We’ve had a few of these leave comments around here in the last few weeks.

I was researching creationism on the web and came across an article titled “Intelligent Design is Dead!” in the Vassar Alumnae Quarterly. It’s written by Vassar Professor of Biology Mark Schlessman. Here’s an extremely abbreviated version of the article:

[Y]ou don’t need extensive background to understand why, scientifically, intelligent design is dead. Significant and lasting scientific theories have two major parts. Biologist and college textbook author Scott Freeman calls them the pattern and process components. Pattern components summarize broad sets of observations about nature, and process components describe natural mechanisms that can account for the observations.
…
Evolution, the pattern component of Darwin’s theory, is a solid scientific fact. Natural selection is Darwin’s original process component.
…
Scientific theories also allow us to make testable predictions. Indeed, as new observations and experimental results that are consistent with their predictions accumulate, scientific ideas that start as hypotheses mature into theories.
…
Lastly, a scientific theory, no matter how well established, is subject to falsification. Good scientists should be able to imagine the kinds of evidence that would falsify a theory, or at the very least force a re-evaluation of its explanatory power.

In fact, that last paragraph is very important. We’ll come back to it in just a moment.

The creationists’ ultimate goal is to convert people to Christianity and to restructure society’s laws to parallel Biblical law. To accomplish this, they have a two-pronged approach. The first prong is to disprove evolution. The second prong is to convince people that ID creationism is a viable alternative of strong scientific validity.

In fact, they would be happy to just disprove evolution. If they can accomplish that, they don’t care much whether anybody believes in ID creationism. All that really matters is the end goal of more converts and a restructured society.

As long as real science has a theory that does not require God’s intervention, then they have a major barrier to accomplishing their ultimate goal. They must remove that barrier.

One of the many claims creationists make against the theory of evolution is that it can’t be falsified. That’s a ludicrous charge. Evolution is the core principle of biology. Everything else flows from it. Therefore, evolution is part of every testable claim in the life sciences. For example, long before the tools of modern genetics were developed, taxonomists had determined which species were closely related to each other. Along comes genetics. Evolutionary theory predicted that closely related species would share a lot of genetic material, while more distantly related species would share less. Scientists ran the tests, and the predictions were validated. That’s just one case where evolution could have been falsified. This is repeated constantly throughout the sciences. The results sometimes cause a fine tuning of existing theory, but nowhere have they invalidated major components of the theory. Evolution is being subjected to falsification tests every single day.

Now let’s return to the article and see why Schlessman says that Intelligent Design creationism is dead:

If intelligent design is truly a scientific theory, we should be able to identify its pattern and process components, use it to make testable predictions, and describe observations that would falsify it.

He then cites a couple of examples of Michael Behe’s so-called “irreducible complexity” and discredits them. He finishes this point with:

Suffice it to say that the broad set of observations that would constitute the pattern component of ID is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find.

He then looks at process:

What about the process component of ID? There isn’t one. I have yet to read a description of the process through which the designing intelligence works. Testable predictions? Again, nothing. How can one make predictions without a process or mechanism to base the predictions on? Is ID falsifiable? To my mind the answer is no. That may seem a little strange, since I obviously don’t think that ID is a scientific theory. But that’s precisely my point. Scientifically, ID is dead.

He also mentions that it’s dead legally, thanks to Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Finally, Schlessman comes to the point depicted in the illustration above:

This brings me to the aspect of the intelligent design story that concerns me the most. The people behind ID believe that if you acknowledge the fact of evolution, your moral compass and your religious faith will be destroyed. That simply isn’t true. Yes, I have some scientist friends who are atheists, but I also know scientists who contribute to our understanding of evolution every working day and also seek out churches to attend wherever their scientific work takes them.

This is important on two counts. First, it shows that science and religion don’t have to be in conflict. It is only the Biblical literalists—mental throwbacks to the Dark Ages—who have a problem.

