The significance for our thinking about origins is that the eons of time demanded by Darwinian processes are not available.

Adaptation - adaptationist fantasies (Tyler)

Adaptation - adaptationist paradigm (Tyler)

Adaptation(Tyler) - adaptive change and design in echolocation

Adaptive landscape(Tyler) Intermediate evolutionary forms and adaptive landscape

"Adult resistance to science" (Tyler) (a social science theory on doubt about Darwinism as rooted in childhood error)

Aldini, Giovanni, and virulent materialism, with John West (podcast)

Allegory of the Cave SciPhiShow with Jason Rennie (podcast)

Altruism (Tyler) Darwinian vs. intelligent design interpretation

Amber See Stasis

analogies in science interview with Jay Richards on analogies in science (podcast)

Animal evolution(Tyler) - central nervous system

Animal evolution (Tyler) multicellular animals and need for complex information

Animations of life inside the cell, indexed, for your convenience.

antibiotic resistance - problems for evolution theory (animation)

Anti-God crusade Recent series on anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera.

Apes and language (Tyler)

Appendix (human appendix) - despite it's name, no longer considered superfluous or rudimentary (Tyler)

Archaea - horizontal gene transfer - review of The Archaea's Tale (Tyler)

He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time. - Freeman Dyson

astronomy and intelligent design interview with Guillermo Gonzalez, (podcast)

Atheism and science (Tyler) Does science promote atheism?

Ayala - Darwinian orthodoxy, beyond question (Tyler)

Azoic hypothesis (Tyler) How a deep-seated belief hindered science

Backwards eye wiring(Tyler) (The vertebrate eye does not have a compromised design.)

Bacterial flagellum - no simple explanation (Tyler)

Bacterial flagellum(Tyler) - sequence similarities

Bats (Tyler) - echolocation, adaptive change and design

Beetle (Tyler) White beetle as optimally designed

Biomimetics (Tyler)

Bipedalism See Human evolution, bipedalism

Birds - bird song(Tyler) Female song neglected due to sexual selection bias

Brain - anachronistic junk? (Tyler)

Brain(Tyler) Mechanistic assumptions and criminal law

Butterfly sex ratios in Samoa - and natural selection (Tyler)

Sex ratios are distorted by the presence of a maternally inherited bacterium which has the effect of selectively killing male embryos. The authors report ratios of >99% female to nearly 1:1. These were different on different islands and at different times. The genetics of this shift of sex ratios is summarised in one paragraph with some supporting online data. There is not enough information here for anyone to either confirm or challenge their conclusions.

Cambrian era (Tyler) Ancestors largely missing

Cambrian era(Tyler) Comb jellies well developed

Cambrian era (Tyler) Pattern of diversity in the marine fossil record

Cambrian explosion - jellyfish in Cambrian as representatives of modern jellyfish (Tyler)

Campagna, Joey C., Intelligent design - research Wiki Web site for research (podcast)

Canada - intelligent design controversy in Canada - Cultural differences between Canada and the United States, interview with Denyse O'Leary (podcast)

Catholic Church A summary of the Catholic Church's actual teachings on evolution

Cell development (Tyler) and complex specified information

Cell, metaphors,changing metaphors (Tyler)

Cell - molecular recognition - advantages of cellular key-lock not being an exact fit. (Tyler)

So, something that could have been interpreted as evidence for tinkering evolution is discovered to have advantages after all. Furthermore, it has potential for the design of human systems operating in noisy environments. By invoking "evolutionary selection", the authors suggest an evolutionary context for their work. However, there is no evidence that evolutionary selection was involved, and the link with evolutionary theory is gratuitous.

Central dogma (Tyler)

Casual observers might say they find chaos in the emerging picture of the genome, but systems biology is tracking down extraordinary sophistication at the molecular biology level, indicating that theories (like Darwinism) that are undirected and stochastic have little to offer 21st Century biology.

Central nervous system - animal evolution(Tyler)

Chambers, Scott, "Cosmological Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Model" interview (podcast)

Chimpanzees(Tyler) Common ancestor with humans - dating disputes

Chimp-human DNAcomparisons (Tyler)

Chimpanzees (Tyler) Differ from humans by six percent of genes

Chimpanzees(Tyler) Tool use of late Stone Age chimps and evidence of design, intelligent causation

Chimpanzees See also Apes

Ciencia Alternativa - intelligent design interview with Mario Lopez (podcast)

Coelacanth Devonian coelacanth find fills gap. "The find is significant for consigning an extensive discussion of coelacanth and lungfish fins to the filing cabinet of history." (Tyler)

Collins, Francis My review of Francis Collins' book The Language of God

Columnists weigh in on the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

Comb jellies(Tyler) in Cambrian era

Compsocidae - an example of stasis. (Tyler) See also Stasis

Consciousness Douglas Hofstadter attempts to deconstruct consciousness:

... the materialist approach to consciousness is commonly dignified by the name "science". Other approaches, which are likely to be linked to Theism, are labelled "religion" and are excluded, on demarcation grounds, from science. This is an unacceptable situation, for as metaphysics, materialism has a philosophical standing that is entirely equivalent to Theism. It is simply that people choose to build their thoughts on different foundations. The paradox is that materialistic science wants to be realist and to have truth as a goal, but its approach to human consciousness can only support a post-modern philosophy which emphasises the socially constructed nature of reality and substitutes relativism for truth. And, for materialists, individuals have to seek for meaning and self-worth in existential experiences (an escape from reason) because the universal acid of rationalism has completely corroded realism and truth in human psychology.

Common ancestor of all life(Tyler) Assumptions vs. evidence

Common ancestor of all life(Tyler) Hagfish and common ancestor

Common ancestor of humans and chimps (Tyler)

cosmological fine tuning "Cosmological Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Model", interview by Casey Luskin with Scott Chambers (podcast) See also Fine tuning

CO2 sensors (Tyler) as wonders of natural engineering

Cypher's choice Jason Rennie explains the Matrix crux (podcast)

Darwinbots Denyse O'Leary vs. the Darwinbots (podcast)

Darwin Day in America - West, John, on Darwin Day in America (podcast) John West reads from his book Darwin Day in America (podcast)

Darwin exhibition (Tyler) American Museum of Natural History - historical errors

Darwinism and its Discontents(Tyler) Comments by David Tyler on Michael Ruse's book

Darwinism - Ayala's Darwinian orthodoxy, beyond question (Tyler)

Darwinism Darwinian reductionism and Darwinism(Tyler) Alex Rosenberg's views
Darwinism, Judaism, and Christianity with Jonathan Rosenblum (podcast)

Darwinism moral relativism and Darwinism John West (podcast)

Darwinism and dissent(Tyler) - defenders of Darwinism propose ways to deal with dissent from current consensus in science

Darwinism dissent Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin

Darwinism, limits of Darwinism Reviews of Michael Behe's Edge of Evolution "The real issue is: will a debate within science be allowed? If Behe is not allowed the right of reply, this review should be treated as an exercise in polemics, designed to protect the world of science from ever having to face up to evidences of ID. If there is the opportunity to reply, readers will enjoy a genuine scientific debate. This review must backfire, because science has shown that there are limits to Darwinism and it is perfectly legitimate to ask what Darwinism can and cannot do." (Tyler)

Darwinism (Tyler) and molecular clocks

Davies, Paul(Tyler) and design inference

Dawkins, Richard, information challenge Casey Luskin's response (podcast)

Dembski, William, on intelligent design and the church, in conversation with Russell Moore (podcast)

Descartes's demon SciPhiShow with Jason Rennie (podcast)

Design(Tyler) Can self-organization explain design?

design - unintelligent design - A discussion between Sheirdan Voysey (host), Robyn Williams, and Denyse O'Leary (science journalists) (podcast)

Dinosaurs(Tyler) Horned dinosaurs and evolutionary predictions

Dissent(Tyler) - defenders of Darwinism propose ways to deal with dissent

Doan, Andy, interviewed by Jason Rennie, "Miracles and the Q" (podcast)

Dover Trial (US) (Tyler)

Dover Trial (US) Montana Law review articles (podcast)

Ear evolution(Tyler) Yanoconodon

Ears (Tyler) Moth ears show design sophistication

Earth as privileged planet "Theories of how planetary atmospheres formed will need to be reappraised. The findings create yet more problems for OOL research. In other contexts, finding water outside the Earth has been used to raise expectations of finding life, but at least that does not arise here. However, it is worth contrasting this point with some of the more sensational media reports ... " (Tyler)

Earth-like planet (Tyler) Found in 2007

Echolocation(Tyler) - Adaptive change and design

Emergent evolution (Tyler) Can self-organization explain design?

Enzymatic PH activity profiles(Tyler) Fine tuning

Eozoon - a claimed fossil strenuously defended by the 19th century science establishment

Eozoon was not a fossil and the dissenters were correct to challenge the consensus. Clearly there are parallels with today: the role of scientific elites, the status of peer publication, the protocols required to be accepted as members of the scientific community, the way debated issues can be presented as fact to the public, the disdain shown to dissenters, the lobbying of editors to restrict access by critics of the Establishment, and the exploration of alternative ways of communicating minority views to peers and the public. This is the very human face of science. We are seeing these characteristics today in numerous areas where scientists have reached different conclusions.

(Tyler)

eukaryotes, origin Reason for flood of speculation in 2007: "According to Poole and Penny, there has been far too much speculation about the origin of eukaryotes. "The conflicting hypotheses currently on offer show a curious disregard for mechanism." (Tyler)

Eukaryotic cell (Tyler) enigmas

Eukaryotic cells (Tyler) Irreducibility issue

Evolution - animal evolution (Tyler) multicellular animals and need for complex information

Evolution(Tyler) And long periods of no change (stasis) See also Stasis

Evolutionary Informatics Lab Robert Marks's explanation (podcast)

Evolutionary Informatics Lab and Banned Items (podcast)

Evolutionary Informatics Lab - Web site suppressed at Baylor Report by Anika Smith (podcast)

Evolutionary Informatics Lab See also Marks, Robert

Evolution - Evolutionary transformations - Darwinism does not have the answers(Tyler)

Evolutionary psychology - Altruism (Tyler) Darwinian vs. intelligent design interpretation

Evolutionary psychology - grandmothers who care

This is 'black box' biology, with natural selection being asked to do an amazing number of things in a short period of time to achieve the (relatively small) fitness benefits. It should be noted that genetic changes are not directly passed on to offspring, as in the normal portrayal of the way Darwinism works. We are dealing here with complex changes in females that marginally affect the survival of grandchildren. Additionally, one wonders how many caring grandmothers there actually were in the hypothetical social groups of early man where life expectancies were low.

Exoplanets - atmospheres (Tyler)

Exoplanets See also Hot Jupiters

Expelled movie, with Ben Stein - interview with Bruce Chapman (video podcast)

Explore Evolution information, textbook (podcast)

Eye - squid's eye lens (Tyler) Fine tuning

Eye, vertebrate eye (Tyler) (It does not have a compromised design.)

Falsifiability - Intelligent design - philosophical criticisms (Tyler)

falsifiability - intelligent design and falsifiability interview with Jay Richards (podcast)

fine tuning of the universe Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin discusses Newsweek's Sharon Begley's take on fine-tuning (podcast)

fine tuning of the universe "Cosmological Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Model", interview by Casey Luskin with Scott Chambers (podcast)

Flagellum - See Bacterial flagellum

Flight - Flightless birds (Tyler) Design in ostriches

Flight - insect flight (Tyler) Hawk moth gyroscope

Form, theory of form The modern synthesis (neo-Darwinism) has not given us a theory of form. (Tyler)

Foundation for Thought and Ethics Dover Trial (podcast) Casey Luskin and Seth Cooper ask, was justice done?

Framing information(Tyler) for public consumption

Galactic habitable zone - Earth-like planet (Tyler) Found in 2007

Galactic habitable zone- hot Jupiters (Tyler) Hot Jupiters lack water

Gecko - feet a standard for adhesion (Tyler)

... the gecko does not demonstrate just a single trait with enhanced performance. There are issues of adhesion and delamination, self-cleaning, and achieving a sustained adhesive performance. What we have in the gecko is exquisite design and, for that, biomimetics needs a methodology that can relate well to intelligent engineering design concepts.

