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Philosophers Rip Darwin
By Michael Ruse
The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Doubters Rip Darwin — Badly” would have been better. In his article, Michael Ruse adds Thomas Nagel to the fold of philosophers seeming to enter a late, demented phase in otherwise illustrious careers. (He discusses Alvin Plantinga too, but he’s been a card carrying creationist for a very long time.)

As always, it’s enough to state the fact: there is not yet an iota of successful science done in the pseudo-scientific field of Intelligent Design. However, on the philosophical side of things, the controversies are different. But, as I’ve maintained previously, scientific research is not utterly contingent on a completely developed philosophy of science, so it’s not likely that any substantial challenge to biological research and demonstration will break free of the usual circularity found in such philosophy.

Ruse:

For 150 years, since the Origin, critics have feared that we humans might become part of the evolutionary picture—not just our bodies, but our minds, our very souls. What makes us distinctively and uniquely human? This worry is still alive and well in today’s philosophical community. Plantinga is open in his fear that Darwinism makes impossible the guaranteed existence of our species. More, for years he has argued that Darwinism is bound up with the metaphysical belief that everything is natural (as opposed to supernatural), and that this leads to a collapse of rational belief and knowledge. The chance elements in Darwinism are simply not compatible with Plantinga’s Christian faith.

This alludes to real problems because there are versions of philosophical naturalism that collide. Are nature’s mechanics run by a strictly determined code that necessarily voids free will? (Etc..) It seems a stretch to imply that if nature is all there is, then some set of singular philosophical assumptions are necessary and inevitable.

But, from the other side, there isn’t any real philosophy upon which to hang the various suppositions of ID.

After all, it is the nexus of designer and materiality, and the mechanics of supernatural intervention that are the only fruitful fields for a science, rather than a superstition, of intelligent design. So, what philosophizing might aid (or underpin,) research into the designer/nature interface? No such coherent and cogent philosophy yet exists. (This noted, Del Ratszch and Bradley Monton are possibly the only mildly worthwhile thinkers on ID.) The problem obviously is research into the interface would tend to be subsumed into the normative philosophy of ‘applied’ science; such as it is.

from a comment to the article:

Thomas Aquinas used logics, reasoning and other qualities that none of the philosophers after him will ever have.

Darwinism is a complete nonsense in the eyes of a contemporary science. The center of Darwinism in London has admitted that, but you won’t! All you do is quoting what this and that guy said!

Open your eyes and think about what it really is! A piece of non-organic matter becomes a human being and yet we relatively know almost nothing about it! Exuse me, but when science tell you that one the sea shrimps has the most sophisticated vision in color (!) than any organizm known on the planet, I have no choice, but to think about the super intelligence behind it! When I know that human optical nerve(relatively thin) is composed of over 6 million cables, each of which is isolated (!) I have no choice, but to think about super intelligence behind it. When I think of the total length of human blood vessels being 2,5 times longer than size of our planet around equator, I am thrilled about intelligence behind it. And knowing that complete blood exchange across the entire human body takes just about 2 minutes, all I can say that all of you “smart” Darwinists either deliberately don’t want to admit the facts of science, or you are just a bunch of complete idiots.

So far, nothing good has ever come out of Darwinism except of a lot of wasted time! Not to mention Hitler who got inspired by it and came with the idea of a holocaust! And no, he was not sick, he just based his ideas an a false science!

This raw comment encapsulates many of the anti-Darwin arguments and their wrongheadedness. As far as the laity goes–and I’m a member–I have discovered over and over again folk proponents of ID invariably have no grasp on biology, biological research, and very rarely can tell you much about either the paperwork of ID or the responses to this paperwork. You know, the responses which have obliterated complexity-based arguments.

Still, I appreciate the irony behind having no choice but to believe in the super intelligence and his or her’s brutal, so-called, creation. Hey, and the Thomist reference–as in, one version, the universe being wholly a Catholic one in which almost everybody is going to roast in hell?

I’m building up to a brief presentation based in a novel concept about the ongoing bumper car action between theists, atheists and new agers; soon enough.

This video from attorney Victor Zammit has stand-alone appeal. One conclusion from viewing Zammit’s “Eight Reasons Richard Dawkins Is Wrong About the Afterlife” is that I’d not want Zammit to be my lawyer for any reason.

