The National Association of Biology Teachers Versus the Ribosome

A Fascinating Dissonance

Theodosius Dobzhansky famously wrote in 1973 that “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” That phrase has since become a staple amongst evolutionists. It appears throughout the literature, from popular works to journal papers, and it motivates the view that evolution is fundamental. Students must learn biology through the lens of evolution. Researchers must formulate experiments from a Darwinian perspective. Medical students must understand the human body as the result of evolution, and so forth. As the National Association of Biology Teachers explains:

The frequently-quoted declaration of Theodosius Dobzhansky that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” accurately reflects the central, unifying role of evolution in the science of biology. … Just as nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, nothing in biology education makes sense without reference to and thorough coverage of the principle and mechanisms provided by the science of evolution. Therefore, teaching biology in an effective, detailed, and scientifically and pedagogically honest manner requires that evolution be a major theme throughout the life science curriculum both in classroom discussions and in laboratory investigations. … Biology educators at all levels must work to encourage the development of and support for standards, curricula, textbooks, and other instructional frameworks that prominently include evolution and its mechanisms

Clearly the NABT thinks highly of Dobzhansky’s phrase and it draws some fairly important conclusions from it. But there is one slight problem: Dobzhansky’s phrase is unequivocally false.

Is it really true that nothing in biology makes sense except with evolution? No it is not as I have discussed many times (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Dobzhansky’s phrase is equivalent to: “Everything in biology only makes sense in light of evolution,” or “If-and-only-if evolution is true, then will we find what we find in biology.” In its logical form, Dobzhansky’s phrase is clearly not even scientific. Indeed, the phrase comes from the title of a paper which appeared in the American Biology Teacher, the official journal of the National Association of Biology Teachers, and in that paper Dobzhansky gave a litany of theological arguments that mandated evolution.

But it gets worse. Not only is this famous phrase a theological claim, it also fails the test of comparative anatomy. For example, consider the various types of echolocation found in different species of bats. As I have discussed (here, here, and here), the echolocation designs do not fit the expected evolutionary pattern. In other words, here we have something in biology that does not make sense with evolution. Evolution does not help to explain what we observe, instead with evolution we must resort to ad hoc stories. As one paper concluded:

the animal’s habitat is often more important in shaping its [echolocation] call design than is its evolutionary history

If you want to understand a bat’s echolocation design, look to its habitat, not its supposed evolutionary history. The scientific evidence makes no sense on the theory of evolution.

Or again, consider how glycan molecules compare across the different species. Again, it isn’t according to the evolutionary model (see here). As one paper explained, glycans show “remarkably discontinuous distribution across evolutionary lineages,” for they “occur in a discontinuous and puzzling distribution across evolutionary lineages.” This dizzying array of glycans can be (i) specific to a particular lineage, (i) similar in very distant lineages, (iii) and conspicuously absent from very restricted taxa only. The patterns contradict what evolution expected. As another paper admitted:

There is also no clear explanation for the extreme complexity and diversity of glycans that can be found on a given glycoconjugate or cell type. Based on the limited information available about the scope and distribution of this diversity among taxonomic groups, it is difficult to see clear trends or patterns consistent with different evolutionary lineages.

In other words, the glycans make no sense on evolution.

Echolocation and the glycans are but two examples. There are many, many more examples where they came from. The biological world is full of patterns of comparative anatomy across different species which make no sense on evolution.

But it gets worse.

It is not just comparative anatomy where the evidence fails to make sense on evolution. In design after design, what we observe in biology does not reflect contingency, as Darwin and later evolutionists predicted, but functional need. In fact, the designs we find are highly efficient and optimal in various ways. To cite just one example of a great many, consider the work of William Bialek.

Bialek discusses compound eyes of insects such as the fly. These compound eyes have a large number of small lenses packed into an array. A large number of small lenses gives high resolution, just as does a digital camera with a large number of pixels.

But when the lens becomes too small its optics become distorted due to diffraction. So in determining the best lens size there is a tradeoff between resolution and diffraction. In the optimum solution the lens size is roughly proportional to the square root of the radius of the head. And indeed, Bialek shows an old paper surveying the compound eye designs in more than two dozen different insects. That paper shows that for the different size insects, the lens size is proportional, as predicted, to the square root of the head size.

This is one of Bialek’s half a dozen or so examples showing the optimization of biological designs and, as Bialek assures us that there are many, many more. Here is how one science writer explained it:

Yet for all these apparent flaws, the basic building blocks of human eyesight turn out to be practically perfect. Scientists have learned that the fundamental units of vision, the photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or fabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.

And where did those “apparent flaws” come from? Evolutionists of course. From an evolutionary perspective, vision systems were full of “flaws.” But in fact those systems were optimized—we just had to stop looking at biology in terms of evolution.

This brings us to the protein synthesis machine—the ribosome. A paper from last month out of Johan Paulsson’s laboratory elaborates on several of the ribosome’s highly efficient, or optimal, design features. Ribosomes are comprised of both protein and RNA molecules, and their proteins make up a sizable fraction of the total protein content of many cells. Cells contain many ribosomes, and naturally in order for the cell to duplicate, the ribosomes must be duplicated. This means a lot of protein synthesis must take place, in order to create all the proteins in all the ribosomes.

One way to help alleviate this production problem would be to have yet more ribosomes in the cell. But that would, in turn, create an even greater protein synthesis burden, since even more proteins would be needed for those additional ribosomes. One way to solve this conundrum is to use RNAs in ribosomes rather than proteins, where possible.

It is a fascinating problem, and the paper concludes that we can understand the solution not as the result of evolutionary contingencies, but as a solution to a functional need:

Rather than being relics of an evolutionary past, the unusual features of ribosomes may reflect an additional layer of functional optimization that acts on the collective properties of their parts.

These are but a few examples and there are many more showing that evolution is by no means required to understand biology. Indeed, evolution is usually redundant—a “multiplied entity” in the language of Ockam’s Razor.

There is no question that Dobzhansky famous phrase has failed. It simply is not true that “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a perspective more at odds with the science of biology. But while a few rare voices, such as Massimo Pigliucci, admit that the phrase is “patently wrong,” evolutionists for the most part continue to rehearse the famous phrase in robotic fashion, revealing an underlying agenda that has strayed badly from the science.

Evolutionists are so heavily invested in Dobzhansky’s phrase they will never admit it has failed. Even Pigliucci soft-pedaled the problem, explaining that “Dobzhansky was writing for an audience of science high school teachers,” as though it is OK to misrepresent science to high school teachers. Also, Pigliucci’s admission was limited to the fact that spectacular progress has occurred in the life sciences while ignoring evolutionary theory. True enough, and that certainly demolishes Dobzhansky’s phrase, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. It is a safe criticism that avoids the more damning problems.

There simply is too much at stake here. It isn’t like admitting that a particular prediction went wrong. Dobzhansky’s phrase was not merely a prediction, it was meta-prediction—the rallying cry of the entire world view—and walking it back in any genuine way would be to reveal the man behind the curtain. Suddenly all those epistemological claims, such as that evolution is as much a fact as is gravity, heliocentrism and the round shape of the earth, would be left hanging, open to scrutiny and with a long, long way to fall.

The National Association of Biology Teachers’ holding up of Dobzhansky’s phrase reveals the underlying, nonscientific dogma at work. We are seeing a fascinating dissonance and hypocrisy, for the phrase is unequivocally false and yet it cannot be abandoned.

