Intelligent Design and Evolution

Red State Rabble pointed me to this letter from the Wichita Eagle - so many ministers commit false testimony. Good point. Certainly one can reject evolution because of one's beliefs, but to say it is not science is false.

Ken Miller on Intelligent Design

I couldn't listen to all of this today, but it sounds like a thorough examination of Intelligent Design. There's more detailed information in the Dover Trial Documents - especially with the cross-examination of a proponent, but this is more acessible.

Creationism's Trojan Horse by Forrest and Gross

Barbara Forrest was one of the experts at the trial over evolution Katzmiller vs. Dover. This book which traces the rise of Intelligent Design was one of the reasons. Alone this would have been enough to show that Intelligent Design is creationism dressed up, but with the documents produced for the trial the relationship between creationism and Intelligent Design was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fact that school board members from Dover lied under oath would have been enough, but this book shows the rest of the story.

Intelligent Design - deceptions o.k.

At Stranger Fruit there are some pertinent comments about someone who lied his way through graduate school to get credentials. I guess I just don't get the idea that anything is more important than being true to self. I spent a number of years denying my sexual orientation, but I was lying to myself at the same time as others. Knowingly going in and lying about your beliefs. Well that just seems to be the game of scammers. Pharyngula has some information and there's also an article in the New York Times. The thing that puzzles me is why would you claim to follow the One who is the Truth and say something different from what you believe to be the truth? I don't get it.

Evolution Sunday Feb. 11

Evolution Sunday sponsored by a number of religious leaders who see no conflict between their faith and the theory of evolution is coming. Set your calendars to February 11. Thanks to Dispatches from the Culture Wars for the reminder.

String Theory and Intelligent Design

Why string theory problems don't support Intelligent Design? Both can't be tested, but how do their proponents operate? The answer at Red State Rabble.

Darwin - a book review

The Atlantic is publishing some articles from the past. One of them is the review of Darwin's famous book. Check it out.

Evolutionary biology and intelligent design

“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.”


–Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher

Creation Science Debunked

In case you hadn't noticed, I don't particularly like the promoters of Intelligent Design and/or creation science. I think it's bad science and bad theology. And I have a love for both. So I was pleased to find this site called Creation Science Debunked.

What Intelligent Design isn't doing.

Here's a link to a great article about why Intelligent Design isn't being treated as science. It's not hard to understand. ID proponents don't produce research, don't produce ideas that can be tested and spends most of their time talking about a controversy that just isn't there. So ID just isn't science.

Discovery Institute - against some religions?

Thoughts from Kansas has an analysis of what Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design proposes as contrasted with some longstanding ideas in christianity. Comparing what Augustine says in the Literal Meaning of Genesis with writings from the Discovery Institute ... makes the case that for all the purported talk of Intelligent Design looking to prove that a being designed this world and the creatures here there is much that goes against long-standing religious beliefs - especially long-standing christian belief.

Why Cobb County lost

“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.”

–Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher

Dover and Cobb lost their cases about Intelligent Design for one very simple reason. And that is there is no credible scientific alternative to evolutionary theory. It's not that some of the witnesses didn't appear. It's not that the lawyers for I.D. or stickers did a poor job. It is that science is self-correcting and looks at the facts while I.D. attempts (as was clearly shown during the Dover trial) to masquerade a religious ideology as science.

P.S. I tried to put this as a comment under the comment category in my Cobb post of yesterday, but didn't succeed, so just did a separate entry. I think it was my computer connection rather than the service.

quotes on evolution

“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.” –Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher“

Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.” –Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist

“An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.” –Steven Pinker, Psychologist

Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist

The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design. –Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist

Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all. —Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist

A denial of evolution–however motivated–is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance. —Tim D. White, paleontologist

Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity. —Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.—Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

Nothing indicates that people who believe that life arose by chance also believe that morality is haphazard. —Scott Atran, anthropologist and psychologist

An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one. —Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist

To state that a given organ is so improbable that it requires design is just ill founded. The argument uses standard probability, which does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere. —Stuart A. Kauffman, theoretical biologist