Gene regulatory networks(Tyler) and design

Genetic code(Tyler) Optimal features

Genetic code(Tyler) Silent mutations and design inference

Genetic information(Tyler) and design inference

Gilder, George A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Gilder, George, on information theory, at Bar-Ilan University (podcast)

Gnosticism Ben Witherington III interviewed by Jason Rennie of the SciPhiShow, on Gnosticism and Christianity (podcast)

Gnosticism Edwin Yamauchi interviewed by Jason Rennie of the SciPhiShow, on who Gnostics were and what they believed (podcast)

Goldilocks Principle(Tyler) Pau Davies and design inference

Gonzalez, Guillermo - and academic freedom (Tyler)
See also Galactic habitable zone

Gonzalez, Guillermo, interview on the Privileged Planet hypothesis (podcast)

Gonzalez, Guillermo, astronomy and intelligent design interview with Guillermo Gonzalez, (podcast)

Gonzalez, Guillermo - denied tenure - documents, interview with John West (podcast)

Gonzalez, Guillermo - denied tenure - tenure appeal (podcast)

Habitable zone See Galactic habitable zone

Haeckel, Ernst (Tyler) doctored embryo images

Haeckel's embryos - use in textbooks, interview with Casey Luskin (podcast)

Hagfish(Tyler) and common ancestor

homology - intelligent design and homology (video podcast)

Hot Jupiters (Tyler)

Human evolution, bipedalism (Tyler)

Human evolution (Tyler) Common ancestor with chimps - dating disputes

Human evolution 1470 man deemed an ape - deemed ape (Tyler)

Human evolution (Tyler) Little Foot and the time gap problem

Human evolution(Tyler) Lucy - former icon currently deemed gorilla

Human evolution - Neanderthals(Tyler) Neanderthals not so primitive as once thought

Human genome (Tyler) Differs from chimpanzees by six percent of genes

Human genome(Tyler) Diversity of human genome

Hunter, George Cornelius - interview on his recent book, Science's Blind Spot (podcast)

information theory - George Gilder at Bar-Ilan University (podcast)

Insect evolution(Tyler) Speculation vs. evidence

Insects - beetles (Tyler) White beetle as optimally designed

Insects - CO2 sensors (Tyler) as wonders of natural engineering

Insects - ears (Tyler) Moth ears show design sophistication

Insects - insect flight(Tyler) Biorobotics and insect flight See also Flight

Insects - insect muscles(Tyler) remarkable adaptations

Intelligent design - and academic freedom (Tyler) Guillermo Gonzalez

Intelligent design academic publications.

Intelligent design - controversy timeline An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

intelligent design - definitions, Crowther, Robert: "Defining what intelligent design is" (podcast)

intelligent design - definitions, Luskin, Casey: "Confronting misrepresentative definitions of intelligent design" (podcast)

ntelligent design - falsifiability interview with Jay Richards (podcast) See also falsifiablity

intelligent design - origin of term by Rob Crowther (podcast)

Intelligent design - philosophical criticisms (Tyler)

intelligent design - research Wiki Web site for research (podcast)

Intelligent design(Tyler) Self-organization and design

Intelligent design - refusal to engage arguments (Tyler)

Intermediate evolutionary forms(Tyler) and adaptation as explanation

In the Light of Evolution conference(Tyler)

Jellyfish - reinforcing challenge created by Cambrian explosion

New fossils from the Middle Cambrian of Utah "have very well preserved soft tissue, which the authors interpret as evidence that representatives of modern jellyfish existed by the middle Cambrian period."

(Tyler)

Jensen, Lyle, neo-Darwiism skeptic (podcast)

Junk DNA (Tyler)

Junk DNA - Framing the debate (Tyler)

Keller, Rebecca, on "Real Science for Kids" (podcast)

Kelvin "As a physicist, Kelvin sought to develop quantitative, rather than qualitative, science and he found himself in conflict with geologists who wanted an Earth with "no vestige of a beginning." (Tyler)

Lactose intolerance (Tyler) and design perspective

Language (Tyler) Apes and language

Life - Vitalism theory (Tyler)

Light of Evolution conference(Tyler)

Linnaeus(Tyler) Tree of life, evolution, and intelligent design

Living fossils(Tyler) (Life forms that change little over long periods of time) - stasis

Living fossils - Jurassic shrimp (Tyler) Challenge to Darwinism

Lucy(Tyler) Former icon currently deemed merely gorilla

lungfish Why lungfish have the best of both worlds.

Lungfish do not demonstrate a transitional physiological system, but employ two developed systems side-by-side. They have an air-breathing system for controlling acidity (respiratory compensation) and they use their gills and kidneys to reduce excess base (metabolic compensation). In other words, the ability to operate in both watery and land environments requires two complex systems to be in place: one for living in water and the other for living in air. The case of lungfish shows that biological information precedes and permits biological function.

(Tyler)

magic - SciPhiSHow with Jason Rennie, on science, rreligion, magic, and technology (podcast)

Mammals - mammal evolution(Tyler) early Cretaceous mammal specialized - not the neo-Darwinian view

Marks, Robert - Evolutionary Informatics Lab Web site suppressed at Baylor Report by Anika Smith (podcast)

Marsupial genome - what we have learned(Tyler) (the opposum)

Matrix SciPhiShow with Jason Rennie (podcast)

Methodological naturalism - Charles Lyell (Tyler)

Microbes(Tyler) as complex in real world

Microbes(Tyler) How microbes don't fit reductionist Darwinian thinking

Microtubules (Tyler) Molecular zipper and complex specified information

mind - mind as illusion - Is the mind just an illusion. Anika Smith interviews Denyse O'Leary (podcast)

miracles, Doan, Andy, "Miracles and the Q" (podcast)

Molecular clocks(Tyler) Darwinism assumed, never tested

Molecular clocks (Tyler) Telling the wrong time

Molecular motors (Tyler) Structural similarity and intelligent design

Molecules(Tyler) small molecules, medicine, and design

Molecular recognition in the cell (Tyler)

moral relativism moral relativism and Darwinism John West (podcast)

Multicellular animal evolution (Tyler) multicellular animals and need for complex information

multiverse "Cosmological Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Model", interview by Casey Luskin with Scott Chambers (podcast)

Mutation theory of phenotype evolution (Tyler)

Mutations as mostly harmful (Tyler) Challenge for Darwinism

Neanderthals(Tyler) Not so primitive as once thought

Neanderthals - language and FoxP2 (Tyler)

Non-coding DNA (Tyler)

Orchids "on the basis that the "rate of orchid evolution" exhibited by the subtribe Goodyerinae is almost zero, the comment of the lead author is probably correct: "The dinosaurs could have walked among orchids." (Tyler)

Origin of life research - examples of flawed thinking (Tyler)

Origin of life (Tyler) Need for design perspective

Origin of life Why origin of life is such a difficult problem. (O'Leary)

Ostriches (Tyler) design in ostriches

Peppered Moth controversy
"Is it scientifically defensible to find an example of natural selection within a population of an animal, and then use this as an evidence for evolutionary transformation from the first single cell to the extraordinary diversity of life that we find in the biosphere?" ( Tyler)

Phenotype variations(Tyler)

Photosynthesis(Tyler) - its efficiency

Photosynthesis(Tyler) Irreducible complexity and photosynthesis evolution

Photosynthesis - extreme efficiency (Tyler) "Photosynthetic complexes are exquisitely tuned to capture solar light efficiently, and then transmit the excitation energy to reaction centres, where long term energy storage is initiated.” The problem has been one of understanding how 95%+ efficiencies are possible in a natural system."

Platypus's complex electrolocation sense evolved early.

... there are extreme constraints on time for any evolutionary story of the origin of platypuses and their electrolocation device. We appear to have a situation where intelligent design is demanded by the evidence of short timescales and the complexity of the "implausible" electrosensory system.

(Tyler)

Polls relevant to the intelligent design controversy A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

privileged planet hypothesis interview with Guillermo Gonzalez, on the Privileged Planet hypothesis (podcast)

Protein engineering - limits to Darwinian mechanism (Tyler)

Protists - oldest known protists (Tyler)

Pycnogonids - pycnogonids (sea spiders) (Tyler)

Real Science for Kids - Keller, Rebecca, on "Real Science for Kids" (podcast)

Reductionism(Tyler) How microbes don't fit

Reductionism(Tyler) Why it doesn't work in medical research

Reductionism - Darwinian reductionism(Tyler) Alex Rosenberg

Retraction - Homer Jacobson's retraction of 1950s origin of life quotes to prevent use by creationists.

This response recalls the Miller-Urey experiments (which are currently regarded as peripheral by most OOL researchers). The element of conjecture is apparent here also, as Jacobson can only argue that the right conditions "could have existed under early Earth conditions". The empirical support for this is highly controversial. More generally, it is worth noting that evolutionists are very reluctant to calculate probabilities - because some regard it as very high (but we don't yet know the mechanism) whereas others regard it as very very low (but think it was a lucky chance anyway). Based on what we know, the probabilities are extraordinarily low, as Koonin has demonstrated. For more on this, go here.

Jacobson is perfectly entitled to make a retraction, but the issues are not going to go away. Jacobson may gain some personal satisfaction, but the challenge of IC systems remains and the improbability of chemical evolution appears insuperable. Far better for Jacobson and those who think like him to face up to these challenges and address the data as we know it (rather than indulge in fantasies about "might well have occurred" and what conditions "could have existed").

(Tyler)

Ribosome(Tyler) and design inference (Ribosome as an AMT cell)

RNP Complexes(Tyler) - remarkable complexity

Rosenblum, Jonathan, interview on Deniable Darwin (podcast)

Ruse, Michael - Darwinism and its Discontents(Tyler) Comments by David Tyler

science journals - double standard re intelligent design interview with Paul Nelson re Michael Behe's work (podcast)

Science - and pursuit of truth (Tyler)

Science teaching (Tyler) Culture of conformity vs. culture of enquiry

SciPhiShow, featuring Australia's Jason Rennie, offers podcasts featuring major players pro and con intelligent design (O'Leary)

Self-organization (Tyler) Can self-organization explain design?

Sensory perception - advanced perception in Permian amniotes (Tyler)

The discovery of a highly-evolved auditory apparatus in Middle Permian parareptiles even further emphasizes that the entire groundplan for the impressive evolutionary history of amniotes was already largely in place by the end of the Paleozoic; what followed was in fact only a subsequent tinkering of earlier inventions." Darwinism needs time, but the fossil record no longer provides it.

Silent mutations(Tyler) Genetic code and design inference

"Small molecules(Tyler) medicine from nature and design

Squid's eye lens (Tyler) Fine tuning

Starlet sea anemone Tyler Unexpected genome complexity

Stasis - amber preserved insects(Tyler) Evidence shows mostly stasis, not evolution - a challenge to Darwinism.

Stasis - amber-preserved insects (Tyler) Midges show little change over time - why stasis should be considred more important than it is.

Stasis Compsocidae as an insect example of stasis from Cretaceous era (Tyler)

Stasis(Tyler) Darwinian attempts to account for stasis (little change in life forms over time)

Stasis - and Jurassic shrimp (Tyler) Challenge to Darwinism

Stasis - and leaf insects (Tyler) Stasis in their fossil record

Stasis - pycnogonids (sea spiders)

Here is yet another life form, stretching from the lower Palaeozoic to the present, that displays stasis in its morphology with relatively minor differences over time. Why is it that the dominant feature (stasis) gets so little attention, when "evolutionary history" gets so much?

(Tyler)

Stasis - trilobites (Tyler)

Stove, David O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove's critique of Darwinism.

