The "God Lab" Opens

New Scientist notes that the Discovery Institute has unveiled the "Biologic Institute" in Redmond, Washington designed to search for evidence of Intelligent Design. One hopes that some sort of methodological framework will emerge. I am not holding my breath. The author writes:

The Biologic Institute in Redmond, Washington, has been shrouded in secrecy since it was established more than a year ago by the Discovery Institute, an organisation which claims ID is a scientific theory (New Scientist, 16 December 2006, p 8). Its existence was finally made public on 10 May, when details of the project were published online at www.biologicinstitute.org

More on the Darwin Exposition at the Royal Ontario Museum

Peter Calamai of the Toronto Star writes on the not-so blatant anti-creationism flavor of the Darwin exposition at the ROM:

Take this statement from a panel headed "Creationism" at the close of the exhibit:

"For 150 years since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the theory of evolution by natural selection has not been seriously challenged by any other scientific explanation."

The weasel word here is "seriously," since that's very much a qualitative judgment.


It also includes this little historical tidbit:

The only obvious Canadian touch in the show is a case that contains T.H. Huxley's application to the University of Toronto for the post of professor of natural philosophy, as science was then known. Among Huxley's letters of support is one from Charles Darwin.

U of T passed Huxley over for a far less qualified man with political connections. Huxley was thus available later in England to become "Darwin's Bulldog," defending natural selection in public talks with his arm draped around a gorilla's skeleton.

Sure would be nice to get up there for it.

More Slings and Arrows for Expelled!

John Vandehey writes in the Daily Emerald that Ben Stein's movie Expelled is not well thought out. He ask what effect the adoption of ID as a workable theory would have on science:

But what would happen to religion? Intelligent design proposes the existence of an overseer, a guiding, intelligent force which directs evolution. Every deity-based religion would point to it and say, "Ho! There's proof that we are right."

And therein lies the stumbling point. The moment religion gets proof, it's not religion anymore; it's fact. There's no faith; everything is given. There's no wonder; there's just a footnote in a school biology textbook that students will read, memorize for the test, and quickly forget.

To me, the greatest gift that religion and spirituality can give is hope, the ability to do the right thing and work for good without any expected personal gain, to do it just because you have faith in the inherent goodness in the world. If we give proof to religion, then doing the right thing becomes no different from paying taxes: it becomes mechanical and without meaning. While I would love to see more people doing the right thing, I can't appreciate a good thing done just because it had to be done; if a person must endure some hardships for doing the right thing, then it shows me that he or she cares about what they do.

In some senses, this is similar to the argument I make that if the YEC supporters really got their way and had creationism taught in public schools, it would be devastating to Christianity. All of those badly-formed, out-of-date arguments would be taught in science class and held up to scientific scrutiny. The results would be catastrophic. They don't really want what they think they want.

Freedom of Expression at Salon.com

Salon has a column called "The Atheist and the Creationist" which takes the form of a letter to the editor in which a man is vexed at the thought that one of his friends might be willing to teach creationism to his children. He writes:

As my wife put it, we consider teaching young earth creationism (in any sense other than as a theology, if it must be taught at all) to be a form of child abuse. It seems bad enough that he has raised his two children with a belief system that he himself has acknowledged has serious holes in it, but it seems far worse that he is now thinking seriously about helping other children drink the Kool-Aid.

After some rumination, the response includes the following:

I believe freedom of expression is more important than the wide dissemination of correct views. I arrived at this conclusion by considering that in a democracy state power will inevitably be used to bolster, promote and enforce ideas and ideals that germinate in personal and family life. So I say in our private lives we ought to tolerate and embrace what we consider to be nutty, in the hope that this is the private behavior that will eventually filter upward into state power. For if what we value in our private lives is the dissemination of correct views, that is the value that is likely to take root in government. And that is the view that leads to tyranny, in my humble opinion.

This is an area that I struggle with constantly as well because I think that people should have the right to educate their children in the best way that they know. At the same time, I do not think that they should have the right to educate them using outdated or wrong educational material. That does the child a disservice and ill-prepares him or her for the world at large. I will have to find an answer to this soon.

My brother Dave is not a champion of states rights and argues that the education curriculum should be standardized. The reason it is not is that there are a whole bunch of people out there who would object to some of the things that the central government would put into it. I sympathize. I don't want my five-year-old taught about contraception. I also have a problem with my kids being taught that to accept the idea that homosexuality is "normal" when it is only practiced by 2-3% of the population. No other behavior that restricted in practice would be considered "normal." I also think, however, that evolution should be part of every state's curriculum. It is established science and the arguments against it are unpersuasive at best and facile at worst.

Debate at Roanoake.com

A series of post in the Roanoke Times is interesting to follow. The first one, "Evolution and Aliens," is written by Linda Whitlock, a Times columnist and adjunct English Professor. She has gone to see "Expelled!" She writes:

"Expelled" has been criticized for implying a link between evolutionary theory and Hitler's murderous policies. But the link clearly is there. Evolution provided the rationale for the eugenics movement and eugenics the justification for getting rid of the unfit, which, to the Nazis, included the Jews. For the greater good.

If evolution is true, it's true. Blinding ourselves to its possible consequences is foolhardy.

But what if it isn't true? What if something else -- some sort of intelligence, if you will -- is running the show? That's the tantalizing question some scientists have been asking. Some things just don't fit neatly into the evolutionary model. They seem, well, designed.

Actually, as I and other people have noted, the link is not there. It is inferred by many people not related to the events and people of the time. One assumes that evolution is the concept by which Hitler acted out his eugenics programs. Further, asking what if evolution is not true implies that one has done research to that effect. That is the problem. Evolution is so well backed up by evidence that it is difficult to suggest it is not.

Michael Scott, Roanoke resident, replies thus:

The problem with Intelligent Design is it has no testable theories. Proponents just don't have anything on which a scientist could hang a hat, and until they do, they will not be taken seriously by any credible scientific community. The reason they don't get any air time in science is because they don't do science.

Well put, Michael. Linda replied in "God, Science Not Exclusive":

In my early American lit classes, I sometimes ask students to explain how John Edwards and Cotton Mather, two noted Puritan theologians, could be both men of God and men of science. Mather, in fact, was a member of the British Royal Society. The students are so convinced that God and science are separate, however, most have a tough time coming up with a coherent explanation.

If science really were defined today simply as an orderly and rational investigation of the natural world, Edwards, Mather, ID theorists and evolutionists alike could all play together on the same field. A more accurate definition for today, though, is that science is an effort to explain all natural phenomena by natural causes only.

That definition pretty much rules Edwards, et al., out of bounds. But given the things we don't have answers for -- how the universe began, how life got started, where DNA originated, to name a few -- there's no way we can be sure all natural phenomena can be explained by natural causes.

Herein lies the crux of one of the misconceptions out there: evolutionary theory does not explain the origin of life or anything about the origin of the universe. It is simply not designed to do so. Many people forget that.

Expelled too Polarizing?

Jen Wulf of the South Bend Tribune has written an exceptional editorial on Expelled! The editorial deals with the scope of the movie and that it was intended to be polarizing. She is particularly critical of one aspect:

Stein, however, never interviews evolutionists who see their scientific views as either compatible with, or distinct from, their religious beliefs.

