Academic Freedom and ID

Brian Angliss at Scholars & Rogues has a lengthy post on the wave of "academic freedom" bills that are sweeping the country. After a mildly humorous introduction in the style of Genesis, he writes:

On the face of it, the language quoted above for these two laws isn’t really a problem. Of course, as it stands, most science teachers in the country already work hard to have an “open and objective discussion” of any scientific theories they teach, and to help their students “understand, analyze, critique, and review” those theories. So, on the face of it, both of these laws are entirely unnecessary.

But a little research reveals the state legislators who introduced the Michigan bill once introduced intelligent design-teaching legislation in Michigan. And that the religious Louisiana Family Forum was responsible for convincing the Louisiana bill’s sponsor to introduce it in the first place. Of course, the fact that the two bills have nearly identical language means that there’s a good chance they come from the same source, possibly the Discovery Institute, which has the text of the Louisiana bill on its website.

This hearkens back to the Dover Trial and "cdesign proponentsists" Although the sponsors of these bills claim to want critical teaching in science, in reality, they just don't want evolution taught. Read the whole thing.

The ROM Darwin Exhibit: A Visit by Steve Martin

Steve Martin visited the Royal Ontario Museum's Darwin exhibit earlier this year. Here is what he had to say:

Overall, the exhibit is extremely well done. It provides a brief sketch of Darwin’s life, from a young boy absolutely fascinated by the natural world around him, to a young man trying to fulfill this passion; from his famous 5-year voyage on the Beagle, to the long years putting together the pieces of his simple, yet revolutionary theory; from his initial hesitancy to publish the theory, to his feverish writing of “On The Origin” once he realized another naturalist had simultaneously worked out a similar evolutionary framework. Since his death, Darwin has been alternatively demonized and given the scientific equivalent of divine veneration. The exhibit effectively puts “flesh and bones” on the mythological Darwin.

Along the way he points out some very interesting things about the exhibit and some personal reflections. A good read.

Royal Museum of Ontario Picketed!

Protesters gathered in front of the Royal Ontario Museum to protest the Charles Darwin exhibition, according to the National Post:

Waving pamphlets that suggest Darwin "showed a certain disdain for 'savages,'" and claiming "many evolutionists are outspoken racists," the protest was part of an odd campaign to stake out the higher ground for creationists, using the unlikely racism card.

Funny, I don't know of any evolutionists that are racists. In fact, the very essence of the synthetic theory of evolution is anti-racist at its core. The article continues:

"I wrote to the president of the Royal Ontario Museum," Dr. McVety said. "I didn't ask him to stop the exhibit. I just asked him to expose the truth, to expose [Darwin's] writings about genocide, the hateful writings about the aboriginals and the negroes. He refused, and that's why we're here today."

One wonders if the good reverend has actually read Darwin. See this post from the TalkOrigins site about Darwinism and genocide.

More on SB733

The Washington Times has an article on the passing of SB733, the academic freedom bill in Louisiana. One of the supporters is quoted thus:

"It's not about a certain viewpoint," said supporter Jason Stern, Vice President of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative group pushing the bill. "It's allowing [teachers] to teach the controversy. It's an academic freedom issue."

This notion of teaching the controversy is not new and is a classic ploy by many groups seeking to ameliorate the effects of teaching evolution. The problem is that there is no controversy. That part has been constructed out of whole cloth by the DI and YEC groups.

Louisiana Coalition for Science: Reject SB733!

The Louisiana Coalition for Science has issued a press release decrying the new academic freedom bill and calling upon science school teachers to reject it. This quote sums it up:

Patsye Peebles, a veteran biology teacher from Baton Rouge and a founding member of the Louisiana Coalition for Science, agrees that the bill should be rejected. “I was a biology teacher for 22 years, and I never needed the legislature to tell me how to present anything. This bill doesn’t solve any of the problems classroom teachers face, and it will make it harder for us to keep the focus on accurate science in science classrooms. Evolution isn’t scientifically controversial, and we don’t need the legislature substituting its judgment for the scientists and science teachers who actually know the subject.”

This is what happens when non-scientists get involved with science education.

Academic Freedom and the ACLU

I wondered when these guys would get involved. According to Nola.com, the ACLU is considering filing lawsuits to keep religion out of public schools in Louisiana. As it eventually came down, the bill is remarkably vague about how the controversy should be addressed:

Heavily amended since it was first introduced, the bill now specifies that teachers in public school science classes will have to teach from state approved science textbooks. However, it also allows local teachers and school boards to introduce "supplemental materials" in science classes. The bill specifically mentions evolution, global warming and human cloning as topics on which such materials might be introduced.

Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would be able to prohibit the use of such materials if they are deemed inappropriate, under an amendment added in the House.

As of late, there seems to be a link between teaching about global warming (anthropogenic) and teaching about evolution, as if both are examples of scientists who have got it wrong and need top be straightened out. If the creationists are smart, they will push this because there is enough doubt in the minds of many people about global warming models. Interestingly, Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas has thought of this as well. As far as what the ACLU will do, the article notes:

Esman was asked Thursday if the ACLU might file suit against the Nevers measure once it becomes law or wait to see if religious materials are introduced into classes as a result of the law. "We're not going to say now what we may or may not do. That's a legal strategy," said Esman.

Scientists Gone Wild!!

CBS news has a video about some shenanigans that occurred at Oak Ridge National Laboratory involving some overspending and abuse of public funds. The video is here. The notion of scientists gone wild is amusing but, on a more serious note, plays into this notion that scientists need to be watched and that there is something sinister about what they do. Not a shining day for the lab.

Louisiana Academic Freedom Bill Passes

Nola.com (Everything New Orleans) has informed us that the bill sponsored by Ben Nevers on academic freedom has passed. According to the story:

The Senate already has agreed to the bill, but it heads back to that chamber for approval of a provision that would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to prohibit supplemental materials it deems inappropriate. Nevers said he will ask the Senate to approve the amendment. He stressed that the amendment does not require BESE to review all the materials. The state board would only step in if someone raised a question about whether the material was appropriate.

Well, I guess the question now is who would deem material appropriate or inappropriate? As I mentioned earlier, critical thinking should always be part of the classroom and it is very hard to believe that this bill is not aimed at the teaching of evolution.

Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins, Part II

I didn't get to finish my reading of Alister McGrath's treatise on Richard Dawkins. Here we go. McGrath characterizes Dawkins' reaction to the widespread belief in God thus:

Since faith in God, for Dawkins, is utterly irrational, it remains to be explained why so many people share such a faith. The answer lies in the `meme', which Dawkins defines as an intellectual replicator. People do not believe in God because the intellectual case for such belief is compelling. They do so because their minds have been infested with a highly contagious and highly adapted `God-meme'

As McGrath correctly points out, there is no concrete thing such as a 'meme.' Unlike a gene, one cannot identify a meme. It is like quantifying a thought—"I like ice cream." Aside from the declarative statement, there is no way to prove that what I said is true. McGrath continues:

Not only is there a total absence of any observational evidence that ideas are like viruses, or spread like viruses - a decisive consideration that Dawkins glosses over with alarming ease. It is meaningless to talk about one kind of virus being `good' and another `evil'. In the case of the host-parasite relationship, this is simply an example of Darwinian evolution at work. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the way things are.

