#48034: Ian Gibson — 11/09  at  04:34 PM
You can't get them on that one; they do believe in microevolution - it's macroevolution they object to (and specifically human macroevolution from non-human ancestors).

#48039: Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling — 11/09  at  04:43 PM
Microevolution? What on earth is that? Does that mean that evolution only applies to microscopic organisms?

#48045: IAMB, FCD — 11/09  at  04:50 PM
Well, we are talking about a virus here...

;-D

#48052: greensmile — 11/09  at  05:03 PM
Thanks for that quote. It doesn't exactly answer my question but it is an answer I am going to remember and enjoy passing around. Its a gem.

Re banging your head against the ceiling: should we pitch in and get you a bigger server?

#48055: — 11/09  at  05:08 PM
Not only that, but Bush only said that both should be taught, not that he disbelieves evolution. We know what's wrong with his "teach the controversy" position, but it's not at all inconsistent his acknowledgement of the threat of the flu jumping. Besides, it isn't clear that he actually believes in the threat; his biggest concern seems to be to use this as a way to get Congress to authorize the use of the military in civilian affairs, the same way he used Katrina to eliminate salary floors and environmental rules. (Yes, he really is that vile.)

#48058: — 11/09  at  05:16 PM
It's been said the KSBE was taken over by "stealth candidates" after an initial round of bum-throwing in reaction to the 1999 debacle. But how stealthy were they? I look at the KSBE website, and each of the members who voted for this ridiculous policy are clearly identifiable: they were educated at Bible colleges, or hold administrative positions in churches. They claim it right on their bio pages!

To be fair, one of the four who voted against the the policy has a resume that includes Episcopal Social Services.

#48060: — 11/09  at  05:17 PM
Meanwhile, in the "Goodbye, Kansas" thread over at Panda's Thumb, a clueless moron named 'socrateaser' blames Mr. Balter's Cowardly Scientists for the board's decision

Anyway, I’m not trying to start an argument with any of you — I’m merely suggesting that boycotting the hearings did not achieve the desired end, and I think that this approach should be reconsidered for future circumstances.

What socrateaser's tiny brain fails to recognize is that if scientists had wasted their time "debating" the creationist liars in Kansas, the outcome would almost certainly have been identical, and the Discovery Institute and the Kansas Rubes for Theocracy would be dancing on the rooftops, crowing to our lazy media that "SCIENTISTS PRESENTED THEIR STRONGEST ARGUMENTS AND THOSE ARGUMENTS WERE FOUND UNCONVINCING!!!!!"

Of course, I'd be happy to educate Poor Li'l Socrateaser myself, except I'm banned from posting to the Panda's Thumb because (allegedly) I'm "excessively vitriolic."

Oh well. ;)

#48062: Kristine Harley — 11/09  at  05:23 PM
"(Yes, he really is that vile.)"

Not only that; look here. Rumsfeld holds stock in the company that has the rights to Tamiflu.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/?cnn=yes

#48066: — 11/09  at  05:27 PM
I look at the KSBE website, and each of the members who voted for this ridiculous policy are clearly identifiable: they were educated at Bible colleges, or hold administrative positions in churches.

The sad part is that just because a person went to a half-assed college or is a church-lovin' type doesn't mean that they are automatically going to behave like kool-aid chugging moron.

The fact is that there are surely millions of people who didn't go to college and who got to church every week who have no difficulty figuring out who the nutball charlatans are in this ongoing drama. High degrees aren't necessary to understand that when 1000 scientists say "A is a well-studied scientific fact" and a couple religious freaks in Seattle say otherwise, the scientists are almost certainly correct -- at least likely enough that teaching kids that a "controversy" exists would amount to teaching kids a lie.

#48068: — 11/09  at  05:31 PM

#48034: Ian Gibson — 11/09 at 04:34 PM
You can't get them on that one; they do believe in microevolution - it's macroevolution they object to

So, if Dembski's 'law of conservation of information' (I refuse to capitalise that!)
claims that only the intelligent designer (and presumably humans) can create information, where do they say that the information for the virus's ability to change to infect humans come from? Did the intelligent designer program it into the virus? Is the intelligent designer then malevolent? Or have they a scientific theory of 'sin' up their sleeves?