Taste (Tyler) evolution and design

Teleology - "promiscuous teleology" and design inferences (Tyler)

Tool use (Tyler) in chimpanzees, and intelligent causation

Transitional forms (Tyler) Intermediate evolutionary forms begin to be studied

Tree of life (Tyler) Bush or forest of life better explanation? Alternatives to common ancestry

Tree of life (Tyler) - force fitting explanations to defend an orthodoxy

Tree of life (Tyler) as unnecessary concept that cannot be justified by empirical data

Trilobites - variation and stasis as a pattern

The research documented both rapid morphological variation and subsequent stasis. ... One hypothesis is that radiations occur because organisms are designed to vary, but the process results in genetic impoverishment that leads to stasis.

(Tyler)

Type III secretory machines(Tyler) challenge to gradualism

Unfalsifiability (Tyler)

Variation - trilobites (Tyler)

Vertebrate eye (Tyler) (It does not have a compromised design.)

Von Baer's law - interview with Paul Nelson (podcast)

Walking(Tyler) intelligent design and evolution

Wells, Jonathan, an interview with Doug Giles at AudioClash on his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (podcast)

West, John, on Darwin Day in America (podcast)

West, John, Darwinism moral relativism and Darwinism John West (podcast)

Wing morphology and intelligent design (Tyler)

Yanoconodon(Tyler) Ear evolution

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I have recently enjoyed a most interesting correspondence with Hiram Caton, retired poli sci prof and former colleague of the late David Stove who is attempting to set right the many misrepresentations in the current Darwin Exhibition, which has travelled from the American Museum of Natural History to various points (some near you probably). The main problems can be traced to ridiculous hagiography, of course. I have often pointed out (and am certainly not the first to do so), that Darwinism functions as a sort of religion for its fervid supporters, often in desperate conflict with transcendent faiths.

It now emerges that Prof. Caton, who is not affiliated with any religion, is an associate of the National Center for Science Education, the American Darwin education lobby, a relentless promoter and enforcer of Darwin in the tax-supported school systems. Specifically, he tells me that he is

an evolutionist who opposes the introduction of creationist concepts into secondary school biology. In fact, I'm an associate of the lead organization in the struggle against the creationists, the National Center for Science Education. The NCSE is aware of my article.

He is also listed as a supporter of the Darwin Day celebrations.

I should think Caton is trying all these people’s patience rather sorely, and all the more so because he is planning a full scale essay on the discrepancy between the theory and evidence for Darwinism, for which details will likely be available here.

Now, speaking of discrepancies, I don't see any discrepancy in principle between wanting to prevent creationist concepts from being taught in secondary schools and wanting to knock the stuffings out of the Darwin myth.

Indeed, contrary to widespread legacy media mythmaking, even the Discovery Institute, the ID think tank, does not not want intelligent design (ID) concepts taught in schools.

(And I suppose only religious school systems could consider teaching actual "creationist" concepts, as such, since these concepts are clearly linked to theism, the Bible, etc.)

Similarly, I rarely encounter people who do not want evolution taught in schools. They want its baggage train to be unloaded somewhere else. Unfortunately, it often isn't.

Some interesting comments from our correspondence that Dr. Caton has given me permission to post:

Here is the skinny on Caton's key observations:

^The Origin is based on principles, which I specify, that had been in place for about 50 years. ^The evolution concept had *saturated* public opinion in the UK by 1860. The notion that public prejudice against evolution obstructed its publication is nonsense. The idea of a 'missing link' between apes and humans was also widespread. ^The natural selection principle was first published *before* Darwin departed on his voyage and was independently discovered again in 1836 by Darwin's old pal, Edward Blythe. ^The eugenics idea wasn't discovered by Galton; it was clearly stated by the French translator of the Origin in 1863, who attributed it to Darwin; he didn't disavow the attribution. Three of Darwin's sons were members of the Eugenics Society and one, Leonard, was a major force in the society. A key figure in the creation of Neo-Darwinism, R A Fisher, was a dedicated eugenicist. Fisher's patron was Leonard Darwin. ^Darwin's writings had virtually no effect on experimental biology of his day, eg, Pasteur, Robert Koch. ^Two of Darwin's most vocal advocates, Huxley and Ernst Haeckel, denied that natural selection was the generative principle of evolution; for Haeckel it was Lamarckism.

While we are here, in 1969, I studied Victorian literature at a small university in Ontario. While Darwin's Origin was certainly identified as a milestone, it was only one of many milestones. I was clearly given to understand that the mindset it typefied was already a commonplace. That was not emphasized as a talking point. It emerged clearly from our studies. One result is that Darwin hagiography obscures the true history of the modern era.

What has been the reaction to his observations?

A number of leading evolutionists and historians have commented on my essay. None question my facts (well, one questioned one important claim). But some expressed unease about my criticism of the Great Man. My response is that I criticize only the interpretation of his reputation, and its creation in the first place. I state in the article what I think his real achievement was, and I hail it as a great scientific achievement. In correspondence with creationists, I plead that they exaggerate the influence of Darwin/evolution on the secularization process. By far the greatest influences are liberal and socialist blank slate theory. That influence is so great, indeed, that many evolutionists abandon Darwin when it comes to the crunch: the inheritance of behaviors, such as sex, race, and age differences: they endorse the blank slate belief. To put it another way, the Darwinian Revolution didn't happen in the social sciences. The controversy over sociobiology and over the Bell Curve are hot spots on that map.

Hmmm, yes indeed. Although Darwinism and liberal "blank slate" theory (= if outcomes are not equal, society is unjust) are not often in direct, perceived conflict, in any actual conflict, blank slate will win.

One thinks of former Harvard president Larry Summers, completely orthodox in his rejection of intelligent design, but utterly destroyed by "blank slate" political correctness about women in science.

I noted, in response to Caton that I do not think that high school science classes should be discussing the ID-Darwinism uproar:

It is difficult enough to teach basic concepts. Unfortunately, however, some want to import to Canada an American-style controversy by pushing evolution as early as possible, as an antidote to creationism/ID. As I have said, that would greatly help both the creationists and the ID guys - but at the expense of the public and the student. (You see, these kinds of issues can’t get as hot in Canada all by themselves, because our system is not nearly as polarizing as the American one. There is no functional equivalent here of the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, or the Christian Right. Publicly funded voluntary religious schools are legal here, with little controversy. People rarely sue school boards and school boards do not pull "Dovers". So Canada is not a natural setting for such a controversy. But if it does become a setting, well, business will boom for me. But I don't want it to happen anyway.

That said, I think teachers should not be forbidden to respond to student questions, let alone given documents to read aloud, or propaganda to cite. Teachers are either professionals or they aren't. If they cannot be assumed to generally have good judgment about teaching, it's all over anyway.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Just today, I received a most interesting note from a retired Australian poli sci professor Hiram Caton, late of Griffiths University, noting that the Darwin exhibition, developed at the American Museum of Natural History, is hitting the road, and may stop at a museum near you.

Caton explains,

You are well aware of my former colleague Dave Stove's critique of Darwinism. We are alike in that we have no religious affiliation; also in that we do not believe that Darwinism can provide a basis for ethics or for 'conservative' politics, in the manner of Larry Arnhart.

At his site, Caton offers a most useful anti-docent, "Getting Our History Right: Six Errors about Darwin and His Influence," documenting the following six errors:

1. The publication of the Origin was not a sudden (“revolutionary”) interruption of Victorian society’s confident belief in the traditional theological world-view. Instead, it was another step, albeit a big one, toward a popularly understandable scientific naturalism, including the idea of our primate origins, that was well in place by 1850.

Caton notes, among other things,

The implication of [the Exhibition's] ill-wrought claim is denial that evolutionary theory was extensively developed before Darwin embarked on his Beagle voyage (1831). Not so. Notable contributors were Louis-Constant Prévost, Louis-Melchior Patrin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Julien-Joseph Virey, Jean-Baptiste-Julien d’Omalius d’Halloy, Bory de Saint-Vincent, Ducrotoy de Blainville, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Corsi, 1988b). Most of these scientists argued for the key “Darwinian” theses of common descent from an initial few organisms, gradual modification and extinction over great ages driven in part by the struggle for existence, geological uniformitarianism, and the primate origin of the human species. Some, notably the physicist Patrin, argued that life originated abiotically. Darwin’s library aboard the Beagle included Bory de Saint-Vincent’s influential seventeen volume Dictionnaire classique d’historie naturelle (1822-1831).

2. The Origin did not “revolutionize” the biological sciences by removing the creationist premise or introducing new principles. On the contrary, Origin had little effect on the hard biological sciences because they were already mechanistic and experimental. Darwin’s naturalist investigations did not contribute significantly to the experimental biology of his day.

Rather,

Darwin discovered a stunning profusion of adaptations, and made many suggestions about phylogenetic relations (Leach and Mayo, 2005), but he did not prove a single phylogeny or prove a single case of speciation by natural selection. Indeed, by 1900 the only fossil-based phylogeny generally accepted was the evolution of the horse (Gayon, 1998). These facts are ignored. The Exhibition also ignores the Pangenesis theory and its influence on Darwin’s shift to substantial Lamarckian explanation in the 5th and 6th editions of Origin. Indeed, it implicitly denies Darwin’s Lamarckism by baldly stating that “Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth : evolution by natural selection” (www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution/) [bold face in original].

3. The Origin did not “revolutionize” Victorian public opinion. Public perception considered Darwin’s message to be about the same as Herbert Spencer’s, known today as “Social Darwinism”, which, though fashionable, never achieved dominance.

4. Many leading naturalists and biologists made significant criticisms of Darwin’s work. This includes Gregor Mendel, who believed that his discoveries refuted Darwin’s premises about the heritability of traits, and Thomas Huxley, who rejected natural selection.

(By contrast, Caton notes, the Exhibition promotes "an extreme version of the triumphalist legend".)

5. Darwin made little or no contribution to the renovation of theology. His public statements on Providence were inconsistent and the liberal reform of theology, including rejection of the divinity of Christ, was well advanced by 1850.

Caton offers,

Although the corrosive influence of Darwinism on conventional religious belief is widely claimed to be its most novel and potent cultural influence, the facts speak overwhelmingly against it.

[ ... ]

However, "The Exhibition triumphantly proclaims that Darwin’s “revolutionary theory changed the course of science and society”. Which society? What changes? Rather than attending to Darwin’s contribution to secularization, as I have done, the Exhibition offers a video of half dozen biologists who simply assert the compatibility of religion with Darwinian evolution. Not all religion, however: Intelligent Design is firmly, if politely, dismissed. My response to this gambit was surprise verging on astonishment. If contemporary opinion is relevant, how can today’s atheist crescendo be ignored? Is it to avoid shocking the religious among the visitors? "

6. The Darwinian Revolution was, at the public opinion level, the fashion of free trade economics backed by the perception that Darwin and Spencer had extended that paradigm to all of living nature. This fashion enjoyed prominence in much of Europe and the United States, but began to fade around 1900. It was in no sense analogous to the Copernican revolution, with which it is often compared.

Caton begins his reply,

A soothing aphorism circulates today declaring that “the only thing Darwinism has in common with Social Darwinism is the name”. The Exhibition expresses this view, maintaining that Social Darwinism is a misuse of a “purely scientific theory for a completely unscientific purpose” and that Darwin was “passionately opposed to social injustice and oppression”. This is a drastic distortion of historical fact.

Caton's article apparently appeared in Evolutionary Psychology, – 2007. 5(1): 52-69. It must be a kind of unusual article for them to publish. Glad they did.

Read the whole thing. Print it out and take it with you. Try not to disturb people by snorting and laughing in the middle of the Exhibition when a local hagiographer starts retelling the Darwin legend. Remember, when you are at the Darwin exhibition, you are in a house of worship!

By the way, yes, Caton is the prof who documented a good deal of the ridiculous Darwin hagiography. But there's more 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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Who sucker punched this guy's "selfish genes" ?

(a 28 year old Ontario power company employee - a complete stranger - is donating part of his liver to help a toddler in Toronto who needs a transplant.)

Oh, and here and here are some other everyday "genuine altruism" stories I happen to know about from Canada, one of them from the Toronto area, involving young guys, who (as a group) are supposed to be selfish, according to feminists. Toronto is not the City of Angels, by the way; readers can likely supply instances from their own communities.

