1.evolution

Ireland is also more secular than we thought - Grania Spingies - WhyEvolutionIsTrue.wordpress.com

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:44:21 +0000

Grania Spingies, of Atheist Ireland, has contributed a short post about a European country that most of us see as religiously retrograde. It turns out that it’s far more secular than we thought.

Ireland may also be a lot more liberal and secular than some would have you believe

by Grania Spingies

Last week the Ipsos MORI polls conducted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science revealed that the majority of self-defined Christians living in the UK tend to have more far more liberal and secular views than those promoted by Christian campaign groups. The reaction from those groups has been predictably both outraged and outrageous, but the message is fairly clear: the highly conservative values espoused by such lobbies do not reflect those of the Christian majority on whose behalf they claim to speak.

A recent government-sponsored poll shows very similar attitudes in Ireland. The poll is based on the Irish Referendum in 2011 (in Ireland the Constitution can be amended only by popular referendum), and was conducted by the Irish government for political reasons: to find out why people voted as they did. Unlike the Dawkins Foundation poll, then, this one was not conducted by a pro-secularist organization, and thus cannot be criticized on that count.

The poll shows that despite being a “Catholic” country (the 2006 Census put the proportion of Catholics above 86%) and in spite of Irish religious lobby groups insisting that the conservative status quo remains, it seems that a comfortable majority of Irish people do not take their cues about morality from the Church at all. In fact, an article in Thursday’s Irish Examiner by June McEnroe shows that the Irish overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage, and also do not support Ireland’s ill-conceived new Blasphemy Law.

Read on

An anti-science cartoonist [Pharyngula]

PZ Myers none@example.com — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:40:33 +0000

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Someone is wrong on the internet, and I don't know whether to scream or to facepalm! (I tried doing both at once, but then it just comes out as a muffled gargle.)

Please go look at this creationist comic called "How Darwin Got It Wrong". It's typical creationist garbage, and practically every panel is wrong, wrong, wrong…yet it purports to be an objective discussion of the scientific problems with evolution. The author, however, knows no biology at all.

Take this page (please).

Look at that one word balloon: "BUT IN MY OPINION THE WHEELS USED TO BE DOORS AND THE DOORS WERE ONCE WINDOWS!" Setting aside the anachronism of the car, Darwin would not have said that: he wasn't expressing an opinion in his book, but marshaling the evidence of prior states with mechanisms of transformation. An evolutionary biologist would not claim that a car can change into anything at all, but that it's descendants will always be derived from a car; we humans are mammals and our descendants will also be mammals, mammals are bilaterian animals and all of their descendants are bilaterian animals, and bilaterian animals are eukaryotes and all of their descendants will be eukaryotes. There is variation, but there are also constraints.

Now I know I'm supposed to be an educator, and ignorance should be something I patiently correct, but this page is so stupid and wrong it just makes me furious.

It doesn't even get its premises right! Those aren't all the different ways you can stack four blocks — the correct answer is 4!, or 24. And it doesn't even make sense to argue that there is no information in the arrangement of the bits in the code — of course there is. If there wasn't, we could just print out individual letters of the alphabet, dump them in a sack, and hand them to the snotty little kid in the cartoon, and tell him, "here's your bible, go read it."

And then…"EACH SPECIES HAS A SET NUMBER OF GENES." No, it doesn't. There are deletions and duplications, there are copy number variants, there are all kinds of ways gene numbers vary within populations. That statement is simply a lie.

And then the author indulges in a little begging of the question.

Imagine a form of inheritance that lost a gene every generation. Well then, smarty pants, E. coli, with less than 5000 genes, would be extinct within a few years! This guy has children; does he consider them inferior to him, because of the inevitable decay of their genes? It is simply not the case that genetic information cannot increase.

One more: this guy has loads of these dumb, ignorant cartoons all over the place, so here's one with a classic quote mine.

I looked up the paper. Birch and Ehrlich did say that; it's a paper criticizing fellow ecologists who use evolutionary assumptions to short-circuit the hard work of doing ecological analyses. Our cartoonist leaves off the next few sentences:

The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more scepticism about its tenets. In population biology, more work is need in elucidating the the general properties of populations, both those made up of two or more species, without reference to dogmas or guesses about how they evolved. First we need answers to questions such as (1) How frequently do populations become extinct in nature? (2) Do most populations have self-regulating properties? (3) How frequently do populations utilize the same limited resources in nature? (4) What kinds of selection pressure does such utilization impose on each population? (5) Is great reduction of gene flow necessary for differentiation of populations in nature? (6) How are community complexity and stability best defined and measured? (7) What is the relationship between complexity and stability? Then we can see how the answers fit into the modern synthesis.

That's in Nature 214(5086):349-352. The idjit couldn't even cite it properly; I suspect he never even read it.

But it's a perfect example of what scientists do all the time: DOUBT. Don't assume, test. The point of their criticism was to explain that evolution is not dogma and should not be used as such, and that the evaluation of the strength of evolutionary theory cannot be made by assuming it's true, but by making real-world observations and assessing whether they fit the theory.

(Also on FtB)

Read the comments on this post...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Inside the Outbreaks on the ScienceBlogs Book Club

Corbett case ends with a "victory for teachers"

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:41:03 +0000

James Corbett

"The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal Tuesday from a former high school student who sued his history teacher, saying he disparaged Christianity in class in violation of the student's First Amendment rights," the Orange County Register (February 21, 2012) reported. The case in question is C. F. et al. v. Capistrano Unified School District et al., which began in 2007.

The case originated when Corbett, a twenty-year veteran history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, California, was accused by a student, Chad Farnan, of "repeatedly promoting hostility toward Christians in class and advocating 'irreligion over religion' in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause," according to the Orange County Register (May 1, 2009). Farnan cited more than twenty offending statements of Corbett's in his complaint.

In the district court's decision, however, only one of the statements was identified as constitutionally impermissible. In 2007, while describing to his class his involvement in the 1994 case Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District — in which a teacher unsuccessfully contended that it was unconstitutional for the school district to require him to teach evolution — Corbett characterized creationism as "superstitious nonsense."

The district court wrote (PDF), "The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause." But the district court also ruled (PDF) that because there was no clear precedent establishing that Corbett's comment would have been unconstitutional, Corbett was entitled to qualified immunity, shielding him from liability.

Both Farnan and Corbett then appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a decision (PDF) issued on August 19, 2011, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court's decision "to the extent it decided the constitutionality of any of Corbett's statements" while upholding its grant of qualified immunity to Corbett. Corbett told the Orange County Register (August 19, 2011) that it "was a victory for free thought and academic freedom."

Farnan then appealed the Ninth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court. With its decision not to hear the appeal, the case is now definitely over. Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law who represented Corbett in the appeal, told the Orange County Register that "Corbett's victory is a really important victory for teachers ... it could have opened the door for other teachers to be held liable."

But the Register also quoted Douglas Laycock, a constitutional scholar at the University of Virginia School of Law, as identifying the case as "an example of a systemic problem in constitutional litigation": "They can't hold the teacher liable because the law was not clearly settled. Because they can't hold him liable, the law will never become clear on what teachers can say in class."

A second Oklahoma bill attacks evolution and climate change

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:16:17 +0000

A bill in Oklahoma that would, if enacted, encourage teachers to present the "scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of "controversial" topics such as "biological evolution" and "global warming" is back from the dead. Entitled the "Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act," House Bill 1551 was introduced in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2011 by Sally Kern (R-District 84), a persistent sponsor of antievolution legislation in the Sooner State, and referred to the House Common Education Committee. It was rejected there on February 22, 2011, on a 7-9 vote. But, as The Oklahoman (February 23, 2011) reported, the vote was not final, since a sponsor "could ask the committee to bring it up again this session or next year." And indeed, on February 20, 2012, Gus Blackwell (R-District 61) resurrected the bill in the House Common Education Committee.

The only significant difference is that where the original version specified, "The Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects," the new version specifies, "the Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

On February 21, 2012, just a day after HB 1551 was resurrected, the House Common Education Committee voted 9-7 to accept it, hearing no testimony from the public. One amendment, providing, "Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to exempt students from learning, understanding, and being tested on curriculum as prescribed by state and local education standards," was accepted; while that language was not present in the original version of HB 1551, it was added by amendment by the House Common Education Committee in 2011 before the bill was rejected, suggesting that Blackwell was working from the original rather than the amended version of Kern's bill. The bill will now presumably proceed to the House of Representatives for a floor vote; it will have to be accepted by the House by March 15, 2012, in order to proceed to the Senate.

In its current incarnation, HB 1551 differs only slightly from Oklahoma's Senate Bill 320 from 2009, which a member of the Senate Education Committee described to the Tulsa World (February 17, 2009) as one of the worst bills that he had ever seen. In its critique (PDF) of SB 320, Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education argued, "Promoting the notion that there is some scientific controversy is just plain dishonest ... Evolution as a process is supported by an enormous and continually growing body of evidence. Evolutionary theory has advanced substantially since Darwin's time and, despite 150 years of direct research, no evidence in conflict with evolution has ever been found." With respect to the supposed "weaknesses" of evolution, OESE added, "they are phony fabrications, invented and promoted by people who don't like evolution."

Source of Heartland leak steps forward

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:40:01 +0000

Peter Gleick

The source of the documents revealing the strategy of the Heartland Institute's campaign to undermine the public's understanding of climate science — including by producing and distributing K-12 curriculum materials propounding climate change denial — revealed himself to be Dr. Peter Gleick, the hydroclimatologist who heads the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security.

In a February 20, 2012, statement posted at the Huffington Post, Gleick explained that at the beginning of the year, he received a document "describing what appeared to be details of the Heartland Institute's climate program strategy." Attempting to confirm the accuracy of the information, he continued, "I solicited and received additional materials directly from the Heartland Institute under someone else's name."

Gleick expressed regret for his actions, writing, "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected."

As part of NCSE's expansion to defend the teaching of climate science, Gleick had agreed to join NCSE's board of directors. On the same day as he posted his statement, however, he apologized to NCSE for his behavior with regard to the Heartland Institute documents and offered to withdraw from the board, on which he was scheduled to begin serving as of February 25, 2012. His offer was accepted.

"Gleick obtained and disseminated these documents without the knowledge of anyone here," NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott commented, "and we do not condone his doing so." But, she added, "they show that NCSE was right to broaden its scope to include the teaching of climate science. There really are coordinated attempts to undermine the teaching of climate science, and NCSE is needed to help to thwart them."

Climate change denial plans divulged

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:51:57 +0000

"Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation’s culture wars," reported The New York Times (February 15, 2012). The documents in question were obtained from the Heartland Institute, a non-profit organization best known for its attacks on climate science, and posted at DeSmogBlog (February 14, 2012), which "exists to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change."

The documents detailed a plan to invest at least $100,000 to produce and distribute curriculum material propounding climate change denial. "Many people lament the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn’t alarmist or overtly political. Heartland has tried to make material available to teachers, but has had only limited success." The proposed remedy was to produce "modules" on climate change with such claims as "whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial" and "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."

"It is in fact not a scientific controversy," the Times explained with regard to the latter claim. "The vast majority of climate scientists [97-98%, according to Anderegg et al., "Expert credibility in climate change," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 2010)] say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk. Whether and how to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases has become a major political controversy in the United States, however."

The Heartland Institute explicitly denied the authenticity of one of the documents, which included a startling description of the proposed curriculum as showing "that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science." The author of the curriculum confirmed to the Associated Press (February 18, 2012) that the description of his curriculum throughout the documents was otherwise accurate, however, explaining that his goal for schools was "teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less."

The article in the Times observed, "The National Center for Science Education, a group that has had notable success in fighting for accurate teaching of evolution in the public schools, has recently added climate change to its agenda in response to pleas from teachers who say they feel pressure to water down the science," and quoted Mark McCaffrey, who is spearheading NCSE's climate initiative, as saying that the Heartland documents show that climate change deniers “continue to promote confusion, doubt and debate where there really is none.”

