#33584: — 08/03  at  07:48 AM
Despite all the activity here in the underworld of blogging, I didn't see anything about it make the news on TV, intresting enough.

#33585: Aaron M — 08/03  at  08:08 AM
Oh, it did show up in at least one venue:

Whatever your belief, it should be respected. But the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both reject intelligent design and don't want it mentioned in science classes. That, in my opinion, is fascism.

#33586: — 08/03  at  08:30 AM
An excellent, no-punches-pulled article by Sam Harris is at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/sam-harris/

#33587: — 08/03  at  08:33 AM
Perhaps not TV but it did eventually make it into the internet presence of the more conventional media, since google news was claiming 253 items on the subject just a little while ago.

#33588: — 08/03  at  08:35 AM
Did you catch the brief segment on this on Chris Matthews last night? He basically snickered through it, implying that anyone who objected to ID being taught alongside evolution was a wingnut wacko.

CP

#33590: sort of buddhist — 08/03  at  09:18 AM
Objecting to Bush's statement is a rather difficult thing to do with average Americans with little appreciation of the nature of science, because his animadversions sound very much like "let's be fair to both sides," which is a sentiment Americans love (at least in the abstract). Never mind that one "side" has tons of actual evidence behind it and the other is merely a sneaky disguise of religion.

Then again, the average American loves religion, too, whether disguised or not. Actually, I'm continually surprised that we are not being governed by a full-fledged theocracy already. (Oh, wait -- in a lot of respects, we are.)

#33592: Risa — 08/03  at  10:16 AM
Thanks for your great work, PZ.

CP: that's horrid. Anyone have a copy of the video and or transcript?

Over at a super long comment thread at bitchphd, a commenter said:

Now, when scientists say Intelligent Design is not real science to begin with, but proponents of it claim it is, people like me who lack the real inside information are stuck in the middle and must somehow decide for ourselves, I guess, which camp to believe. Since it [ID] sounds good to my feeble mind, I like it.

How do scientists reach out to people like this, and get away from this whole he said-she said feeling about science -- especially when the schools and the media are doing such a dismal job?

#33593: — 08/03  at  10:19 AM
According to this excerpt from today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, Marburger avoids stepping in it, but only after smelling, feeling and tasting it:

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and an institute advancing intelligent design embraced Bush's comments, while scientists and advocates of the separation of church and state disparaged them. At the White House, where intelligent design has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Bush's science advisor, John Marburger III, played down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Marburger said "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Marburger also said that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.

Any shred of professional dignity that Marburger may have possessed is now in tatters. I only wish I could say I was surprised.

#33600: — 08/03  at  10:48 AM

Whatever your belief, it should be respected. But the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both reject intelligent design and don't want it mentioned in science classes. That, in my opinion, is fascism.

LOL, FOX...

#33602: Ken Cope — 08/03  at  10:52 AM
Dr. Paul Gross (author of Creationism's Trojan Horse) debates Bill O'Reilly, who praises Bush's dangerously stupid position on IDiocy, archived over at Crooks and Liars.

#33604: — 08/03  at  11:11 AM
How do scientists reach out to people like this, and get away from this whole he said-she said feeling about science -- especially when the schools and the media are doing such a dismal job?

Teach them science and the scientific method, and if they don't want to learn, tell them it's dishonest to form an opinion without becoming informed first.

One of the hallmarks of scientific thought is a stout refusal to accept conclusions that aren't entirely supported by the evidence. Contrast this principle to the behavior of our modern political punditry, which spins agenda-serving conclusions out of farts and fairy dust every hour on the hour, and it's easy to see why lots of people (myself included, sometimes) have difficulty approaching scientific issues embedded in the political frame of reference.

We need to resurrect that kind of prudent caution. We need to resurrect an interest in bettering the mind. We need to do it in grade school, in the first grade, and we need to do it in every state in the union.

