Comment is Back!

The comment that I posted to O'Leary's site is back. Wonder what happened? I checked several times this morning and could not find it. I take back all of the things I said. Maybe there is hope after all.

Its Gone!!

Denyse O'Leary has come through with Flying Colors!!! The comment that I left last night on O'Leary's atheism post is GONE! In its place are eight comments that, to one degree or another, agree with what she wrote. Absolutely amazing. How can anyone call themselves a journalist with integrity when they remove comments that don't agree with what they write? My comment contained no name-calling, no hateful references, and no ad hominem attacks and yet, as far as the readers of UD know, it was never there. Disgraceful.

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Comment on Uncommon Descent

O'Leary has a post with the particularly snotty title “Darwinism best career choice for aspiring influential atheists?” , which is a comment on another post that was put out called The 25 Most Influential Living Atheists. Seven of them are evolution supporters or evolutionary biologists, something she finds significant. She writes:

“And, by the way, when Evolution Sunday rolls around in 2011, all Christian Darwinists should pause to reflect on how much their faith owes to these people. (I mention this because I am knee-deep in these blessed dimes of Darwin, for some project I am stuck with.)”

I responded:

Why on earth would my faith owe these people anything? My faith in Jesus and my acceptance of evolutionary biology doesn’t hinge on whether or not these people are atheists. These people were atheists long before they supported evolution. And evolution has been around a lot longer than they have.

We will see how long the comment stays up or if she responds to it. I know it is not strictly a DI page, but, then again, there have never been open comments here before.

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Evolution in Action

National Geographic News has a story that shows exactly what evolution is capable of accomplishing. The story, by Brian Handwerk, is about the Yellow-Bellied Three-Toed Skink. He writes:

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales, the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young.

Only two other modern reptiles—another skink species and a European lizard—use both types of reproduction.

This has shown that the transition from eggs to live young happens much more quickly than had originally been thought and presents no barriers for evolutionary theory.

Over at Uncommon Descent, however, Denyse O'Leary wonders what all the hubbub is about. Of this "supposed live birth" she writes:

I don’t get how this shows that live birth is evolving.

Animals that produce their young in eggs have way different systems from those that produce them via placentas, as do mammals.

With eggs, live birth is just a technicality.

Some snakes lay eggs, and others give live birth.

In other words, the eggs hatch indoors instead of outdoors.

Maybe some snakes or skinks are in between, but so?

To me, a more significant interest is the reptiles that protect their eggs or young, like crocodiles, alligators and cobras. that suggests that the theory of the unfeeling reptilian brain is not true.

It is hard to respond to this in a cogent fashion since it seems to have been written without much thought in the first place. If one species can be caught in the act of switching from one birthing process to another, they plainly are not "way different systems." Egg-laying is the primitive way of having offspring. This is a means of reproduction used by amphibians and the vast majority of reptiles. As you move up the evolutionary ladder, placental development becomes more and more common to the point where the only mammals to lay eggs are the monotremes, which are universally understood to be the most primitive mammals in existence.

How is egg-laying selectively advantageous? If you live in a colder climate, it is harder to keep eggs warm and mobility is restricted: you have to create a nest and then stay with it once the eggs are laid. If your fetuses are within you, you can move around and escape predation. When you go look for food, your children-to-be go with you. As the article notes, the evidence from the skink presents an evolutionary snapshot. Over time, given the changing environment, the live-bearing skinks will likely out-compete the egg-laying ones.

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Forthcoming Book by Dembski and O'Leary Takes Aim at Theistic Evolution

William Dembski and Denys O'Leary are releasing a book called Christian Darwinism: Why Theistic Evolution Fails As Science and Theology. The PR announcement from O'Leary, at Uncommon Descent, starts thus:

In Christian Darwinism: Why Theistic Evolution Fails As Science and Theology (Broadman and Holman, November 2011), mathematician Dembski and journalist O’Leary address a powerful new trend to accommodate Christianity with atheist materialism, via acceptance of Darwinian (“survival of the fittest”) evolution.