The Los Angeles Times (February 20, 2012) offered its editorial opinion: "On one side of the 'controversy' are credentialed climatologists around the globe who publish in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame; on the other are fossil-fuel-industry-funded 'experts' who tend to have little background in climatology and who publish non-peer-reviewed papers in junk magazines disputing established truths. ... It's bad enough that we're gambling our children's futures by doing so little to fight this problem; let's not ask their teachers to lie to them about it too."

"Anti-evolution bills should be defeated"

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:53:26 +0000

The two antievolution bills in New Hampshire's House of Representatives were editorially denounced by the Concord Monitor (February 20, 2012), which wrote, "The House should spare the state further embarrassment and kill both bills." Both bills were dismissed by the House Education Committee on February 16, 2012, but nevertheless proceed to a floor vote in the House on February 22, 2012. According to a primer on legislative process posted on the state legislature's website, "It is rare for the full Senate or House to overturn a Committee's decision."

With regard to House Bill 1148, which would have charged the state board of education to "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism," the Monitor commented, "But we fear that [the bill's sponsor Jerry] Bergevin is not referring to Darwin with his use of the words 'the theorist' in his bill but to today's science teachers. If so, it is a McCarthy-esque proposition that's odious on multiple levels."

With regard to House Bill 1457, which would have charged the state board of education to "[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis," the Monitor commented that its description of science, insofar as it was accurate, "is the opposite of efforts to espouse positions like the creationist theories of life's origin promoted by ... a representative from the Discovery Institute who came to New Hampshire from the state of Washington to testify in favor of the bills."

This Week in Intelligent Design - 19/02/12

Jack Scanlan — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:23:19 +0000

Intelligent design news, commentary and discussion from the 11^th of February to the 19^th of February, 2012.

So, it happened again: the Discovery Institute decided to notice something I wrote about them. I’m not sure if it’s because I write for The Panda’s Thumb and they see me as the weakest, undergraduate link in its strong chain of esteemed, proper biologists, or because my criticisms of their ideas are annoying, but they seem to focus on me quite a lot. Ah well, any recognition is good recognition, right?

This week I’ll be focusing mostly in their response to me, but also on the Discovery Institute’s move into the iAge (which must be very exciting for them), as well as a curious post that highlights yet another major problem with the way the intelligent design movement operates.

Background on the credit-for-creationism scheme

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:14:07 +0000

Alabama's House Bill 133 — which would, if enacted, "authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students" — was introduced at the behest of a former teacher who was "fired in 1980 for reading the Bible and teaching creationism at Spring Garden Elementary School when parents of the public school sixth-grade students objected and he refused to stop," the Birmingham News (February 17, 2012) reports. Now 84, Joseph Kennedy "still has a dream of teaching public school students about creationism," and he and his supporters are poised to offer a course on creationism if the bill passes.

The sponsor of HB 133, Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), told the News that he introduced the bill — which he described elsewhere as a "vehicle" for creationism — at Kennedy's request. Describing his plans to the newspaper, Kennedy explained, "All the school board needs to do is set it up. They can give the students credit. We're going to major on creation science. Since creation involved science, then certainly we can study it. We want to give students good sound scientific reasons to support their faith in the seven-day creation and the young Earth," adding, "The textbook will be 'The Defender Study Bible,' with notes by Henry Morris, author of 'The Genesis Flood,' who started the creationist movement."

Mary Sue McClurkin (R-District 43), who chairs the House Education Policy Committee, told the News that the bill would be debated in committee during the week of February 28, 2012, commenting, "It looks like it's a very viable way to offer some elective courses for kids that have many opportunities for electives." But Thomas Berg, a professor of law formerly at Samford University in Birmingham, expressed doubt about the bill's constitutionality, asking, "Is the religious teacher going to certify that the student passed? Would the school do any review of that? Would they monitor the class for quality to ensure it would warrant a public school credit? All those things would entangle the school."

New Hampshire antievolution bills dismissed

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:25:08 +0000

"The House Education Committee dismissed two bills this morning that would have dictated classroom lectures on evolution," the Concord Monitor's State House blog reported (February 16, 2012). The bills in question are House Bill 1148, introduced by Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), which would have charged the state board of education to "[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism," and House Bill 1457, introduced by Gary Hopper (R-District 7) and John Burt (R-District 7), which would have charged the state board of education to "[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes." Although HB 1457 as drafted was silent about "intelligent design," Hopper's initial request was to have a bill drafted that would require "instruction in intelligent design in the public schools."

The House Education Committee heard testimony on HB 1457 on February 9, 2012. According to the Nashua Telegraph (February 10, 2012), the committee heard about ninety minutes of testimony, "including opposition from the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association and the New Hampshire School Board Association, who said state science standards already require students to learn that questioning established theories is part of the scientific method." Hopper, the sponsor of the bill, "made it clear that his concern involves teaching alternatives to evolution," and a representative of the Discovery Institute was quoted as saying, "There are non-creationist, skeptical alternatives to Darwinist theory that teachers could bring into their classroom," even while expressing a lack of support for the bill. John Godfrey of the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association, testifying against the bill, was quoted by the Concord Monitor (February 10, 2012) as saying, "There's lots of things in science we really know and we can teach the kids, here's what scientists have figured out, and we pretty much agree. Don't deprive them of that and say, 'Maybe yes, and maybe no. Go figure it out for yourself.' "

The House Education Committee heard testimony on HB 1148 on February 14, 2012. According to the New Hampshire Union Leader (February 15, 2012), "No one testified in support of Bergevin's bill, however, it did face several opponents, including representatives from the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association and the N.H. School Administrators Association — as well as Jackson Hinkle, a 10-year-old student from Nashua." The youngster told the committee that enacting the bill "would be a blow to our educational system, which is already in a bad state," adding, "If evolution was not presented in the scientific sense, but rather the colloquial, people would be denied modern scientific information." John Godfrey of the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association emphasized that, contrary to the apparent presumption of the bill, a theory is not just a guess or a hunch. "Evolution," he explained, "is at the extremely well-established end of the spectrum of scientific theories." The Union Leader reported, "Members of the committee asked no questions and made almost no comments during the hearing, except to praise the students for participating."

Despite the House Education Committee's votes, New Hampshire's antievolution bills are not officially dead yet, however. A subsequent story in the Concord Monitor (February 17, 2012) reports, "The bills are due for a vote at Wednesday's session of the full House." Apparently, in New Hampshire, a committee's vote is in effect only a recommendation. According to a primer on legislative process posted on the state legislature's website, after a committee votes on a bill, "The bill is then placed on the House/Senate Calendar for a 'floor vote', where a Committee member presents the Committee's decision. Floor debate may follow, with legislators who oppose the Committee's decision speaking alternately with legislators who support the Committee. It is rare for the full Senate or House to overturn a Committee's decision. After debate, the full body votes on the Committee's decision." New Hampshire's HB 1457 and HB 1148 are two of the seven antievolution bills of 2012 so far, along with Alabama's HB 133, Indiana's SB 89 (now shelved), Missouri's HB 1227 and HB 1276, and Oklahoma's SB 1742.

Updated on February 16, 2012, by the addition of the fourth paragraph.

Credit-for-creationism scheme unconstitutional?

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:00:02 +0000

A leading authority on the law of religious liberty regards Alabama's House Bill 133 — which would, if enacted, "authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students" — as unconstitutional. Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia told WBHM (February 16, 2012) that although the bill attempts to ensure that the state would not be unconstitutionally supporting the teaching of religion, it is "oblivious to the question of whether academic credit is a form of support." But, he added, "awarding academic credit would seem to be a pretty significant incentive."

The sponsor of the bill, Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), is on record as saying that the point of the bill is to balance the presentation of evolution in the public schools. Laycock commented, "I think that should not be constitutional. Despite all the political rhetoric, there is essentially no scientific evidence for creationism. The only scientific debate is about the details and mechanisms of evolution. So a course in creationism is essentially promoting a religious belief, and the state is supposed to stay neutral on questions of religious belief and leave us free to decide those questions for ourselves."

Laycock argued, "the state should not be granting credit for instruction in religion, either from a believing perspective or from a non-believing perspective. The only state credit for religion courses should be objective study of what each of the great religions does or teaches." It would be problematic for schools to offer credit for released time religious instruction, he explained: "We don't want the government telling churches how to provide the religious instruction. ... There'd be an entanglement problem with the school trying to regulate these courses, trying to tell the churches what kind of religion course they can offer."

Transcript of Douglas Laycock's on-air interview with WBHM's Dan Carsen, February 16, 2012

LAYCOCK: It's better drafted than most such bills. It deals with all the forms of financial support and other kinds of indirect support, and says the school can't provide any of that. It's sort of oblivious on the question of whether academic credit is a form of support. It says release time doesn't work because kids can't get academic credit. That means families aren't going to do this on their own. So awarding academic credit would seem to be a pretty significant incentive. But the bill is written on the assumption that it's not. While it's got a lot of recitals in its preamble, it doesn't say anything to justify the assumption that academic credit is not an incentive.

CARSEN: The impression that I was given was that this had all been litigated already. But the fact that we're talking about a course for credit, that's not true then.

LAYCOCK: That is not true, no. It seems to me the risk here is that they're giving academic credit for something that's appropriate to a church but not appropriate to a school.

CARSEN: I interviewed the sponsor of the Alabama bill yesterday. He wants it to be a course in creation as a balance against evolution.

LAYCOCK: I think that should not be constitutional. Despite all the political rhetoric, there is essentially no scientific evidence for creationism. The only scientific debate is about the details and mechanisms of evolution. So a course in creationism is essentially promoting a religious belief, and the state is supposed to stay neutral on questions of religious belief and leave us free to decide those questions for ourselves.

CARSEN: And granting that credit, that would be stepping over the line of neutrality?

LAYCOCK: I think so. And obviously that's the central issue here. But I think the state should not be granting credit for instruction in religion, either from a believing perspective or from a non-believing perspective. The only state credit for religion courses should be objective study of what each of the great religions does or teaches.

CARSEN: I've heard the argument that basically a completely secular school day, from 8:00 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon, whatever that may be, that in itself is not neutral, as far as religion. It seems understandable to me. What do you think about that argument?

LAYCOCK: There's some force to that, but there are other solutions to that. This is certainly not going to help a Muslim student who has a prayer call five times a day. They've got to accommodate his needs some other way. They can have the release time program, and it can be as intensely religious as people want it to be without giving academic credit. And if the issue is that people who want religious instruction aren't sufficiently concerned to go get it unless they get academic credit, then it's not much of a problem, and they're really not that concerned. They can have religious student groups in the school that meet during the extracurricular activity period on school property; that's entirely permissible. There are plenty of things they can do that enable individual students or groups of students or the private sector to introduce religion into the school day without school sponsorship and while the school itself remains neutral on religious questions. But what they cannot have is the school giving religious instruction itself. And then this is a sort of in-between case: the school is going to give academic credit for religious instruction by a church or a religious organization. That seems to me to be on the non-neutral side of the line.

CARSEN: Doesn't this go to the issue of local control?

LAYCOCK: Well, local control is a slogan. School boards have local control over many things. They do not have local control to do unconstitutional things. The Constitution applies to all levels of government. Saying it's about local control doesn't tell you which side of that line it's on. It doesn't tell you whether it's really a local matter or really a constitutional matter.

CARSEN: Do the logistics of something like this concern you also?

LAYCOCK: There's an issue about what happens for the kids who don't attend. Is their school day going to continue undisrupted? It needs to, otherwise they're being pressured or leaned on to go participate. But what's really troubling about this to me is there's no quality control over these courses. We don't know if they're going to be the objective study of religion or if they're going to be Sunday School, but we can guess they're probably going to be Sunday School, and that seems to be what the sponsor wants.

CARSEN: In this case, definitely, yes.

LAYCOCK: I don't think the school wants to control that. It would very problematic if the school did control that, right? We don't want the government telling churches how to provide their religious instruction. The problem here is giving academic credit for something offered by a church that the state doesn't control, cannot control, and it may not be an academic course at all; that's the problem.