One such scientist is Kenneth Filchak, a practicing Roman Catholic and a professor of biology at the University of Notre Dame. He disagrees with the idea that the theory of evolution devalues human life, and he does not relate it to atheism.

“Darwin said probably the most profound thing that any scientist has ever said: ‘If you go far enough back in time, all things on our planet are related.’

“If you start really thinking about it, that sounds really biblical to me. It sounds like something God would do, to make everything related,” Filchak says.

Read the whole thing.

Evolution Exhibit in Toronto

The Toronto Star has a story on a new exhibit on Charles Darwin and evolution at the Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibit dwells not just on Darwin but on the controversy surrounding his theory on natural selection. As the Star writer Geoff Pevere notes:

Small wonder Darwin himself sat on the revelation for years before publishing it. He knew what was coming. As he wrote in a letter, he felt like he was "committing murder."

While there remains much dispute as to just what Darwin killed or how effectively he did so, at the very least he strangled the notion that history might have contained that fabulously dramatic moment when men went spear to talon with T-rex. Never happened. At least not in nature. But who needs nature (or Charles Darwin) when you've got movies?

Yet there may be no country in the world other than America where a movie featuring both dinosaurs and people would be regarded as the truth.

Consider the statistics. According to Susan Jacoby's recent book The Age of American Unreason, which singles out certain anti-Darwinian strains in American culture as an especially egregious example of the country's drift away from rationalism, "Fewer than half of Americans – 48 per cent – accept any form of evolution (even guided by God), and just 26 per cent accept Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Fully 42 per cent say that all living beings, including humans, have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

Yup. The continual problem. Much like the clerics who would not look into Galileo's telescope, it isn't that most people don't know anything about evolution, most people don't want to know anything about it. The exhibit opened on March 8.

Einstein and God

Lest any of you out there think that Albert Einstein was a Christian, Bloomsbury Auctions is selling a letter written by Einstein a year before his death in which he states that belief in the Bible is "childish." He says other things as well:

The letter up for sale, written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, suggests his views on religion did not mellow with age.

In it, Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

Richard Dawkins would be proud. For me, it is another example of where science and religion just don't mix.

Trouble in Maine

According to Articles of Interest, there is a debate in Maine School Administrative District 59 over the teaching of evolution. The story notes:

Director Matthew Linkletter argues that evolution is an unprovable theory and shouldn't be taught as fact. He's urged the SAD 59 Board of Directors to consider his view during its May 19 meeting in Madison, with a goal of removing evolution from science classrooms.

But David Connerty-Marin, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, says evolution must be taught because, in the state's view, it's a proven science.

My brother Dave lives with his wife in Maine and he says that the population is composed of two very different socio-economic groups, one very affluent and educated and the other, shall we say, less so. Maine was once known for textile mills and manufacturing and most of those jobs have evaporated or moved away but many of the people stayed.

Off-Topic

A German archaeologist has claimed to have found the palace of the Queen of Sheba and, hence, the possible place of the lost Ark of the Covenant. According to the story:

"From the dating, its position and the details that we have found, I am sure that this is the palace," he said. The palace, that is, of the Queen of Sheba, who is believed to have lived in the 10th century B.C. After she died, her son and successor, Menelek, replaced the palace with a temple dedicated to Sirius. The German researchers believe that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem by the queen — who had a liaison with King Solomon — and built into the altar to Sirius.

"The results we have suggest that a Cult of Sothis developed in Ethiopia with the arrival of Judaism and the Ark of the Covenant, and continued until 600 A.D.," an announcement by the University of Hamburg on behalf of the research team said.

I dunno. Sounds a tad funny. As they say, you can find enough wood from the original cross of Jesus to build an ark.

Maryann Johanson on "Expelled!"

Maryann Johanson of the Colorado Independent suggests that scientists and the public need to go on the offensive regarding the new Ben Stein-narrated movie "Expelled!" She writes:

We cannot dismiss this movie, because all those who care about public discourse in America and the ongoing war on scientific literacy need to see it in order to arm themselves against the idiocy. The film — written by Stein, Kevin Miller and Walt Ruloff, and directed by Nathan Frankowski — shows just how insidious the "intelligent design" proponents are.

Aside from the Darwin/Hitler connexion, there are other insights:

Since Stein is unable to adequately critique evolutionary science, he resorts to a kind of name-calling that is purposely designed to mislead his audience. He constantly refers to those who accept evolution as "Darwinists," which is akin to referring to quantum physicists as "Newtonians" or "Copernicans." He does this even though one of his own ID proponents notes that biological science has moved on from Darwin just as physical science has moved on from Newton.

While Darwin's concept of Natural Selection is clearly the driving force behind evolution, it is important to remember that Darwin did not know of the existence of genes and by extension, could not formulate the concepts of genetic drift, flow mutation, and the various forms of speciation that occur. The negative review are building up.

The Fuzzy Black Box

My mother had a stroke over the weekend. It seems to have burned out her speech center. For quite some time, all she could get out was "yes" or "no." It was clear that she was all there, she just could not communicate. That was Saturday. By Monday night, she was speaking in phrases. What a strange thing the brain is.

Expelled!: A Review from Blogcritic

Michael Clayton of Blogcritic writes a piece called "An Analysis of the Arguments Presented in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed!" The problem is that he doesn't really get around to doing so until the third page, and then in half-hearted fashion. The article largely just recapitulates the narrative of the film, with little added insight for the first two pages. His only real analysis is that the film is "certainly a one-sided affair." Beyond that, there are the usual problems. For example, he writes:

According to the information presented in the film, there have been active efforts to remove the theory of intelligent design from the consciousness of educational institutions nationwide, and to exalt the theory of evolution as the only rational explanation for the origin and development of life. In my opinion, this process is fraught with flaws. It seems that these institutions have gradually lost sight of one of the most prominent characteristic of evolutionary theory: it is ultimately just a theory. Yet in many scientific circles, it is no longer considered a theory, but fervently argued as completely factual.

Note to all those who wish to write about these topics--Learn what a theory is first!! He goes on:

Another astounding trend outlined in the film is the fact that the theory of intelligent design is repeatedly identified as a code word for creationism. Stein conducts a series of interviews with many of the most outspoken opponents of intelligent design, and many of them attempt to use the discussion as a platform to slander Christianity and similar beliefs.

While it is certainly true that some, like Dawkins, do exactly that, there is ample justification for the connexion between Christianity and ID, as was starkly brought out in the Dover trial, where the school board trucked in copies of the execrable book Of Pandas and People, reviewed here, here and here. As far as the origin of life is concerned, he writes this:

At the same time, evolutionists have yet to present a reasonable alternative argument as to how life began. Rather than producing further research and analysis on evolutionary theory in order to provide their own conclusion to this process, it would appear that many evolutionists have sought to target and eliminate all traces of intelligent design from modern scientific theory.