This is a remarkably frank, evolutionary way to look at it and yet cuts to the heart of the weakness of Dawkins' position. His idea that religion is bad and evil, like a virus is simply not logical and, worse, is non-Darwinian in explication. McGrath closes by pointing out another irregularity in the writings of Dr. Dawkins:

But there is another issue here which we need to note. Dawkins is quite clear that science cannot determine what is right and what is wrong. What about evidence that religion is bad for you? And what criteria might one use to determine what was `bad'? Dawkins himself is quite clear: `science has no methods for deciding what is ethical.

Quite simply, if religion is bad, then that decision is not based on science but rather on an emotional response to one's experiences, which in the case of Dawkins, have been bad. I have often thought that if polled, most scientists would say that whether or not they believe in God has very little to do with the practice of science but rather much more to do with their sociocultural upbringing and experiences. It seems that Richard Dawkins is just one such person. Read the whole piece.

NASA is Going to the Sun!

So quoth the NASA web site:

"We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time," says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts."

But they're going at night.
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New Louisiana Bill Will Create Problems, AAAS Says

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has written an open letter to the Times-Picayune protesting the new "academic freedom" legislation. He writes:


The 21s t-century economy will require a new generation of scientist and engineers, and signs point to trouble ahead for New Orleans and Louisiana. Employers already are struggling to fill science and tech jobs, and recent test scores show that 53 percent of the state's eighth -graders-the workforce of tomorrow-lack basic competence in science. It is therefore alarming that the Louisiana Senate has passed a bill that directly threatens science education. Proponents offer deceptive arguments about encouraging students to think critically But Louisiana's education standards already do that.

He argues that such a fight would expend needless money that could be used to further science education. He is right. Sadly, they don't see it that way.

The Discovery Institute Responds to Laura Beil

The DI is responding to a New York Times article by Laura Beil (that I am now going to link to because it is very important but i am not happy about it) here. She writes:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

Already, legislators in a half-dozen states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina — have tried to require that classrooms be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent design movement.

After the fiasco that was Dover, one wonders how successful these movements will be. There is still funny business going on, though:

The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase “is subterfuge for bringing in creationism.”

That is nothing short of malarkey. Teaching "strengths and weaknesses" has been applied only to evolutionary theory because people don't like evolution. If this were an honest effort, that language would be applied to other theoretical constructs that we teach in science class, such as germ theory, gravitational theory and quantum theory. To say that evolution has not been singled out is deceptive at best and lying at worst.

Anyway...

Here is how the Discovery Institute replies:

The central premise that teaching "strengths and weaknesses" of Darwin's theory (and chemical origin of life theories) is a new, post-Dover innovation is flagrantly false.

That this is false can be proven with only a minimal amount of research, which makes it so much more surprising that Beil would blindly follow the assertions of the NCSE and others without bothering to call the people they're attacking – Discovery Institute and Texans for Better Science Education.

Here's the problem: Ms. Beil doesn't say that it is new. She clearly says:

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution.

The rest of the piece is devoted to arguing that the notion of teaching strengths and weaknesses is not new, something Ms. Beil never said. Beyond that, in typical DI fashion, there is no substance to the piece. Oops. screwed that one up.

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JDL Up In Arms Over Expelled!

The Jewish Defamation League has waded into the controversy surrounding the film Expelled, narrated by Ben Stein, an orthodox Jew. According to the story in JTA:

The Anti-Defamation League blasted the film Tuesday, saying in a statement that it “misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community.” The ADL adds, “Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people.”

The Oakland, Calif-based National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, has “had its eye on” the film for a few months, according to spokeswoman Susan Spath.
“We are concerned about the long-term impact of this film and its irresponsible misrepresentation of a terrible history,” she said. “It propagates the message that Nazis were Darwinist, with the implication that today’s Darwinists are proto-Nazis, and that’s not OK.”

As Glenn Reynolds would say: Ouch!

Oops! Got That One Wrong.

The Australian is reporting a story of a discovery of the fossilized partial remains of a megaraptor not where it ought to be:

The 19cm bone was found in southeastern Australia but it comes from a very close cousin to Megaraptor, a flesh-ripping monster that lorded over swathes of South American some 90 million years ago.

The extraordinary similarity between the two giant theropods adds weight to a dissident view about the breakup of a super-continent, known as Gondwana, that formed the continents of the southern hemisphere, the authors say.

The thought is that if Australia had broken away from South America when it was thought to have, then evolutionary pressures of selection and drift would have resulted in a dinosaur that had phenotypically diverged from its Australian cousins.

The investigators, led by Nathan Smith of the University of Chicago, say the two dinosaurs are so similar the two land masses of South America and Australia could not have been separated for so many millions of years beforehand.

Back to the drawing board.

Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins

On a site called Science, Religion and Society, Alister McGrath takes on Richard Dawkins. It is a transcript of a lecture given at Cambridge in November 2004. He writes what I and others have often thought:

If Darwinians choose to dogmatize on matters of religion, they stray beyond the straight and narrow way of the scientific method, and end up in the philosophical badlands. Either a conclusion cannot be reached at all on such matters, or it is to be reached on other grounds.

He argues that Dawkins has put up a straw man in the form of his definition of faith as "blind trust in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence." He then states that this definition is false and is one that no theologian would support. I am reminded of the opening verse of Hebrews 11, which reads:

1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.

Christ also speaks of those who have not seen and yet believed as being blessed in John 20. In some sense, we do believe in things not seen and have no evidence that God exists. The evidence for Christ being who he is is circumstantial and we do have "faith." That is why they call it that. More tomorrow.

Slightly Off Topic But Relevant

Last week's Parade Magazine had a small story on Home Schooling. In their "Intelligence Report," the writers quote Richard Kahlenberg, the "author of a number of books on education." He states that the homeschooling controversy

...pits those who believe parental rights are paramount against those place a premium on well-educated citizens."

That is astounding. My wife has a bachelors degree and a masters degree in Art Education. I have two masters degrees and a Ph.D. As I noted a few posts back, my son Marcus, who is homeschooled, just took the second grade Stanford Achievement test and blew it out of the water compared to public school children who took it. My wife and I have come to view the homeschooling controversy as not being an "educated versus uneducated" one but one that reflects the state not having control over what my children are taught.

Despite numerous studies to the contrary, the NEA continually wants more control over what children are taught in this country. One of the problems is that they can get their foot in the door by pointing out to legislators that creationism is being taught at home. That raises the red flags, as well it should. This is where creationism is at its worst. I will fight to the death for my right to home school our children, and I know that they and the vast majority of the kids that are home schooled get a great one, but when I see the debate over evolution, I can kind of see the other side's point.

Michael Ruse in the Miami Herald

Michael Ruse, the philosopher of science, has a guest column in the Miami Herald called Knowledge and its discontents: Darwin passes his own test

He very clearly and concisely lays out the case for predictive science:

Darwin realized full well that often we don't have direct evidence, but that doesn't stop us from talking about facts. Indirect evidence can be overwhelming. It can trump direct evidence even! Take a murder, or some other crime against the person. What would lead you to point a finger at a culprit? Sure, eyewitness testimony is going to be very powerful. But we all know that people under strain can be very unreliable about remembering faces. That is not a weakness; it is a very understandable aspect of human nature.

