Happy Kitzmas. This is the sixth anniversary of the famous decision in Kitzmiller vs Dover School Board, which really exposed the duplicity of those in the Intelligent Design creationist movement. Judge Jones, who many did not see as a particular ally to those fighting this incursion of religion into American schools, actually provided a exceptional smack-down of the devious and dishonest strategy taken by those wishing to push Intelligent Design creationism as science. This has led to many US-based bloggers to conclude that Intelligent Design creationism is something of a ‘busted flush’. But in reality, this is only true in the USA, where publicly funded schools are prohibited by the Constitution from teaching or promoting religion. In contrast, here in the UK we have a government that actively encourages the development of faith schools, and via its ideologically driven Free Schools raises the spectre of increasing the presence of creationism in our nation’s schools. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: creationism, education, intelligent design
I see that Jonathan McLatchie has crossed Larry Moran’s radar (Fishing for Creationists). Jonathan published one of his verbose articles taking issue with Jeffrey Shallit’s takedown of a video featuring Phillip Johnson, the grand-daddy of Intelligent Design creationism (This Video Should be Shown to all Biology Students - see also A Discovery Institute Flack Responds) – it’s a video dating to the early days of the Intelligent Design variant of creationism, and reveals Johnson’s ignorance of biology and evolution. The whole thing’s blown up to include another example of ID creationism misquoting, selectively quoting, and just plain failing to comprehend the scientific literature, this time on homology (both morphological and molecular).
Paul Nelson, in particular has weighed in at Sandwalk. In case you’re wondering about Nelson’s background in biology, it is the usual extensive education seen in ID creationism. According to his Wikipedia page, ”In 1998, Nelson gained a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago”. Anyway, the discussion has spilled out into a new post, Homology, where I expect the discussion to continue, amid the accusations that he’s selectively mis-quoting and misrepresenting the literature. Worth following.
And on the ‘further incomprehension by McLatchie’ front, we have this blog article cross-posted to crossexamined*: An Eye-Opening Discovery: The Remarkable Vision of Anomalocaris. This is a ‘teaser’ paragraph from the full article at the very silly and mis-named Evolution News and Views, to which I don’t link, due to its ‘no comments’ policy). For the rational-minded, the new discovery is really very interesting: that the ‘top predator’ in Cambrian seas was equipped with an effective visual system comprising a high resolution compound eye. The proposal has elicited quite a bit of discussion, not least around whether or not the eyes are really part of Anomalocaris (which, interestingly, McLatchie doesn’t refer to), but also that it suggests that Anomalocaris had arthropod affinities. Anomalocaris itself has had an interesting history in palaeontology, having over the years had body parts identified as three different species. While I cannot fault McLatchie when he says “This beast poses mysteries both small and large”, he then ruins it by charging off into his usual nonsense. Apparently the new discoveries make it another “tough day to be a Darwinian”, though it’s not clear quite why he says this, other than senior ID creationists say so (Meyer, Nelson and Chien** – the latter being one of the few biologists in the ranks of ID creationists), and that it’s the hoary old story of ‘sudden appearance’ of complex structures (such as a very high resolution compound eye) in the fossil record that exceeds his capacity to grasp the science.
For my part, I am fascinated by Anomalocaris, and look forward to further discoveries about the Cambrian seas. Not so much the ID creationist mangling of those discoveries!
*Jonathan McLatchie seems to be the sole blogger at crossexamined. Many of his posts there are ‘interesting’.
** Chien apparently leads the Discovery Institute Paleontology Research Program, according to his Wikipedia page, though that page suggests he’s a biochemist rather than a palaeontologist.
Tags: creationism, intelligent design
Jonathan M who seems to have become a regular blogger for the Discovery Institute has noticed this blog once again (From the Darwinist Blogosphere, Stephen Meyer’s Trip to London Elicits a Typical Reaction) in a posting at the bizarrely named Evolution News website – no comments permitted there, it would seem. The BCSE believes Jonathan M to be Jonathan MacLatchie (sometimes his name is given as McLatchie), an undergraduate student in forensic science [UPDATE: Jonathan is now taking a Masters degree in Evolutionary Biology & Systematics at the University of Glasgow (!) ] who appears to have absorbed a typical strategy beloved of Intelligent Design creationists: of devising neologisms that don’t correspond to normally used science terminology, and combined this with ignorance of biology. P. Z. Myers was exposed to some of his ‘thinking’ while visiting Glasgow.
