October 2007 Archives

First, I actually agree with Egnor that “Creationism” and “Intelligent design” are ostensibly different things; however, the history behind the Intelligent Design movement puts the lie to the prima facie difference between the two.

So for Egnor to claim that “Intelligent design isn’t a religious belief” is the height of disingenuousness; an accusation he himself levels at Pigliucci.

Egnor made much of the fact that Pigliucci cited a survey result that showed that people with more education were less likely to agree with the statement that “heaven is a physical place”. While Egnor may still believe that Heaven is hiding above the firmament and that Hell is in the depths of the earth, it seems rather ignorant to claim that Heaven is a physical place rather than a spiritual place. In response Egnor exclaimed “Why is Dr. Pigliucci surprised that most people, even well-educated people, believe in Heaven?”, it is clear that the question was about Heaven as a real (physical) place. But Pigliucci’s argument was simply that “In fact, the connection between education (science education in particular) and belief in paranormal phenomena or explanations is an empirical matter”.

Now I understand that not too many people take the musings of Egnor too seriously but I do enjoy a good fisking. Saves me a lot of hard work. For those interested in the excellent and thought provoking essay by Pigliucci, it can be found here. Critical thinking can prevent scientifically vacuous concepts like Intelligent Design and other forms of Creationism from violating St Augustine’s position on science, a position I believe us Christians should take seriously.

In my earlier posting on Johnson, I was reminded by a Ron Okimoto that Johnson in an interview with the Berkeley Science Review had made even more startling claims:

“I considered [Dover] a loser from the start,” Johnson begins. “Where you have a board writing a statement and telling the teachers to repeat it to the class, I thought that was a very bad idea.” The jaw drops further when he continues:

Johnson Wrote:

I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.

I remain speechless. The real question now becomes, if there is no real competing ‘theory of ID’ then how can ID have been ‘expelled’. It seems to have been flunked.

The Smart Set (a reincarnation of H.L. Mencken’s great magazine from the Twenties) has an article on the creationist museum in Kentucky. Excerpt:

The museum here isn’t the first devoted to a literal interpretation of the Bible’s opening book. There’s also the 7 Wonders Creation Museum near Mt. St. Helens, the Museum of Earth History in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and the Institute for Creation Research’s Museum of Creation and Earth History in Santee, California. This summer, the Big Valley Creation Science Museum opened to less fanfare in a small, vinyl-sided building in Alberta, Canada.

AiG’s museum in Petersburg, however, is the biggest creationist museum in the country and, AiG boasts, the most “professional.” The ministry brought in Patrick Marsh, the designer behind Universal Studios’ Jaws and King Kong attractions. At Universal, Marsh used special effects to build a fear of killer sharks and giant gorillas. In Petersburg, he’s used the same tools to build a fear of God.

The Creation Museum also draws the most on the conventions of traditional natural history museums, including the rush for interactivity and entertainment as a means of reaching young minds. Qualities like these led believers to pony up the entire $27 million in construction costs, leaving the museum debt-free, according to its builders. They’re also what AiG hopes will attract 250,000 people every year to this sleepy corner of Kentucky.

(Read the rest…)

In other words, the flagellar machine itself indicates that it did not arise by a random and unguided process like Darwinian evolution, but rather arose by a non-random and intelligently directed process such as intelligent design.

Source: Evolution News Blog, Principled (not Rhetorical) Reasons Why ID Doesn’t Identify the Designer (Part 1)

Let’s carefully analyze this statement. What is intelligent design? It is the set theoretic complement of the disjunction regularity-or-chance. In other words, that which remains when science cannot explain how something arose via processes of regularity and chance. In other words, Luskin basically describes the definition of design. However, in order to reach a true design inference, one has to take the step towards agency. It is in that step where ID fails miserably, and even though ID proponents like Dembski warned about confusing design with agency, Luskin seems to not have gotten the memo.

