July 2006 Archives

Many readers of this blog will be familiar with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. CSHL is the Long Island educational and research institution that hosts some of the most important professional meetings in several biological disciplines. It has for decades been the “home campus” of phage, bacterial and yeast genetics, as well as of computational neuroscience, developmental biology and various branches of genomics, bioinformatics and systems biology.

As a frequent attendee of meetings and symposia at CSHL, I am on their regular mailing list. I recently got an announcement of a meeting to be inaugurated this December that should be of great interest to followers of Intelligent Design. The meeting, “Engineering Principles in Biological Systems” ought to be exactly the kind of forum at which “Intelligent Design” researchers present their conclusions.

One of the standard talking points from ID advocates these days is that us evolution advocates are just plum crazy to even suggest that policies requiring schools to teach “critical analysis of evolution” are a way to get intelligent design into the classrooms. DI shill Casey Luskin even coined a phrase in February when he claimed that those who think this way are suffering from “false fear syndrome” and exhibiting paranoia. I’m going to suggest that this is argument is transparently false and that the ID side knows it and is pushing it anyway. And I have proof in their own words.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. And don’t forget the follow up post, where Dembski’s research assistant admits the fraud.

Here I am, minding my own business, reading this editorial opinion piece in The Guardian about fundamentalists and creationism/ID, stem-cell research, The Rapture, etc. It is by Karen Armstrong, author of the 2000 book The Battle for God. I have not read the book, but I had the impression it was a best-selling history of fundamentalism and a comparative study of the fundamentalist phenomenon in various religions. So I figured that Armstrong probably had some idea of what she was talking about.

So I’m reading the editorial. It overviews some history of Christian fundamentalism and the like, and goes into the Scopes Trial. One minor misstep occurs when “creation science” is dated to 1925, which is not quite accurate (“scientific creationism” was a particular expression of creationism that was codified around 1969 according to Ronald Numbers), but this is the kind of detail that may be lost on people who are not creationism nerds.

But then I read this:

The fundamentalists’ rejection of science is deeply linked to their apocalyptic vision. Even the relatively sober ID theorists segue easily into Rapture-speak. “Great shakings and darkness are descending on Planet Earth,” says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, “but they will be overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God’s power and light. Ever the long-term strategist, YHVH is raising up a mighty army of cutting-edge Jewish End-time warriors.”

As Jon Stewart would say, Whaaa?

Kansas State Board of Education member Connie Morris was one of the anti-science gang of six who railroaded changes to the state standards past the normal processes of curriculum development. In “Reasoning Behind Evolution Vote” (full copy available on the flip side), she attempts to justify that decision. Her article was published in the Hays, KS newspaper, and we here at the Thumb were just cracking our knuckles to respond to it.

Alas, one of the stalwart science defenders in Kansas has beaten us to the punch, but we didn’t mope too long because the response was brilliant. Cheryl Shephard-Adams’s “ID Promoters’ Perpetual Folly” is highly recommended and you can find it at the Garden City Telegram Online.

Of note, Ms. Morris is up for re-election this year. She will be opposed by both a Republican, Sally Cauble of Liberal, and a Democrat, Tim Cruz of Garden City.

If you click through to the flip side, you’ll see the Google Cache version of Morris’ original screed and, in case the same fate befalls Shepard-Adams’ brilliant reply, a full copy of it as well.

BCH

Actually, it’s split into two posts, just as the original post by Casey Luskin was done in two parts. You can have a look at my response to Luskin’s attack on Judge Jones, and then continue with some comments on Luskin’s trashing of the TalkOrigins Archive. Basically, in the first I point out that Luskin’s real problem is with ID advocate Michael Behe, not Judge Jones, since it was Behe’s testimony that Jones relied upon to make the statements that Luskin finds objectionable. In the second, I take a look at the complete irrelevancies and odd reactions Luskin has to the TalkOrigins Archive article cited by John Derbyshire. Enjoy!

