Steve Fuller on the Dover Judgement

I promised to write a report on the Dover court case.... I am still working on it. Mean time Steve Fuller has been busy writing.

He wrote this piece in the Times Education Supplement: Schools for the Enlightenment or epiphany? and then sent me this article for the Blog:

If you follow US court cases over what can be taught in high schools, you will be treated to discourses of the sublime and the ridiculous in disturbingly equal measures. In this respect, the Kitzmiller case, the first to test the teaching of ID, is par for the course. The local school board was, by all accounts, fractious and its members not entirely forthcoming in their motives or actions. On those grounds alone, the presiding judge had good grounds for ruling against the defendants.

The larger and more interesting question was whether he would comment further on the fitness of ID for high school science classes. This was my reason for getting involved in the case, and the defence lawyers, to their credit, kept these two issues separate in the trial. As it turns out, Judge Jones devoted most of his decision to denouncing ID as a scientific project, while making some polite noises about its possible interest as ‘theology’ – not much of a consolation from a judge who admitted in a newspaper interview that his brush with religion consists in his wife dragging him to the local Lutheran Church on Sundays.

The judge’s reasoning could have been simply lifted from the plaintiffs’ playbook. The American Civil Liberties Union scored a total win, easily justifying their legal fees. However, the fact that Judge Jones, who is ostensibly intelligent and independent, would rule so categorically against intelligent design suggests that those interested in the fate of the US legal system need to initiate a far-reaching discussion about the relationship between religion and science in public life, in which I would include the classroom. This should not have been such a cut-and-dry case. A constitutional principle that originally aimed to prevent the establishment of a state-sponsored church is now being invoked to prevent the expression of views, regardless of merit, that happen to have religious origins and inspire religious support.

Regardless of Judge Jones’s appreciation or approval, virtually every major scientific world-view began with what contemporaries regarded as controversial political and religious assumptions. Galileo stands out in the Scientific Revolution because he spoke plainly and, not surprisingly, stood trial and suffered house arrest. Most others, not least Isaac Newton, concealed their motives. The project of rendering controversial political and religious assumptions ‘scientific’ involves enabling others not sharing those assumptions to find enough intrinsic merit in the positions themselves to accept or at least tolerate them. Newton was a genius because he could translate his theological insight into mathematical terms that commanded assent even from those who would not otherwise accept his theology. Of course, this scientific ‘sublimation’ of the original religious impulse typically invite new converts who take the position in radically new directions: How many people today think that they’re affirming Unitarianism when they work with Newtonian mechanics?

But sublimation is not possible without public exposure. In contrast to the 17th century, we claim to inhabit societies where people are mature enough to think for themselves. At the very least, this means that they possess ideas, not the other way round. No one seriously doubts that contemporary ID is historically connected to scientific creationism’s opposition to Darwinism. Unfortunately, the judge treated this point as a permanent strike against ID, as if to teach ID would be to unleash that entire history upon unsuspecting students. And who is being ‘supernatural’ here?!

Moreover, the US seems to have no trouble divorcing the origins from the import of scientific views when it comes to matters of race. The racist motives of biologists are not routinely investigated before deciding whether their work should be taught, despite their potential for subverting the grounds of universal civil rights. (But those so interested could ferret around recent discourse surrounding ‘genetic diversity’.) Darwin’s own magnum opus is fully titled: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, the connotations of which were happily embraced by Hunter’s Civic Biology, the high school text defended in the 1925 Scopes Trial. The ease with which the US legal system turns a blind eye to this matter reflects no more than that the nation was formally constituted with Black slaves but without an established church. The anchoring effect of a nation’s birth trauma should never be underestimated.

Let me stress that I am not calling for a witch-hunt for scientists’ racist motives, however more harmful they might be than their religious motives. Rather, I am calling for an amnesty on motives altogether. What was perhaps most disturbing about the judge’s decision was its reliance on the testimony of a professional conspiracy theorist, Barbara Forrest, who showed – quite correctly – the historical continuity between Christian fundamentalism and ID, including the Discovery Institute’s ‘Wedge Document’, a strategy for (re)turning the US to its Christian roots. When I was first shown this document during my deposition, my response was: ‘So what?’ That a particular scientific point-of-view is attached to – or even motivated by – a certain religious viewpoint backed by economic and cultural clout and dedicated to achieving specific political goals does not strike me as a problem in itself. The mere presence of a plan does not imply its success, as should now be clear from the many documents discovered in the 1950s alleging plots to turn the US into a puppet state of the Soviet Union. I mention this precedent because Forrest, a philosopher like myself, did her Ph.D. on Sidney Hook, a student of John Dewey who became just such an anti-Communist.

I have a lot of faith in the future of science and the United States. But both deserve better than what Judge Jones delivered in his verdict. The judge ignored a precedent set by McLean v. Arkansas (1982), the landmark case that banned creationism from high school science classes. The presiding judge, William Overton based his ruling on the expert testimony of the noted historian and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse. For the first time in a US court case, a definition of science was invoked that did not rely on whatever most scientists happen to think. To be sure, Ruse’s definition supported the scientific establishment but without making reference to it. At the time, Ruse was excoriated by his colleagues for lack of nuance, yet he succeeded in providing what philosophers value most: an independent standard for deciding validity. Francis Bacon’s invention of the ‘scientific method’ 400 years ago can be seen as a version of Ruse, but now acting as judge rather than witness. It was not a trivial achievement the first time round, nor was it when Ruse re-invented it. Unfortunately, this history was lost on Judge Jones, whose idea of neutrality required driving out religion from science simply because it challenged the received view of the scientific establishment.

Also, Steve will be speaking in January on ID at the following venues:
Thomas More Institute, London (Wednesday, 25 January). Contact person is Andrew Hegarty: andrew.hegarty@thomasmoreinstitute.org.uk
University of Bristol, Philosophy Department (Tuesday, 31 January). Contact person is Alexander Bird: alexander.bird@bristol.ac.uk

The Ribosome.

The Ribosome is perhaps the most complex machine at the centre of life. It is the place where proteins are assembled by putting together the 20 different amino acids in a specific order coded by information "photocopied" from the cell's "hard drives" - the DNA molecules.


Bruce Alberts is the President of the National Academy of Science in the US and organisation which thrown its weight behind the campaign to exclude consideration of Intelligent Design from Science.

In his huge textbook on Molecular and cellular biology he says this about the ribosome:

“The complexity of a process with so many interacting components has made many biologists despair of ever understanding the pathway by which protein synthesis evolved.”

He goes on to argue that RNA in the ribosome (the factory for assembling amino acids into long chains in the correct order using the code message copied from the DNA) provides a clue to its simple evolutionary precursors.

The important point is that Bruce Alberts here acknowledges a real and serious problem. He goes on to suggest some hope for Darwinists but it is a clutching at straws sort of hope.

Biologists have really serious problems with explaining complexity using chance and selection but they are determined to teach our children that no other more appropriate causes of complexity can be seriously considered.

The God of the Gaps Argument.

The argument goes like this:

Some Theists point to areas of biology that have not yet been explained in detail in terms of natural causes and say …the fact that we cannot explain this as a result of natural causes is evidence that God did it.

The GAP in our knowledge is evidence that we need another explanation.

ID is not simply a God of the gaps argument….and it is by no means clear to me that evidence that some gaps have been explained using natural causes is the same as proof that all gaps in our knowledge will be filled by natural causes.

