Evolution and the Environment: A Graph by Josh Rosenau

Josh Rosenau, at NCSE has constructed an interesting, if somewhat reductionist graph plotting acceptance of evolution and support for environmental regulations among the major religious groups.  Downloading questionnaire data from the Pew Research Center, the two questions he analyzed were:

• Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy; or Stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost and
• Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth
  

The Graph that he came up with is here.  The x-axis is the evolution question and the y-axis is the environmental question.  The first surprise I found is that the Seventh Day Adventists exhibit more support for environmental regulations than the Pentacostals.  Not sure what is driving that.  It is a given that most members of those denominations reject evolution almost uniformly.  In fact, as Ron Numbers points out, many of the early creationists, including Ellen White, were SDA. 

I am also not surprised at the non-denominational evangelical lack of support for evolution.  Many of those folks, like me, came of age in the 1980s when house churches were springing up everywhere and inductive bible studies were the rage.  Those folks are now in their 40s and 50s and raising their own kids.  My church could serve as a poster child for this group.  This group, based on what I have read, also makes up the vast majority of the home school movement, which is almost lock-step anti-evolution.  

There is much lost in the analysis of only two questions and each group's theology has nuances that are certainly not covered here, but it is an interesting analysis of these two questions.  

HuffPo on The “Monkey Bill”

Cara Santa Maria of the Huffington Post has a short video on the Tennessee anti-science bill 893.

The ending interview with “a student” is devastating.

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Texas Board of Education Approves Supplememental Texts as Written

The Texas State Board of Education approved the supplemental material as written, rather than taking the supplements from other groups, one of which was International Databases, LLC. The NCSE has this to say about the verdict:

“This is a huge victory for Texas students and teachers,” said Josh Rosenau, NCSE programs and policy director, who testified at the hearings this week. In his testimony, Rosenau urged the board to approve the supplements--recommended by a review panel largely composed of scientists and science educators--without amendments, and to reject International Database's creationist submission. The board did just that, and asked for only minimal changes to the approved supplements.

In hearings yesterday, NCSE members and allies showed up in force. At least four times as many people testified in favor of the supplements as written, versus those opposing the supplements or demanding significant changes.

Josh writes on his blog that the fight is not over and won't be until all of the strong science supplements are approved. The issues that are mostly dealt with in the story involve biopoesis rather than evolution of later forms although according to Rosenau, they got evolution wrong also. Not surprised.

More From Josh Rosenau on the Miss USA Pageant

Josh Rosenau guest-writing for Scientific American has more thoughts on the Miss USA pageant and the evolution question. He has a different take than mine. He writes:

Miss USA certainly doesn't set education policy, but the state pageant winners – especially the one wearing the Miss USA crown – have broad reach into households that may not read Scientific American, but who do vote for school boards and press their children's teachers on the coverage of evolution. Knowing how these role models think about evolution is important not just because these women have a bully pulpit, but because they are chosen to represent their states, and it is rare that we can see a national cross-section of how the non-scientist public views evolution (even as self-selected heavily vetted a cross-section as this group of pageant-winners). Indeed, understanding how Miss USA contestants talk about evolution can help us better understand how politicians talk about evolution, and how we can better promote science education.

In retrospect, he is probably right in some ways about the pageant giving us a cross-section of views on evolution. It certainly reinforced how badly evolution education really is in this country, a point also noted by Dr. Rosenau.He also writes:

Like the Miss USA contestants, most politicians (excluding those on local school boards or state boards of education) will have little opportunity to influence how evolution is taught. In answering questions about evolution during campaigns, their goal is rarely to indicate a clear conception of how science works and why evolution is central to modern biology. Instead, they must alienate as few constituents as possible, keep their base happy, and avoid an embarrassing misstep that could draw harmful national mockery.