Not their job to do so. Evolutionary theory does not deal with origin of life questions. Finally, in the third page, he gets to his objections to how the film was put together. Even here, though, he blunts his criticisms by saying the following:

Another concern I had relating to the presentation of the film was the way in which some of the information was acquired for the film. A number of the figures involved with the production, including Richard Dawkins, claimed they were misled about the purpose of the film, and were not aware that it was a film advocating the instruction of intelligent design. While I do not necessarily approve of this method in regards to acquiring information, it should be noted that the comments made by Richard Dawkins are similar to comments made by the man himself consistently on his own website. Therefore, while the way in which his involvement was enlisted is questionable, his responses in the film seem to be pretty representative of his personal ideology.

This is specious reasoning. Richard Dawkins' ideology doesn't enter into it. If someone were to come up to me and tell me they were making a movie about the strengths of evolutionary biology and interviewed me to that extent and then when the film came out, it promoted the six-day creation model, I would be pretty hacked off. Not because my views weren't properly expressed but because the interviewer lied about why he was interviewing me. The question is not about my views or those of Richard Dawkins. The question is about the motives of the interviewer. Not a useful review.

Editorial: Academic Freedom Act is a Bad Idea

An argument against the "Academic Freedom Bill" from the Destin Log's Fraser Sherman. It is concisely written and covers most of the the rebuttal points. For example:

•“Intelligent design has nothing whatsoever to do with religion.” The ID-supporters of the Discovery Institute have admitted ID is a “wedge” for putting “Christ-centered” science into schools. And one religious publisher put out an ID textbook, “Pandas and People,” by reprinting a creationist text with “ID” where “creationism” used to go.
•“Creation science is science.” No more than “flat earth geography” would be geography. You can put lipstick on a pig, but ...
•”Darwin’s theory of evolution remains a theory with no scientific conclusions on the origin of life.” Which is why he called his book “The Origin of Species,” not “of Life.” Evolution is about how life changes, not how it started — and the proof that life has been evolving for millennia is overwhelming. The origin of life is a separate question, as witness that even some devout creationists have conceded evolution does work at least sometimes (it explains why bacteria become immune to antibiotics, for instance) without changing their views on Genesis.

A good read.

ID Part of a Surge in Evangelicalism at Universities?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece recounting the rise of evangelicalism in today's colleges and universities. The writer, D. Michael Lindsey, notes changes from past movements:

Unlike fundamentalists who retreat from pluralistic environments, evangelicals relish the chance to engage people who hold different beliefs. This could present an opportunity for deeper understanding on our campuses, but it will happen only if we bring evangelicals into our classroom discussions. Just as the debate surrounding intelligent design has forced many biologists to engage religious topics in the classroom, so will rising religious pluralism. As we make greater progress in medicine and genomics, we should expect the number of moral issues surrounding those developments to multiply. That, joined with the rising number of evangelical students on our campuses, will demand of us at least a basic understanding of what this religious community believes.

Read the whole thing.

On the other hand...

Reading the reviews of Expelled, it seems to me that most of them are even-handed. For example, Matt McKilop suggests more than a few similarities to Michael Moore films. He writes:

Expelled then goes on to interview a number of proponents of intelligent design. Each of them sounds smart, obviously more knowledgeable about science and the origin of life than I am, but the film fails to define exactly what these men think and what they're proposing. I understand they reject the theory of evolution. I understand that intelligent design involves a "designer." But what else? What would intelligent design research contribute to the body of science literature? How would intelligent design researchers test their claims? Unfortunately, the film doesn't bother to provide answers to these questions.

Perhaps the worst part of Expelled comes when Stein tries to connect the theory of evolution and Nazism. While it's true that Hitler used Darwin's theories to support his ideology, it's intellectually dishonest to associate, however tenuously, today's scientific community with Nazism. Too often in today's public discourse, people feel it's not enough merely to assert that their ideological opponent is wrong -- they must also claim he's evil. This is shameless demagoguery, and it's not persuasive or constructive.

Check out the reviews.

Expelled on RT

Rottentomatoes.com has corralled the available reviews of Expelled. They are harsh. Now, it is not clear to me that movie reviewers are notably different from Hollyweird in general so you might take the reviews with a grain of salt.

The Great Off-Ramp of Evolution

The Australian has a story about research coming out of Argentina that suggests that Neandertals were not part of modern human ancestry:

The team [led by Rolando Gonzalez-Jose of the Patagonian National Centre at Puerto Madryn, Argentina] goes back over the same well-known set of specimens, but uses a different analytical approach, focusing on a set of fundamental, yet long-term, changes in skull shape. They took 3D images of the casts of 17 hominid specimens, and from a gorilla, chimpanzee and Homo sapiens. These were crunched through a computer model to compare four variables; the skull's roundness and base, the protrusion of the jaw, and facial retraction, or position of the face relative to the cranial base.

That is a pretty bald conclusion based on four variables, when there are over 60 that can be taken on the head alone. It sounds like they have used prosthion radius and a few other ones--don't know what "roundness and base" are. Time to pick up the paper.

What did the Old Man Eat?

According to Eurekalert, Peter Ungar, Fred Grine and Mark Teaford are arguing that Australopithecus/Paranthropus boisei did not have a hard nut-based diet after all.

The findings showed that P. boisei teeth had light wear, suggesting that none of the individuals ate extremely hard or tough foods in the days leading up to death. The pattern was more consistent with modern-day fruit-eating animals than with most modern-day primates.

"It looks more like they were eating Jell-O," Ungar said.

Hey, it killed the dinosaurs didn't it?

The Derb on Expelled!

John Derbeyshire has written a piece on the movie Expelled for National Review. He is not complimentary:

So what’s going on here with this stupid Expelled movie? No, I haven’t seen the dang thing. I’ve been reading about it steadily for weeks now though, both pro (including the pieces by David Klinghoffer and Dave Berg on National Review Online) and con, and I can’t believe it would yield up many surprises on an actual viewing. It’s pretty plain that the thing is creationist porn, propaganda for ignorance and obscurantism. How could a guy like this [Ben Stein] do a thing like that?

He has further harsh words for creationism in general:

These dishonesties do not surprise me. When talking about the creationists to people who don’t follow these controversies closely, I have found that the hardest thing to get across is the shifty, low-cunning aspect of the whole modern creationist enterprise. Individual creationists can be very nice people, though they get nicer the further away they are from the full-time core enterprise of modern creationism at the Discovery Institute. The enterprise as a whole, however, really doesn’t smell good. You notice this when you’re around it a lot.

Although he suggests that the earlier creationist movement shows more integrity than the modern ID movement, there are plenty of creationists who behaved as badly as any Dawkins or Meyers ever did, and hid behind the idea of doing "God's word" while they were doing it.



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Now playing: Anthony Phillips - Sunrise And Sea Monsters
via FoxyTunes

Sorry, been SUPER busy.

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Now playing: Anthony Phillips - Sunrise And Sea Monsters
via FoxyTunes

"Won't Ya Be My Yoko Ono"

Yoko Ono is suing Premise Media and Ben Stein for using the John Lennon song "Imagine" in the film Expelled! without permission. According to the story:

"Defendants have intentionally and willfully used the song without authorization because they knew that they would likely be unable to secure permission from plaintiffs," Ono, 75, said in the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in New York.

The story additionally notes:

Ono has tightly controlled Lennon's intellectual property rights since the Beatles member was assassinated in 1980. On April 30, a preliminary hearing will begin in Boston federal court in her lawsuit to stop footage of Lennon from being used in a World Wide Video film called "3 Days in the Life."