The latest on Dr. Dino:

Tax evasion suspect is flight risk, ruling states

Michael Stewart @PensacolaNewsJournal.com Pensacola evangelist and tax protester Kent Hovind won’t be lecturing on creationism in South Africa next month, prompting an irate letter from a sponsor of the trip to the prosecutor.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers this week denied Hovind’s motion to lift travel restrictions pending his Sept. 5 trial on 58 federal charges that include evading nearly $470,000 in employee taxes.

Hovind, who calls himself “Dr. Dino,” operates Dinosaur Adventure Land, a theme park on North Palafox Street dedicated to creationism.

He believes evolution is a religion and says man did not evolve from dinosaurs but, rather, lived alongside them.

At Hovind’s first federal court appearance July 13, U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis agreed with prosecutors that Hovind posed a flight risk. Hovind was ordered to surrender his passport his travel was restricted to the local judicial district, stretching from Pensacola to Gainesville.

Hovind’s public defender countered with a motion contending travel restrictions violated his client’s constitutional rights to religious freedom.

Rodgers disagreed, pointing to U.S. Supreme Court decisions saying neutral restrictions that incidentally burden religious practices are not unconstitutional.

Hovind was scheduled to travel to seven South African cities between Aug. 12 and Aug. 21 to debate scientists.

Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science, gave a talk on “What’s the matter with the Standards” at Johnson County Community College this past Monday. Jack has kindly made the audio available as a set of MP3 format files. Jack’s original post on this is here. If what’s going on in Kansas is of any interest to you, you should check out these files. And these are the direct links to the downloads:

Jack Krebs’s JCCC Powerpoint Text of John Calvert segment. Calvert is the driving force behind the Kansas IDNet and effort to have the antievolution version of the standards stay in place.

MP3 sound files all zipped together (43 MB)

Introduction (MP3) Overview (MP3) The context (MP3) What was added (MP3) The Plan (MP3) Abuse of the process (MP3) The ID movement (MP3)

Calvert’s explanation (MP3) The rest of the audio (MP3)

Today, John Rennie, Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, put up on the SciAm blog his thoughts on the Kansas election situation. See: Kansas, Undo the Damage. Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute issued an immediate reply in the comments, linking to his longer blog reply…but it was mostly just long quotes of his reply last week to my PT post showing that the current Kansas Science Standards are (a) wrong and (b) creationism/”intelligent design” in a very thin disguise.

So, I can just kill two birds with one stone by posting my reply to Luskin, which I also just put into the comments on Rennie’s blog. Here it is (short and sweet, plus a few edits):

Here is part 3 of James Downard’s autopsy of Ann Coulter’s book. As before, I am only posting this guest contribution by Jim Downard as a courtesy to him, without having myself contributed to it. Further installments from Jim are expected.

The last four chapters of Ann Coulter’s latest bestseller, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (thus a third of her book) are devoted to roasting “Darwiniac cultists” for their evolutionary delusions. As explored in the first two parts, Coulter’s ebullient confidence is inversely proportional to her knowledge. In the third part of an ongoing investigation of how Coulter could come to believe the things she does, James Downard looks into the background for one of her baldest assertions: the supposed bankruptcy of Archaeopteryx as a bird-reptile intermediate.

Continue reading Secondary Addiction, part 3, on Talk Reason

Dr. Lori Marino, a colleague of mine at Emory University, sent out a call for action to end the Japanese drive hunts that annually kill dolphins and small whales. I got it relayed from Dr. Brenda McCowan at UC Davis. The short version is that scientists and zoological park professionals have gotten together to condemn Japan’s small cetacean drive hunts and are looking to collect a million signatures on a petition to try to get it shut down before the next scheduled drive hunts this coming October.

The petition site is ActForDolphins.org. Please visit it soon.

I’ve converted the three MS Word documents that I received as attachments to the safer and more portable Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Call For Action Press Release Statements from Scientists

I’m proud to say to two of my committee members, Bill Evans and Sam Ridgway, are on the “Statements” page above.