And that brings us to the second point. If we allow Intelligent Design creationism into the schools, besides weakening science education, we are violating the separation of church and state. We are making one specific flavor of Biblical literalism the official state church of the United States. That doesn’t just violate the rights of a minority, such as atheists or Hindus who don’t follow that religion. It violates the rights of the majority of Christians, who also don’t believe that particular flavor of Christianity.

That’s what the separation of church and state is all about. It not only protects the rights of a minority, it protects the rights of the majority.

I received an email from BoF reader Terri. I tried to respond, but my email bounced. I’ve been having internet connection problems for the last day and a half, but I don’t know if that’s the cause.

Terri wrote:

Today, my local newspaper published a long article about Adrian Bejan’s Constructal Law. I’m not enough of a scientist to judge, but the way the article was written seems to be subtly supporting intelligent design. I would appreciate your opinion, or a reference to another blog or person that could help me; if I am correct, I intend to write the paper about misleading readers.

The article does seem to suggest intelligent design creationism, but that may not be the actual intent. Here’s what I wrote to Terri in my email that bounced:

I read the article. Physical sciences aren’t my expertise, but I don’t think the guy is implying intelligent design. Things are designed by their environment. Look at a fish. They all have similar shapes, because that shape is the most efficient way to travel through water. Through mutation, some fish will have a more efficient design, and some will have less. The more efficient design is selected for. You end up with a design without a designer.

Does anybody out there know more about this Constructal Law and if the guy behind it is promoting ID creationism?

If you make fun of enough fundies, eventually one of them will notice. “Oh boo hoo! Stop laughing at us!” Such is the case with Access Research Network, who are upset about my last post. Their rebuttal is written by Tom Magnuson. He writes:

The Bay of Fundie blog, no friend of ARN, opined on our recent “Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories of 2007”.

Poor ARN! They don’t have me as a friend!

It is not surprising that when someone has little to say concerning the substance of the debate, he resorts to ad hominem attacks and vitriolic speech.

For instance, ARN and IDers are crackpots, morons, “smart guys”, retards, incapable of understanding biology, Clowndi_ks, fundies, disinformationists, etc.

Actually, I had a lot to say about the substance of the debate. Apparently Tom didn’t read that part of the article. Maybe if he’d get in the habit of reading something in its entirety, like a biology book, he wouldn’t be so ignorant.

Yes, I throw in derogatory terms, such as “crackpot” and “moron”, but they are accurately descriptive. If you promote crackpot ideas like creationism, then you’re a crackpot. If you proudly advertise your lack of comprehension of sixth-grade science, then you are a moron.

Reread that list of “ad hominem attacks and vitriolic speech”. With the exception of “clowndick” (which was just thrown in because I’m sick of creationists) every single item in that list is accurate.

He asserts there is no debate, which is often the first line of “defense” of proponents of the “Modern Synthesis”, a.k.a. Neo-Darwinism (and Global Warming).

What? So now “Darwinists” are also proponents of global warming? Why stop there, Tom? Why not accuse us of also including the Kennedy assassination and the Iraq War into “Darwinism”?

Notice that he equates the Modern Synthesis with Neo-Darwinism. As is typical of creationist retards, Tom either didn’t read the article I linked to (they don’t seem to read much science), or he was incapable of comprehending it. The article about the Modern Synthesis clearly says:

…more recently the classic Neo-Darwinian view has been replaced by a new concept which includes several other mechanisms in addition to natural selection. Current ideas on evolution are usually referred to as the Modern Synthesis….

Here’s a cheat sheet for you, Tom. Cut it out and hang it on your fridge until you learn it:

Also notice how he didn’t actually address the point I made in the article. That’s really funny, because he started his article by accusing me of not addressing the issues raised.

So come on, Tom. Put up or shut up. In my article, I specifically asked you to tell me who all of these scientists are who doubt evolution. Who and where are all of these scientists who are part of the great debate?