Much better in such cases is the indirect evidence -- the clues, the bits and pieces that point to the culprit. Today, DNA evidence is nigh definitive and with good reason. Any good judge and jury would much sooner know about the molecules on the weapon than the recollections of someone who caught a fleeting glance and whose prejudices may be coloring memory.

It is funny that such an obvious example is lost on people like Ken Ham, who famously asks "Were you there?" Ruse also posits a stunningly simple case for the argument of evolution from homology:

Why -- and this was really powerful evidence -- are the front leg of the horse, the arm of the human, the wing of the bat, the flipper of the porpoise, the paw of the mole, all apparently molded from the same bones connected in the same order when the functions that these forelimbs serve are so very different? Because these animals share common ancestors, and evolution took the early forelimbs and shaped them in different ways, according to need.

Ruse does not share my religious convictions but he writes very easily and clearly. Read the whole article.

Pharyngula

There is a glowing tribute to P.Z. Meyers' blog Pharyngula in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (intelligencer??) Meyers is similar to Dawkins in his outlook:

"It's true that a number of good scientists also have religious beliefs," he said. "I'm not saying they are not good scientists. I'm just saying they also appear to believe in a magic sky fairy."

The genesis of Meyers' religious convictions is also outlined:

Myers, 51, said he didn't start out to wage a war on religion. He was raised a Lutheran, he said, and went to Sunday school as a boy growing up in Seattle's suburbs. In 2003, he launched Pharyngula (the word refers to one stage in vertebrate embryonic development) as a tool to assist his students' writing projects.

"I just see science as a wonderful thing that everyone should be excited about," Myers said. But he soon discovered that presenting even the most basic facts of his particular branch of science, evolutionary biology, provoked angry denunciations and even personal attacks by those who saw it as an assault on their religious beliefs.

The war was on. The Lutheran boy from Kent became one of the world's leading atheists, speaking from the pulpit of science.

So once again, we have another scientist who has a bad experience with creationists and, using somewhat twisted logic, throws belief in God out the window. Does anyone else have a problem with this? Myers is at once insulting and irrational in his attacks on religion. That he had such bad experiences with Christians does not excuse their behavior which can be abominable and very unChrist-like. I know this from personal experience. It does not, however, qualify as a logical position.

Meanwhile, Over in Alabama...

A scientist/educator by the name of Albert Gapud, who is a condensed matter physicist and has worked here at ORNL, has written an editorial for the Alabama Press-Register. His plight is becoming sadly familiar:

Mobile is poised for better economic times ahead. Unfortunately, this has put a spotlight on a public education system in serious need of improvement.

Sadly, Alabama's public education system is ranked close to the bottom among all the states. This is on top of an already distressing nationwide failure in providing science education on a par with other developed nations in the world.

If we want our children to have a shot in the globalized real world, we need to join forces to improve science education in our schools. If we are to do this, however, we should also recognize our own tendencies to inadvertently sabotage our science curricula.

His is a plea for the education bureaucracy to not give in to the desires to teach ID in science classes. More power to him!

Concerns About Lucy

The headline reads "Is an Ethiopian National Treasure Being Exploited for Money?" Well, yes. Concerns still exist about the idea of shuttling the bones of AL-288, otherwise known as "Lucy" around the world. As the story in the Tampa Bay Tribune notes:

Citing ethical problems and a conviction that Lucy's fragile remains should not travel, The Smithsonian refused an exhibition. Richard Leakey, a renowned fossil scientist, said "It's a form of prostitution ... it's a gross exploitation of the ancestors of humanity."

The real Lucy remains in its vault here, the consensus goes in Addis Ababa, and a replica was sent to America. The final word rests with a tall thin museum guard in a green semi-uniform who said in the Amarigna language to the trekkers' translator, "Who would be so stupid to take that risk?"

Well, off the top of my head, I can think of a gazillion people, to whom Lucy is only a ticket to more revenue. This is no different than what was done with the European Neandertal remains by Otto Hauser at the turn of the century, or the Homo erectus skull discovered in a Manhattan curio shop. To many people, the fossil record is only a ticket to money and fame.

SERIOUSLY BUMMED OUT!!!

I had been looking forward for months to the Yes 2008 tour Close to the Edge and Back. Now I have come to find that a serious asthma attack has sidelined Jon Anderson and they have had to cancel the tour. Sadness...crying...look away.

New Grand Canyon Dating

The Hartford Courant has a story on new dating of the Grand Canyon, long thought by creationists to reflect a recent creation. The article outlines the question thus:

Within the United States, the most common psychological yardstick for Earth's antiquity is the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Seeing it from above is unforgettable. One is immediately struck by the mile-deep chasm beneath the Colorado Plateau. Seeing it from below is also unforgettable. The erosive power of its foaming, grit-laced rapids is self-evident. Could such a canyon be carved in only 5,000 years, as young Earth creationists suggest? Was it cut by single torrent when Noah's flood drained away?

It then answers its own question:

It turns out that the Grand Canyon is really two canyons, an older one to the west and a younger one to the east. The western canyon began to form about 20 million years ago by the progressive erosion of a small river system toward its head. This erosion took place at an average rate of about one-quarter of one-thousandth of a foot per year. In the eastern canyon, the rate of erosion is double that rate, and didn't begin in earnest until about 4 million years ago. This was shortly after the eastern and western watersheds merged to become a through-going river.

Three points emerge from this study that should be heeded by those tempted to accept young Earth creationism as a matter of faith. First, the story of an older and younger canyon merging is inconsistent with the notion of a single biblical deluge. Second, canyon cutting is a fairly steady process, not a catastrophic one. Third, the long-term rate of erosion demands that the process began 4,000 times earlier than the young Earth creationists would suggest.

Read the article to see how they did it. Not a shining day for the YECs. This pretty much confirms that which we always thought: the Grand Canyon reflects the accurate age of the earth. Here is TalkOrigins' critique of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating papers.

The Joy of Cooking

It has been determined that, left to their own devices, humans and apes like their food cooked. A story in New India Press relates the following:

Scientists have shown that our ancestors had a natural liking for cooked meals, by finding that several great apes, like humans, seem to prefer cooked foods over raw.

The authors says that the findings indicate that our ancestors had an intrinsic preference for cooked meals, and most likely had a preference for cooked foods before controlled fire emerged.

According to the team, since that happened between one million and 1.6 million years ago, hominids probably began to cook their food not long thereafter.

It probably saved on food poisoning problems as well.

Off-Topic: Well, This is a Tad Odd.

a new web site offers to send email to your friends telling them that you've been taken up in the rapture. I kid you not. Foxnews has the story here. The site itself is here. This is the opening page message:

You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.

I am guessing if the rapture happens, this site is not going to be up and running. Just a thought.

Texas Continues to Heat Up

An article in the Houston Chronicle details the coming war between ID and science teachers in Texas. The story notes:

Board members say it is unlikely that intelligent design will even be considered. More likely is a fight over whether to keep an existing requirement that teachers present both the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, including evolution.

Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, favors keeping that standard.

"Part of preparing our students for postsecondary success includes providing them with a well-rounded education," she said. "Having the freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of a theory such as evolution teaches students how to evaluate both sides of an issue. It prompts them to be critical thinkers, and it also helps them to respect the opinions of other students even if they disagree."