#33611: Kagehi — 08/03  at  11:46 AM
Screw being fair to both sides. The constitution defends the right of crazy lunitics to stand on a box in a park and spout gibberish, it doesn't demand, imply or require the rest of us to pay any attention to it or take the raving seriously. Sadly, while both sides claim the press is either a shill for Bush or too liberal, the reality is its just too damn cowardly. It rarely if 'ever' challenges the basic premises of those it interviews, makes little is any attempt to find real facts (unless its to find some moron who knows enough to only *almost* look like a total fool to defend the other side) and is posititively disinterested in doing any real research of its own. Case in point. This morning I saw the tale end (and I mean the literally, all I heard was, "mumble, mumble", then they went to commercial segments with the title, "Intelligence design does not propose God as the guiding force in design." This could have been disproven as pure bullshit by the simple act of figuring out that a) the Discovery Institute first came up with it, b) DI was created to find psuedo-scientific explainations for literal Biblical events and c) ID, even if they now claim God isn't involved, is still using all the same arguments as DI originally came up with, along with the same claims about who in the scientific community support them, from DI's own 'poll', etc. Why would DI allow ID to be hijacked by people not intent on everyone believing God was the guiding force? And if they did, why would they still support the movement?

See, it only takes about 3 facts and two additional questions to get from, "Is this statement anything other than pure, high grade fertalizer?", to, "What's that smell?" But doing so would require the media to have the courage to challange crazy ideas, not just report on them.

#33627: — 08/03  at  01:44 PM
Careful, everyone. If we keep taking pot shots at the press, davidm and the Galilean crew will get all smug and self-righteous, saying how we're blowing a subject that they apparently refuse to understand out of proportion. And then they will make great offended snorts at us all.

#33628: PZ Myers — 08/03  at  01:52 PM
Who am I to deprive the Galileans of their meat and drink? Take away their smugness and self-righteousness, and they would deflate completely.

#33630: — 08/03  at  02:02 PM
You're a hard man, PZ. How can you face their ponderous debate and be unmoved? I want to throw them some bone, simply for proving that Karel Capek was right when he said that there was no idea so terrible that an intellectual couldn't talk himself into supporting it...

#33631: — 08/03  at  02:58 PM
Pseudo-intellectual. You have forgotten to take into account that they fail to reach a sufficient standard.

#33643: — 08/03  at  07:47 PM
Marburger's comment reminds me of Rush Limbaugh's defenders, who take some inflammatory statement that RL had made and claim that what RL had really meant was really something that seems more reasonable. And also of a very similar style of interpreting sacred books.

#33647: — 08/03  at  08:21 PM
My take on things:

The end result of any scientific inquiry should be truth. Many essays present the classic false dilemma by pitting so called science against so called religion. They erroneously presuppose one position to be science and the other religion. Why?

Macro evolution, as a theory of the origin of life, is under increasing scrutiny these days because it simply cannot explain the most fundamental question of science, i.e., how did life begin? Biochemistry and Molecular Biology are posing questions and producing theorems (intelligent design, and irreducible complexity) that evolution simply can’t answer or refute. So instead of disproving these competing models evolutionists cry, “religion!”

In his critique of all things “creationist” The Blind Watchmaker, evolutionary zealot Richard Dawkins presents his arguments in difficult to understand analogies and pseudoscientific language hoping to persuade us that he has sufficiently proven his theory. In Chapter 6, Origins and miracles, Dawkins cleverly writes (p. 149-150) about DNA as the “stable and elegant arch, which persists once all its parts simultaneously exist. It is hard to imagine it arising by any step-by-step process unless some earlier scaffolding has completely disappeared. That scaffolding must itself have been built by an earlier form of cumulative selection, at whose nature we can only guess.”

This guessing is an elemental and vital part of Dawkin’s theory, and it isn’t even remotely scientific. There is no experimentation. There is no testing whatsoever. It is pure and simple subjective speculation. It is very much like the now nonexistent scaffolding that must have existed to support the existing arch, because admittedly DNA could not have been constructed over time by anything.

Evolution has no answer to the existence of the complex engineering present in DNA. One must believe in the non-existent scaffolding. Does that sound like science? Dawkins spends the next few pages surmising, speculating, guessing, imagining, conjecturing, and presupposing all in a vain attempt to prove what neither he nor any other evolutionist can prove, i.e., that life happened by what he calls cumulative natural selection. In other words it just happened because he said so. No proof. No experiments. No science.