Before I proceed, however, I note that Dembski makes an important concession to his critics. He refuses to make the second assumption noted above. When the EF implies that certain systems are intelligently designed, Dembski does not think it follows that there is some intelligent designer or other. He says that, “even though in practice inferring design is the first step in identifying an intelligent agent, taken by itself design does not require that such an agent be posited. The notion of design that emerges from the design inference must not be confused with intelligent agency” (TDI, 227, my emphasis).

Source: Ryan Nichols, Scientific content, testability, and the vacuity of Intelligent Design theory, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2003 ,vol. 77 ,no 4 ,pp. 591 - 611

Well, if Behe can call Miller an intelligent design proponent because of his Christian faith, showing that ID really is all about religion, then it seems that it is not more than fair that we call Behe an evolutionist for his acceptance of common descent, and his somewhat self-contradictory claim that after God set it all in motion, evolution could very well have played itself out via purely natural processes of regularity and chance. But if that is the case then ID, which is based on eliminating such natural processes to infer design seems to have lost its claim to it.

Miller Wrote:

Even more confusing is Behe’s attempt to meld this version of design with science. He tries to argue that his God need not intervene to produce change because “the purposeful design of life to any degree is easily compatible with the idea that, after its initiation, the universe unfolded exclusively by the intended playing out of natural laws.” Really? Bebe has just provided two hundred pages of passionate arguments that natural laws are not sufficient to explain evolutionary change, only to turn around and claim that they are. His core argument is that the natural laws that produce mutations cannot generate the diversity needed to explain evolutionary change. Then he insists that the unfolding of our universe is governed entirely by those same natural laws. And Behe does nothing to dispel this self-contradiction.

Kenneth R. Miller “Faulty Design” Review of “The Edge of Evolution” CommonWeal, October 12, 2007

Just in time for Halloween, the latest edition of Newsweek has a neat article about the psychology of supernatural belief. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The mind also sees patterns in random data, which is why the sky is speckled with bears and big dippers. This drive to perceive patterns—which is very useful in interpreting experimental data as well as understanding people’s behavior—can also underlie such supernatural beliefs as seeing Jesus in the scorch marks and flecks of grain on a grilled-cheese sandwich. “If a stain looks like the Virgin Mary,” says Hood, “then it is a divine sign and not a coincidence. If the wind in the cave sounds like a voice, then it is a voice.” […]

The mind also tends to impute consciousness to inanimate objects (ever yell at a balky computer?). This leads us to believe that natural phenomena are “purposeful, caused by agents with sentient minds,” says Hood, whose book “The Supernatural Sense” is due next year. It’s only a short step to thinking that “ ‘things that go bump in the night’ are the result of some spirit or agent,” not branches brushing against your drainpipe.

Sound like anyone you know?

An important point made in the article is that the tendency to see patters that aren’t there or to impart consciousness to things that aren’t conscious is a normal outcome of the way the human brain functions, due in large part to having to deal with incomplete sensory input. A couple of important lesson to draw from this (to me anyway) is that, first of all, rigorous empirical testing is necessary in science precisely because everyday perception can be so badly misleading. And secondly, the brain’s wiring can make it very difficult for people to disabuse themselves of supernatural beliefs. I still don’t know what the best method of doing that is, but getting them to understand the underlying means by which such beliefs form is probably a useful exercise.

The Association for Science Education adds its voice for evolution

From the NCSE we hear about the Association for Science Education which has issued a statement on science education, “intelligent design” and creationism

The Association for Science Education – a professional association for teachers of science in Britain and around the world, with over 15,000 members – recently issued a statement (PDF) on science education, “intelligent design,” and creationism, reading in part:

it is clear to us that Intelligent Design has no grounds for sharing a platform as a scientific ‘theory’. It has no underpinning scientific principles or explanations to support it. Furthermore it is not accepted as a competing scientific theory by the international science community nor is it part of the science curriculum. It is not science at all. Intelligent Design belongs to a different domain and should not be presented to learners as a competing or alternative scientific idea. As such, Intelligent Design has no place in the science education of young people in school.