IDers are liars, like Joseph Goebbels (a Nazi), who once may have said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” As was said in the blog, sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

Apparently he’s calling me a liar. Which statements, specifically, are the lies? Everything stated as fact in my article is a verifiable fact. Tom can not say the same thing about the article I was commenting on.

As is typical of Neo-Darwinists…

I’ll say it again. Modern biology has moved beyond Neo-Darwinism.

…they separate the origin of species from the origin of life.

Now Tom launches into a misdirection. I mentioned that evolution and abiogenesis were separate, because it was in response to the laughable statement in their original article that said:

[T]he level of biological complexity being discovered in early life history provided another challenge for Darwin’s molecule-to-man theory in 2007.

Neither Darwinism nor Neo-Darwinism nor the Modern Synthesis have a “molecule-to-man” theory. This is all part of the ARN disinformation campaign. They try to get the public to equate all of modern biology with the one theory that Darwin proposed. Then they show that Darwin’s original theory doesn’t explain everything. Then, ipso facto, they have disproven evolution!

Neo-Darwinism does not deal with the origin of life, and we are well aware of that fact.

Well you sure as hell didn’t give that impression in the original article! You very specifically said that it did. Weren’t we saying something earlier about liars?

But, in the materialist’s worldview, the origin of life is actually more problematic than the origin of species. That’s why Francis Crick pushed back OOL by proposing directed panspermia. He rightly concluded that a chemical origin of life on Earth was impossible. He posited that OOL must have happened somewhere else in the universe, and was brought here. Neo-Darwinists choose to say, “In the beginning was a great mystery, then evolution.”

This is all misdirection. It has nothing to do with the original article that I was responding to. In any event, there are several scientifically-valid hypotheses involving the origin of life. None involve “God did it”.

One of the citations in the blog to indicate how out-of-touch IDers are with Neo-Darwinism is from 1993.

Wrong again, liar. It was to show how out of touch you are with the Modern Synthesis.

In that post, Moran states, “Biologists no longer question whether evolution has occurred or is occurring. That part of Darwin’s book is now considered to be so overwhelmingly demonstrated that is is often referred to as the FACT of evolution. However, the MECHANISM of evolution is still debated.” So, my question is, “If we don’t know HOW materialistic evolution happened, how do we know THAT it happened?”

Excellent question, Tom! (I’m not being sarcastic for once. That is exactly the type of question that any person should ask. How do we know what we know?) There might be a brain in that skull after all! (OK, now I’m back to the sarcasm.) Your question can be easily answered with this illustration:

The debate (which he says doesn’t even exist among REAL scientists) is about the HOW (mechanisms). What they accuse us of (God of the Gaps), is exactly what they are doing (Science of the Gaps), when saying they don’t know HOW it happened.

Wrong again, liar. We never said we didn’t know how it happened. We have an excellent theory that explains it all. It’s called evolution. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

But, according to them, it had to have happened, because it fits their worldview.

You’re putting the cart before the horse. We have that worldview, because it fits the data.

Believers in the extranatural either believe that the universe was front-loaded with information, or a designer injected information into systems at various times.

“Extranatural” isn’t a word. You’re looking for “supernatural”. And looking for the supernatural is not science. Stop claiming it is (e.g., “intelligent design”).

If REAL scientists can infer design in SETI, criminology, etc., why not in biological science?

He lost me here. What are you saying, Tom, that SETI is trying to prove that God made aliens? We need to find some first, then we can try to figure out where they came from.

Well, that would upset the apple cart, because they cannot allow a “divine foot in the door”.

It has nothing to do with not allowing a “divine foot in the door”. It’s just that a few centuries ago, we discovered that we didn’t need a divine foot to explain the natural world.

So they attempt to nail the door shut by saying there is no legitimate debate.

Nobody’s nailing any doors shut. It’s shut, because nobody has opened it in a hundred years. I’ll repeat my challenge from above: Where is this huge gaggle of scientists who are debating evolution? You didn’t answer it in the original article, and you didn’t answer it in your rebuttal.