The Christians in Science website (which I’ve hitherto not visited) has a brief report on Stephen Meyer’s C4ID sponsored lecture (Stephen Meyer – 17th Nov). This is the lecture that I didn’t attend last week (An evening with the Centre for Intelligent Design: why I didn’t attend). Sounds like I didn’t miss much! The writer begins by saying that pretty much everyone he know sin the Science Faith community was invited to the lecture. He goes on to review the contents and the (anonymous) reaction of at least one senior attendee, before concluding:
I was hoping for a much better talk from so well known a speaker, but basically it boiled down to the incredulity argument coupled with a God of the gaps conclusion. The event reminded me of why I no longer bother to read any of the ID literature, and generally consider anyone who takes ID seriously as either being naive about science or alternatively a bit stupid.
Pretty much par for the course for the strategy of ID creationists, I’d say.
Tags: creationism, intelligent design
Back in September, I received a plain envelope at my work address. In it was an invitation to attend an event in Whitehall, London. This invitation from Lord Mackay of Clashfern, was for an’”Evening lecture and supper with Dr Stephen Meyer”, which would feature a “careful presentation of the ‘fiendishly difficult’ problem of the origin of life and the evidence for intelligent design”, and was held on 17th November. I’ve obscured my name from the image below (click the image for a larger version).
Interestingly, the front of the invitation was a little coy about the organisers. It did surprise me that Lord Mackay, one of the more outstanding lawyers of the 20th Century (according to Wikipedia) would take an interest in intelligent design creationism. But Lord Mackay was a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland until a rumpus developed following his attendance at a Roman Catholic colleague’s funeral. From Wikipedia:
Lord Mackay of Clashfern is also remembered for an incident when he, an elder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, attended the funeral Masses of two close Roman Catholic friends. On one of these occasions, Lord Mackay attended in his role as Lord Advocate as the deceased was a member of the judiciary. This was considered a grave offence by the Free Presbyterian Church authorities and he was suspended from church office, bringing about a split and the formation of Associated Presbyterian Church in 1989, which supported greater “liberty of conscience”.
Notably, the triumvirate behind C4ID hold strongly religious views, and at least one is a lay preacher.
All is made clear on the reverse of the invitation, where the Centre for Intelligent Design logo is prominently displayed. And indeed the accompanying letter is headed with the C4ID logo. All attendees are to be blessed with a copy of Meyer’s book ‘Signature in the Cell’.
Bizarrely (as you can see), the reverse of the invitation uses a piece of puffery from Thomas Nagel, Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at New York University. This, rather than being derived from an actual review of the book (which, it might be suggested, a Professor of Law and of Philosophy might not be best equipped to deliver) was actually Nagel’s submission to the Times Literary Supplement 2009 Books of the Year.
I haven’t read Meyer’s book, so receiving a copy would have been interesting. I have, however, read a number of articles about the book, both supportive and dismissive (particularly those who take issue with Meyer’s (mis)use of information theory), together with a number of Meyer’s articles. Most of these are un-refereed book chapters, though a recent review paper has appeared in the Biologic Institute house ‘journal’ BIO-Complexity (of which, more later in this article). As an aside, the Discovery Institute has released a brief publication entitled ‘Signature of Controversy‘, which is a response to the many criticisms of Signature in the Cell and very largely figures the rather abusive and puerile writing of one David Klinghoffer.
It would seem that the topic of the lecture (entitled “Is there a signature in the cell?”) principally relates to the origins of life, and in particular, it would seem to relate to the difficulty Meyer has in understanding how the genetic code was able to arise in the first place. Of course, once organisms with heritable genetic material were present on Earth, normal and well understood evolutionary processes would have given rise to the diversity of life on the planet. I don’t suppose that is something Meyer subscribes to, since he is one of the principal architects (and an author) of the Wedge Strategy- the duplicitous strategy that aimed to supplant evolution with creationism by an extensive rebranding exercise. The scheme came a little unstuck when the Dover school board in Pennsylvania, which was at the time influenced by creationists, attempted to force Intelligent Design into science classrooms. The subsequent trial (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District) ruled that Intelligent Design was a rebranding of creationism, that it was not a scientific approach and that teaching it in American schools was unconstitutiomal. This judgement forced the Discovery Institute onto the back foot. More recently, the Centre for Intelligent Design was established in the UK, based in Glasgow, apparently to regurgitate the DI line.