In this video the category errors, faults of logic, and, circular arguments pile up almost until one wants to look away. Yet, it’s really funny too. My favorite parts are the several times when Zammit appeals to the venue of a court of law and its procedures being an apt environment for sorting the controversy out, presumably into the right and wrong parties.

I carry no brief for the new atheists at all since I’m an agnostic, but Zammit here is unable to reach even the low hanging fruit. His most grotesque, albeit garden-variety, category error is to imply something about energy persisting after death in a specific form without declaring how his view reconciles the actual dispersion of embodied energy at death with the presumptive persistence of consciousness he’s enthusiastic about.

But, there’s more:

4) As part of a cumulative case, you have presented several lines of evidence supporting the afterlife. In your opinion, what is the best or most convincing or more hard to refute single piece of evidence supporting the afterlife?

Without doubt, my investigation of David Thompson’s materializations were the most impressive – because we had the time to investigate. Time is critical to come to valid conclusions – and David Thompson’s mediumship passed all tests. My wife and I sat with David Thompson every Sunday night for fifteen months. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that whenever we communicated with intelligences from the afterlife during David Thompson’s materializations, we were in direct contact with beings who are residing in the afterlife dimension. We travelled with David, the medium, and saw him before during and after séances. We helped prepare the room and tape recorded the sittings. On more than seventy occasions we were present when people were reunited with their loved ones and talked with those people after the sessions. They confirmed that they recognized specific mannerisms of their loved ones and spoke of intimate things that no-body in the séance room could have known. My wife’s father came through as did my sister. They confirmed their identity in several ways.

My wife is a professional psychologist with expertise in Scientific Method and with my expertise in the admissibility of objective evidence we came to the inevitable conclusion that the evidence qualified as objective and repeatable. This made the evidence empirical and scientific. Of course closed minded skeptics would not accept our evidence. But again, they did not raise critical issues such as what intervening variables we did not control in our experiments. No hard core skeptic took up my challenge to claim half a million dollars if they could show that there was fraud or negligence taking place in these critical afterlife experiments. Of course one condition was that if the skeptic failed, then the skeptic had to hand over half a million dollars to us. In other words, the challenge was to put up or shut up. Recent experience has shown that they shut up. from subversivethinking

Obviously in this clip Zammit provides no warrant for the decisive appeal to his and his wife’s authority. But, he hasn’t sketched anything ’scientific’ out here at all. The minimal scientific test of mediumship would be that the channeler could raise the materialization in a controlled experiment and do so repeatedly against a control session.

(Zammit) My particular one-sided bias is the test of objectivity/repeatability. Once the test is passed, and I have had personal experience that it was administered properly, I will rigidly adhere to my decision about my conclusion.

Obviously, this framing of his own objectivity is antithetical to scientific methodology and its component of necessary provisionality.

Both theists and new atheists are working over ultimately circular arguments.

Zammit has a web site.

One thing I’ll give the Muslim creationist Harun Yahya credit for is that he states his sense of the facts of the matter courageously, whereas, the stateside Intelligent Design crew has come to do everything but state clearly, or do research directly about, their central hypothesis. (born as Adnan Oktar-wikepedia)

I.
Therefore, the process from initial conception to production is quite extensive. In fact, the Sole Owner of all designs is One Who has power over all things. Allah creates all creatures flawlessly through a single command: “be”. This is in the verse: The Originator of the heavens and earth. When He decides on something, He just says to it, ‘Be!’ and it is. (Surat al-Baqara:117) The faculty of creating from nothing and without precedent belongs to Allah alone. Humans just copy these examples. Furthermore, the human designer is himself a wonderful creation. Allah created creatures and humans from nothing and bestowed on humans the skills for designing.

II.
All of these laws of physics are clear proofs that the universe, just like all the creatures within it, is a product of divine design. In fact, the laws of physics are nothing but human explanations and descriptions of the divine order that Allah has created. Allah has created the unchanging laws of order in the universe and put them in the service of humans so that man will reflect upon and understand the Sovereignty of Allah and give thanks for His blessings. One can continue giving countless examples in illustration of the order in the creation of Allah. Every created thing since the formation of the universe millions of years ago has been brought into existence by nothing other than the Omniscience and Sovereignty of Allah.