I prefer clarity of thinking over agreement. This is what we should all strive for this coming year, including Neo-Darwinists.

Well, Tom, you go find yourself some Neo-Darwinists, and you guys can get yourself a nice big clarity orgasm. In the meantime, all of modern biology will continue with the clarity of thinking that we’ve enjoyed for over a hundred years.

UPDATE

Note to those coming here from Carnival of the Godless. This is the second post in this series, both of which pissed off one of the guys at ARN. The post I wrote right before this one received the brunt of the comments from their “Director of Media Relations”. He just proves what I say in that post, that they’re a disinformation site. If you want to read that post, and the barrage of comments that it generated, you can see it here.

One of those crackpot creationist institutions dedicated to dismantling everything that has been accomplished since the Enlightenment and plunging us all back into the Dark Ages is called Access Research Network. I think the only research these morons are trying to access is that done by Joseph Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
—Attributed to Goebbels

ARN has just published a press release promoting their year-end top ten list, “Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories of 2007”. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

As is typical of press releases, there is a quotation from one of their head guys, in this case Kevin Wirth, Director of Media Relations. He says:

Part of our mission at ARN is to help educate the public about issues relating to Darwin and Design. Not only are there a lot of moving parts to this issue, but it also suffers heavily from significant mis-information.

Yes. Most of it coming from fundie disinformation sites like ARN.

The news reports we’ve cited in our Top 10 News Stories this year reflect many of those concerns…. One of the things we’ve noticed is that the probability surrounding the notion that life arose spontaneously and evolved over eons is straining the limits of credulity among observers who are not heavily invested in Darwinian speculations.

OK, smart guy. Who are all of these so-called scientists who reject evolution? I’m waiting. And don’t give me that list of mathematicians and physicists you retards have been pedaling for the last few years. Who are the life scientists? You know, the people who actually study biology.

[T]he level of biological complexity being discovered in early life history provided another challenge for Darwin’s molecule-to-man theory in 2007.

Now which theory would that be? Darwin never proposed a “molecule-to-man” theory. He merely described how one species (that already existed) could evolve into another. I told you ARN was a creationist disinformation site. The origin of life (abiogenesis) is a separate issue.

Well-preserved jellyfish fossil finds in Utah confirm that the modern form of the jellyfish existed nearly 200 million years earlier than previously thought. This leaves an insufficient amount of time for complex life to have developed only via the Darwinian principles of random mutations and natural selection.

Then it’s a good thing that modern evolutionary theory abandoned Darwinism as the sole explanation decades ago. Once again, this is creationist disinformation at work. In fact, almost all creationist claims are rooted in this one disinformation tactic.

The press release then starts quoting Dennis Wagner, ARN Executive Director:

We have a whole generation of people who have been raised according to Darwinian fairytales, like ‘human and chimpanzee genetics only differ by 1%’….

They then cite a study that indicates that the genetic difference between chimps and humans is closer to 6%. I fail to see how that’s relevant to their argument. Science marches forward, unlike Biblicalism. If you read the article cited, everything about it supports evolution. If ARN is going to try to shoot down evolution, they should try to find a study that actually does so.

These are Darwinian ‘arguments from ignorance’….

Wagner also noted that several new books in the ARN 2007 Top 10 Darwin and Design Resource list such as Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution and Mike Gene’s The Design Matrix are causing a healthy shift in the debate from ‘Darwin versus Design’ to ‘Darwin and Design.’

You can’t shift something that doesn’t exist. There was no “Darwin versus Design” debate in the first place, at least not among scientists.

The debate has been highly polarized for generations because you have one group claiming everything can be explained by Darwin…

Those would have to be the creationists. As I explained above, they’re the only ones who are still fixated on the antiquated notion of “Darwinism”. Real scientists have long since moved on to the Modern Synthesis of genetics and evolution.

…and another group claiming everything can be explained by design.

Those would also be the creationists. They must be a very confused group of people, having polarizing debates among themselves like that.