If we dismiss the appearance of design in nature as merely an appearance and convince ourselves that it really can be explained as a natural chance phenomenon how do we know that we have not missed real intelligent design?

Evolution did not predict extraordinary complexity at the threshold of life and it struggles to adapt itself to explain it away.

Papering over the cracks and sweeping the problem out of the public gaze is not the best way to face up to the nature of nature.

The Darwinist Propaganda Carnival Continues…

The public relations exercise that is defending modern philosophical naturalism is seeking to use all the propaganda tricks in the book.

This years Science journal’s top ten discoveries seeks to underline an important propaganda point.

Evolution is an integral part of every single biology experiment.
Evolution underpins all our work to identify and treat genetic disease.
Evolution underpins all our work in countering infectious diseases.

Thus those who have grave misgivings about the creative power of chance genetic change being the cause of complex life forms and brilliant nanotechnology are portrayed as being anti-science and anti-medicine and seeking to turn the clock back to an age where mysterious spiritual forces were the causes of sneezing.

“They” want Astrology chapters inserted into physics textbooks.
“They” want Alchemy chapters in chemistry texts.
“They” want Unicorns, elves, hobgoblins and fairies in the biology textbooks.

These are tactics of slander, smearing and false accusation rather than a fair and balanced treatment of the arguments.

Thus scientists have crossed over the line between the pursuit of truth to the defence of a worldview. The odd thing is that they do not seem to realise what they are doing. Most of them simply have no concept that there is such a thing as a “worldview” they are so immersed in their own view of the world that they don’t really believe that there can be anything else other than naturalism without it deserving to be in a padded clinic.

Scientists (especially biologists trained to think in exclusively evolutionist fashion) are poorly placed to draw the distinctions between belief based upon evidence and belief based upon worldview.

Evolution provides poor resources for explaining the huge problems of the origins of life and the origins of huge amounts of complex machinery which makes our best efforts at technology look very clumsy indeed. To pretend that we have demonstrated that unintelligent causes provide a full explanation for all this is dishonest.

Ken Miller Vs Bill Dembski on the BBC

Bill Dembski provides what he was going to say after Ken Miller used up all the time available on the BBC interview a week ago here. Ken Miller's main point was that ID is bad because it is a "negative argument." I blogged about this complaint here.

Exposure

Even if ID does nothing else it has performed a useful function in exposing the necessity of the fact of evolution for authoritative secularism. ID exposes the relationship between Darwinism and materialism more clearly than ever before.
Darwinism claims to come as a neutral, apolitical, nonreligious, scientific fact but it is, in fact, the trump card of dogmatic atheism and the backbone of modern secularism.

Is not Darwinism an integral part of a political and ideological system? Are socialists generally Darwinists? Are atheists universally Darwinists?

ID has rattled some cages in a very disturbing manner. The extraordinary venom with which it is attacked should alert us to the significance of its arguments.

David Klinghoffer pulled together some striking quotes here which illustrate what I mean:

Daniel C. Dennett. In his highly regarded Darwin's Dangerous Idea, he tells why it might be necessary to confine conservative Christians in zoos. It's because Bible-believing Baptists, in particular, may tolerate "the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world." In other words, they may doubt Darwin. This cannot stand! "Safety demands that religion be put in cages," explains Dennett, "when absolutely necessary....The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strains of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for."

In an essay, "Is Science a Religion?", Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins is frank enough. Perhaps the leading figure on the Darwin side, he forthrightly states that "faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate." He equates God with an "imaginary friend" and baptism with child abuse.

There is Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas, who defended Darwinism before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003. In accepting an award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation,Weinberg didn't hide his own feelings about how science must deliver the fatal blow to religious faith: "I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science — to free people from superstition." When Weinberg's idea of science triumphs, then "this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, [and] we'll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."
There is University of Minnesota biologist P. Z. Myers, a prominent combatant in the Darwin wars being fought in an archipelago of websites. He links his own site (recently plugged in the prestigious journal Nature) to a "humorous" web film depicting Jesus' flagellation and crucifixion, a speeded-up version of Mel Gibson's Passion, to the accompaniment of the Benny Hill theme music "Yakety Sax," complete with cartoonish sound effects. "Never let it be said that I lack a sense of reverence or an appreciation of Christian mythology," commented this teacher at a state university. In another blog posting, Myers daydreamed about having a time machine that would allow him to go back and eliminate the Biblical patriarch Abraham. Some might argue for using the machine to assassinate other notorious figures of history, but not Myers: "I wouldn't do anything as trivial as using it to take out Hitler."
Then there is the Darwinist chairman of the religious studies department at the University of Kansas, Paul Mirecki. He emerged from obscurity recently when his startlingly crude anti-Christian writings came to light. Mirecki's bright idea had been to teach a course about "mythologies," including intelligent design. Things got interesting when it came out that he followed up his announcement by crowing in an e-mail to a list-serve: "The fundies [Christian fundamentalists] want [ID] taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category 'mythology.'"
Mirecki had previously posted a list-serve message responding to somebody's joke about Pope John Paul II being "a corpse in a funny hat wearing a dress." Mirecki wrote back, "I love it! I refer to him as J2P2 (John Paul II), like the Star Wars robot R2D2."
Administration officials at KU confirmed that the e-mails had come from Mirecki, who also wrote: "I had my first Catholic 'holy communion' when I was a kid in Chicago, and when I took the bread-wafer the first time, it stuck to the roof of my mouth, and as I was secretly trying to pry it off with my tongue as I was walking back to my pew with white clothes and with my hands folded, all I could think was that it was Jesus' skin, and I started to puke, but I sucked it in and drank my own puke. That's a big part of the Catholic experience."

The Zone Call

Captain W.E John’s fictional hero “Biggles” forces an unarmed Pfalz pilot to land and captures him. The man later gives information whilst drunk to Air Intelligence, that leads them to organise a raid on a new German Airfield. Biggles isn't so easily fooled and finds a torn part of a secret order in the German's plane. Biggles then searches in the opposite direction to the information given.
As he flies aimlessly around he notices that the anti-aircraft fire becomes much more intense the closer he flies to a particular piece of woodland.
He decides to fly low over the wood and finds the German Army massing soldiers in it. He then uses a helpful R.E. 8 pilot and observer to send out a "zone call". This is a concentrated fire by all British artillery in the area on one spot (and costs in the region of £10,000 a minute in shells!). The wood is pounded and the German troops are forced to withdraw so this foils the potential German attack.

ID seems to me rather like flying near the wood. There must be something very important about ID- because of the nature of the opposition to it.
It exposes the heart and soul of materialist assumptions and exposes the materialist faith as one religious position amongst many rather than the one truth amongst many fairy stories.
The Dover judgement (I will write a report on this when things have calmed down a little) is another piece of evidence calling for a Zone call concentrating on the materialist love affair with Darwin.

Negative Arguments and the haka

+ OR -

Now…am I getting the right idea?

1. A negative argument is one which seeks to establish an alternative explanation by presenting evidence that the current explanation has a poor fit with reality. A negative argument is therefore an attempt at falsification of an explanation.

A negative argument is therefore a fundamental part of scientific endeavour and there is no shame in presenting a negative argument(s) A negative argument is not by definition a bad shoddy little bit of science that you drop secretly somewhere and do not want your name associated with.

A negative argument is often a different way of presenting a positive argument.
Your explanation has a bad fit with reality…but hey! My explanation really works nicely here!


2. A positive argument will therefore be one which seeks to establish an alternative explanation by presenting evidence that the alternative explanation has a better fit with reality.