I am not so sure this is true. It may be true on the democrat side but, increasingly, it is not true on the Republican side, as the recent examples of Michelle Bachmann's endorsement of Intelligent Design and the spate of “academic freedom” bills that have been pushed by politicians in Louisiana, Indiana, New Mexico, and Tennessee to name just a few. In all, there are eleven states that currently or have recently had academic freedom legislation promoted. Louisiana drew nationalwide condemnation from science organizations for its LSEA last year and it didn't phase them. A recent attempt to have the bill repealed failed by a 5-to-1 margin. I think these politicians are trying to keep their constituents happy. The problem is that many of their constituents are young earth creationists. The problem is not that they don't have much influence. The problem is that they have too much.

Thoughts From Kansas

I have added Josh Rosenau's site, Thoughts from Kansas, to the blog role. I go to the site regularly and he is often quite insightful and pithy.

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Josh Rosenau Thinks that Southerners are Crazy

Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas relays the results of a new poll by Marcos Moulitsas, the runner of the Daily Kos, in which southerners poll differently from the rest of the nation in a question about date of the origin of the universe. The question was:

Most astronomers believe the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive event called the Big Bang. Do you think that's about right or do think the universe was created much more recently?

Here are the results he got in a poll of 1200 people:

	RIGHT	RECENT	NOT SURE
All	62	25	13
Men	60	28	12
Women	64	22	14
Dem	71	17	12
Rep	44	38	18
Ind	66	23	11
White	58	27	15
Black	75	18	7
Latino	73	21	6
Oth/Ref	78	15	7
18-29	69	18	13
30-44	66	22	12
45-59	59	28	13
60+	56	31	13
NE	72	17	11
South	48	34	18
MW	64	24	12
West	69	21	10

The huge problem here, of course, is that even in the original poll on the Daily Kos site, "much more recently" is not defined and might mean different things to different people. Some might think it was created eight billion years ago, which is much more recent than 13.7. Some might subscribe to "last Thursday-ism" (appearance of age). Some might be young earth creationists. There is simply no way of knowing exactly what people think here. Is it bigger or smaller than a breadbox? This is very inexact. Southerners might be crazy, or they might not know what the poller means by the question.

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Josh Rosenau Ponders on Todd Wood

Josh Rosenau has a long piece over at Thoughts from Kansas in which he examines Todd Wood's creationism and response to the new BIO-Complexity journal. Wood is hopeful about the new journal because it represents an effort, at last, of the ID establishment to put its money where its mouth is. Josh agrees, and then contrasts the ID movement with standard creationism. He writes:

The thing that's so shocking about the failure of all previous attempts at an ID journal is that the young earth creationist movement has actually done quite well at creating its own pseudoscientific infrastructure. They have several journals that imitate the peer-review of proper scientific journals. Sure, authors have to swear that their results won't contradict a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, and the actual arguments they make tend to fall apart once you start pushing on them, but many of the papers are quite sharp, and do a decent job of testing hypotheses within the straightjacket imposed on them by fundamentalist ideology.

While it is quite true that the modern-day recent earth creationist movement has a large infrastructure, their imitation of peer-review is a very poor one and is anti-scientific at its core. Rosenau is correct to call it a straightjacket but it results in a discipline that cannot even be called peer-reviewed because everyone that reviews the articles is sympathetic to them and, for the sake of the theology, doesn't dare disagree with them. This results in a skewing of the data in such a way that the results the results do not stand up to an even cursory examination. It also, as Randy Isaacs found out with the RATE project, results in intellectual dishonesty.

He continues:

In the past I've cited Wood as a reminder to anti-creationists that it's not enough to simply dismiss creationism as irrationality run amok. Wood's approach is rational, but premised on faulty assumptions. Rationality is dependent on the quality of the minds inputs and presuppositions, and some folks tend to wrongly claim that simply being rational would solve all our problems.

I also point it out in the hopes that Wood will, at some point, confront the special pleading he's using, and will realize that if he extends his arguments to their logical results, he'll have to abandon his creationism. His critiques of ID creationism and of old earth creationism are spot on, and if he'd only turn the same analytical approach toward his adherence to young earth creationism, interesting things might happen.