Since I haven't seen the film, I don't know how much of the song was used. It is a good bet that any of it was too much.

Carrying Babies Not the Driving Force Behind Bipedalism

The Bignews Network is airing a story detailing research by folks at the University of Manchester on bipedalism. The story notes:

For long, researchers have proposed that carrying babies that could no longer use their feet to cling to their parents in the way that young apes can is what made humans bipedal.

But University of Manchester researchers investigating the energy involved in carrying a child say the physical expense to the mother does not support the idea that walking upright was an evolutionary response to child transportation.

Back to visual predation?

Humans on the Brink of Extinction

According to a story on Foxnews, humans neared the brink of extinction a scant 70 000 years ago. According to one of the authors of the study:

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement.

"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world," he added. "Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Well, that is somewhat melodramatic, if a tad overstated. The story also notes:

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa, formerly known as Hottentots and Bushmen, who appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers, led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University, concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

This will probably be news to most archaeologists who have quite a bit of material worldwide from this general time period. It also flies in the face of the fossil remains dated to between 50-90 ky in Europe and the Mediterranean. If those fossils represent only a fraction of the population alive at the time, then there were a bunch more people around than this study would want to admit.

"Expelled" Rakes It In!

Biz of Showbiz has an article on just how well Expelled is doing at the Box Office. How well?

The film is already one of the top documentaries ever, just after the first weekend, where it averaged $2,997 per venue. While it ended up in the No. 10 spot for the weekend box office, it was fifth as far as average taken in per theater.

Cool. Take that, Richard Dawkins!!

Reading a Newspaper is Good For You

The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has an article suggesting that, in order to be better educated, one should read the newspaper. They write:

In fact, newspaper readers are one of just two groups in society likely to reject belief in the paranormal, says Lou Manza, chair of the psychology department at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. The other group is people who think everything has a scientific explanation.

Manza surveyed college students on about 20 different paranormal beliefs such as near-death experiences and psychics.

What is also interesting is how much of a cross-cut of society is involved. When controlling for income, ethnicity and other factors, the team found that:

Almost none of it seemed to matter. Religious and non-religious people were about equally likely to believe in ghosts, astrology, and the rest. So were rich and poor, all political parties, ethnic groups, believers in "alternative spiritualism" -- even, stunningly, those with and without science courses in high school and in college.

Yup. Keep reading the newspaper.

"Academic Freedom Act" Passes

The Ledger reports that the Florida State legislature has passed the "Academic Freedom Act." They write:

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, has steadfastly refused to say whether she believes creationism and intelligent design are scientific and would be allowed to be taught under her bill. Her only response has been to cite provisions in the bill saying it would not require religious alternatives to be taught.
Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, argued the measure would constitute an unconstitutional “establishment of religion” by the state.

I still find it odd that an "academic" freedom bill has gone out of its way to target evolution directly. I think this bodes ill.

Texas Takes a Stand!

The Texas Commissioner for Higher Education is going on record as being against the petition by the ICR to educate science teachers in creationism. The San Antonio news reports him saying:

"...the proposed degree cannot "be properly designated either as 'science' or 'science education."

"The Language of God" Excerpt

ABCnews has an excerpt from Francis Collins' book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief buried in the link that I posted a few days ago. Here it is. He writes:

So here is the central question of this book: In this modern era of cosmology, evolution, and the human genome, is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and spiritual worldviews? I answer with a resounding yes! In my view, there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us. Science's domain is to explore nature. God's domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul -- and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms.

I will argue that these perspectives not only can coexist within one person, but can do so in a fashion that enriches and enlightens the human experience. Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world, and its tools when properly utilized can generate profound insights into material existence.

Something else to read. I had better get moving.

High Praise for Expelled!

Libertas blog is gloating that Expelled is doing much better than another film released at the same time, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, which he describes as an "America Trasher." He comments:

Gee, whodthunk, huh? $3 million in ticket sales for a religious-themed, freedom of speech documentary and less than $150 thousand for an American-trasher??? Has the world gone mad?

Trying.To.Stop.My.Self… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH BWAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaa…..

The comments are good, also.

A Call for Science in the White House

David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail have written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal calling for renewed interest in science at the presidential and congressional level. They write:

Last year things seemed hopeful, at least for the physical sciences. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," that helped drive Congress to pass legislation – the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) – aimed at bolstering the sciences. It was supposed to beef up the study of science in high school. In the end, no money was found to fund the initiative. It was a commitment made, but not kept.

That was the rule of thumb for most of the scientific initiatives. The science bill came back flat from congress and some programs were drastically cut. Funding for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a joint venture with several other nations, was zeroed out completely. Why is it that when it looks like things are going well for sciences, short-sighted partisan politics comes into play? Read the whole thing.

Francis Collins on the Pew Forum

There is an extensive interview with Francis Collins, author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief at the Pew Forum. When asked about why the conflict was so polarizing, he responds:

Perhaps today’s conflict, which seems particularly intense, is so difficult to understand because, after all, evolution has been very much on the scene for 150 years, and the science that supports Darwin’s theory has gotten stronger and stronger over those decades. That evidence is particularly strong today given the ability to study DNA and to see the way in which it undergirds Darwin’s theory in a marvelously digital fashion. And yet, we have seen an increasing polarization between the scientific and spiritual worldviews, much of it, I think, driven by those who are threatened by the alternatives and who are unwilling to consider the possibility that there might be harmony here.

What often astounds me about the people who argue against teaching evolution in the classroom is that, more often than not, they cannot properly identify what evolution is. About Creationism, Dr. Collins responds:

I take great comfort looking back through time, particularly at the writings of Augustine, who was obsessed by trying to understand Genesis and wrote no less than five books about it. Augustine ultimately concluded that no human being really was going to be able to interpret the meaning of the creation story. Certainly Augustine would have argued that the current ultra-literal interpretations that lead to young earth creationism are not required by the text, and would have warned that such a rigid interpretation, regardless of what other evidence comes to the scene, could potentially be quite dangerous to the faith, in that it would make believers out to be narrow-minded and potentially subject to ridicule. And in a certain way, that warning has come true with the battles we’re having right now.

This is a recurrent theme among practicing scientists who are self-proclaimed OECs (Old Earth Creationists), such as Davis Young, Howard Van Till, Alan Davis, among others, that the persistence of the young earth creationism movement degrades serious belief and puts Christians in a bad light. Read the whole thing.

Sowing Atheism at the National Academy of Sciences

Solving Light Books has a free download of a book titled Sowing Atheism: The Natonal Academy Of Science' Sinister Scheme To Teach Our Children They're Descended from Reptiles. Sure to be an interesting read. The opening two paragraphs pretty much set the tone:

Imagine yourself standing in the administrative offices of your local junior high school. You are there to bring a forgotten lunch to one of your children. Two tall, forbidding men enter wearing black business suits with red-letter NAS (National Academy of Sciences) armbands. They sneer and brush past you. They ignore the receptionist and the other people working there, and head straight for the principal’s office. Just as the startled educator looks up at the intruders, both slam their fists on his desk. In unison, they cry, “We represent infallible science. You must teach these children that they are descended from reptiles. It is impossible to disprove our findings, and wrong to challenge them; therefore, no other point of view will be tolerated.” When these men disregard you again on their way out, you follow and yell down the hall, “What evidence do you have that we are descended from reptiles?” They reply, “We don’t need any evidence. All we have to do is say we have it in abundance. We are the philosopher kings of science.”