I’ll append the text of the email I got. Please pass on word of this to your friends and acquaintances. Please also note here or on O.Z. in the comments if you sign the petition.

(Continue reading at Online Zoologists)

Evolutionary biologists sometimes think we microbiology people have it easy. “No one doubts the germ theory!,” they claim.

Au contraire, mes amis:

Do some research Tara. Then you will be ready to start from scratch again, forget the germ theory nonsense and become a real scientist.

And I bet this insult will sound familiar to many used to dealing with the anti-science brigades:

(Continued at Aetiology)

Once again, this is a guest appearance of Jim Downard, and, once again, I have not contributed to it but only post it here as a courtesy to Jim.

While William Dembski has proudly proclaimed his role as a contributor to the evolution chapters of Ann Coulter’s new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, when push comes to shove it turns out he is singularly unwilling to take responsibility for any of the many mistakes she has made. Follow James Downard as he ventures into the curious world of Dembski/Coulter “scholarship” and learn just how much “descent” one encounters at Dembski’s website “Uncommon Descent.”

Continue reading The Dembski Alert on Talk Reason

Butterstick, my youngest, was talking the other day about this new website he found, Myspace. After checking out the site and seeing all the cool people I can be friends with, I decided to sign up.

So if you want to become my friend, an official Pandit, you can do so on Myspace.

Due to the Darwin Correspondance Project, the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History Library, modern Darwin scholarship by people like James Moore, the AMNH Darwin exhibition, together with the web, amazing things are now possible if journalists get interested in taking a serious look at Darwin and reactions to Darwin.

An example is an hour-long program entitled “Evolution and Wonder – Understanding Charles Darwin” that is being broadcast on many public radio stations on Sunday and Monday. It is also available for online download in streaming or mp3 format at the program website, which includes a large amount of additional material.

Rather than re-invent the wheel I will quote the summary from NCSE news:

There is a new interview with Judge Jones in the July/August edition of the Pennsylvania Lawyer. The article is not available online, but I wanted to share some of the more interesting bits. As he did at the close of the trial and many times since, he offered a great deal of praise to the attorneys, particularly from the plaintiffs team:

In this case, however, it wasn’t simply a matter of everyone just doing their jobs. In Jones’ view, the lawyers performed exceedingly well.

“I think that some of the cross-examination was absolutely fabulous,” said Jones. “It will endure, and I think it will be excerpted for advocacy classes. … I would say, in particular, Eric Rothschild’s cross-examination of Professor [Michael] Behe – the intelligent design proponent – that might be as good a cross-examination of an expert witness as I have ever seen. It was textbook.”

That it was. If you want to read it, it begins here. I said at the time that it was one of the most devestating cross examinations I had ever seen. Aside from the testimony of Barbara Forrest, I thought that the Behe cross was the single most important turning point in the trial. It was during that cross that it was established, beyond a doubt, that ID is primarily an argument from ignorance. Behe continuing to assist that the scientific literature contains nothing to explain the evolution of the immune system even after admitting that he had not read an enormous portion of that literature could not have looked worse.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

The name “Richard Gallagher” may be familiar to some readers. Gallagher is the editor of The Scientist, and last year, somewhat naively suggested that the evolution/creation “debate” was actually a good thing (you can find the text of his editorial at this site). Both PZ and Jason Rosenhouse took him to task for the editorial (and Gallagher replied, and PZ shot back). The next month, New Scientist then published a number of letters responding to the editorial, and Gallagher also wrote a reply (republished here by the Discovery Institute). Gallagher ended that piece with this quote:

Critical thinking has no place in science class? Really? That bodes incredibly poorly for the future of science teaching. We’re shelving our best weapon against intelligent design, and I find it incredibly sad that scientists who support evolution so strongly would have us shield growing young minds from the “dangers” of critical thinking.

If that’s not dogma, I don’t know what is.

…which of course doesn’t really address the arguments PZ and Jason had put forth–no one wants to “shield minds” from critical thinking at all.