For Harun there’s no reason to do any research on the facts of the matter of creationism, but at least he identifies the cause of creation. He also has never met an element in the pseudo-science of ID, he didn’t incorporate into his industrial media operation.

On the other hand, Yahya/Oktar is also a garden-variety loon.

After 20 minutes of sound checks, Adnan Oktar made his grand entrance. He’s a burly man with slicked-back hair and a carefully trimmed beard, and he wore his trademark white suit with a black T-shirt. Oktar was gracious throughout our hourlong interview, but the weirdness of the evening quickly emerged. When I asked how so many evolutionary biologists could be wrong, he replied, “We need to talk about the Masons’ role because Masons manage the world through a scientific dictatorship.” When I suggested that scientists would be surprised to hear this, he said that’s because the Masons’ “essential characteristic is that they act secretly and they are invisible.” Meet Harun Yahya. Steve Paulson – Slate Magazine Oct.21.2009

Deepak Chopra, the new age maven, regularly contributes to the Huffington Post. Today, he starts out with this:

I.

This year, the world celebrated Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. But now that all the backslapping is nearing an end, it may be time to reflect on where things really stand. When Darwin finished writing “Origin of Species” in the fall of 1859 — exactly 150 years ago — the theory of evolution became part of the Newtonian world picture. However, since that time, major puzzles of mainstream science have forced a re-evaluation of the nature of the universe that goes far beyond anything Darwin could have imagined.

I’m trying to fathom Chopra writing his opening paragraph and not feeling as if he is about to fling into the Huffington winds something both patronizing to Darwin, and, something idiotic. Alas, to the tune of cash registers ringing, Chopra takes his insights seriously. No, this spiritual advisor to Oprah is onto to something with his colleague, Robert Lanza: the spiritualization of solipsism! Via quantum mechanics!!!

Science obviously investigates what it is able to investigate. There’s no move to re-evaluate the nature of the universe, when nature is posed as a lumpen “nature” in the way that Chopra means, and has meant in the past. Still, Chopra is playing a deceptive word game here too. He actually believes science is quite incapable when it comes to the re-evaluation he’s on about.

(more…)

Using Google alerts, the philosopher Bradley Monton drifts on my radar screen with increasing regularity.

Why?

He’s a philosophically-minded proponent of the validity of the motive behind the “research” program of Intelligent Design. Also, his work is unintentionally really amusing. Too, I would count myself as a proponent of my (and the,) motivation to find humor, especially unintentional humor, in odd places. For consistent howler potential, ID is second to none.

His paper, Is Intelligent Design Science? Dissecting the Dover Decision (pdf), is worth a close reading for amusement’s sake.

Monton:

My position is that scientists should be free to pursue hypotheses as they see fit, without being constrained by a particular philosophical account of what science is.

There are lot of hypotheses a scientist or someone else could pursue. What constraints a researcher enforces and suffers under are necessary to an eventual credible claim of verification or falsification. But, what this has to do with a philosophical account of any kind is not a question Monton pursues in his paper. Presumably, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, but, we’re still waiting for a cogent entry in the philosophy of ’supranatural’ science able to issue constraints on ID researchers.

Don’t hold your breath. Still, it would be neat to learn of a philosophical account which unpacks ID’s primary posit: ‘biological systems were designed because their a lot like designed stuff.’

Monton’s paper approaches his four points of contest sideways in each of the four instances.

His kick off is remarkable:

I do, however, have specialized training which will help me to answer the question of whether ID counts as science.

So does ID count as science? I maintain that it is a mistake to put too much weight on that question.

[]

If our goal is to believe truth and avoid falsehood, and if we are rational people who take into account evidence in deciding what to believe, then we need to focus on the question of what evidence there is for and against ID. The issue of whether ID counts as “science” according to some contentious answer to the demarcation question is unimportant.

So it is that his specialized training is inadequate to the task of peeling the onions of a demarcation problem. Whatever the answers are to the demarcation problem, one would have to demonstrate their unimportance, and this is irrespective of their being contentious. I do know you wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic who appealed to their own authority and then next told you, “But, I’ve had it with engines!”

Yet, Monton then goes into, sort of, his hollowed out version of the demarcation problem. It’s more funny then reasonable.