Time to wade in...

Protesting the "Academic Freedom Act"

The Tallahassee Democrat has a story on the response that the Academic Freedom Act is getting locally:

The Senate bill says in part it will provide, "public school teachers with a right to present scientific information relevant to the full range of views on biological and chemical evolution; prohibiting a teacher from being discriminated against for presenting such information."

Once again, if this bill is "academic" in nature, why is evolution being singled out for special treatment? As Kenneth Miller states, shouldn't we think this way about all of science? The wording of the bill gives away its true intent--to get people to reconsider their support for evolution.

"Academic Freedom Act" Moves Forward

The Independent Florida Alligator reports that another hurdle has been passed for the Academic Freedom Act to become law. The reporter, Joshua Frederickson, writes:

Last week, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature — which now boasts a prodigious 32 percent approval rating, the lowest ever — moved one step closer to pushing through an incredibly ignorant and shamelessly duplicitous piece of legislation that aims to inject religion into the Sunshine State’s public schools. The deceptively named “Academic Freedom Act” is now one House council’s approval away from a floor vote. The Senate is already set to vote on the measure.

The bill’s supporters claim that the legislation has nothing to do with religion and would simply permit teachers to present alternative theories (read: intelligent design) without fear of harassment or dismissal.

The article is somewhat vitriolic and at least one of the commentators takes him to task for this. Personally, I also get a bit weary of this "Republicans are evil" schtick. Interestingly, one of the comments below the article shows the dilemmas that exist within the kind of representative government in which we live:

Also, this is a not a church and state issue. Separation of church and state means that the clergymen and officials of religious sects are not allowed to govern our state, or to create a new church to govern our state, unlike what was done in Europe. However, we do elect people to represent our interests, and if most of our elected officials happen to uphold Christian or other religious values that would lead them to think that teaching Creationism is important, all they are doing is implementing and/or upholding what most of their own constituents would want. And guess what? If you ever get out of Gainesville these days, one of the most liberal parts of the state and in all the of the South, you would realize the the average Floridian and US citizen wants creationism to be taught in public schools. If you personally want it hexed from your child's classroom, what is so awesome about the United States is that you have the right to find a school that does not teach it, and if one doesn't exist, you can home school your child, or you can go start a school of your own.

As I have noted in the past, I understand the want on the part of parents to have their kids get a high quality education, but the kids also have to be taught the most up-to-date information, especially if it involves science. Learning the ins and outs of alchemy might be fun but it won't prepare you for 21st century scientific endeavors.

Michael Behe Speaks

Michael Behe is giving some talks in northern Colorado. The link is here.

Expelled Exposed!

The National Center for Science Education, run by Eugenie Scott has posted a website devoted to critiquing the film Expelled! The main page has a short film detailing the trials of Christine Comer, who was fired from her education position in Texas for passing on an email about a pro-evolution talk by Barbara Forest.

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Variety Reviews "Expelled"

Variety examines the film Expelled and finds that, although it asks some good questions, ultimately, its style and direction undermine any point it is trying to make. For example:

First-time director Nathan Frankowski strikes a relentlessly jokey tone throughout, using black-and-white film clips as comic punctuation (after news of a professor's axing, pic cuts to a shot of a guillotine). In addition to being just plain irritating, this jittery style seems to reinforce the perception of the pic's target audience as a bunch of intellectual lightweights.

Even more offensive is the film's attempt to link Darwin's "survival of the fittest" ideas and Hitler's master-race ambitions (when in doubt, invoke the Holocaust), complete with solemnly scored footage of the experimentation labs at Dachau. Evocations of the Berlin Wall, treated as a symbol of a bullheaded scientific establishment on the verge of collapse, are equally fatuous.

As I have posted before, the Darwin/Hitler connection is misplaced, as he did not believe that evolution applied to humans. The other is unfortunate because it is, once again, playing directly into the hands of people like Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers who need no encouragement.

The Atlas of Creation Arrives in Scotland

Last year the Atlas of Creation was sent to universities in France, generating interest from the Human Rights group Council of Europe. Now it has been sent to Scottish universities. According to The Sunday Herald, the tome, which can be downloaded for free on the internet, was sent, unsolicited. The story notes:

"I find it quite staggering," said Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh. He houses his seven copies in a cupboard in the zoology department's staff room. "Every academic I know says they've got one of those. And it's peddling an absolute, downright lie."

He said the appearance of the books and the rise of creationist voices in the UK, within both Christian and Muslim groups, didn't affect his teaching but that he was "much more worried about primary and secondary school classrooms".

This is a reasonable concern, as we have seen here in the United States. The story notes one of the paragraphs in the book concerning evolution.

Under a picture of the collapsing Twin Towers, a caption reads: "No matter what ideology they may espouse, those who perpetrate terror all over the world are, in reality, Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy that places value on - and thus encourages - conflict."

I think this would come as news to your average member of Hamas or Jemaah Islamiyah.

I just signed up to get free tickets to see Expelled! The link is here. I might try to go see it anyway if I get the opportunity.

Sorry

i am recovering from prostate surgery so will probably not post for a few days. Not fun.

Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed by an Asteroid?

Well, I guess there is no reason that it couldn't have been done this way. Foxnews is reporting on a clay tablet that dates to around 700 B.C. and reports on a cataclysmic event in 3123 B.C. that wiped out an area some one million square kilometers. The story notes:

Dr Hempsall [of Bristol University] said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid's impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father's sun chariot.

The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event."

I think more needs to be done to relate the two, but this is an interesting intersection of science and Biblical events.

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Obama on Evolution

Barack Obama was in York, Pennsylvania and was asked by an interviewer for the York Daily Record what he thought about the evolution debate. his answer was more focused than anything else he has said in his campaign:

Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What's your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?

A: "I'm a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state.

But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there's a difference between science and faith. That doesn't make faith any less important than science.

It just means they're two different things. And I think it's a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don't hold up to scientific inquiry."

Too bad I can't agree with him on sooooo many other things.

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Creationism in Louisiana

The Times-Picayune's James Gill writes that creationism has descended on Lousiana. According to Gill:

Now it has painted on a new face and emerged on the arm of state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, who is pushing what he humorously terms the "The Louisiana Academic Freedom Act" in the upcoming session.

Nevers has filed Senate Bill 561 with the spurious premise that evolution is a matter of serious scientific debate and that both sides are entitled to a hearing. A lot of people have fallen for that line, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, although, of course, scientists, save a few stray zealots, regard the evidence for evolution as overwhelming.

Nevers' concept of academic freedom requires that "any writing, document, record or other content" on the subject be allowed in science class. It is a license for crackpots.

This story suggests that the creation/evolution debate does not fall along party lines as much as I thought. This is reassuring in once sense, because, as a Republican, I am frequently associated with the creationism arm of the party. On the other hand, it is disturbing because it means that these views are more deeply held than party loyalty.