A demonstrably false claim is feverishly held up as true. Religion drives science, and it matters.

The BBC on Evolution: Chris Stringer Puts the Hammer Down

Right There in the Mirror

British anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, a leading proponent of the “Out of Africa” hypothesis, is by any measure a leading light amongst evolutionists. And so not surprisingly religion drives his thinking. He made that clear in Chris Baraniuk’s article for the BBC about why evolution is a fact. As Baraniuk writes:

By comparing how many genes organisms share, we can figure out how they are related. For instance, humans share more genes with apes like chimps and gorillas than other animals, as much as 96%. That suggests they are our closest relatives.

"Try to explain that in any other way than the fact that those relationships are based on a sequence of changes through time," says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. "We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees, and we and they have diverged since then from that common ancestor."

In other words, according to Stringer, genetic similarities between humans and apes cannot be explained in any way other than evolution. This sentiment, which runs all through evolutionary thought, is not scientific, it is metaphysical.

Stringer and the evolutionists insist that there is no explanation, other than evolution, for similarities we observe between species, such as the high genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees.

And since there is no explanation, other than evolution, then we must conclude that “We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees.”

That must be the conclusion.

But this claim makes reference to the set of all possible explanations. You’ve got evolution, and then you’ve got all the others.

This means that Stringer and the evolutionists must have knowledge of all those explanations. All possible theories of origin are known to them.

Creationism comes to mind, but of course there could be different versions of creationism. And of course there could be other theories still.

A scientist, qua scientist, cannot have such knowledge. This is why Mr. Nelson was so careful to teach you in seventh grade science class that “The Scientist” works from observation to hypothesis to prediction to experiment. Scientists deal with hypotheses and theories, which they deduce and test.

They don’t make all-encompassing truth claims. The claim that Theory A explains Observation B is scientific. The claim that no theory except Theory A explains Observation B is metaphysical. A slight change in the language makes an enormous difference in the claim.

One is scientific, one is religious.

But it gets worse.

Because, as stated above, Stringer and the evolutionists are making claims about creationism. Stringer’s point is that God would not create genomes with so much similarity. This claim traces back to the Principle of Plenitude. That is the label that historian Arthur Lovejoy gave to a long running religious tradition in the history of thought about, simply put, how God would design the world.

The Principle of Plenitude is very much with us today, as much as it was with Plato, Anselm, Bruno, and Leibniz.

Evolutionists aren’t merely making some vague claims about colored marbles in an urn. They are making very specific claims about what God would and would not do.

That’s religious.

But it gets worse.

Not only are Stringer and the evolutionists driven by religious sentiment, but it forces them into a completely untenable position. If you genuinely want to test theories against the evidence, it is evolution that fails. In this case we’re talking about the comparisons between the species. How are they similar, and how are they different?

And these data demolish evolutionary theory.

The data do not fit the evolutionary model, not even close. One way to measure this is with the so-called consistency index, which consistently shows, pun intended, no consistency. The observables are closer to the random “null hypothesis” model than to the evolution model.

So while evolutionists criticize the skeptics for being religiously-driven, anti-science, smuggling metaphysics into science, and insisting on terrible theories, all those criticisms are, actually, right there in the mirror.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Zack Kopplin: There is No Scientific Evidence Against Evolution

A Product of the Warfare Thesis 

Zack Kopplin is the face of rational thought. Kopplin is a bright, energetic young man opposing the forces of anti intellectualism and ignorance that deny science and the fact of evolution, and seek to inject religious beliefs into the public schools. There’s only one problem. While we are delighted to see young people get involved in public policy issues, Kopplin is feverishly promoting precisely what he claims to be opposing.

Kopplin insists that there is no scientific evidence against evolution. While there is room for debate about particular biological evidences and exactly how they bear on the theory of evolution, there simply is no question that there is scientific evidence against evolution. Plenty of it. To deny that would be the height of anti science denialism. Yet this is precisely what evolutionists claim.

Kopplin explains that the church burned people alive for believing the Earth was round and that the Earth rotated the sun. A myth such as this is sure to move audiences, and is red meat for evolutionists, but it is, nonetheless, a myth. Historians call it the Warfare Thesis myth, but evolutionists won’t stop using it.

Not surprisingly Kopplin wants evolution to be taught in the public schools. But evolution is full of religious claims. Kopplin is pushing to have religious beliefs injected into the public schools—precisely what he claims to oppose.

This is the fruit of evolutionary thought.

This Piece by Lawrence Krauss is a Damning Indictment

Follow the Evidence

When Eric Metaxas wrote a Christmas Day piece in the Wall Street Journal about how science is lending support to modern-day arguments for design in the universe, he drew fire from all quarters. Apparently Metaxas arguments were full of fallacies. Of particular interest was a criticism by leading physicist, Lawrence Krauss. Surely a top scientist would leave no doubt about Metaxas’ flubs.

Krauss’ first point was that Metaxas is a “religious writer with an agenda,” and so his arguments cannot be trusted. But religious people in general, and Christians in particular, are all over the map when it comes to design. Indeed, many of Metaxas’ critics are Christian theologians.

Clearly Metaxas, qua “religious writer” or Christian, is not bound to an agenda regarding design. Why then does Krauss sense an agenda at work? Perhaps because, in fact, it is Krauss who is the one with the agenda. You see Krauss is an atheist, and when it comes to design, atheists are most definitely not all over the map. If you are an atheist, then you can’t accommodate arguments that the science strongly points to a designer. In fact, elsewhere, when not claiming others have an agenda, Krauss has advocated the abolishment of religion:

Religion will go away in a generation, or at least largely go away - and that's what I think we have an obligation to do.

And Krauss says Metaxas is the one with the agenda?

Unfortunately Krauss’ criticism goes downhill from there. Krauss explains that “The piece was rife with inappropriate scientific misrepresentations.”

Misrepresentations?

Metaxas makes two basic arguments. First, evolution’s just-add-water view of life had led astronomers to expect that the universe is teeming with life. ETs should be common and if we point our radios to the stars we should eventually pick up some interesting signals. But no such signals have been found. It is a clear example of yet another falsified evolutionary expectation. In fact Metaxas cites some astronomers who have argued the probabilities for ET life is far lower than previously expected.

Second, Metaxas points out that the universe is fine-tuned for life. And while this is a more subtle point, no one questions that this is an interesting and powerful set of evidences that must be reckoned with. That is, except Krauss.

Metaxas is pointing to fundamental findings. While there is much more to say about them, there is no misrepresentation as Krauss charges.

In fact, again, it is Krauss who is the one who is guilty of his charges. Krauss makes the common evolutionary appeal to future findings. “We currently DO NOT know,” the publicly-funded professor begins, “the factors that allow the evolution of life in the Universe.” [emphasis in original]

I’ve seen this response many times. Evolutionists argue the science proves their theory, and when they are presented with the actual evidence they then make the argument from ignorance. So what if the evidence is against them, future science might switch things around.

Absolutely. That certainly is true. Who knows what science may discover in the future.

But that is irrelevant.

No one is talking about unknown findings at some unknown time in the future made by some unknown scientist. Metaxas is talking about the here and now. He made no sweeping metaphysical claims, as evolutionists do. He was merely discussing today’s science.

It gets worse.