As philosopher David Stove would probably have said, if Dawkins was right about the selfish gene, these cases would be much more rare and they would be socially disapproved. Yet we see the opposite; such persons are admired. (In Canada, we don't pay for organs; the only thing that guy gets is paid time off work while he recovers - most of which he could have got even if he had piled up his truck on an icy road, from the insurance.)

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My most recent post talked about why Fr. George Coyne was asked to retire from the Vatican Observatory, after his vigorous campaign to oppose the Vatican's efforts to distance itself from Darwinism (or "evolutionism," as Cardinal Schoenborn likes to call it).

I shouldn't have to point this out, but hey. Sidelining Fr. Coyne does not mean that the Vatican is weighing in on the interminable US school board wars.

Yes, the Pope used the term "progetto intelligente," which is a functionally equivalent rendering of "intelligent design" in a homily. But only a naive person would imagine that the Catholic Church, which is thousands of years old, would stake all on current specific ideas of American biochemists, mathematicians, or astronomers.

Why? It need not. Philosopher David Stove has already demolished Darwinism by doing nothing more than unpacking what neo-Darwinists really expect us to believe, to help them preserve their theory.

And if you really believe all that that the Darwinists wish, you had better ask a solicitous friend to answer the door for you whenever you see two frumpy people approaching your house, armed with tracts ... .

I expect ID ideas to come thick and fast in the next few decades, and it certainly won't be the job of the Catholic Church to keep up with, let alone pass judgment on, all of them. The main thing the Church seems to want to get across is that "evolutionism" (Darwinism) fails to account for human life in the present day, which happens to be true.

A given ID hypothesis may turn out to be well or poorly supported. That, in a nutshell, is the science game. But an ancient institution like the Catholic Church can well afford to wait and see what happens, as Darwinism self-destructs.

Of course the universe and life forms show evidence of intelligent design! It is a measure of the sheer stunnedness of a materialist culture that such a proposition would even be controversial. Or that academics should be obsessing about why the American public doesn't believe in Darwinist materialism. Well, primarily because Americans enjoy the unique and enviable freedom to say that they don't believe nonsense. I hope the freedom spreads. Lots of places could sure use it right now.

Meanwhile, I was recently involved in a somewhat heated private discussion about whether Darwinism can be held in a purely "scientific" way, devoid of the philosophy that usually animates its most fervent promoters.

Well, maybe. And maybe I can wake up my old cat and learn him to play the fiddle, and then we can all have a dance ...

From everything I can see, 150 years later, Darwinism is still the creation story of materialism. That is the real reason for its persistence.

Physics has got on fine in the last century without a Grand Unified Theory, and biology could too. But materialism, unlike biology, needs a creation story in order to function as a religion - hence the value of Darwinism.

In the private debate noted above, I discovered that philosophers who argue for fine distinctions between Darwinism as a theory in science and Darwinism as a philosophy have rarely actually encountered serious Darwinists in their native state. The Thumbsmen are a case in point , and a piece of work, too (scroll down). But the philosophers are unlikely to go out and discover that for themselves.

Essentially, no Darwinist has any motive whatever to clear up the confusion between Darwinism as a theory about how species develop and Darwinism as a philosophy. The confusion is precisely what maintains Darwinism's social power.

The last thing the Darwinists want is to see Darwinism evaluated on its own merits as a strictly defined theory of the origin of species (with such issues as origin of life and human consciousness off the table because Darwinism is probably inapplicable to them). You may as well expect communists to accept an objective evaluation of the performance of Marxist economics!

To anyone who doubts this, I have three-word suggestion: Google "evolutionary psychology."

You could sink a canal barge with all the nonsense that has been talked about cave guys and gals, as a speculative explanation for the life around us. Guarantee: You will wake up in the morning, and the sun is shining and all that is still nonsense.

Indeed, Darwinists will stoop a long, long way in their efforts to prevent an objective evaluation. I am reminded of a sentence from journalist Michael Powell's masterly Washington Post piece on Richard Sternberg:

Sternberg was advised not to attend. 'I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order,' Sternberg said.

Oh yes? Indeed. And yet I was informed by certain sniffy philosophers that my distrust of a point of view on account of the behaviour of those who hold is a "genetic fallacy."

I want to say here and now that I do not believe in the genetic fallacy in any systematic way.

Some points of view are only held by persons of poor character.

The eminent Darwinists who can no more be trusted to keep order than the guys in the Court Services van that shuttles between the jailhouse and the courthouse are a possible case in point ....

Here's another interesting "Darwinism" item: University of Washington psychology professor and Darwinist David P. Barash recently looked forward enthusiastically to the day when "thanks to advances in reproductive technology, there will be hybrids, or some other mixed human-animal genetic composite, in our future."

Barash objects to drawing a line between humans and other life forms: "It is a line that exists only in the minds of those who proclaim that the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature."

There, you see. It is as plain as daylight. Barash is NOT making a secret of his aim to denigrate humans and there is NO big philosophical conundrum. If you can read a newspaper, you an understand what he is saying.

Barash's point of view is NOT the inevitable outcome of any reasonable interpretation of science, it is merely the outcome of radical materialism.

I know of no serious proposition to separate that sort of thing from the teaching of Darwinism in tax-supported schools. And that is the main reason why there is an intelligent design controversy.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Apparently, Coral Ridge Hour, hosted by Dr. D. James Kennedy, is hosting a special called Darwin's Deadly Legacy, on the legacy of social Darwinism (= sterilizing or murdering people who are thought to be unfit, sometimes called eugenics). There is a whole history there, ably recounted in a sober way by Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler.

I think it quite worthwhile that Coral Ridge wants to explore the legacy of social Darwinism, on the "never again" principle.

However, some cautions might also be well advised.

Strictly speaking, the social Darwinists were completely off the wall in their understanding of Darwinism, as agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove points out.

For example, Darwin himself disapproved, apparently, of vaccination because it preserved weak people. He wrote in 1874:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poorlaws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. (p. 9, quoting Darwin, c. (1874) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (2nd edition) John Murray, London, Vol. I, pp. 205-6.)

Now, in writing as he did in this specific instance, Darwin was being a true Darwinist (though according to Stove's Darwinian Fairytales, he often wasn't).

That is, if you believe that natural selection is the main force that creates diversity and adaptation in the world, you should not interfere via eugenics. After all, the prison sociopath's selfish genes are probably much better adapted to sheer survival and continuance than are those of the musical genius. The prison socio may well produce eight children on his "trailer weekends," whom he compels taxpayers to support. The musical genius, by contrast, may produce one or two at best, but very often none.

Yet most human beings who have ever lived would prefer to forego the evolutionary benefits of the sociopath's selfish genes. Whenever they can, they execute him or keep him locked up, and offer awards, prizes, and fan clubs to the musical genius instead. That approach to human survival seems quite sound to me - but it is hardly Darwinism.

Here's where the social Darwinists went wrong: They took from Darwinism the lack of respect for the human being as anything other than a brainy ape. But they still wanted to smuggle into Darwinian philosophy at least some respect for human culture and decency, because they were not willing to give all that up. So they developed the worst possible solution: Instead of helping the halt, the lame, and the blind, as well as bumpkins and dullards, because God loves them (the traditional view) OR letting nature take its course (the only reasonable Darwinian view), the social Darwinist came up with a new view that was far worse than either: A system for mass riddance of people who fail a cultural or medical standard.

If they were true Darwinists, they would have just done nothing instead of done murder, for the same reason that Darwin saw a danger in vaccinations.

So we need to be clear here: Social Darwinism is very bad. But, strictly speaking, it is not Darwinism. No human being can live with what Darwinism entails, which is why it so quickly morphed into a bastard social Darwinism.

Neither Darwin nor most of his loyal followers clearly saw the problem because they could not live with the consequences of their own theory. The confusion continues: After the Nazi eugenic horror was fully revealed, people decided to get rid of social Darwinism, but assumed that it was Darwinism in some sense. They couldn't have lived with Darwinism either, but they did not realize that.

Then we reacted by vilifying the Nazis - which is 100 percent fine with me, as far as it goes - but, as Richard Weikart points out, we must see clearly the origin of the problem or we have no assurance that we won't repeat it: Darwinism cannot provide a reasonable account of the human being.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

George Gilder, a co-founder of the Discovery Institute, explained recently in National Review why he thinks the universe and life forms show evidence of intelligent design. His most recent book, The Silicon Eye , was a finalist for the Royal Society's Aventis Prize for science.

His article's title, "Evolution and Me: Darwinian Theory has Become an All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific Advance," pretty much sums up the view he defends in the essay.

But even if Darwinism is the intellectual equivalent of the horrible, overstuffed sofa your late aunt Mildred left you - the problem is not whether to get rid of it but how to do so decently and tactfully - why embrace intelligent design instead? As philosopher David Stove and cell biologist Giuseppe Sermonti have pointed out, Darwinism is a wrong account of evolution. But that doesn't make intelligent design a right account.

However, Gilder argues that information theory - the theory that launched the computer revolution - both reveals the weaknesses of Darwinism as an explanation of the history of life, and at the same time, makes intelligent design more plausible.

"Everywhere we encounter it, information does not bubble up from a random flux or prebiotic soup. It comes from mind. Taking the hierarchy beyond the word, the central dogma of intelligent design ordains that word is subordinate to mind. Mind can generate and lend meaning to words but words in themselves cannot generate mind or intelligence.

Gilder first sensed that something was wrong with Darwinism in the late Sixties when books that analyzed human life purely in terms of animal behavior - The Naked Ape and The Human Zoo , et cetera, were all the rage. Gilder was writing a critique of the sexual liberation philosophy that took hold at that time (Sexual Suicide, later revised and republished as Men and Marriage). He hoped that the study of patriarchal hamadryas baboons by Darwinian anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, published as The Imperial Animal would support his own theory of the inevitability of sex roles.

However, while researching Sexual Suicide, he discovered that it wasn't so simple. Anyone can make up Darwinian just-so stories. "Once upon a time there was this cave guy, see, and he bopped this cave gal on the head .... but she bopped him right back, and then ... " Feminists were doing it too.

In The Descent of Woman, Elaine Morgan portrayed humans undulating from the tides as amphibious apes mostly led by females. Jane Goodall croodled about the friendliness of "our closest relatives," the chimpanzees, and movement feminists flogged research citing the bonobo and other apes as chiefly matriarchal and frequently homosexual.

Gilder, to his credit, recognized that the problem lay with the tautological principle behind Darwinism: Whatever survives is the most fit. Whatever is most fit survives.

But designating survivors as "fit" doesn't tell you much about human society. It doesn't tell you which social structures benefit society and which harm it. Put another way, what if slum sociopaths are more fit than other men? Perhaps they spread more of their "selfish genes" than other men because they compel others to accept responsibility for their children. Only a "trained professional" who is getting a salary from promoting the sociopath's lifestyle can afford to advocate it, and only through devious policies and rhetoric.

As Gilder concluded,

Almost by definition, Darwinism is a materialist theory that banishes aspirations and ideals from the picture. As an all-purpose tool of reductionism that said that whatever survives is, in some way, normative, Darwinism could inspire almost any modern movement, from the eugenic furies of Nazism to the feminist crusades of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood.

So in his book, he ended up ignoring Darwin.

He also dumped Darwin in his Wealth & Poverty. The world of business, he came to see, is not a "dog-eat-dog zero-sum struggle" as portrayed by the rhetoric of Darwinian capitalism. Mostly, the business world focuses on creating, rather than capturing wealth, in what Michael Novak has termed a mind-centered system.

Gilder's later work focuses on human creativity, especially the products of information theory such as computers. Claude Shannon of MIT, the founder (for the most part) of the discipline of information theory, understood information as "unexpected bits, or 'news,'" This news travels across a "channel," for which he calculated elaborate logarithmic rules. The channel could be a wire perhaps, or a gap between neurons, or - for evolution - the channel is time itself.

Now, information transfer depends on a simple, predictable (low entropy) carrier of messages, which are in themselves unpredictable (high entropy). As Gilder puts it, "A blank sheet of paper is a better vessel for a new message than one already covered with writing."