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1.3 Million Year Old Humans in Spain

Foxnews is reporting the discovery of a partial mandible at the Spanish site of Atapuerca is 1.3 million years old this is being lumped in with the species found in 1997, Homo antecessor. The jury is still out on whether that is a good taxonomic designation, but it is encouraging that more hominid fossils are turning up here at this fantastic cache of fossils. The story notes:

Carbonell's team has tentatively classified the new fossil as representing an earlier example of Homo antecessor. And, critically, the team says the new one also bears similarities to much-older fossils dug up since 1983 in the Caucasus at a place called Dmanisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

These were dated as being up to 1.8 million years old.

"This leads us to a very important, very interesting conclusion," Carbonell said. It is this: that hominins which emerged from Africa and settled in the Caucasus eventually evolved into Homo antecessor, and that the latter populated Europe not 800,000 years ago, but at least 1.3 million years ago.

The thinking goes that these hominids then led eventually to Neandertals. Not sure about that one yet.

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Bipedalism at 6 Million Years Ago

Bill Jungers and Brian Richmond write that the femur from the 6 my old Orrorin tugenensis reflects bipedality. In a story in Science Daily, Jungers is quoted as saying:

Our study confirms that as early as six million years ago, basal hominins in Africa were already similar to later australopithecines in their anatomy and inferred locomotor biomechanics.

At the same time, by way of the analysis, we see no special phylogenetic connection between Orrorin and our own genus, Homo.”

So we wait to see if anything comes of the digs out at the Sahel River to see is Sahelanthropus might have been bipedal. This is a coup for Orrorin, though.

Expelled Gaining Interest

Businesswire notes that the Expelled controversy is the top issue in the blogosphere. Uncommon Descent tells that Richard Dawkins applied to get in to see the film calling himself "Clinton Dawkins."

Gatecrashing Expelled?

This is nothing short of astounding!!! Apparently, PZ Meyers, the palaeontologist at the University of Minnesota, was barred from watching the premier of Expelled, the ID film promoted heavily by Ben Stein. His account of it is here. This is from his account:

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.

I went back to my family and talked with them for a while, and then the officer came back with a theater manager, and I was told that not only wasn't I allowed in, but I had to leave the premises immediately. Like right that instant.

I complied.

They didn't notice the fact that Richard Dawkins was with him. They blithely let him in. Later, Mark Mathis, the film's promoter sent out a press announcement about the expulsion. Meyers writes about it here. The Discovery Institute has their own take on the episode, called Richard Dawkins, world's most famous Darwinist, stoops to Gatecrashing Expelled. In it, they note:

In January I saw an early version that was screened in Fort Lauderdale and I will be at a Seattle screening soon. The Darwinists who are portrayed in the film -- giving answers to questions submitted in advance! -- are worried about what the public will think of their views when produced incontrovertibly in their own words. What they say is damning, all right, but it’s not much different than what they write in books and say in speeches and other appearances.

The "incontrovertibly in their own words" statement is a bit thin, since several of these self-proclaimed "Darwinists" have complained loudly and long about how they were portrayed and that they weren't told what the project would be in advance. I posted about a bit back.

Richard Dawkins writes about it here. I tend to view PZ Meyers the same as I do Richard Dawkins, and he is every bit as caustic toward religion (birds of a feather?) as Dawkins. As the DI quote also notes, he is not above trampling on the rights of teachers. I wonder, though, if this is, in some way, any different than me saying that creationism should not be taught in schools at all. I firmly believe that there is no place for recent earth creationism in the science curriculum in schools. I just don't want people publicly humiliated for it.

Flores, the Debate Rages On!

PopSci has posted a story about the Flores "hobbits" (provisionally Homo floresiensis).  The drift seems to be heading away from pathology.  The author, Laura Allen, quotes Bill Jungers of SUNY Stonybrook.  His position is clear-cut:

When one of the first Homo erectus specimens was discovered in Java in 1891, it was deemed pathological by many; even called a "microcephalic idiot" by a prominent scientist of the day. And even as late as 1998, skeptics have suggested that Neanderthals were victims of cretinism.

I asked Jungers his take on the apparent urge to pathologize. “I consider it to be a scientific example of cognitive dissonance,” he said. “Here’s something out of the blue, no one anticipated; everyone’s got their mind made up about the course of [human] evolution. To have your scientific world view jarred like that is difficult to accommodate. It’s easier to dismiss it than to assimilate it.”

He is certainly right about that.

Is America Anti-Intellectual? Not so Fast!

A bit back, I blogged about Susan Jacoby's take on anti-intellectualism. She has written a book on the subject entitled The Age of Unreason. Carlin Romano of Philly.com (a compilation of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News) is not amused. He takes issue with her here. He characterizes her approach thus:

Her style of argument often amounts to hitting the clip file or Google, piling up thrice-told tales of putatively vulgarized culture, then sarcastically inviting the reader's repelled reaction without examining whether the examples she lays out prove her point. Anti-rationalism, she argues, is not understanding the difference between factual evidence and opinion, but Jacoby's own judgment about which evidence counts for which assertions is often unconvincing.

He then goes on to defend the American populace in general.

In a nation that boasts more educated people, college graduates, books sold and general literacy than ever before, intellectually oriented people patronize institutions that pay attention to sophisticated print culture - universities, colleges, Web sites, publications, radio shows - and dump those that aim at bottom-level taste. It's telling that Jacoby piles on The Da Vinci Code and The O'Reilly Factor while ignoring NPR and BOOK-TV. The latter play the same role in the "edifice of middlebrow culture" as many of the media for which she's nostalgic (e.g., Saturday Review), but because she insists that edifice has "collapsed," they don't exist in her inventory.

My reflection on reading this is that, yes, there is much to laud in human educational aptitude and performance. This is especially evident here at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. However, I am also reminded of something that Richard Young wrote about creationism in the United States and in the schools, in his article Why Creationism Must Be Kept out of the Classroom:

However, just as a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, the stinkweed of Creationism remains rank.

Just as Mr. Romano is referring to the intellectual weight of the American universities, it is clear that the general public remains woefully uneducated in basic scientific matters. If you doubt this, have a look at a poll conducted by CBS/NYT in 2004 on creation/evolution. It is only 885 people, and that certainly is not a large number of people, but the results were pretty tell-tale. No, we clearly have a long way to go.

Didn't We Already Know This?

A new study by Michael Schillaci indicates that, while it is known that there was a modern human migration out of Africa around 50 kya, there is evidence of a previous migration at around 100 kya. The story, in Discovery News, notes:

Schillaci, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto, also found the earlier group of emigrants had some genetic similarity to Neanderthals, a hominid that left Africa much earlier, settling in Europe and parts of western and central Asia.

"This could be the byproduct of limited [interbreeding] with Neanderthals, or a shared more recent common ancestry with Neanderthals," he told Discovery News. "Humans and Neanderthals share a common Homo ancestor in Africa at around 500,000 years ago. However, Neanderthals evolved in Europe, while modern humans evolved in Africa."