Later:

I will now argue that it is counterproductive to restrict scientific activity in such a way that hypotheses that invoke the supernatural are ruled out. Specifically, I will argue that it is possible to get scientific evidence for the existence of God. The scenario I am about to describe is implausible, but there is nothing logically inconsistent about it. The point of the scenario is that in the described situation, it would be reasonable for scientists to postulate and test the hypothesis that there is supernatural causation occurring.

I have a better suggestion, why not entertain a plausible scenario? Give it your best shot. In any case, his scenario is riotously funny.

If one works through the rest of his oeuvre, his basic position on ID is clarified: ID hasn’t been proven impossible. In a sense, his paper’s argument is unintentionally ironic: ‘my arguments here may be specious, but this doesn’t mean that better arguments are impossible!’

Amazingly, google alerts turned up more intellectual anti-matter. Via Denyse O’Leary’s Post-Darwinist blog, I came to listen to two interviews with another philosopher, Angus Menuge. He’s given the podcast treatment by The Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin: (1) Agents Under Fire: Part One With Angus Menuge; (2) Rebutting Methodological Materialism.

Menuge. . .much more amusing than Monton, and Monton is very amusing. On one hand, Menuge and Luskin indulge in canard-a-rama. Incredibly, the tornado whirling through the junkyard is revisited in a different guise. On the other hand, Menuge folds in a vague and very extreme picture of a hyper-positivist materialistic naturalism, adds in a fuzzy reference to an irrelevant fault line in the field of theory of mind, dribbles in a riff on downward causation, and then battles the super dooper straw man so conjoined of those disparate and completely unjustified parts. Or, to be more accurate, Menuge doesn’t articulate any justification or reasons why this category mash-up is germane to his vague argument. Maybe it was enough that the argument impressed fawning Luskin.

However, having brought up downward causation, he could at least have speculated about what the import of an over-arching designer is in the context of a particular, well-defined and operationalized system, for which the conceptions of both upward and downward causation are justified and thus may be deployed.

More Menuge.. Is Menuge a young earth creationist?

As always, my consul with respect to proponents of ID is brute simple: please, start theorizing the operations of the designer’s agency, so your movement (or research program,) can quickly depart the long discredited agenda of trying to overturn naturalistic biology, and, trying to subvert the demonstrable efficacy* of natural science.

IDers, you really do not require philosophers and their philosophical accounts. If you do, best to find some brilliant, less funny, ones.

*It would be world-shaking at such point that any ID biologist verifies a single, ’starter,’ hypothesis.

William Dembski in 2005:

For ID to win the day, however, will require talented new researchers able to move this research program forward, showing how intelligent design provides better insights into biological systems than the dying Darwinian paradigm.

Close, but not close enough. Better: showing how intelligent design provides better understanding of the development of biological systems. Tis most of the ball game–riding on the better replacing the merely good.

via Ron Chusid, from an interview of Rush Limbaugh by Matt Drudge.

Context: a full skeleton of an early presumed primate, Darwinius masillae, was discovered (story@Pharyngula; This is an important new fossil, a 47 million year old primate nicknamed Ida. She’s a female juvenile who was probably caught in a toxic gas cloud from a volcanic lake, and her body settled into the soft sediments of the lake, where she was buried undisturbed.

RUSH: Drudge had as a lead item up there this morning on his page a story from the UK, Sky News: “Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution.” It’s all about how Darwin would be thrilled to be alive today. “Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.” It’s a one-foot, nine-inch-tall monkey, and it’s a lemur monkey described as the eighth wonder of the world. “The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years – but it was presented to the world today —” So I guess this is settled science. We now officially came from a monkey, 47 million years ago. Well, that’s how it’s being presented here. It’s settled science. You know, this is all BS, as far as I’m concerned. Cross species evolution, I don’t think anybody’s ever proven that. They’re going out of their way now to establish evolution as a mechanism for creation, which, of course, you can’t do, but I’m more interested in some other missing link. And that is the missing link between our failing economy and prosperity.

Chusid believes this clip from the interview pegs Limbaugh as a creationist of some sort. The Rush-o-saur has never gone on record about origins. He may be against evolutionary biology in a doctrinaire sense, but his riff here is just ignorant in five different ways. “you can’t do”!!! LOL

That there is a doctrinaire non-argument against any research result that is employed anytime evolutionary findings hit the table, probably has something to do with the perceived offense given by biology to the varieties of foundationalism which infect anti-Darwinists. The idea being that human morality just can’t issue should there be found links to monkeys.