In the post about my review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution, many complained that they couldn’t access the full text without a university subscription or paying a huge fee. I have checked Elsevier’s policies on this. Authors are not allowed to post the published PDF to their websites (you have to get that from Elsevier), but they can put up the unformatted, submitted preprint version of their articles, as long as they include the reference and DOI to the published version. So here is the reference: Nicholas J. Matzke (2007). “The edge of creationism.” Trends In Ecology and Evolution, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 24 October 2007. ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2007.09.004.

…and the full text is below the fold. Note that the unpublished version has a few minor differences from the published version. For example, it has more emphases which were kind of my way of jumping up and down on the smoking ruins of Behe’s core arguments in The Edge of Evolution.

Although Behe has referred to Miller as an ‘intelligent design proponent’, Miller himself is on the record in many different forms that we should not conflate Miller’s faith with his scientific position.

On November 13^th, 2007 Nova will present Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” and as part of the experience, Nova is providing an excellent companion website. One of the features involves the perspective of various scientists on defining the concept of science

Miller has two segments in which he explains both the scientific method and religion and addresses what he considers some of the abuses of logic (“a gross mischaracterization to take a scientist in the past … and say that Newton worked based on a hypothesis of design)

On Isaac Newton Running time 1:34
Science vs. Religion Running time 2:29

Miller Wrote:

What Intelligent design pretends to do to be in the tradition in Newton, What intelligent design actually is, to be perfectly honest, is in the tradition of the middle ages where they stop investigation by saying we cannot answer this mystery it is the work of God “the designer”. This is a science stopper

On Amazon, Behe has been making the ‘argument’ that not only Miller is an ‘Intelligent Design’ proponent but also that Miller is (in large part) motivated by theology to embrace Darwinism.

Behe Wrote:

So there you have it. Miller (and Ayala) won’t tolerate life on earth being designed because that would impugn God’s reputation. Too many bad things inhabit the earth. They embrace Darwinism, at least in large part, for theological reasons.

all because Miller observes that

To Behe, these are not byproducts of a fruitful and creative natural world that also gave us the beauty of a sunset, the grace of an eagle, and the talent of a Beethoven. No, each vicious parasite and fatal disease is the direct and intentional work of the designer. This isn’t my conclusion; it’s Behe’s.

Yet in Miller’s scathing review, he clearly states his position

Few may be aware that the State of Florida is revising its educational standards and that a dedicated group of people have been working on the science standards, including evolution. The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Joe Wolf, president of Florida Citizens for Science, called the draft standards a “wonderful” blueprint for science education. Wolf, of Winter Haven, said the evolution debate holds little interest to most scientists, who accept it as fact. That’s why the issue did not become controversial during the standards-writing meetings, he said.

“It’s a PR issue,” he said. “And it’s a religious issue. In the scientific community, it’s not an issue.”

On EvolutionNews.org, the Discovery Institute’s blog site, Robert Crowther manages to spin it as

Florida Citizens for Science Excommunicate Prominent Scientists from “Scientific Community” For Doubting Darwin

So what has happened to Philip ‘the father of Intelligent Design’ Johnson? While some ID proponents have been arguing that ID has nothing in common with religion, Johnson seems to disagree. Since his stroke in 2001, Johnson’s public appearances seem to have been minimal and given his past statements, I am not surprised that ID is keeping Johnson out of the lime-light.

On UcD Tyke explains why the “confusion” by O’Reilly and Stein about the religious nature of ID is due to a fundamental entanglement with creationism. And while some effort is made to manage the message and pretend that ID makes no claims about the designer(s), ID proponents are very clear that the purpose of ID is to introduce the reality of God into the academic world.

Tyke Wrote:

This may be pessimistic, but I very much doubt ID will ever come close to disentangling itself from creationism and religion. By far the largest block of support for ID comes from the conservative Christian community, and they simply see no merit in pretending that they don’t necessarily mean God when they talk about an intelligent designer. In fact, many of them believe it to be disingenuous to do so.

Even Philip Johnson himself is quite open about his religious motives for supporting ID when talking about it on Christian radio shows. While his lawyerly choice of words may allow him to continue claiming that the science of ID is silent on who the creator is, there is no mistaking the message he is sending to the Christian faithful–that ID enables Biblical creationism as a scientific theory.