There must be more to this story than meets the eye because we have had modern human remains in the Near East dated to around 100 kya for some time now (almost twenty years) and they had to come from somewhere. Add to that the North African Herto remains (mentioned in the news story) dated to around 160 kya and you have, what I think to be as close to a smoking gun as you can have in this business. A study done by Art Durband and myself that we are going to expand and publish when I am not up to my eyeballs in work, teaching and kids argues that the Skhul and Qafzeh remains from Israel that are dated to 90-100 kya express some non-Neandertal, general archaic characteristics that are likely north African in origin. I will have to get the article by Schillaci when it comes out in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Did Neandertals Drift Away?

Tim Weaver has concluded that Neandertals evolved in different direction from modern human precursors because of nothing more than genetic drift. According to the article:

In their new study, Weaver and his colleagues crunched their fossil data using sophisticated mathematical models -- and calculated that Neanderthals and modern humans split about 370,000 years ago. The estimate is very close to estimates derived by other researchers who have dated the split based on clues from ancient Neanderthal and modern-day human DNA sequences.

This suggests that Neandertals were an isolated group in Europe and had no outside contact with other population groups. The article states that it is in this week's PNAS. The problem is that it isn't. I guess I will have to check next week.

No Quarrel in New Mexico

The online version of the Albuquerque Journal has an article about the new Superintendent of Schools for the city.

The superintendent-designate of the Albuquerque Public Schools hails from Kansas, which triggered a national backlash when it opened the door to teaching creationism in its public schools. Winston Brooks, who will move from Wichita to take the helm of APS by July 1, has some thoughts on the evolution/creation debate— but no plans to push for teaching creation theories here. And it's doubtful he could do so, even if he wanted, given state control of district curricula, its policies on the subject, and opposition from the APS board.

This is welcome news, given that there are fights going on elsewhere in the nation about this.

Homo floresiensis Again!

In a press release, George Washington University researchers have concluded the the remains from the island of Flores represent a new species of human.

GW researchers Adam Gordon, Lisa Nevell, and Bernard Wood developed a novel way to compare the shape of the "Hobbit's" skull with what the shape of modern human skulls would be like in individuals as small as the "Hobbit." Using these new methods, they have shown that the "Hobbit's" skull is shaped nothing like that of a modern human, whether or not size differences are taken into account. Instead, it is similar to our possible ancestors belonging to the species Homo erectus and Homo habilis found in Africa and the Republic of Georgia, which are about 1.7 million years old. This result is consistent with the most recent analyses of the skeleton that also suggest it was similar to older species.

"What's interesting about this is that the 'Hobbit' doesn't closely resemble the younger Homo erectus material from Indonesia, arguing for an ancient divergence of this species from the lineage that produced modern humans," said Gordon, postdoctoral research fellow with GW's Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology. "We're looking at a different human lineage that split from our own possibly as much as 1.7 million years ago or more, and persisted up to the time when modern humans started peopling the Americas. That's pretty exciting."

This will fan the flames even more, although it is certainly getting harder to deny the very weird nature of these hominids.

The Persistent Rep. Storms

Rhonda Storms has continued her campaign to get the Academic Freedom Act heard. TampaBay Online has this to say:

On Wednesday, Storms and Rep. D. Alan Hays, a Republican from Umatilla who is introducing the House version[of the Academic Freedom Act], held a press conference with actor-turned-commentator Ben Stein in Tallahassee to draw attention to the measure. Stein has produced a documentary called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" that he says shows the negative effects experienced by teachers and scientists open to other theories.

For someone who is only peripherally involved with the film, Ben Stein certainly is getting his voice heard. As far as other reaction is concerned, this is disturbing:

Rep. Rob Schenck, R-Spring Hill, said he would consider supporting the bill "as long as it's done responsibly." Schenck taught high school before his election to the House in 2006. "In my opinion, and this coming from an ex-teacher, education is the pursuit of knowledge," Schenck said. "Why should we contain that knowledge to certain theories? Schenck said criticism of Storms and her bill is misguided. "People don't look at the root of (the) issue, and the root of the issue is education," he said. "Education should be all-encompassing."

Why of course! Why should we contain our understanding of gravity to the current theory when "Intelligent Falling" is certainly an open option. If the root of the issue is education, don't you think we ought to provide the best education with the best knowledge that we can?

More Small-Bodied Hominids from Indonesia

The Public Library of Science journal PLosOne has posted an article about the discovery of more small hominids from the island of Palau, which is just north of PNG in the Micronesia chain of islands. From the conclusion, the authors note:

Based on the evidence from Palau, we hypothesize that reduction in the size of the face and chin, large dental size and other features noted here may in some cases be correlates of extreme body size reduction in H. sapiens. These features when seen in Flores may be best explained as correlates of small body size in an island adaptation, regardless of taxonomic affinity. Under any circumstances the Palauan sample supports at least the possibility that the Flores hominins are simply an island adapted population of H. sapiens, perhaps with some individuals expressing congenital abnormalities.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Now playing: Alex De Grassi - Turning: Turning Back

Stein Puts Weight Behind Florida Legislation

The Palm Beach Post reports that actor Ben Stein, largely responsible for the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, has voiced his support for the piece of Florida legislation calling for "Academic Freedom." The story notes:

Lawmakers were invited to attend a private screening of the movie Wednesday evening, but members of the public and press were not allowed unless reporters signed waivers promising not to write about what they saw.

The legislation being pushed in both chambers is in response to new Florida science standards adopted last month that for the first time use the word "evolution" instead of such phrases as "biological change over time." They also require that evolution be taught in more detail.

House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber remarked:

"I think it's ironic that they expelled the media and the public from a film called 'Expelled,'"

Well put.

Yet Another Book to Read!!

The Gatehouse News Service has a story of another book on faith and science by a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. The gentleman, Dr. Karl Gilberson laments the recent polls indicating widespread adherence to creationism.

So, he has joined the fray with a new book, “Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution.” The book is scheduled to be released by HarperCollins in June with a foreword by Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Already the author of numerous scholarly works, an international lecturer and the director of Gordon College’s Forum on Faith and Science, Giberson has now written what he calls his first “message book,” aiming to reach believers who are trying not to be torn between heart and head.

What he says resonates with me as well:

“If you propose the idea that the universe is random, with no purpose, instead of saying that it was created by a loving God, the creationists win hands down,” Giberson said.

For those who see understanding God and the universe as a more complicated enterprise, “you have to wrestle with what the Bible means,” he said. And, in the face of that, “you believe your faith is true.”

Just as I believe mine is.

Mikal Heller and ID

Mikal Heller, cosmologist and Catholic Priest, has won the Templeton Award for "Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities" for 2008. This award carries with it a cash prize of $1.6 million. The web page on the award notes:

Heller's examination of fundamental questions such as "Does the universe need to have a cause?" engages a wide range of sources who might otherwise find little in common. By drawing together mathematicians, philosophers, cosmologists and theologians who pursue these topics, he also allows each to share insights that may edify the other without any violence to their respective methodologies.

He has issued a statement since winning the award. He makes a note of Intelligent Design. He is not supportive:

Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories, that ascribe the great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes, should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old manicheistic error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.

In a sense, this is not much different from Kenneth Miller's perspective that the universe reflects and reveals the mind of God. The notion that ID is Manichean in perspective has also been raised
by Denis Alexander in his excellent article "Is Intelligent Design Biblical?"

