I thought Dembski didn't believe in reincarnation...

If ever you wanted a shrine to the Galileo Gambit, head on over to William Dembski's newly re-incarnated Evolutionary Informatics Lab.

Intelligent design is NOT creationism.

They're different. You know, because they're different.

And those folks over at Uncommon Descent? They're interested in Intelligent Design, not Creationism. Got that?

ID-creationists claim that ID is not religiously motivated and doesn’t refer to the Christian god. To test this claim I did some google searches on uncommondescent.com and compared the occurance of the terms “designer”, “god”, “jesus” and “holy spirit”: Here’s the outcome for god under his different aliases (all results from September, 26):


And this is the outcome for the term “designer”:


Quite astounding

Quite. Nice one, SPARC.

Circular reasoning works!

Taking wagers

Evolution News & Views; these are the folks who say of their own blog:

The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site.

They do that job admirably, misreporting evolution in every post.

I'm taking bets, here. How long will it take them to misrepresent this fascinating story from the Los Angeles Times:

Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and briefcase-carrying man.

The new research by famed paleontologist Meave Leakey in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, calling into question the evolution of our ancestors.

The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens. But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The original Nature paper is here (subscription required).

My bet is it will take Evolution News & Views fully 18 hours from when this blog post is up to misrepresent this story. Anyone?

EDIT: Not sure what time zone his post is in, but if it's in the same time zone as my server (which I think it is) it was almost 24 hours. Blech.

Michael Behe vs. Stephen Colbert

Only Stephen Colbert can truly make someone look like an ass by agreeing with them. Here he spends 5 minutes agreeing with Michael Behe, while Behe trots out all his canards that have been dealt with elsewhere.



EDIT: Quote of the night:

Colbert: So, you think you're Darwin's Einstein?

Behe: No, but...

A rushing river of stupid (Part 2): is creationism responsible for eugenics?

Creationists of late have been spending a fair amount of time writing that the theory of evolution by natural selection naturally flows into eugenics. This would only appear obvious if you have a very superficial understanding of evolution and is easily debunked. Their only smoking gun is that several prominent defenders of evolution were also proponents of forced sterilization of "mental defectives".

I'll repeat what I've written elsewhere: even if this were true, it wouldn't be a convincing argument against evolution. Relativity made the atomic bomb possible. That doesn't mean relativity is wrong.

Now, Andrea Bottaro writes in the Panda's Thumb that we can understand eugenics better as a product of its time, and that in the early and middle parts of the 20th century, prominent members of the creationism crowd also were members of the eugenics movement. This is well worth a read. Find it here.

Note that pointing out that creationists supported eugenics doesn't make creationism a natural flow into eugenics. It merely points out that eugenics was a commonly held and popular belief in the early parts of the 20th century.

Democrats and quarks?

What are the political implications to liberals of gravity? What does the Big Bang contribute to communism? Does the libertarian party have concerns about DNA being the genetic material? Should Democrats make their social policies to suit the existence of quarks?

I'm writing these questions to point out the silliness in asking the question:

Does Darwinian theory undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it actually support conservative philosophy?

The New York Times asked this question in an article, published yesterday, lending a layer of credibility to the question.

Three of ten Republicans at the recent presidential debate said that they don't "believe" in evolution. (Never mind that I find believing in a theory to be silly. Belief is for churches. Science deals in evidence for and against. And in the case of evolution, the 150 years of evidence has piled up, and the results are in. Evolution is the best description of the origin of species that we have). Perhaps a followup question could have been "How many of you believe the earth is flat?". This country has the best scientific enterprise in the world, and yet presidential candidates are professing anti-scientific sentiments (in public, no less).

Let's just usher those folks off the stage, shall we? You're not qualified to be president. Buh-bye.

Gary Trudeau's take on the evolution/intelligent design "debate"

You've probably already seen this before, but I stumbled on it today, and it made me snicker.

News from the front.

Apparently it's rough all over. Pseudoscientists are having a hard time getting funded, (just like genuine scientists). It's the first time a shortage of funding has made me smile.

Brain surgeon knows Jim Watson's mind better than Jim Watson

Wait, what? So, Michael Egnor (our friendly Intelligent Design advocate and brain surgeon) has made a post that explains how the design inference is useful in every day biology - in reference to a challenge made by Orac:

"Will Dr. Egnor show us some of these wonderful insights into human biology and disease provided or facilitated by the design inference"?