I sure hope the book is better than that opening paragraph. It is not clear to me that Denys O'Leary understands science and the scientific enterprise at all. The implication in this paragraph is that evolution=atheistic materialism. How did a biological process manage to become synonymous with atheistic materialism? This is only the case if you don't understand evolution. Dembski has demonstrated repeatedly that he does not (here, here and here). She continues:

Dembski and O’Leary insist that this conflict has nothing to do with the age of the Earth. Darwinism is, as they will show, the increasingly implausible creation story of atheism, which diverges at just about every point from the Christian worldview on which modern science was founded.

I need to read the book before I make wholesale interpretations but if it is what she is painting it to be, it is yet another of the myriad of straw men coming out of the Discovery Institute that strive to link evolutionary theory with atheism and every sort of evil that has seen the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This is little different from the attacks on evolution by Henry Morris, who blamed it for all immoral activity on the globe—despite the fact that such activity dates from biblical times. Abraham, after all, didn't say to God "But LORD, surely I can find ten people that don't believe in evolution in those two towns!"

As long as attention can be deflected away from the status that evolution holds as a scientific theory, the anemic attempts to attack it on those grounds can be hidden. She ends this way:

Reactions – not only praise but criticism – are expected and much appreciated! Regular updates will be provided at www.uncommondescent.com, so persons who wish to comment on the project can post there.

This would represent a sizable change in policy for these guys. The Discovery Institute, as I and others have noted, does not publish the email addresses of its fellows and does not provide an avenue for comments. UC does, but only in limited fashion, as this experience with William Dembski shows. My suspicion is that they would only publish positive comments and treat any negative comment, no matter how substantive as being from a troll.

By the way, while it is customary for an author to plug an upcoming book, it is not common to phrase it in the context of a review and to do so this glowingly. That is, at least, conflict of interest. Further, to do it in the third person, as O'Leary does here is pretentious.

Something else to put on my reading list.

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Uncommon Descent Waxes About Science Blogs

Science Blogs has, to read the press, had problems. As Virginia Heffernan writes in the New York Times (quoted from Genomicron):

Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that’s not what’s bothersome about them. What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats.

Genomicron agrees and opines that science blogs hasn't provided anything useful for some time. To be sure, some of the examples that Heffernan relates do not paint Science Blogs in the best light. That is unfortunate. Originally, it was a great platform for scientists to write about what was near and dear to them and discuss it in an open forum context.

Using this as a springboard, Uncommon Descent raises questions not about the scientists themselves, but the underlying science. Denyse O'Leary writes:

The whole article is worth reading. Frankly, anyone interested in the intelligent design controversy or – for example – concerned about tax-based mismanagement of public issues like climate change or conservation – would do well to support Heffernan’s main point.

In my personal view, too many scientists are tax mooches. They do not need to be reasonable, because they are not doing anything that is obviously useful.

This is an astounding thing to write for someone representing a web site that is trying to promote a scientific viewpoint—intelligent design. Whether or not Science Blogs is fulfilling its mandate, has little to do with the underlying science. Scientists are humans too and are subject to the same foibles that other folk are. I have yet to see a blogger that doesn't call someone a name in the heat of the moment. Witness Cornelius Hunter's recent column on Uncommon Descent, in which he referred to "evolutionary clowns."

It is the underlying science that is the focus of the attack here and "it is her opinion" that most scientists are not useful. How does she know this? Does she know what the scientists she is insulting actually do? As a society, we take science for granted and much of our everyday life is possible because of scientific advancements that go largely unnoticed by the general public. Discoveries in astronomy and cosmology have helped us to understand how our world works. Which of those would be useless and which would be useful?

Every hypothesis that is asked about a particular phenomenon helps to focus the theory of that discipline and even seemingly mundane hypotheses answer broader questions. But here is where the problem really hits: discoveries in genetics and evolutionary studies have helped us to understand how we can best adapt to our world. Understanding of organ transplant and repair is now progressing by leaps and bounds with the help of evolutionary medicine. Understanding of how viruses respond to selection forces and how they affect populations differentially is possible with the understanding of evolutionary theory and the interaction of genetics and the environment. It is not clear that any of these advances would have been "obviously useful" a decade back.

Further, if the viewpoint that O'Leary and other ID supporters have underpinned the way "science" is performed, it is not clear that they would have happened at all. We might not like some of the viewpoints that some scientists espouse but as long as they ask questions about the world around us, they are useful.

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