In my book Telecosm (2000), I showed that the most predictable available information carriers were the regular waves of the electromagnetic spectrum and prophesied that all digital information would ultimately flow over it in some way.

Gilder doubts that chemical processes can usually carry information because they tend to blend the medium and the message, which results in illegible data at the other end. (Think, for example, of a bad telephone connection.)

Next:Why tech guru George Gilder is not a Darwinist: Part Two: Life as architecture of ideas or information

Posts in this series:

Why is tech guru George Gilder not a Darwinist?: Part One - "Information does not bubble up from random flux"
Why is tech guru George Gilder not a Darwinist?: Part Two - Life as architecture of ideas or information
Why is tech guru George Gilder not a Darwinist?: Part Three - The cell as supercomputer
Why is tech guru George Gilder not a Darwinist?: Part Four - The hierarchy of information vs. "nothing but"
Why is tech guru George Gilder not a Darwinist?: Part Five Why complexity can be irreducible

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The late Australian philosopher David Stove, for whose book of essays, Darwinian Fairytales, I have provided an introduction on line, also wrote a paper in which he identified ten false propositions of modern Darwinism (sometimes called neo-Darwinism), as applied to humans.

He begins,

Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.

but notes

I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one, obviously false in the case of our species, at least.

Now, keep in mind that Stove is an agnostic and no friend to religion, let alone creationism or intelligent design. He is simply explaining why Darwinism (and therefore evolutionary psychology) does a poor job of accounting for human behaviour.

His ten propositions start from the present day and work backward. You can go to the site to read most of his comments on them. I will provide only a brief summary in parentheses.

1. Dawkins’ selfish gene thesis: "The truth is, 'the total prostitution of all animal life, including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of these minute virus-like substances’, genes. (Despite his denials, Dawkins' thesis in fact requires that genes be smarter than creatures equipped with actual brains, consciousness, and self-interest, a situation that certainly requires some explanation, and cannot simply be shuffled under the heading of "natural selection.")

2. "'…it is, after all, to [a mother’s] advantage that her child should be adopted' by another woman. This quotation is from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, p. 110." (That is because she is free to spread her selfish genes further, but, of course, few mothers have ever thought that way, which makes Dawkins' thesis suspicious at best.)

3. "All communication is 'manipulation of signal-receiver by signal-sender.' This profound communication, though it might easily have come from any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57)." (Do you honestly think that all the communication you have ever engaged in fits this description? If so, you must be vending some lulu lemons on Hell's biggest car lot.)

4. "Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism: that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters to raise more children. This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a leading light among ultra-Darwinians ... What is there to stop anyone believing such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question among sociobiologist." (Homosexuality usually inhibits passing on genes. The reasons for same-sex preference probably do not relate to passing on genes through natural selection.)

5. "In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism (or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring." (This immediate and admitted consequence of neo-Darwinian theory was first advanced by Hamilton in 1964. In Darwinian Fairtytales Stove gives the example of the cock robin who - even if he knew that a rival cock on a nearby branch had been an egg in the same nest as himself, and a rival for pieces of worm - would hardly be in any position to show him much favor. Yes, the robin is a bird, not a mammal, but do mammals really behave differently? Do puppies stand back and let their siblings precede them to the feeding tray? For that matter, do identical twins usually share boyfriends?)

6. " '…no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.' This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago."

7. "Every organism has as many descendants as it can. Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: ‘every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers’; and again, pp. 78-9, ‘each organic being is striving to increase at a geometrical ratio’. These page references are to the first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were published in Darwin’s lifetime. He also says the same thing in other places." (Stove asks, "Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. ‘Every single organic being’, or ‘each organic being’: this means you.")

(Note: Stove does not spend much time on theses 2 through 7, because - certainly with respect to human society - they are demonstrably false and anyone can think of objections to them. You can easily find such objections in your own neighborhood, as I can in mine. So let's move on to theses 8 through 10, which might possibly make some sense.)

8. "In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high. Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’; or p. 5, ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin." This is a critical feature of Darwinism because it is a key part of the motor that drives natural selection. Stove comments,

In any case, as I said earlier, Darwinians cannot without contradicting themselves make an exception of man, or of any particular part of human history. Their theory, like Malthus’s principle, is one which generalizes about all species, and all places and times, indifferently; while man is a species, the last 350 years are times, and European countries are places. And Darwin’s assertion, that child-mortality is extremely high, is quite explicitly universal. For he said (as we saw) that ‘of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive’, and that ‘many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive’. Again, this means us.

(Stove notes that, only under exceptionally bad conditions would such a small number of children survive.Note: One suspects that elephants, whales, horses, cattle, deer, and other creatures given to singlet births also do not experience the loss of most births in a year (or two or three years, in the case of very large mammals). If they did, they would go extinct. Even given that their luck is probably better in many cases than Darwin estimated, another question remains: Do these creatures evolve more slowly, as a consequence of their slower rate of reproduction, than do creatures that lay thousands of eggs? Interesting question. In any event, in Darwinian Fairytales, Stove goes into detail about the disastrous consequences of Darwin's dependence on Malthus, the largely discredited early nineteenth century population expert.)

9. "The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the other class. That this proposition is false, or rather, is the exact reverse of the truth, is not just obvious. It is notorious, and even proverbial." (Indeed, Stove argues that "... the more privileged class is the less prolific. To this rule, as far as I know, there is not a single exception." But the actual situation in human society is exactly the opposite of what Darwin - and Malthus, from whom Darwin took key ideas - had to insist was true.)

From Stove:

A later Darwinian and eugenist, R. A. Fisher, discussed the relation between privilege and fertility at length, in his important book, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (1930). But he can hardly be said to have made the falsity of proposition 9 any less of an embarrassment for Darwinism. ... His explanation ... is that civilized countries have always practised what he calls ‘the social promotion of infertility’. That is, people are enabled to succeed better in civilized life, the fewer children they have.

But this is evidently just a re-phrasing of the problem, rather than a solution of it. The question, for a Darwinian such as Fisher, is how there can be, consistently with Darwinism, such a thing as the social promotion of infertility? ...

Fisher’s constant description of the fertility-rates in civilized countries as ‘inverted’, deserves a word to itself. It is a perfect example of an amazingly-arrogant habit of Darwinians, (of which I have collected many examples in my forthcoming book Darwinian Fairytales). This is the habit, when some biological fact inconsistent with Darwinism comes to light, of blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory. Any such fact Darwinians call a ‘biological error' an ‘error of heredity’, a ‘misfire’, or some thing of that kind: as though the organism in question had gone wrong, when all that has actually happened, of course, is that Darwinism has gone wrong.

10. "If variations which are useful to their possessors in the struggle for life ‘do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.’ This is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81. Exactly the same words occur in all the editions." (Stove comments that "the proposition is (saving Darwin’s reverence) ridiculous", and quickly cites ten characteristics that are obviously injurious to their possessors in Darwinian terms that are not even remotely being wiped out, including abortion, preference for spending time with animals, and sexual asceticism.)

He concludes:

It would not be difficult to compile another list of ten obvious Darwinian falsities; or another one after that, either. But on that scale, the thing would be tiresome both to read and to write. Anyway it ought not to be necessary: ten obvious Darwinian falsities should be enough to make the point. The point, namely, that if most educated people now think they are Darwinians, it is only because they have no idea of the multiplied absurdities which belief in Darwinism requires.

By the way, when you hear about controversies in the media about "teaching evolution," keep in mind that "evolution," in the context, always means Darwinism. Yes, it is true. The nonsense cited above is the allegedly unassailable fortress of Darwinism. Most of the people carrying on about how important Darwinism is supposed to be to science - it is fair to say - actually do not know what Darwinism really says.

Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

These posts are updated with new material regularly

If you need to write or blog something on the ID controversy, check here to see if one of these intro'd links will help you with your project:

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove ? Stove is indispensable for understanding objectins to Darwinism that spring from the observable facts of human nature, rather than revealed monotheistic religion.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary 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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Celebs, pundits, and freelance opinionators offer thoughts, opinions, gossip, and quotes on ID, some to pin up on your wall and some to put down on the bottom of Fluffo's litter box. Here are a bunch, in alphabetical order. Scroll down to find your fave or your pet hate. If you are writing a paper, these folks may provide good quotes; otherwise, just a coffee break read. I will try to update this post, as I accumulate more opinions. I am, of course, in no way responsible for the truth, charity, sensibleness, or defamation avoidance of any punditry offered. I have interspersed some notes of my own, demarcated as Notes.

Adams, Mike S. suspects (June 4, 2007) that popular Darwinism is supported mainly as a way of avoiding responsibility for sexual choices:

My understanding of (and disrespect for) the underpinnings of modern feminism was actually fostered by a biologist who once made a very candid remark about the foundation of his support of Darwinism. When asked about the lack of evidence supporting Darwinism – the fossil record, etc. – he confessed there was a very human reason for his faith in evolutionary theory despite the lack of scientific evidence. He confessed that if Darwinism were not true, he wouldn’t be able to sleep around.

At the heart of his support for Darwinism was a desire to get God out of the picture by any means whatsoever. And his desire to get God out of the picture was in turn motivated by his desire to copulate with as many people as possible without feeling guilty. I wonder whether some untenured psychologist would dare to publish a paper called “A Cognitive Dissonance Theory of Human Devolution.” I think we all know the answer to that question. (June 4, 2007)

A tricky case to argue nowadays, when so many people think that they are beyond virtue rather than beneath it, ... but Adams argues it fearlessly. It's a good thing he got tenure recently.

Andersen, Kurt
In "Backward, Christian Soldiers", Anderson explains how ID advances dreadful theocracy. "For practical reasons�reasons both of politics and civility�it ordinarily behooves our tiny minority of reality-based infidels to keep quiet about our astonishment that most of our fellow citizens are in thrall to fantastic medieval fever dreams, just as it behooves secular minorities in Islamic countries to keep their modern sentiments to themselves. In countries like ours, the Iraqs and Afghanistans and USAs, liberals need to pick their battles." (Note: I couldn't believe I was reading this, but my eyes did not deceive me. Can this New Yawkster really think that his disagreements with his neighbours over ID are in any way comparable to the sufferings of the women of Afghanistan? Or that the idea that the universe or life forms show evidence of intelligent design has anything to do with any of it? Well, if there were a discursive dictionary of self-centredness, I'd have a great quote to suggest. )

Bahr, Scott , a freelance writer from Livonia, Michigan, notes in the Detroit News that evolution theory relies on faith, too:

Both creationists and evolutionists have logically derived hypotheses for the origin of our world and its inhabitants. Creationists believe in an Intelligent Designer who set nature in motion, and evolutionists believe that nature itself is the infinite being and the source of all we know.

How theories differ

Both theories cite the same evidence, but they interpret the evidence differently based on their presuppositions. For example, science shows that a wide variety of organisms share an extraordinarily high percentage of DNA sequences. Evolutionists see this as evidence of a common ancestor, but creationists see this as evidence of a common builder.

The problem with answering the question of origins is that neither hypothesis is testable. We can't recreate the scenario to observe the process.

Balter, Michael, argues that teaching challenges to Darwinism should be permitted in the classroom, "Pro-evolution scientists have little to lose and everything to gain from a nationwide debate. Let's put the leading proponents of intelligent design and our sharpest evolutionary biologists on a national television panel and let them take their best shots. If biblical literalists want to join in, let them. Let's encourage teachers to stage debates in their classrooms or in assemblies. Students can be assigned to one or the other side, and guest speakers can be invited. Among other things, students would learn that science, when properly done, reaches conclusions via experimentation, evidence and argument, not through majority view." (Note: It is hard to imagine anything Darwinists would want less. There are so many issues that are not seriously addressed, simply shelved with pieties about future discoveries. )

Bekelis, Bob. See Thomas, Cal

Buckley, Bill muses "In the United States, the battlefront is in the schools, on the question of evolution and creationism. If a 14-year-old student is introduced to the contingent possibility that life evolved as it did because its creator so willed it, which of the following risks, from the hard-line evolutionists� point of view, is that student taking? 1) His intellectual disqualification by admitting creationism, for which there is no scientific no warrant, into his thinking? 2) A lifelong intellectual confusion, perhaps disabling in its consequences, which will keep him from prevailing as a responsible thinker and actor? Or perhaps, 3) a lifetime as an agent of teleological confusion, with the result that he will not only mislead himself, but also mislead others?"