3. Where we can limit rigorously a discrete number of possible explanations and then knock down until only one is left this is perfectly reasonable proof that the remaining option is true (providing the discrete number of options are really all the options available)

I remember from O-level physics the excitement of the experiment showing that the current bun model of the atom was wrong. (Rutherford found it pretty exciting too: “It was quite the most incredible thing that ever happened to me in my life” he is reported to have danced a haka!) Was that in one sense a negative argument….throw away the currant buns… and in another positive… we need a new idea…aha how about a small tiny nucleus plus electrons scattered around.

Sudden integrated increases in biological Information.

We know that there must be sudden integrated increases in information from the nature of the systems that we have discovered operate within a cell.

All life as we know it operates in membrane bound units. This means that the first membrane bound cell had to occur at a specific moment when the membrane sealed on a blob of protoplasm. For this object to be really alive it needed

(a) All the information to code for the apparatus to replicate its own information
(b) All the information to gain sufficient energy to power replication of the information and the doubling of the structural molecules is needed.
(c) All the information to produce the machinery to double all the structural materials of that first living cell.

It is impossible to have this happening without a sudden increase in integrated information.


The origin of a new protein system from scratch.

If we imagine a tree of ancestry for all proteins then there is a limit to the degree with which new protein can be thought of as deriving from other proteins. A large number of proteins must be present to make the simplest living organism but there are large numbers of families of proteins which are additional to those which would have been derived from those necessary for the origin of life.

My understanding is that it is this clustering of interdependent information which is at the heart of Behe’s argument in Darwin’s Black Box and which is the insight which is at the heart of the biological ID debate.

Dembski's Book- The Design Inference.

Was it supposed to be serious mathematics/science or just a scheme to make money for the CUP?

Did the editors of the series simply include the Dembski volume as a cynical ploy to make money out of brain dead fundamentalists... or was there serious content that serious mathematicians, logicians and scientists thought was worth serious consideration by academics...

I genuinely want to know the answer to this question.

Maybe I should just sit down and send this question to them by email and ask.

Am I supposed to look at the list of advisory editors and say "bunch of total jokers"?

Here they are:

Brian Skyrms
Ernest W Adams
Ken Binmore
Jeremy Butterfield
Persi Diaconis
William Harper
John Harsanyi
Richard Jeffrey
Wolfgang Spohn
Patrick Suppes
Amos Tversky
Sandy Zabell

If you do a google search on each you do not immediately think.... erm... this is a wind up!

Classification of ID

It seems to me that there are two sorts of ID type arguments.

(a) Cosmological ID - "Someone monkeyed around with the physics" This someone it seems to me has to be God or at least a god of some kind. To be able to control the laws of physics must be a property of deity I think.

(b) Biological ID - Life is an exhibition of design (or apparent design)

For this area there are two divisions:

(i) The origin of life itself. Where did the first living organism(s) on the planet come from? How did they/it arise?

(ii) The origin of additional biological complexity to produce the stunning variety of living organisms we can see around us.

I am interested in Cosmological ID but I do not intend to focus on it in this blog. By training and natural inclination I am much more concerned about the biological ID arguments.

Dembski and Dilbert

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) feels a little of the same way that I do:

"Let me say very clearly here that I’m not denying the EXISTENCE of slam-dunk credible evidence for evolution. What I’m denying is the existence of credible PEOPLE to inform me of this evidence. "

I tried to read the Design Inference. I can cope with some of it but I have a sort of brain that does not cope very well with pages of equations. I have a brother in law who dreams in equations....but so far he has not had time to tell me what it all means. My choice at the moment is to trust Elsberry and Shallit or to trust Dembski. This is a thoroughly unsatisfactory state of affairs. The fact that The Design Inference was published by Cambridge University Press means that at least some people somewhere think it ought to be taken seriously.

Who are they? Where are they? Don't they realise that what they did was important?

The Panda's Thumb response of resorting to "believe Shallit and Elseberry or you are an idiot" and "Dembski is a wicked liar" is entirely unsatisfactory. What I need is a good collection of well qualified statisticians and probablity theory people - well respected in their fields to tell me that Cambridge University Press made a mistake here and some rubbish got through the filter.

I need someone who can communicate properly without resorting to pages of equations but someone who is respected by both sides to tell me what it all means.

Surely it should not be too difficult to get together a group of people and produce a report on the logic and probability arguments in this controversy.

If Dembski is totally and utterly wrong can I have some credible witnesses to tell me so please....

Evidence for ID

Some of the commenters have been challenging ID because it has not produced a "knock out experimental result" If ID had produced a knock out experimental result proving ID then it would be published through the peer review system and we could all stop arguing and re-arrange our thinking appropriately.

If there are no knock out experimental results then ID cannot be science.

This is an unwarranted narrowing of the meaning of the word "science" and would have excluded Darwin's book the origin of Species from science. He had no knock down experiments. What he was proposing was a whole new way of thinking about the evidence that was already there.

His theory made sense of a lot of evidence which did not fit with a simple static - it was designed exactly as we see it - model for origins in biology.

Proposing new ways of thinking about the evidence in front of us is real science. The new way of thinking about the evidence may be right or wrong or in-between but we decide by carefully comparing one explanation with another.

Chance, necessity and a combination of both provide poor resources for the generation of complex integrated information. Intelligent design provides a much more resonable explanation for this kind of phenomenon.

Our ordinary and natural response to complex integrated information is to infer design. This is acknowledged even by Richard Dawkins and others who are convinced that it is a mistaken view. However since our natural and normal response is to infer design the default position has to be that the design is real until it can be shown that this inference is mistaken.

The evidence of molecular biology has provided a real challenge to the molecules to man by chance idea. There are conjunctions of objects in molecular biology which are difficult to account for in terms of chance and necessity or a combination of both. Until a clear explanation of how this can happen it is therefore reasonable and right to believe and teach that the design is real.

ID...Nuggers and nutters following wicked liars.

In C. S. Lewis' children’s novel the Silver chair the great climax of the story comes in the underworld where Eustace and Jill have ended up in their quest to rescue Prince Rilian with the inimitable Marshwiggle “Puddleglum” (what a character!) They are struggling with the soothing deceptions of the witch who is crooning…. There is no Narnia… There is no Narnia….There is no sun... There are no fields…

Puddleglum’s answer is a masterpiece:

"One word, Ma'am" he said coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.

In some ways the conviction that intelligent design is right is like this… at the moment (for me anyway)…it is too beautiful and alive to be wrong. Truth is alive and envigorating. Falsehood is deathly and suffocating.

For anti-IDers we are somewhere on a scale of “just plain delusional nuggers to certified nutters” as Jeffahn put it elegantly… with a few (Like Behe and Dembski) who are just plain old fashioned wicked liars. We’re just babies making up a game. Delusional nuggers and certified nutters following wicked liars!

In the story the “underworlders” were intent on going deeper and deeper underground they were not interested in even going to have a look at the little hole being enlarged to look into a very real Narnia.

Puddleglum knew his world was the real one and the story ends with an escape from the gloomy underworld into the shockingly dazzling brightness of a real Narnia!

Which world will turn out to be the real one?
I am going with Puddleglum….

Tony Blair an ID supporter?

On the occasion that the above right honourable gentleman may next be found here would he mind leaving a comment about the above subject... I just happened to read in the New York Times (you have to log in) that he was an ID fan:

"President George W. Bush, a vocal Christian, has stated he believes that intelligent design should be taught in classrooms alongside evolution, as has British Prime Minister Tony Blair."
The report was from Reuters but I certainly was not aware of whether you were keen or not... I might even consider giving you space to do a guest post!