This is wishful thinking. Wood, at one point, addressing the nature of evidence, wrote:

As a point of application, I think modern creationists would be much better served if we stopped coddling their every doubt and fear with new "evidence for creation" and instead helped to wean them off evidence altogether. A truly close Christian walk with Jesus should render evidence irrelevant. This is where we really want to be, not buffeted about by the wind and waves but confidently walking through the storm with our eyes fixed unwaveringly on Christ.

As I have written before, I believe that this represents some sort of dualism in that the clear evidence from creation is not just rendered as secondary in importance, but ignored. The researchers of the RATE project found unequivocal evidence of over 500 million years of radioactive decay yet still managed to conclude that there was support for a young earth. Why? Because the evidence had to be subjugated to the theology. If, as Wood suggests, we should be called upon to "wean them off of evidence altogether," what does the evidence mean? Why would God create a beautiful and wondrous creation filled with majesty and awe only to have us ignore it?

One might argue that Wood means that we, as Christians, should focus entirely on our walk with God and not even bother at all with the questions of origins. For most people, this is an entirely appropriate perspective and it has always been my position that Christians should think carefully before exposing themselves to scientific areas that might affect their faith but for which there is little importance in their daily lives.

But we know from his other posts that Wood is a card-carrying recent earth creationist, who runs the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College. The focus of this research is "baraminology," which is the study of the search for the original created kinds. Their view of creationism is this:

Creationism isn't some modern, extremist anomaly. It was the dominant view of western culture and the church for nearly two millennia. From ancient commentaries on Genesis to medieval books on Noah's Ark to Renaissance monographs on Flood geology, we are seeking to recover the history of that intellectual domination.

Much is left out of this definition. For example, while creationism was the dominant view in western culture for nearly two millenia, what is not said is that once we began to acquire the tools to examine planet earth and the cosmos, beginning in the 1400s, creationism became less and less sustainable until, by the late 1800s, no practicing geologists and very few practicing clergy supported it. It was only the work of the Seventh Day Adventists in the early 1900s that led to a resurgence of this view, one that was (and is) totally without established scientific support. To recover that intellectual domination would carry scientific achievement back six hundred years and negate all of the advancements that have been acquired since then. Is this really what he wants?

It reminds me of something that Conrad Hyers once wrote, and I paraphrase: "if the Bible is found to be in accordance with science of the 20th century, it is necessarily out of accordance with the science of the 19th century and that of the 18th century and so on." Why does Wood presuppose that the science of six hundred years ago is the correct model?

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Josh Rosenau, Jerry Coyne, and the "New Creationism"

Jerry Coyne is an atheist. He makes no secret of it and, while he is considerably less acerbic than either Richard Dawkins or P.Z. Myers, it does spill out sometimes. Josh Rosenau noticed, in his zeal, he got some things wrong. Coyne writes:

I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God. New Creationism differs from intelligent design because it rejects God’s constant intervention in the process of evolution in favor of a Big, One-Time Intervention, and because these ideas are espoused by real scientists like Kenneth Miller and Simon Conway Morris. (Note that Miller, though, has floated the possibility that God does sometimes intervene in the physical world by manipulating electrons.) New Creationism is bad because, while operating under the deep cover of real science, it tries to gain traction for dubious claims about the supernatural.

Aside from the oh-so-cute play on his name, his closing premise is wrong. But first, Josh:

Two main thoughts occur. First, this is the creationism that preceded the Enlightenment. It's not, in any sense, new. And there's already a term for it: Theistic Evolution.

Second, the term "New Creationism" is not new. Creationist Henry Morris used the term "neo-creationism" to describe his strategy in 1997. A chapter in Scott's sourcebook on the controversy has a chapter titled "Neo-creationism." Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh used the term "New Creationism" in 1997 to describe a particular front in the Science Wars then waging, in which certain social scientists rejected biological explanations for human behaviors. Creationist Paul Garner titled his work of young earth creationism The New Creationism. It was published last year.

His main complaint stems from the belligerence with which Coyne presents this, however. He has his own definition to add:

coyne: (v) To invent a new pejorative which adds heat, not light, and which tends to collide with established usage.

