A scientific model of segmentation

Intelligent Design creationism is bad theology, bad politics, bad education, and bad science. That last point is made for me every day as I read the real science literature, and see what a contrast it makes with the ideological press releases that come out of the Discovery Institute. In particular, as I was reading a recent review article by Peel (2004), I was struck by the way scientific work builds on past observations, integrates multiple lines of evidence, and makes justified predictions about the natural world that are amenable to testing…all things deplorably absent from ID creationism.

The common theme in ID creationist research seems to be an assertion of the negative: science can't explain X. Y is an impenetrable barrier. Z can't possibly happen. You can't get here from there. Dembski, Behe, Meyer, and Nelson are all taking this approach, and worst of all, justifying it by carefully omitting all the evidence that shows that X can be explained, Y can be crossed, Z did happen, and of course we got here from there. It's also a failure as a research program, because their point of view is utterly dependent on not finding evidence.

So let's take a look at how scientific minds deal with an awkward problem in evolution.

Continue reading "A scientific model of segmentation" (on Pharyngula)