Vote for High Priest of the Temple of the Enlightenment.

In his last address as President of the Royal Society Lord May mentioned the values of the Enlightenment:

What are these values? They are tolerance of diversity, respect for individual liberty of conscience.....

He then proceded to attack ID, Christianity and especially the last book of the bible as the cause of Islamic terrorism! There are clear limits to his tolerance then. Clearly a prime candidate for the High Priest at the Temple of Enlightenment Tolerance. Perhaps this is why he has retired from the Royal Society.

Dr William Dembski has a new candidate for the leader in the new Darwinist culture of contempt.

Other notable examples of candidates for the position of High Priest:

Dr. Richard Dawkins Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Scientific Enlightenment and Tolerance:

"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that) "

[He later explains that what he particularly dislikes about creationists is their intolerance.]

Paul Z. Myers:
"Please don’t try to tell me that you object to the tone of our complaints. Our only problem is that we aren’t martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough. The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many schoolboard members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians."

And:

"Don't tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution, or that Americans are just responding to common notions of "fairness". That just tells me that we scientists have not been expressing our outrage enough. And yes, we should be outraged that the president of our country panders to theocrats, faith-healers, and snake-oil artists; sitting back and quietly explaining that Bush may be a decent man who is mistaken, while the preachers are stridently condemning all us evilutionists to hell, is a (deleted word) ineffective tactic that has gotten us to this point.
I say, (deleted word) the polite words and careful rhetoric. It's time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don't care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way. "

Paul Mirecki, designer of the world's shortest course on Intelligent design and other mythologies at Kansas University (It is one of those course that finishes before it begins!) :

“The fundies want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category ‘mythology,’"

ID is popular amongst traditional Christians

Contrary to the view which Darwinists are seeking to portray (the theory of intelligent design reflects the views only of extreme fundamentalists in the US) an increasing number of traditional and well established Christian denominations are expressing their support for Intelligent Design.

In the UK many conservative Christian denominations look to the reformed publishing charity "The Banner of Truth" to express an orthodox stance doctrinally. They have recently put an article on their website from the very traditional Free Presbyterian Church magazine expressing a very positive attitude to intelligent design theory.

Positive articles have also been written in the Evangelical Times and the Grace Magazine.

Recently the usually extremely cautious Roman Catholic approach to evolution has hardened to clear opposition for chance only teaching and a positive approach to Intelligent Design.

To have the Pope and the Free Presbyterian Church agree about something controversial must be a first!

Clearly it is not just theological illiterates who find the chance and necessity view of life and death unsatisfactory. It seems that your attitude to ID is influenced strongly by your prior commitments to particular worldviews. Materialists find it alarming and threatening. Theists of a more traditional and conservative type find it exciting and thrilling.

An Outrageous Address!

I have now had time to read Lord May's retiring annual address as president of the Royal Society. I had read the brief comments from the BBC website on the address and my interest was aroused. The entire text of the address is now available and all Christians need to express their outrage about this address.

Lord May indulges in the usual ritual evangelical fundamentalist creationist intelligent designist bashing and about these sort of people having no real understanding of their own religion and being anti-science and seeking to bring the world into a new dark ages but he also goes several steps further.

The crucial quote comes as Lord May attacks biblical literalists and fundamentalist christians as equivalent to extreme terrorist groups in Islam. In this crucial quote he points the finger of blame for all Islamic terrorism at.....the last book in the Holy Bible - the book of Revelation.

The quote is apparently from a book by Scot Atran quoted by M. Brooks in the New Scientist.
(Meeting of minds. New Scientist, 8 Oct 2005, pp. 44-46.)

Here it is:

“People attribute Islamic fundamentalism to Islam, but I think it has as much – or more – to do with Christian fundamentalism. You’ll find no apocalyptic visions in Islam; it comes from the Book of Revelation.”

Did you hear that everyone! Britain's top scientist in Britain's top science institution at its most prestigious lecture in the year states that the Book of Revelation through St. John, the glorious exalted visions that close the Christian scriptures....is the cause of Islamic terrorism via evangelical Christians!

In other words (in Lord Mays opinion presumably) if we want to deal with terrorisom at its roots we need to reduce the numbers of evangelical Christians and cut the last book out of every bible.... perhaps, Lord May, we should go the whole way and burn the whole book!

Is the bible a book that brings a society out of the dark ages or a book that takes a society into darkness?

ID a threat to Science and Society?

Lord May has weighed into the debate about intelligent design in his final annual address as President of the Royal Society. He sees all forms of fundamentalism as variants of "dark unreason." He argues that faced with complex issues we are being tempted to retreat from living by reason and fact into a life of the deceptive security of revelation and faith.

He warns:
"In the US, the aim of a growing network of fundamentalist foundations and lobby groups reaches well beyond 'equal time' for creationism, or its disguised variant 'intelligent design', in the science classroom. Rather, the ultimate aim is the overthrow of 'scientific materialism', in all its manifestations."

The dangers he argues are not only over the theory but are impacting public policy.

Arguments from the creationist fundamentalists about the provision of condoms for preventing the spread of AIDS is resulting in polices that are less effective in containing the spread of this disease.

What this amounts to is public demonization of ID combined with an appeal to return to the orthodox morality of fundamentalist atheism!

What Lord May seems unable to distinguish is the distinction between science and scientific materialism. What he seems unable to appreciate is that he himself is a fundamentalist building on a different set of assumptions about reality from those who argue that personality and intelligence are more fundamental entities than matter and energy and time.

It looks to me like more of the same instinctive herd rejection of something which is unorthodox rather than a careful analysis of the arguments and evidence. Portraying ID as an attack on science rather than an attack on materialism by confusing science and materialism is a policy which is bound to fail in the long run.

I say bring back men like Robert Boyle who thought about science in an entirely different way from Lord May.

What is going on here is the begining of a process which exposes the religious nature of scientific materialism. Lord May is announcing his willingness to stand as leading priest of the ranks of orthodox materialists who which to exclude the reality of intelligent causation from science as a basic rule of science while at the same time pretending to embrace principles of "free, open, unprejudiced, uninhibited questioning and enquiry."

Secular humanism allied with scientific materialism needs to be recognised as a thoroughly religious position rather than being treated as the neutral factual basis from which all other worldviews can be compared. The distinction between science and materialism needs to be reasserted in no uncertain terms.

Secular humanism based on scientific materialism has its own moral agenda which is opposed to a Judeo/christian worldview but which seeks to present itself as having exclusive claims to reason and sound logic. These claims have gone unchallenged for too long. It is time for the Royal Society to go back to its roots!

Strict Darwinism.

Dr Andy Groves asked:
"What is "strict Darwinism"? Was Stephen Jay Gould a "strict Darwinist"? How about Lynn Margulis? Or George Gaylord Simpson? Or Theodosius Dobzhansky?"

I would say that “strict Darwinists” regard the issue of explaining biological complexity as essentially solved.

They say….
Darwin found the answer and we are just tinkering with a few loose ends.
All we need is chance and time.

As Sir Peter Medawar put it at the Wistar Institute meeting :

Clearly the eye has evolved therefore there must be errors in the equations the mathematicians were using.

And Ernst Mayr at the same meeting:
Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred

Any thinking outside a rigid time plus chance box is regarded as “unscientific.”

