Recently in Creationism Category

I've never linked to Uncommon Descent before. In fact, I've only visited the site once or twice, but this is too good to pass along. (When reading it remember that Uncommon Descent is a blog that "serves the intelligent design community".)

At UD we have many brilliant ID apologists, and they continue to mount what I perceive as increasingly indefensible assaults on the creative powers of the Darwinian mechanism of random errors filtered by natural selection. In addition, they present overwhelming positive evidence that the only known source of functionally specified, highly integrated information-processing systems, with such sophisticated technology as error detection and repair, is intelligent design. (emphasis added)

As Joe Felsenstein says in the post at Panda's Thumb that pointed me to that paragraph,

I really can't think of anything to add to that.

Thanks, Joe.

If you enjoyed last week's video on irreducible complexity, you'll also enjoy this one. Arguments for irreducible complexity reduce to an argument from lack of imagination.

Intelligent design creationists are fond of the idea that some biological systems are irreducibly complex. From this they infer that those systems didn't evolve. The YouTube video below does an excellent job of explaining why they're wrong. It shows clearly that the argument from irreducible complexity is really just a failure of imagination.

Shortly after the report of arsenic-based life appeared, I pointed out that several scientists were skeptical of the claim. I used the debate as an example of how science works and compared it to the "debate" about intelligent design:

Compare that lengthy, tortuous process of debate and review among experts to the "debate" that intelligent design creationists want to have in high school textbooks. Which process do you think is most likely to help kids understand their world?

Much the same could be said about climate science. In fact, the folks at RealClimate have a post showing how the debate about arsenic-based life demonstrates three things:

1. Major funding agencies willingly back studies challenging scientific consensus.
2. Most everyone would be thrilled to overturn the consensus.
3. Scientists offer opinions based on their scientific knowledge and a critical interpretation of data.

Here's the money paragraph:

This is the key lesson to take from this incident, and it applies to all scientific disciplines: peer-review continues after publication. Challenges to consensus are seriously entertained - and are accepted when supported by rigorous data. Poorly substantiated studies may inspire further study, but will be scientifically criticized without concern for funding opportunities. Scientists are not "afraid to lose their grant money".

But you should go read the whole thing.

Related articles

• 'Weird life' reveals science at work (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)

If you are a member of Facebook, I encourage you to visit the "We can find 1,000,000 people who believe in evolution before June" page and sign up.

"Believe" is an unfortunate choice of words in this context, because "belief" typically has a connotation of accepting a statement as true without empirical evidence. Evolution is, of course, one of the most strongly supported scientific ideas there is, right up there with gravity and Newton's laws of motion. It's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of accepting the evidence.¹

Yes. You read that right -- in Connecticut. From the March 15th edition of the Hartford Courant:

Chester Harris, newly elected to the Region 17 school board, is a Republican with a standard conservative outlook: He distrusts government bureaucracy, believes in fiscal restraint and thinks kids today have too many advantages and too few responsibilities.

But it is his answer to fundamental questions about the origins of life that sets him apart.

Harris, 53, rejects evolution. To him, the idea that humans and apes share a common ancestor takes "a whole lot more faith than believing there was a creator who set all these things in motion and allows us to operate under free will."

In other words he's a creationist. The principal of Haddam-Killingworth high school reports that a meeting Harris had with teachers was "very pleasant, not the least bit adversarial." And what did Harris talk about with teachers and administrators?

"I sort of got stuck on one thing with them, which was basically the teaching of evolution in the schools and how it tends to ride roughshod over the fact that various religions -- Christian, Hebrew, Muslim -- hold a theistic world view," Harris said one morning during a break from his job driving a school van. "Evolution is basically an assumption that there is no God."

No, Mr. Harris. It isn't.

Science uses natural explanations to account for natural phenomena. Adopting the principles and methods of science as a means for understanding the natural world doesn't require anyone to reject their religious beliefs, unless their religious beliefs include claims about the observable world inconsistent with empirical observation.¹ Or as Michael Zimmerman puts it,

Evolution simply notes that alleles, alternative forms of genes, change in a population over time. More importantly, though, evolutionary theory, like all scientific theories, is silent on the existence of any god; such an issue is well beyond the boundaries of science. Religious leaders as well as scientists fully understand this point. Indeed, more than 13,000 religious leaders in the United States have joined The Clergy Letter Project and have signed one of three Clergy Letters imploring school boards to teach evolutionary theory in science classes.

It's obvious that intelligent design creationism has failed as a scientific hypothesis. And although it's proponents claim otherwise, it's a religious theory, 

[T]he writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. (source)

That's not my opinion. That's a quote from the Honorable Judge John E. Jones who presided over Kitzmiller v. Dover in an interview with PLoS Genetics. And it's a threat to religious belief. Michael Behe, one of its most prominent proponents, admitted under cross examination that were teachers to teach intelligent design creationism, they should also teach that the creator might be dead.

So why am I mentioning this? Well, I'm an evolutionary biologist, and you could be forgiven for thinking that I'm biased, but what do you think of this?

It is time to take stock: What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle.

Very few religious skeptics have been made more open to religious belief because of ID arguments. These arguments not only have failed to persuade, they have done positive harm by convincing many people that the concept of an intelligent designer is bound up with a rejection of mainstream science.

The words of another evolutionary biologist? No. Those paragraphs are from an article in the February issue of First Things, a monthly magazine published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life.

"Students are discouraged from any conversations about religion," said Poirier, who also is a co-sponsor of the bill. "Perhaps in science class, when evolution is discussed, a student would be able to bring up creationism." (source)

Louisiana? Kansas? Mississippi? Nope. The bill was presented to the legislature by Representative Viriato Manuel deMacedo, of Plymouth, and Representative Elizabeth Poirier is from North Attleboro, Massachusetts.

According to the Cape Cod Times, "No one testified against the bill, which has bipartisan support and is expected to pass favorably through the Joint Committee on Education." You can read the text of the bill here.