A Neandertal Site in the North Sea

The Independent has a report of a discovery of a huge Neandertal site 8 miles off the coast in the North Sea. This would have corresponded to the early Wurm glaciation, when sea levels were low. David Keys, the Archaeology Correspondent, states:

Academic interest in what are being described as drowned Stone Age hunting grounds is likely to increase dramatically after the discovery of 28 Neanderthal flint axes on the sea bed off the East Anglian coast.

Dating from at least 50,000-60,000 years ago, they were found with other flint artefacts, a large number of mammoth bones, teeth and tusk fragments, and pieces of deer antler. The sea bed location was probably a Neanderthal hunters' kill site or temporary camp site.

There are, apparently, many more sites to be excavated:

Detailed archaeological research at the bottom of the North Sea would be likely to solve a host of Stone Age mysteries. It should help establish when Britain was recolonised by humans after a 100,000-year uninhabited period. It may also reveal for the first time the full technological capabilities of Neanderthal Man, because preservation on and in the sea bed is extremely good. Wooden, stone and bone implements have almost certainly survived.

Later this week, British and Dutch archaeologists will meet in Holland to formulate a joint program of North Sea research. German, Belgian, Danish and Norwegian archaeologists and oceanographers are likely to be included in a plan to map and investigate the North Sea's prehistoric landscapes in detail.

Excellent.

The Daily Texan Watches "10,000 B.C."

...and they are not amused. In an article titled "10,000 B.ull C.rap," Alex Regnery and Robert Rich have great fun with it:

I felt as if I was watching a rough cut or work print when D'Leh is running away from a stampede of mammoths. It looked as if he was on a treadmill in front of a blue screen. If you're going to spend $75 million on a film and not have any big movie stars, at least invest in some solid CGI.

This pretty much mirrors what others are saying about the film. Not anymore believable than The Day After Tomorrow but without the really cool special effects.

An Iodine Deficiency?

Peter Obendorf of the RMIT in Melbourne, Australia now says that the specimens that have been dubbed Homo floresiensis are nothing more than modern humans with an iodine deficiency. Foxnews reports of an upcoming article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in which this case is made:

Writing Wednesday in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Obendorf and his colleagues argue the hobbit's short stature and primitive anatomical features can be explained as dwarf cretinism caused by the dietary deficit.

The idea has not met with much support. Among others, Bill Jungers had this to say:

"The only merit to this paper is their correct dismissal of a competing 'pathology du jour' called Laron Syndrome (which causes skeletal deformities). The rest is a rather large and stinky pile of misinformation and wild speculation."

As Glenn Reynolds would say, Ouch.

Pat Hardy Has Won

The Dallas Morning News has reported that Pat Hardy has retained her post in the Texas School Board against challenger Barney Maddox, the avowed creationist. See this post for more information. This is good news.

Kenneth Miller on NMSR

New Mexicans for Science and Reason posted an interview with Kenneth Miller, Brown University biochemist. It was aired on February 8 of this year can be found here by following the "Archives" link. I am listening to it now. First up is a definition of science as being outside the realm of the supernatural and subject to peer-review. "Throw rocks at me" is how one of the hosts puts it. It is a methodology of learning about the natural world. It is not an ideology. Contrast this with the AIG post on "Are We Against Science?"

They are remarking on the Avalon Explosion, which occurred before the Cambrian explosion and took place over a time period of some thirty million years. This is a problem for creationists because they are fond of saying that the all of the major forms of life "exploded" on the scene, suggesting that animal and plant life did not evolve slowly but arrived on the scene at one time. The Avalon explosion suggests that there has been more than one "explosion." Listen to it if you have the time.

The interview mostly covers the Dover School Board trial and the adoption of the book that he and Joe Levine wrote on biology. He suggests that the Discovery Institute realized that the trial was going to be a "train wreck" because of the "hidden links between ID and old fashioned creationism" and that is why the DI's senior fellows withdrew from the trial. Miller refers to the trial as a "scientific rout for evolution."

The "Academic Freedom Bill" Rises Again

Rhonda Storms has proposed the Academic Freedom Bill in the Florida State Legislature. Tampa Bay Online has this to say:

Storms said the new bill merely says teachers should have the freedom to teach what they want, including theories that may contradict the prevalent theories of biological and chemical evolution. The bill does not mention creationism or intelligent design.

The basis of her bill came from activists who failed in February to persuade the state Board of Education to allow the leeway. The board voted 4-3 two weeks ago to explicitly require the teaching of evolution.

Here is where the problem occurs. My wife and I teach our kids at home, in large part because we don't like the education in the public schools. It also allows us to tailor our education to the kids to maximize their learning potential. In our defense, our son Marcus took the first grade Stanford Achievement Test earlier this year and blew it out of the water. The key is that we teach well-grounded math, literature and science. Allowing teachers to teach "what they want" is not the same thing. I don't teach my children the theory of phlogiston, or Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Why? Because it is not good science. I might teach science more rigorously than the public schools, and make it more fun for my kids than they would, but it is not junk science. If there are legitimate alternatives to evolution, they should be taught. As of now, there are no legitimate alternatives. ID argues from negative evidence.

Just because my theory is wrong doesn't make your theory right. And right now, there is not much evidence that my theory is wrong.

The DI and Bad Grammar

Josh Rosenau takes the Discovery Institute to task for bad grammar. The original article is here. His commentary is here. Here are my thoughts.

As silly as it may sound, there are scientists who are still researching gravity. This isn't as absurd as you might think. While no one doubts that mass attracts mass and apples fall down, not up, scientists are still debating the nature of the underlying physical laws and fundamental particles that cause gravitational attraction.

Yup. That's why they call it gravitational theory.

Except when it comes to neo-Darwinism. Then scientists are supposed to shut up, not ask questions, not challenge anything. That isn't science. It isn't even what Darwin himself envisioned for science.

Given that a perusal of any biological journal contains many articles that are tests of evolutionary theory, how is this true? In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould revolutionized the the field of evolutionary biology by introducing Punctuated Equilibrium (punk-eek). This was done by careful hypothesis testing of the evidence. This practically caused a paradigm shift. How is this not science?? Onward.

It looks as is Darwin would have been sorely disappointed in what is considered a fair consideration of the evidence these days. In Florida there was recently a vigorous debate over how evolution should be taught. Dogmatic Darwinists are insisting that Darwinian evolution be presented without any sort of critical analysis, as if it were 100% above reproach, as if it were a natural law that left no doubts.

This simply is not so. After reading the arguments of those who were opposed to the teaching of evolution in the schools, it was clear to me that most of them knew nothing of the theory! Would you want someone like me, a trained biologist, making policy on physics or English education? And what is a fair consideration of the evidence? As John Derbyshire pointed out in a National Review article:

George’s [Gilder's] own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science? In all those years, not a single paper of scientific standing has come out of (nor even, to the best of my knowledge, been submitted by) the DI or the CSC.

The DI seems to continually think that arguing from negative evidence is good scientific method. It is not. The author of this piece, Robert Crowther, also mentions the "Scores of Scientists" who reject evolution. As far as that goes, see this post. Even Michael Behe, the author of Darwin's Black Box supports evolution.