So, of course it’s a bit depressing to see an editor of a life science magazine make strawman mischaracterizations of his fellow scientists who approach the issue differently (and, perhaps, have spent a bit more time in the trenches than Gallagher has). But Gallagher’s editorial in the July issue (“Zealots for Science”) makes me think that, maybe, hopefully, he’s starting to get it.

(Continued at Aetiology)

The conservative pundit Peggy Noonan today published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which she blames confusion over global warming on – wait for it – climate scientists.

She writes:

…how sad and frustrating it is that the world’s greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not?

Yes, how sad. Except that the vast majority of scientists with any credibility have in fact come to the conclusion that global warming is real, and that it has a likely anthropogenic origin.

.. and why you should care.

KCFS invites Panda’s Thumber’s from all over to visit us next week and get your fill of discussion of the science standards. Here’s what we’ve got planned so far:

Jack Krebs will speak on the meaning of the changes made to the Kansas science standards by the creationist majority on the Board of Education. You’re invited to attend the following talks. All are free and open to the public

If you can help advertise, download the appropriate flier and distribute it in any way that will help. Thanks.

Monday, July 24, 7-9 PM, at Johnson County Community Center, Carlsen Center, Room 211, College Blvd. & Quivira, Overland Park, Kansas flier

Thursday, July 27, 7-9 PM,, at Hutchinson Community College & Area Vocational School, Shears Technology Center, 1300 N. Plum, Hutchinson, Kansas flier

NEW - Friday, July 28, 7-9 PM, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 710 N Main St, Garden City, Kansas flier

NEW - Saturday, July 29, 1-3 PM, at Tomanek Hall, Room 106, Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas flier

Monday, July 31, 7-9 PM at Kansas City Kansas Community College - Performing Arts Center, 7250 State Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas. flier

See here for additional resources associated with these talks.

Sponsored by Kansas Citizens For Science www.kcfs.org

Information: Jack Krebs – 785-840-5113 [Enable javascript to see this email address.]

I wrote here that pili–long, filamentous surface molecules involved in adhesion and bacterial “sex”–had recently been discovered in gram positive organisms; pecifically, in group A and B streptococci (Streptococcus pyogenes and Streptococcus agalactiae, respectively), using a genomics approach. Though this publication is quite recent, this is a fast-moving area of research, as evidenced by two new papers which extend this earlier research into pili in the group B streptococcus (GBS).

(Continued at Aetiology)

Well, I’ll give Dr. Dino this: at least he is consistent in his wackiness. The latest from the Pensacola News-Journal:

Hovind’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kafahni Nkrumah, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis at a hearing Monday that his client did not want to enter a plea because he does not believe the United States, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office “have jurisdiction in this matter.”

When pressed by Davis to enter a plea of either guilty or not guilty, Hovind said he wished to enter a plea of “subornation of false muster.”

“Subornation,” according to Webster’s Dictionary, means instigating another to do something illegal. “Muster” is an assembly, often for inspection or roll call.

When pressed by Davis, Hovind said he was entering a not guilty plea “under duress.”

First, I would just like to say that everyone here at PT would like to express their sympathies to the public defender assigned to Hovind. I suppose public defenders see all sorts of weird things, but Hovind will be a handful.

I attempted to gain a little more insight on what “subornation of false muster” is supposed to be – the poor reporter was obviously struggling. The Pensacola News-Journal‘s columnist, who was at the hearing, said it was “a defense I haven’t heard in 30 years of hanging around courtrooms.”

Listeria monocytogenes is a gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium. It can be found in the environment as a soil inhabitant. However, it also can be a frequent contaminant of our food supply. As the latter, the bacterium is a significant public health concern, as it is capable of causing serious infections. Listeriosis (infection with Listeria) causes ~2500 serious illnesses and 500 deaths each year in the United States, and the hardest-hit are those with poor immune systems due to age (the very young and old), other immunocompromsing conditions (such as chemotherapy, organ transplant, or AIDS), and pregnant women. Once ingested, the bacterium is able to cross the intestine and spread throughout the body via the bloodstream, where it can attack organs and cause serious damage.