The Centre for Intelligent Design makes much of the supposition that only intelligence can bring about ‘information’. Unfortunately from their point of view, increase (and decrease) in gene number and genome size are clearly observable, not only by comparative genomics studies of a wide variety of taxa, but by direct observation of within species genome variation. What’s more, those of us engaged in laboratory genetics are well aware of the kinds of genome changes that can occur even within the timescale of laboratory work.
In contrast to the ongoing efforts of science, one of the hallmarks of Intelligent Design creationism is that they don’t conduct novel research aimed at proving the existence of design. How can they? – ID isn’t science and makes no testable predictions. What ID creationists do is to focus on individual cases where they assert evolutionary biology cannot explain how some feature arose (usually by claiming “irreducible complexity” or some such tosh) and claim that if evolution wasn’t responsible, intelligent design is the only alternative – a pretty dubious way of claiming evidence for ID. Unfortunately for the likes of Michael Behe, each time one of these assertions is made, those pesky scientists come along and knock it down. Examples include the bacterial flagellum and the vertebrate immune system. The rather wonderful Nova TV documentary about Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District I linked to the other day (US TV Documentary – Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial) demolishes those two canards of intelligent design creationism in a very accessible fashion.
From what I’d read of Meyer’s written output, it seemed likely that Meyer’s tack would be to claim that the probability of the appearance of a genetic code that enabled life to begin is so vanishingly small that it must have been designed. What I have noted is a paper by Meyer (with his colleage Paul A. Nelson) in the Biologic Institute house ‘journal’ BIO-Complexity. The Biologic Institute is funded by the Discovery Institute and really fits the Wedge Strategy as an attempt to portray ID as a scientific discipline, largely by playing at science. BIO-Complexity is an example: an apparently above-board journal website with quite specific aims:
BIO-Complexity is a peer-reviewed scientific journal with a unique goal. It aims to be the leading forum for testing the scientific merit of the claim that intelligent design (ID) is a credible explanation for life. Because questions having to do with the role and origin of information in living systems are at the heart of the scientific controversy over ID, these topics—viewed from all angles and perspectives—are central to the journal’s scope.
(I note that Kluwer, a respectable scientific publisher, originally planned a journal called Biocomplexity: its launch issue was cancelled due to a lack of submissions. I don’t think this should be confused with the Biologic Institute creation.) BIO-Complexity’s editorial board comprises a disparate collection of people who support Intelligent Design creationism or, it would seem in some cases, a more conventional young earth creationism. To date, and through two years of publishing, only a handful of publications have been made. And these are derived from members of the editorial board, and largely include members of the Discovery and Biologic Institutes (vanity publishing?).
Meyer and Nelson’s recent publication in BIO-complexity is really an objection to the work of Yarus and colleagues modelling how an RNA world could have come into being. It’s not really a research paper, and kind of fits the ID strategy of knocking down science with the intention of allowing an ID ‘explanation’ to fill the gap. This would be in keeping with Meyer and Nelson’s expertise (Meyer qualified as an earth scientist and has a PhD in Philosophy of science, while Nelson similarly has a PhD in Philosophy): Nelson appears in the past to have held young earth creationist views.
My particular scientific field is not related to the origins of life, and it’s always seemed to me that figuring out how life began on Earth is particularly challenging, especially as our understanding of likely pre-biotic conditions changes periodically. Nevertheless, the scientific approach is to try and figure out plausible hypotheses: if Meyer and Nelson have bona fide concerns about Yarus’ hypotheses, I’d be the last to censor them. I’d be even happier if Meyer and Nelson had the science background sufficient to set up their own experimental programme.
An email communication from C4ID a week or so before the lecture said in part (the comment is mine):
At the request of some guests and to encourage open discussion, we wish to conduct the evening with a modification of the Chatham House Rule as follows: Guests are free to report, formally or informally, on the content of the lecture, the nature of the issues raised at question time, and the identities of the host, lecturer and representatives of the Centre for Intelligent Design. However the identities of all the other guests who attend and who may contribute to the debate should not be revealed unless specific permission is given by them to do so. [ It's hard to see how the planned release of video recording of the event could avoid identifying attendees if they questioned the speaker] We thank you for respecting our wishes in this matter.