Back to Coyne. The closing premise to his paragraph is incorrect. Evolutionary creationists do not use science as a "deep cover" to gain traction for anything. One of the complaints that theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists have about the "science" that is performed by recent earth creationists is that the science is always secondary to the particular theological perspective such that if it conflicts with the literal reading of scripture, it must be disposed of and "right thinking" science instated in its place. Theistic evolutionists understand that the physical world is the creation of God but that it behaves in accord with laws and processes that God has laid down.

When Jesus came to earth, he didn't say "I have come to make you understand science better." He came to save our souls. The world kept spinning on its axis and things kept evolving. Coyne gets that there are differences between ID supporters and TEs but because he has adopted a reductionist way of thinking about the universe, anything beyond the observable world doesn't exist. Consequently, any appeal to it, even outside the realm of science, is unacceptable. It isn't the science of Kenneth Miller that Coyne objects to. It is the religion of Kenneth Miller.
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Josh Rosenau Takes Casey Luskin to Task

Josh Rosenau has reacted to the piece by Casey Luskin about the New York Times article on the Georgia biology textbook stickers that I posted about yesterday. The Times argued that the high court decided that the biology sticker was unconstitutional because it singled out evolution among all of the science disciplines. Luskin, if you will recall, wrote this:

The problem with the NY Times’ claim is that the Selman case did NOT rule that the sticker was unconstitutional due to the fact that “evolution alone was the target.” In fact, in the Selman v. Cobb County ruling, Judge Cooper held that the Cobb County sticker had a valid secular purpose and that it was permissible to single out evolution. In the words of Judge Cooper’s lower court ruling in Selman, “The School Board's singling out of evolution is understandable in this context” because “evolution is the only theory of origin being taught in Cobb County classrooms,” and “evolution was the only topic in the curriculum, scientific or otherwise, that was creating controversy.”

About this, Rosenau writes:

I'm not a lawyer, but I've picked up some things over the years, and one of them is that the test at issue in Selman is something called the Lemon test. It has three parts (actually prongs, because lawyers love cutlery). The first is purpose: a government action may not have a primarily religious purpose. The second is effect: its effect cannot be to elevate one religion over another, or religion over nonreligion. The final is entanglement: The action cannot excessively entangle government with religion...

... Anyway, the court in Selman looked at a sticker which the local board of education wanted affixed to biology textbooks and applied the Lemon test. And the court concluded that, yes, placing the sticker on books does serve a secular purpose. Had the court stopped there, Casey would be right. But the court only stops when a policy fails one of the prongs, or after looking at all the prongs.

Rosenau continues by noting that the court viewed the opposition to evolution to be peculiar and to be historically religious-based. The court also noted that opposition to evolution had run into legal trouble in the past and used Epperson as an example. The sticker, therefore, violated the "effects" prong of the lemon test. As I wrote yesterday, Casey then wrote the New York Times and complained that they had gotten it wrong (when they didn't) and that there should be a correction. Here is where it gets a little funny. When they declined to do so, Luskin posted the information to his blog. Rosenau writes:

Having been rebuffed by the reporter, by the editors, and by lawyers with at least modest literacy, Casey didn't take the hint, so he posted his complaint and selections from the Times' response at the Disco. 'Tute complaints department (created, they explain, for "the misreporting of the evolution issue"), hoping that if he didn't link to the ruling itself and the various other documents relevant to the case, that his readers would just take his word for the ruling's content.

