Jonathan Turley's Thoughts on COPE et al. VS. Kansas State Board of Education

A Jonathan Turley notes, and as I reported a month back, a lawsuit has been filed in Kansas by Citizens for Objective Public Education against the Kansas State Board of Education to keep them from implementing the next generation science standards.  The focus of the complaint is that the science standards use scientific naturalism as their base for understanding science.  From the COPE press release:

The Complaint claims that the Standards lead students to ask “ultimate religious questions” like “where do we come from?” Rather than objectively inform children about these questions in an age-appropriate manner, the F&S lead them “to answer the questions with only materialistic/atheistic answers.” This indoctrination is driven by the use of a concealed Orthodoxy (or doctrine) called methodological naturalism or scientific materialism. The Orthodoxy requires that explanations of the cause and nature of natural phenomena may only use natural, material or mechanistic causes, and must assume that teleological or design conceptions of nature are invalid.

Turley suggests that neither of these are valid. He writes:

The allegations are absurd on a number of levels. First, Plaintiffs have adopted a definition of religion which eliminates any requirement for belief in a supernatural entity. Second, Plaintiffs’ reasoning, if pursued to its logical conclusion, would virtually preclude the teaching of science in the public schools because their objections go to the basis of what we understand as the scientific method. Third, Plaintiffs rely upon the same flawed dualism that taints most fundamentalist arguments, the false assumption that acceptance of the findings of evolutionary biology are incompatible with religious belief in general and Christian belief in particular. The great paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, for example, who is quoted above, regarded evolution itself as part of the process of divine creation.

I think that what Turley is getting at in the first part is that religion is overstepping its bounds by demanding that explanations of scientific phenomena include teleological considerations. That is debatable. For the second one he is dead on. Science must proceed within the confines of scientific naturalism to explain things. That is not antithetical to religion. God has created a world that behaves within ordered bounds and is knowable. Science is how we know about it. As far as his third point is concerned, that is one of the greatest debates within Christianity right now: whether or not evolutionary biology can be subsumed within organized Christianity. Entities such as BioLogos think so. Those like AiG and ICR do not. Turley paints a rather broad brush here that is not broadly applicable.  His statement effectively does away with the controversy.  Teilhard de Chardin was a great thinker and a great palaeontologist but as anyone who has read The Jesuit and the Skull
knows, he battled with the church over issues of science his entire life. 

Creation Museum To Get Allosaurus Skull

The AP is reporting that the Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Kentucky, has become the recipient of a privately donated, almost complete (but plastically deformed) Allosaurus skull.  Dylan Lovan writes:

The museum said in a written statement Friday that the Allosaurus probably stood about 10 feet tall and 30 feet long, and was a meat-eater. The skeleton, nicknamed "Ebenezer," includes a skull with 53 teeth and will go on display in an exhibit next year.

"For decades I've walked through many leading secular museums, like the Smithsonian in Washington, and have seen their impressive dinosaur skeletons, but they were used for evolution," said Ken Ham, co-founder of the Answers in Genesis ministry, which operates the museum. "Now we have one of that class for our museum."

Unfortunately, they have no idea what to do with it other than put it on display. They can't do a taxonomic study because that would involve evolutionary biology. They cannot try to place it in a geological context because that would involve mainstream geology. All they can really do is sit and look at it.

The story continues:

The well-preserved condition of the Allosaurus is evidence that it died during a worldwide flood as described in the Bible's Old Testament, Andrew Snelling, a geologist at the Creation Museum, said in the statement.

Snelling said the fossil's intact skeleton is proof of an extremely rapid burial, "which is a confirmation of the global catastrophe of a flood a few thousand years ago."

That is absurd. The fact that it was buried rapidly constitutes no evidence whatsoever that it was buried during a world-wide flood. There are plenty of examples of animals that become entombed and fossilized in contexts that didn't involve water.  This happens routinely in volcanic sediments.  The Ashfall deposits in Yellowstone and the Liaoning fossil beds in China are prime examples.    Ironically, it is the deposits at Liaoning that are so damaging to the flood model because they represent multiple volcanic eruptions over  a considerable depositional thickness, something that could not possibly have happened in a world-wide flood. 

The nature of the fossil find, itself, also presents problems for Ham and Snelling (or should, at any rate).  How could something like that fossilize in four and half thousand years?  Actual, carbon-dated archaeological remains that old aren't fossilized.  These, and so many other questions about the flood model are never addressed.