This monkey business constitutes a kind of memetic thread that peaked with the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, the movie about the 1925 Scopes trial. (The movie followed by five years the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee.)

As far as the origins of morality goes, it’s a fascinating problem for paleo-social-anthropology. I’d be surprised were I to learn Limbaugh is a young earth creationist, yet from that particular foundationalism human morality is worked out via the fall and the wisdom of patriarchs, and a bit of incest.

I wonder what the Rushster would answer if asked ‘what are the origins of conservative morality?’ Probably his answer would be appallingly ignorant…too.

Dr. Brian C. Melton, Assistant Professor of History at Liberty University, writing at the web site Intellectual Conservative, Human Origins and a Side of Fries: Refuting a Popular Neo-Darwinian Position.

[A] A prime example of this appeared in Expelled, when Dawkins expressed a willingness to accept evidence of cellular intelligent design if it came from aliens, but not if it implied that God existed. While there is manifestly less proof to support the idea of extra-terrestrial life than a supernatural God, the general concept at least fits in with Dawkins’s naturalistic biases, and so he finds it acceptable. Evidence has nothing to do with it.

Brian, the word evidence meaningfully appears in your sentence [A] in two instances: (1) accept evidence if it came; and (2) not [accept] if it implied.

Evidence does have something to do with the difference between its coming from or coming about, and, its pointing toward some implication. But how to research the mechanics of the designer’s biological agency?

The ID crowd argues furiously in favor of this latter implication, that a designer is implied by inferences drawn from the current evidence. Yet, they understand that their understanding as much is impossible to demonstrate within any naturalistic verification methodology, (eg. science,) given the requisite supernatural causation and its mechanics or miraculous (pre?) mechanics.

So, marching off in the direction of “creation science” and post-science, why is it the proponents of creationism get so exercised by science when ID’s verification can’t even exist within the scientific framework?

(more…)

By way of the blog of Florida Citizens for Science comes a capture from the notes of a Taylor County Florida school board meeting.

Upon motion by Danny Lundy, seconded by Darrell Whiddon the Board adopted/approved the: 1.) Resolution regarding the new Sunshine State Standards for Science.

The adopted resolution is as follows:
Whereas, the Florida Department of Education has drafted and is now proposing new Sunshine State Standards for Science, the Taylor County School Board opposes the implementation of the new standards as currently presented.
Whereas, the new Sunshine State Standards for Science no longer present evolution as theory but as “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported in multiple forms of scientific evidence,” we are requesting that the State Board of Education direct the Florida Department of Education to revise/edit the new Sunshine State Standards for Science so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed.

Lundy and Whiddon, despite being ignorant, get props in my book for at least considering the begged-question that is primary to the whole project of teaching religion in biology classes. If God created the entire universe, it surely is worthwhile to wonder how. If the entirety of the scientific project stands on the pinhead of a creation tale, might as well begin to sort out how that could be the case. Except…not in science class.

The young earth creation tale is a candidate.

(excerpt from Billions of People in Thousands of Years?)

Let us start in the beginning with one male and one female. Now let us assume that they marry and have children and that their children marry and have children and so on. And let us assume that the population doubles every 150 years. Therefore, after 150 years there will be four people, after another 150 years there will be eight people, after another 150 years there will be sixteen people, and so on. It should be noted that this growth rate is actually very conservative. In reality, even with disease, famines, and natural disasters, the world population currently doubles every 40 years or so.

Evolutionists are always telling us that humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. If we did assume that humans have been around for 50,000 years and if we were to use the calculations above, there would have been 332 doublings, and the world’s population would be a staggering figure—a one followed by 100 zeros; that is
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000.

This figure is truly unimaginable, for it is billons of times greater than the number of atoms that are in the entire universe! Such a calculation makes nonsense of the claim that humans have been on earth for tens of thousands of years.Simple, conservative arithmetic reveals clear mathematical logic for a young age of the earth. From two people, created around 6,000 years ago, and then the eight people, preserved on the Ark about 4,500 years ago, the world’s population could have grown to the extent we now see it—over 6.5 billion.