Jon Blumenfeld on “NOMA”:

Every single [book review in the Reports of the NCSE], in whole or in part, is an attempt to reconcile science and religion – and that’s just one issue of RNCSE.… [C]an’t we dispense with all the book writing, all the mental contortionism, all the close study and redefinition of every word in the bible to somehow rescue God, and just say, “Science good. Faith not subject to reason.” As Hugh Laurie’s character, Dr. House, recently said: “Rational arguments do not work on religious people, otherwise there would be no religious people.”

(Read the rest…)

Update: I’ve corrected an error; Blumenfeld was referring to the reviews section of RNCSE, not to every article.

On UcD Dembski addresses the news that the author of a 52 year old paper has retracted the paper. Dembski makes some claims which are either erroneous or full of irony. So let’s start.

Dembski Wrote:

Below is a fascinating report in the NYTimes about a long-retired professor who found that his work was being cited by “creationists” and THEREFORE decided to retract it.

But in fact the researcher retracted passages of the paper because he had uncovered errors in his paper, errors which were being quote-mined by Creationists.

So not only did the researcher not retract the paper, he asked to retract two passages that contained errors in the claims and which were abused by creationists.

Homer Jacobson Wrote:

In January 1955, American Scientist published my article, “Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life” (Vol. 43, No. 1). I ask you to honor my request to retract two brief passages, as follows:

Those crazy rascals behind Expelled have some new games they want to play: they’ve put out a casting call for victims of persecution. It’s a pitiful plea, but it will probably net a nice collection of complaints — because it’s true. We do reject Intelligent Design from the academy, from science, and from science education, and there’s a very good reason for that: it’s the same reason we reject astrology, alchemy, creationism, haruspication, necromancy, ornithomancy, and witchcraft from our science courses. Because they aren’t science.

Taylor Kessinger gets it. He’s a junior at the University of Arizona who wrote a nice, lucid opinion piece for the school paper.

Continue reading “The Discovery Institute doesn’t like smart college students” (on Pharyngula)

On Amazon Behe admits that Intelligent Design is nothing more than a code word for Christian faith.

Behe Wrote:

Miller Wrote:

Behe happily notes, as I would, that we live in a universe whose fundamental physical constants are remarkably hospitable to life. To me, and apparently to Behe, these constants may well reflect the will of a creator we would both identify as the God of Abraham.

So let me emphasize: Kenneth Miller is an intelligent design proponent. He believes that the laws of the universe were purposely set up to permit life to develop. Miller thinks that, to accomplish the goal of life, the universe had to be designed to the depth of its fundamental physical constants. I agree with him as far as he goes, but, on the other hand, as I write in The Edge of Evolution, I think design extends further into the universe, past physical constants, past anthropic coincidences, and well into biology. Yet, with respect to design, he and I differ only on degree, not on principle.

Having a hard time finding enough persecution stories, the makers of Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed (background here and here, in case anyone’s forgotten) are now asking students or anyone else they can find to submit their horrible, horrible stories of oppression at the hands of the Dogmatic Darwinist Conspiracy. And if the other persecution stories they’re touting are any guide, little details like being true are not a prerequisite. You too can be a movie star!

Ever sat in class and had your professor straight up challenge your intelligence for suggesting even the possibility of an intelligent design in the universe?

Tired of being labeled merely for questioning aspects of the Darwinian theory of evolution?? Ever been scoffed at or ridiculed in front of your peers?

Well, here’s your opportunity to tell your story on our Website AND possibly be in the movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Tell the world some of the outrageous things your professors say about your questions.

You and your story just might be chosen by our producers to be in the film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”! Let your voice be heard!

Oh my, have you been.… scoffed at? Does someone think you’re being foolish? Did they make mean girl faces at you? It’s time to stop taking it like an adult and unleash your inner cry-baby. The tireless defenders of free speech that are the makers of Expelled! will help you denounce those evil professors and anyone else who thinks they have a right to an opinion.