For now, all they can do is put it up and say "Gee, isn't that pretty."

 

Ohio Supreme Court to issue verdict soon in Freshwater case

Here is a story that continues to have legs.  The Kenyon Collegian is reporting that the John Freshwater case, the teacher that was accused of teaching creationism in the classroom and branding the arms of at least one student is going to finally be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court.  Eric Geller writes:

Freshwater’s dismissal brought widespread attention to a local controversy over religious education in public schools that began almost a decade ago. In interviews with the Collegian, Kenyon professors recalled following the story over the years as it evolved from a rejected intelligent design curriculum into allegations of physical violence against students.

Between 2002 and 2003, Freshwater petitioned the Board of Education to adopt a lesson plan based on materials from the Intelligent Design Network, an organization dedicated to promoting creationism. Freshwater’s proposal “was turned down by the District’s science curriculum committee, and then was turned down by the Board,” said Richard Hoppe, an affiliated scholar in biology at Kenyon, who has written extensively about Freshwater’s case for The Panda’s Thumb, a science education blog.

After the last set of allegations about Freshwater’s conduct surfaced in 2008, Hoppe attended 38 of the 40 public school board meetings leading up to the 2011 termination decision. He also taught an interdisciplinary studies course at Kenyon about the conflict between creationism and evolution.

“The materials he used in support of that proposal were classical intelligent design creationism materials,” Hoppe said. “It didn’t surprise me when some of the allegations later were that he taught using those kinds of materials.”

Professor of Biology Wade Powell said Freshwater “was teaching creation science — and the fashionable version of it at that time was called ‘intelligent design’ –– and it coincided with some battles that were being fought at the level of the state board of education about the standards for Ohio education.”

The most disturbing quote from the story is this, though:

Hoppe related an incident from the administrative hearings where a student witness, when asked what he had learned about science from Freshwater’s class, reportedly replied, “I learned that you can’t trust scientists. Scientists don’t know anything. You can’t trust science.”

“That was the most striking and disheartening thing,” Hoppe said. “You can’t trust science.”

Sometimes, when I read what comes out of state legislatures with people like Paul Broun in Georgia, I think that they get these ideas from teachers like Freshwater. Rotten science education breeds rotten science legislation.

More on "Noah" From the Hollywood Reporter

Here is another article on the upcoming "Noah" film by Darren Aronovsky.  Aside from apprehensions and criticisms, we find that the production budget has gone over $125 million and:

The use of visual effects has been so extensive that in some scenes, only an actor's face is in the final image. The film relies on effects to create the flood, of course, but in addition, Noah doesn't feature any real animals. Aronofsky said the creatures in the film are "slightly tweaked" versions of those that exist in nature, and there also are fantastical beings in the mix. The director recently told DGA Quarterly that Industrial Light & Magic had said it did the most complicated rendering in the company's history for the film -- "a nice badge of honor," he said.

Might not matter. ILM did the last Star Wars film and it was awful anyway.

Stormy Seas For Darren Aronovsky and "Noah"

Somehow I missed this.  Darren Aronovsky is directing a big-budget movie adaptation of Genesis 6-9 and is running into difficulties with the studio and his audiences.  Amanda Taylor of The Deseret News reports:

Remakes are difficult enough, but when you're creating a film based on a story from the Bible that happened eons ago, the challenges increase.

Director Darren Aronofsky is creating a blockbuster version of the epic tale of Noah and his ark. Of all the problems that have arisen, the latest seems to be a clash between Paramount and the director over audience reactions. The studio has asked Aranofsky to make some changes, but he doesn't want to budge on his vision, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

An anonymous source told THR, "Darren is not made for studio films. He's very dismissive. He doesn't care about (Paramount's) opinion."

The specifics about the film remain unclear, but reactions from Jewish, Christian and general audiences are reportedly "troubling" enough for Paramount to request some alterations.