#48073: — 11/09  at  05:55 PM
We may have lost Kansas, but look what happened in Pennsylvania.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051109/pl_nm/election_usa_evolution_dc

Duncan

#48082: — 11/09  at  06:16 PM
Good for Pennsylvania. It's beginning to really look like touching that putrid ID mess is political suicide... I only wish we had a stronger comment from Bush to attack.

#48083: — 11/09  at  06:23 PM
Wuhoo! The morons who pushed for "id" in Dover were voted out! Thank FSM! May his noodly appendage touch us all in unforseen ways!

The judge's decision is still in the future, but it looks like the good guys will win this one, no matter what.

#48084: removed — 11/09  at  06:24 PM
Exactly PZ!

If you're a Republican/conservative and Kansas is an embarrassment to you, tough shit! It's your damn Party that's placed these religious whackos in positions of power…

#48085: — 11/09  at  06:26 PM
screw microevolution. i bet i could get some serious funding for nanoevolution.

#48090: — 11/09  at  06:54 PM
All true devotees of the modern synthesis can now slake their thirst for knowledge with a chilled glass of Wasatch Brew Pub's Darwin-approved Evolution Amber Ale:
http://www.wasatchbeers.com/evopage.html No, this isn't a page from The Onion.

#48095: Rick @ shrimp and grits — 11/09  at  07:36 PM

You can't get them on that one; they do believe in microevolution - it's macroevolution they object to

So they believe it's possible to walk downstairs to the kitchen but impossible to walk across your neighborhood?

What strange people.

#48096: Adam Ierymenko — 11/09  at  07:36 PM

So, if Dembski's 'law of conservation of information' (I refuse to capitalise that!)
claims that only the intelligent designer (and presumably humans) can create information

Oh wow... What a turkey...

I have a 1000-line C program that runs an evolutionary simulation and easily generates more information than the size of the original C source file and the size of the compiled program combined. The information generated is functional, was not placed there by a human being, and contains "irreducible" control structures. Oh, and the amount of information exceeds the size of the original program (by up to 10 times) even after being fed through some very strict filtering processes to pack, sort, and remove redundancy from it to yield a good estimate of the number of *non-redundant* bits of information.

http://www.greythumb.org/twiki/bin/view/GreyThumb/Nanopond

I am planning on posting some pretty graphs of this particular phenomenon soon. I am planning also to do some work that might result in a publication, but I am not going to publish on this finding specificially. Instead, I am going to use this to study biodiversity in this simple model system. After all, publishing something in the MIT Artificial Life journal saying that you've generated information would be (to non-IDiots) like sending a space probe to the nearest star and reporting back that the nearest star is, indeed, hot. I just couldn't publish a yawner like that, even if it would help jackhammer Dembski back into his hole. It's so obvious it has no scientific value.

Other people have built other systems that show similar things, though this one is the only one I am aware of that shows information growth that exceeds the size of the original program. Indeed, alife systems showed information growth as early as the late 1980s. Traditional genetic programming systems did so much earlier.

The "law of conservation of information" is what I sometimes refer to as a "lead balloon." A lead balloon is an idea that sounds really compelling, sorta feels right, but is *unbelievably* stupid. Lead balloons are so unbelievably stupid that they somehow-- get it-- float right past our stupidity detectors simply by virtue of the fact that their stupidity is so extreme. It's like some circuit deep in our brain simply cannot believe it, so it just lets it fly.

Lots of dot-com business plans fell into this category. The whiz-bangyness of them caused people not to ask little things like "how does this pay for itself?"

In the case of our friend Dembski and his conservation law, I think it sneaks by because it sounds like a solid scientific law (aren't there other conservation laws?) and when you state it in a certain way it sounds plausible. What we don't notice because we never really think about it is that we witness information-generating phenomena of various types every day.