Bradley said he does not foresee any successful effort to remove the "strengths and weaknesses" requirement from the science standards.

"Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven," he said. "Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions."

That's funny. The phrase "jump to conclusions" is often used of people who come to the wrong conclusion because they don't look at all of the evidence. Freudian slip? Every time a board of education member gets up and says "evolution is just a theory" it reminds me of how badly educated our education board members really are. Is this the kind of science education they are getting out of school? If so, how can we hope to reverse the process?

Scientists: Bush Be Gone!

Very few scientists will be shedding tears when the W leaves office, according to a story in Wired. The writer, David Duncan, notes:

In a demonstration of how tough it is to get science funded in the Bush II era, Senate leaders tucked both budget increases into a $156 billion war and veterans' appropriations bill. That measure passed the Senate by a wide enough margin to override a threatened veto from the president. The House didn't include the raise in its version of the bill, but is expected to agree to the increase in conference.

Like so many other things, the task of recovering from Bush's distressing disinterest in science will be left to the next president.

This is an ongoing tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats and someone, somewhere did a bivariate plot that showed that when Republicans were president, science funding went down and when Democrats were in power, funding for science went up. Not a pretty picture. This is exacerbated by movies like Expelled! which paint scientists as amoral, arrogant louts. Some are, but most are not.

Kenneth Miller Reviews Expelled!

And it is not pretty. Miller lambasts the film for the usual sloppy science but also has some seriously damning things to say about how the film was put together. He writes:

The movie also uses interviews with avowed atheists like Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," to argue that scientific establishment is vehemently anti-God. Never mind that 40 percent of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science profess belief in a personal God. Stein, avoiding these 50,000 people, tells viewers that "Darwinists" don't allow scientists to even think of God.

Puzzled, the editors of Scientific American asked Mark Mathis, the film's co-producer, why he and Stein didn't interview such people, like Francis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project), Francisco Ayala, or myself. Mathis cited me by name, saying "Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily." In other words, showing a scientist who accepts both God and evolution would have confused their story line.

This is truly troubling—that any contrary evidence has to be suppressed—and smacks of some of the tactics that YEC supporters use. Instead of portraying a controversy the way it is supposed to be, the makers of the film want the public to see scientists as standing in the way of "true research." This is offensive and gives ID another black eye.

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Steve Matheson on Evolution and Calvin College

Steve Matheson has written a guest post at Steve Martin's blog "An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution" (now two days ago) on the controversy of evolution at Calvin College that is a fascinating read. Those familiar with Calvin know that it has been home to a number of remarkable scholars who have delved into these issues, notably Clarence Menninga, Davis Young (who's book Christianity and the age of the Earth is a must-read for any Christian), Howard van Till, and Terry Gray, who was notably tried for heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church a number of years ago for espousing human/ape ancestry. The story is a microcosm of what many of us, as Christians, face in our pursuit of science.

Church and State Battles

There is an article in High Beam Encyclopedia with anecdotes about people fighting church-state battles (listed "bottles" in the title). There are some that deal with ID. Not a shining day

* Academic Integrity--Bryan and Christie Rehm: The Rehms were among several residents of Dover, Pa., who challenged the teaching of "intelligent design" (ID) in public schools. They served as plaintiffs in a landmark lawsuit, brought by Ameri cans United and its allies, that found the teaching of ID, the latest variant of creationism, unconstitutional.

"There was a slow and gradual change that occurred on the school board over a number of years," Bryan Rehm said. "People got in for issues other than science curriculum, and then they had their final wave. They started telling teachers, first in the Science Department, 'You will rewrite the biology curriculum, and we want creationism in it.' And then they went from all-out creationism replacing evolution to 50-50. The Science Department fought this over two years internally before it went public."

I am Continually Amazed

at the continued and widespread use of the word "Neanderthal" as a pejorative, as if that were the worst thing someone could be. Probably, like evolution, most people that use the term don't understand it and have little to no sense.

Story in the NYT

There is a story in the NYT on the rise of ID. I won't link to it and didn't read it all since I am extremely suspicious of anything that newspaper puts out but...there it is. If you can stomach the newspaper, it is by Laura Beil.

Yoko Ono Loses

A judge has ruled that the use of the John Lennon song Imagine is okay in the context of the film Expelled! Yoko Ono and the sons of John Lennon had sued to have the film distribution stopped because of what they deemed unauthorized use of the song. As the Reuters story notes, though:

But on Monday U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein found in favour of the filmmakers based on a "fair use" doctrine. "That doctrine provides that the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes of criticism and commentary is not an infringement of copyright," the judge said.

I am sure that there was considerably more to the ruling but that quote seems a tad vague. I have little to no doubt that Weird Al Yankovic needs the okay of a music publisher before he skewers a song. Having said that, Yoko Ono has been living off of John Lennon's image for decades with little music output of her own, so I am not that sympathetic.

Faraday Institute

Steve Martin has turned me on to a site called the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Here is it's mission:

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is an academic research enterprise based at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. The Institute has four main activities:

1. Scholarly research and publication on science and religion, including the organisation of invited groups of experts to write joint publications.
2. To provide short-term courses in science and religion.
3. To organise seminars and lectures on science and religion.
4. To provide accurate information on science and religion for the international media and wider public.

Sounds like a place to bookmark to me!

Earliest Live Birth Recorded

Foxnews has a story about a fossil fish that has been discovered with an intact embryo and umbilical cord. The story, somewhat humorously, notes:

"When I first saw the embryo inside the mother fish, my jaw dropped," said researcher John Long, a paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. "It dawned on me after studying the specimen that this was the earliest evidence of vertebrates having sex by copulation — not just spawning in water, but sex that was fun."

One more piece of the puzzle.

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Polkinghorne Link

Sorry, forgot to post the link for the Polkinghorne Lecture. Here it is.

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John Polkinghorne on Speaking of Faith

John Polkinghorne is Christa Tippett's guest on Speaking of Faith. The mp3 is almost 50 megs in size so you might want to listen to the stream. Dr. Polkinghorne is a physicist and Anglican Priest. It is a fascinating listen. The interview took place in 2005. About beauty, he says this:

Well, beauty is a very interesting thing, and a form of beauty that is important to me is mathematical beauty. That's a rather austere form of aesthetic pleasure, but those of us who work in that area and speak that language can recognize it and agree about it. And we've found in theoretical physics that the fundamental laws of nature are always mathematically beautiful. In fact, if you've got some ugly equations, almost certainly you haven't got it right and you should think again. So beauty is the key to unlocking the secrets of the physical world.

On quarks:

Well, quarks are, in some sense, unseen realities. Nobody has ever isolated a single quark in the lab. So we believe in them not, because we've, even with sophisticated instruments, so to speak, seen them, but because assuming that they're there makes sense of great swaths of physical experience. And I was lucky enough to be a humble member of the particle physics community during the time all that was being worked out, and it was great fun to be, in a small way, part of it.