Brian Godawa, a Hollywood screenwriter referred to in the story, is extraordinarily critical of the screenplay, and writes in his movie blog:

Though God has not spoken to men or angels for a long time, Noah is haunted by recurring dreams of a rainstorm and flood that he surmises is God’s judgment on man because as Noah says, “At our hand, all he created is dying.” The trees, the animals, and the environment. “If we change, if we work to save it, perhaps he will too [save us].” Or as grandfather Methuselah reiterates, “We have destroyed this world, so we ourselves will be destroyed. Justice.” Oh, and I almost forgot, they kill people too, but it’s not really as important. In another place, “We have murdered each other. We raped the world. The Creator has judged us.” The notion of human evil is more of an afterthought or symptom of the bigger environmental concern of the great tree hugger in the sky.

Although it might reasonably be assumed that these sort of actions on the part of the humans at the time would constitute "evil," that is clearly not the primary focus of God's anger in the Genesis story.Godawa writes as much in his article, which is smack on the money in many ways.  The film is supposed to be out March 28 of next year.  It cannot possibly be as bad as the John Voight, Mary Steenburgen, "Noah's Ark" miniseries that was put out by Robert Halmi, Sr. fourteen years ago. 

No Abominable Snowman After All?

Todd Wood points in the direction of this story about the Yeti, or abominable snowman.  Alan Boyle of NBC Science writes:

After a yearlong quest, a British geneticist says he has matched the DNA from hairs attributed to Himalayan Yetis, also known as "Abominable Snowmen," to a breed of Arctic bear that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Other researchers say that might be as good an explanation as any.

The claim is being made by Oxford University's Bryan Sykes, already well-known for his research on human ancestry. Sykes says his findings suggest that sightings of the legendary Yeti may actually represent observations of a previously unknown creature in the Himalayas — perhaps a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.

Sykes told NBC News that his aim is to bring the Yeti out of the realm of myth and fantasy. "All my colleagues think I'm taking a risk in doing this, but I'm curious, and I am in a position to actually do something to answer the questions," he said.

Outside experts didn't reject Sykes' conclusion out of hand. Tom Gilbert, professor of paleogenomics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, told The Associated Press that Sykes' research provided a "reasonable explanation" for past Yeti sightings.

Based on the interview in the story, Sykes appears to believe that these animals exist and that the reason that they have not been found is that they are few and far between with enormous home ranges. This sounds a tad too convenient. Oddly, the new findings don't seem to have deflated his enthusiasm any.

I think that he is off the mark, anyway. As I wrote sometime back, as nearly as I can tell, the earliest stories of these huge creatures are from China and India.   I believe that their source is the extinct ape Gigantopithecus. This ape consisted of three species and the genus ranged very widely, from India to China and northern Vietnam. The largest species, G. blacki stood almost ten feet tall and is estimated to have weighed over 1100 pounds.   Put simply, if you found the fossilized remains, you would come away thinking there was a very, very large animal on the loose. Given the comparative lack of understanding of what a fossil was and how old these animals were when they were alive, it is quite conceivable, even believable that stories would have arisen about them.The earliest Gigantopithecus remains date to around 10 million years ago but G. bilaspurensis lived as recently as 100 k years ago, coeval with late archaic Homo sapiens.  When people came to the New World (from the Amur River area of China) through the Bering Strait, they brought the stories with them, which is why you get stories of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. 

I have no evidence for this, only, as Mr. Spock would say, an hypothesis "which just happens to fit the facts." 

Been on Vacation

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I have been on vacation for the last week with the family down in Florida.  A nice time was had by all.

Meanwhile, Over In South Carolina...

The South Carolina State Board of Education is about ready to approve the new school standards and some are not happy.  Ron Barnett writes this for Greenville Online:

The state Board of Education gave initial approval to a new set of science standards Wednesday, although some board members tried to overturn the vote out of concern over whether the new guidelines leave room for students’ religious beliefs on the origin of life.

“What I’m asking is to teach both,” said board member Neil Willis of Boiling Springs.

After the board approved first reading of the state’s first revision of its science standards since 2005, Willis made a motion to reconsider the move. One other board member seconded the motion, but it failed on a voice vote.

The standards now will go to the state Education Oversight Committee and come back to the state Board of Education for final action early next year.

As is typical in these debates, however, a basic understanding of how science works is not self-evident in all of the participants:

“To remove the option to believe, I think, is a mistake,” Willis said.

Board member Raye O’Neal Boyd of Winnsboro agreed.

“Where is the opening for people who believe to stick by their beliefs, but at the same time show that they understand what you’re trying to teach them, but not necessarily adopting what you’re trying to teach them?” she asked.