CARSEN: So there's a potential entanglement of teacher accreditation or school standards, and that could actually represent more government control over, say, a church.

LAYCOCK: There'd be an entanglement problem with the school trying to regulate these courses, trying to tell the churches what kind of religion course they can offer. That's the kind of problem that the court sometimes describes as entanglement, but it's really a problem of the state interfering inside the church, and that's generally unconstitutional. But here, if you don't interfere in that way, if you don't regulate what the church does with this course, then you wind up giving academic credit for something that is not academic at all, but is inherently religious.

CARSEN: In your career, have you come across other new bills similar to this one?

LAYCOCK: No. There's a steady stream of bills to try to get more religion in the public schools, but this is the first bill I've seen that does anything like this.

CARSEN: Professor, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it very much.

LAYCOCK: Okay.

Antievolution legislation in Alabama

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:26:14 +0000

A bill introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives would allow local boards of education to award credit for religious instruction — and its sponsor says that it is intended as a vehicle for teaching creationism. House Bill 133, introduced on February 7, 2012, by Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), and referred to the House Committee on Education Policy, would, if enacted, "authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students."

Such released time programs, writes (PDF) Anne Marie Lofaso in Religion in the Public Schools (2009, p. 64), are generally constitutionally permissible "as long as (1) there is no evidence that the public schools enforce attendance at the religious schools by punishing absentees from the released time programs with truancy sanctions; (2) the school authorities remain neutral about the program and do nothing other than release the students for the religious instruction upon the request of their parents; (3) the school authorities do not force or coerce any student to attend the religious instruction; and (4) the school authorities do not actually bring the religious instruction into the public school."

HB 133 seems to go further, however, by providing, "A student who participates in a released time religious instruction may earn elective course credit for participation as determined by the local board of education. ... The local board of education may adopt minimum standards for the curriculum and participation necessary to qualify for credit." The provision of elective course credit is in fact identified as the purpose of the bill, which includes as a legislative finding that "the absence of an ability to award such credits has essentially eliminated the ability of a school district to accommodate the desires of parents and students to participate in released time programs."

Discussing the bill with WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama (February 5, 2012), Galliher was "pretty clear on where he stands," telling the station, "They teach evolution in the textbooks, but they don't teach a creation theory," and "Creation has just as much right to be taught in the school system as evolution does and I think this is simply providing the vehicle to do that." In the 2011 legislative session, Galliher introduced the identical House Bill 568, which died in committee. According to WAFF, "The state board of education did not support the bill last year when it was introduced, citing the challenge it would create for working around critical instructional time."

There are already signs that the passage of HB 133 would encourage the teaching of creationism. The Gadsen Times (November 19, 2011) reported that a local religious group in Galliher's district was eager to participate in such a released time program, planning to offer four classes per day, five days per week. "The primary thrust of the school," explained a spokesperson, "is to inform young people there is [a] theory of creation besides evolution, and it's strictly based on Genesis 1 through 12."

SYNOPSIS: Existing law relating to courses of study in public schools specifies that it is the intent of the Legislature that, in addition to required courses, elective courses including wellness education be available to students as determined by the local board of education.

This bill would authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students.

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED AN ACT

Relating to courses of study in public schools; to provide legislative intent; and to authorize local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for purposes of satisfying certain curriculum requirements for high school students.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF ALABAMA:

Section 1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the Alabama Released Time Credit Act.

Section 2. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1) That the free exercise of religion is an inherent, fundamental, and inalienable right secured by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(2) That the free exercise of religion is important to the intellectual, moral, civic, and ethical development of students in Alabama, and that any such exercise must be conducted in a constitutionally appropriate manner.

(3) That the United States Supreme Court, in its decision, Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952), upheld the constitutionality of released time programs for religious instruction during the school day if the programs take place away from school grounds, school officials do not promote attendance at religious classes, and solicitation of students to attend is not done at the expense of public schools.

(4) That the United States Constitution and state law allow local school districts to offer religious released time education for the benefit of public school students.

(5) That the purpose of this act is to incorporate a constitutionally acceptable method of allowing school districts to award public high school students in the state elective credit for classes in religious instruction taken during the school day in released time programs, because the absence of an ability to award such credits has essentially eliminated the ability of a school district to accommodate the desires of parents and students to participate in released time programs.

Section 3. (a) Each local board of education in the state may adopt a policy that authorizes a high school student to be excused from school to attend a class in religious instruction conducted by a private entity if all of the following are satisfied:

(1) The parent or guardian of the student gives written consent.

(2) The sponsoring entity maintains attendance records and makes them available to the public school the student attends.

(3) Transportation to and from the place of instruction, including transportation for any student with disabilities, is the complete responsibility of the sponsoring entity, parent, or guardian.

(4) The sponsoring entity makes provisions for and assumes liability for the student who is excused.

(5) No public funds are expended and no public school personnel are involved in providing the religious instruction.

(b) A student who participates in a released time religious instruction may earn elective course credit for participation as determined by the local board of education. The credit awarded may not exceed one credit unit. The local board of education may adopt minimum standards for any program pursuant to this act including minimum standards for the curriculum and participation necessary to qualify for credit.

(d) No student may be released from a required core curriculum class to attend a religious instruction class.

(e) While in attendance in a released time religious instruction class pursuant to this section, a student is not considered to be absent from school.

Section 4. This act shall become effective immediately following its passage and approval by the Governor, or its otherwise becoming law.

Creationist bill in Indiana shelved

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:19:55 +0000

"A bill passed last month by the Indiana Senate that would have allowed schools to teach religious stories of creation along with the theory of evolution when discussing the origins of life in science class is dead," according to the Indianapolis Star's education blog (February 14, 2012). The bill in question is Senate Bill 89. As originally submitted, SB 89 provided, "The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation." On January 30, 2012, however, it was amended in the Senate to provide instead, "The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology."

The bill subsequently proceeded to the House of Representatives. But the Speaker of the House, Brian Bosma (R-District 88), was disinclined to let it continue further, as the Times of Munster (February 2, 2012) reported, as was the chair of the House Education Committee, Robert Behning (R-District 91), as the Associated Press (February 7, 2012) reported. Now, according to the Star's education blog, Bosma "moved the bill to the rules committee, a procedural step that all but assures it will not make it to a vote this year." The bill would have to be approved by its committee and by the full House by March 5, 2012, in order to be passed by the legislature. "I didn't disagree with the concept of the bill," Bosma said. "But I hesitate to micromanage local curricula. Secondarily, I didn't think it was prudent to buy a lawsuit the state could ill afford at this point."

SB 89 was widely criticized by newspapers around the state, including the Indianapolis Star (February 1, 2012), the Evanston Courier & Press (February 3, 2012), and the Terre Haute Tribune Star (February 10, 2012), which argued, "There is little doubt the target of the bill is evolution, whose staunchest political and religious opponents display little interest in the teaching of good science, which should be a disinterested, peer-reviewed, religion-neutral process." The Tribune Star's editorial also observed that there is a deeper problem: "In 2011, the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers discovered that less than 30 percent of a sample of public school instructors made students aware of the evidence for evolution. The reasons for this may be manifold, but when so few Americans become literate in even the rudiments of science, it's unlikely they'll gain the skills to distinguish it from pseudoscience."

Polling creationism in Britain

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:05:05 +0000

A poll reveals that more Christians in Britain oppose teaching creationism in the science classroom than support it. Asked "To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The Genesis story that God created the world and all the life forms in it in 6 days should not be taught in UK state-funded school science lessons," 17% of respondents strongly agreed, 21% tended to agree, 24% neither agreed nor disagreed, 17% tended to disagree, and 14% strongly disagreed, while 5% said that they didn't know and 2% preferred not to say.

Commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science UK, the poll (PDF) was conducted by Ipsos MORI between April 1 and April 7, 2011, on a face-to-face basis with 2107 adult respondents in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The full version of the questionnaire, including the question about teaching creationism in the science classroom, was administered only to the 1136 (54%) of respondents who said that they were recorded, or would have recorded themselves, as Christians in the national census in 2011.

The poll asked a broad range of questions about the beliefs, attitudes, and practices of Christians in Britain. In a press release, Richard Dawkins summarized the results: "Britain is a secular society, with secular, humane values. There is overwhelming support for these values, even among those who think of themselves as Christian. Just as importantly, there is also deep opposition to the state promoting religion in our society. When even Christians overwhelmingly oppose the intermingling of religion and state policy, it is clearly time for the government to stop 'doing God'."

The Trouble With Theistic Evolution

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:39:51 +0000

The current issue of The Philosopher's Magazine contains a lengthy interview with philosopher Elliott Sober, a prominent philosopher of biology. Most of the interview focuses on the problem of reconciling evolution and theism, with Sober serving up the standard talking points. For me the interview is a reminder of what I find most frustrating about theistic evolution. Too often the defender of reconciliation acts as though his job is done as soon as he has tossed off a logically possible scenario that includes both God and evolution.

The interview does not seem to be freely available online, so I will transcribe a few sections. The first person pronouns refer to the interviewer, James Garvey.

The interview starts off acceptably enough, with Sober discussing the threat of religious extremism both in society generally and in science education. But things go wrong when Sober is asked to discuss the various views people hold on this subject:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Tomorrow is Darwin Day

Matt Young — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:13:15 +0000

Tomorrow, February 12, is Darwin Day, and you can find lots of lectures and whatnot through next weekend at the website of the International Darwin Day Foundation. If you live near a university, you might also want to Google the words “Darwin Day” along with the name of your university, because the Foundation’s listing is apt to be incomplete. If you want to announce any events here, please do so in the comments section.

This [TIME PERIOD] in Intelligent Design - 10/02/12

Jack Scanlan — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Intelligent design news, commentary and discussion from the 17^th of December, 2011 to the 10^th of February, 2012.

Huh? Intelligent design, what’s that? Oh, oh, yes. Yes, you’re quite right. I’m sorry, I’ve been out of the loop a bit and I’d forgotten this little movement I like to keep an eye on from time to time. Well, it’s actually supposed to be a weekly thing, but… things have been crazy around here. Leave me alone, I’m a university student on holidays, I have no time to do anything.

Anyway, what has the intelligent design community been up to online since we last saw them? Not a huge amount, actually, although certainly more stuff than is feasibly possible to fit into one blog post. So, like normal, I’ll skim off the cream floating at the top of this ID think-tank and have a peer into the beaker I used to do it.

This time we’ll be looking at speciation, the glowing past and future of ID, ID as a default assumption in science, appeals to historical authority, and the Discovery Institute distancing themselves from a creationist bill in Indiana.

What's next for Indiana's creationism bill?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:41:50 +0000

Indiana's Senate Bill 89, passed by the Senate on January 31, 2012, is off to the House of Representatives, and speculations and recommendations about its fate are circulating. As amended by the Senate, the bill would allow local school districts to offer "instruction on various theories of origins of life" which "must include theories from multiple religions" — prompting the Times of Munster (January 31, 2012) to predict, "Hoosier public school students soon may be taught life was created by God, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, the human mind and/or Xenu, dictator of the Galactic Confederacy."

The Times of Munster subsequently reported (February 2, 2012) that the bill "probably will not be voted on by the Republican-controlled House" on the grounds that House Speaker Brian Bosma (R-District 88) "has not made a final determination on whether Senate Bill 89 will get a hearing and vote, but said he believes the General Assembly should not mandate what's taught in science classrooms." So far, the bill has not been assigned to a House committee; it would have to be approved by its committee and by the full House by March 5, 2012, in order to be passed by the legislature.

Newspapers around the state have been critical of the Senate's passage of the bill. The Indianapolis Star (February 1, 2012) described SB 89 as a "toxic mix of religion and science" and called on the state attorney general and the state superintendent of public instruction to speak out against it. The Evanston Courier & Press (February 3, 2012), insisted that "it is clear that those lawmakers attempting to push creationism into the public school biology class want it taught on equal footing with evolution, which is based on scientific research and evidence. Creationism brings no such scientific evidence to the science class."