The very fact that it’s typically an environmental organism (rather than a solely pathogenic agent) likely accounts for some of its virulence and transmission. It’s able to survive a number of environmental stresses, including low temperature and high salt concentrations. Indeed, its ability to grow at relatively low temperatures is one way it evades our efforts to control it: it can grow in food even at refrigeration temperatures.

Listeria is particularly insidious as a cause of fetal death or other complications during pregnancy. Intrauterine infection can lead to preterm labor, spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, or serious–and potentially deadly–infection of the neonate. However, fairly little is known regarding exactly how this condition develops, or the mechanisms that lead to infection of the fetus. It has been thought that the increased susceptibility to infection with Listeria during pregnancy is largely due to a decrease in cell-mediated immunity that occurs as a result of pregnancy. This is a particularly attractive hypothesis for Listeria, which is an intracellular pathogen. A new paper in PLoS Pathogens examines this phenomenon in greater detail, using a guinea pig model of infection.

(Continued at Aetiology)

The primary election for the Kansas Board of Education is coming up on August 1. Everyone is following the election closely, because the creationists currently have a 6-4 majority on the board, but 4 of the creationists are up for reelection, while only 1 of the pro-science candidates is up for relection. Furthermore, in many places in Kansas, the Republicans are so dominant that the real fight is not between a Democrat and a Republican in the general election, but between a moderate Republican and a conservative Republican in the primary.

So, you can expect that the Kansas news will be heating up for the next two weeks. We here at PT will do our best to keep you in the loop, but here are some webpages and blogs based in Kansas that you should follow for the latest firsthand accounts:

Stand Up for REAL Science. This website, which I just found out about, is run by Kansas biology teacher Jeremy Mohn. He appears to be somewhat annoyed at the Discovery Institute’s irony-meter-busting “Stand Up For Science” campaign. It’s a nice looking site, and comes with his blog, An Evolving Creation, where he has already debunked one of the fables that the ID advocates are telling about the group Kansas Citizens for Science.

Earlier this week the Kansas state Board of Education unveiled a glossy pamphlet on the changes made to the Kansas science standards. Even though they claimed to just be including direct quotes from the standards, they in fact did some significant editorializing that supports the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design network’s campaign position that Intelligent Design is not included in the standards.

But the Kansas science standards do say that students should learn about ID, and that ID content ought to be in the standards.

If you want to read more about this new KBOE pamphlet, see State BOE aligns itself with Intelligent Design campaign in saying “No ID in standards at KCFS News.

However, here I would like to repost from KCFS News my analysis of the Board’s Rationale statement showing that indeed the Board does call for students to learn about ID. I know Nick Matzke posted on this topic earlier, but I wanted to present my take on the matter also.

The Pensacola News-Journal is doing fantastic work keeping us up to date on the Hovind story. A longer and more detailed story came out today. Some of the more interesting/scary bits:

Of the 58 charges, 44 were filed against Kent Hovind and his wife, Jo, for evading bank reporting requirements as they withdrew $430,500 from AmSouth Bank between July 20, 2001, and Aug. 9, 2002.

At the couple’s first court appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miles Davis, Kent Hovind professed not to understand why he is being prosecuted. Some 20 supporters were in the courtroom.

“I still don’t understand what I’m being charged for and who is charging me,” he said.

Kent Hovind, who often calls himself “Dr. Dino,” has been sparring with the IRS for at least 17 years on his claims that he is employed by God, receives no income, has no expenses and owns no property.

Yet more:

This is a guest appearance of Erik Tellgren (it is his first appearance on the Panda’s Thumb). Again, lest it can be misinterpreted by inattentive readers (as this happened before), Erik is the sole author of this essay to which I (MP) did not contribute in any way except for posting it as a courtesy to Erik.