This kind of thing suggests that people are equating scientific evidence  with sociological or cultural debates. It just ain't the same thing. Yes, there are obviously disagreements on how some evidence is explained as theory is being worked out but  if there is scientific evidence for "A" and there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for "B" then it doesn't matter how much you "believe" in "B", it should not be taught as science. Why don't people get this?

Ball State University: The Backlash Continues

The Muncie Star Press is reporting that now the course purporting to teach atheism that was put in the spotlight by the Discovery Institute is under investigation.  Seth Slabaugh writes:

“You can be assured that the syllabi and curricula of all of the courses you singled out, as well as those of other courses offered by the Honors College and elsewhere at the university, are reviewed and updated on a regular basis,” BSU President Jo Ann Gora wrote in a letter on Monday to The Discovery Institute.

The institute is an anti-evolution, pro-creationism intelligent design think tank in Seattle that maintains supernatural forces shaped the universe.

“Some were undergoing this process before we received the inquiry regarding Honors 296, and others are being reviewed and updated at the present time,” the letter read. “Our intent is to ensure that their content and pedagogy reflect the highest academic standards.”

It appears that Gora is concerned about the allegations but in typical fashion, the Discovery Institute is approaching the controversy in a very ham-fisted way by threatening legal action. At issue seems to be the make-up of the commmittee to evaluate Eric Hedin's class and whether or not equity is being applied across the spectrum. The story continues:

[John] West said, “We gave BSU an opportunity to clarify what it is doing, and to show that it is applying its policies in a fair and legal manner. Because BSU has refused to clarify what it is doing or answer our questions, we will be forced to seek another remedy.”

Gora said she shared the institute’s concerns and demands with the university’s board of trustees before responding to the institute by letter this week.

It seems to me that this can only come out well for the Discovery Institute, despite the fact that I still think that they are providing a mixed message in their protest. The position of the university has always been that intelligent design is not accepted science and should not be taught as such. If the Discovery Institute were protesting the straight teaching of evolutionary theory in biology class, that would be one thing. They have historically argued in an anti-evolutionary vein so that would make sense.

But that is not what they are doing. They are protesting because a strictly theological perspective is being taught in another class and they want that scrutinized. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I am thinking "ID is either science or religion. It cannot be both."

The Rise of the Neandertals, Part II

My second BioLogos post on the Neandertals is up here.  Comments welcome. 

Kansas (Again)

"Who could imagine that they would freak-out somewhere in Kansas."  -Frank Zappa

The next generation science standards have been adopted in Kansas and already there has been a lawsuit filed against the Kansas State Board of Education by a conservative group to block their implementation.  From the AP by way of Fox News:

The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007.

The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established. Most board members believed the guidelines will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in science classes to doing hands-on projects and experiments.

The complaint focuses on the idea that if the children are taught evolutionary principles, that is tantamount to teaching them atheism.  Most of the direct quotes in the story reveal a general ignorance of science on the part of the lawsuit's promoters, notably John Calvert

Calvert was a key figure in past Kansas evolution debates as a founder of the Intelligent Design Network, contending that life is too complex to have developed through unguided evolution. Joshua Rosenau, programs and policy director for the Oakland, Calif.-based National Center for Science Education, said Calvert has been making such an argument for years and "no one in the legal community has put much stock in it."

Like the folks involved in most of these lawsuits and complaints, I would be surprised if he would be capable of coming up with even a cursorily working definition of evolution.

BioLogos Post The Rise of the Neandertals, Part I is Up!

My newest BioLogos post, The Rise of the Neandertals, Part I is up, here.  Comments are welcome either here or there.

Science Daily: "Anthropologists Confirm Link Between Cranial Anatomy and Two-Legged Walking"

This sort of fits under the category of "gee, who knew" but it is nice to finally have confirmation of something that has been tacitly understood for almost ninety years.  Science Daily writes:

The study, published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, confirms a controversial finding made by anatomist Raymond Dart, who discovered the first known two-legged walking (bipedal) human ancestor, Australopithecus africanus. Since Dart's discovery in 1925, physical anthropologists have continued to debate whether this feature of the cranial base can serve as a direct link to bipedal fossil species.