Krauss next resorts to a silly straw man version of Metaxas’ simple point:

The mistake made by the author is akin to saying that if one looks at all the factors in my life that led directly to my sitting at my computer to write this, one would obtain a probability so small as to conclude that it is impossible that anyone else could ever sit down to compose a letter to the WSJ.

At this point Krauss wasn’t even wrong. Did he write this while standing in line to board his next flight?

Krauss continues with more misrepresentations of both science and Metaxas’ points. It is true that science isn’t going to prove anything for Krauss and the evolutionists. One can always interpret the evidence to support the chance-creationism hypothesis. Just look at how Krauss ends his rebuttal:

The appearance of design of life on Earth is also overwhelming, but we now understand, thanks to Charles Darwin that the appearance of design is not the same as design, it is in fact a remnant of the remarkable efficiency of natural selection.

The remarkable efficiency of natural selection?

Krauss is apparently unaware of the most basic biological research in the past half century. Yes, Charles Darwin hoped for such remarkable efficiency. And yes he presented many thought experiments for why he believed it to be true. But that was nineteenth century naturalism. There was no scientific evidence for it then, and we now understand much more about the many problems with that view.

Krauss’ criticism of Metaxas reveals the pathetic state of evolutionary thinking. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Origin of Life Research Has Failed to Generate a Coherent and Persuasive Framework

A Maze of Madness

Because while Franklin Harold wonders in 2014 if “we may still be missing some essential insight” (given that a century of origin of life research “has failed to generate a coherent and persuasive framework that gives meaning to the growing heap of data and speculation” and has “remarkably little to show for” for all the effort expended), it was, in fact, just over a century ago when evolution’s co-founder, the great Alfred Russel Wallace, provided exactly what Harold may be looking for, to wit:

there was at some stage in the history of tile earth, after the cooling process, a definite act of creation. Something came from the outside. Power was exercised from without. In a word, life was given to the earth. … Postulate organization first, and make it the origin and cause of life, and you lose yourself in a maze of madness. An honest and unswerving scrutiny of nature forces upon the mind this certain truth, that at some period of the earth's history there was an act of creation …

But who is capable of such “honest and unswerving scrutiny”? For as I explained in Science’s Blind Spot, this never was about honest, objective scientific inquiry:

Naturalism has no way to distinguish a paradigm problem from a research problem. It cannot consider the possibility that there is no naturalistic explanation for the DNA code. This is science's blind spot. If a theory of natural history has problems—and many of them have their share—the problems are always viewed as research problems and never as paradigm problems. … Problems are never interpreted as problems with the paradigm. No matter how badly naturalism performs, when explanations do not fit the data very well, they are said to be research problems. They must be, for there is no option for considering that a problem might be better handled by another paradigm.

The problem with evolutionary theory is not that the naturalistic approach might occasionally be inadequate. The problem is that evolutionists would never know any better.

And so what Harold does not, and cannot, tell his readers is that our problem in figuring out the evolution of life may be more serious than merely “missing some essential insight.” Our problem may be that our methodological naturalism mandate has planted us firmly in the belly of anti realism. Or more simply put, there may be no naturalistic explanation. It may not be that we are missing some essential insight, but rather that there simply is no such insight to be found.

In fact that is what the science has been indicating for a long time. The strictly naturalistic evolution of life, of eukaryotes, of multicellular species, of fish, of reptiles, of amphibia, of mammals, and of a thousand other novelties is unlikely. Period. That is what the science is telling us, like it or not.

But evolutionists cannot say that. They cannot admit to the scientific truth. In fact, quite the opposite and quite unbelievably, they insist evolution is a fact beyond all reasonable doubt.

Evolutionists say that their skeptics oppose science, present theories that are driven by presupposition and are unfalsifiable. But all of that precisely describes evolution. Why can't we just tell the truth?

[h/t: The Man]

This Paper Explains How Potassium Channels Evolved

Promoting Evolution Literacy

The evolution of proteins such as potassium channels, according to a recent paper, occurs easily and is a good opportunity for communicating evolutionary principles, promoting evolution literacy, and refuting the misleading message of “design creationism” which is empirically unfounded and conceptually wrong. Nothing more than mutations and natural selection are sufficient to explain the origin of highly specialized proteins such as potassium channels. Those are important claims given the consistent message from both experiments and theory that protein evolution is so astronomically unlikely it can safely be put in the “impossible” category. There is only one problem: the paper is all wrong.

One problem with evolutionists writing papers which are peer reviewed by other evolutionists, for consumption by yet other evolutionists, is the lack of scientific scrutiny. In this case the paper presents a silly calculation for the evolution of a potassium channel protein that wouldn’t stand up even to minimal legitimate peer review. The calculation multiplies a nominal mutation rate per generation by a nominal generation rate per year by several millions of years to obtain 483, which is the length of the protein coding gene sequence.

In other words, all that is needed are millions of years and roughly a mutation per nucleotide and, there you have it, a potassium channel gene emerges. Along the way the paper sports the usual teleological language (natural selection is a “tinkerer”), evolution is full of serendipity (the cellular chemical apparatus that magically generates new proteins is itself a product “of Darwinian evolution”) and so forth. The paper, as they say, isn’t even wrong. But at least it promotes evolution literacy.

Door Number Two: The Existence of Evil is the Most Powerful Argument

It’s All About Religion

In my previous post I discussed David Barash’s op-ed piece in the New York Times reviewing the usual religious beliefs that motivate evolutionary thinking. Barash’s piece is not peculiar, it is standard evolutionary reasoning. For instance, another evolution professor, Jerry Coyne, responded today, in support of Barash’s arguments. Coyne explains that he agrees with Barash “100%” and adds a few additional comments of his own.

First, Coyne echoes Barash’s non scientific claim that evolution explains how the wonders of the biological world evolved spontaneously. Coyne writes:

The argument from complexity. As we all know, evolution dispelled this most powerful argument for God when Darwin showed that “design-like” features could arise from a purely naturalistic process. 

There’s only one problem. That is a lie. What Coyne writes here is not an exaggeration, not a controversial point, not a questionable point, not an unsupported suggestion. There simply is no nice way to put it—this is a bald faced lie, period.

Darwin showed no such thing. That is not my opinion. I’d be delighted to tell you Darwin and the evolutionists have made such a discovery. How cool that would be. But anyone even remotely familiar with Darwin’s work knows that this just didn’t happen. Not even close. Coyne’s claim is just laughable.

But the more important part of Coyne’s response is the religious part. Here, again, he supports Barash fully. Coyne writes:

The existence of evil. This, to me, is the most powerful of Barash’s arguments for incompatibility between science and religion. Theists must perforce explain evil—both “moral” evil (humans doing bad things to other humans) and “natural” evil (diseases like childhood cancer, earthquakes, and other stuff that kills innocent people)—as part of God’s plan. There’s no easy way to reconcile these with a loving and all-powerful god, though the entire discipline of theodicy is devoted to the effort. I haven’t yet seen a successful reconciliation, and theists know, deep in their hearts, that the problem remains. But such “evils” are, as Barash explains, easily understandable in a naturalistic universe: they’re an inevitable result of either evolution, physics, or geology.

No easy way to reconcile the world’s evils with a loving and all-powerful god (Coyne forgot the all-knowing part)? Coyne obviously has strong religious beliefs that drive his thinking. Imagine that you too believed what Coyne believes. Then of course you would be an evolutionist.