Just close your eyes and listen sometime... concentrate and filter out all the sounds made by living organisms... and what else do you hear? Does it sound organized? If you graphed it, would the graph show order? Drop a pebble in a pond and graph that sound, and you will see that it has structure. Watch crystals grow, and they form shapes that are neither random nor simply repetative. Google "Class IV cellular automata." Information growth is everywhere around us.

Information generation isn't magic, and it doesn't even require a biological (or biomorphic) evolutionary process. It's an omnipresent aspect of nature. It requires nothing special. It happens all the time, all around us, constantly.

Evolutionary processes are however capable of doing something that looks special to us: they are capable of generating information that is functional-- it does something. As to whether this has any objective significance outside of the phenomenon of self-replication, I am not sure. I don't think anyone knows the answer to that at the moment.

#48099: — 11/09  at  07:39 PM
Yes, this appalling development in Kansas is the responsibility of the Republican Party. But I want to add, as a gay man who loves Pharyngula and hates the Fundies, that it would be nice to hear more bloggers making the connection between homophobia and right-to-lifers, war-mongers and creationists.

After all, it was the gay-marriage-fearing evangelists who got out the Bush vote in Ohio and tipped the election. They have integrated the jingoistic, anti-science, anti-environmentalist, misogynist and homophobic features of their agenda to great political effect. We must make the same connections, publicly, and integrate our agenda as well, or lose the future to the morons.

Trackback: PLANET OF THE KANSAS APES Tracked on: The Heretik (66.151.149.25) at 2005 11 09 19:57:28
FADE IN or is it fade out?“I’m so mad. Doctor Zaius, how can this be happening?”“Don’t go apesh*t on me, Zira. It’s just . . . Kansas.”“How can you be so calm? I’m so angry, Doctor. I want to

#48114: LochNess — 11/09  at  08:20 PM
Yes, the Republican Party is responsible for this, but ultimately, the people of Kansas are really at fault. They voted those clowns into office.

#48128: Evan Murdock — 11/09  at  09:14 PM

So they believe it's possible to walk downstairs to the kitchen but impossible to walk across your neighborhood?

Crossing the neighborhood is an inconceivably difficult (read: impossible) task. Anyone who got across the neigbhorhood clearly drove, since I can't imagine walking that far. In these shoes.

#48131: DarkSyde — 11/09  at  09:30 PM
Well to be perfectly fair, while I agree the repubs have incubated this particular meme of vile ignorant know-nothings way, way more than the dems, the dems aren't exactly standing tall for evo across the board. I've seen them evade and waffle as well.

I really don't think we have all that much to fear from the IDCists. A tiny band of paid scientists operating on a shoestring and a few dozen volunteers like Reed, Ed, and PZ, have kept a well funded group at bay for years. Until there's big corporate money at stake, I don't see that changing. And evo/IDC just doesn't have that kind of appeal to big biz.

#48143: — 11/09  at  10:11 PM
I tend to dissagree with blaming Republicans/religious right. Scientists have cut the masses out of most of their most important discoveries by writing in very specialized journals ostensibly to each other - specialists all. While this is necessary it also provides the opening for creationists, because most people don't have Doctorates and have no idea what the scientific method means or how detailed the work is. To add to the problem, most of the information is hidden behind copyright in university libraries where the general public can't access it.

Access to discovery is the real issue. And it entails outreach, accessibility, and understandability for those who don't have the tools to understand. Break down these barriers and the creationists will have nowhere to go.

Instead of lashing out at the ignorant or stupid. Scientists need to get out of their cloisters, loose the arrogant "we are a special club attitude", and teach the ignorant and stupid before the creationist wingnuts do.

#48153: — 11/09  at  10:55 PM
I have to disagree with Dennis Lynch. There are plenty of good science books for the layman, like me. Just pick up "The Elegant Universe" by Greene, "The Demon Haunted World" by Sagan, "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat" by Gribbin, "Brief History of Time" by Hawking, "Godel, Escher, Bach" etc etc the list goes on and on. These are all "outreach" by the scientific community.