Okay, first, the controversial nature of this is being massively overstated. There is very little doubt, based on comparative anatomical studies, that the placement of the foramen magnum is directly indicative of the kind of locomotor pattern that a given animal employs. That is what clued Dart in to the whole idea that the Taung child represented a biped in the first place. Its foramen magnum was not in the place that you would have expected it to be if the individual had been either a quadrupedal baboon or extinct ape (of which there were none in South Africa). It was, however, located in the same place as in bipedal humans. Further studies demonstrated that if you placed the Taung skull on a quadrupedal animal, it didn't work. The animal would have its face pointed down all of the time, instead of out, like your average quadruped. Put simply, the Taung child was an early biped and there was no reason to think anything differently.

Once again, comparative anatomical studies to the rescue!

As part of the study, the researchers measured the position of the foramen magnum in 71 species from three mammalian groups: marsupials, rodents and primates. By comparing foramen magnum position broadly across mammals, the researchers were able to rule out other potential explanations for a forward-shifted foramen magnum, such as differences in brain size.

According to the findings, a foramen magnum positioned toward the base of the skull is found not only in humans, but in other habitually bipedal mammals as well. Kangaroos, kangaroo rats and jerboas all have a more forward-shifted foramen magnum compared with their quadrupedal (four-legged walking) close relatives.

Well, now we know for sure...sort of.   

Josh Rosenau Updates Us on the "Ark-n-Park"

Josh Rosenau of the NCSE is writing to let us know how Ken Ham is continuing to prop up construction of the Ark Encounter (derisively called the "Ark-n-Park" by Barry Lynn).  He notes:

The project has already been promised a tourism-related state tax rebate and state road crews will widen the road leading to the park, but apparently the campaign to raise capital for construction has not been meeting expectations (neither has Creation Museum attendance, reportedly). So Ken Ham is looking for a new way to scare up money. He sent out an appeal to the Answers in Genesis mailing list offering people a chance to buy bonds to fund the park, bonds issued by the city of Williamstown, Kentucky.

This isn’t quite TARP, but the bonds will be a small government bailout for AiG, using the city’s borrowing power to cut the cost of loans to build the creationist theme park. That probably doesn’t violate the First Amendment, according to a church-state attorney I ran this past, though he observes, “Bond financing is quite complex, and the analysis can differ based on what precise type of bond financing we are talking about here.”

Ham, it seems, is selling bonds rather than going through the usual tax exemptions route because he claims that Obamacare will require any venture that takes public money to provide for "abortion-producing drugs" to be offered. Therefore, to avoid the pitfalls of federal funds, Ham is going the bond route.  This is a problem but not for the reasons that Ham thinks:

First, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t mandate coverage for abortion. Indeed, since 1979, Kentucky law has forbidden insurers from covering abortion without the purchase of a separate insurance rider. My guess is that Ham is referring to the law’s mandate that insurers cover contraception, and claiming that birth control is actually abortion. This is a fairly common argument advanced by the radical religious right, since by defining pregnancy to begin at the moment of fertilization, rather than at implantation, and they can claim that birth control pills (including Plan B) cause abortion (PDF) by preventing implantation of the fertilized egg. Federal law and the medical community see it differently, but being at odds with the science is nothing new for Ham.

Also, as Rosenau points out, selling municipal bonds is still entangling the donors or buyers in government just at a smaller scale and has very little to do with whether or not abortion is supported.  I suspect that he is right in that the whole ark project is tanking and Ham is just trying to raise money in a somewhat less traditional route.  It doesn't help that there has never been an approved feasibility study for the undertaking.  Here is to hoping that the thing is never built. 

Sorry...

It looks like I have torn some ligaments in my right knee and have been laid up for a bit.  Back now.

Zack Kopplin Files FOIA Suit Against Louisiana Superintendent of Louisiana Department of Education

Zack Kopplin, the tireless crusader for good science public school education contends that the Education Department of the state of Louisiana has withheld documents and obfuscated regarding the details of the Louisiana school voucher program.  To combat this, he has filed suit in Louisiana court to compel the State Education Superindendent John White to release these documents.  As CenLamar reports:

The suit is designed—at long last—to ferret out what the process was leading to Jindal’s sweeping education changes—including whether there was a lack of record making or so-called “off campus” records retention, which is a particularly non-transparent practice of some government officials to hire consultants or third party firms to develop and store policy in order to shield policy making from the public.