With such a population clearly possible (and probable) in just a few thousand years, we could actually ask the question, “If humans were around millions of years ago, why is the population so small?” This is a question that evolution supporters must answer.

Dr. Monty White is now a young-earth creationist; however, as a young Christian, he believed in theistic evolution. Since 2000, he has been the CEO of Answers in Genesis—UK.

Hmmm, the doubling factor starting at two persons could be based upon:

Adam & Eve

two children, boy and a girl, by the time Adam & Eve are 30

Total 4; world population has doubled in 30 years; doubling factor=30 years.

Creation Control we have a problem. Now the two offspring need to procreate. But with whom? With mom, dad, each other?

I believe we’ll need to do some research!

From a little-read but always amusing web site called, Intellectual Conservative. Article: Darwin’s Lapdog Thinks You’re an ID-iot! By Jeff Osonitsch

Money quote:

Johnson claims that ID is not scientific because “it predicts nothing, since it essentially states that everything is the way it is because God wanted it that way.” In fact, ID begins, according to the Discovery Institute, with the hypothesis that “if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of complex and specified information. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information.” They cite the concept of irreducible complexity as one example. This conforms to the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, and observation, leading to a conclusion.

Actually Jeff, your offered hypothesis itself contains several unproved hypotheses. The important one is: a natural object contains high levels of complex and specified information.

ID’s pseudo-scientific project wholly turns on this fundamental violation of hypothesis generation: it takes unproved vague propositions as being proved, and then argues for a method of proving a different proposition as if it isn’t the same as what it already takes as given and proven.

Look at this way:

Rocks are hard. (posit)

Hardness is always a product of design. (hypothesis masked as posit)

Rocks are designed. (pseudo-hypothesis)

Reverse the direction of the utterance: first you have a natural object, then you decide what makes it so, next you bolt “design” onto what makes it so, and end up with: the object must be designed. “See the bolts!”

Furthermore, if one cares not a wit about design and tracks back to constituents of the object, constituents that must predate its becoming the sort of object that must be complex, it must also be so that those constituents must be complex in only slightly less ‘complex’ terms than the so-called natural object.

(I count this as the main reason why the Discovery Institute hasn’t taken on the field of cosmology.)

In any case, you can’t hide your conclusion in the hypothesis and then say you’re doing science by inferring back to the hidden conclusion using only the terms of the same.

If the ID crowd is to do science, they’re compelled to do science about the agency of the designer be it revealed in evidence of the agent’s interference, or, maybe there is evidence of the heavenly workshop.

The author is so unaware of the logical stinker he’s peddling that the rest of the article is fabulously and unintentionally knee-slapping. Jeff is, on philosophical matters, apparently, dumb as a box of rocks.

Yet, he also writes,

In lieu of any actual argument, Johnson, like all Darwin sycophants, continually uses the straw-man tactic of culling the evolutionary examples he cites from the domain of micro-evolution – the universally accepted (and scientifically observable) concept that small changes occur within a given species such as when a bacterium develops a resistance to antibiotics – rather than citing an example of macro-evolution, or how one species transmogrifies over time into an entirely new species. There is a very simple reason for this sleight-of-hand: there is virtually no compelling evidence to support this, the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory – even after 150 years of looking.

Let’s see, how many examples of transitional fossils would one need to satisfy Jeff?

1? 5? 10? A zillion?

Jeff then takes on religion,

…one simply cannot be a Christian if he rejects the concept of a Creator.

This is because, presumably, the definition of a Christian is somebody who accepts the concept of a creator? And this rule of membership is found where?

Same mistake writ in a different domain. …funny stuff.

It seems some leading lights of the anti-God, pro-evolution have become ensnared by an “op” of the intelligent design brotherhood. The NYT reports today the film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is a scree made to support ID and issues of academic freedom. Presumably the academic freedom is not free enough to allow non-scientific viewpoints in biology departments.

The article has lots of juicy tidbits about the nonsensical view of IDers, yet, at the same time, I think being entrapped in this movie serves Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott and other A-listers, right. They should have conducted a bit more peer review, as it were.

Anyway, from the article we learn:

(Narrator Ben Stein) He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.”

…an intellectually bereft idea just on the face of it.

(Producer Ruloff) He said he knew researchers, whom he would not name, who had studied cellular mechanisms and made findings “riddled with metaphysical implications” and suggestive of an intelligent designer. But they are afraid to report them, he said.