I linked to Luskin's piece yesterday, in which he waxes indignantly about being rebuffed by the Times. Rosenau continues:

What's most disappointing is that, for all Casey's bluster in his blog post (and presumably the letter he sent to the Times), he knew he was wrong. He knew this because he wrote this about the Selman case in a 2009 law review article (p. 54):

While the sticker passed the purpose prong of the Lemon analysis, the judge ruled that the disclaimer failed the effect prong of the Lemon test. The court observed that “citizens around the country have been aware of the historical debate between evolution and religion.” The court found that the school district did not intend to endorse religion, but nonetheless “the Sticker sends a message to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the Sticker sends a message to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders.” In this particular case, “the informed, reasonable observer would know that a significant number of Cobb County citizens had voiced opposition to the teaching of evolution for religious reasons” and “put pressure on the School Board to implement certain measures that would nevertheless dilute the teaching of evolution.” Although the district did not intend to endorse religion, “the informed, reasonable observer would perceive the School Board to be aligning itself with proponents of religious theories of origin.”

While Casey decided not to emphasize the decision's specific references to the effect of singling out evolution, he quoted language found all around those passages, so I presume he read those bits as well, and saw how the parts he's quoting here connect to the parts about isolating evolution. So we know that, within the last year, Casey has apparently read the ruling. He saw that the sticker failed the Lemon test, and why. He knows better, yet he keeps advancing a claim which he knows to be wrong. I cannot fathom why. The issue isn't even the dishonesty of haranguing reporters with meritless demands for a correction, but the massive FAIL embodied in trotting out the attempts by others to set him straight that I find so puzzling.

There have been a number of instances in which DI individuals have posted about news stories (here and here) and have gotten basic points about the stories wrong. We all do that. This is a bit more complex, however, in that Luskin is being accused of academic dishonesty here. I am curious to see if he responds to Rosenau's accusation.

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Thoughts from Kansas: Creation vs. Expelled at the Box Office

Josh Rosenau has been tracking the box office numbers of Creation against those of Expelled! His take:

Darwin biopic Creation premiered in seven movie theaters across the country last weekend, earning $53,073, an average of $7,582. That's not a lot of money, but at roughly $10/ticket, this works out to 760 viewers per theater, a solid showing. I know the theater I saw it at was full for their 7 pm showing.

Compare that to creationist schlockumentary Expelled: No Intelligence…, released two springs ago. Part of its promotional strategy was a big opening weekend; coordinating with the owners of Regal movie theaters, they opened in 1,052 theaters, earning $2,970,848, or $2,824 per theater (roughly 280 viewers).

By my math, Creation did more than 3 times better than Expelled, and with a much smaller promotional budget. Which makes sense: it's a much better movie.

But be sure to read the comments.

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Josh Rosenau Has Fun With Ray Comfort

Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas has this to say about Ray Comfort, the man responsible for the million book giveaway of the altered version of On the Origin of Species (a title that both Comfort and Kirk Cameron got wrong on their version and didn't seem to notice). Josh writes:

It's honestly hard to know what to make of Ray Comfort. First he says bananas are proof of intelligent design because of how well they fit in your hand. Then he retracts the claim, accepting that the domestic banana is, in fact, a product of extensive artificial selection. Then he backs off and insists "There isn’t any evidence that the banana has changed its shape in the last 2,000 years."

As Rosenau points out, Ray Comfort has a blog called AtheistCentral and, when asked whether the earth was in the center of the universe, he had this to say:

The Bible says that the earth is immovable. It cannot be moved. So now is your chance to prove your point. Run outside and move the earth. Perhaps you and your friends could jump on it, or find a rocky outcrop and push it together.

Maybe after that little experiment you will concede that the earth is immovable. So is Scripture. You can push, twist, pull, and jump on different verses, but the Word of God isn’t going to move. It is a rock. It cannot be broken (see John 10:35). It will judge you on the last Day (see John 12:48). You only twist it to your own destruction (see 2 Peter 3:16).

So if I go out and jump up and down on the ground and don't get it to move, it means the earth is fixed in the heavens and doesn't move? I see his astronomy and physics education is every bit as good as his biology education. More seriously, if the earth does move, what does that say about scripture? Well, for most of us, not a dang thing. I wonder what it means for Ray Comfort?

