Evil mad scientists steal credit

Lately, the Discovery Institute’s ID site Science and Culture has had almost no arguments that would convince any scientist that Intelligent Design contributed to the diversity of life. Michael Behe’s arguments are the same as before, and William Dembski’s latest versions of his specified complexity argument leaves out any discussion of why having a large value (of his Algorithmic Specified Complexity) cannot be achieved by ordinary evolutionary processes.

But at S&C they are getting a bit angry at evolutionary biologists. For stealing credit that belongs to ID advocates. A post on December 12, is titled “All the Evidence Points to Design, but the Credit Goes to … You Know What”. Even more remarkably, its author is “Science and Culture”. This makes it an official statement by the site. Or else none of their people want to take credit or blame for it.

They simply point to an article at BioEssays on “spatiotemporal cues in cell division”, in particular to its last paragraph, which contains the sentence (boldface text is S&C’s emphasis):

Why evolution selected chromosomes as a platform to integrate different signals is easily explained by the need to concentrate mitotic regulators (and their control) which would otherwise dilute in a vast cytoplasmic ocean.

and S&C’s comment is

Many years ago, William Dembski said that one of the most objectionable aspects of modern evolutionary theory was the undeserved, unearned credit it steals from the exquisite, transcendentally elegant work of the Designer. Put more bluntly, evolution is a credit thief, a lowdown sleazy embezzler. If we could personify evolution, we’d have ChatGPT make a drawing of the word as a convict with a prison serial number across its chest. But if you just put your thumb over the word “evolution” in the phrase we highlighted, all the evidence for design is still there, and it’s just too cool for words.

See, all the wonderful details of biological systems must be evidence for Intelligent Design, it’s so obvious that they figure anyone can see this. If a biologist lapses into teleological language that personifies evolution, this must mean they acknowledge that Design Intervention happened, but are too scared to admit it, and give credit to a personified Evolution instead.

Well, the matter can be looked at another way …

Evolutionary biologists would mostly not bother to pay attention, but those that did would notice that S&C is impressed by lots of phenotypes and behaviors that are the result of natural selection. They would notice that the BioEssays article yields to an unfortunate temptation to personify natural selection, in a burst of enthusiasm at the end of the article.

As to who is stealing credit, it is clear that S&C is. But this is mostly silly, rather than distressing.