Those readers who are familiar with Talk Reason archive may recall that Erik was the author of a 2002 essay wherein he provided a rigorous mathematical rebuttal of Dembski’s so called law of conservation of information (see here ).

The original NFL theorem and rugged fitness landscapes are briefly reviewed and it is pointed out that the fact the assumptions behind the former leads to the latter type of fitness landscape. Furthermore, it is stressed that for these fitness landscapes, the absolute performance of evolution is not prohibitively bad, that high-fitness regions tend to be well-connected, and that the difficulty of finding high-fitness regions does not increase with the size of the search space.

Continue reading Free Noodle Soup on Talk Reason.

In an earlier posting on the No Free Lunch Theorems and random search, I stated that

PvM Wrote:

It should not come as a surprise that the “No Free Lunch Theorems” have more unfortunate surprises in store for Intelligent Design. More on that later…

Now it is later and I present: Erik Tellgren, freshly returned from a trip, who has combined the results for random search and the work by Gavrilet to show

Tellgren Wrote:

The original NFL theorem and rugged fitness landscapes are briefly reviewed and it is pointed out that the assumptions behind the former lead to the latter type of fitness landscape. Furthermore, it is stressed that for these fitness landscapes, the absolute performance of evolution is not prohibitively bad, that high-fitness regions tend to be well-connected, and that the difficulty of finding high-fitness regions does not increase with the size of the search space. (PDF format.)

Concluding that:

Tellgren Wrote:

To summarize, the implications of the assumption of a randomly chosen fitness function do not just include Wolpert and Macready’s NFL result, but also the results

• that the absolute performance of any search for high-fitness genotypes is fairly good and, importantly, independent of the size of the genotype space, and
• the set of high-fitness genotypes is well-connected and the connectedness ncreases with increasing dimensionality of the genotype space.

More metaphorically, the NFL scenario may deny biological evolution a free lunch, but once the lunch break is over it hands evolution a large free bowl of noodle soup. Acknowledgement:

Read more at TalkReason:Free Noodle Soup

One of the tried and true tactics of creationists of all stripes has long been to equate evolution with atheism, and thus those who accept evolution become atheists. In a society where surveys show that atheists are, for some bizarre reason, among the most distrusted people, this is good political strategy; it’s also false. It is simply a scare tactic, designed (intelligently, perhaps, but also unethically) to exploit the public’s fear and distrust of atheists. Such fears are utterly irrational, of course, but that is precisely why they can be exploited so effectively by demagogues. Those people exploit the fact that the vast majority of people who deny evolution do so not because of the science (which they are almost uniformly ignorant of) but because they have a perception that evolution leads to atheism which, of course, leads to mass chaos and rampant immorality.

Continue Reading at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Comments may be left there.

I know this is just a part of their shameless election strategy for the Kansas Board of Education primaries coming up on August 1, but it is still gratifying to see the Discovery Institute frantically running from ID in an attempt to avoid an election defeat for the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” “intelligent design” crypto-creationist science standards they are attempting to push onto students in Kansas. Check this out:

Critical Analysis of Evolution is Not the Same as Teaching Intelligent Design

A favorite Darwinist conspiracy theory is to claim that education policies requiring critical analysis of evolution are simply a guise for teaching intelligent design (ID). Right now anti-science groups in Kansas are claiming that the state’s new science standards are pushing intelligent design.

The Kansas science standards do not include intelligent design. In spreading this falsehood, opponents of the standards ignore the following clear statement by the Kansas Board of Education in the standards. “We also emphasize that the Science Curriculum Standards do not include Intelligent Design.…” (emphasis added) Which part of “do not include Intelligent Design” can’t opponents of the standards understand?

[formatting original]

First, the obvious one-liner: “No, the standards don’t include ‘ID’, they really just include creationism.” But apart from that, I would like to look at the claim that this ID-in-the-Kansas-science-standards idea is a conspiracy theory.