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Josh Rosenau and the Good Samaritan

A bit back, Josh Rosenau, the blogger behind Thoughts from Kansas lost his laptop and some other items. Recently, someone anonymously donated some money to him with a note that reads, in part:

Not that it matters, but I am one of those dreaded "creationists" that many science bloggers love to mock. My own personal views fall somewhere between id [sic] (not ID the whole DI anti-evolution political movement) and TE [theistic evolution] or EC [evolutionary creationism, the evangelical version of TE, roughly]. I love science and have a B.S. in a health-related field. I am kind of a freak in that no one else I know really seems to care much about the subject. … I do not oppose teaching good science. But I do oppose either scientism or religion being promoted in public schools, but am willing to bet that most educators know better than to cross the line. … I hate the warfare rhetoric used by the most vocal culture warriors. A lot of books and articles apparently get sold/read by capitalizing on the warfare model. I have concluded that those on the extremes have no desire to see the warfare end and achieve their purposes best by fanning the flames.

When I read that, I think of the ICR, AIG, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne and then I think about all of the rest of us caught in the middle. Here is someone willing to help out just because he can and believes that he is called to do so. A good example for all of us.

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Josh Rosenau Calls Casey Luskin on the Carpet

Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas notes that Casey Luskin's recent apology for misreading Kenneth Miller comes off a bit lacking in factual integrity. Luskin wrote:

In a recent post, I noted that Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments on the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade in his book, Only a Theory. When I blogged at the end of last year about Miller’s similar mistakes at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Dr. Miller responded by making me aware of something I did not previously know: apparently Michael Behe wrote the section in Of Pandas and People on blood clotting.

Rosenau responds:

Under normal circumstances, it would suffice to congratulate Casey for finally acknowledging his ignorance, but alas, we must not pause to revel in that minor miracle. Like so many miraculous claims, it vanishes under investigation.

First of all, it is implausible that Casey wouldn't have been aware of Behe's involvement in Pandas. Casey, after all, has been involved with Behe, Pandas, and the broader ID movement for long enough that ignorance of any widely known fact in any of those three areas is a dubious claim.

Indeed, Casey was at the Dover trial when Behe discussed his involvement in writing parts of Pandas. He even used that involvement to browbeat reporters during the trial itself, writing:

"Behe was a contributor to Pandas, it was on the blood clotting cascade section (found in Chapter 6, "Biochemical Similarities")…"

I would like to think that Mr. Luskin forgot this little bit of information. We all forget things. Luskin's account of the differences between Behe's early work with Of Pandas and People and what showed up in Darwin's Black Box goes like this:

I contacted Behe about the differences between the two works, and he informed me that the differences between the treatment of blood clotting in Pandas (1993) and Darwin’s Black Box (1996) were the result of his refining, tightening, improving, and revising his arguments before publishing Darwin's Black Box. There's nothing wrong with Behe updating and improving his arguments.

That is fair enough. The rest of Luskin's post is an attack on the "random, undirected processes of mutation and natural selection" language that shows up in several places in Miller and Levine's textbook on biology. I do not have a copy of this book so I have no reason to doubt Luskin on this. There may be more than enough fuzzy memories to go around on this one.

A Brief History of the Discovery Institute

I missed this one a few years back. In 2006, Roger Downey wrote a column for the Seattle News about the history of the Discovery Institute (or "Disco. 'Tute", as Josh Rosenau has been given to calling it). The article was written a short time after the Dover-Kitzmiller trial that saw all of the gains that the intelligent design washed away. According to the story, the public attention to the Discovery Institute began with the discovery of the "Wedge Strategy" and a part-time employee by the name of Matt Duss:

Curious, Duss rifled through the 10 or so pages, eyebrows rising ever higher, then proceeded to execute his commission while reserving a copy of the treatise for himself. Within a week, he had shared his find with a friend who shared his interest in questions of evolution, ideology, and the propagation of ideas. Unlike Duss, the friend, Tim Rhodes, was technically savvy, and it took him little time to scan the document and post it to the World Wide Web, where it first appeared on Feb. 5, 1999.

The unnamed author of the document wasted no time getting down to his subject. "The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Yet little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science." Such thinkers as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and, above all, Charles Darwin promulgated a "materialistic conception of reality" that "eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and music."