Buckley, Bill (William) It is great to see someone taking on the bullying character of organized Darwinism.

An intimidatingly learned colleague has written to a few friends to deplore the latest bulletin on Senator John McCain, who is of course running for president. The news is that McCain has agreed to speak at a luncheon hosted by the Discovery Institute in Seattle. What offends my friend is that the think tank in question supports the concept of Intelligent Design. And the question raised—believe it or not—is whether such a latitudinarian thinker should be thought qualified to be president of the United States.

Buckley recalls,

But the contention continued, and has been explored from time to time under heavy lights. My own forensic involvement took place nine years ago as host of Firing Line. The two-hour, nationally televised debate on the topic "Resolved: that the evolutionists should acknowledge creation" featured seven professors. Four of them took the establishmentarian scientific position. It is, essentially, that not only is naturalism established as verified science, but any interposition into the picture—of inquisitiveness, let alone conviction that there might have been design in the evolution of our world—is excluded.

But that was a tough night for those who hoped that the lunacy of creationist thought would prove self-evident. The evolutionists had to contend with, for instance, Phillip E. Johnson, professor emeritus of law at the University of California at Berkeley, who wrote the book Darwin on Trial , and then Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.

Some day, someone must write a history of the intelligent design controversy that is not just propaganda for either side. The stakes are high, after all - a vast civilization.

Bullock, Roddy M., director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio, argues in the Lehigh U campus newspaper, "Knowing Ken Miller, an advocate for Darwinian evolution, is a �religious� man does little to bring clarity or resolution to the scientific issues in the evolution vs. intelligent design debate. In a strange reversal of roles, on the question, �Where do we come from?� religion is often liberal, while science has become dogmatic. Therefore, rather than stress one�s religious bona fides in an attempt at appeasement of those who are differently-religious, one should stick to the scientific issues in any attempt to resolve the conflict." (Note: Yes, if there is one type of discourse in the ID controversy that I would gladly never hear again, it is the "I am a religious man" protests from advocates of Darwinian-only evolution. Is Darwinism more plausible on account of your religiosity? Then what if you were not a religious man? Would that make Darwinism less plausible? Ah, just as I thought. It wouldn't. Then no more do I care how your religiosity would make it more plausible.)

Burgess, Stuart, in Britain's Independent (February 8, 2007), notes from his perspective as an engineer:

Evolution cannot be taken as a fact of science because of the ambiguities in the evidence. The fossil record can be evidence for and against evolution because of the gaps. Similarities in DNA code can be just as much evidence for a common designer as for evolution. Most significantly, scientists have failed to reproduce the spontaneous generation of life for 60 years.

I've been designing systems like spacecraft for more than 20 years. One of the lessons I've learnt is that complex systems require an immense amount of intelligence to design. I've seen a lot of irreducible complexity in engineering. I have also seen organs in nature that are apparently irreducible. An irreducibly complex organ is one where several parts are required simultaneously for the system to function usefully, so it cannot have evolved, bit by bit, over time.

This "Against the Grain" column resulted from an interview with Nick Jackson.

Chadwell, Pete

Writing in the Bend Bulletin (July 3, 2006), Chadwell, notes

Recently, the state of South Carolina joined Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Kansas and New Mexico by approving statewide science standards which require a critical analysis of evolution in science classrooms. In these five states the standard-issue Darwinian evolution will still be taught, but with an interesting twist which ought to raise some eyebrows - the scientific WEAKNESSES of Darwinian theory will ALSO be disclosed.

In a country where ideals such as free speech, diversity, balance and tolerance are preached constantly, the remaining states DO NOT ALLOW the scientific weaknesses of Darwinian evolution to be presented in our public school science classrooms. This means that, in the state of Oregon (and 44 others) Darwinian evolution is taught as sheer dogma - scientific weaknesses are withheld from our students and Darwinian evolution is presented as a theory of origins that is incontrovertible. It is important to note that of the aforementioned five states, precisely NONE has required that opposing theories of origins, such as Intelligent Design, be included in the state's science curricula. The standards adopted in those states require ONLY an objective presentation of the strengths AND weaknesses of evolutionary theory.

It's important to scrutinize the media's reporting on this point because as these states have come forward, reporters have repeatedly spun the decisions as victories for Intelligent Design, as though Intelligent Design had some relevance in the decision and as though ID will be taught in these five states as a result. Yet nothing is further from the truth - there is no language in these five states' science standards which requires - or even allows - the teaching of Intelligent Design or any other competing theory.

No, but Darwinism, as it exists today, seems hardly in a position to sustain any questions. It seems to be a demand that we interpret the whole history of evolution in the light of one theory, just as Marxism required us to interpret the whole history of economics in the light of one theory.

Chopra, Deepak, "It's high time to rescue 'intelligent design' from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward." (Note: Working from what sounds like a Hindu perspective, Chopra points out some facts that David Stove noted in Darwinian Fairytales. as well as many others that undermine a purely Darwinian perspective on evolution.)

Cohen, Jonah, who does not accept ID, nonetheless thinks it should be taught in schools and slams myths about it. For example, "Those who advocate intelligent design are not 'disguising' anything; they are not furtive men. They are offering for your consideration an idea that has intrigued the minds of everyone from Plato to Kant, an idea that possibly began when Socrates asked: 'With such signs of forethought in the design of living creatures, can you doubt they are the work of choice or design?'" (Note: This is refreshing in an age when motivated nonsense is swallowed by gullible bureaucrats who then trip over themselves defending the status quo.)

Crichton, Michael is a medical doctor and thriller writer, but has strong opinions on why science must depend on evidence, not merely the consensus of a punditocracy. He talks about the SETI search as a religion, for example.

Derbyshire, John insists on Darwinism as consensus science in the school system. (Note: If all you need is consensus, well, Derbyshire's your man, except for the fact that Darwinism isn't anything like a consensus in many school systems. Unfortunately, his strategy sounds like a recipe for conflict.) John Derbyshire also explains how he gradually ceased to be a Christian, and curiously, ID-related stuff played a role:

I can report that the Creationists are absolutely correct to hate and fear modern biology. Learning this stuff works against your faith. To take a single point at random: The idea that we are made in God�s image implies we are a finished product. We are not, though. It is now indisputable that natural selection has been going on not just through human prehistory, but through recorded history too, and is still going on today, and will go on into the future, presumably to speciation, either natural or artificial. So which human being was made in God�s image: the one of 100,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago? 1,000 years ago? The one of today? The species that will descend from us? All of those future post-human species, or just some of them? And so on. The genomes are all different. They are not the same creature. And if they are all made in God�s image somehow, then presumably so are all the other species, and there�s nothing special about us at all.

This is the first time that I have ever heard anyone claim that being made in God's image implies that humans are a finished product. Few human beings have ever claimed it of themselves.

DeWolf. David K., (law prof) and Randall Wegner (lawyer), "The ACLU has a variety of clever arguments as to why it is a "civil liberty" to exclude any competing theory. It claims that anything other than Darwinism is not science and that the only alternative to Darwin's theory is a "supernatural creator" who can't be investigated scientifically. This is plainly false. The scientists who have questioned Darwinian evolutionary theory point to scientific evidence (the fossil record, the digital information content in DNA, the engineering structure in cells) and use scientific reasoning to explain that design is the most likely cause." (Note: This link is provided because the original Philly Inquirer op-ed may no longer be on line.)

Engber, Daniel
provides a useful distinction in Slate between creationism and intelligent design hypotheses. "Intelligent Design adherents believe only that the complexity of the natural world could not have occurred by chance. Some intelligent entity must have created the complexity, they reason, but that "designer" could in theory be anything or anyone." (Note: Yeah, of course, but then how can Hollywood make a big conspirafantasy about ID if that's all it is? And so many elite types so much need a big conspiracy that explains why no one believes materialism. Will they now invent a vast conspiracy to believe in? That Engber guy was pretty quickly drowned out.)

Dworkin, Ronald offers three questions to America in the New York Review of Books, and one of them concerns the dangers of allowing students to know that Darwin may be doubted in science classes:

If we are to protect dignity by protecting people's responsibility for their own personal values, then we must build our compulsory education and our collective endorsements of truth around the distinction between faith and reason. We need a defensible conception of science not only for the intensely practical reason that we must prepare our children and youth to advance knowledge and to compete in the world's economy but also in order to protect the personal responsibility of our citizens each for his own religious faith. We need an account of science, in our public philosophy of government, that does not make its authority depend on commitment to any set of religious or ethical values. So Senator Frist made a serious mistake when he said that describing intelligent design only as a scientific alternative to evolution doesn't "force any particular theory on anyone." In fact it damages young students, practically and politically, by using the state's authority to force on them a false and disabling view of what science is.

Flynn, Dan

Insufferability award?: Here's a strong entry

Author of Intellectual Morons, Dan Flynn argues that Darwinists should stick to science and ID types to faith (November 14, 2005):

Of the Darwinists, he says,

So insecure are the Darwinists that the Kansas State Board of Education's rather sensible decision to introduce materials into the curriculum critical of the theory of evolution, which, in the board's own words, "do not include Intelligent Design," became a target of attack. "We're becoming a laughingstock," board member Janet Waugh lamented, "not only of the nation but of the world." The Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and other news outlets incorrectly reported that the Kansas board mandated the teaching of Intelligent Design, which it clearly and explicitly does not. "Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution," the board states, "the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory." In other words, the board mandates teaching evolution but does not mandate teaching Intelligent Design. Any number of news reports lead readers to believe the opposite.

As for the ID guys, he says,

The universe may have been designed by a Supreme Intelligence, but there is no scientific evidence saying this is so. Forget the damage done to science in Intelligent Design's name. By holding matters of faith to scientific standards, Intelligent Design stands to erode belief.

He ends with

Supporters of Intelligent Design demote faith to science. Darwinists elevate science to faith. Both camps would be best served by staying within their own realm.

Flynn makes quite clear that he thinks that science is about facts and intelligent design is about high-minded but unsupported nonsense. But - in the polite way that befits a man who avoids giving offense to the dear little pious tea grannies - he wants us to know that faith would merely be demoted if it enjoyed any support from facts at all.

Such insufferable smugness about the very nature of the universe and its knowability! - and, worse luck, all in defense of a merely silly idea like neo-Darwinism

Franke, Greg wants to inject some common sense into the debate. "According to Casey Luskin, Public Policy spokesman for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which is seeking to establish the right of teachers to question Evolutionary theory, the question isn't whether it would have been advantageous for man to develop the ability to reason -- of course it would have. The real question is whether mutations are capable of producing this. "This certainly seems to strain Darwin's theory. It appears that something else has to be added to the equation to explain human complexity."

Graff, Gerald thinks the controversy should be taught - in order to discredit ID. Of interest is the fact that he coined the term "teach the controversy." Here's a great quote: "Teachers can act as if their students� doubts about evolution don't exist, but pretending that your students share your beliefs when you know they don't is a notorious prescription for bad teaching."

Humes, Edward In "Unintelligent Designs on Darwin" (February 28, 2007), Humes reassures every middle American who does not want to think that the intelligent design controversy is based on anything that could possibly matter:

But real evolution isn't random; it doesn't say man came from monkeys. Those claims are made up by critics to get people riled up -- paving the way for pleasing alternatives such as intelligent design.

Real evolution - if by that we mean Darwinian evolution - insists that man came from creatures more primitive than monkeys, by a process of natural selection acting on random mutations, not by any divine providence. Now the real evolutionist, so to speak, is either right or wrong about that, but the claim was not invented by critics.