Quite what significance (if any) this holds I don’t know. But one interpretation might be that attendance from individuals outside the obvious ID creationism circles was looking low, and the organisers felt this statement might encourage them to come along. In the end, I chose not to attend, not because I have scientific objections to hearing Meyer’s message, but because I object to the Discovery Institute’s working methods, its deceptive Wedge strategy (of which Meyer is an author), and that attendance might be taken as offering support to ID creationism (despite C4ID’s intention that attendee identity be kept secret). I did not want to add apparent legitimacy to ID creationism my my attendance, even though my attendance would have been as a private individual rather than as a representative of my employer. Finally, I don’t believe that lectures delivered to lay audiences are the most effective way of communicating science (or, in the case of ID creationism, pseudoscience): I would much rather read the technical literature. Unfortunately, Intelligent Design creationists are unable to generate research of the kind that would find its way into the science literature.
Tags: creationism, intelligent design, origin of life, wedge strategy
There’s a post over at Uncommon Descent in which Jonathan Wells laments quote-mining as applied to his career history (Here’s Jonathan Wells on destroying Darwinism – and responding to attacks on his character and motives*). Wells has had an eventful life, as judged by his account at Uncommon Descent (and his page at Wikpedia) – he sounds like a guy it would be fun to talk to. Apart from the gulf that lies between us over science, that is.
Wells has not one, but two doctorates. The first is in Religious Studies (Yale, 1985), the second in Molecular and Cell Biology (UC Berkeley). What’s interesting is the reason why someone with such a commitment to the Unification Church (and with such strong opposition to evolutionary explanations of life’s diversity) would embark upon a PhD in a subject related to one he has such difficulty in accepting. Incidentally, the Unification Church was founded by Sun Myung Moon (known in the media as the Moonies), and was the subject of much alarm in the UK during the 1970s due to its perception by the media as a destructive cult.
At any rate, Dr Dr Wells claims to have been selectively misquoted as to his motives in undertaking his second PhD. Personally, I find this quite amusing, given the typical quote-mining strategies often employed by creationists to discredit Darwin and evolutionary biology. The quotation that’s doing the rounds on the internet, and which Dr Dr Wells believes is being improperly taken out of context reads as follows:
“Father’s [Sun Myung Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism.”
Dr Dr Wells paints a scenario that differs from this account in some respects, mostly because there is rather more detail:
I still felt called to devote myself to toppling Darwinism, however, so in 1988 I resigned from my position to return to graduate school—this time in biology. I applied to several schools in California and moved there with my family, only to learn that I had not been admitted anywhere. I took a job as a medical laboratory technologist (the Army had taught me a trade!) and sometime afterwards went back to New York to attend a meeting between Unification Church leaders and Reverend Moon. When he learned that I was planning to go back to graduate school he admonished me not to do it, saying that I was too old (I was 45 at the time). After the meeting, however, I prayed for a long time and decided that I had to continue on my course.
I returned to California and applied again to various graduate schools. In 1989 I was granted interviews at Cal Tech, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and U.C. Davis. I chose Berkeley, where I completed a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology in 1994. By then—having been exposed to the actual evidence—I was skeptical of Darwin’s claim that all living things share a common ancestor. [my emphasis]
The essence of the disputed internet quote is that Dr Dr Wells undertook his second doctorate with the specific aim of trying to undermine ‘Darwinism’ (Wells conveniently elaborates on what he means by Darwinism) – but judging from the emphasised words in the quoted section, this would seem to be the case, though without Moon’s blessing.
But over at this site (which appears to be run by the Unification Church), we see this account, penned by Wells (Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D.):
Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.
Presumably this refers to Wells’ first PhD, in Religious Studies. Wells continues…
I eventually decided to join the fray by returning to graduate school in biology. I was convinced that embryology is the Achilles’ heel of Darwinism; one cannot understand how organisms evolve unless one understands how they develop. In 1989, I entered a second Ph.D. program, this time in biology, at the University of California at Berkeley. While there, I studied embryology and evolution.
It’s true that an understanding of developmental biology is one of the approaches to understanding evolution (but not the only approach**), but this quotation contains the widely quoted statement (emboldened). Essentially, he embarked upon a PhD, and a postdoc position with a clear preconceived goal, namely that ‘Darwinism’ was wrong, and that he would work to topple it. And this in the face of mountains of evidence sufficient to convince the vast majority of active research scientists of the reality of evolution. That is not science.