In George Will’s July 4, 2005 Newsweek article “The Last Word” A Debate That Does Not End he makes a statement that if true also applies to macro evolution, i.e., that it too is a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school’s science curriculum. For like intelligent design, which he claims is not falsifiable due to its nature as an un-testable hypothesis, so macro evolution is also not falsifiable since it also is an un-testable hypothesis. Hence, as Will implicitly states (at least from my perspective), evolution too is not scientific but a creedal tenet—a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school’s science curriculum.

Truth, no matter whether it is scientific, philosophical or religious, is absolute in its singular reality. If Will speaks with authority and supposes himself to stand for the truth, then he should be sure to include both hypotheses the next time he writes about matters of faith, and so should Dawkins and so should you.

Cordially yours,
SV

#33649: Virge — 08/03  at  09:19 PM
Sol,
Your arguments might be more persuasive if you defined your terms. Perhaps you could tell us how you distinquish "micro" from "macro" evolution. You seem to think there is a clear black and white distinction, so it should be very easy for you to define that barrier beyond which evolution cannot pass. (You might also let us know your thoughts on the age of the earth and life on earth--the time span you've allowed for evolution.)

#33652: Ken Cope — 08/03  at  10:07 PM
Sol Venturi's rambling argument from incredulity meanders into falsifiability: he claims a position that George Will did not state is "implicit".

George Will is not anybody I'd cite as an authority on anything more consequential than baseball, on which Stephen Jay Gould also wrote at length. No matter, I am as ignorant of baseball as Sol Venturi appears to be about evolution; not just ignorant, but mistaken on just about all its particulars (that Venturi finds Dawkins hard to understand is no reason to reject science and characterize it as theology). What Will does in his essay is show that every objection Dayton Christians had to evolution was specious. They were arguments from consequences, among other fallacies. The problem with intelligent-design theory is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet—a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.

For a punchline, Sol complains that Will does not "include both hypotheses" and demands that we all acknowledge we're writing about matters of faith. Sol wants to use Will's essay slamming ID and its creationist ancestors in the 1920s rural south, to complain that Will didn't make the conclusion Sol just finished claiming he could read between the lines.

The scientific enterprise does not have truth as its end result. Science at its best yields better questions; it leads where it will, where answers and certainty are always up for grabs. Answers and [T]ruth are cheap; anybody can pull those out of their ass. Science concerns itself with observations and evidence, testing fruitful hypotheses that can be challenged, perhaps falsified. There are scientific theories in competition with each other to best explain the mechanisms of evolution, and the best lead us to more questions, more hypotheses, and more things that we can practically apply in our understanding of the world.

Intelligent Design does none of that. "God^H^H^HAn Intelligent Designer did it" provides absolutely no research program for a scientific enterprise. There is nowhere else to go! The best anybody could do with it is to get on with the science and look at what the consensus can tell us about the world and add, "and that's how God^H^H^Hthe space aliens did it!"

Science gets on with it, no matter how uncomfortable you are with the meaning you wish to read between the lines.

#33654: — 08/03  at  10:20 PM
Sol:

Macro evolution, as a theory of the origin of life, is under increasing scrutiny these days because it simply cannot explain the most fundamental question of science, i.e., how did life begin?

Actually, the so-called macroevolution is not (and is certainly not offered as) a theory of the origin of life.

But, you are right about one thing: Macroevolution is under increasing scrutiny, i.e. scientists are spending a lot of time performing experiments that always test and test and test the Theory. Even in experiments not designed to ellucidate evolutionary relationships, many fields of biology contribute invaliable (and innumerous) data that continue to support the Theory.

Sol:

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology are posing questions and producing theorems (intelligent design, and irreducible complexity) that evolution simply can’t answer or refute.

I don't think many biochemists or molecular biologists will be very happy to hear that their specialties are fostering nasty theories that go against evolution! Rather, some gentlemen who call themselves biochemists and molecular biologists have come up with said "theories," - none of which are scientific - both of which have been refuted on numerous occasions, on this weblog alone, ad infinitum.