Why summarize what Egnor says, when Egnor says it best?

"Notice that Watson and Crick aren’t standing next to a pair of dice. To untangle the structure of DNA, they inferred design, not chance. They reversed-engineered DNA. They collected physical data about the structure of DNA (X-ray diffraction studies, Chargaff’s rules, the physical chemistry of nucleotides, etc), and then they designed a model of the molecule to understand its structure and function."

Beg pardon? Because they were operating under the assumption that DNA has a structure, that means that they were using a design inference, and were really closet creationists?

"This is not to say that Watson and Crick believed that DNA was designed by God. They were both atheists. Even molecular biologists who are avowed atheists use the design inference in their work."

Well, at least he's occasionally honest...

But let me get this straight. Anyone who assumes that there are things in the universe that are ordered or structured is operating on the principle that there is a design (and a Designer). Even if they don't say so explicitly. Even if they say quite the opposite. Well, let's see what Jim Watson says:

"Today, there is a concerted effort by some religion-dominated scientists to treat evolution as a theory, as though that in some way diminishes its authority and power as an explanation of how the world works. Fortunately, the courts are exercising their wisdom and rejecting arguments of equal time for creationist beliefs in schools. We can only hope that a time will soon come when rational, skeptical thought renders the creationists' stories as what they are — myths.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

Let us not beat about the bush — the common assumption that evolution through natural selection is a "theory" in the same way as string theory is a theory is wrong. Evolution is a law (with several components) that is as well substantiated as any other natural law, whether the law of gravity, the laws of motion or Avogadro's law. Evolution is a fact, disputed only by those who choose to ignore the evidence, put their common sense on hold and believe instead that unchanging knowledge and wisdom can be reached only by revelation."

Hmmm, but Michael Egnor says that Jim Watson used a design inference. He must know Jim Watson's mind better than Jim Watson does. It's probably because Michael Egnor is a brain surgeon.

When you come across a conspiracy theorist in the forest...

One of the reasons I started this blog is that I noticed how common it was for the folks who call themselves "climate skeptics" use many of the same rhetorical techniques as HIV/AIDS skeptics, Intelligent Design advocates, 9-11 conspiracy theorists and holocaust deniers (I read the Intelligence Report - some people gape out their windows at car accidents, I read about hate crimes). It turns out the folks at Denialism.com have noticed the same thing.

I once made the mistake of pointing out to a climate skeptic that for him to believe what he did, he would have to believe that almost every climatologist, and many scientists in other specialties (from biologists to astronomers) were in on an elaborate hoax. When he agreed with that assertion, I pointed out that other folks who believed in such elaborate hoaxes were holocaust deniers. And he invoked Godwin's Law. For anyone who finds themselves in this situation, speaking (or typing) to someone who is positing such extraordinary claims that couldn't possibly true without turning every expert in the world into a lunatic or a fraud, I give you this:

An HIV/AIDS denialist will say denying the link between HIV and AIDS isn't unreasonable, and pointing out that they use the same methods as other denialists, like evolution denialists or holocausts denialists is unfair. They're not like those other dirty denialists, they're just misunderstood.

But they are like those other denialists. That's the whole point that we make here at denialism.com. The methods of all denialists are the same. We're not creating guilt-by-association, we're pointing out that that they're using similar tactics, and that no matter what the denialists deny, they use the same rhetorical tricks to sow confusion and disrupt debate. If they feel guilty that they share space with these other denialists, that's not my problem. They're the ones using denialist tactics to make their point. If they don't want to be called cranks or denialists, I suggest instead of alleging conspiracies and making fallacious arguments, they actually provide data.

From the folks at Denialism.com. Enjoy.

Dr. Egnor finally gets something right

Michael Egnor is repeating his nonsense about evolution causing the eugenics movement. I'd like to point out, though, that there is one quote on that page that is accurate (though perhaps not in the way that they had intended):

The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site.

Yes, it certainly seems that they've gotten the misreporting of the evolution issue under control...

Ricky Gervais clears up the theory of Intelligent Design

Finally we get the details of how Intelligent Design works...

EDIT: I found the video as one video, instead of split into two.

Your Monday morning funnies.

Created here.

A little levity couldn't hurt

I've had a lot of serious posts here. I thought I'd put in something topical but amusing.

well worth watching