I see that Wells says he wrote that document for private consumption within the Unification Church, and that its wide publication was made without his wishes:
A senior Unification Church leader then asked me to write something for other church members explaining why I went for a second Ph.D. even after Reverend Moon had admonished me against doing so. I wrote an essay that I thought would be for in-house use only, but it was subsequently posted on the Internet without my knowledge or permission.
I first learned that my essay was available online in 2001, when Jerry Coyne made it the alpha and omega of his review in Nature of my book Icons of Evolution.
But why should he tell one version to the Unification Church while seeking to send a different message to the world? Could it be that confession of his motivation would significantly dent his work towards ‘destroying Darwinism’?
* I don’t often read Uncommon Descent because I find reading stupidity rather irritating. But I note Larry Moran (who has taken the time to plough through Dr Dr Wells book on junk DNA, and written a lengthy series of articles detailing his criticisms chapter by chapter) has engaged with a bunch of commenters who largely spout vast amounts of pure stupidity and ignorance. I envy Larry his patience.
** I have to observe that the vast published enterprise of biology contains a huge body of literature supportive of evolution. The distinction between the scientific approach to biology and that of the ID creationist is that where poorly understood cases are uncovered, the scientist seeks to find an explanation, whereas the ID creationist merely invokes a supernatural agency as a designer. More on this in a later blog post.
Tags: intelligent design
Here’s a YouTube link to an American TV documentary about the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case concerning the attempts of the Intelligent Design creationists to inveigle their anti-science into American school science classes.
I wonder if Alastair Noble and the rest of the C4ID people have ever watched this. And in particular taken note of the demolition of the notion that Intelligent Design creationism is some kind of scientific enterprise. And indeed the evidence of ID as a mere rebranding of creationism by ‘cut-and-paste’.
Tags: creationism, intelligent design
A recurrent theme from the religious right and the Intelligent Design creationists is that the Nazi racial policies that led to the Holocaust were inextricably linked to Hitler’s reading of Darwin. Some of my earliest blogging at this site addressed this issue
(Did Darwinism lead inevitably to the Holocaust? part 1 – Eugenics and Part 2).
But of course, Intelligent Design creationists cannot let go of this discredited idea. In particular, the Discovery Institute continually presses the accusation that Darwin’s theories somehow inevitably led to the Holocaust, in particular by advancing the ideas of one Richard Weikart. This morning I noted an article at Sensuous Curmudgeon – Hitler & Darwin, Part II – which, quite apart from setting the foolishness of the Intelligent Design creationists in context, provided a link to a particularly interesting paper (Was Hitler a Darwinian? from the historian Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago.
I’d just like to recommend Richards’ paper (and, indeed, the Sensuous Curmudgeon) which clearly sets out the origins of Hitler’s anti-semitism. Not that it will deter the Discovery Institute from further distorting history.
Dr Alastair Noble has penned a rather defensive article at the C4ID website, in response to James Williams’ recent blog concerning some radio discussions he had had with Noble (Intelligent Design Creationism is not Science). Unlike Williams’ blog (and this one), the C4ID website does not brook any comment, preferring to push their line of reasoning unchallenged.
I have a number of comments and observations relating to the latest Noble epistle and in particular in relation to Intelligent Design creationism as an alternative to an evolutionary explanation of life’s diversity. For my rebuttal of many of C4ID’s claims about ID as an alternative to evolutionary biology, see my article “C4ID’s Introduction to Intelligent Design: A critique”.
Firstly, is Intelligent Design creationism actually a scientific enterprise? Well, the origins of ID as a front for biblical creationism are well-established (the ‘Wedge Strategy‘). ID was devised as a way of adding an apparently scientific veneer to creationism as a way of inveigling creationism back into American public schools. Unlike the UK, where we are plagued by a high proportion of church schools, the American consitutional separation of church and state essentially forbids the teaching of religious doctrine (most notably theologically aberrant doctrines such as Young Earth Creationism). We mustn’t get diverted into a supposition that YEC is the only form of creationism: there are a variety of creationist stances, including those of a more theistic evolutionary bent. And that is to only consider christian creationism.
So, it’s clear that ID was devised as a front for creationist infiltration of the American school system, and that it does this by using words and arguments lifted from science. But is it science? The answer to that has to be a resounding ‘no’. ID creationism merely takes the stance that a complex living system seems to be to complex to have evolved, and that a designer must somehow have put that system in place. This is a profoundly un-intellectual approach, and is essentially saying “I cannot understand how this has come into being, I will not investigate and I will assume a Designer”. And what supernatural entity would have had the capacity to design the bacterial flagellum (in all its varieties), bacteria (in all their varieties), plants, animals, fungi etc? Who else but the god of Alastair Noble. If this is not creationism, I don’t know what is.