These new books are revealing that scientific evidence is now indicating life bears the hallmarks of both.

No. These new books are revealing that the authors are incapable of understanding modern biology, and are therefore resorting to “God did it”.

Wirth concluded, “As we monitor scientific discoveries and reports in the news, I think we’re beginning to see a growing trend overall that the sufficiency of Darwinian explanations to describe how life evolved is turning out to be substantially inadequate in a growing number of fields, particularly in the areas of genetics and molecular biology.

Look, Clowndick. If you’re just now seeing that “Darwinism” is inadequate to explain everything, then I suggest you throw away your 1920 textbook and learn some modern biology.

Don’t forget to watch Nova tonight on PBS.

“Judgment Day” is nigh! As I mentioned briefly a couple of months ago, Nova will air a special two-hour episode devoted to the 2004 creationism trial in Dover, PA. Here’s how the Nova website describes this episode:

In this program, NOVA captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools. Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants, including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers, and town officials, “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.
…
NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as “What is evolution?” and “Is intelligent design a scientifically valid alternative?”
…
U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III ultimately decided for the plaintiffs, writing in his decision that intelligent design “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”

The program is scheduled for November 13, 2007. That means the program is already in your Tivo’s program listings (you have a Tivo of course!), so you can go schedule it right now, before you forget!

For the technologically impoverished (who watch live TV), you can go to the Nova website to find out when and where you’ll be able to see it.

Don’t miss this. It ought to be good. (BTW, next week’s Nova is about Sputnik. That one looks good, too!)

I haven’t posted much these last two weeks, because I’ve been busy. I’m hoping to have some more stuff soon. In the meantime, I went looking for something fun to give you for today.

I came across a website devoted to debunking Kent Hovind. That site is no longer being updated, as of January 2007, because Hovind is now serving a ten-year sentence for tax evasion. Nevertheless, the site has a wealth of information about this crackpot. I knew he was crazy, but I had no idea just how looney this toon was.

The quotations that follow are all from the “Quacky Quotes on Evolution” page. If you go there, you’ll find even more quotes like these, as well as references to where the quotes come from.

Now sit back and enjoy the “wisdom” of Kent Hovind. (Remember that Hovind is one of the big names in the creationism field. This gives you a good indication of how and what these people think.)

Every farmer on planet Earth counts on evolution not happening. They count on it. It doesn’t happen. People can believe whatever they want but whenever a farmer crossbreeds a cow he expects to get a cow not a kitten.

Do you know chimpanzees are still having babies? Why don’t they make another human?

Guess what happened to the T Rex. According to evolutionists the T Rex turned into a bird. … Man, those guys need some serious, serious help.

… so it’s totally wrong, bogus, and some bold faced lie that some professor told you that the Earth receives energy [from the Sun] and that is how [evolution] overcomes the Second Law [of Thermodynamics]. It’s just a bold face lie. It is true we receive energy but it is not going to overcome the Second Law.

Teaching the pagan religion of evolutionism is a waste of valuable class time and textbook space. It is also one of the reasons American kids don’t test as well in science as kids in other parts of the world.

There is definitely a conspiracy, but I don’t think that it is a human conspiracy. I don’t believe there is a smoke filled room where a group of men get together, and decide to teach evolution in all the schools. I believe that it is at a much higher level. I believe that it is a Satanic conspiracy. The reason these different people come to the same conclusion is not because they all met together; it is because they all work for the devil. He is their leader and they don’t even know it.

If Evolution is true, there is no Creator, so laws come from mans opinion. That is called a democracy, which is a terrible form of government. Democracies always degenerate into dictatorships. In America, it is sad to say, has become a democracy.

The Smithsonian Institute [sic] has 33,000 sets of human remains in their basement right now as you are reading this. Many of them were taken while the people were still alive. They were so desperate to find missing links, so desperate to prove their theory that they murdered people to prove it.

If evolution is true, you could not know that it’s true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. Think about that.