All in the Service of a Message

A Youngstown, Ohio school district has come under fire for its inclusion of a video for tenth grade science that is produced by Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, who was once interviewed favorably in the Intelligent Design blog Uncommon Descent (and not so favorably by The Guardian).  Yahya has a long history of being an Islamic creationist, holocaust denier and was jailed for a time in Turkey for unseemly behavior involving his organization and young girls.  

The story, by Zack Kopplin, in the Daily Beast, has this:

Youngstown, Ohio, students are learning creationism in school with materials from a Islamic, Holocaust-denying group accused of being a sex cult.

A curriculum map (PDF) recommends teachers in this public school district show a creationist video, Cambrian Fossils and the Creation of Species, as part of 10th-grade science education. The video claims that the Cambrian Explosion “totally invalidates the theory of evolution.” The Cambrian Explosion was a time period, nearly 550 million years ago, where, over the next tens of millions of years, the number of species on Earth experienced a (relatively) rapid expansion by evolutionary standards. Christian creationists regularly point to this explosion of life as evidence for creation by God and against evolution.

Blink and you’d miss the Islamic connection in the video. A black screen flashes for less than one second that says “this film is based on the works of Harun Yahya.” In the right corner, there’s a gold bubble that says, “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” in Arabic.

As alluded to above, it seems that U.S. ID supporters and creationists are perfectly happy to hitch their wagons to people like Yahya, as long as the message is anti-evolutionary. This is disturbing, since it obscures the other poisonous aspects of Yahya's message. Kopplin continues:

Youngstown City School District is trying to “teach the controversy,” which is an old creationist argument for sneaking religion into schools, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Rob Boston told The Daily Beast.

“The district is doing its students a disservice by pretending that a controversy exists when none does,” Boston said. “That the district is apparently inadvertently using material produced by an evolution-denying, anti-Semitic Islamic TV preacher who has been accused of running a sex cult only makes the situation worse.”

All in the service of a message.

Idle Question

I read over at Uncommon Descent that Jonathan Marks doesn't buy common descent based on the genomics. When is the Discovery Institute going to turn out a palaeontologist? Has anyone else noticed that there is no emphasis on geology or palaeontology at the site and when they do forage into those two fields, their specious and ill-formed arguments usually get blown out of the water?

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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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Feedback!

I am reminded of that fantastic section of Emerson, Lake and Palmer's live version of Aquatarkus where Greg Lake channels feedback through his bass into the speakers (at the 19:02 mark). As Panda's Thumb notes, it seems that the Discovery Institute, after years of negative press about the fact that they don't allow feedback on their hit pieces, are testing the waters. I am not optimistic. A year back, I found a piece by Cornelius Hunter to be incorrect in places. How was I able to voice this? I had to write the PR guy and lawyer Casey Luskin, who then relayed the message to Dr. Hunter, who then wrote me a very arrogant and condescending message. After debating whether or not to answer it and fearing I would write something that I would later regret, I just walked away. Let's see what Wesley Elsbury writes:

Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William Dembski’s weblog, “Uncommon Descent”, has comments enabled, but the moderation there is generally so ham-fisted that only a few voices of dissent have lasted more than a week or two. The various inconsistencies of moderation and proclivity to stifle dissent have their own thread at “After the Bar Closes”., and discussion of content at UD has occupied three long-running threads ([1], [2], and [3]).

For a reminder of one particularly bad exchange, a read of Pharyngula's account is instructive. We shall see what we shall see.

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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 Gets it Right (And Nature Immunology Gets it Wrong)

In the most recent post on Uncommon Descent, Scordova points out that the journal Nature Immunology, in their May editorial, takes some pot shots at Francis Collins, head of the NIH and founder of the BioLogos site, for his Christianity. The unsigned editorial can be found here. Scordova writes:

May, 2010 editorial in Nature Immunology makes it clear that they don’t trust religious persons–even those who are neo-Darwinian evolutionists like Francis Collins–in positions of scientific authority.

The editorial is basically a long argument that falls under the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy—correlation does not imply causation. They begin:

The newest book authored by Francis Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, was released in March 2010. A collection of essays addressing the rationality of faith, the book reflects the struggle of great minds of the past and present—philosophers, poets, scientists—to understand the urge to believe in a supernatural power. It is advertised as an essential companion for anyone seeking clarity in the ongoing debate between reason and faith: seekers, believers and skeptics.

The publication of the book has great potential to reignite some nagging doubts over the election of Francis Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Many hoped that after his nomination he would refrain from publicly discussing his religious convictions and step down from projects such as Biologos, which attempts to reconcile evolution with the idea of God. This, however, has not been the case, and although most agree that Francis Collins is a skilled administrator, there are justified concerns that such public embrace of religion from an influential scientist may have negative consequences on science education.

This idea might, in and of itself, have merit, if there was evidence that Collins was subverting science education in this country. But there is none. The editors then recount several events in the last five year that detail the struggles that have been waged regarding science education over the country. These include the Dover-Kitzmiller case, the 2008 Louisiana "Academic Freedom" bill and the results of several polls suggesting that the acceptance of evolution in the United States is lower than it should be.

This is all certainly bad news but how is it remotely Francis Collins' fault? By their own admission, he has lamented the lack of evolution education and has never shied away from describing himself as an ardent evolutionist and is a prolific and gifted scientist. It is therefore, a bit puzzling when the editors refer to him only as a "skilled administrator." They write:

In the introduction and in interviews surrounding the book release [Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith], he describes his belief in a non-natural, non-measurable, improvable deity that created the universe and its laws with humans as the ultimate aim of its creation. Some might worry that describing scientists as workers toiling to understand the laws and intricacies of this divine creation will create opportunities for creationism adepts.

What they fail to recall is that when he was appointed as head of NIH, many creationist groups decried the appointment. Ken Ham, for example, wrote:

It is true that in this era of history, people are asking questions about Genesis, as they recognize that if Genesis is not true, how can one trust any of God’s Word? Collins is offering them answers that will only further undermine biblical authority—AiG is giving answers that stand on biblical authority, and, as a result, so many have testified they became Christians or rededicated their lives.

Lawrence Ford of the ICR wrote:

Should we conclude that Dr. Francis Collins is not a "born again" Christian as described in the Bible? He appears to be genuine and sincere in his belief that Jesus Christ is his personal Savior. But quite troubling is Collins' public and proud disbelief in the historicity of the Bible, the existence of Adam and Eve, the event of the Fall, and many more fundamental doctrines of God's Word--leading one to conclude that even if he is a Christian, his self-selective beliefs are terribly resistant to God's truth, revealing his dangerously poor view of the power of God. Like the Sadducees, Collins errs by "not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).

Neither of these quotes faintly resembles high praise. These were calls to the "Christian" community to reject Francis Collins as a role model for Christians. It is only those of us who accept evolutionary science that welcomed his appointment and hoped he would truly be the bridge between science and faith.

But the problem, of course, is the faith. The editors of Nature Immunology have failed to distinguish between someone like Collins, who is not just a Christian but an accomplished scientist, and someone who supports creationism at the public school level, and this elementary lack of discernment is troubling and insulting.

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