Andy Warhol is now smiling down from heaven (or up from hell) of all the many hours of fame that are about to be created in neat little 15 minute packets. Careful though. Given the loose ethical standards of the filmmakers, you may well end up in an entirely different film than the one you interview for.

On Uncommon Descent Denyse O’Leary asks a question, every ID creationist should ask, and be able to answer: “What exactly is the “design” part of “intelligent design”?”

For an author of a book on Intelligent Design as well as a ‘teacher’ of a pastoral course on Intelligent Design, Denyse seems to be rather unfamiliar with one of the foundational concepts of Intelligent Design. Well, no fear, PvM is here.

I am pleased to announce that Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE) has just put up the article-in-press version of my book review of Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Here is the reference and link:

Nicholas J. Matzke (2007). “The edge of creationism.” Trends In Ecology and Evolution, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 24 October 2007. ScienceDirect, DOI.

The DOI link doesn’t seem to be working just yet, presumably that is temporary. And the other link is one of those nasty superlong ones, so if nothing works, go to the TREE website and click on “Articles in Press” to see it (you will have to have a subscription or university access to get the article; I will provide a partial quote below).

Writing this review was challenging. There are a great many things wrong with Behe’s book, and attempting to hit the most important points effectively, with just 750 words to work with, was quite a challenge. For example, there was no way to fit in anything about HIV, even though some really good points have emerged on that front in the last few months. Thanks to the PT crew for a great many helpful discussions, comments, etc. I also had Cavalier-Smith’s (1997) TREE review of Darwin’s Black Box, literally the article that got me into ID criticism in a serious way, to inspire me (despite some flaws in that review).

I tried to make every word count, so it is hard to pick a summary quote, but here is a bit from the middle:

Biologist Stephen Matheson describes some cool evolutionary biology experiments:

Even better, though, would be to find an example of evolutionary change in which the new and old forms are still living, so that one could do the before-and-after comparison. It would look something like this: take a species, subject it to evolutionary influences of some kind until the descendants look significantly different from the ancestors, then compare the genomes (or developmental processes) of the descendant and the ancestor, in hopes of discovering the types of changes at the genetic or developmental level that gave rise to the differences in appearance or function of the organisms. That would be a cool experiment.

In fact, that kind of experiment has been done, more than once. The best example, in my opinion, involves an organism far less sexy than a dinosaur or a finch or a whale: Zea mays, better known as corn (or maize).

If that’s got you hungry for more, head on over to his blog and read the entire article.

On UcD, BarryA claims that “Dawkins: “Darwinism Leads to Fascism””

As irksome as Richard Dawkins can sometimes be, one must nevertheless admire his occasional outbursts of honesty. Over at First Things Fr. Ed Oakes refers to an interview Dawkins gave to an Austrian newspaper, Die Presse (July 30, 2005), in which he said: “No decent person wants to live in a society that works according to Darwinian laws. … A Darwinian society would be a fascist state.”

That’s like saying that a Quantum Mechanical society would be an anarchy. I hope that those better versed in logic than our Intelligent Design defender, understands the difference between “A Darwinian society would be a fascist state” and “Darwinism leads to Fascism”?

Kids, you be warned, this is your brain on Intelligent Design…

And what about the ellipsis?

The Ledger reports how “..45-member committee appointed by the state Department of Education began revising the science standards in May in response to a failing 2005 report on Florida’s public school science curriculum by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit group.”

The science side is well supported by an NCSE representative

Jonathan Smith, a Lakeland resident and a representative of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit group critical of intelligent design, helped write the new standards.

“It (new standards) closed the door on any ambiguity” about evolution, Smith said. “There isn’t both sides. There is only one side as far as science is concerned.” That side is evolution, he said.

and there are also some creationists who lament that God/Intelligent Design is unfairly excluded

But Mickey Carter, pastor at Landmark Baptist Church in Haines City, said the revisions will be a disservice to students.

He said there should be a balance between both intelligent design and evolution.

