Anti-evolution
jlynch | June 27, 2007The negative reviews of Behe’s Edge of Evolution continue. Kenneth Miller has a review in this week’s Nature and Richard Dawkins will have one in next New York Times Sunday Book Review (available here for NYTimes Select customers).
From the former:
Behe, incredibly, thinks he has determined the odds of a mutation "of the same complexity" occurring in the human line. He hasn’t. What he has actually done is to determine the odds of these two exact mutations occurring simultaneously at precisely the same position in exactly the same gene in a single individual. He then leads his unsuspecting…
jlynch | June 20, 2007In 2002 William Brookfield (our favorite "pleasurian" and "ID scientist") published his paper "In Search of a Cosmic Super-Law: The Supreme "Second Law" of Devolution" in Dembski’s vanity journal PSCID. Mark over at Good Math, Bad Math takes on Brookfield’s "science" here and here.
When Mark took on Behe’s math a few weeks back, Dembski accused him to being insufficiently credentialed to comment - given Brookfield doesn’t "hold any degrees from any university of any kind," yet sees fit to accuse Hawking of making errors, I doubt Billy D will be defending Brookfield on this one!
jlynch | June 18, 2007I haven’t spoken of Michael Egnor is a long time. If you remember, he’s the DI’s pet neurosurgeon who, as many have documented, has a penchant for silly arguments. Attacking Egnor is a little like harvesting low-hanging fruit, but I couldn’t let this (lack of) logic go unnoticed ... think of it as a teaching moment.
In response to a Nature editorial on Brownback’s defense of his views on evolution, Egnor writes:
Yet if intelligent design is scientifically wrong ...then the design inference can be investigated (and, they claim, refuted) using the scientific method. Then intelligent design is…
jlynch | June 16, 2007Over at Uncommon Descent, Dembski wonders how the NCSE will deal with "the growing number of non-religious ID proponents" and links to this blog which is something called ICON-RIDS "an international coalition of non-religious ID scientists & scholars." Let’s take a look at this "international coalition," shall we?
ICON-RIDS is a little underwhelming. It’s a blog with five entries going back to October 2006, the first of which proclaims that "Darwinism is a Hoax!" All entries are authored by William Brookfield who describes himself [pdf] as a "logician" and "conceptualist." A little more…
jlynch | June 15, 2007Once again, Jason Rosenhouse goes to ID events so that you don’t have to. Wednesday, he saw Behe give a "staggeringly dull" talk in Washington. Details here.
jlynch | June 13, 2007Jason Rosenhouse has already noted that Tom Woodward opined that "in the next six to twelve months, Darwinism will go into a steep nose dive as the result of Behe’s new book." How is this "tremendously important" book going to change the landscape of ID? Early indications appear to say ... not at all.
To begin with, let’s look at the postings on the Discovery Institute’s blog Evolution News & Views. Since May 30th (i.e. in the past two weeks) there has been a single posting (4% of total) on Behe’s book, a posting that merely noted that Behe appeared on Michael Medved’s radio show (this…
jlynch | June 13, 2007Others have mentioned Jerry Coyne’s shredding of Behe’s Edge of Evolution in The New Republic. I’d just like to highlight this paragraph as it more or less summarizes everything that Coyne has to say:
In the end, The Edge of Evolution is not an advance or a refinement of the theory of intelligent design, but a retreat from its original claims--an act of desperation designed to maintain credibility in a world of scientific progress. But it is all for nothing, because Behe’s new theory remains the same old mixture of dead science and thinly disguised theology. There is no evidence for his main…
jlynch | June 12, 2007Jason’s recent encounter with ID-apologist Tom Woodward spurred me to revisit his book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design (2006) which I had tossed aside months back due to its breathless, inane cheerleading for ID. Not surprisingly, the talk Jason witnessed follows the book quite closely, so you can save yourself the pain by just reading Jason’s posts [1, 2, 3, 4].
On page 77, Woodward tries to deal with the accusation that ID does not make any predictions. He replies that ID does indeed have a "clear and daring prediction." And what is it?
"Darwinists will not…
jlynch | June 10, 2007Jason has been running a series about Tom Woodward’s recent talk at the Discovery Institute in Washington [1, 2, 3, 4]. This caught my eye:
Woodward closed by setting the date for the end of Darwinism’s reign as the dominant paradigm at ...wait for it...2025. Later he suggested that it might be within ten years that evolution as we know it suffers a decisive failure. And then he predicted a severe nosedive for evolution in the next six to twelve months as Behe’s book soaks into the public consciousness.