In late May and early June, Kopplin submitted a number of requests pertaining to education policy, the overwhelming majority of which were either ignored or improperly answered. Kopplin alleges that, during the last several months, Superintendent White and officials at the Louisiana Department of Education have attempted to conceal, delay, and deny the production of public records.

This is not so different from what the Dover County School Board did in Pennsylvania in 2005, when they brought in copies of the execrable Of Pandas and People in the middle of the night when no one was looking.About his dealings with the Education Department, Kopplin is quoted as saying:

“Pretty early on, I knew this would be a ‘war of attrition,’” said Kopplin. “The hope was that if they didn’t legitimately respond to my questions, then I’d eventually stop asking them. But I never thought I’d need to file a lawsuit, and I never imagined the Department of Education would attempt to conceal so much. I had tried working with them. I even drove in from Houston to meet personally with their staff.”

This is what happens when politicians make education policy.

Discovery Institute Attacks Ball State's Decision to Allow Atheistic Seminar

The Discovery Institute has written an open letter to Jo Ann Gora, the president of Ball State University, asking her to be consistent with regard to the treatment of protected speech on campus.  Christian NewsWire reports:  

"If Ball State is going to ban faculty speech favoring intelligent design by claiming that it would violate the separation of church and state, then it must apply the same ban to faculty speech that promotes atheism or attacks intelligent design in the classroom," says Dr. John West, Vice President of Discovery Institute.

Discovery Institute is asking BSU to investigate its honors seminar "Dangerous Ideas." The sole textbook used in the course is an anthology edited by a prominent atheist in which the authors assert that "Science Must Destroy Religion," that "There is no God; no Intelligent Designer; no higher purpose to our lives," and even that scientists should function as our society's "high priests." The book contains an afterword by atheist evangelist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion.

In her published remarks on the issue, this is what President Gora said:

“Intelligent design is overwhelmingly deemed by the scientific community as a religious belief and not a scientific theory,” President Jo Ann Gora said. “Therefore, intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses. The gravity of this issue and the level of concern among scientists are demonstrated by more than 80 national and state scientific societies' independent statements that intelligent design and creation science do not qualify as science.”

The question is not one of academic freedom, but one of academic integrity, she added. “Said simply, to allow intelligent design to be presented to science students as a valid scientific theory would violate the academic integrity of the course as it would fail to accurately represent the consensus of science scholars.”

Nowhere in there did President Gora ban faculty speech on the discussion of intelligent design on campus.  Instead, Ball State is banning the teaching of intelligent design in science classes because it is not established science (it is not science at all, for that matter).   The two are very different things.  Leave it to the Discovery Institute to conflate them.

The other peculiar thing here is which First Amendment clause has been used.  By demanding that the atheistic seminar be investigated, focusing on the religious nature of the course and contrasting it with intelligent design, John West is focusing on the establishment clause rather than the free speech clause and, thus, is agreeing that intelligent design is religious, in nature.  Otherwise, why would he care about a philosophy seminar promoting atheism?  This is a substantial shift away from the standard position of the Discovery Institute, which has continually put forth the idea that ID is not tied to religious practice or theology.  If it is going to be argued that banning it is a violation of the establishment clause then it must be. 

It is difficult for me to believe that this is what they really meant to say or that they could have made such a rookie mistake.

And I Thought Don Prothero's Review of Darwin's Doubt Was Withering...

Nick Matzke has also written a review of Darwin's Doubt that has been posted on Panda's Thumb.  This is the nicest thing he has to say about it:

As I read through Meyer’s book, though, in case after case I see misunderstandings, superficial treatment of key issues which are devastating to his thesis once understood, and complete or near-complete omission of information that any non-expert reader would need to have to make an accurate assessment of Meyer’s arguments.

Matzke also points out that Meyer continually uses redrawn, dumbed-down illustrations, while ignorning detailed ones that would poke holes in his case and completely fails to understand the key events in the Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian periods. According to Matzke, Meyer also completely fails to understand phylogenetic analysis and the importance that it has to understanding patterns in the fossil record. It is this section for which he reserves his greatest scorn:

His main argument is basically that phylogenetic results sometimes conflict, therefore the whole thing is meaningless. This exhibits a jaw-dropping level of incompetence. It’s amateurish in the worst possible way, the opening-your-yapper-without-knowing-the-first-thing-about-what-you-are-discussing sort of amateurism.