Why was the bill, which originally would have allowed school districts to require instruction in creation science, amended? A blogger for the Village Voice (February 1, 2012), after interviewing state senator Vi Simpson (D-District 40), who introduced the amendment, explained that it "was a brilliant attempt to sabotage the bill. By adding in other religions (Islam, in Indiana!), her wording would probably make the bill completely unattractive to local school boards, who are under no obligation to follow its suggestion anyway." Simpson added, "My number one intention is to kill the bill or at least kill the effectiveness of it."

Evolution (partly) restored to NSB report

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:57:07 +0000

Almost half — 47% — of Americans surveyed in 2010 agreed that "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," and 38% agreed that "the universe began with a huge explosion." Those results are reported in Science and Engineering Indicators 2012 (PDF), a biennial report from the National Science Board. The figures are basically unchanged through the years for which data is provided (PDF), from 1985 for evolution and from 1988 for the Big Bang. The report also contains a brief discussion of the public controversies over evolution education.

Science Engineering Indicators 2010 deleted a section similarly describing the survey results about the American public's beliefs about evolution and the Big Bang, a decision which drew criticism at the time, including from veteran science literacy researcher Jon Miller, who originally devised the question about evolution, and from NCSE's Joshua Rosenau, who told Science (April 9, 2010; subscription required), "Discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice ... It downplays the controversy."

The National Science Board later acknowledged to Science (July 22, 2011; subscription required) that deleting the text was a mistake. But although the new report discusses the survey data, those questions are excluded from its measure of science literacy. Eleven factual questions, covering a variety of topics in addition to evolution and the Big Bang, were used to assess science literacy in previous versions of Science Engineering Indicators; nine questions, excluding evolution and the Big Bang, are used in the 2010 and 2012 versions.

In 2010, the then chair of the Science and Engineering Indicators committee told Science that the questions were excluded as "flawed indicators because the responses conflated knowledge and beliefs." The 2012 report, however, argues that they were excluded as unnecessary: "the social science foundation for using either 11 items or 9 items together in one scale is well-supported," adding, "Whether or not these two questions are included in a scale of factual science knowledge has little bearing on the summary portrait of Americans' knowledge that the scale portrays."

Indiana creationism bill passes the Senate

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:33:25 +0000

On January 31, 2012, the Indiana Senate voted 28-22 in favor of Senate Bill 89. As originally submitted, SB 89 provided, "The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation." On January 30, 2012, however, it was amended in the Senate to provide instead, "The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology."

The Senate spent less than twenty minutes considering the bill, with its sponsor Dennis Kruse (R-District 14) defending it. Kruse acknowledged that the bill would be constitutionally problematic but, he told the education blogger at the Indianapolis Star (January 31, 2012), "This is a different Supreme Court," adding, "This Supreme Court could rule differently." The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana's legal director Ken Falk was previously quoted in a story from the Associated Press (January 26, 2012) as saying that the bill is clearly unconstitutional and invites lawsuits: moreover, he added, "when lawmakers propose legislation they clearly know will end up in the courts, it wastes time and resources."

Speaking against the bill in the Senate were Tim Skinner (D-District 38), who expressed concern not only about the bill's constitutionality but also about the lack of guidance it provides for local school teachers and districts and the logistics of defending them against lawsuits, and Karen Tallian (D-District 4), who was impassioned in her opposition against the bill: the Times of Munster (January 31, 2012) quoted her as saying, "In my mind, this violates everything we stand for as Americans ... The very fact that we're talking about this makes me heartsick." Tallian also mentioned the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover, arguing that the bill invites local districts in Indiana to follow disastrously in the steps of the Dover Area School Board.

Skinner's and Tallian's arguments echoed the concerns of John Staver of Purdue University, who previously testified against the bill in committee. He told the Purdue Exponent (January 31, 2012), "If this does become law, they are going to face legal problems and, given the legal precedents, it is very likely to lose ... And then they're going to have bills to pay and schools are struggling enough with bills to pay without this happening." NCSE's Eric Meikle added, "I have trouble understanding why people think it's necessary ... If they want classes on philosophy or comparative religion, they can do that. There’s nothing that stops classes about religion, just don’t promote religion."

The bill now proceeds to the Indiana House of Representatives, where its sponsors are Jeff Thompson (R-District 28) and Eric Turner (R-District 32), who is also the house speaker pro tem. Thompson, interestingly, is also a cosponsor, along with Cindy Noe (R-District 87), of House Bill 1140, which would require teachers to discuss "commonly held competing views" on topics "that cannot be verified by scientific empirical evidence." While evolution is not mentioned in the bill, Noe cohosted a controversial dinner at the Creation Evidence Expo in Indianapolis in 2009, according to the Fort Wayne Reader (August 23, 2010). In any case, HB 1140 seems to have died in committee.

Alfred Russel Wallace was a Hyper-Evolutionist, not an Intelligent Design Creationist

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:00:22 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I participated in an online debate at Evolution News & Views with Center for Science & Culture fellow Michael Flannery on the question: “If he were alive today, would evolutionary theory’s co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, be an intelligent design advocate?” The following is my opening statement in the debate. A link to Flannery’s reply can be found near the end of this page.

The double dangerous game of Whiggish What-if? history is on the table in this debate that inexorably invokes hindsight bias, along the lines of “Was Thomas Jefferson a racist because he had slaves?” Adjudicating historical belief and behavior with modern judicial scales is a fool’s errand that carries but one virtue—enlightenment of the past for correcting current misunderstandings. Thus I shall endeavor to enlighten modern thinkers on the perils of misjudging Alfred Russel Wallace as an Intelligent Design creationist, and at the same time reveal the fundamental flaw in both his evolutionary theory and that of this latest incarnation of creationism.

Wallace’s scientific heresy was first delivered in the April, 1869 issue of The Quarterly Review, in which he outlined what he saw as the failure of natural selection to explain the enlarged human brain (compared to apes), as well as the organs of speech, the hand, and the external form of the body:

In the brain of the lowest savages and, as far as we know, of the prehistoric races, we have an organ…little inferior in size and complexity to that of the highest types…. But the mental requirements of the lowest savages, such as the Australians or the Andaman Islanders, are very little above those of many animals. How then was an organ developed far beyond the needs of its possessor? Natural Selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one but very little inferior to that of the average members of our learned societies.

(Please note the language that, were we to judge the man solely by his descriptors for indigenous peoples, would lead us to label Wallace a racist even though he was in his own time what we would today call a progressive liberal.)

Since natural selection was the only law of nature Wallace knew of to explain the development of these structures, and since he determined that it could not adequately do so, he concluded that “an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws, so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature.”

Natural selection is not prescient—it does not select for needs in the future. Nature did not know we would one day need a big brain in order to contemplate the heavens or compute complex mathematical problems; she merely selected amongst our ancestors those who were best able to survive and leave behind offspring. But since we are capable of such sublime and lofty mental functions, Wallace deduced, clearly natural selection could not have been the originator of a brain big enough to handle them. Thus the need to invoke an “Overruling Intelligence” for this apparent gap in the theory.

Why did Wallace retreat from his own theory of natural selection when it came to the human mind? The answer, in a word, is hyper-selectionism (or adaptationism), in which the current adaptive purpose of a structure or function must be explained by natural selection applied to the past. Birds presently use wings to fly, so if we cannot conceive of how natural selection could incrementally select for fractional wings that were fully functional at each partial stage (called “the problem of incipient stages”) then some other force must have been at work. Darwin answered this criticism by demonstrating how present structures serve a purpose different from the one for which they were originally selected. Partial wings, for example, were not poorly designed flying structures but well designed thermoregulators. Stephen Jay Gould calls this process “exaptation” (ex-adaptation) and uses the Panda’s thumb as his type specimen: it is not a poorly designed thumb but a radial sesamoid (wrist) bone modified by natural selection for stripping leaves off bamboo shoots.

Wallace’s hyperselectionism and adaptationism were outlined more formally in an 1870 paper, “The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man,” in which he admitted up front the danger of proffering a force that is beyond those known to science: “I must confess that this theory has the disadvantage of requiring the intervention of some distinct individual intelligence…. It therefore implies that the great laws which govern the material universe were insufficient for this production, unless we consider…that the controlling action of such higher intelligences is a necessary part of those laws….”

After an extensive analysis of brain size differences between humans and non-human primates, Wallace then considers such abstractions as law, government, science, and even such games as chess (a favorite pastime of his), noting that “savages” lack all such advances. Even more, “Any considerable development of these would, in fact, be useless or even hurtful to him, since they would to some extent interfere with the supremacy of those perceptive and animal faculties on which his very existence often depends, in the severe struggle he has to carry on against nature and his fellow-man. Yet the rudiments of all these powers and feelings undoubtedly exist in him, since one or other of them frequently manifest themselves in exceptional cases, or when some special circumstances call them forth.”

Therefore, he concludes, “the general, moral, and intellectual development of the savage is not less removed from that of civilised man than has been shown to be the case in the one department of mathematics; and from the fact that all the moral and intellectual faculties do occasionally manifest themselves, we may fairly conclude that they are always latent, and that the large brain of the savage man is much beyond his actual requirements in the savage state.” Thus, “A brain one-half larger than that of the gorilla would, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the savage; and we must therefore admit that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been solely developed by any of those laws of evolution…. The brain of prehistoric and of savage man seems to me to prove the existence of some power distinct from that which has guided the development of the lower animals through their ever-varying forms of being.”

The middle sections of this lengthy paper review additional human features that Wallace could not conceive of being evolved by natural selection: the distribution of body hair, naked skin, feet and hands, the voice box and speech, the ability to sing, artistic notions of form, color, and composition, mathematical reasoning and geometrical spatial abilities, morality and ethical systems, and especially such concepts as space and time, eternity and infinity. “How were all or any of these faculties first developed, when they could have been of no possible use to man in his early stages of barbarism? How could natural selection, or survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, at all favour the development of mental powers so entirely removed from the material necessities of savage men, and which even now, with our comparatively high civilisation, are, in their farthest developments, in advance of the age, and appear to have relation rather to the future of the race than to its actual status?”

Modern Intelligent Design creationists generally (with few exceptions) believe that the designer is God. Nowhere in this paper does Wallace invoke God as the overarching intelligence. In a footnote in the second edition of the volume in which this paper was published, in fact, Wallace upbraids those who accused him of such speculations:

Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in this part of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphilosophically appealing to “first causes” in order to get over a difficulty—of believing that “our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selection;” and that, in point of fact, “man is God’s domestic animal.” … Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining causes, I have used the words “some other power”—“some intelligent power”—“a superior intelligence”—“a controlling intelligence,” and only in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of the will or power of “one Supreme Intelligence.” These are the only expressions I have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were purposely chosen to show that I reject the hypothesis of “first causes” for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that the action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using such terms I wished to show plainly that I contemplated the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man’s structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws.

Clearly Wallace’s heresy had nothing to do with God or any other supernatural force, as these “natural and universal laws” could be fully incorporated into the type of empirical science he practiced. It was not spiritualism, but scientism at work in Wallace’s world-view: “These speculations are usually held to be far beyond the bounds of science; but they appear to me to be more legitimate deductions from the facts of science than those which consist in reducing the whole universe…to matter conceived and defined so as to be philosophically inconceivable.”

In Wallace’s science there is no supernatural. There is only the natural and unexplained phenomenon yet to be incorporated into the natural sciences. That he left no room in his evolutionary theory for exaptations of early structures for later use is no reflection on his ambitions and abilities as a scientist. It was, in fact, one of Wallace’s career goals to be the scientist who brought more of the apparent supernatural into the realm of the natural, and the remainder of his life was devoted to fleshing out the details of a scientism that encompassed so many different issues and controversies that made him a heretic-scientist.

If modern Intelligent Design theorists restricted their visage to only natural causes they would, perchance, be taken more seriously by the scientific community, who at present (myself included) sees this movement as nothing more than another species of the genus Homo creationopithicus.