On light:

You take both answers into account. And the important thing I want to emphasize is that people had to cling on to taking both insights into account before they understood how they fitted together. We don't make progress by chopping experience down to a size that fits into our current theories. We have to allow the way the world is to modify our understanding of the world. And if you're a Christian theologian, and you're telling that sort of story that I've just told about light being both particle-like and wave-like, we know that the Christian story about Jesus Christ is that He is, of course, a human being but also, in some real sense, needs to be described in terms of divine language. And it's the same sort of dilemma, if you like, and we're not quite so clever, theologically, at finding the precise answer to that. But, again, we don't make progress by denying our experience.

About Quantum theory and a Clockwork Universe:

Well, that's right. Well, if the world were clockwork, then I suppose you'd have to hope that God had designed the clockwork and wound it up in such a way that things wouldn't turn out too badly. But 20th-century science has seen the death of a merely mechanical and merely clockwork view of the world. It came first of all through quantum theory. At the subatomic level, quantum events are not precise and determinate. They have a certain randomness to them. They have a certain cloudiness to them, so that that process isn't clockwork. And we've learned, of course, from chaos theory, the "butterfly effect" - very small disturbances producing enormously big consequences - that even the everyday world described by the sort of physics that would have been familiar to Newton isn't as clockwork as people thought it was.

Listen to the whole thing.

Things Heat Up in Texas

Trinity University has held a forum called “Religion, Science, and Evolution: The Pending Showdown in Texas Science Education." According to a story in MySA.com, the web site for the San Antonio Express-News and KENS Channel 5:

“Never before has the drumbeat for some form of teaching intelligent design and its inclusion in science textbooks been louder,” moderator Eliza Sonneland said Tuesday.

The panel included Rabbi Barry Block; St. Mary's Hall science teacher Carol Brown; Ryan Valentine, deputy director of the Texas Freedom Network; and Dr. David Ribble, chairman of the Trinity University Biology Department.

The Texas Freedom Network, the Sol Center at University Presbyterian Church and the Biology and Education departments at Trinity University sponsored the event.

The panel gave its views about the Texas Education Agency reviewing and selecting a new science curriculum for textbooks by 2010 and the possibility that religious creationism could be included, voted on by members of the Texas State Board of Education who back intelligent design.

Lending weight to concerns is that the chairman of the board of education, Don McLeroy, has sided with creationism supporters in the past.

At the heart of the panel's explanations was one common theme: Science and religion should remain separate in school lessons.

The article also noted that fears about what happened in Kansas a few years ago is driving the fear in the science community. It should.

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British Scientists Take to the Streets

The Guardian has a story about the 18-month long celebration of evolution that is taking place in schools across England. This has been well-thought out:

People all over Europe will take part in a mass experiment to discover evolutionary changes to a species of snail; a major series of programmes is to be shown by the BBC; several books are to be published; and the Open University plans a new course on the subject.

Entries for a competition to design "Darwin's Canopy" – a piece of art to cover a ceiling in the Natural History Museum – will be unveiled this week, and the museum will hold a major exhibition on Darwin beginning in November.

I will be curious to see how well this works.

Clash of Cultures in Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald contains an article on the potential of class warfare because of the controversy regarding "faith-based" schools. The article is in the form of a point-counterpoint between detractors of faith-based schools and their supporters, represented by John Kay of the Greens Party and Stephen O'Doherty, of Christian Schools Australia. Kay begins:

Alarm bells start sounding when young people leave school confused about the boundaries between faith and evidence. They get even louder when the penny drops on the massive state and federal funding that supports the growth of schools that systematically mislead their students. And they reach a crescendo when governments are caught accepting the distortion of education in faith-based private schools.

Mr. O'Doherty responds:

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the arguments against choice in schooling are becoming increasingly divisive and anti-religious? With the school funding issue taken off the table by the Federal Government, at least for the time being, the anti-choice debate has taken on a much nastier tone. The old cliches are creeping back in. People with religious faith are increasingly targeted as narrow minded or anti-intellectual. Too often arguments against faith-based schooling adopt the patronising tone of superior knowledge.

Once again, I wonder what the correct position on this is. My son Marcus just got back his second grade Stanford Achievement Test scores and one thing leaped off the page at me. When compared to other students nationwide—presumably national public school children, he did better than between 70 and 98 percent of them, depending on the subject. When compared to other Christian school students (I haven't tracked down what that sample is yet), however, he was largely just above average. In several scores, he was below average for the grade. What accounts for this, I wonder. Are the kids in faith-based schools getting that much better of an education than the public schools? The perception among Christian parents certainly is that. It seems that, albeit with a sample size of one, it is borne out here. Wouldn't you want to put your children in a school that gave them the best education?
When does the problem with science rear its ugly head? I know I am going to have to write Marcus' curriculum when it gets to the natural sciences because most of the established curricula veer off the rails when it comes to evolution. Thoughts?

Stonehenge Burial Ground

Foxnews is reporting a story that Stonehenge is, in fact, an elaborate burial ground. The story notes:

Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.

And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

"It's now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.

Neat, but not entirely unsurprising.

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Born to Believe?

The Pew Trust has a report on "How Our Brains are Wired For Belief." What follows the short article is a transcript of the fourth annual "Faith Angle Conference." Among the highlights:

So how does this work? Why is it that God doesn’t go away? I think religion and spirituality, when we look at these in very broad terms, help us in the same ways that the brain tries to help us, in terms of maintaining ourselves and transcending ourselves. When you look at the vast amount of literature and data that has been collected, we find religion often is extremely supportive of our behaviors: It helps us in terms of our mental health, our ability to cope with various issues and problems, and therefore it tends to be pretty good at helping us maintain ourselves.

It also happens to be pretty good at providing a system by which we transcend ourselves. When you look at most religions, there are a number of points along the way, as you go from birth to adolescence and marriage and ultimately old age, there are approaches and processes in place that enable you to transcend yourself from one moment to the next. The ultimate expression of this self-transcendence may be that we all can achieve some greater being: We can do something a little bit better; we can become better than we are, and transcend ourselves in that way. - Andrew Newberg

Of course, the unspoken question here, which is beyond the scope of neurology is "Did God put the need for belief in our brains through an evolutionary process?" or "Does that area of the brain suggest to us that we believe in a higher power, real or imagined?"

David Brooks writes about religion:

But the other moral precept in this is a very measured view of human nature. We’re not exactly next to the gods. The human mind – especially the human mind – is this jerry-rigged creature with very old things and a few new things built on top of it. It’s a very imperfect little organ. And so, it leads to a very problematic human condition because nature has this old stuff; it doesn’t need to invent something new and efficient; it just piles the new stuff on top of the old stuff.

That carries over into the social belief that every religion that exists must have served some purpose. So you have these theories of spiritual selection, that there were all these thousands of religions, and the ones that died off must have done so because they were ineffective, and the ones that survived, like Islam or Judaism or Christianity, must serve a purpose. They must be superior.

I’m not sure that’s actually testable. But that’s taken on faith because of the power of the Darwinian mindset.

To which Andrew Newberg responds:

Can I just add something to that real fast? For my own personal approach to this, we did used to talk a lot more about the evolutionary basis of religion. As I’ve heard more and more of those arguments, I find they become less and less tenable because there’s – People say, “Religion came into play because it was a way of dealing with the environment. It was a way of bringing people together.” And to some extent, that’s true. But I think it becomes very hard to perceive how we evolved with that ahead-of-time in mind. It becomes a much harder argument to make.