Indeed, this seems to characterize much of the work that comes out of the DI these days.  One wonders why they don't just pick up a book on palaeontology and read it from cover to cover before writing these things.  This sort of reluctance to adapt their arguments to current data or respond to their critics is the kind of thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of your average scientist.  Reading reviews of Meyer's earlier work Signature in the Cell, it is clear that he has learned nothing in the intervening years. As I wrote over two years ago:

It is as if the concept of natural selection is completely foreign or is so repugnant as to be unacceptable and therefore, the DI writers continue to misunderstand it. The problem that I have with this perspective is that this misunderstanding of natural selection has not gone uncorrected. Kenneth Miller, Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne, Steve Matheson and Darrel Falk, just to name a few have written treatises strongly rebutting this position held by Meyer, Dembski and Michael Behe. These have been ignored. Therefore, to continue to promote this misunderstanding of natural selection and its role in evolution constitutes, as they say, a terminological inexactitude. This would not be the first time the Discovery Institute was accused of that.

Why should your average scientist take this organization seriously when they continue to misunderstand basic evolutionary theory and repeat falsehoods time and time again?

What really pains me about this is that books that emanate from the Discovery Institute are being read by my kids in school. That has got to stop.

Off-Topic (Sort of) But Way Cool

Scientific American has an infographic that is really neat.  It is 150 million years of fish evolution put in a phylogenetic tree structure.  Here is the graphic but you should go to the story to get the whole thing in all of its detail.

The Washington Times Weighs In on Ball State

Getting in a little bit late in the game, The Washington Times waxes on the trials of Eric Hedin and Ball State University and, by and large, makes a hash of it.  They write:

At Ball State University in Indiana, for example, anti-religion activists are irritated that physics and astronomy professor Eric Hedin presented intelligent design in his classroom as a plausible theory of origins. The basic gist was that mankind and the universe did not spring forth out of a series of wholly random events and that some higher power guided the process.

For one thing, intelligent design is not a theory of origins. Intelligent design is not really a theory at all, in the scientific sense of the word. Intelligent design rests almost entirely on the premise that prevailing scientific theories are at a loss to explain certain processes that take place in the natural world.  Second, there is nothing in the scientific enterprise that argues that the universe sprang forth out of a series of wholly random events.  That is a non-scientific statement.  Onward.  They continue:

Progress depends on challenging the conventional wisdom. Most of the ancient world looked at the sky and assumed it was obvious that the universe revolved around the Earth. In the 16th century, Copernicus said, no, the common belief was wrong and the planets, including Earth, revolve around the sun. A century later, Newton explained how gravity made it all work, which was accepted until Einstein came along with his breakthrough theory of relativity. Science never rests.

It is somewhat ironic that she chooses these examples of people who challenged the prevailing views because each one of these people had hard evidence that supported their positions.  This was also true of Charles Darwin, who's theory was revolutionary for its time and, with other researchers extending it, had been found to be one of the most robust theories in existence.  Now let's see what the theoretical constructs of intelligent design are. As Paul Nelson said eight years ago:

Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory now, and that’s a real problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity” –- but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.¹

We are eight years down the road and intelligent design still consists of attacks on evolution rather than a attempting to design a full-fledged theorectical base. Jeffrey Shallit pointed this out a year back:

Here is a perfect example of this sterility: Bio-Complexity, the flagship journal of the intelligent design movement. As 2012 draws to a close, the 2012 volume contains exactly two research articles, one "critical review" and one "critical focus", for a grand total of four items. The editorial board has 30 members; they must be kept very busy handling all those papers.  (Another intelligent design journal, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, hasn't had a new issue since 2005.)

The 2013 volume has had, in eight months, only three articles and all three are based on arguments against evolution, not support for intelligent design.  The problem persists.  And as long as proponents of ID cannot provide their own tests of how this theory can be supported, it does not belong in the science classroom. Indeed, their only recourse in recent years has been to try to redefine science so that ID can be incorporated.  The problem here, is, as Michael Behe noted, when one does so, astrology is considered to be science.

Jo Ann Gora of Ball State did not close off discussion of competing scientific theories, she closed off acceptance of a non-scientific alternative to established science.


¹Nelson, P. (2004) The Measure of Design," Touchstone, pp. 64-65