Using this definition the above scientists ...I would guess (I have not read anything of Simpson or Dobzhansky other than brief quotes) were/are pushing at the edges of the “strict Darwinists” box but are/were not willing to look over the edge.

Creationists cannot teach Biology

P Z Myers is a lecturer in biology at University of Minnesota, Morris he runs a popular website: http://pharyngula.org/ and has been fighting his way to the head of the militant fundamentalist wing of the Extreme Orthodox Darwinist denomination. He has recently committed himself passionately to the battle for Darwinist orthodoxy in every public school.

Some quotes:

Our only problem is that we aren’t martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough. The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many schoolboard members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians.

Don't tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution, or that Americans are just responding to common notions of "fairness". That just tells me that we scientists have not been expressing our outrage enough. And yes, we should be outraged that the president of our country panders to theocrats, faith-healers, and snake-oil artists; sitting back and quietly explaining that Bush may be a decent man who is mistaken, while the preachers are stridently condemning all us evilutionists to hell, is a (deleted word) ineffective tactic that has gotten us to this point.
I say, (deleted word) the polite words and careful rhetoric. It's time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don't care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.

For your information, I mentioned that there is a creationist teacher in my local high school. I have not “gone after” that person, because they do not inject that fallacious belief into instruction. If they were teaching that nonsense, then I would be furious, and yes, they would be pushing their incompetence off onto impressionable kids.

He seems to be advocating an orthodoxy test for all public school biology teachers. P Z Myers the developmental biologist is evolving into P C Myers the high school orthodoxy inquisitor. His key definition of scientific competence is a clear rejection of any kind of creationism... I believe in evolution....only evolution...exclusively...fully... with all my heart.... yes evolution is the only creative force in the biological realm... I promise and commit myself never to even as much as think that there may be intelligence involved in the origin of biological complexity.

In other words all biology teachers must behave as if they are atheists in the biology classroom. They must speak like atheists, behave like atheists and think like atheists. Human beings as intelligent designers are fine I assume. The possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life is fine I suppose but the supreme test of biological pedagogical competence is an absolute rejection of any teleological(here for a purpose) thinking in biology.

I was a biology teacher. I was recognised by many colleagues at all levels as competent. I would however have refused to swear PC Myers oath of allegiance to evolution.

If I was asked whether I thought that the cell was explained by random collision of molecules and atoms in some kind of primitive soup I would have said that I personally think that no primitive soup would ever produce a cell on its own.

If I was asked whether I thought that chance bundling together and modification of other proteins could produce an elegant motor... I would have said and do still say ....nonsence!

If I was asked whether I thought the complexity of developmental pathways to produce complex mulicellular organ systems functioning together in an integrated body plan displaying real beauty developed as a result of random mutation and unguided DNA change I would have said ....No! I think such a theory is mistaken.

I assume that if PC Myers had been my teacher training supervisor he would have recommended that I be rejected for scientific incompetence!

I hope that most parents will be able discern which side of the argument sports the more incompetent observers!

I am happy to back a voucher system of education.... let the darwinists build their own curriculum from scratch. If needs be let them have their own land and their own legal system and form of government. Lets see which sort of education really works. Don't expect me to turn up in a hurry with my voucher to the PC Myers seminary of orthodox Darwinism however!

Chuckling behind their hands....

I found this very revealing quotation in David Samuel’s book “Without Excuse.” It was from a Letter of J.D. Hooker to Charles Darwin following Hooker’s address at a meeting of the British Association in 1866. In that address he had declared that he saw evidence for design in variation itself:

“By a wise ordinance it is ruled, that amongst living beings like shall never produce its exact like…. A wise ordinance it is, that ensures the succession of being, not by multiplying absolutely identical forms, but by varying these.”

He soon afterwards wrote to Darwin to assure him he was only talking like this to make the religious freaks feel comfortable with evolution!

He writes to Darwin:

The only thing I do not like…. Was the passage about a wise Providence ordering &c, &c or something of that sort (I forget the words, it matters little). It is bosh and unscientific, but I could not resist the opportunity of turning the tables of Providence over those who will have a Providence in the affair, that yours is the God one and theirs the Devil’s.
(Life and Letters of J.D. Hooker Vol 2 p106)

The clergy who suck up to Darwinists and say that there is no conflict at all between theism and atheism are rather like those who clapped Hooker’s address while he was chuckling behind his hand to his friend Charles.

Was the human blindspot intelligently designed?

I have been searching for good web pages about Intelligent design in the UK which is after all what this Blog is supposed to be about…. But there are painfully few. I am not really much concerned about whether they are PRO ID or ANTI ID so long as they have some reasoned and even original thinking I would be happy! What I find is that those that are ANTI ID are just monotonous rehashes of arguments that are not even straw men!

There is a sort of group mentality whereby so long as you hear a few “important” voices saying the right sort of sentences you “know” they are right and join in with them. We only hear what we want to hear.

The trouble is that it is often the things that we do not want to hear that are the things we most urgently need to listen to carefully. There is such a thing as an intellectual blind spot and if we are not careful it can become a larger and larger blind patch.

Sometimes it is the thoughts which cause us the most psychological pain and distress that are the ones which we are most in need of.

What are the symptoms of a developing intellectual blind patch?

We do not thoroughly question our instinctive responses to contrary evidences.
We are not prepared to read or listen carefully to those who we disagree with.
We trust in the crowd or especially the noisy members of the crowd and make the right sort of noises ourselves. Sheep mentality…. How much like sheep we actually are!
We are not willing to look long and hard at the consequences of being very wrong indeed.
We resort to force, authority or pressure of numbers rather than looking carefully at evidence.

Who was it that said….”There is no one as blind as the man who will not see.”

Intellectual opponents are very useful to help us see what is in our blindspots but those who know they have not got an intellectual blindspot will never see what is in it.

Are theists more in danger of having a blindspot over evolution than atheists and the practical-atheist agnostics are over design?

Are those whose careers depend on them looking at the world using methodological naturalism more likely to develop a blindspot over design?

Is it possible or even likely that they may find it difficult to see clearly any real evidence for real design.

Often what we want to see and hear has a huge impact on what we actually see and hear. The scientific method helps us to see things we did not want to see but it does not entirely prevent us from ignoring and dismissing things we do not want to see especially if the prevailing thinking of our whole society is consistent with ignoring or dismissing these things.

Was the human blindspot intelligently designed as a kind of physical reminder to watch out for intellectual blindspots developing?

HOW INTELLIGENT DESIGN CAME TO ME

Steve Fuller is a professor in the Sociology Department at Warwick University. He testified as an expert witness in favour of ID in the Dover, Pennsylvania trial.
His background is the study of the history of science and the philosophy of science and has written the following books on these subjects:

Social Epistemology Indiana University Press.
Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents Guilford Press, New York.
Science Open University Press
The Governance of Science: Ideology and the Future of the Open Society Open University Press.
Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times Knowledge Management Foundations,

After contacting him with regard to his debate with Jack Cohen he kindly agreed to write a piece for this Blog on his thoughts about ID and its future.

I have never been a ‘religious’ person in the conventional sense, though I was a scholarship student in a Jesuit school before going to university. However, in the 1970s, the Jesuits were more likely to talk about burning draft cards (in protest of the Vietnam War) and Marxo-Freudian accounts of alienation than the intelligent design (ID) of the universe. Recovering the human was a more pressing concern than discovering the divine. Nevertheless, the experience left me with an overall positive impression of Christianity, especially as the source for modern secular conceptions of social progress.