[Note: Some comments have expressed confusion about what I am quoting below, so to be clear: the bits from the Kansas standards that I quote below are in the Kansas Science Standards right now. They were passed into the Kansas Science Standards by the creationists on the Kansas Board of Education on November 8, 2005. The quotes are specifically from the February 14, 2006, version of the standards, which passed minor edits to avoid copyright infringement after the NAS and NSTA denied Kansas permission to use text from the national model standards. However, because it takes a while for school districts to receive the standards and write up science curricula, these new standards are probably not “in effect” anywhere until the next school year starts. Between now and then 4 of the 6 creationists on the Board of Education face reelection this fall, which is why the antievolution groups are gunning up the propaganda.]

UPDATE: A summary and MP3 of the relevant part of the Achievement Committee meeting are available here. The first voice is co-chair Father Michael Cochran, one of the two main ID pushers on the State BOE.

By James I. Kirkland, Ph. D.

The National Park Service is requesting comments on the development of a regional paleontological repository facility in Vernal, Utah in a partnership with the Vernal Field House of Natural History (Utah State Parks). The facilty is to be constructed adjoining the newly opened Vernal Field House of Natural History in Vernal and jointly managed.

Please strongly support the development of this facility.

The plan can be accessed here.

We need to strongly support the development of the Uintah Research and Curatorial Center in Vernal, Utah versus the alternative of No Action!

Pamela Winnick is an attorney and former reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who has written several articles that lean against evolution and in favor of intelligent design. I recently forced myself to read her 2005 book, A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion. It wasn’t a pleasant experience…

Read more at Recursivity, and leave comments there.

…but luckily, I’m set straight over at Effect Measure, where Revere completely refutes my silly notion of mutations in H5N1 by citing this excellent guest commentary in the Greely Tribune (where their top story today is about a hot dog from 1952). The commentary is titled “Bird flu a lame claim to evolution theory” and written by one Mike Martin, former editor of Ag Weekly Magazine. He certainly demolishes my silly science-y notation of just what “mutations” (such as those discussed in the Nature article I cited use for analysis) are all about:

(Continued at Aetiology…)

by Mark Isaak

One contributor to this board has commented that religion is never addressed critically here. That’s about to change. Below, I define a criterion for bad religion, explore reasons for its prevalence, and suggest means of combating it. I’m sure many people can find much here to disagree with; I hope they can find things to think about, too.

First, let me clarify that there are really at least two battles for evolution. The first battle is science vs. apathy and poor education generally. That battle, though important, is uncontroversial. The same battle exists for mathematics without excessively raising ire. I will not consider it further here.

The second battle is sometimes called science vs. religion, but such a characterization is grossly misleading. Really, the battle is science, religion, and just about everyone else vs. bad religion.

In an updated paper, Dembski discusses alchemy and describes why he believes evolutionary theory, under certain circumstances, is analogous to alchemy. To appreciate his argument, it helps to realize that on closer scrutiny, Dembski is arguing against philosophical materialism, not evolutionary theory. Secondly, I believe that Dembski has made an excellent case for an analogy between alchemy and Intelligent Design: Namely, both are lacking causal specificity.

The term ‘causal specificity’ means “… specifying a cause sufficient to account for an effect in question” and is used by Dembski to describe to what extent one can specify the pathways and processes through which a particular system has arisen.

Dembski Wrote:

Here, then, is the fallacy in alchemy’s logic. Alchemy [ID] relinquishes causal specificity, yet confidently asserts that an unspecified process [design] will yield a desired transformation [complex specified information]. Lacking causal specificity, the alchemist [ID activist] has no empirical grounds for holding that the desired transformation can be effected. Even so, the alchemist [ID activist] remains convinced that the transformation can be effected because prior metaphysical beliefs [Intelligent Design] ensure that some process, though for now unspecified, must effect the desired transformation. In short, metaphysics guarantees the transformation even if the empirical evidence is against it.