This has always been one of the Achilles heels of the DI in its quest to divest intelligent design from its religious roots. It was clearly obvious from the start that the DI's Center for Science and Culture had, as one of its main goals to remake society and science in a theistic manner. ID was simply a means to that end. As the movement gained momentum (and attention), it became clear that there were a great many people that did not share their vision. Consequently, they began to change tactics:

Indeed, as more and more school boards seriously took up consideration of intelligent-design programs, the Discovery Institute became concerned that some of the people they were trying to influence might grow so enthusiastic as to push the newly moderate ideological envelope. They professed no knowledge of the origins of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture's founding Wedge document. They also dropped the loaded word "renewal" from the name and ceased demanding that intelligent design replace Darwinism in the high-school curriculum, or that it even be actively taught there. All that was asked now was that students be apprised that there was a controversy.

Then came Dover. Although several of the Discovery Institute's fellows, Michael Behe and Scott Minnich, agreed to testify, William Dembski pulled out of the trial. It has been suggested that he did so because of the withering pre-trial testimony of Jeffrey Shallit, who had originally been called to testify against Dembski's expertise. Shallit's expert rebuttal is here. It is, indeed, withering. As all reports have indicated, the trial was an unmitigated disaster for the purveyors of ID. One peculiar aspect of it, though, was that it was not clear who was using who. It is clear that the ID crowd was using Dover as a test. It is also clear that the local creationists were using the ID crowd to gain a degree of legitimacy. Eventually, the facade was discovered. As Judge jones put it:

In the realm of the lay witnesses, if you will, some of the school board witnesses were dreadful witnesses and hence the description “breathtaking inanity” and “mendacity.” In my view, they clearly lied under oath. They made a very poor account of themselves. They could not explain why they did what they did. They really didn't even know what intelligent design was. It was quite clear to me that they viewed intelligent design as a method to get creationism into the public school classroom. They were unfortunate and troublesome witnesses. Simply remarkable, in that sense.

Although the decision was rendered narrowly, no one actually thought that school boards across the country were not paying attention:

No one believes that Judge Jones' decision, even if it's replicated in courtrooms across the country, is going to stop the campaign against materialism and for a God-centered worldview. But it surely must be seen as a catastrophic defeat for the notion of intelligent design, and no single institution is so identified with it, and has more of its financial and intellectual resources tied up in it, than the Discovery Institute of Seattle. Maybe the group can regroup and make a comeback, but for now, the mighty wedge is irreparably blunted.

Since the writing of this document, the Discovery Institute has shifted its tactics once again and is now focused on "academic freedom" to the extent that it has drafted a document that is a blueprint for legislatures across the country sympathetic to the cause of ID to use. In its public relations, the DI has been increasingly vocal about its dislike for all things evolution and has come to resemble many young earth creationist organizations in the approach that it has taken, especially when arguing against the evidence for evolution. As I have written previously, this now should be considered in the realm of culpable ignorance, since the evidence has been presented and rejected for no good reasons.

The "academic freedom" legislation has fallen on rocky ground, however, with several bills falling short (Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, Missouri) and others passing with bad press, like that in Louisiana.

What will be their next move? It is hard to tell. One thing is for sure: they will not go ahead blindly like their YEC cousins, who have almost become a caricature of themselves, so academically isolated they have become. The ID crowd will certainly try a new avenue to get the message out.

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Francis Collins, Bill Maher and Josh Rosenau

Josh Rosenau has an interesting post at Thoughts from Kansas about the criticisms that have been leveled at Francis Collins because of his vocal Christian stance. He writes:

Collins is criticized mainly for two sets of claims about science and religion. The first, that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of human life, the second is that the "Moral Law" cannot be explained scientifically. There is a consensus that the universe's physical constants cannot be much different than they are for life to exist, but no consensus why the universe has those values. Some people think there are a lot of universes and it is inevitable that one would have the combination of values we see in ours. Others seek physical laws which limit the range of variation in universal constants. Nothing Collins says attacks any consensus, and he has made clear that he has no aversion to scientific explanations for this phenomenon. As for the second point, there is no consensus about the origin of morality. There's good scientific evidence for the origins of altruistic behavior, but Collins seems to be aiming at a broader metaphysical meaning for "Moral Law," and has walked back comments suggesting that altruism was scientifically inexplicable.