Read Flannery’s reply to my opening statement and tune into Skepticblog in a couple weeks for my response to him.

Fordham on evolution in state science standards

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:32:02 +0000

The State of State Science Standards 2012 (PDF), published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is a new report offering a survey and evaluation of the state science standards in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia. Among the major problems across the country: "An Undermining of Evolution."

"While many states are handling evolution better today than in the past, anti-evolution pressures continue to threaten state science standards," the Fordham reviewers observe, citing in particular the "infamous Science Education Act" enacted in Louisiana in 2008. "Though the act is a free-standing statute with no direct link to the Pelican State's academic standards, it does damage by allowing for the introduction of creationist teaching supplements — thereby affecting classroom instruction without explicitly altering the state's standards."

State science standards failed to treat evolution adequately in a number of ways, according to the report — by including evolution only in courses that are electives or in guidelines not subject to state assessment, as in Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland; by suggesting that evolution is "somehow not quite as 'scientific' as other concepts," as in Colorado, Missouri, Montana, and West Virginia; or by unnecessarily delaying evolution until high school, as in Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Nebraska.

Especially worrisome was the absence of human evolution from the vast majority of the state standards, the Fordham reviewers explained. "This marks a subtle but important victory for creationists: Even states with thorough and appropriate coverage of evolution (e.g., Massachusetts, Utah, and Washington) shy away from linking the controversial term with ourselves. Only four states — Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Rhode Island — openly embrace human evolution in their current science standards."

Fordham's reviewers were Lawrence S. Lerner, Ursula Goodenough, John Lynch, Martha Schwartz, and Richard Schwartz. The State of State Science Standards 2012 also contains a review of the Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress by Paul R. Gross and a foreword by Chester E. Finn Jr. and Kathleen Porter-Magee.

Indiana creationist bill passes committee

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:17:54 +0000

Indiana's Senate Bill 89, which if enacted would allow local school districts to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science," was passed by the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development on January 25, 2012. The vote was 8-2, with the bill's sponsor and committee chair Dennis Kruse (R-District 14), Carlin Yoder (R-District 12), Jim Banks (R-District 17), Jim Buck (R-District 17), Luke Kenley (R-District 20), Jean Leising (R-District 42), Scott Schneider (R-District 30), and Frank Mrvan Jr. (D-District 1) voting for and Earline S. Rogers (D-District 3) and Tim Skinner (D-District 38) voting against the bill.

Testimony against the bill stressed the unconstitutionality of teaching creation science, established by the Supreme Court in 1987. Among those testifying against the bill were John Staver, professor of chemistry and science education at Purdue University; Chuck Little, executive director of the Indiana Urban Schools Association; David Sklar, the Director of Government Relations for the Jewish Community Relations Council; the Reverend Charles Allen, a chaplain for Grace Unlimited, a campus ministry in the Indianapolis area; Nancy Papas of the Indiana Science Teachers Association; and Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director of the Indiana Center for Inquiry.

Antievolution bills: Bad for your health?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:28:53 +0000

In a column for the Concord Monitor (January 22, 2012), Leslie Brunetta criticized the latest spate of proposed antievolution measures, writing, "these bills are bad for my health and the health of each of the 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with cancer every year." She explains, "Although most such bills die in committee, they legitimize the idea that the theory of evolution is just an opinion. It is actually a robust explanation for the diversity of life on earth, supported by thousands of observations and experiments, used to make testable predictions about nature — which includes our bodies."

After reviewing how evolutionary theory helps to guide cancer research, Brunetta observed, "Meanwhile, creationists, 'intelligent design' advocates, and other 'challengers' of evolution theory propose no research program," and concluded, "If you're looking for a cure for your cancer, don't look to evolution-deniers for hope. As for me, I give thanks to Darwin and the researchers who have stood on his shoulders." Brunetta is the author, with Catherine L. Craig, of Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating (Yale University Press, 2010).

Mounting opposition to Indiana's creationist bill

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:43:32 +0000

Opposition to Indiana's Senate Bill 89, which if enacted would allow local school districts to "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science," is mounting — and coming, moreover, from a variety of perspectives.

In a letter dated January 18, 2012, the Center for Inquiry — which seeks to "foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values" — wrote (PDF) to the sponsor of SB 89, Dennis Kruse (R-District 14) to request that he withdraw the bill. The CFI's letter explained, "SB 89 would allow school boards and other authorized educational administrators in Indiana to require that religious belief be taught in public school classrooms as valid and true. This would violate both the spirit and letter of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution," adding, "SB 89 would also blatantly contradict the Supreme Court's ruling in the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching creationism as science in public schools is unconstitutional." In addition to Ron Lindsay and Michael DeDora of the CFI national office, the letter was signed by Reba Boyd Wooden, the executive director of CFI Indiana.

In a column for the Indianapolis Star (January 20, 2012), James McGrath offered to leave it to scientists to explain that "creation science" is anything but scientific and to legal experts to explain that the provisions of SB 89 are unconstitutional. "But as a professor who teaches biblical studies," he wrote, "I want to get the word out that 'creation science' or young-earth creationism is problematic for another reason: It involves poor, and at times deceitful, biblical interpretation." He recommended, "Instead of listening to charlatans propounding pseudoscience of their own invention that is neither biblical nor scientific, I would like to encourage people of faith in Indiana to listen to people who share their faith and who also have expertise in biology." McGrath is Associate Professor of Religion and Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University.

And Jacob Homan, in a column for the Munster, Indiana, Times (January 23, 2012), wrote, "Ratification of this bill would be both an embarrassment to Indiana and do a tremendous disservice to students across the state," explaining, "It would be an embarrassment because the theory of evolution maintains a very high degree of confidence among the scientific community and because creationism is not a science." Noting that various religious leaders and organizations have denounced the teaching of creationism, Homan called on the religious community to speak out against the bill: "Religious leaders also share the responsibility to look out for the best interest of public school students, and SB89 is a clear deviation from that responsibility that merits response." Homan, who hails from Whiting, Indiana, and earned his undergraduate degree at Purdue University, is a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago.

SB 89 is scheduled for a committee hearing on January 25, 2012. Its sponsor Dennis Kruse told the Indianapolis Star (January 22, 2012), "I believe in creationism ... Just because there are constitutional concerns doesn't mean you don't try to get something done you believe in."

The Beacon sheds light on HB 1227

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:48:17 +0000

The St. Louis Beacon (January 19, 2012) shed light on Missouri's House Bill 1227, which if enacted would require "intelligent design" to be taught alongside evolution in the state's public schools. The sponsor of the bill, Rick Brattin (R-District 124), told the Beacon, "We're trying to say intelligent design is a very viable theory, much like evolution." Both he and his fellow sponsor Sue Allen (R-District 92) stressed that in their view evolution was just a theory.

But Charles Granger, a professor of biology of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, replied, "I don't know of any practicing biologist who has actually studied evolution who believes that evolution is not the best explanation ... I don't think anybody argues against the general idea. What they do argue about is mechanisms, about how it can happen faster or slower. But as far as the general principles, I don't know of anybody who has published anything negative in a peer-reviewed journal."

As for Brattin and Allen's contention that evolution is just a theory and therefore ought to be open to challenge in the classroom, NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch explained that as scientists use the word, "a theory is not a hunch or conjecture. It is a systematic explanation." He added, "In many ways, theories are more important than facts. Facts are isolated. If you want to make sense of the natural world, you need to have systematic explanations."

HB 911 and HB 1722, ancestors of HB 1227, died in 2004, and Allen acknowledged that HB 1227 is not likely to be passed. Asked why such bills are introduced, Granger speculated, "They can pull out this bill and show it to their constituents and say see, my name is on this. I tried." Unmentioned in the Beacon's article was Missouri's House Bill 1276, a version of the "academic freedom" antievolution bill, of which Brattin and Allen are also sponsors.

Oklahoma bill attacks evolution and climate change

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:22:53 +0000

Senate Bill 1742 (document), prefiled in the Oklahoma Senate, is apparently the sixth antievolution bill of 2012, following on the heels of two bills in New Hampshire, two bills in Missouri, and one bill in Indiana. The bill would, if enacted, require the state board of education to assist teachers and administrators in promoting "critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning" upon request of the local school district. The bill also provides that teachers "may use supplemental textbooks and instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner."

SB 1742 is evidently modeled in part on the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, passed and enacted in 2008 as Louisiana Revised Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1; indeed, the bill itself declares, "This act is modeled on a Louisiana law which has not been invalidated by the highest court of the State of Louisiana or a federal district court," adding, "Legal challenges to academic freedom bills have historically alleged that such bills are intended to allow the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. This bill does not propose that schools teach creationism or intelligent design, rather, it is the intent to foster an environment of critical thinking in schools including a scientific critique of the theory of evolution."

The sole sponsor of SB 1742 is Josh Brecheen (R-District 6). In 2011, Brecheen introduced Senate Bill 554, which combined a different version of the "academic freedom language" — referring to "the scientific strengths [and] scientific weaknesses of controversial topics ... [which] include but are not limited to biological origins of life and biological evolution" — with a directive for the state board of education to adopt "standards and curricula" that echo the flawed portions of the state science standards adopted in Texas in 2009 with respect to the nature of science and evolution. SB 554 apparently died in committee on February 28, 2011, when a deadline for senate bills to be reported from committee passed.

Before Brecheen filed SB 554, he announced his intention to file antievolution legislation in a column in the Durant Daily Democrat (December 19, 2010): "Renowned scientists now asserting that evolution is laden with errors are being ignored. ... Using your tax dollars to teach the unknown, without disclosing the entire scientific findings[,] is incomplete and unacceptable." In a subsequent column in the newspaper (December 24, 2010), he indicated that his intention was to have creationism presented as scientifically credible, writing, "I have introduced legislation requiring every publically funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution using the known science, even that which conflicts with Darwin's religion."

Oklahomans concerned about SB 1742 are urged to get in touch with Eric Meikle at NCSE and the grassroots organization Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education.

SENATE BILL 1742 By: Brecheen

AS INTRODUCED

An Act relating to school curriculum; creating the Oklahoma Science Education Act; providing short title; providing legislative intent; providing for the assistance of teachers in teaching scientific curriculum; promoting critical thinking; allowing for open discussion of scientific theories; directing teachers to teach certain material; allowing supplemental material to be taught; prohibiting the promotion of a particular belief system; directing the State Board of Education to adopt rules; providing for codification; providing for noncodification; providing an effective date; and declaring an emergency.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA:

SECTION 1. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 11-103.12 of Title 70, unless there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:

This act shall be known and may be cited as the "Oklahoma Science Education Act".

SECTION 2. NEW LAW A new section of law not to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes reads as follows:.

Recognizing the importance of critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion in education it is the intent of the Legislature to foster an environment in public schools where such learning occurs. This act is modeled on a Louisiana law which has not been invalidated by the highest court of the State of Louisiana or a federal district court. Legal challenges to academic freedom bills have historically alleged that such bills are intended to allow the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. This bill does not propose that schools teach creationism or intelligent design, rather, it is the intent to foster an environment of critical thinking in schools including a scientific critique of the theory of evolution.

SECTION 3. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 11-103.13 of Title 70, unless there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:

A. The State Board of Education, upon the request of a school district board of education, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and school administrators in creating an environment within the public school system that promotes critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning. Assistance shall include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied, including those enumerated in this subsection.

B. A teacher shall teach the material presented in the standard science textbook and may use supplemental textbooks and instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.

C. This act shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine or set of religious beliefs.

D. The State Board of Education shall adopt rules to implement the provisions of this act.

SECTION 4. This act shall become effective July 1, 2012.

SECTION 5. It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.

The culmination of the climate change launch

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:03:00 +0000

The week of launching NCSE's new climate change initiative reaches its climax. For Friday, January 20, there are no new press releases, videos, or book excerpts. New coverage in the press of the initiative includes KQED's Climate Watch blog (January 17, 2012). And the launch of the initiative prompts The Takeaway (January 18, 2012) to interview Susan Buhr about the need to defend and support climate education. Plus Eugenie C. Scott is interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As it Happens (January 18, 2012, beginning at about 10:00) and NPR's Science Friday (January 20, 2012).