The problem here is that there is still the need to apply philosophical naturalism to every new study. If we preclude the idea that there is a God, then of course religious belief is only a product of neurochemical pathway reactions, irrespective of what put those pathways there in the first place.

It is long and involved, but a good read.

The Frogamander

Yahoo News is reporting the discovery of a fossil critter that links salamanders with modern frogs. Quoth the article:

Modern amphibians -- frogs, salamanders and earthworm-like caecilians -- have been a bit slippery about divulging their evolutionary ancestry. Gaps in the fossil record showing the transformation of one form into another have led to a lot of scientific debate.

The fossil Gerobatrachus hottoni or elderly frog, described in the journal Nature, may help set the record straight.

"It's a missing link that falls right between where the fossil record of the extinct form and the fossil record for the modern form begins," said Jason Anderson of the University of Calgary, who led the study. "It's a perfect little frogamander," he said.

Another nail in the coffin.

Hollywood and John McCain

UPI is reporting that support for John McCain is "tepid." Wow, now there's the shock of the century! In the process, McCain picked up an endorsement: Ben Stein. The article notes:

The Politico reported Wednesday that among those supporting the Arizona senator is Warren Beatty, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who has raised more than $100,000 for McCain, and actor Ben Stein.

"I've given him the maximum I'm allowed in this cycle, and when he gets the nomination, I'll give him the maximum again," said Stein, who recently made a documentary about intelligent design.

"Hollywood is not Republican country. There are some of us here, but not enough to make a difference. I don't think Hollywood will be counted on to make a great deal of support for Senator McCain," Stein said.

Warren Beatty?? The man behind the paean to John Reed, the founder of the American Communist Party? My, how times have changed!

I have decided to wait until Expelled comes out on DVD to watch it. There are two reasons for this. 1). it is very hard to find the time with four young children. 2). I want to be able to freeze the action to be able to make lucid comments about it.

Flock of Dodos

I missed this when it came out. There is a movie about the evolution/ID debate called Flock of Dodos, by Randy Olsen, an evolutionary biologist. It is reviewed by Tribeca here. The review reflects an aspect to the controversy missed most of the time:

Olson himself plays a central role in the film, and his winning, gregarious personality is a key to its success, as he interviews majors players on both sides of the intelligent design controversy (as well as his own incredibly vivacious mother, Muffy “Moose” Olson). Despite his science background (he has a degree in evolutionary biology), Olson is as open with intelligent design advocates as he is those on the other side of the issue, and the ease he finds in relating to the former is presented as both troubling and amusing. In Flock of Dodos, supporters of intelligent design come across as straight-forward, friendly people. Evolutionists, on the other hand, tend towards arrogance and intellectual elitism, making it difficult for even one of their own to relate to them. When Olson gathers a group of scientists with whom he played poker in graduate school for another game, they are full of bluster, and obsessed with being “right,” instead of trying to understand their opposition.

One would certainly think so if one's only encounters were with P.Z. Meyers and Richard Dawkins, two of evolution's militant atheists. I will see this after Expelled!

Creation Science Series

Jeannie Fulbright has been busy writing a series called Exploring Creation with Zoology, which takes a distinctly YEC bent. The most recent book Land Animals of the Sixth Day, has been reviewed by Christian Newswire, who write this:

Released in March 2008, Christian book stores are already selling out of this well researched, scientifically profound book, which is the fifth book in Fulbright's creation science sequence. Covering all the land creatures from parasites to primates, Exploring Creation with Zoology III presents scientifically sound teaching, along with evidence for deliberate design, a biblical model for origins and explanations that expose the absurdity of evolutionary leaps of logic.

"Absurdity of evolutionary leaps of logic." Would those be anything like the leaps of logic that have the entire geologic column created in one year and settling just so that it looks like an evolutionary progression? Here are some of the reviews on Amazon. They are not kind. I couldn't find a professional review of the book.

A quick check of the content samples that are available online show that, as long as she sticks to descriptions of the animals, it is okay as far as it goes. It is her section on dinosaurs in which the wheels fall off very quickly. I cannot quote directly, but she brings up the passage in Job 40 and saunters off to the idea that dinosaurs and humans were alive at the same time—without quoting a bit of evidence to support this. Well-researched????

More Kid's Fare at the Creation Museum

According to the Courier-Journal, Ken Ham intends to add more Kids' attractions to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. This was inevitable, I suppose. Given the explosion of "academic freedom" legislation and school board resistance to the teaching of evolution all over the country, this just serves to remind me that "Christian Folk-Science" as Steven Matheson calls it, is alive and well in the good 'ole U.S of A. The article notes:

Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham said among additions to the Creation Museum will be kiosks aimed at kids and an outdoor playground.

The museum, which presents a literal interpretation of the Bible, has hosted more than 400,000 visitors since it opened last May. Officials hope to have 300,000 visitors to the museum in the next year.

Oh! Joy.

"Academic Freedom" and Evolution

Education Weekly has an article (registration required, confound them!) on the launch of "academic freedom" bills around the country. The article states:

Recent state legislative proposals, introduced not just in Michigan, but also in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Missouri, make no mention of creationism or intelligent design. In fact, each of them specifies that they are not promoting religious doctrine.

Instead, they describe evolution as controversial or subject to doubt. A number of them, including Rep. [John] Moolenaar’s bill, advocate allowing teachers to discuss “scientific strengths” and “scientific weaknesses” of scientific theories, though they do not define what constitutes a legitimate scientific analysis. The Michigan lawmaker’s proposal also identifies humans’ role in climate change and human cloning as science topics that “can cause controversy.”

As if that were not bad enough, the article goes on thus:

The state proposals include language similar or virtually identical to model academic-freedom legislation supported by the Discovery Institute, a pro-intelligent-design organization based in Seattle. A Web site, www.academicfreedompetition.com, presents the legislation and an online petition in support of those efforts.

That site also promotes a pro-intelligent-design film now playing in theaters, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” narrated by the actor Ben Stein. ("Coming Soon: Movie Backs ‘Intelligent Design’," Feb. 27, 2008.)

This whole process is deceitful and smacks of desperation. They don't like evolution (despite knowing little to nothing about it in many cases)and they feel that this is the best way to get in the back door because the front door is blocked, for good reason.

Does Science Make God Obselete?

The John Templeton Foundation hosts a debate between leading philosphers, scientists and theologians called Does Science Make Belief in God Obselete? Dr. Steven Pinker starts it off with the following idea:

Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?

Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

This assumes that the observable defines the whole of reality, an argument made by Friedrich Schleiermacher and is currently reflected in the notion of "philosophical naturalism." Cardinal Christof Schönborn parries thus:

In our innermost being, we moderns remain unsatisfied. Sooner or later we face an existential crisis, and recognize in our lives something broken, disordered, in need of redemption. The fact that we can recognize disorder, brokenness, and sin means that they occur within a larger framework of order, beauty, and goodness, or else in principle we could not recognize them as such. Yet brokenness and disorder are painfully present, and the human soul by its nature seeks something more, a deeper happiness, a lasting good. Consideration of the order and beauty in nature can lead us to a Something, the "god of the philosophers," but consideration of our incompleteness leads us beyond, in search of a Someone who is the Good of us all. Science will never make that quest obsolete.