Again, no denial of scientific consensus. He was wrong about a scientific claim (which Jason notes is not inherently anti-science), but corrected himself when he learned new information. That's how scientists work. By contrast, Maher has been challenged and corrected on his anti-vaccine and anti-germ-theory claims, but has not modified or abandoned those claims in the light of new evidence. That is decidedly contrary not just to scientific knowledge, but to the scientific process.

Rosenau is very sharp and correctly points out that there is no evidence that Collins has ever used his Christianity to sway his scientific decisions. He also points out that those who criticize him do so for his religious beliefs, not his scientific pursuits and successes. He also points to a potential problem that most people who are Christians and practicing scientists encounter—that election or appointment to any post that is as lofty as the NIH should have as a "litmus test" in that the candidate espouse no religious perspective at all. This is absurd. It demands a completely reductionistic view of the universe that is neither warranted nor unwarranted based on the available evidence. Science simply cannot speak to it. Just because these scientists have chosen to not believe in God does not mean a competent, highly qualified scientist has to do the same. A tip of the hat, Josh.


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Raining on Other Writers' Parades

Josh Rosenau wonders why people who write books about evolution are both critical of a book lamenting the state of U.S. science education. PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne are both critical of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, despite agreeing with the premise. He writes:

I find it odd that the author of a book intended to bring already published information to a new audience would criticize another author for publishing material already available in the technical literature in a way more accessible to the general public.

I find it doubly odd that PZ would echo this criticism. Not only did PZ rise to fame by rendering the technical literature in developmental biology accessible to those outside his field (adding not argument, but clarity), he is now famous for plowing the fields of atheism with arguments not dissimilar to those already made famous by recent writers Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, Vic Stenger, etc. He is (I believe) writing yet another book in that vein. It is a well-worked vein, with works touting evolution as an attack on theism dating back to Darwin's day, and no discernibly novel arguments in these popular atheist writings since that time. As one student of the field writes: "There's really only a handful of arguments for atheism in the first place."

This kind of squabbling is not helpful at a time when it is becoming clear that the average person knows little about science, even less about biology and next to nothing about evolution. That is exactly the way that groups like the Discovery Institute, the Institute for Creation Research, and Answers in Genesis want it. Why are we trying to help them? A book that is well-written and sourced that is supportive of evolution should be trumpeted.

Furthermore, I have no sympathy for arguments for atheism by evolutionary biologists in the first place. All they do is cement in the eyes of the general public the already perceived link between evolution and atheism. This just makes it harder for everyone concerned who think that evolution and faith can coexist.


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Josh Rosenau on Francis Collins

Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas has a post on the appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH. His reaction to the move is mostly positive. He writes this:

Collins favors stem cell research and evolution. He's [sic] won't be pushing for research on intercessory prayer or other religious hokum masquerading as science. He's a good scientist, a good administrator, and a good politician. He'll work hard to keep NIH funding flowing smoothly, and he won't let his personal beliefs interfere with his agency's work.

As Rosenau points out, Collins walks a fine line between the anti-evolutionary crowd and the anti-religious crowd. He will likely get slings and arrows from both.


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The Discovery Institute and Free Speech

Apparently, the Discovery Institute has a peculiar idea of what constitutes free speech and when. If you remember, Don Exodus, who put up the original YouTube video up that criticized Casey Luskin's appearance on FoxNews was sued by the Discovery Institute. The DI filed a copyright claim notice asking YouTube that Exodus take the video down. As Josh Rosenau noted, they didn't seem to care when Yoko Ono claimed copyright on the song "Imagine." Here is the video that Exodus made in reponse to that.




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