Both my M.Phil. (Cambridge) and Ph.D. (Pittsburgh) were in History and Philosophy of Science. My respective supervisors, Mary Hesse and J.E. McGuire, were renowned for their work interrelating science and religion. While my own research really had nothing to do with theirs, the idea that religion provided intellectual sustenance for science was assumed because it was so obviously borne out by history. Indeed, I have come to believe that the specific form of monotheism developed through Judaism, Christianity and Islam – whereby humans are said to have been created ‘in the image and likeness of God’ – best explains the West’s unique scientific achievement. Certainly Isaac Newton was convinced that he had got inside the mind of God. However, when Charles Darwin tried and failed, he concluded there was no divine intelligence to access. Yet, we live with the semantic residues of Darwin’s quest, since biologists still speak of ‘design’ (‘without a designer’, whatever that means) and, of course, ‘natural selection’, which is a metaphor from animal husbandry – but for what literally? But that is only the academic side of the story. There is also the political side.

The US has always had a ‘difficult’ relationship with religion because of the traumatic origins of the nation. The original British settlers, especially in what became the liberal northern establishment, were wealthy dissenters (including Catholics and Jews) who were prohibited from political participation in their homeland. Henceforth, all attempts to impose a religious orthodoxy would be prohibited – in the name of protecting religious freedom, of course. Thus, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the trial in which I testified, is classed as a civil rights case. It is not the first time a moral panic has broken out over the prospect that some religiously inspired views might make their way into state-supported schools. The legal response has been characteristically thuggish. Thus, the American Civil Liberties Union bulldozed its way into Dover, Pennsylvania, just as it did eighty years ago in Dayton, Tennessee to turn the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial into an international sensation.

The intellectual content of the ACLU’s case against ID is largely based on fears about a right-wing religious takeover of the US school system. I don’t doubt that many of ID’s supporters harbour such desires, but the decentralised nature of the school system – which accounts for the seemingly endless court cases involving the teaching of evolution -- makes any such takeover unlikely. Indeed, this is part of the ‘federalist’ genius of the US Constitution. Nevertheless, the ACLU’s eagerness to pursue cases like Kitzmiller, especially given all the other civil rights violations in the US, reflects a profound lack of faith in the wisdom of elected local school boards to resolve these matters. Since schools are funded entirely through local taxes, if taxpayers dislike what is taught, they can always vote against the school board’s members in the next election. (And they do!) In this respect, the US provides a wonderful experimental environment for educational alternatives. Yet, this has not prevented an ingrained paranoid reaction to the slightest whiff of religion in the schools that serves, unwittingly, to stultify the spirit of free inquiry.

I was asked by the defence counsel to serve as a ‘rebuttal witness’ to the experts amassed by the ACLU. I agreed after having read the expert witness statements, which contain some of the most egregiously ignorant abuses of scientific and philosophical authority imaginable. I tried to address the most important of these in my own expert statement, but they continued to proliferate – more egregiously and ignorantly – in the ACLU expert witness transcripts. I don’t know if ID’s hardcore supporters are simply scared or polite, but it would not take much to deflate the significance of the ACLU experts’ claims. I tried to do this in my own court testimony, but in the end I was mainly trying to shore up ID’s scientific credentials, not deconstruct those of the ACLU’s experts. Nevertheless, I have plenty of notes about this and hope to be invited to publish them to a wide audience.

Finally, what do I think of ID’s own prospects? ID is currently stuck in the Neo-Darwinists’ image of them. Its proponents lean too heavily on the evidence against evolution. They too quickly reach for God and don’t make enough of the idea that ‘design’ is a concept indifferent to the life/non-life distinction. People (mostly younger ones) who generate virtual realities on computers and biotechnology in laboratories are quite happy to blur the life/non-life distinction, imagining themselves in a God-like capacity. They are a natural constituency for ID, and should be cultivated. That the inventor of the computer, Charles Babbage, and the founder of genetics, Gregor Mendel, were devout Christians who thought they had decoded the divine programme should be used to greater effect in promoting a positive image of ID. The problem with falling back on old William Paley is that his design argument presumed that people (e.g. David Hume) had already expressed doubts about its validity. Why waste time defending the possibility of an Intelligent Designer when you could show how presupposing its existence enables you to break new scientific ground?

Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller vs Jack Cohen - Warwick University.

Thanks go to Tom Abbott for this information.

A public discussion between the above academics occured at Warwick University.

The audio of the discussion is available here.
The webpage for comments is here.
I was left with 2 burning questions for Prof Jack Cohen (and lots of others at a slightly lower temperature.)

1. You said that Dembski's maths was "nonsense"... can you explain what you meant?

2. You said that after a few days work in the library you found lots(I think you said lots or may be several) of structures intermediate on the way to a bacterial flagellum. I am aware of the Type 2 Secretory system but I am not aware of any good homologies with the motor components… would you mind sharing your research?

Tom is going to try and get Prof Cohen to respond.... stay tuned!

A case of intelligent design?

This is a copy of a Bricklayers report, which was printed in the Newsletter of the New Zealand equivalent of the Workers Compensation Board.
It is allegedly a true story.


Dear Sir,
I am writing in response to your request for ‘additional information’ as per block 3 of the accident report form.
I put ‘Poor Planning’ as the cause of my accident and you have asked for a fuller account, I trust the following will explain.

I am a bricklayer by trade and on the day of the accident I was working alone on the roof of a new six-storey building.
When I had completed my work I found that I had some bricks left over, which, when weighed later, were found to be slightly in excess of 500lbs.
Rather than carry the bricks down by hand a few at a time I decided to lower them in the barrel by using a pulley, which was attached to the side of the building. Securing the rope at ground level I went up to the roof swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the bricks. You will note in block 11 of the accident report form that I weigh 135lbs.

Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded up the side of the building at a rapid rate. In the vicinity of the third floor I met the barrel, which was now proceeding downwards at an equally impressive speed.

This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and broken collarbone as listed in section 3 of the accident report form. Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley.

Fortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.
At approximately the same time, however, the barrel hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approx. 50lbs, I refer you once again to my weight.
As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building.
In the vicinity of the 3rd floor I once again met the barrel, this time coming up, hence the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.
Here, my luck began to change slightly.
The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.
I’m sorry to report however, as I lay on the pile of bricks, in pain and unable to move I lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope. As I lay there I could watch the empty barrel begin its downward journey onto me. This explains the two broken legs.
I trust this answers your query.

The Watch Analogy.

William Paley is justly famous for his watch analogy which is referred to at the top of this Blog. David Samuel (Without Excuse) points out that Paley got it from Bernard Nieuwentyt a Dutch physician and mathematician who lived from 1654 to 1718 "Let us suppose, that in the middle of a sandy down, or desart and solitary place, where few people are used to pass, any one should find a watch..."

These ideas were being discussed by English theologians prior to this however.

I happened to come across a passage in John Preston from 1631 which discussed the design argument in a very similar way to Paley's detailed examination.

Preston mentions "the impressions of skill and workmanship that is upon the creatures. All which argue that there is a God.... just as he that makes a watch or any ordinary work of art, he knows all the junctures, all the wheels, and commissures of it.... (John Preston- Life Eternal 1631)

US evolution wars

The BBC online had a report on the new Kansas Science Curriculum standards today. These standards provide a more well thought through response to evolution than the Dover schools requirement for teachers to read a statement about evolution which resulted in the Kitzmuller Vs Dover trial. The Kansas standards will provide a much more difficult target for the pure Darwinism supporters and a much better basis for a supreme court battle. What is not mentioned is that very similar standards have already been passed in Ohio and Minnosota.