This religious theory drives evolutionists such as Coyne to abuse science (as we saw above). But of course there is nothing new here. As we have discussed before, Coyne elaborates on his religious views (that is before he denied them) in his book, Why Evolution is True. It’s all about evil and dysteleology and how this world would never have been intended by any creator or designer.

Should we laugh or should we cry. Evolutionist are so drunk with their own metaphysics they can’t even see it. They are oblivious to their own shtick.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Evolution Professor: Every Year I Give My Students “The Talk”

Your Tax Dollars at Work.

Well it’s fall again and the beginning of a new school year. That means evolution professors will be warming up their religious indoctrination messages for their unsuspecting students. A cynical and unfair criticism? No, actually, metaphysical and value-laden messages, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit, are rampant in the life sciences. In fact evolutionists are certain they area right and so make no attempt to hide their absurdities. Consider David Barash, evolution professor paid by your tax dollars at the University of Washington. Barash gives a special lecture each fall to indoctrinate his young charges. He calls it “The Talk” (yes, evolutionists really are that pompous and condescending) and he happily tells the world about it today in the New York Times.

Barash explains that in “The Talk” he reveals to his students three hard truths that have demolished pillars of religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God.

First, evolutionists have discovered and demonstrated that evolution is fully capable of creating the incredible world of biology. Evolutionists such as Barash do not deny the “wonderful complexity” of the biological world. But they are certain that “an entirely natural and undirected process, namely random variation plus natural selection, contains all that is needed to generate extraordinary levels of non-randomness.”

To understand what evolutionists mean by this rather astonishing claim of spontaneous generation it is worth returning to Chapter 6 of Origins where Darwin explained the evolution of the eye. Darwin went through some mental gymnastics about how a light sensitive spot could have arisen and then enhanced through slow, gradual change via natural selection. And he made a religious argument straight from the pen of David Hume about how God wouldn’t work like man, so we ought not infer design from complexity anyway. And finally Darwin shifted the burden of proof to the skeptic, saying it was up to the skeptic to prove his idea of spontaneous generation to be impossible—otherwise it stands.

This defense of Darwin’s became the template of how evolutionists handle complexity. They set the bar very low for themselves. So when Barash informs his students that the evolution of biology’s “wonderful complexity” is a solved problem, he is simply misrepresenting the science.

In fact, since Darwin the science has revealed the exact opposite. The inexorable march of science has shown over and over that biology is more exotic, subtle and complex than Darwin and the evolutionists ever dreamed of. Even the blind evolution of a single protein is impossible by any realistic measure.

Barash’s second “hard truth” for his students is that human beings are not distinct, other than being a separate species, from the other animals. Furthermore, no “supernatural trait has ever been found in Homo sapiens.” You may think you are conscious, but that is merely a manifestation of so many molecules in your skull.

And finally Barash reveals to his class that evolutionists have shown belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God to be futile. After all,

just a smidgen of biological insight makes it clear that, although the natural world can be marvelous, it is also filled with ethical horrors: predation, parasitism, fratricide, infanticide, disease, pain, old age and death — and that suffering (like joy) is built into the nature of things. The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

In other words, there is unmerited suffering, therefore the species must have been created by the blind, amoral process of evolution. An all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing Creator would never have intended for such a thing.

It’s all about religion.

Imagine for a moment that you believed in this religion, that you believed in Darwin’s God. Then of course you would require evolution to be true. It would have to be. And of course you would see complexity as a minor bump in the road.

You see the science is driven by the religion. It always has been.

So there you have it, The Talk. The evolutionist’s scientific absurdity is exceeded only by his religious fundamentalism and hypocrisy.

It is pathetic and sad to see the silliness of evolution. But what is truly astonishing is that evolutionists are oblivious to their own shtick. They shout it from the rooftops, unaware of their own absurdity. They are like the drunk at the party who doesn’t know he is drunk while everyone else stands back in embarrassment for him.

Your tax dollars at work.

Science Has All Kinds of Non Scientific Influences and Motivations

Zombie Science

Philosophers of science well understand that everything from enticements (prestige, publishing, etc.) to threats (tenure, funding, etc.) influence scientists and science, but perhaps no one has said it better than Dr. Bruce Charlton:

Although the classical ideal is that scientific theories are evaluated by a careful teasing-out of their internal logic and external implications, and checking whether these deductions and predictions are in-line-with old and new observations; the fact that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice. In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas for so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status. The classic account has it that bogus theories should readily be demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists. However, in practice even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ may fail to kill, or even weaken, phoney hypotheses when they are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of lavish and sustained funding. And when a branch of science based on phoney theories serves a useful but non-scientific purpose, it may be kept-going indefinitely by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves. If this happens, real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves. Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like the real thing. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds. If zombie science is not scientifically-useable – what is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda to be deployed in arenas such as political rhetoric, public administration, management, public relations, marketing and the mass media generally. It persuades, it constructs taboos, it buttresses some kind of rhetorical attempt to shape mass opinion. Indeed, zombie science often comes across in the mass media as being more plausible than real science; and it is precisely the superficial face-plausibility which is the sole and sufficient purpose of zombie science.

Sound familiar? It may sound like a worn out cliché, but we need to follow the evidence and let science speak for itself.

Greg Dawes: Religious Arguments Are Susceptible to Divine Mystery

Except When We Use Them

As a general rule, evolutionists never allow their own ideas to be exposed to the criteria they are using to criticize the other guy. To wit, while Greg Dawes finds there to be all kinds of problems with appeals to divine agents, including the fact that we really can’t predict what an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect agent would do, he also finds evolution to an inference to the best explanation, in spite of the fact that that inference relies on the evolutionist’s appeals to how God would create the species.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: We are the “truth-seekers”

Rationalism on Steroids

While informing his friendly Berkeley audience that the world must not have been designed because of all its evil and dysteleology (there are earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and lightning strikes, and for every beautiful waterfall there is a deadly newt hiding under a rock), Neil deGrasse Tyson also reminds his fellow evolutionists that they are the “truth-seekers.” [7:10 in this video] The Director of the Hayden Planetarium is an entertaining speaker but this was not meant to be funny. The lesson here is that evolutionists are so confident and convincing not because they are good liars, but because they actually believe their lies.

When evolutionists make religious claims about how the world would be created, if it had been created, they are utterly convinced that their claims are nothing less than obvious statements of truth. Evolutionists take their personal religious belief not as personal religious belief but rather as what A.F. Chalmers appropriately referred to as a “universal criterion”:

The typical rationalist will believe that theories that meet the demands of the universal criterion are true or approximately true or probably true … The distinction between science and non-science is straight-forward for the rationalist. Only those theories that are such that they can be clearly assessed in terms of the universal criterion and which survive the test are scientific … The typical rationalist will take it as self-evident that a high value is to be placed on knowledge developed in accordance with the universal criterion. This will be especially so if the process is understood as leading towards truth. Truth, rationality, and hence science, are seen as intrinsically good. [What is this thing called science?, 2d ed, 1982, p. 102]

It is ironic that those who are most beholden to their metaphysics are those who are most oblivious to their metaphysics. As Alfred North Whitehead observed, people take their most crucial assumptions to be obvious and in no need of justification. These underlying assumptions are unspoken and undefended because, as Whitehead put it, “Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them.”