There are many more editorials, including those of Michael Shermer, Christopher Hitchens and Kenneth Miller. Read 'em all!

Resources for OPAP

With all of the new uproar about ID and legislation, it seems fair to revisit the Of Pandas and People resources at the NCSE. Those can be found here. If you ever encounter this book, run. Failing that, read up on it.

Robert Pennock on Expelled and the Academic Freedom Bills

Robert Pennock, science philosopher at Michigan State University, has a guest editorial in the Michigan Messenger in which he tackles both Expelled and the new academic "freedom" bills being debated in legislatures across the country. His response to Expelled is caustic:

In "Expelled," the deception began early. Scientists like Richard Dawkins were snookered into appearing in the film, having been solicited to be interviewed for what was purported to be a documentary called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion" that was to examine the interplay of science and religion in America. Stein has denied that anyone was deceived, and implied that no one even asked about what the film was about. Not so.

How do I know? Because I received the same solicitation and was interviewed by "Expelled" producer Mark Mathis, though he never mentioned that name or Stein’s involvement. I questioned Mathis in detail about his production company, the nature of the Crossroads documentary and plans for its distribution before agreeing to be interviewed for it. I now know that his answers were misleading and dishonest.

What did Mathis want to interview me about? Why, he asked, can’t ID be discussed in the academy? In retrospect, I see how this question fit with "Expelled’s" message, but at the time I simply thought that he was new to the topic and misinformed. I explained that in fact ID has been given very careful consideration in the academy for more than 15 years. It has been the subject of numerous symposia, academic talks and university courses. ID advocates have been invited to speak at universities, professional conferences and in college classrooms. Their views have been published and discussed in dozens of academic books and hundreds of articles.

It is disappointing that the ID community took a golden opportunity, one to present their views to the public and went about it in such a deceitful way. Pennock never appeared in the film. One has to wonder why, if the producers wanted to present the debate in a fair way, were people like Jen Wulf, Terry Gray, Howard van Till and others excluded from it. These are people who are either Christians or at least sympathetic to the cause but have rejected ID on scientific grounds. These would have rounded out the film, but made for less drama. Interviewing only P.Z. Meyers and Richard Dawkins is like doing a film about the NBA and only interviewing Dennis Rodman.

He is equally caustic on the legislative attempts:

The “Academic Freedom” bills are similarly dishonest. They are a ruse to get ID creationism in without using the name. Rep. Moolenaar and other ID advocates in the Legislature have introduced a series of bills over the last eight years aimed to get ID in public schools. Early bills introduced ID explicitly, but recent ones follow the new DI strategy of just calling for “critical evaluation” of evolution. DI Fellow Ralph Seelke was brought to Lansing to speak on behalf of the last such bill. It has nothing to do with ID, he testified, but in the very next breath spoke of how it would allow students to learn important arguments against evolution such as those of Michael Behe. Come again? Not about ID? Behe is another DI Fellow, and one of the most prominent ID creationists. The bills may speak of free speech, but their goal is to bring in ID and to undermine evolutionary science.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is more than a tad suspicious that many of these bills fall on the heels of changes in school curricula that solidly back the teaching of evolution. If the DI wants to develop a reputation, this is not the way to do it. This is no different than the Dover school board decision to truck in copies of Of Pandas and People in the dead of night. Deception leaves a very bad taste in people's mouths. More and more, the "Wedge Strategy" hangs around the DI like an anchor, and it won't be too long before someone throws it overboard.

Missing the Point in Expelled?

This letter showed up in the Roanoke Times. It is priceless:

Critics of 'Expelled' protest too little

Michael Scott's op-ed "Intelligent Design lacks testable theories" (May 2 commentary) is the fifth irate review of the Ben Stein movie "Expelled" that I've read. As a biologist who is not opposed to evolution, I found it amazing that the five reviewers all failed to mention the climax.

There, Richard Dawkins, the reigning champion of atheism, admits he believes (like Nobel laureate Francis Crick) that intelligent design by space aliens (but certainly not God) is plausible. What a hoot!

The reviews simply miss or reinforce the movie's take-home message, that opposition to intelligent design has a large component of Christianphobia.

CHARLES WILLIAM PUTNAM

CHRISTIANSBURG

That speaks for itself. Good show, Mr. Putnam!

More about the Education Bill at the Advocate

The Louisiana Advocate has another article on HB733, which allows teachers to expand their normal classroom materials to include "controversial" materials. Amid the hubbub, there is one thing that seems to get lost

“There is absolutely no need for this bill,” said Tammy Wood, a veteran educator in the Zachary School District and a former Louisiana science teacher of the year.

She is right. I am reminded of what Kenneth Miller said about the Dover case. We ought to be examining ALL of science critically, not just evolution. It should infuse all of our investigations. To believe that the passage of this bill just happens to coincide with a change in the way the science curriculum handles evolution in Louisiana would be a bit of a stretch.

Steve Matheson's Blog

Steve Matheson, a professor of Biology at (where else) Calvin College, that oasis in the middle of the Christian intellectual desert, has a blog that is great to read. His two most recent posts on tomato leaf morphology and how the bat got its wing are concise, clearly written and (ought to be) compelling to anybody of a creationist bent. While my blog tends to be more newsy and less interpretive, Steve seems to have really gotten the feel for what a blog ought to be. Bookmark this one!

The PLoS Study: Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms

Here is the study that was done for the PLoS Biology journal on creationism and evolution in the classroom. The authors write, among other things:

We followed most previous studies in asking teachers to think about how they allocate time over the course of the school year. We went a step further in also asking whether evolution serves as a unifying theme for the content of the course. Over the entire year of high school biology we found substantial variation among America's high school teachers (see Table 1).

To me, more interesting is Table 2:



Even though there is clearly a strange thing going on with biology teachers, there is also a huge gulf between the biology teachers and the general public. Read the article.

New Poll: the Smoking Gun

ABC News reports on the study on creationism in PLoS that has confirmed that 16% of high school biology teachers are creationists. By creationists, they mean creationism as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species." Not in conjunction with evolution but as an alternative to it. Sometimes I wonder how these questions are phrased...

Yup, It Passed

Here is another Times-Picayune story on the bill. It addresses both concerns in the last post:

An amendment added by Rep. Don Trahan, R-Lafayette and the committee's chairman, gives the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education the ability to prohibit introduction of materials, but that didn't mollify the bill's opponents.

"Anything could get into the classroom," said Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and a member of the Louisiana Coalition for Science.

She is right. Also, it would be hard for the oversight board to not become politicized.

A Contrary Position from Barbara Forrest

Barbara Forrest, one of the principles in the Dover trial has responded to the potential passage of HB733:

The committee can make it easier for Louisiana students to get the education they need to compete with the rest of the country, or they can make it more difficult.

They can help enhance education in Louisiana, making it more likely that educated people will stay and that other talented people will come, or they can perpetuate Louisiana’s image as a backwater.

I think that the potential danger in the passage of HB733 is that what is already a patchwork of science education will become worse as different teachers use their own "add-ons," some of which will undoubtedly be contrary to established science teaching. Who would hold them accountable?

