Anti-Creationism
jrosenhouse | July 13, 2006Writing in National Review Online, John Derbyshire provides a nice characterization of what it's like to argue with creationists:
I'll also say that I write the following with some reluctance. It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn't actually any fun. Creationists just chase…
jrosenhouse | June 28, 2006Shortly after finishing Monday's post, I discovered that the new issue of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education had turned up in my mailbox. It contained the following item:
Arthur Shapiro is a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Starting in 1981 and continuing through 2004, he was running a long-term study of the frequency of hybridization and its relation to population density in a particular species of butterfly. The research was undertaken at a ranch in northeastern California. The ranch's owner had no problem…
jrosenhouse | June 27, 2006My new essay for CSICOP's Creation and Intelligent Design Watch site is now available. This time: My take on the old tautology argument, inspired by Ann Coulter and Tom Bethell. I argue - surprise! - that natural selection is not a meaningless tautology. Enjoy!
jrosenhouse | June 26, 2006An interview with historian of science Ronald Numbers has been posted. It has already attracted some blog attention. P. Z. Myers rightly criticizes Numbers for some rather bizarre statements about the relationship between science and religion. Over at Telic Thoughts, Krauze offers this typically dopey reply.
The interview contains a lot of bloggable items, but I will focus on just one:
QUESTION: So, in a certain sense, doesn't this represent some sort of divide between religion and science?
MR. NUMBERS: To me, the struggle in the late 20th Century between creationists and evolutionists…
jrosenhouse | June 21, 2006Paul Gross has written this useful review of John Brockman's recent anti-ID anthology Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement. I intend to do some posts relating to specific essays in the book, but Gross' overall assessment is the same as mine:
This collection is helpful but not because it provides the primary knowledge base for the current effort to limit the impact of the IDM - a politically potent hoax with an excellent public relations machine and adequate funding. The necessary primary sources on the IDM and on the relevant science are already available in…
jrosenhouse | June 19, 2006The detailed responses to Ann Coulter's silliness about evolution are now coming in. P.Z Myers illustrates the insanity of claiming that there is no evidence for evolution. See also this post for further examples of Coulterian insanity.
Over at the Panda's Thumb, Ian Musgrave deals with the peppered moths issue, showing that Coulter, to put it kindly, doesn't have the faintest idea what she is talking about.
Coulter also raises the tautology objection in her screed. This is the idea that natural selection is a meaningless tuatology because it is described by the phrase “Survival of the…
jrosenhouse | June 16, 2006My old sparring partner Salvador Cordova recently posted this essay over at Uncommon Descent. Salvador describes his intent as follows:
Intelligent design will open doors to scientific exploration which Darwinism is too blind to perceive. The ID perspective allows us to find designed architectures within biology which are almost invisible to natural selection. Thus, the ID perspective is a far better framework for scientific investigation than the Darwinian perspective. What do I mean, and how will I justify my claim?
Pretty brazen, but hardly new. ID folks have been telling us precisely…
jrosenhouse | May 23, 2006I'm a bit pressed for time today, so why not just have a look at this insightful op-ed by Jay Ingram in The Toronto Star. He begins:
Scientists are absolutely correct to argue that intelligent design -- the claim that a designer, not evolution, created life on Earth -- is not science and does not belong in science classrooms. But it might come as a surprise to many of them that simply saying so isn't enough.
First, to understand why intelligent design isn't science, you do have to know something about what science is.
Scientists constantly test their theories, trying to poke holes in them…
jrosenhouse | May 22, 2006After writing that last post, I decided to have a look at the comments to macht's essay. I found another delightful instance of macht being clueless.
Commenter Daniel wrote:
“if some modern scientist happened to introduce something supernatural into science and it was testable”
See, I don't get this - ID keeps missing the point, that it's impossible to simultaneously use supernatural explanations and have those explanations be testable. How can you test miracles and magic??
Good question. Here's macht's answer:
For those of you who have been following my posts lately, this is an…
jrosenhouse | May 22, 2006My essay on the nature of science has provoked this limp response from macht, over at Telic Thoughts.
My essay emphasized the fact that science has a specific goal in mind: To understand the workings of nature. Understanding is measured via predictability and control. Investigative methods are scientific to the extent to which they bring us closer to this goal. I went on to emphasize that many of the terms used in discussing the problem of defining science - such as testability, falsifiability, or methodological naturalism (MN) - are just short hand ways of saying that science cares about…
jrosenhouse | May 17, 2006The last six months have been hard ones for ID folks. First, there was the big Dover decision. Then came several new transitional forms (see here and here, for example). The evolution of complex biochemical systems gets less mysterious every day. Likewise for the evolution of of cooperative behavior. Nick Matzke's brilliant annotated bibliography on the evolution of the immune system was posted, showing once more that the Michael Behe's of the world are just making it up when they say that scientists can't explain the evolution of “irreducibly complex” systems. Meanwhile, there is…