And so while evolutionists enforce their religion, misrepresent science and persecute those who disagree, it is, for evolutionists, all in the service of truth and righteousness. After all, they are the truth-seekers.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Religion Not Allowed In Science

Except His Religion

With his upcoming reprisal of Carl Sagan’s acclaimed Cosmos documentary just weeks away, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview with Bill Moyers touches on science and religion as well. At the [16:50] mark Moyers wonders about religious people who are trying to find signs of the divine in all those cold, hard scientific findings. Like most journalists Moyers takes the mythical Warfare Thesis (religion fights the inexorable march of science when not in full retreat and must locate its god in the gaps not yet filled by science) for granted and asked unsurprising questions about the feeble-minded faithful for the Director of the Hayden Planetarium to reluctantly set straight. The exchange reaches peak banality at the [20:50] mark where Tyson finally cuts to the heart of the matter. Religion cannot be allowed in science:

Go think whatever you want. Go ahead. Think that there is one god, two gods, ten gods, or no gods. That is what it means to live in a free country. The problem arises, is if you have a religious philosophy, that is not based in objective realities, that you then want to put in the science classroom. Then I’m going to stand there and say “No, I’m not going to allow you into the science classroom.” I’m not telling you what to think, I’m just telling you the science classroom—you’re not doing science, this is not science, keep it out. That’s when I stand up. 

This is, of course, standard evolutionary fare. Blame others for introducing religion into science after, yes, introducing religion into science. It is Tyson who insists the world spontaneously arose (Evolution is “not only an important concept in biology but an important concept in all of science.” [3:50 in this video]) in spite of having precisely, err, no idea of how that happened while, on the other hand, mandating the evolutionary metaphysics that this must be true because we all know this world could not have been designed:

Star formation is completely inefficient. Most places in the universe will kill life instantly—instantly! People say “Oh, the forces of nature are just right for life.” Excuse me. Just look at the volume of the universe where you can’t live. You will die instantly. That is not what I call the Garden of Eden, alright. … We’re on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy—gone is this beautiful spiral that we have. And of course we’re on a one-way, expanding universe as we wind down to oblivion, as the temperature of the universe approaches absolute zero.

And that is only the beginning. You can see and hear Tyson’s religious concerns beginning at around 32:00 in this video. Yes you can find clever designs and beauty, but there is always evil and dysteleology lurking. For every Paley, there is a Hume:

And so, if I came upon a frozen waterfall, and it just struck me for all its beauty, I would then turn over the rock and try to find a millipede, or some kind of deadly newt, and put that in context, and realize, of course, the universe is not here for us.

Not here for us? And from where did Tyson gain this scientia? Which experiment informed him that these things demonstrate that the world “is not here for us”? Of course there is none, for this isn’t science.

This coming from the man who points the finger and says “you’re not doing science, this is not science, keep it out.”

/hiˈpäkrisē/

A Kind of Lie

Thomas Huxley, 1860:

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

Thomas Huxley, 1868:

Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy;

James Shapiro Cries Foul: “I was outraged”

Evolution’s Crocodile Tears

The latest attack in the never ending Texas textbook battle comes from evolutionist James Shapiro, University of Chicago professor, who states that he was falsely misquoted by certain members of the Texas state’s school board textbook review committee. Shapiro explains that he was outraged by a “completely false statement” and that he was “the victim of skillful misquoting for an anti-science purpose.” Indeed, according to Shapiro these opponents of evolution are “trying to confuse and mislead the public,” and are “against freedom of speech in scientific research, honesty in public decision-making, and suitable modern education for the students of Texas.” Shapiro concludes that all of this “sounds counter to the ideals of liberty, democracy and opportunity on which this nation was founded.” These are very serious charges from a leading evolutionist and, as such, need to be addressed.

The Outrage

Here is the statement that so outraged Shapiro:

THE CURRENT UNDERSTANDING OF THE GROWING BODY OF EVIDENCE IS THAT NATURAL SELECTION ONLY PURIFIES BUT SOMETHING ELSE IS REQUIRED TO CREATE SIGNIFICANT VARIANTS TO BE SELECTED. The critical aspect is introduction of novelty. It is gradually being recognized that no mechanism for this has been firmly established. See "Evolution: A view from the 21st century," James A. Shapiro, Prof of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Univ. of Chicago, (2011), page 144, "Selection operates as a selective but not a creative force."

As you can see, Shapiro is cited to support the claim that natural selection appears to be inadequate to explain the evolution of novelty and that science is beginning to recognize that no mechanism for the introduction of novelty has been firmly established.

Shapiro cries foul because, as he explains, he has been studying and publishing the details precisely of mechanisms that create novelty:

I stated on the very first page of the Introduction [of his book]: "Uncovering the molecular mechanisms by which living organisms modify their genomes is a major accomplishment of late 20th Century molecular biology."

Indeed, Shapiro says he discusses such mechanisms, for the introduction of novelty, throughout his book. But what exactly is this “novelty” that Shapiro discusses? It is changes to the genome structure.

The Facts

In other words, Shapiro is referring to genetic changes such as adaptive mutation, horizontal gene transfer, insertion of nucleotide sequences into the genome and movement of sequences within the genome, gene and genome duplication, and so forth.

All fascinating stuff, but it directs our attention away from the problem. Yes such mechanisms are real and important, and yes science increasingly understands how these mechanisms help organisms cope with their environment. But these mechanisms do not explain the major evolutionary advances. They do not explain macroevolution and, yes, they do not explain the introduction of novelty. From individual proteins to new body plans, we have more questions than answers. And these natural genetic engineering mechanisms, as Shapiro calls them, do not suddenly resolve this fundamental problem of evolution.

Indeed, Shapiro’s outrage is rather incredulous given that evolution’s failure to explain the origin of novelty is well known. Stephen J. Gould long ago admitted that macroevolution is an unsolved problem. Since then this sentiment has only increased. As one evolutionist recently agreed, “we know very little about how they [evolutionary innovations] originate.” Or as another paper explained, “Little information exists on the dynamics of processes that lead to functional biological novelties and the intermediate states of evolving forms.” Another evolutionist was a bit more frank: “The problem is that the source of novelty is so dammed elusive.”

Shapiro’s work further confirms that natural selection is not the powerful creative force it has often been portrayed to be and that “something else” is required. Shapiro may think the answer lies in his natural genetic engineering toolkit, but neither he, nor anyone else, has shown this to be true.

To make matters worse, the sentence that so outraged Shapiro is decidedly conservative. It states that “It is gradually being recognized that no mechanism for this has been firmly established.” That is absolutely uncontroversial, as there is no question that no mechanism has been “firmly” established. It would have been entirely safe to say that no such mechanism for this [the creation of novelty] has been established, period.

Shapiro, of course, is well aware of all this. He knows that his natural genetic engineering toolkit has not been shown to solve evolution’s problem of novelty. And he knows that no mechanism for this has been firmly established. The statement is well within its rights and Shapiro’s outrage amounts to little more than false indignation.

The Serendipity

There is another aspect of this issue that is worth mentioning. Imagine for a moment that Shapiro is on to something. Perhaps his natural genetic engineering toolkit can generate biology’s many incredible designs. Even if that is true, it would not solve the problem of novelty, it would just push it back one step.

For if those natural genetic engineering tools could create such complexities, it would raise the question of how evolution created such tools in the first place. You see those natural genetic engineering tools are, themselves, the result of complex structures and information. Adaptive mutations and horizontal gene transfer don’t “just happen.”