We know, at least could guess, that the niggling metaphysical implication is an instance of foundational methodological naturalism or its defeat. If it’s the former, it is–yet another–example of misunderstanding what the pragmatic predicates are to scientific research, and, if it’s the latter, it’s probably an example of a leap to an unsupported supposition.

Meanwhile, Mike the Mad Biologist has served up a response to a two year old article of Matt Yglesias. Yglesias wrote 9/21:

Last but not least, nothing whatsoever of practical importance hinges on whether or not life on earth originated as a result of intelligent design. The theory is exceedingly silly pseudo-science, but it doesn’t actually threaten anything. There is, moreoever, no reason to think it’s especially crucial for the average citizen to have an accurate grasp of state-of-the-art biological theory.

Whether your axe to grind is the infiltration of nonsense/non-science or creationism concealed under the cloak of Intelligent Design into science classes, both are significant threats to education.

However, Mad Mike offers a set of off target reasons in support of taking the threat of bad biology education seriously. They are, with one exception, themselves ridiculous.

A basic understanding of evolution is important for all people, not just scientists. Here’s one example: antibiotic resistance. The evolution of antibiotic resistance is a problem we can all address, only if we understand how the use of antibiotics selects-as in natural selection-for antibiotic resistant genotypes. I don’t expect people to be able to derive the neutral theory, but this we all must understand.

In tests of practical knowledge, it is found that most adults can’t pinpoint Paris on a globe. The sketch of evolution given in a high school class is where most people’s exposure to and knowledge of biology will come to an end. Mike doesn’t explain why his example is so pregnant. How the basic development of scientific knowledge unfolds amongst the laity, so-to-speak, seems beyond him. Most people will go through life knowing little of science or Paris. That’s not good but hoping tons of people to know about antibiotic resistance is hoping for way too much.

This is about education, not just politics. My experience has been that students who are exposed to evolutionary biology in high school (and are taught it well) have a much easier time grasping the harder material in college.

This is a straw man. Well-educated students obtain critical thinking tools able to serve their advancement through college and eventual subject area specialization. But the harder material points in the direction of the suggestion that high school biology is a most excellent preparation for college biology. Of course it is and there can’t be any advancement toward mastery of biology without sure-footed understanding of the basics of evolution. Doh. I don’t think there is any risk of dumbing down medical education for reasons Mike is apparently unaware of.

Evolutionary biology is very different in that the basic foundation is theoretical (not the case studies and examples). Unlike math, it’s a very different way of thinking because there is a strong historical component as well as a good deal of math. For example, there are very few high school courses where one implicitly or explicitly has to compare Aristotlean typological thought with Darwin’s population based approach. That’s good for your brain.

Bearing down on particulars here constitutes another straw man; not the best argument. One can study, as I did in prep school decades ago, biology and not engage the history of biology at all. Mike has a definite curriculum in mind! Yet is apparent that his view is better posed more generally: good science education helps build cognitive advantages. Doh! Ironically, I have long been aware of the weak philosophizing scientists do when they don’t know much about the philosophy of science. They don’t need to know anything about this philosophy to be able to do scientific work. When I read insipid elevation of biology’s difference as a discipline, I am reminded of this common shortfall.

Anyone who says that the religious right won’t try to target evolution is simply demonstrating a sorry lack of imagination

Yglesias’s primary assumption is that the battle between science and creationism (etc.,) exists but that it is irrelevant. He’s wrong of course but Mike seems to have worked himself up here.

The idea that a basic understanding of the world around us shouldn’t belong to the ‘little people’ is utterly arrogant. Say what you will about us eggheads, at least we think everyone potentially can understand what we’re talking about.

Mike could have, done some homework before making his anti-science capper. Not everybody can understand biology, and the constraints on understanding are well-studied in the field of cognitive psychology, and in studies about variations in cognitive ability. Oddly, Mike spends a lot of time arguing for a salutary very advanced understanding, and then ends with irrational generalizing about everybody’s potential.

This strikes me as a sideshow. If how science works is taught first, the charlantry on the fringes only can survive among fellow irrational travelers. I sympathize with Mad Mike but he drills down beyond where the real action takes place: explaining what science is and how it is conducted.