Yet more from the climate change launch

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:14:19 +0000

Yet more information, resources, and coverage regarding NCSE's new initiative aimed at defending the teaching of climate change. For Thursday, January 19, there is a sample chapter (PDF) from Shawn Lawrence Otto's Fool Me Twice, and a two-part video (part one, part two) on climate change misconceptions by Peter Gleick. New coverage in the press includes Chris Mooney at the DeSmog blog (January 17, 2012), Lynne Peeples at the Huffington Post (January 18, 2012), Think Progress (January 18, 2012), and New Scientist (January 19, 2012). Plus Eugenie C. Scott discusses the initiative with Steve Mirsky for Scientific American's podcast (January 16, 2012).

More from the launch

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:07:49 +0000

More information, resources, and coverage regarding NCSE's new initiative aimed at defending the teaching of climate change. For Wednesday, January 18, there is a press release about the addition of Mark McCaffrey to NCSE's staff, a sample chapter (PDF) from L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen's Climate Capitalism, and a video interview of Eugenie C. Scott. New coverage in the press of the initiative includes Erica Gies's blog at Forbes (January 17, 2012), MSNBC's Cosmic Log (January 17, 2012), and John Farrell's blog at Forbes (January 18, 2012). Plus Eugenie C. Scott was the guest on Chris Mooney's Point of Inquiry podcast for January 16, 2012.

The launch continues

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:42:50 +0000

The launch of NCSE's new initiative aimed at defending the teaching of climate change continues. For Tuesday, January 17, there is a press release about the addition of the climate scientist Peter Gleick to NCSE's board of directors, a sample chapter (PDF) from Robert Henson's The Rough Guide to Climate Change, and a video interview of Peter Gleick. (UPDATE: Dr. Gleick will not be joining the NCSE board. See Source of Heartland leak steps forward.)New coverage in the press of the initiative includes Nature (January 16, 2012), Ars Technica (January 16, 2012), Science Insider (January 17, 2012), the Houston Chronicle's science blog (January 17, 2012), and The New York Times's Green blog (January 17, 2012).

NCSE's climate change initiative launched

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:19:45 +0000

NCSE is proud to announce the launch of its new initiative aimed at defending the teaching of climate change. Like evolution, climate change is accepted by the scientific community but controversial among the public. As a result, educators trying to teach climate change, like their counterparts trying to teach evolution, are often likewise pressured to compromise the scientific and pedagogical integrity of their instruction. But there was no NCSE for climate — no organization, that is, specializing in providing advice and support to those facing challenges to climate change education.

With the launching of the initiative, NCSE itself becomes that organization. As NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott explained in a January 16, 2012, press release, "We consider climate change a critical issue in our own mission to protect the integrity of science education." She added, "Climate affects everyone, and the decisions we make today will affect generations to come. We need to teach kids now about the realities of global warming and climate change, so that they're prepared to make informed, intelligent decisions in the future."

The response from the scientific and education communities has been enthusiastic. Alan I. Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, commented, "AAAS has long admired the NCSE's efforts to protect the integrity of science. We are delighted to see the Center expand its activities to ensure that climate science is appropriately taught in our nation's schools." And Francis Eberle, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, added, "We applaud the NCSE for its efforts to promote the teaching of climate change in our nation's classrooms."

Included in the climate change initiative is a new area of NCSE's website devoted to climate change education, with sections on "Climate Change 101," "Teaching about Climate Change," "Climate Change Denial," and "Taking Action." During the week of January 16, 2012, NCSE will emphasize various aspects of the new initiative through a series of stories on its website, excerpts from recent books on climate change and controversies surrounding climate change, and videos on its YouTube channel — so stay tuned!

For Monday, January 16, there is a press release about the initiative and a statement describing the initiative's mission, a sample chapter (PDF) from Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's Merchants of Doubt, and a video: "NCSE tackles global warming". Coverage in the press of the initiative so far includes the Guardian (January 13, 2012) and the Los Angeles Times (January 16, 2012). Additionally, NCSE's Scott discusses the climate change initiative with the Lab Out Loud podcast (January 16, 2012).

Darwin Day approaches

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:01:12 +0000

It's time to dust off your Darwin costume again: less than a month remains before Darwin Day 2012! Colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country — and the world — are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or around February 12, in honor of the life and work of Charles Darwin. These events provide a marvelous opportunity not only to celebrate Darwin's birthday but also to engage in public outreach about science, evolution, and the importance of evolution education — which is especially needed with assaults on evolution education currently ongoing in Indiana, Missouri, and New Hampshire. NCSE encourages its members and friends to attend, participate in, and even organize Darwin Day events in their own communities. To find a local event, check the websites of local universities and museums and the registry of Darwin Day events maintained by the Darwin Day Celebration website. (And don't forget to register your own event with the Darwin Day Celebration website!)

And with Darwin Day comes the return of Evolution Weekend! Hundreds of congregations all over the country and around the world are taking part in Evolution Weekend, February 10-12, 2012, by presenting sermons and discussion groups on the compatibility of faith and science. Michael Zimmerman, the initiator of the project, writes, "Evolution Weekend is an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science. One important goal is to elevate the quality of the discussion on this critical topic — to move beyond sound bites. A second critical goal is to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith. Finally, as with The Clergy Letter itself, Evolution Weekend makes it clear that those claiming that people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy." At last count, 437 congregations in forty-eight states (and ten foreign countries) were scheduled to hold Evolution Weekend events.

Update from Missouri

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:35:13 +0000

The chief sponsor of Missouri's House Bill 1227, which if enacted would require "intelligent design" to be taught alongside evolution, offered a revealing explanation to the Kansas City Star (January 14, 2012). Rick Brattin (R-District 124) told the newspaper that his bill was not about religion. But he was also quoted as saying, "I keep pointing to a Gallup poll that shows 90 percent of Americans believe in a higher power. ... And yet our schools only teach that we emerged from primordial ooze. I think students should get both sides of the issue and get to come to their own conclusions."

Defending his bill, Brattin said, "The jury is still out on evolution." NCSE's Joshua Rosenau countered, "The science of evolution is not in dispute," and Francis Eberle, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, agreed, adding, "There is no evidence to support intelligent design." Rosenau explained that the "intelligent design" movement emerged in order to circumvent the 1987 Supreme Court ruling that teaching creationism in the public schools is unconstitutional — but failed in its first attempt to do so in the 2005 case Kitzmiller v. Dover.

Brattin, nevertheless, was undaunted; the Star reported that "he will discuss his legislation with Republican House leadership this week with the hope of getting a committee hearing scheduled. He remains optimistic about the bill’s chances." Previous versions of the bill introduced in 2004 — HB 911 and HB 1722 — died when the legislative session ended. HB 911 was drafted by a group calling itself Missourians for Excellence in Science Education, headed by Joe White, a member of the Missouri Association for Creation, according to the St. Louis Dispatch (March 4, 2004).

NCSE files amicus in Freshwater case

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:59:45 +0000

By providing a friend of the court brief (PDF) to Ohio's Fifth District Court of Appeals on January 10, 2012, NCSE is supporting a local school district that fired a middle school science teacher over his inappropriate religious activity in the classroom — including teaching creationism. NCSE's brief argues that the teacher's materials and methods concerning evolution "have no basis in science and serve no pedagogical purpose." The case is John Freshwater v. Mount Vernon City School District Board of Education; NCSE's amicus curiae brief was prepared pro bono by Richard Mancino, Samuel M. Leaf, and Anthony Juzaitis of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Christopher S. Williams, Colleen M. O'Neil, and Jeffrey J. Lauderdale of Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP.

In 2008, a local family accused Freshwater of engaging in inappropriate religious activity and sued Freshwater and the district. The Mount Vernon City School Board then voted to begin proceedings to terminate his employment. After thorough administrative hearings that proceeded over two years and involved more than eighty witnesses, the referee presiding over the hearings issued his recommendation that the board terminate Freshwater's employment with the district, and the board voted to do so in January 2011. Freshwater challenged his termination in the Knox County Court of Common Pleas in February 2011, but the court found "there is clear and convincing evidence to support the Board of Education's termination of Freshwater's contract(s) for good and just cause."

Freshwater then appealed the court's decision to the Fifth District Court of Appeals. With respect to his teaching of creationism, his appeal brief argued, "Freshwater sought to encourage his students to differentiate between facts and theories, and to identify and discuss instances where textbook statements were subject to intellectual and scientific debate," claimed, "his encouraging students to think critically about scientific theories ... cannot be rendered illegal based solely on the presumption that Freshwater's personal beliefs happen to align with one of the competing theories considered," and accused the board's actions of constituting "an outright hostility to religion that ... violates the Establishment Clause."

NCSE's brief addresses "[w]hether there is any pedagogical or scientific merit in John Freshwater's teaching of 'alternative theories' to evolution, including theories that are 'consistent' [as Freshwater's appeal brief described them] with Christian religious beliefs, and whether there is pedagogical or scientific merit in his specific approach to 'encouraging students to think critically' about evolution" and argues that Freshwater's "materials and methods serve no legitimate pedagogical purpose in a public school science class, are scientifically unsound, and serve only impermissibly to advance a sectarian purpose, namely to teach creationism in its traditional version of creation science or its modern incarnation of intelligent design."

A second antievolution bill in Missouri

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:15:27 +0000

House Bill 1276, introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives on January 11, 2012, and not yet referred to a committee, is apparently the fifth antievolution bill of 2012 — and the second in Missouri. The bill would, if enacted, call on state and local education administrators to "endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution" and to "endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies." "Toward this end," the bill continues, "teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution."

Andrew Koenig (R-District 88) is the main sponsor of HB 1276; its cosponsors are Rick Brattin (R-District 124), Charlie Davis (R-District 128), Todd Richardson (R-District 154), Sue Allen (R-District 92), Kurt Bahr (District 19), Brent Lasater (R-District 53), Darrell Pollock (R-District 146), Doug Funderburk (R-District 12), Bill Reiboldt (R-District 130), Bill Lant (R-District 131), Casey Guernsey (R-District 3), Dwight Scharnhorst (R-District 93), and Kathie Conway (R-District 14). The text of HB 1276 is identical to the text of HB 195 in 2011; Koenig, Davis, Bahr, Pollock, Funderburk, Reiboldt, Scharnhorst, and Conway were among its sponsors. HB 195 died in the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee without receiving a hearing. In the present legislative session, Brattin, Davis, Koenig, Allen, and Pollock are also among the sponsors of HB 1227, which if enacted would require "the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design" in both public elementary and secondary schools and introductory science courses in public institutions of higher education in Missouri.

"Intelligent design" bill in Missouri

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:37:49 +0000

House Bill 1227, introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives on January 10, 2012, would, if enacted, require "the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design," according to the legislature's summary of the bill. The equal treatment provision would apply to both public elementary and secondary schools and to "any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education" in Missouri.

HB 1227's text is about 3000 words long, beginning with a declaration that the bill is to be known as the Missouri Standard Science Act, followed by a defectively alphabetized glossary providing idiosyncratic definitions of "analogous naturalistic processes," "biological evolution," "biological intelligent design," "destiny," "empirical data," "equal treatment," "hypothesis," "origin," "scientific theory," "scientific law," and "standard science."

Among the substantive provisions of the bill, applying both to public elementary and secondary schools and to introductory science courses in public institutions of higher education: "If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught."

For public elementary and secondary schools, HB 1227 also provides, "If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a textbook, the textbook shall give equal treatment to biological evolution and biological intelligent design." After the bill is enacted, new textbooks purchased for the public schools will have to conform to the equal treatment requirement. A committee will develop supplementary material on "intelligent design" for optional interim use.