There’s the timetable, folks: 2008 a severe nosedive, 2017 decisive failure, and 2025 end…
jlynch | June 7, 2007... or at least can't think critically about polling questions. Today USA Today/Gallup announced poll results on evolution. The "highlights":
"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life" is probably or definitely false: 44%
"Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" is probably or definitely true: 66%
15% said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that did not believe in evolution.
The second question is usually…
jlynch | June 5, 2007Behe's latest piece of dreck (The Edge of Evolution) has appeared and it has already recieved quite the beatdown from Michael Ruse, Mark Chu-Carroll, PZ Myers, and Nick Matzke, with Nick's post being fairly damning regarding Behe's "ability" to do basic research (see here as well). I've a copy sitting on my desk here but am not terrible keen to crack it open, particular as there appears to be nothing new in the book beyond what was said eleven years ago in Darwin's Black Box - ID, a "new science for a new century" that is still trapped in the old century, it appears.
Whether I bother to read…
jlynch | May 22, 2007Headline at Uncommon Descent:
The Chronicle says of Gonzalez "a clear case of discrimination"
Actual sentence in Chronicle article:
At first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination. (emphasis mine)
Wow. Just, wow.
jlynch | May 5, 2007I'm sure PZ will comment on this, but I couldn't help but highlight this statement by George Gilder:
The notion that "the whole universe contains no intelligence," Mr. Gilder said at Thursday's conference, is perpetuated by "Darwinian storm troopers."
"Both Nazism and communism were inspired by Darwinism," he continued. "Why conservatives should toady to these storm troopers is beyond me."
Way to go George! And his sock puppet, John West, once more tells us what the real agenda is:
"Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing of certain esoteric points of biology and philosophy. Darwinian…
jlynch | April 1, 2007I guess we all fell for it. It turns out that the whole Michael Egnor cafuffle was an elaborate ruse to have us Darwinists make fools of ourselves. Boy, do we feel dumb! Still, Egnor has managed to outdo his parodic self with this:
"materialism is nonsense, because if matter and energy are all that exist, then truth doesn't exist (it's neither matter nor energy). If truth doesn't exist, then materialism can't be true."
Wow.
jlynch | March 31, 2007Given the question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', 48% of Americans say 'No'. Now, whatever about the "well-supported by evidence" clause (it is), evolution is "widely accepted" and even the anti-evolutionists admit it. Apparently nearly one in two Americans have been hit with the stupid-stick. Really, really hard.
(HT to whomever linked to me from Slashdot.)
jlynch | March 31, 2007
I spent this afternoon giving a public talk to the Greater Phoenix Mensa Regional Gathering. The topic was the history of anti-evolutionism (largely Intelligent Design) in this country over the past twenty years. Slides (without my soft Irish accent) are available here for those that care.
The slide player is a little funky and seems to skip certain parts of the slideshow, but it's probably enough to give you the gist of what I said. Props go to Nick Matzke at NCSE for providing some of the material.
jlynch | March 24, 2007Dembski seems to think Darwin was a racist when it came to the "careless, squalid, unaspiring" Irish. Pat Hayes points out Dembski's selective quotation of Darwin and John Wilkins applies the coup de grace. I hope these aren't the "research" methods that Dembski is teaching to his students at his little bible school.
jlynch | March 20, 2007Following on from earlier postings (here, here and here) what follows is the fourth and final part of the talk. Enjoy!
Creation History?
To emphasize my assertion of the danger of Creationism to nonscientific areas, it is worth noting that Creationist scholarship outside the sciences is equally as suspect as their science (as will be demonstrated in later chapters). If Creationists wish to write textbooks, they are likely to contain gross errors, sloppy scholarship and indeed blatant deception. I have already mentioned their treatment of Darwin, and the origins of Marxist thought. Morris'…
jlynch | March 20, 2007Mike hits one out of the park:
It took me a while to realize that the 'professional creationists' were not intellectually honest either. I am not referring to those who follow them, or those who are simply not very [knowledgeable] about evolution. .... Everyone can be misinformed, ignorant, or simply have not thought things through correctly. What I will not tolerate is willful ignorance. Creationist leaders and spokesmen are willfully ignorant. How many times do they have to be told what scientists mean by a theory? How many
times will they misstate the basics of evolutionary theory, such as…