ID News

Peter Williams has three new posts up at IDplus. Where I noticed that the Times had a report this weekend relating to ID and the Vatican. He mentions Steve Fuller from Warwick University who testified in the Dover school Trial and the recent ID conference in Prague.

It seems a shame that this first major court case for ID in the US caused a considerable amount of confusion amongst the ID people. The method by which ID was to be introduced into the Dover schools curriculum was clumsy to say the least. This meant that the Discovery Institute was not fully behind the lawsuit. Then to make matters worse the Law firm representing the Dover school bungled badly in seeking to have the key players in ID testify without their own legal experts being involved (see here) Despite this Behe and Minnich did very well on the witness stand and seem to have enjoyed the opportunity to speak out for ID.

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

I ordered a copy of this DVD from the Access Research Network I watched it last night and thought it was excellent. It is produced as a high quality documentary and introduces many of the major players in the Intelligent design movement.... Behe, Minnich, Kenyon, Johnson, Dembski and Nelson. It also adds a little of the human side to the movement. I did not realise that the meeting at Pajaro Dunes, California was so significant.

I can thoroughly recommend this DVD and hope that it is widely seen in the UK. Buy it for yourself and get your friends a copy for Christmas!

Robert Boyle and the borders of Science.

"The rejection of Final Causes from the consideration of Naturalists, tends much to weaken.... if not to deprive us of, one of the best and most successfularguments, to convince men that there is a God."

Robert Boyle 1627-91

Boyle was one of the most significant of British Scientists and a founder member of the Royal Society.

Cicero - Intelligent Design supporter?

Cicero was born in 106BC and died in 43BC

"When we see some example of a mechanism, such as a globe, or a clock or some such device, do we doubt that it is the work of a conscious intelligence? So, when we see the movement of the heavenly bodies, the speed of their revolution, and the way in which they regularly run their annual course, so that all that depends upon them is preserved and prospers, how can we doubt that these too are not only the works of reason but of a reason which is perfect and divine."

Richard Dawkins.... a man of faith?

You might want to watch the last of a three part series by Jonathan Miller which is being repeated on BBC 2 at the moment. It was shown on BBC 4 this time last year, and in the final part, Richard Dawkins is interviewed. In the interview, Jonathan Miller presses him about missing transitional forms. Dawkins eventually admits that “It is a matter of faith on my part”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/atheism.shtml

The Final Hour

BBC Two Monday 14 November 7pm-8pm TBC

The history of disbelief continues with the ideas of self-taught philosopher Thomas Paine, the revolutionary studies of geology and the evolutionary theories of Darwin. Jonathan Miller looks at the Freudian view that religion is a 'thought disorder'. He also examines his motivation behind making the series touching on the issues of death and the religious fanaticism of the 21st century.

A new generation of Microsoft Software- the new model for software development.

Microsoft have announced a new model of software design. Applying the results of evolutionary history we see that unintelligent random change combined with natural selection has produced feats of engineering and informational brilliance far in advance of our own feeble efforts.

Software Engineers at Microsoft have now started including their patented “evo-soft” package in all of their operating system software.

Andrew Randon (a software evangelist) said “We copied Nature… we introduced a software mutation package. It randomly changed the code in a way exactly analogous to the way DNA mutates in nature. The package includes point mutations (where one zero is substituted for one 1 in the code), chromosome recombination events, (where one section of code is swapped to a new location in the code) and even transposon events are mimicked.”

Bill Gates said “We have been testing this new evo-software in the public domain for several years now and the results are encouraging. No one has noticed any negative impact and we are certain that new functions will appear much more quickly with this system than simply relying on our own software engineers.”

George Steady from Sun Microsystems said “We are very jealous of this product and the thinking behind it. I wish we had thought of it first.”


Google refused to comment but there are rumours that they have a similar project of their own which they will soon be releasing as a search facility which will only work with Windows systems.

BMW shares plummet as a mutant model escapes.

After an industrial dispute with the quality control team
an extraordinary version of the new BMW saloon has caused a bigger press scramble than BMW marketing departments ever intended. No one is quite sure exactly what happened on the production line in the Berlin assembly plant but a new push button control appeared on the left of the CD/DVD system with the word “Geschlecht” on it.

This was embarrassing enough in itself as over 1000 cars had been produced and sold before the button and its extraordinary function was spotted by a team of service engineers in Hamburg. Hans Smut from Autoservice said “It was the most extraordinary experience in my life. There was no BMW documentation for this and nothing in my 40 years in th industry prepared me for what happened”


What happened is the most closely guarded secret in the history of the car industry. As Gerhard Dien put it:

“It blew my mind… A week after I pressed the button I found the little baby in the boot. It was about 15cm long and enclosed in a squashy plastic layer. "

One month later it was too big to fit in the boot and after 3 months it was a fully functional copy of the original…bright and shiny as new!

"No one told me about this function when I bought the car but I am not complaining!”

Comments

I have to admit....I had not looked at the comments bit of the blog. I did not realise that I had turned comments off! I have now turned them on.... so feel free to comment away... and I will delete all the comments I don't like!

Switches....

Something happens when you turn it on….something different happens when you turn it off.

Switches on their own are of no use.

Switches where the same thing happens when you switch them are no use.

The switch needs to do something useful in two different sets of circumstances for it to be useful.

The simplest living organism is full of switches and control systems.

The biochemical pathways shown here (you can click on the first image to see parts of the diagram more clearly) have elaborate control systems that operate at different levels.

The biochemical switch that controls the two possible lifestyles of the virus called Bacteriophage Lambda has been studied in great detail it was this little switch that convinced me (way back in 1986- see here) that there was a real case for an intelligent designer.

One of the snazzy molecules involved in a DNA/protein switch:

You need the whole lot!

Bill Dembski happened to blog on this subject today with some more interesting background to this subject and how it should make Emperor Darwin blush here.


The most striking example of irreducible complexity is life itself. A multitude of overlapping webs of intricate complexity yet showing an abundance of interdependent systems all of which are essential before even the simplest cell can be said to be truly alive. What a wonderful thing life is!

I used to possess a wall chart of the basic biochemical pathways in cells. In the good old days it used to be sent free by a pharmaceutical company... Boehringer Mannheim.
Now it has been put up on the web. It is not as good as having a copy of it on the wall however!
Here is a tiny piece of the poster:



The web version is
here.

You can click on any of the squares on the web version to see a larger version of that part of the whole picture.

The whole diagram represents the biochemical reactions that happen inside each living cell (some reactions only happen in plants [coloured green], some only in bacteria etc- but the majority is common to all living cells)
Each of the arrows represents a specific enzyme catalysed reaction. Each of the enzymes is a complex molecule made up of hundreds of amino acids put together according to a specific blueprint coded by DNA.

A model of a single enzyme:

In many of these pathways each of the enzymes is essential for the cell to remain alive.

The whole pathway cannot be replaced by a single big super-enzyme, the pathway is needed or you are dead and each of the enzymes in the pathway are complex structures all of which are needed in many cases to provide a useful function.

What further complicates the situation is that the whole complex web is full of elaborate control systems as well... but that is another story!

It literally shouts brilliant design all over. You have to be very deaf indeed not to hear it. A child can hear it.

ID - Unbiblical?