Imagine a fully automated factory that builds automobiles. That would be amazing and the discovery of how the factory works wouldn’t explain the origin of cars. Likewise, the discovery of genetic tools that created the species would be a tremendous advance, but it would hardly solve evolution’s problem of novelty. For how did the novel genetic tools evolve?

The Hypocrisy

Evolutionist James Shapiro was outraged, but given the facts how does his criticism fare? He was outraged by the “completely false statement that ‘no mechanism for this [introduction of novelty] has been firmly established.’”

But that statement is not “completely false.” In fact, it is not even just plain false. On the contrary, it is Shapiro who is making false statements about evolution’s problem of novelty.

Shapiro also complained that he was “the victim of skillful misquoting for an anti-science purpose.” But Shapiro was not misquoted, and expecting our public schools to teach accurate science is certainly not “anti-science.” On the contrary, it is Shapiro who is firmly in the evolution camp which consistently makes the anti-science claim that evolution is a fact.

Shapiro also complained that these opponents of evolution are “trying to confuse and mislead the public,” and are “against freedom of speech in scientific research, honesty in public decision-making, and suitable modern education for the students of Texas.” But how is it that wanting to get the science right makes one guilty of all these crimes? As we have seen, it is evolution that consistently misrepresents science in textbooks and classrooms, and misinforms the public.

Finally Shapiro complained that all of this “sounds counter to the ideals of liberty, democracy and opportunity on which this nation was founded.”

Really.

How about blackballing anyone who dares question evolutionary theory, Professor Shapiro? How about keeping lists of those people and ensuring their careers are derailed? How about constructing false histories?

Is that sort of McCarthyism your idea of liberty, democracy and opportunity, Professor Shapiro?

Evolutionists are outraged when anyone dares come forward with scientific problems. These opponents are castigated for their nefarious motives. They are bad while evolutionists are good. Evolutionists wear the white hat and wrap themselves in the flag while blackballing and misrepresenting both the science and the history behind the science.

We have, unfortunately, seen this movie before and it no longer surprises. Professor Shapiro’s false outrage and hypocrisy are the rule rather than the exception.

DOMA and Evolution’s Dangerous Cocktail

A Witch’s Brew

Evolution is, if anything, a negative theory. We don’t know how life started in a warm little pond or anywhere else for that matter. We don’t know how fish evolved, or how they transformed into amphibia, reptiles, birds, mammals and all the rest. In short, beyond vague speculation, we don’t know how the species arose. But we do know how they did not arise. The species were not created or designed in any sort of intentional sense. You can see right off that this is a peculiar scientific theory. It arrives at an unlikely conclusion without much of an explanation or justification except that the alternative must be false. But that’s not all. Along with this non empirical, rationalistic, formulation comes two important corollaries: certainty and self-righteousness. It is a dangerous mix in a scientific theory and this week it emerged in American jurisprudence as well.

Evolutionists are certain that evolution is a fact. For if creation and design are false, then one way or another, the species must have evolved. Evolution, they say, is beyond all reasonable doubt. Evolutionists like to compare their theory with gravity, the roundness of the Earth and heliocentrism.

Given this level of certainty, it is not surprising that evolutionists do not suffer dissent gladly. In fact for evolutionists, those who disagree are typically viewed as undermining science and up to no good. This leads to value judgments and the assigning of motives of those who are skeptical of evolution.

So it is not surprising that evolutionists have no compunction about blackballing dissent. Evolution is good and right, and anyone who disagrees has nefarious motives. Here is how one philosopher described this dynamic (speaking of rationalism in general):

The typical rationalist will believe that theories that meet the demands of the universal criterion are true or approximately true or probably true … The distinction between science and non-science is straight-forward for the rationalist. Only those theories that are such that they can be clearly assessed in terms of the universal criterion and which survive the test are scientific … The typical rationalist will take it as self-evident that a high value is to be placed on knowledge developed in accordance with the universal criterion. This will be especially so if the process is understood as leading towards truth. Truth, rationality, and hence science, are seen as intrinsically good. [A. F. Chalmers, What is this thing called science? 2d ed., (Indianapolis, IN.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982) 102.]

What is dangerous here is the tendency to identify ones theory, not merely as an explanation of the natural world and as explaining certain evidences, but with righteousness. And so those who doubt that the world spontaneously arose, by chance and on its own, are routinely subject to everything from innuendo and silent discrimination to ridicule and blackballing.

All this for an allegation which is patently false. Evolution may be true, but skeptics are certainly not surreptitiously attempting to undermine science. It would be laughable except evolutionists have ruined so many careers and misdirected so many textbooks and students. And like the Witch Trials, once blame has been assigned there is no acceptable defense except to admit to the imagined wrong-doing and accept the sentence.

Such high moralizing, unfortunately, is not limited to the life sciences. Its familiar pattern is too common in today’s cultural disputes and this week it appeared in the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act.

The ruling was, in part, a response to pro traditional marriage propositions that were passed in California. The first one was declared unconstitutional by a judge, so the second (Proposition 8) made the necessary change to the state constitution. It too was overruled, this time by a gay judge in San Francisco.

In his decision the judge accused Californians who had voted for the proposition of bigotry. With the motives of millions of voters determined the judge was confident of his decision. Gay marriage was good and Proposition 8 supporters were bad.

In science there is an old saying, initiated by physicist Wolfgang Pauli, for theories that are not merely incorrect, but make no sense. Such theories are said to be “not even wrong.” The judge’s overturning of Proposition 8 was a legal ruling that was not even wrong. What was amazing was that the judge was oblivious to his own erroneous moralizing.

This week that bizarre opinion not only went uncorrected, but was reinforced when the Supreme Court doubled-down on such high moralizing, this time in its decision on DOMA. Not only did the high court strike down DOMA, it determined that those who disagree with them are out to “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings and citizens who are homosexual.

This ruling was not from a lone judge in a lower court but from five of the top judges in the land with a small army of clerks on their staffs. It is astonishing they could produce a judgment so irrational and false. Again, gay marriage was good and DOMA supporters were bad. It would be difficult to imagine a better example of out of touch elites pronouncing judgments from on high.

The status and definition of marriage is no doubt a complex legal issue. But this is not about technical legal details. Evolution’s negative theorizing and moralizing has set a pattern that now seems to be prevalent. What is frightening is that these prosecutors actually believe their charges. Whether we are talking about a scientist or a judge, whatever the color of the robe, they are certain and they are self-righteous.

This Week’s Dispute Between Evolutionists Can’t Hide the Religion

Don’t Be Fooled

This week’s squabble between evolution professors might seem like great fun, but it is more likely to mislead than to inform. Austin Hughes at the University of South Carolina criticized the University of Chicago’s Jerry Coyne for linking evolution and atheism and Coyne, in turn, wondered aloud if Hughes is in cognitive dissonance and is up to snuff as a scientist. There is plenty there to criticize but it is all a sidetrack. Don’t pay too much attention to such infighting because where it counts, Hughes and Coyne agree.

Hughes and Coyne are probably an excellent case study of evolutionary thought. They hold to different politics and have different views on religious belief, but they are both evolutionists and that means where it matters, they share the same religion.

Even a Buddhist and Baptist can share common beliefs, and while evolutionists come from all religious backgrounds and beliefs, those differences are all irrelevant. What matters is their shared religious beliefs that mandate evolution. They can argue all they want about peripheral matters, but they share the same core commitments.