A Disgruntled Student Strikes Back

The Advocate has a letter by a graduate student in Baton Rouge, who is hacked off about the current ID debate in Louisiana and says, well, see for yourself:

There has been a long string of college professors and now even a machinist that has written about how intelligent design is “bad” science and that our kids will not be able to compete.

News flash to professors and machinist: teaching our kids their way has made them unable to compete NOW! Louisiana is ranked among the worst in public school education, and they are telling us that intelligent design is bad? Is this a joke?

Of course this brings us to one glaring question in this debate; if mixing religion and science makes for “bad” education then how is it that schools like Catholic High, Episcopal High, Parkview Baptist turn out world-class medical doctors, engineers, scientists, etc.

A fair question, no? Of course, this only scratches the surface of why the public schools are bad. There are so many reasons.

Class Add-Ons

The Louisiana House Education Committee passed, with absolutely no reservations, a bill to allow science teachers to use supplementary class material when talking about global warming, evolution and other radioactive topics, according to the Times-Picayune. This is House Bill 733, that is being debated. There is a lot of heat surrounding this:

Opponents, including members of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Sen. Ben Nevers' Science Education Act is part of a broader strategy by groups that have failed in previous legislative battles and court cases to legitimize teaching biology from a perspective that assumes an intelligent designer of life.

Nevers, D-Bogalusa, reacted angrily to those accusations: "There is no language in here submitted by some secret agent trying to teach religion in public schools."

The bill includes a clause stating that the intent is neither to promote nor discriminate against any religious doctrine. Nevers also accepted an amendment that would give the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education final say about what materials teachers could bring to the classroom.

I am of two minds about this. I tend to regard global warming a bit more skeptically than many and would welcome well-researched, authoritative material on the subject that might not tow the party line. On the other hand, I have yet to find any such material attacking evolution and would not be in favor of kids being taught conflicting information that appears to be on the same playing field but, actually is not.

The book State of Fear by Michael Crichton, aside from being a great page-turner, has an excellent post script warning about the politicizing of science. It should be a must read for any educator and researcher.

New Blog

Steve Martin just posted on my blog. He has his own up at http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2008/05/evangelicals-evolution-and-academics.html. Check it out!

A Positive Review of Your Inner Fish

The Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska has a review of Your Inner Fish, written by Dick Herman, staff writer. He starts off with a bang:

This is not a book Creationist folks will much enjoy. For all others, though, there’s a very good deal of fascinating, mind-stretching, even worrisome information. The text invites browsers to consider the evolutionary processes that got all of us to where we are today, and have been for the last few 10,000 years. And exactly where we are is having a not especially well-designed human body after all this time. For the curious, reading is recommended.

New Video from the NCSE on the Evolution of Of Pandas and People.

Josh Rosenau has posted a video from the NCSE on the evolution of the awful book Of Pandas and People from the creationist book pre-1987 to the ID book post-1987. The defining moment was the Edwards vs. Aguillard court case ruling that creationism was religious and could not be taught in the public schools. This came out in the Nova special, but this is a short, good video.

Creationism Still Taught in Public Schools According to Survey

Daily India has a story about the teaching of creationism in the United States. According to the story:

London, May 20: US courts might have ordered ban on teaching creationism in schools, but still one in eight high-school biology teachers teach it as valid science, according to a survey. The surveyors say that though courts have ruled that creationism and intelligent design are religion, teachers take it as a matter of discretion to decide what is to be taught.

Here's the amazing quote:

Upon being questioned about their own beliefs about creationism, about 16 per cent teachers said that they believed human beings had been created by God within the last 10,000 years.

Based on what evidence???? Aren't these science teachers? This is another reason I don't have my kids in public schools.

Aliens and Evolution

The Pope's Astronomer, Jose Gabriel Funes, has, in an interview, admitted that "there would be nothing surprising about the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrials." The article continues:

"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, so there could be other beings created by God [beyond it]," he said. The interview suggests that the Church's hierarchy may be paving the way to showing that Pope Benedict XVI is more open to the ideas of modern science than he has previously seemed to be.

As far as evolution is concerned, the article suggests a bit of discord with regard to Vatican views:

Fr Funes, in the interview, admits that, for him, evolution is a given. He also said that he believed in the Big Bang theory as the most likely explanation for the origin of the universe, and that the Bible should not be held to account for its lack of scientific accuracy. "Fundamentally," he said, "the Bible is not a book of science... It's a love letter written by God to his people in the language of two or three thousand years ago... So one cannot ask the Bible for scientific responses."

Funny, I think that William Jennings Bryan said this around a hundred years ago.

Yoko Ono to Get Here Day in Court

A New York judge has stated that he will rule shortly on the lawsuit brought by Yoko Ono on the use of "Imagine" by John Lennon.

Lawyer Anthony T. Falzone said the movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," was set to open in Canada on June 6 and DVD rights needed to be finalized by the end of May for distribution in October. The movie is still being shown in about 200 theaters in the United States.

He said an adverse ruling by Stein would mean "you have muzzled the speech of my clients" because they would have to replace the song with other images, losing the chance to make the issue important enough that it could even influence the U.S. presidential campaign.

Well, I don't know about influencing the presidential campaign. That sounds a bit far-fetched. It will have bearing on the movie, though.

The ICR has done a piece rightly castigating the bad theology of Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott and P.Z. Meyers . I have challenged them to do a piece on Francis Collins, who champions evolution from within a theistic construct. I bet they won't. The piece contains this little gem, commenting on Dr. Scott:

When she ranks evolution as one of the "core ideas of science," Scott grants it the same legitimacy as the studies conducted on gravity and atomic theory-- although these involve testable phenomena, whereas there has been no observable scientific evidence for macroevolution.¹³

The foot note goes to this note: See Morris, H. 2000 and 2001. The Scientific Case against Evolution, Parts 1 & 2. Acts & Facts. 28 (12) and 29 (1), who says, among other things, that evolution is not happening now. Oh really? How does he know this? Because he sees cats and dogs around but no dats or cogs. Yup, that there's evidence.
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The Chicken From Hell

There is new evidence that the Tyrannosaurus Rex grouped with birds than with reptiles:

"We determined that T. rex, in fact, grouped with birds — ostrich and chicken — better than any other organism that we studied," said researcher John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. "We also show that it groups better with birds than [with] modern reptiles, such as alligators and green anole lizards."

This came about with the finding of a drumstick with soft tissue still intact inside. Neat.

Oh, That Bouncing Ball of Fire

According to a story in Foxnews:

The sun bounces up and down as it roams the Milky Way, and such wavering might have hurled showers of comets Earth's way that caused mass extinctions, including the one that killed the dinosaurs, a new study claims.

Not everyone is convinced:

"The whole concept is wrong," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Paul Weissman, who did not participate in this study. "As you cross the galactic plane, it's not like you go over a speed bump. The variation in any cratering rate would be very gentle, not in sudden pulses."

This ought to be fun to watch.

Another story on the revival of dead genes.

Science Meets Fiction

According to a story in Yahoo News the extinct genes of a Tasmanian Tiger have been revived in a mouse embryo. The story notes:

"This is the first time that DNA from an extinct species has been used to induce a functional response in another living organism," said research leader Andrew Pask of the University of Melbourne.

The announcement was hailed here as raising the possibility of recreating extinct animals.

Didn't Michael Crichton basically point out that that is a BAD IDEA?????