Does ID creationism advance credible, testable hypotheses? No. ID creationism merely takes the observation of biological complexity and advances the claim that it must have been designed. There is no proof of design other than the observer’s ignorance. Does ID creationism have any truly explanatory power? No.
Williams’ contention that I don’t know the definition of Intelligent Design used by the Discovery Institute is just fatuous. The primary definition of ID, widely used by Discovery, is that ‘certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not by an undirected process such as natural selection’.
Well this may be attractive to someone who, as a chemist, may well have received little or no biological education. But for those of us who have, and who are both active researchers and teachers in the biological sciences, this is trivial fluff. Natural selection is the process that ultimately gives the illusion of design, using as raw material the genetic variation that continually arises.
What that means is that there is hard evidence in nature which suggests design. The starting point is the evidence. No-one is imposing design on nature and then looking for evidence. It’s the other way round. What James Williams seems to find difficult is the difference between a scientific conclusion and its implications. Of course ID has profound religious and philosophical implications, but those are consequent to the interpretation of the evidence. [my emphasis]
The key here is that design is suggested. Not that it is a reality. One really cannot conclude that something is designed just because it looks that way. In my opinion, Noble is disengenuous here here when he claims that the religious and philosophical implications are consequent to interpretation of evidence – I cannot believe he is unaware of the evidence that ID creationism was devised for the purpose of infiltrating religious views into American schools. Much of this evidence comes from the Discovery Institute and was famously examined in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
And as to whether Williams’ position on the claim that ID creationism is truly science, I refer the reader to the very article to which Noble takes exception (Intelligent Design Creationism is not Science) – it would be unreasonable to cut and paste so much text.
Alastair Noble, who holds a PhD in Chemistry, frequently writes about DNA. From his writing, he appears to be rather ignorant, misguided or just ill-informed on the subject. This PhD of his is much-touted as some kind of qualification as a scientist – presumably it’s hoped (with some justification) that the public won’t grasp the distinction between chemistry and biology. Unfortunately a PhD awarded about 40 years ago in a non-biological discipline (albeit followed by a brief research career in chemistry) does not really qualify him to make many of his public statements on biology. What may be more of a guide to his attempts to further ID creationism is his religious background (Noble is an elder of the Cartsbridge Evangelical Church in Glasgow and a lay preacher). Indeed very, very few supporters of ID creationism are biologists (and those that are, such as Michael Behe, hold strong religious views).
Scientists of course don’t know how DNA came to be the near-universal genetic material, though many hypotheses have been forwarded, among them that the forerunner may have been RNA. Aspects of these hypotheses frame testable questions, though how good an explanation of life’s origins we can reach is debatable. From the point of view of evolutionary biology, this is moot: evolutionary biology deals with the processes by which the diversity of life around us arose, not the origins of life. It is interesting to note the congruence in strategy between ID creationisms and young earth creationists as they all consider the origins of life to be a big problem for evolutionary biology.
Noble recommends that:
[...] Williams reads ‘God’s Undertaker – Has Science buried God’ (Lion 2009) by Prof John Lennox, a world-class mathematician at Oxford, who certainly knows what he is talking about when he deals with types of information.
Yes, Lennox, who is I believe a creationist and holds strong religious views is a mathematician, not a biologist.
It may be hard for someone with a 40 year old qualification in Chemistry to grasp this, but decades of biological research involving genetics and molecular biology has not only demonstrated that genetic information can and does increase (and decrease) during the diversification of life, but has clearly shown how these changes can and do occur. Alastair Noble exhorts us to read more on the subject:
For biological life, it matters a great deal whether the information is functional or not, and Shallit simply fails to deal with this. Stephen Meyer in his book ‘Signature in the Cell’ (HarperOne 2009) certainly does.
Well, Meyer is the founder of the Discovery Institute. His biography at the Wikipedia page is informative: several of his qualifications derive from religious institutions, and none are in biology.
What, then, of the vast scientific enterprise, particularly in the biological sciences, for whom evolutionary biology is key to interpreting experimatal data? Are all these investigators really denying the truth of the existence of a Designer? Is this a conspiracy against the lone intellectuals in the ID creationist movement? Is this, as Alastair Noble contends, ‘Intellectual Fascism’?