Consider, for example, Coyne’s rhetorical statement that biogeography refutes creation:

If animals were specially created, why would the creator produce on different continents fundamentally different animals that nevertheless look and act so much alike?

Or consider Coyne’s metaphysical claims about how organisms would be designed and why this proves evolution:

What I mean by "bad design" is the notion that if organisms were built from scratch by a designer—one who used the biological building blocks of nerves, muscles, bone, and so on—they would not have such imperfections. Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. Imperfect design is the mark of evolution. ... the particular bad designs that we see make sense only if they evolved

Or again, consider how Coyne’s religious convictions leads him to the certain conclusion that only evolution can explain the appearance of species through time because that pattern is “far from random” and “no theory of special creation, or any theory other than evolution, can explain these patterns.”

Coyne’s goes on and on with his religious proofs in his book Why Evolution is True and in his presentations. Biology, Coyne repeats over and over, “makes no sense under the idea of special creation.”

These are religious claims not scientific claims. And when Coyne made such points at his recent talk at the University of South Carolina Austin Hughes readily agreed:

Earlier this month, University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne presented the 2013 A.C. Moore lecture at USC on Evolution and Society, in which he defended the evidence for evolution by describing several well-chosen examples. Particularly effective was his examination of structures such as the vestigial hind limbs of whales, which would be hard to explain under any hypothesis other than the Darwinian theory of descent with modification.

Here Hughes affirms Coyne’s central point. Coyne and Hughes did not learn these truths from science. Such truths come from heartfelt religious beliefs.

We know evolution is a fact not from the science, but from our religion. From a purely scientific perspective evolution is a bust, but from our religious perspective evolution, in one form or another, is a necessary fact. Our theological truths require it.

And so what can we learn from this little spat? First, that the core theoretic of evolution is religious. Even evolutionists with otherwise widely differing religious viewpoints share these beliefs in common.

Second, that infighting amongst evolutionists over their other religious beliefs, such as atheism, is a sidebar. It is not relevant to evolution’s core theoretic.

And finally, that one should not be fooled by atheists who claim they have no religious beliefs. Atheism and religious beliefs are two different things. Coyne is an atheist, but he is quite literally a religious fundamentalist. Coyne does not believe in God, but Coyne holds a great many strong religious convictions about God.

Yes, there is a cognitive dissonance there (if there is no God then there is no basis for religious beliefs about Him) and Coyne’s criticism of Hughes is, as usual with evolutionists, a criticism of the man in the mirror.

And nor are the evolutionist’s religious arguments merely a dispassionate and objective testing of creationism and design ideas, to which otherwise the evolutionist does not hold.

This is the canard that evolutionists always use when confronted with their abuse of science. As Coyne put it:

the argument from imperfection — i.e., organisms show imperfections of “design” that constitute evidence for evolution — is not a theological argument, but a scientific one. The reason why the recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, makes a big detour around the aorta before attaching to the larynx is perfectly understandable by evolution (the nerve and artery used to line up, but the artery evolved backwards, constraining the nerve to move with it), but makes no sense under the idea of special creation — unless, that is, you believe that the creator designed things to make them look as if they evolved. No form of creationism/intelligent design can explain these imperfections, but they all, as Dobzhansky said, “make sense in the light of evolution.”

Here the evolutionist does us the favor of contradicting himself not in separate talks or papers, but in the very same paragraph. Should we laugh or cry?

According to Coyne the design “makes no sense under the idea of special creation" and this "is not a theological argument, but a scientific one.” Coyne’s misrepresentations and sophistry are astonishing.

There are, in general, two problems with the evolutionist’s canard that their religious fundamentalism is not really religious after all, but merely a test of creationism. First, it is not a test of creationism. Every religious proof they use to refute creation and mandate evolution does not come from biblical creationism, or any other tradition, aside from their own.

You can trace the evolutionist’s arguments about what God would and wouldn’t do back to earlier thinkers. Evolutionary thought is based on a set of religious beliefs, from earlier centuries, that are unique to evolutionary thought. Evolutionists use the bizarre argument that they are merely testing creationism when their religion is all their own.

The second problem with the evolutionist’s canard is that if they are merely testing creationism then they are not helping their cause, as they claim. If creationism is false, then that does not aid evolution. All that is established is that a particular religious theory is wrong. Evolution would still be a scientifically unlikely idea.

If, on the other hand, God would never have created this world, as evolutionists claim, then yes, evolution in one form or another is the obvious conclusion. And therein lies the religion.

You see evolutionists are not making claims about creationism, they are making claims about God.

Such religious beliefs are well documented. They laid the foundation for and motivated evolutionary thought. And they are represented today in evolutionists such as Hughes and Coyne.

So don’t be led astray by evolutionary squabbles. And don’t be led astray by those evolutionists who are atheists. It is all a side show for, where it counts, evolutionists are in strong religious agreement.

[Edited for clarity]

If You Understand Nothing Else About Evolution Understand IFF

Christians (And Everyone Else) Should Know This

Should Christians reject evolution because it violates the Bible by leaving no room for Adam and Eve and the Fall, or should Christians accept evolution because it is the obvious scientific conclusion? That, according to one history professor, is how the debate will be framed at an upcoming conference. If so, it would be an unfortunate repeat of a centuries old false dichotomy and what would be missing would be any discussion of what evolution really is.

Evolution does not necessarily exclude Adam and Eve and the Fall, and evolution is not a scientific conclusion, obvious or otherwise. For Christians to reckon with evolution they must understand evolution. And to understand evolution, they must understand IFF. Understanding IFF does not force one’s position on evolution, but it does force one’s understanding of evolution.

What is IFF and why does it matter?

IFF is a logical connective and is shorthand for “If and only IF.” For example, if and only if it is Saturday, then I eat pizza. This not only means that I eat pizza on Saturdays. It also means I don’t eat pizza on any other day.

And while this is a perfectly good use of IFF, IFF has no place in scientific hypotheses. A scientist would never say “if and only if my hypothesis is true, then we will observe a certain observation.”

Scientists use hypotheses to make predictions, but they cannot know that a particular hypothesis is the only explanation for a observation. So scientists say “If hypothesis H, then observation O,” but they never say “if and only if H, then O.”

IFF is a religious truth claim, and not scientific statement, because it entails knowledge of all possible explanations. And science affords no such knowledge.

But while IFF is not scientific, it lies at the very heart of evolutionary thought. For example, the practically official motto of evolution is that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This phrase shows up repeatedly in evolutionary papers and every evolutionist believes it. Yet it is an IFF statement (you can see why here).