HB 1227 is apparently a descendent of HB 911 in 2004, which was also dubbed the Missouri Standard Science Act, began with a glossary of the same eleven terms (and also "extrapolated radiometric data"), would have required equal treatment of "intelligent design" in the public elementary and secondary schools (although not in public higher education), and would have required textbooks to conform to the equal treatment requirement.

HB 911 was widely criticized, including by the Science Teachers of Missouri. A sequel bill, HB 1722, also introduced in 2004, contained the same language as HB 911, but omitted provisions that would have required the text of the bill to be posted in high school science classrooms and that would have enabled the firing of teachers and administrators who failed to comply with the law. Both bills died when the legislative session ended.

Rick Brattin (R-District 124) is the main sponsor of HB 1227; its cosponsors are John McCaherty (R-District 90), Charlie Davis (R-District 128), Andrew Koenig (R-District 88), Sue Allen (R-District 92), and Darrell Pollock (R-District 146); Davis, Koenig, and Pollock also cosponsored the antievolution HB 195 in 2011. HB 1227 is the fourth antievolution bill of 2012, joining Indiana's Senate Bill 89 and New Hampshire's House Bills 1148 and 1157.

ID's Demise, Revisited

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:00:05 +0000

I have a general policy of not blogging when I'm on the road, but I couldn't resist poking my head up to call your attention to this article, by Paul Wallace, over at HuffPo. Follow the link to see why...

Read the comments on this post...

Another Round on Morality

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 01:18:06 +0000

Michael Ruse has written another post about morality. Sadly, he hasn't really clarified much of anything. Throughout this discussion his position has been that there are moral facts that we come to know through non-scientific means. I have been trying to understand how he justifies either part of that, but I'm afraid I still have no idea.

He writes:

First, the complaint that since I think morality is a product of evolution through natural selection, I must therefore be using science to justify my ethical claims. I too am committing the naturalistic fallacy. Not so. Distinguish between an explanation of the origin of something and its justification. Suppose David Barash starts writing columns claiming to be the Queen of the May. We discover that this is because a group of Christian fanatics captured him and, as in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed him. That is the explanation for why he now thinks the way he does. It is hardly a justification of the claim--delightful though it would be, were it true--that he is in fact the Queen of the May.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Personal attacks in science denial

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:37:09 +0000

Orac, of Respectful Insolence, has a post about how global warming wasn’t "invented" by Al Gore, contrary to what many global warming deniers seem to think. However, the part I find especially interesting in his piece is his explanation of why denialists tend to attack people.

Here’s an excerpt:

If there’s one characteristic of denialists of all stripes, it’s that they have a strong tendency to personalize their dislike of their particular bete noir science.

[...]

The reason, of course, is that cranks can’t attack the science using good science and, of course, it’s far easier to attack a person than well-supported science. After all, all people have flaws that can be ridiculed or used as the basis of ad hominem attacks.

Like Orac, I’ve seen this from global warming deniers, anti-vaxxers, religious fundamentalists, and anti-evolution creationists. Whatever motivates them in their denial, it seems they share this common tactic of attacking the messenger.

…any messenger.

Ken Ham is upset again

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:32:19 +0000

I’m not sure that’s accurate. I think it would probably be more accurate to say that he’s upset “still.” In the latest issue of the Answers in Genesis newsletter answersupdate, Ham laments that the Assemblies of God denomination, which had adopted a “evolution is nonsense because the bible says so” stance back in 1977, has now changed its tune and says…

The advance of scientific research, particularly in the last few centuries, has raised many questions about the interpretation of the Genesis accounts of creation. In attempting to reconcile the Bible and the theories and conclusions of contemporary scientists, it should be remembered that the creation accounts do not give precise details as to how God went about His creative activity. Nor do these accounts provide us with complete chronologies that enable us to date with precision the time of the various stages of creation. Similarly, the findings of science are constantly expanding; the accepted theories of one generation are often revised in the next.

As a result, equally devout Christian believers have formed very different opinions about the age of the earth, the age of humankind, and the ways in which God went about the creative processes. Given the limited information available in Scripture, it does not seem wise to be overly dogmatic about any particular creation theory.

(source pdf)

For a theological position, that sounds pretty reasonable. But of course Ham doesn’t think so. He’s particularly aggrieved by the part about science expanding and changing. Says Ham…

My heart was heavy as I read the statement: “The findings of science are constantly expanding; the accepted theories of one generation are often revised in the next.”

Well, at least the Bible hasn’t changed in the past 33 years. But man’s ideas certainly have!

It’s almost ironic how Ham puts so much faith in the 2,000 year old words of (all but) scientifically illiterate tribesmen, but when it comes to the evidence gained since then by our advancing scientific and technological abilities, he just can’t bring himself to accept any of it.

Of course, to Ham, the “science” that gives us the age of the universe, the age of the Earth, and evolutionary evidence (among other things) isn’t real science. He makes a distinction between “operational science” and “historical science.” The latter can’t be valid, according to Ham’s reasoning, because we can’t observe it directly. I suppose Ham doesn’t believe that murder investigations can ever determine the guilty party, either. His position is beyond ridiculous and every time he argues it, he just confirms his obstinance and willful ignorance about science and the way the world works.

Answers in Genesis is a horrid organization that spreads misinformation about the world in which we live… misrepresenting science, promoting questionable values, and teaching an intellectually crippling worldview.

Sadly, they’re not the only organization that does this.

Poor Ken Ham still doesn’t get it

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:41:04 +0000

I just got the latest Answers In Genesis newsletter today. I’m on the list because I ordered some of their videos on their site (one of which I reviewed here). This is the first one I’ve received and I can tell it’s going to be a monthly source of amusement and bewilderment.

The lead story in this month’s newsletter is titled “The Emotional Age Issue.” The gist of Ham’s point is that secular folks who obviously don’t have a scientific leg to stand on when it comes to the age of the Earth, get all angry and emotional about the issue when the AiG folks “prove” that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. I kid you not. There are some wonderful quotes in here that I’d like to share with you (with comments, of course!).

Ken says that, in his years of ministry, he’s found that the age of the Earth and the universe is an “extremely emotional topic for secularists.” For biblical creationists, of course, it’s issue that should lead Christians to a “real zeal for the authority and accuracy of the Word of God.” It’s an amazing twist… and one that Ham and other creationists make on a constant basis… trying to make scientific data into an emotional issue while portraying biblical mythology as scientific fact.

Ham says…

This all hit home to me as I watched a startling video clip of famed atheist Richard Dawkins who appeared on the TV program “Q&A” in my homeland of Australia. Prof. Dawkins, perhaps surprisingly at first, came across as quite tolerant of religious people who believe in evolution.

But when it came to the topic of the age of the earth, Dawkins changed his tone dramatically. On the program, he openly mocked those who believe in a young universe and earth (i.e., just over 6,000 years old). Now, he could somehow manage to tolerate religious people as long as they accepted evolution. But with the age of the earth, that’s different. He scoffs and mocks.

A couple comments on this. First, it’s not surprising at all that Dawkins is tolerant of religious people who believe in evolution. Anybody who’s actually listened to him can attest to that. Though Dawkins thinks religious belief is mostly (or completely) nonsense, if religious folks want to believe, that’s fine… unless (and here’s where Ham just doesn’t get it)…

Unless they reject actual science. The reason Dawkins would mock those who believe in a young Earth is that, contrary to the repeated insistence of Ham, every single shred of relevant scientific data indicates the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Ham and his AiG crew will insist that there is evidence of a young Earth… that the Grand Canyon was cut by the Genesis flood draining away… that fossils were created in a flash by the whoosh of water… that light travelling from distant stars somehow went faster than it does today… that the ocean would be a solid salt block if the Earth were billions of years old… that the atmosphere would be unbreathable… that the moon would have left orbit by now… and all kinds of other nonsense that a quick bit of research (you can start here if you’re so inclined) will show to be scientifically absurd.

So when it comes to matters of unprovable (yet not unprovable, either) faith, Dawkins is pretty tolerant. When it comes to outright rejection of scientific data in order to sustain a baseless belief in 2,000 year old writings that are blatantly and provably inaccurate, his tolerance wanes quite a bit… as it should.

But Ham doesn’t understand. He continues…

Why is the age of the earth such a big issue with secular scientists and the media? And why is it that after biblical creationists have written so many books and scientific peer-reviewed papers that contradict the supposed billions of years for the age of the earth/universe, and expose the fallible dating methods devised by man, secularists will scoff?

It’s such a big issue because creationists are unequivocally wrong and they’re trying to foist their nonsense onto others, including children who should have the benefit of learning real science and accurate information about the world in which they live. Ham’s claim of “books and scientific peer-reviewed papers” does nothing to change the simple scientific fact that the Earth is about 4.5 million years old. Anybody can write a book (just look in the Creation Museum bookstore!) and make all kinds of crazy claims. Peer-reviewed papers? Seriously? In a reputable science journal not run by like-minded creationists? I have doubts.

Ham finishes with…

The only reliable dating method for the age of the earth/universe would come from someone who knew everything, who had always been there, who knows when it started — and then revealed it to us!

Of course there is such a ONE — the God of the Bible! The Bible is the only trustworthy dating source. It presents a detailed history from the beginning, about 6,000 years ago.

On the AiG website, there are hundreds of articles that reveal that there is nothing in observational science that contradicts a young earth. In fact, observational science overwhelmingly contradicts an old age.

So… let’s sum up. Science is wrong because the bible says it is… and Ham can’t understand why those ignorant secularists get all emotional when he says the Earth is only about 6,000 years old.

I think that about covers his position.

AiG Videos: Four Power Questions

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:07:11 +0000

Answers in Genesis, the ministry organization founded by Ken Ham, is fairly well known for its apologetics outreach programs such as the Creation Museum, which Craig and I have already reviewed in detail. AiG also produces a large number of audio, video, and print materials to promote their biblical literalist view of the world.

I recently purchased some of their downloadable videos and Craig and I are going to watch them as time permits. Not having the patience to wait for a joint viewing, however, I went ahead and watched Four Power Questions to Ask an Evolutionist, a talk given by Mike Riddle, a somewhat prolific contributor to the AiG collection of misinformation.

Riddle starts by explaining that apologetics is not only knowing how to answer questions, but also knowing how to ask the right questions and how to take the discussion “back to the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ where it should be.” His topic for this talk, of course, is what questions to ask an evolutionist. Now, the AiG folks have always had a problem when it comes to understanding the theory of evolution and Riddle is no exception.

His list of topics to cover in the talk are as follows:

The Bible has answers

The origin of the universe

The origin of life

The fossil record

Origin of dinosaurs

Of those five topics, only two have anything to do with evolution. The “bible” item obviously has nothing to do with evolution, but Riddle, like many of his AiG colleagues, doesn’t seem to understand that evolution also has nothing to do with the origin of the universe or the origin of life. It only deals with how life developed after it appeared… much like the Big Bang Theory only deals with the development of the universe after it existed (Riddle doesn’t understand that, either, by the way).

So right from the start, Riddle shows that he doesn’t even have a basic understanding of the topic on which he is talking. Interestingly enough, that’s a pretty good foreshadowing of what is to come in this talk.

I don’t want to quote everything he says in his talk, but I’ll quote some of it. A common tactic Riddle uses (as well as most other creationists and deniers of other stripes) is to cherry pick quotes, use them out of context, and hold them up as evidence backing up his position.

To start, he quotes Cornell Professor William Provine as saying…

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind.

Riddle presents this quote saying, “Here’s where we send our children to be educated and this is what they’re taught,” implying that this is part of the classroom curriculum. However, the quote in question was made during a debate about whether Darwinism is a science or a natural philsophy between Provine and Phillip Johnson in 1994.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Provine’s statement is completely acceptable and would be fine with it being a point in his teaching curriculum, but it was just a quote from a debate… presented by Riddle as if it were in the collegiate educational mandate. After the quote, Riddle says, “Now is that a true statement?” followed by “Well let’s take a look at what the bible does have to teach.”