Or is this really the paranoia of a small band of energetic people pushing a religious agenda?
Tags: creationism, intelligent design, science
C4ID’s Director Alastair Noble has come out fighting against proposals to legally prevent creationism in its many varieties being taught in school science classes. His campaign, as ever, revolves around contributions to a variety of christian organs. In the online christian magazine, Inspire, he has an article protesting against the proposal (Centre for Intelligent Design rejects ‘false claims’ of Dawkins and Attenborough). [Note that while I can open that link using Firefox, Google Chrome cannot - at least on my computer]. As with many a christian website, commenting doesn’t appear to be possible.
With what appears to be a complete irony failure, Noble says:
“If this was about the integrity of science education,” says Dr Alastair Noble [...], director of the Centre, “then they would be campaigning for students to have access to all the scientific evidence about evolution and origins – including the positive evidence for design in nature and the evidence both for and against evolution.
“Scientific theories are only credible if they take account of all the evidence. Science always moves on. The 30 scientists who have signed up to the ‘Evolution not Creationism’ statement are attempting to prevent students from hearing the rational, well-evidenced arguments that cast doubt on neo-Darwinism.”
Dr Noble is always portrayed as a scientist (he has a PhD in chemistry rather than a biological discipline), yet he appears not to understand how science works. Intelligent Design creationism is not a scientific approach. It has no explanatory power. It makes no testable predictions. It fails at all points of a definition of a scientific activity. He does say:
“Students also need to understand the provisional nature of the scientific consensus. Science is not done by consensus. Indeed, students should be aware that some crucial scientific discoveries were made by individuals who challenged the consensus. The reality of science is that one individual scientist with sound evidence can trump the consensus.”
Intelligent Design creationism has no scientific approach of collecting evidence and interpreting it in a way that generates explanatory hypotheses for further testing. Its sole approach seems to be to identify specific individual cases where an ID proponent cannot see an evolutionary explanation, then proudly proclaiming that it must have been designed – “God did it” rephrased as “the Designer did it”. Unfortunately for Intelligent Design creationism, each and every case where such claims inferring design have ben debunked using evolutionary mechanisms to explain their origin, supported by a wealth of comparative biological data.
Another chemist (again, not a biologist) is quoted:
John Walton, Professor of Reactive Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, agrees: “There are many doubtful passages and leaps of faith in the molecules-to-man evolutionary narrative scenario. The authoritarian attempts by old generation scientists to suppress discussion of alternatives are ill-advised and go against the open spirit of enquiry science should foster.”
Leaps of faith! My irony meter just leapt off scale. Walton’s language is amusing – he’s using the language of church here. Yes, there are gaps in our understanding of the pre-biotic world (which actually doesn’t really fall within the purview of evolutionary biology). But at least some scientists are trying to construct hypotheses that offer an investigative route into understanding chemical events that may have occurred billions of years in Earth’s history. What do the likes of Noble and Walton offer? Merely intellectual cowardice and a desire to invoke a supernatural entity. And as an aside, who, or what is that entity? It’s notable that with very rare exceptions, ID supporters are fervent christians. Noble and his C4ID triumvirate are clearly active christians (Noble is a lay preacher) – why don’t they come off the fence and identify their god as the designer?
Noble’s closing line is
“Dawkins argues that ID should not be taken seriously because its main protagonists are theists,” says Dr Noble. “But we don’t hear him arguing that by the same token evolution should not be taken seriously because its main protagonists are atheists.”
I would strongly suggest Dawkins’ position is really that ID creationism should not be taken seriously because it is an entirely unscientific enterprise. One might recommend that those persuaded that ID creationism is science might take a look at Why Intelligent Design doesn’t cut it: A Primer. Again in this context, there’s an interesting article by James Williams (a Lecturer in Science Education), written following what sounds like an exhausting series of interviews alongside Alastair Noble for BBC local radio (Intelligent Design Creationism is not Science ). I strongly recommend this account of the interview and Noble’s failure to grasp the objectives of the Intelligent Design Wedge Strategy.
Footnote: Personally, I am uncomfortable with the notion of legal prohibition of the teaching of anti-science in science classes, but frankly the disinenguity of proponents of ID creationism makes such a proposition increasingly attractive.
Tags: creationism, education, intelligent design
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