Pop quiz

Here is a typical example, from this week, of how evolutionary thinking entails IFF and how, for evolutionists, it proves evolution to be true. See if you can find the IFF statement in this quote (hint: I’m giving you some help):

Why am I as sure as I could be of any thing in science that humans and other primates have common ancestors? There are millions of complex mutations (transposable element insertions and other insertions or deletions as well as multiple point mutations in proximity) that are exactly reproduced at the corresponding (orthologous) locations in the human genome and in chimp and in many cases gorilla, orangutan and even gibbon and other monkey genomes. In the case of individual transposon insertions, the peculiarities of the particular event, e.g. the degree of truncation or the specific rearrangement of the element, the exact length of the short direct repeats that flank the insertion, are reproduced in the genomes of different species. The age of the insertion, as estimated by the sequence divergence of the transposable element sequence, matches the age determined by which species contain the insertion (the phylogenetic age) of the insertion. The same kind of observations on the inactivating mutations in unitary pseudogenes that are shared by multiple species confirm that these are records in multiple species of the same mutation events occurring millions of years ago during the branching descent of these species. If you look at really ancient transposon insertions, they tell the same story about mammals in general. There is no way to account for these millions of genomic observations in multiple species except common descent. That is what biologists are talking about when they say evolution is a fact. It is possible to argue from now on about mechanisms of evolution, but the starting point is common descent. These observations about genomes don’t depend at all on any theory of the mechanism of evolution, whether all the mutations are really “random,” or whether the elements involved have since acquired some function. The process of insertion of these elements has been very thoroughly studied for several decades and the results are clear.

There you have it. This is the essence of evolutionary thought, and it is not scientific. Here the evolutionist explains that there is “no way” to account for observations O, except for on his hypothesis, H. This is equivalent to claiming that if and only if H, then O.

Science simply cannot provide this sort of knowledge. And likewise, science cannot be used to refute such a claim. Evolutionary truth claims are not vulnerable to science, for they are not scientific to begin with.

Indeed from a purely scientific perspective the notion that the entire biological world (and by extension everything else for that matter, because evolutionary thought is by no means limited to the origin of species) arose spontaneously is silly.

But from a religious perspective it is true. That religious perspective, however, is not biblical. It may be challenging to fit the gospel message into evolution, but that doesn’t begin to address the real conflict between evolution and the Bible.

There will always be evolutionists and there will always be evolution skeptics. Let’s at least be clear about what evolution is.

Evolutionist, You Are the Man!

More Religious Hypocrisy

After David arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle so he could have Uriah’s beautiful wife, Nathan the prophet told David a parable of a rich man who stole a poor man’s cherished little lamb. David had no difficulty in identifying the wrong, but how shocked he was when, in the very next moment, he realized the story was about him. “You are the man!,” exclaimed Nathan. How easy it is for us to exercise our reason and judgment when we are removed from the picture. And so how surprised atheists will be when they realize that, while accusing others of mindless fideism, it is they who “are the man.” Atheists accuse others of holding to comforting but vacuous and misleading religious beliefs. But that is a perfect description of themselves and their religion.

In this week’s Sunday Review Susan Jacoby issued all the usual hypocrisies. Religious believers enjoy the “comfort of their faith” but atheists like her are not religious. And that frees Jacoby and religion-free thinkers like her of the “theodicy problem.”

That was after Jacoby explained that she chose atheism because God wouldn’t allow so much suffering. Here is the money paragraph:

Now when students ask how I came to believe what I believe, I tell them that I trace my atheism to my first encounter, at age 7, with the scourge of polio. In 1952, a 9-year-old friend was stricken by the disease and clinging to life in an iron lung. After visiting him in the hospital, I asked my mother, “Why would God do that to a little boy?” She sighed in a way that telegraphed her lack of conviction and said: “I don’t know. The priest would say God must have his reasons, but I don’t know what they could be.”

Eight years later that little boy died but by that time Jacoby no longer had to ask the questions, for she was a committed atheist:

I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.

It is true that theists are left with this question of why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen. But atheists such as Jacoby are left with questions of why such things ought not to happen in the first place. Such questions, as Whitehead so well observed, “appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming.”

And one of those things atheists are assuming is that God wouldn’t do it that way. As P.Z. Myers exclaimed to world he is:

pretty certain that if there were an all-powerful being pulling the strings and shaping history for the benefit of human beings, the universe would look rather different than it does.

Pretty certain God wouldn’t have made this world? While Myers criticizes others for their religious beliefs, Myers’ notion of how the universe would and would not look if such an all-powerful being created it is, itself, a religious belief.

Perhaps Myers’ certainty is at the 99% level. How did he arrive at such a value? You see whether Myer’s certainty is 99%, 98%, 90%, or whatever, does not matter. For in any case, it is a religious claim. There is no scientific experiment or evidence to back up Myers’ belief. There is no logic or rationale to which Myers could appeal.

Myers concludes with atheism, but his very atheism undermines his religious claim. If atheism were true, then no religious claims could be known to be true. One could claim there is a 99% chance God would or would not do this or that, but such a claim would be worthless.

Now Jacoby repeats this illogical exercise yet again. She claims freedom from theodicy not realizing she is a captive. Jacoby did not obviate religion as she imagines, she swallowed it. Jacoby no longer asks such questions not because they are no longer relevant to her, but rather because she has committed to them.

She has decided that God wouldn’t do that to a little boy and so, she concludes, there is no God. Not only is her premise a religious belief, but her conclusion makes it vacuous.

At this point atheists dig themselves even deeper with their standard, F6, response that they are “just testing your belief.” If that were the case then there would be no basis for their conclusion. For all that they would have proved is that people who believe that (i) God created this world and (ii) God would not create this world, are wrong.

When Myers states that God probably would not create this world and Jacoby says God would not do that to a little boy, they are expressing their religious beliefs. For atheists, it’s all about God. You Are the Man.

Evolutionist: Sub Hypotheses of Evolution Need Not Be Testable

Though evolutionists often cite testability as a criterion for acceptance, this apparently is not required when the theory is one of their own. The mutational-hazard (MH) hypothesis is difficult to test but, as one evolutionist reminds us, that is no reason to reject it:

Given its broad phylogenetic perspective across species with widely different features, the MH hypothesis is admittedly difficult to test with comparative data. … Unfortunately, the procurement of direct estimates of Ne remains dauntingly difficult [40], and until this problem is solved, it will remain difficult to obtain unbiased estimates of the key parameter Neu. However, there is no justification for rejecting a theory based on its accessibility to formal hypothesis testing.

Evolutionists insist on strictly naturalistic explanations. That makes evolution—broadly construed as the origin of species via natural laws and processes—the right answer. Evolution can be modified by rejecting old sub hypotheses and erecting new ones, but the core idea cannot be wrong. Now even evolution’s sub hypotheses can also be untestable.

Whitney Tilson’s Diatribe Explains Why Science (Still) Doesn’t Matter

The conviction that the world must have arisen spontaneously dates back to antiquity and is no less strong today. Its contemporary label is evolution and if you want your funding, or just respectability, you must accept it. Skepticism of the power of spontaneity is not allowed as this latest post from investor and all-around smart-guy Whitney Tilson makes clear:

Even if Romney is a pragmatic centrist, I question his ability to act independently of a party that I fear has become beholden to people I view as extremists – anti-intellectuals who are hostile to women, minorities, the poor, immigrants, and gays, and who don’t believe in evolution, diplomacy, protecting the environment, equality for women, global warming, and gun control.

Can you imagine doubting evolution in the company of elites such as Tilson? You would automatically qualify, in their view, as an extremist. To question whether all of biology could have somehow arisen by itself makes you an anti-intellectual. On the other hand the evolutionist’s insistence that they hold the truth is the intellectual approach.

For evolutionists, their views are true and good and anyone who so much as doubts is automatically linked to all manner of nefarious thoughts and deeds.

Ironically all this comes after Tilson complains that “the political environment has become very toxic.” So while pointing the finger and castigating those who don’t silently go along with their dogma, evolutionists simultaneously bemoaning the toxic environment.

Religion drives science and it matters.