We don’t have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). Or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution. —Lisa Randall, physicist

What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist

Incredulity doesn’t count as an alternative position or critique. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist

Rather than removing meaning from life, an evolutionary perspective can and should fill us with a sense of wonder at the rich sequence of natural systems that gave us birth and continues to sustain us. —Scott D. Sampson, paleontologist

Cobb County settles

In another of those ridiculous anti-science moves Cobb county put stickers touting evolution as theory not fact and more. They settled out of court and removed the stickers. Lots of good money was spent for nothing. Evolutionary theory certainly doesn't answer all the questions, but it's the best answer that we've got. And, unlike idiocies such as creationism and Intelligent Design, science changes to fit the facts. Here's a link to some of the trial documents - fascinating reading.

Evolution as religion?

Another lawsuit, but not in the USA, about Intelligent Design and the theory of evolution. Evidently evolutionary theory is antithetical to religious beliefs and so this person shouldn't have to be taught evolutionary theory in their science class.

counterstrikes at non-science

One of the classic books against Intelligent Design, useful for when you don't want to wade through all of the mutitudinous variations of excuses, is now in paperback. Hat tip to Pharyngulia for helping to get the word out. It's called Index to Creationist Claims and available at many places. A related website is at talkorigins.

I have a somewhat rabid rejection of something that purports to be science and is actually bad religon, but this book helps put some of that in context.

Intelligent Design Board Game

Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a link to a new board game that promotes Intelligent Design. How can I say it.... This is not science. Science is not about fun board games. Science is about research and peer reviewed publication. Popular books, no matter how technical they appear, are not peer review. Board games are not research. Being an award winning actor aka Kirk Cameron doesn't qualify you to even know whether or not you're being accurate in speaking of science. Calling a theory that provokes nearly all science research in biology 'unscientific' is simply ridiculous. The world they portray in the game Intelligent Design is not reality no matter how many quotes that are taken out of context or how many untruths are included.

Intelligent Design - isn't

One of the truisms of logic and math is that if your presuppositions are wrong so is the rest of the problem. This is one of the reasons that one doesn't have to know math in order to figure out where Intelligent Design goes wrong.

Much is made of the unlikelihood of certain events. But being unlikely is not the same as being impossible. And in a large universe - as is admitted by both sides - there is the likelihood that even events with very small probabilities will happen somewhere. So being unlikely is not a measure of intelligent design. It is a measure of the vast universe.

This is just one of the reasons that one doesn't have to be able to follow the math in intelligent design in order to figure out where it goes wrong.

Dembski and Intelligent Design

A scathing review does not in itself indicate prejudice. I suspect most Christianists would agree in the example of the Christ that the use of 'whited sepulchre', 'hypocrite', 'brood of vipers' and similar terms indicate a well-founded review. That may not be the case when Christianists listen to Mark Perakh's review of William A Dembski's work in the book "Unintelligent Design".

With a quote attributed to Tolstoy saying 'that the actual value of a person is like a fraction wherein the numerator indicates the person's achievements and talents, where the denominator indicates what the person thinks of himself.' used to indicate that Dembski's value is nearly zero (p. 106) and a statement that "The result is a seemingly very sophisticated theory, which may be impressive to those who find in it a confirmation of their preconceived convictions, but which nevertheless has so many holes and inconsistencies that it is overall meaningless." it can be said that the art of scourging bad work is not dead.

Dembski's failure to remain as an expert witness in Katzmiller vs. Dover - even though he was deposed - speaks volumes for his ability to stand up and meet criticism. In his own publications he is fierce, but when it comes to public discourse and peer review he seems to flee any true debate or adjudication.

Intelligent Design fails.

Mark Perakh, Unintelligent Design (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).

The year with Intelligent Design

Stranger Fruit did a great job of summing up what's been happening with Intelligent Design. Take a look. My perspective tends to be from the viewpoint of bad religion, but the science stuff is equally problematic.