“We are denying freedom of ideas, speech and shutting down one side,” Carter said. “The kids ought to be able to study both sides of it so we don’t just turn out a bunch of rubber-stamped robots in the classroom.”

Carter said that science is limited in its ability to determine every fact. “When it’s all said and done, folks just don’t give God enough credit,” Carter said. “Too many things on this world cannot just be an accident. You’ve got to give some credit to some intelligence.”

Why is it that Intelligent Design supporters are honest enough to admit that it ID is all about God while its major activists seem to be denying the obvious fact? Teach the controversy… Despite denials by the Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design is correctly identified as a religious concept. O’Reilly, Ben Stein and many ID supporters could not possible be all wrong :-)

The latest Tangled Bank is online at the Radula — enjoy the diversity of (mostly) biology!

Over on the Ben Stine vs Intelligent Design thread , one Ben Major writes:

…..Behe just placed a major thumping on the head of Sean Carroll on pyrimethamine in a back and forth at Science for the full story see: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2

No, Behe just put together a series of non-sequiturs.

To put this in perspective, here is what Carroll wrote: (which flows on from this article )

“With respect to the latter, the passage he quotes in his Letter about how “[a]dding more mutations …. can increase the level of resistance” is immediately followed in his book by the disclaimer that “[h]owever, as usual there’s a hitch. Some of those extra mutations (but not the first one) seem to interfere with the normal work of the protein” (p. 75). Behe is clearly seeking to convey the message that there is some impediment to Darwinian evolution via multiple intermediates, both in this specific case and in general (hence the phrase “as usual”). However, this is not the case. Careful inspection of the data in the reference I cited (2 (Sirawaraporn et al., 1997)) reveals that, in fact, certain mutations (e.g., Cys59->Arg) increase specific parameters of the enzyme’s performance. Structural studies suggest that this mutation, found at very high frequency in drug-resistant parasites in nature, improves enzyme binding to substrates in the context of otherwise adverse mutations (3(Yuvaniyama et al., 2003)). Furthermore, pyrimethamine resistant dihydrofolate reductase enzymes actually have activities equal to or better than the wild-type enzyme (4(Sandefur et al., 2007)). Behe also neglects to note the fact that such triple and quadruple mutant enzymes have been found in isolates from India, Southeast Asia, Eastern Africa, and South America, including areas where pyrimethamine use has been limited. The latter suggests that mutant parasites may be as fit as wild-type parasites.”

This is the funniest thing I’ve read all week. Yes, it’s even funnier than young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute fellow John Mark Reynolds attempting to argue that J. K. Rowling is wrong about Dumbledore being gay. (It’s fascinating to watch Reynolds blithely employ interpretive principles derived from the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and apply them to the Harry Potter texts to argue against the very ‘deity’ that created them, J. K. Rowling. It’s a short circuit in Reynolds’s brain, just like young-earthism. But that’s another story.)

Anyway, here’s the funniest thing: First the DI tells everyone to watch Ben Stein on the O’Reilly Factor. But apparently neither Stein nor O’Reilly got the memo about how ID isn’t about religion or God creating things. They both think it is for some reason. And yet they clearly are not part of the evil Darwinist liberal media. Wherever could they have gotten the idea? I mean, it’s not like hundreds of clear statements from ID advocates connecting ID to God, creationism, and conservative evangelical apologetics should have lead them astray.

Here’s the actual text of the latest missive from the Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division:

The next episode of NOW on PBS will report on a trip by scientists and evangelical Christians to Alaska “with open minds to learn about the effects of global warming.”. Earlier this year, the ScienceDaily blog reported on this unique trip.

The Scientists-Evangelical Alaska Expedition grew out of a collaboration that began at a two-day private retreat in December 2006 attended by 30 leaders from the scientific and evangelical communities. The retreat led to close relationships of mutual trust and understanding among the participants and to the release in January 2007 of an “Urgent Call to Action,” a pledge that these leaders would speak with one voice in their shared commitment to protect life on Earth.