Dennis Alexander runs a molecular immunology group at Cambridge University and has also written two books on science from a Christian perspective. Recently a version of one of his lectures has been published on the web here. He has recently expanded his attack on Intelligent Design from a Christian perspective. His article is available here entitled "Is Intelligent Design Biblical?" and a shortened version of it is due to be published in the British Christian monthly "Evangelicals Now."


One of the obvious pieces of background material to the Apostle Paul's claim in Romans 1:20

(For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse)

is the oral examination that God gives to Job after his lengthy discussion of God's ways with his friends.

Job is to realise God’s power and wisdom when he surveys biology. E.g Job 39:26

Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?

Here we are pointed to God’s aeronautical brilliance. It is surely in the sense of design that God is using this word here. Just as he gave wisdom to Bezaleel to follow His design for the ark of the covenant God uses his own wisdom and engineering brilliance to make a wonder for us to see something of the splendour of his superior intelligence.

To suggest that God is somehow belittled by analogies with human engineering is entirely wrong. It was the Spirit of God who came upon Bezaleel to enable him to accomplish his works of wood and metal working brilliance. It is the outworking of the image of God in man that allows us to be designers and engineers and to discover God’s thoughts after Him.

ID - Back to Babel?

Dennis Alexander runs a molecular immunology group at Cambridge University and has also written two books on science from a Christian perspective. Recently a version of one of his lectures has been published on the web here. He has recently expanded his attack on Intelligent Design from a Christian perspective. His article is available here entitled "Is Intelligent Design Biblical?" and a shortened version of it is due to be published in the British Christian monthly "Evangelicals Now."

Dr. Alexander makes the accusation that ID people are guilty of "terminological inexactitude." Changing the meanings of words to suit your argument is one of the commonest and most effective ways of deception. Here is Dr. Alexander's accusation:

It should also be noted that in making its case the ID literature uses
the terms ‘naturalism’ and ‘naturalistic’ in a way that is quite different from
their commonly accepted meanings. The Oxford dictionary definition of
‘naturalism’ in its philosophical sense is “a view of the world that excludes
the supernatural or spiritual” and this is indeed how this term is generally
understood. Instead ID proponents commonly use ‘naturalistic’ as a
synonym for ‘scientific’

Sadly Dr. Alexander does not give a single specific example of this terminology confusion. This makes contradicting him difficult and this is a pity as it is a crucially important point. On the basis of the UK system of justice ID people are innocent until proven guilty and Dr. Alexander has notably failed to prove this particular charge.

More evidence please!

ID - another "god of the gaps" argument?

Dennis Alexander runs a molecular immunology group at Cambridge University and has also written two books on science from a Christian perspective. Recently a version of one of his lectures has been published on the web here. He has recently expanded his attack on Intelligent Design from a Christian perspective. His article is available here entitled "Is Intelligent Design Biblical?" and a shortened version of it is due to be published in the British Christian monthly "Evangelicals Now."

This is the second post in the series discussing Dr Alexander's short statement opposing ID from a Christian perspective. (The first post is here.)

Are ID people following a will-o-the-wisp “God of the gaps” argument?

Dr. Alexander asserts that ID people are enthusiastically embracing an apologetic mirage which will gradually fade away as scientific knowledge increases. He believes that given time natural forces under the normal government of God will be all that is required to explain all of biology. As the gaps in our knowledge decrease the God we needed to explain the gaps gradually contracts to the point where we see that this sort of God was not needed at all.

The God of the gaps argument against ID assumes for its validity that there are no gaps which require God’s direct intervention. This is precisely the point at issue! Just because some gaps have been crossed does not imply that all gaps can be crossed. To dismiss ID as another “God of the gaps” argument is just the same as asserting it is wrong without bothering to consider it.

For Dr. Alexander to imply that in the nine years since the publication of Darwins Black Box the problem of the evolution of the blood clotting system has been essentially solved is simply an abuse of his position as a respected scientist.

Dr. Alexander knows that despite huge efforts the whole field of abiogenesis is still just as empty of real explanations for the origin of life now as it was 30 years ago. Indeed the more work that is done the bigger the gap between living and not living becomes. It is sad to see a truth seeking scientist failing to acknowledge this.

ID - guilty of semi-deism?

Dennis Alexander runs a molecular immunology group at Cambridge University and has also written two books on science from a Christian perspective. Recently a version of one of his lectures has been published on the web here.
He has recently expanded his attack on Intelligent Design from a Christian perspective. His article is available here entitled "Is Intelligent Design Biblical?" and a shortened version of it is due to be published in the British Christian monthly "Evangelicals Now." I intend to produce a series of posts responding to his larger article.

In this post I want to examine Dr. Alexander's claim that ID is a revival of Deism and further that Michael Behe (and by implication those who embrace ID) is at least semi-Deistic in his teaching.

Here is his accusation:

It is in dissecting this argument that the semi-deism of Behe’s position may be perceived most clearly. The key give-away phrase is where Behe states that ‘Some features of the cell appear to be the result of simple natural processes, others probably so.’ Behe envisages a quasi-autonomous domain called ‘nature’ in which there are ‘naturalistic processes’ which science can explain, and a quite different domain in which the designer acts supernaturally to bring about designed processes which science is unable to explain.

Deism accepts a Real Creator and a real supernatural origin of matter, space, time and energy. At this point Deism is indistinguishable from classical Theism.

It is in its negative position that Deism is distinguished from Theism. Deism says (according to the OED) that having created the universe God does not intervene in it. God is the absentee landlord or the watch maker who wound up the watch and placed it carefully on the mantelpiece to carry on its unwinding. Thus deists reject the deity of Christ, the historicity of miracles and the whole concept of the special revelation of the scriptures. Thus Deism is actually serious and ugly heresy.

Alexander’s accusation of semi-deism is not focused on the traditional divergences of Deism from Christianity but on the understanding of divine providence or God's sovreignty over all creation and what we call natural laws and forces. Theism asserts that the laws of nature are laws and that they are regular because of the personal faithfulness and reliability of God and that the realm of natural law is under the sovereignty of the Word of God. The reign of natural law is the way God normally governs the universe but a Christian Theist claims that God has acted and will act above and beyond natural law.

Alexander’s accusation is therefore a claim that in stating that a class of natural phenomena exhibit ID we are also necessarily claiming that natural phenomena outside this class have escaped from the sovereignty of God’s Word. We have created a “semi-autonomous domain called ‘nature’ in which there are ‘naturalistic processes’ which science can explain.” However it seems to me that there is no evidence from the quote that Alexander uses of Behe that his understanding of natural law is any different from Alexander’s. Proposing a class of natural phenomena that exhibit ID is entirely independent of our convictions regarding God’s sovereignty over natural laws.

Alexander’s charge of heresy is founded upon wholly inadequate evidence. To distinguish three classes of features in a cell under the headings “natural, probably natural and designed” does not provide grounds for the accusation that the natural or even the probably natural have thereby escaped into an autonomous or semi-autonomous domain outside of the sovereignty of God. Saying we can reliably detect instances of ID in nature says nothing about our convictions about the sovereignty of God and natural laws.

To make a serious accusation such as the one Alexander makes here in print and in public is a solemn business and one which ought not to be made carelessly or lightly. If he is justified in his accusation then it is right to ask him to come forward with further evidence. If he has no further evidence then he has a duty to publically retract his accusation and admit that he was mistaken.

(William Dembski has a couple of posts on the background to this argument linked from here. Peter Williams has another background article here -"Paper on Theistic Evolution & ID published by Bethinking.org")