Jacoby, Jeff muses on the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" moment when Darwinists attempted to ridicule ID theory by attributing all non-Darwinian mechanisms to a flying sphag-m. Jacoby comments, "In truth, intelligent design isn't a scientific theory but a restatement of a timeless argument: that the regularity and laws of the natural world imply a higher intelligence -- God, most people would say -- responsible for its design. Intelligent design doesn't argue that evidence of design ends all questions or disproves Darwin. It doesn't make a religious claim. It does say that when such evidence appears, researchers should take it into account, and that the weaknesses in Darwinian theory should be acknowledged as forthrightly as the strengths. That isn't primitivism or Bible-thumping or flying spaghetti. It's science."

Jenkins, Sally links ID and sports: "The sports section would not seem to be a place to discuss intelligent design, the notion that nature shows signs of an intrinsic intelligence too highly organized to be solely the product of evolution. It's an odd intersection, admittedly. You might ask, what's so intelligently designed about ballplayers (or sportswriters)? Jose Canseco once let a baseball hit him in the head and bounce over the fence for a home run. Former Washington Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte gave himself a concussion by running helmet-first into a wall in a fit of exuberance. But athletes also are explorers of the boundaries of physiology and neuroscience, and some intelligent design proponents therefore suggest they can be walking human laboratories for their theories." (Note: Hey, why not! If you win, you win, and whatever helps you to a fair win, well ... )

Kemmerer, Liz talks about the Knox College course examining the pros and cons of ID. Apparently, the classroom did not turn into a time machine that morphed everyone back to the Dark Ages, and still no one asked for their money back. Amazing! More amazing than the Amazing Randi.

Klinghoffer, David documents the anti-Christian sentiment that lies behind much promotion of Darwinism: "Other leading Darwinian advocates not only reject religion but profess disgust for it and frankly admit a wish to see it suppressed. Lately I've been collecting published thoughts on religion from pro-Darwin partisans. Professional scholars, they have remarkable things to say especially about Christianity. Let these disinterested seekers of the truth speak for themselves." (Note: Well, these particular "seekers of truth" sound about as disinterested as the fox who just happened to be in the henhouse in the dead of night. The problem is not with their opinion, but with their desire that it be seen as "science.") Also, Klinghoffer, David
You can't have both Darwin and
God because

The key point is whether, across hundreds of millions of years, the development of life was guided or not. On one side of this chasm between worldviews are Darwinists, whose belief system asserts that life, through a material mechanism, in effect designed itself. On the other side are theories like intelligent design (ID) which argue that no such purely material mechanism could write the software in the cell, called DNA.

ID supporters find positive evidence of a designer�s hand at work in life�s history. The Discovery Institute, where I�m a senior fellow, has compiled a list of more than 600 Darwin-doubting doctoral scientists representing institutions like Stanford, Yale, and MIT. The bibliography of Darwin-doubting works in peer-reviewed and peer-edited scientific publications continues to grow.

To put it starkly, Darwinism would put God out of business. God�s authority to command our behavior is based on His having created us. By this, I don�t mean that He formed the first person from clay less than six thousand years ago, but that His guidance was necessary to produce the chief glory of the world, life. If the process that produced existence and then life was not guided, then God is not our creator.

Klinghoffer has some pointed things to say about Francis Collins' book, The Language of God, as well, including "sticky-sweet memories of how he accepted Jesus on a nature hike."

Krauthammer, Charles insists, for some reason, that the ID controversy can be explained as follows: "This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer." (Note: This is a wonderful column if you are looking for examples of someone just getting it wrong. They guy never once considers the possibility that there might actually be good arguments against Darwinism specifically, as opposed to evolution in general. Apparently, he just can't get it, and he represents a beautiful taxonomic illustration of the type. Also go here and here if you need more Krauthammer for whatever you are doing.)

Krauthammer, Charles also offers a cute play on words, riffing evoluton off intelligent design, to talk about endless campaigning in electoral politics. This column offers an interesting study on word use in the controversy (June 8, 2007):

WASHINGTON -- In Britain, Canada and other civilized places, national elections are often called, run and concluded within six weeks. In America, election campaigns go on forever. It used to be one year, now it's two. No one planned this, but like other evolutionary artifacts (the Founders applied intelligent design to the general makeup of the U.S. government but never foresaw formal political parties, let alone the endless campaign), this crazy improvisation embodies a certain wisdom.

Krugman, Paul
Krugman argues that

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.

And why is that the important thing to remember, Paul? Actually, the question is not about the "validity of evolutionary theory" but about the ability of Darwinism to do all that is claimed for it.

Limbaugh, David
David Limbaugh argues in "Slamming intelligent design" that intelligent design is picking up steam, expressing wonder at "how much disinformation has been taught in our public schools, universities, and our culture in general on evolution." He argues that

the popular culture and the education establishment, while holding themselves out as guardians of science, fact, and even reality, often refuse to allow any scientific objections to evolution to be discussed in the classroom. They are the real censors and opponents of science, all in the name of promoting science. You really should look into this scandal if you haven't already, instead of just assuming the controversy is between superstitious anti-science Christians and enlightened, open-minded scientific academics.

Possibly, many people may simply not want to know if another of the popular icons of the twentieth century (Marx, Che, Freud) has gone bad. So much easier to stop one's ears and insist on teaching the materialist orthodoxy.

Limbaugh, David also identifies consensus science as the way scientists deal with contrary data that they do not want to acknowledge (May 4, 2007). The consensus is that there is no such data:

Tom Bethell, in his "Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," quotes author Michael Crichton as saying that consensus science "is an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."

We are witnessing a similar phenomenon on the subject of evolution versus intelligent design. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins, explains Bethel, believes that evolution is not a debatable topic. "I'm concerned about implying that there is some sort of scientific argument going on," said Dawkins. "There's not." Meanwhile the Intelligent Design movement is gathering courageous and impressive adherents who would debate the notion that no debate is going on

Limbaugh, Rush Now, remember, this is Rush, not David. Rush claims that the ID folks aretouting Biblical creationism, which only shows that he needs ARN's course in the intelligent design controversy (but probably will not take the time to even audit it):

The people pushing intelligent design believe in the biblical version of creation. Intelligent design is a way, I think, to sneak it into the curriculum and make it less offensive to the liberals because it ostensibly does not involve religious overtones, that there is just some intelligent being far greater than anything any of us can even imagine that's responsible for all this, and of course I don't have any doubt of that. But I think that they're sort of pussyfooting around when they call it intelligent design.

Showers, Rush. The ID sympathizers include many traditional Christians and Jews but also secularists and atheists, and followers of Eastern religions. The only thing they all agree on is the intelligence of the design.

Manzari, Joe quotes John Scopes, of the Scopes trial, "John Scopes once said, "If you limit a teacher to only one side of anything, the whole country will eventually have only one thought.... I believe in teaching every aspect of every problem or theory."

Mathews, Jay Jay Mathews asks in the Washington Post "Who's Afraid of Intelligent Design" (March 23, 2005), adding,

My favorite high school teacher, Al Ladendorff, conducted his American history class like an extended version of "Meet the Press." Nothing, not even the textbooks other teachers treated as Holy Writ, was safe from attack. I looked forward to that class every day.

My biology class, sadly, was another story. I slogged joylessly through all the phyla and the principles of Darwinism, memorizing as best as I could. It never occurred to me that this class could have been as interesting as history until I recently started to read about "intelligent design," the latest assault on the teaching of evolution in our schools. Many education experts and important scientists say we have to keep this religious-based nonsense out of the classroom. But is that really such a good idea?

Mathews, who covers schools for the Post, and is an admittedly devout Darwinist sees the obvious point, that iron sharpens iron - students benefit from exposure to differing points of view.

(Note: A delicious irony would be if students who are exposed to both the strengths and the weaknesses of Darwinism grasp it better than students who are simply proselytized to believe in it as the creation story of the school system.)

Melott, Adrian, L. on intelligent design as creationism in a
cheap tuxedo in Physics Today is a gold mine of marvelous nonsense, including "Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows. This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks (with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad public understanding of science." Right. So any doubts raised by scientists or any failure on the part of the public to merely accept some folly folly burbled on behalf of Darwinism is due to the sheer incompetence of journalists, except of course for a few who presumably burble in tune. We can be fairly sure that "accuracy checks" in the context, are merely checks for being in line with the Darwinian orthodoxy of the moment.

Mohler, Al, St. Louis Baptist seminary prez, asks "What is it about even the slightest dissent from Darwin's theory of natural selection that drives liberal elites (and even some conservative elites) bonkers?" Adam Wolfson asks that question in "Survival of the Evolution Debate: Why Darwin Is Still a Lightning Rod," an essay published in the January 16, 2006 edition of The Weekly Standard." He suggests, "As Wolfson cleverly adapts H. L. Mencken, "Liberals are haunted by the specter that someone, somewhere harbors doubts about Darwin's theory." Note: See also Leon Wieseltier below for another Mohler comment. )

Mooney, Chris addresses the favorable polls for teaching ID in the schools, in an effort to show, t'ain't so. Well, 'tis so, and in any event, Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science comes with his own more-than-slightly overloaded portmanteau. By the way, here is a roundup of recent polls on ID-related subjects.

Moyers, Bill

Moyers writes as though we don�t know that arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins is an atheist who obsessively attacks religion and worries about the fact that most Americans doubt his view about evolution. In fact, Dawkins has spent so much time attacking religion that he has not had an original idea in biology for perhaps fifteen years.
Also, here�s a NOW show with Dawkins, where views other than Darwinism are equated with anti-intellectualism in American life. Commentators like Moyers are losinginfluence in the age of blogs and the Internet, because it is much harder today to keep people from access to information that challenges the commentator�s magisterial view.

Numbers, Ron In a Salon interview with Steve Paulson, historian Numbers makes some very interesting comments:

Numbers says much of what we think about anti-evolutionism is wrong. For one thing, it's hardly a monolithic movement. There are, in fact, fierce battles between creationists of different stripes. And the "creation scientists" who believe in a literal reading of the Bible have, in turn, little in common with the leaders of intelligent design. Numbers also dismisses the whole idea of warfare between science and religion going back to the scientific revolution. He argues this is a modern myth that serves both Christian fundamentalists and secular scientists.

He goes on to say that he is shocked by how much publicity the ID guys have got in the last fifteen years. Maybe it has something to do with a long-suppressed fact base ... ?

O'Reilly, Bill dismisses the current pop atheists:

the atheists will never get it. The universe and the earth is so complex, so incredibly detailed, that to believe an accidental evolutionary occurrence could have exclusively led to the nature/mankind situation we have now, is some stretch of the imagination. I mean, call me crazy, but the sun always comes up, while man oversleeps all the time.
So bless you, Richard Dawkins, and all the other non-believers. As long as they don't attack people of faith, I have no problem with them. As my eighth-grade teacher Sister Martin once said: "Faith is a gift."

But not everybody gets to open the box.

In point of fact, the current crop of atheists has not come up with anything new that is of any importance, and Darwinism is not helping them any either.

Padgett, Jeffrey argues in the Western Illinois University Courier that teaching both sides of the evolution controversy is a good idea:

In truth, I discovered that there is much good, hard scientific evidence supporting and denying the theory of intelligent design, just as there is much that supports and discounts the concept of evolution. The reason public schools do not teach us the theory of intelligent design in science classrooms is because they equate it to teaching religion, and of course we must keep church and state separate.

But if the state is in fact being unbiased, then shouldn't they present the scientific evidence for both sides? This is the only way to be fair, and it certainly isn't forcing a religion on anyone. What is the harm in teaching all of the evidence for evolution and for intelligent design?

Pafford, John M., an adjunct professor of history at Northwood University, Michigan, argues in the Midland Daily News for teaching about the evolution controversy:

What aggravates opponents is that scientists supporting intelligent design rejected Darwinian evolution and determined that the evidence points to a Creator. While it is true that creationism is taught in the Bible, scientists believing in it do study scientific data and scientifically examine the phenomena of the natural world.

Mr. Bufka's advocating the removal of creationism and intelligent design from being considered in public schools leaves Darwinian evolution as the state-established belief system, a serious error and denial of academic freedom. All three of them, creationism, intelligent design -- and Darwinian evolution -- should be taught with each individual free to accept whatever he or she chooses.