On October 22, Anika Smith, posted the following announcement on EvolutionNews.org

Ben Stein, star of the new movie “Expelled,” is going to be on the O’Reilly Factor tonight, talking about his involvement in “Expelled” and the suppression that’s taking place in our nation’s academic and scientific communities. Be sure to tune in and learn more about the movie, which we first noted here.

After Ben KlStein’s disastrous appearance in which both he and the host emphasized the religious foundation of Intelligent Design, the posting seems to have been expelled from the website. But evidence remains

Teach the controversy seems to have its limits. But design inferences are fun.

It’s only taken 30 years, but information about Ebola in nature is finally starting to snowball. First, after almost 15 years of disappearing from the human population, Ebola returned with a vengeance in the mid 1990s, causing illness in 6 separate outbreaks in Gabon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and South Africa (imported case) between 1994 and 1996. As doctors and scientists rushed in to contain the outbreaks, they were also able to collect viral samples, and trap animals and insects in the area, searching for a reservoir for the virus. In this decade, there have been almost yearly outbreaks of Ebola and/or the closely related Marburg virus in Africa, resulting in the discovery of both Ebola and Marburg infection in species of fruit bats–suggesting these animals may be a reservoir species for filoviruses (though more work remains to be done to confirm this).

As I blogged about previously, prior work has suggested that the most deadly Ebola subtype, known as Ebola-Zaire (EBO-Z) after its initial site of isolation, has been spreading steadily eastward across the central African continent. This was tracked by examining isolates of the virus obtained during human epidemics, which introduces a bias into the sample. However, viral isolates from other sources have been quite difficult to obtain, despite many years of searching. A new paper examines viral isolates collected from dead gorillas and reconstructs their phylogeny in an effort to fill in some of these gaps.

(Continued over at Aetiology).

For those who find it too painful to watch the video of Bill O’Reilly interviewing Ben Stein on his show last night, I have taken the liberty of posting a transcript over at EvolutionBlog. Read it and weep. (And believe me, I do mean weep.) Comments can be left there, but please keep in mind that I am only the messenger!

The ID crowd was all giddy about Ben Stein appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s show, little did they know that Bill would introduce ID as follows:

“intelligent design, that is, a deity created life”

Seems that Bill and Ben never got the Discovery Institute’s talking points. I am almost starting to accept the hypothesis that Ben Stein is doing this all to expose ID with “Expelled”. Surely this belongs in the category of humor.

On Bill O’Reilly, Ben Stein made the following claim:

Ben Stein Wrote:

ID is an effort to fill in the gaps, and is a sincere effort to add new knowledge to the theory.

(paraphrased)

Nice to know that ID is in the business of filling the gaps, seems that Ben Stein does realize that ID is just a variant of God of the Gaps. However, like so many other ID proponents, Ben has been misled to believe that ID adds new knowledge to the theory. It doesn’t. Did he not get Bill’s memo? Did Ben not get a copy of the Wedge document?

Bill 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.”

Since ID proponents argue, without much merit, that they are being censored, I invite them to explain on this thread to us what knowledge ID has added to science. Ideally, this would be knowledge which would not have been added to science were it not for Intelligent Design’s “revolutionary approach” which involved avoiding to deal in ‘pathetic levels of detail’.

Read more at Pharyngula

The National Geographic shows how intelligence can be reduced to simpler processes and rules. The work is important as it shows, contrary to ID’s assertions, that intelligence can in fact be reducible to processes of regularity and chance. From ants to bees to fish to caribous, the researchers found that “swarm intelligence” is based on simple creatures following simple rules based only on local information. In other words, none of the creatures sees the bigger picture and yet the swarm “responds” in an intelligent way.

Several researchers have used the concept of swarm intelligence to find solutions to similar problems. For instance, Southwest Airlines used the principle to find an optimal schedule for its planes leaving and arriving at gates. In another instance a company optimized its profits by scheduling which plants were to deliver to which customers.

WIkipedia explains:

SI systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. Although there is normally no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local interactions between such agents often lead to the emergence of global behavior. Examples of systems like this can be found in nature, including ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, and fish schooling.