Regarding the Evolutionists crying "Religion!" - What else could be driving this ID nonsense; for if they actually have a supposed "theory of the origin of life," how couldn't it (and how is it different from) the IDist crying "God did it!" Furthermore, it is well known that the ID movement has been driven primarily by the godders (I love that term... thanks, Hank). Further furthermore, these "theories" are (again) unscientific at best.

Sol (quoting Dawkins, and then commenting):

“stable and elegant arch, which persists once all its parts simultaneously exist. It is hard to imagine it arising by any step-by-step process unless some earlier scaffolding has completely disappeared. That scaffolding must itself have been built by an earlier form of cumulative selection, at whose nature we can only guess.”

This guessing is an elemental and vital part of Dawkin’s theory, and it isn’t even remotely scientific. There is no experimentation. There is no testing whatsoever. It is pure and simple subjective speculation... Evolution has no answer to the existence of the complex engineering present in DNA.

Sol, I absolutely agree with everything you say here in response to Dawkins. In fact, I'm sure scientists would, as well (read: don't take Dawkins as your typical evolutionary biologist). Also, make sure to watch out for those strawmen.



In regards to Evolution not being able to explain the complex structure(s) found in the cell (e.g. DNA), I also agree. Origin of Life is not the job of Evolutionary Biology. Thus, it may not be able to explain how (or if) a DNA molecule could "build up" in a "step-by-step" fashion.

However, there are other fields of study that can pick up the slack, e.g. Quantum Physics and Cosmology. Cosmic Symmetry-Breaking is a well known phenomenon which (at least) can try to explain the fundamental forces in the Universe. These interacting forces, along with major bifurcation points, are what allowed for the great complexity we see in the Universe, e.g. the properties of the elements can be grouped such that bifurcations (which led to the resulting new elements) are evident.

As elements (atoms) interacted and thus formed molecules, new bifurcations and exponentially more complexity ensues. The subsequent interactions that all started off with cosmic symmetry breaking, ended up with very complex structures, including many so-called "pre-biotic" molecules (nucleic acids, complex sugars, etc). In fact, these complex and pre-biotic molecules can (and have) been found in the surrounding universe (i.e. in the clouds of other galaxies).

You are correct, in that it may be the jobs of biochemists and molecular biologists to figure out the origins of life, but it won't have anything to do with denying the scientific facts of Evolution.

#33659: — 08/04  at  01:47 AM
What I find amazing in this debate, is the fact that many mentions the fact that a large part of the US population believes in ID Creationism as a reason why ID should be taught in science classes. In my opinion, this is exactly the reason why it shouldn't be even approached - obviously the teachers are not doing a good enough job as it is, without confusing the students, and wasting time on nonsense.

Maybe there could be a class in refuting pseudo-/anti-science? This might be combined with critical thinking and basic research abilities.

#33684: — 08/04  at  07:36 AM

Maybe there could be a class in refuting pseudo-/anti-science?

I'm happy to see that my alma mater (Washington University in St. Louis) is now offering a class of that sort. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything like this while I was attending...

Here's the course description:

Darwin and Evolutionary Controversies

Focus is on controversies in evolutionary biology from Darwin´s day to the present. Most of the controversies concern scientific issues such as Kelvin´s estimate of age of the earth, Jenkin´s argument against blending inheritance, neutral variations, effects of isolation on the role of selection, mass extinction and "nemesis," but some address social issues such as evolutionary ethics and "scientific creationism." Emphasis in the readings is on primary sources, including Darwin´s Origin of Species.

#33690: — 08/04  at  08:17 AM
"refuting pseudo/anti-science" sounds so negative. Rephrase it a little. Every student should be taught critical thinking. Rules of logic, how to evaluate statements and evidence, etc.

#33804: Eva Young — 08/04  at  11:11 PM
PZ, thank you for posting all the links to responses - and cross posting them to the American Street.

I've been continuing to rant about this on my blog Lloydletta, and I've called out Duane Quam - chair of the Science Standards committee on MN Politics National:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mn-politics-national/messages

Two posts per day allowed. I encourage other science supporters to join - and post to the list - and keep the thread going.