Peterson, Dan, an attorney who describes himself as "designed to live in Virginia," provides an entertaining and useful overview of the controversy, quoting from proponents and opponents of ID. In the latter camp is Franklin Harold who notes, "Thus, many scientists embracing naturalism find themselves in the seeming dilemma recently articulated by biochemist Franklin Harold: "We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity [i.e., Darwinian evolution]; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations." (Note: And just why should we borf reason in order to protect Darwin? Tell me once again why wishful speculation is better.)

Powell, Michaelreports for the Washington Post on how ID advocates vow to continue despite Dover ruling: It is an engaging and reasonable account, quoting, for example, Michael Behe: "It was a real disappointment," biochemist Michael J. Behe, who testified in the trial, said from his office at Lehigh University. "It's hard to say this chills the atmosphere, because if you're publicly known as an ID supporter you can already kiss your tenure chances goodbye. It doesn't help."

Reed, Fred Fred, who plans to devolve because bacteria are more respectable, laments "Why, oh why, are the curricula of the schools the business of the courts? If Pennsylvania wants to mention Creationism, or to require three years of French for graduation, it seems mightily to me that these things are the business of parents in Pennslyvania. Yes, I know: In practice, both freedom of expression and local government are regarded as ideals greatly to be avoided. The desire to centralize government, impose doctrine, and punish doubt is never far below the surface, anywhere." (Note: No indeed. The fascinating aspect of the intelligent design controversy is the inability of the Darwinists to se that they are attempting to impose a religion that explains origins as the outcome of purposeless events, in the teeth of a public that simply does not believe that.)

Safire, William is a useful consult on the origin of the phrase "intelligent design."

Saletan, William
opines regarding ID that "It's too bad liberals and scientists don't welcome this test. It's too bad they go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously. It's too bad they think good science consists of believing the right things. In the long view-the evolutionary view-good science consists of using evidence and experiment to find out whether what we thought was right is wrong. If they do that in Kansas, by whatever name, that's all that matters." (Note: Saletan assumes that in any fair fight Darwinism would triumph. The trouble is, he hasn't spent as much time as I have kicking around the walls so he doesn't see that Darwinism has huge unpaid debts, as David Stove noted in Darwinian Fairytales.. Here I go plugging Stove again, but he really is worth the read.)

Schlafly, Phyllis

Conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly
argues

Liberals see the political value to teaching evolution in school, as it makes teachers and children think they are no more special than animals. Childhood joy and ambition can turn into depression as children learn to reject that they were created in the image of God.

It sounds a bit over the top, and I so much want to dismiss it. But when I read what key Darwinists actually think, and what they do in the school system, it is quite clear that a philosophy is involved, one that is at odds with the philosophy of most parents. Clearly, it never was about the science; it was about imposing a philosophy on the school system.

Snow, Tony Snow wants to know why we can't have a rational debate. "Evolutionary theory, like ID, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis -- like ID -- although very popular in the scientific community. Its limits help illuminate the fact that hypotheses are only as durable as the evidence that supports them. ID is useful largely because it punctures the myth of scientific invincibility, while providing a basis for promoting the cause of "hard" science. Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe." (Note: Fair enough all, but Darwinism is about materialist philosophy, not science. That is why it can never be wrong and can explain absolutely everything, Tony. Didn't you know?)

Snow is as of April 2006 White House Press Secretary.

Springsteen, Bruce "We believe in evolution - it's our only"hope" from "Part Man, Part Monkey." (Aw, Brucie baby, cut the rot. It's been a long, long time since dumb evolution had much to do with human affairs. We violate evolution every day. Every time we create a better crop plant or save a life through medical care or irrigate a desert, we are violating evolution. The reason we do that, ahem, is that evolution as such doesn't offer any hope at all. That's why we got rid of it.)

Stark, Rodney

Rodney Stark, sociologist and author of For the Glory of God, confronts (One America, September 2004) in "Fact, Fable, and Darwin" the main reason for the ongoing ridiculous adulation of Darwin. Despite being nearly two years old, it is still worth reading:

I write as neither a creationist nor a Darwinist, but as one who knows what is probably the most disreputable scientific secret of the past century: There is no plausible scientific theory of the origin of species! Darwin himself was not sure he had produced one, and for many decades every competent evolutionary biologist has known that he did not. Although the experts have kept quiet when true believers have sworn in court and before legislative bodies that Darwin's theory is proven beyond any possible doubt, that's not what reputable biologists, including committed Darwinians, have been saying to one another.

There is much interesting material here, both about motives:

Without question, Charles Darwin would be among the most prominent biologists in history even if he hadn't written The Origin of Species in 1859. But he would not have been deified in the campaign to "enlighten" humanity. The battle over evolution is not an example of how heroic scientists have withstood the relentless persecution of religious fanatics. Rather, from the very start it primarily has been an attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the mantle of science.

and the state of the evidence:

According to Steven Stanley, another distinguished evolutionist, doubts raised by the fossil record were "suppressed" for years. Stanley noted that this too was a tactic begun by Huxley, always careful not to reveal his own serious misgivings in public. Paleontologist Niles Eldridge and his colleagues have said that the history of life demonstrates gradual transformations of species, "all the while really knowing that it does not." This is not how science is conducted; it is how ideological crusades are run.

Thomas, Cal and Bob Bekelis
Cal Thomas asks, "'Intelligent design': What do scientists fear?", and continues,

What I find curious about this debate, not only in Pennsylvania, but in Kansas and throughout the country, is that so many scientists and educators are behaving like fundamentalist secularists. Only they will define science. They alone will decide which scientific theories and information will be taught to students. That sounds like mind control to me, Bob. If their science is so strong on the issue of origins, why not let the arguments supporting intelligent design into the classroom where it can be debunked if it can't be defended?

Well, Cal, and Bob, ... let's start with the fact that there is no good, firm theory of the origin of life ... and go from there. Maybe there will be one someday. but why pretend there is one now?

Turner, J. Scott wonders why we can't discuss intelligent design. In an interesting piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he recalls using words that Darwinism forbids at a public meeting:

I think what stirred up the heckler had something to do with the word "design." Unless clearly linked to the process of natural selection, "design" can be a bit of a red flag for modern biologists. The reason is not hard to fathom. Most people, when they contemplate the living world, get an overwhelming sense that it is a designed place, replete with marvelous and ingenious contrivances: the beak of a hummingbird curved like the nectaries it feeds from, bones shaped to the loads they must bear, feathers that could teach new tricks to an aeronautical engineer, the nearly unfathomable complexity of a brain that can see — all built as if someone had designed them.

[ ... ]

Charles Darwin was supposed to have put paid to that idea, of course, and ever since his day biologists have considered it gauche to speak of design, or even to hint at purposefulness in nature. Doing so in polite company usually earns you what I call The Pause, the awkward silence that typically follows a faux pas.

I wonder if Turner will ever do anything as scary as this again.

Weisberg, Jacob In Evolution vs. Religion: Quit pretending they're compatible", Weisberg says bluntly, "So, what should evolutionists and their supporters say to parents who don't want their children to become atheists and who may even hold firm to the virgin birth and the parting of the Red Sea? That it's time for them to finally let go of their quaint superstitions? That Darwinists aren't trying to push people away from religion but recognize that teaching their views does tend to have that effect? Dennett notes that Darwin himself avoided exploring the issue of the ultimate origins of life in part to avoid upsetting his wife Emma's religious beliefs."
(Note: It is clearly not true that Darwinism is devoid of a religious agenda, despite the claims of timid, well-meaning bureaucrats and clergy, anxious not to "cause any fuss." )

Westneat, Danny reports on a guy who is one the list of Discovery's then 400 (but now over 500) scientists who doubt Darwinism for scientific reasons but thinks he
shouldn't be. Westneat explains, "Davidson began to believe the institute is an "elaborate, clever marketing program" to tear down evolution for religious reasons. He read its writings on intelligent design - the notion that some of life is so complex it must have been designed - and found them lacking in scientific merit." (Note: I can't find Davidson's name on the list, which does not appear to be sorted in complete lpha order, so presumably he sensibly asked to have it removed. I wonder if Westneat will write on the growth of the list since then.)

Wieseltier, Leon, literary editor of The New Republic, "Intelligent design is an expression of sentiment, not an exercise of reason. It is a psalm, not a proof." This is a wonderful exercise in literary swank and condescension. Apparently, it doesn't matter whether Darwinism is an accurate account of evolution; everything comes down to motive and the Crawford pomo, and the fact that they are sophisticated but we are, um, not. Interestingly, the same edition of the mag features several other attacks on ID. Clearly, the editors are in a panic about something or other, as Louisville Baptist seminary prez Albert Mohlernotes. Hmmmm.

Will, George Will claims that intelligent design is unfalsifiable, despite ongoing efforts to falsify it. Elsewhere, he notes, regarding recent disasters, "Earth, that living, seething, often inhospitable and not altogether intelligently designed thing, has again shrugged, and tens of thousands of Pakistanis are dead. That earthquake struck 10 months after an undersea quake caused the December 2004 tsunami that killed 285,000 in Asia. Americans reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and warned of scores of millions of potential deaths from avian flu, have a vague feeling - never mind the disturbing rest of the news - of pervasive menace from things out of control."
(Note: There is an underlying theme in the latter column, which begins with musings on intelligent design. It seems that Will's main beef is out-of-control events in nature. On the whole, I think it is a good thing that he is asking the questions in relation to whether there is evidence of intelligent design in nature. If you don't think the ID guys are making progress in getting key questions before the public, consider how the issues raised by earthquakes would have been dealt with fifteen years ago:
- THOSE people have too many kids (and therefore set themselves and us up for disaster) - sometimes expressed in a more pompous way as "Man is a species that has overbred."
- This proves that there isn't such a thing as the right to live!
So if the ID guys have done nothing else, they have refocused debate away from the enormous vulgarities of materialist ideas and toward timeless dilemmas. - Denyse)

Will, George (Sunday August 28, 2005) on the March of the Penguins film, accused of promoting ID:

"March of the Penguins" raises this question: If an Intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins? The movie documents the 70-mile march of thousands of Antarctic penguins from the sea to an icy breeding place barren of nutrition. These perhaps intelligently but certainly oddly designed birds march because they cannot fly. They cannot even march well, being most at home in the sea.

[ ... ]

The penguins' hardiness is remarkable, as is the intricate choreography of the march, the breeding and the nurturing. But the movie, vigorously anthropomorphizing the birds, invites us to find all this inexplicably amazing, even heroic. But the penguins are made for that behavior in that place. What made them? Adaptive evolution. They have been "designed" for all that rigor -- meaning they have been shaped by adapting to many millennia of nature's harshness.

Will raises some interesting questions here. The penguins probably could not in fact live in warmer climates, in which case their unusual adaptations are an alternative to going extinct, as 99 percent of all the creatures that have ever lived on Earth have done. The reason the film causes people to discuss intelligent design is precisely the difficulty of seeing how the penguin's behaviour could evolve through simple, random Darwinian steps. But as for anthropomorphism (talking about animals as though they had emotions like those of humans), well, it is an interesting criticism. Darwinists generally talk about humans as though they were animals. The narrator in this case is reacting to the evidence of the penguins' behavior, and avoiding the refuge of sophistries such as they're "just birds," offered by a studio exec .

Wills, Gary displays in "A Country Ruled by Faith" in The New York Review of Books (November 16, 2006) a touching faith in materialist consensus in science:

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush said that "the jury is still out" on the merits of Darwinism. That is true only if the jury is not made up of reputable scientists. Bush meant to place religious figures on the jury, to decide a scientific question. As president, he urged that schools teach "intelligent design" along with Darwinism—that is, teach religion alongside science in science classes. Gary Bauer, like other evangelicals, was delighted when the President said that. Bush's endorsement proves, Bauer observed, that intelligent design "is not some backwater view." An executive at the Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design, chimed in: "President Bush is to be commended for defending free speech on evolution." By that logic, teaching flat-earthism, or the Ptolemaic system alongside the Copernican system, is a defense of "free speech."

Well, teaching consensus is fine if it is backed by evidence, but what if the evidence forthe consensus is weak and the reason why it is a consensus is mainly ideological?

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