Source:: EVOLUTION AS ALCHEMY By William A. Dembski.(Note: I have added my edits in square brackets [.…])

Although Dembski is arguing that there is an analogy between alchemy and evolution (or more accurately materialistic evolution), there seems to be a much stronger similarity with Intelligent Design when it comes to the lack of causal specificity. Take for example the following response by Dembski when Rafe Gutman asked him for some specificity in explaining how Intelligent Design explains a particular system:

Dembski Wrote:

As for your example, I’m not going to take the bait. You’re asking me to play a game: “Provide as much detail in terms of possible causal mechanisms for your ID position as I do for my Darwinian position.” ID is not a mechanistic theory, and it’s not ID’s task to match your pathetic level of detail in telling mechanistic stories. If ID is correct and an intelligence is responsible and indispensable for certain structures, then it makes no sense to try to ape your method of connecting the dots. True, there may be dots to be connected. But there may also be fundamental discontinuities, and with IC systems that is what ID is discovering.”

Source: ID in their own words: Dembski at Panda’s Thumb

Any more questions? Perhaps “No Free Lunch” should more properly be described as “ID’s Free Ride”. ID has a lot to learn from Darwin, including Darwin’s observations that:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

Charles Darwin, 1871 THE DESCENT OF MAN

This is one more guest appearance of James Downard, continuing his autopsy of Ann Coulter’s ignorant and mendacious screed. For the record, I (Mark Perakh) am posting this essay on PT as a courtesy to Jim Downard, having contributed nothing whatsoever to Jim’s text. This disclaimer seems necessary because some readers in the past erroneously attributed to me essays written by guest contributors (like Mark Frank).

One third of Ann Coulter’s latest bestseller, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is devoted to assailing “Darwiniac cultists” for promoting what she is certain is the false science of evolution. As explored in the first installment (see Talk Reason, part 1), Coulter’s breezy confidence turns out to be a gooey meringue atop layers of stunning technical ignorance caused by indolence when it comes to investigating the issues, along with a giddy reliance on marginal secondary reading. In the second part of an ongoing analysis of what Coulter (didn’t) know and how exactly she manages (not) to know it, James Downard discovers what can happen when Coulter tries to join two fields about which she knows literally less than nothing: paleontology and biology. Continue reading Secondary Addiction, part 2, on Talk Reason, part 2.

Here follows the guts of my new C++ program for solving Steiner Tree problems with a Genetic Algorithm.

I have eliminated much of the Microsoft Foundation Class support code, focusing mainly on the number-crunching routines. I will be happy to share the complete code with interested parties.

The original FORTRAN version from five years ago is still online at NMSR.

You’ll see that I’ve cleaned up and organized everything quite a bit, and completely re-done the snippet which checks for properly connected solutions.

Dave August 21^st, 2006

A couple weeks ago, William Dembski posted an anonymous “edited report” of a talk Ken Miller gave at Texas Tech in March. The “edited report” suggests that Miller should be considered an ID supporter. The only problem is that the “edited report” completely fabricates the question and answer it uses to make its point. Ken Miller has posted a response on his website.

Read Texas Tech – The Real Answer.

Did you ever wonder what was behind that weird amicus brief that a Hindu group filed (with ID advocate Edward Sisson’s help) in support of the evolution warning label sticker in Selman v. Cobb County? You remember, the one that ended by citing a Supreme Court decision, only the Supreme Court in question was the Supreme Court of India? Well, you’re in luck, because I just came across an article by Meera Nanda on Vedic creationists and the alliance they’ve formed with the more traditional conservative evangelical creationists here the U.S. I’d pay good money to see these two groups in the same room with Harun Yahya…

Those of you who have followed creationism/intelligent design literature over the years have probably felt as if you’re living in an alternate universe sometimes. In that literature, many times it seems as if “up” means “down” and “highly supported by the evidence” means “a theory in crisis.”

You may not have been following the comments to this post on AIDS denial (and lord, I can’t blame you), but if you have been, you’ve seen a similar phenomenon, where it’s suggested that mut