This leads him into presenting the biblical “rock solid foundation to stand on.” His “evidence” for this foundation, of course, is the bible itself. He lays it out as follows:

Who created? God

What was created? All things

How was it created? By His power

When was it created? In the beginning

How long did it take to create? 6 days

He naturally goes into far more detail about each point, pronouncing each item as undeniably true, including that the six days of creation were a six literal days, even showing a “partial list” of (nineteen) scientists who believe that the creation days were six literal days. His points are somewhat absurd in that they say nothing specific or useful. In explaining that we know how “all things” were created, he points to bible verses that state “God said” and “word of God” and concludes, “so the bible clearly tells us how God created and it is not open to anybody’s opinion.” That’s hardly specific or useful.

In his argument that the creation days were six literal days, he uses a weak example of the Ten Commandments being simple to understand in plain language (“Thou shalt not steal… Thou shalt not murder”) meaning that the rest of the bible is simple to understand in plain language, too. So when the bible says “six days,” it means six literal days. This is important because, as emphasized repeatedly by AiG speakers, if you don’t believe Genesis is real, then the rest of the bible falls apart.

After going over his six points, Riddle then authoritatively claims that “we have a firm, rock solid foundation. We have answers.” I don’t know if I even have the words to describe how absurd his claim is. How do a few quips from the bible create a “firm, rock solid foundation?” They don’t, and since they don’t, the rest of his talk is made even more absurd, knowing that his initial premise is completely flawed.

After laying his “foundation,” Riddle gets on with the heart of his topic, making claims about “evolutionists” that really show off his ignorance of the topic… to the point of being bizarre. He starts by asking what evolution is and then makes this claim (sic).

You know the sad thing about this is? I can go out and ask ten different evolutionists to give me a definition of evolution. I’ll get ten different answers. Isn’t that sad? No wonder our children are in such confusion. There’s no set standard or definition of evolution.

Wait, what?!

There’s no set standard or definition of evolution? That will come as a complete shock to thousands of biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, and anthropologists. Not that Riddle’s rhetorical coffin needed any more nails in it, but that statement would certainly qualify as the “final nail.” However, not to be deterred by reality, Riddle confidently strides on, explaining what evolution really is, since no “evolutionists” seem to know (sic).

Evolution is based on something called materialism. That is the ideology that all that exists in this universe is mass and energy. It is the ideology that there is no creator god. Folks if there is no creator god, there is no Jesus Christ which the bible clearly teaches Jesus Christ was the creator. In other words, if evolution therefore is true, then the bible has to be wrong or if the bible is true, then evolution has to be wrong.

I just want to point out that he didn’t define evolution even a little bit. Again, however, Riddle is not deterred by his shortcomings. Reiterating that he already has a foundation and has answers (from the bible), he asks if evolutionists have a foundation. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but he concludes they don’t… as he finally gets into his “power questions,” the first of which has to do with the origin of the universe, something about which evolution says absolutely nothing. Actually, Riddle spends the vast majority of his talk arguing about things irrelevant to evolution.

His first question, after giving a mocking explanation of the big bang, is “Where did the matter come from to create the big bang?” After a few more mocking comments about supposed answers he gets to this question, he states that this is a perfectly legitimate scientific question.

Shockingly, I agree with him. It is a perfectly legitimate scientific question… one that cannot be answered by a simple, dismissive “God did it” response… and one that has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.

Riddle then proceeds to cherry pick some other quotes in an attempt to show how ridiculous this whole “big bang” idea is. He quotes from the April 2002 edition of Discover magazine, falsely attributing the quote to an article about Alan Guth’s ideas regarding the Big Bang theory:

The universe burst into something from absolute nothing – zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere.

The main problem with this quote is that it appears nowhere in the Discover Magazine article. It appeared on the cover of the magazine, but not as a quote from Guth. If Riddle would have actually read the article, he would have gotten the actual explanations, but that wouldn’t have suited his purpose, which seems to be mocking science and misleading his audience. He further displays his ignorance about the science, offering more cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes and pretending to understand quantum physics.

Of course, he claims, the counter-question will be “Who created God?” He has an answer, of course, and quotes a couple bible verses.

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM:
- Exodus 3:14

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
- Revelations 22:13

Of course, he concludes that (sic)…

In other words, the bible teaches very clearly god is a self eternal being and has no beginning no end.

He says that the reason he uses the bible is that it’s “the most powerful tool we have.” I’ll leave the snarky response to that statement to my readers.

Riddle continues on for quite a while about the question of the origin of the universe, but I want to move on… but only after saying that I always find it interesting when creationists like Riddle ridicule science on one hand, but want to use science to support their creationist claims on the other hand. The same science they mock is okay with them if they can use it to back up their claims (which is a common denialist trait in general).

So on to power question number two, which is “How did life originate?”

That’s a good question. It has nothing to do with the theory of Evolution, but it’s a good question. However, Riddle clearly doesn’t understand even the question, much less the answers, because he immediately sets up not only a false dichotomy, but an invalid false dichotomy (is there such a thing?). He says there are only two possible options for the origin of life.

Life evolved by natural processes

Life was created

Wait, what?

Point one has to do with evolution, which can only happen after life originated! Since I’ve come this far, however, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he really meant “Life originated by natural processes.” Then, at least, it’s a valid false dichotomy.

As the ignorance continues to manifest itself, Riddle states (sic):

The “model of evolution” teaches that about 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth formed all by naturalistic processes. This is their foundation for how life got started. Then, over long periods of time, chemicals began to form in a pool where they nicknamed the primordial soup. Then, over more long periods of time, these chemicals bonded together to make molecules, and finally, over more long periods of time, these molecules bonded together to make the first living cell and we have our formula “time plus chance equals life.” Does that make you feel pretty good about yourself? Something exploded, formed a pool of chemicals, and here you are. That gives you some self worth there.

That almost makes my head explode. What he has mockingly described is “abiogenesis,” the hypothesis that life originated by chance from inanimate matter (except for the “and here you are” part, which could factor in evolution). What is even more telling about this quote, however, are the statements about feeling good and giving self worth… as if having a healthy sense of self worth has any bearing on the validity of scientific facts. It’s an argument that I do hear from creationists regarding evolution… that evolution makes life pointless and makes humans “just another animal.” They seem to think that science is invalidated if it makes claims they don’t like (again, another classic denialist trait).

Riddle follows this up with more bible quotes that say that God created everything, of course, but he again follows that up with simple science, defining atoms, molecules, amino acids, and proteins… sounding very authoritative and knowledgeable. He uses this information to lead into a discussion of the Miller Experiment (more technically known as the Miller-Urey Experiment) which was done back in 1953 and which he claims is in “just about every biology textbook in this country.”

The Miller-Urey Experiment was groundbreaking, but that was 57 years ago and scientific knowledge has progressed a long way since then, so using it as a refutation of abiogenesis seems disingenuous at best. Riddle tries to make the experiment sound very dramatic and adds how horrible it is that students are then taught that we don’t need a creator because we can do it ourselves. It’s a long part of the talk and it’s essentially pointless, but he goes there anyway.

Amusingly, he follows it up with a demonstration of… something… where he asks the sum of three plus one… but the answer is not allowed to be four. He then accepts answers of seven, thirteen, and six. He summarizes the point of his little demonstration by saying…

If you rule the truth out, if you cannot accept the truth, you have to accept anything in its place and that is what evolution is.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? The irony immediately grows when he continues with this (sic)…

What we are observing today out of our universities and high schools is our students are coming out of those schools repeating the same mistakes we did 30 years ago because we’re unwilling to teach all the scientific evidence.

The irony, of course, is that the same statement would apply to Christian apologetics, but instead of a thirty year time span, it would be a 2,000 year time span because of an unwillingness to teach any of the scientific evidence. Creationists like Riddle are making every attempt to move science and our corresponding understanding of our world back to the bronze age.

At this point, the fifty minute video is thirty-six minutes complete. That means that the final twelve minutes will be used for the final two power questions. Amusingly, the final two questions are the only questions that actually address evolution.

The lead up to power question number three is tedious and reiterates many of the fallacies that Riddle has already perpetrated earlier in the talk. Basically, it’s “Where are the transitional fossils?” Predictably, his objection to the fossil record is based on the “Cambrian Explosion.” This is such a tired, old creationist cliché that it’s tiresome just to think about addressing it yet again. Riddle displays not only ignorance of the fossil record, but ignorance of the Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian periods. To get the facts, go here and here as starting points. Both links provide plenty of references and follow-up links. Perhaps email some of them to Riddle.

I don’t think Riddle would be satisfied, however. He asserts that he won’t settle for three or four “alleged” (yes, he says “alleged”) transitional fossils, but, showing his boundless ignorance about the process of fossilization, says he needs millions of transitional fossils. Laughably, he explains…

I need to see the observable evidence. Why? Because great claims require real evidence.

Biblical claims, of course, need no such scrutiny in his mind.

I really want to say that his statements are born of ignorance, but Riddle (and many of his creationist colleagues) seem to maintain a willful ignorance that really approaches stupidity or unassailable stubbornness to accept reality.

Riddle claims to have gone through Ernst Mayr’s entire book, What Evolution Is, and offers up another great cherry-picked quote.

Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.

Fortunately, in this case, I own the book, so I went and checked the quote. Sure enough, there it is just as attributed. Riddle says that, in the entire book, Mayr could only come up with about half a dozen “alleged” transitional fossils. Riddle says, “That is not evolution. That is supporting that there had to be a creator.”

Wait, what?!

After the above quote from Mayr’s book, the text goes on to explain why fossils are, indeed, rare and says that some fossil lines are incredibly complete. The facing page of the book shows about sixteen transitional fossils leading from reptiles to early mammals. Riddle’s summarization of Mayr’s book is not only misleading, but is a bald-faced lie.

Power question number four is basically an extension of question three. It’s “Where did the dinosaurs come from?” His premise for this question is that he goes to museums and sees dinosaurs… but he’s not seeing “thousands or millions” of transitions that lead up to the dinosaurs. He says…

Why are these transitions not in the museum? How about a thought here? Just a thought. They never existed. If those transitions were readily available, I believe they would be in the museum, but we don’t see them.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Riddle has never actually read a book about paleontology… or evolution… because if he had, he would have seen plenty of smaller forms all leading up to the larger forms of the dinosaurs. He again makes the statement that “Great claims require real evidence” and follows it up with more cherry picked, out of context quotes from dinosaur books.

Riddle seems to pile more and more ignorance-born absurdities on top of his “rock solid” biblical foundation. He says, of course, that dinosaurs were created on day six according to Genesis.

His conclusion is always that he has a reasonable and rational faith… a logical faith, not a blind faith. He says that, since evolution can’t be defended scientifically, it must be a faith-based belief system with no foundation.

How anyone who claims to understand evolution can say that with a straight face is almost unfathomable to me. Willful ignorance? Outright deceit? Simple stupidity? I don’t know, but the hypocrisy and misinformation that overloads Riddle’s talk is outrageous and inexcusable.

The sad part is that the audiences that hear Riddle’s talk will walk away thinking that the nonsense that he spewed so authoritatively is somehow true. They’ll continue to not understand what the theory of evolution states, continue to think there is no fossil evidence, continue to be ignorant of other biological evidence for evolution, and generally feel that Riddle’s presentation was sensible, logical, factual, and genuine. Talks like Riddle’s spread ignorance like the plague and Answers in Genesis helps carry that plague all over the world.

It’s harmful. It’s contemptible. It’s deceitful.

The End of Origins

Elizabeth Culotta — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:06:55 +0000

Darwin (Festival) Caught on Video

John Travis — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:08:11 +0000

A Musical Tribute to Darwin and the Earth

John Travis — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:38:44 +0000

Leaf Plumbing and Angiosperm Evolution

Elizabeth Pennisi — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:44:10 +0000

On the Origin of Tomorrow

Elizabeth Pennisi — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:05:14 +0000

The Lost World of Old Europe: See It in New York

Elizabeth Culotta — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:56:26 +0000

Researchers Discuss Darwin in NSF's Online Report

Elizabeth Pennisi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:57:35 +0000