The Darwinists get it wrong again: Letter from KY superintendent continues to spawn nonsense

Matt Young at Panda's Thumb, a Darwinist blog, describes my post on the correspondence between the Kentucky superintendent and State Education Commissioner in the comments section of his post on the issue. According to Young, I defend Mr. Line and demonstrate "just enough erudition to hide the anti-scientific tenor of the post. If you haven’t enough time or patience, I suggest you scroll directly down to the comment by Scott Goodman, who really hits the nail on the head."

And this:

At any rate, the author of the blog ran a post that defends Mr. Line and demonstrates just enough erudition to hide the anti-scientific tenor of the post. If you haven’t enough time or patience, I suggest you scroll directly down to the comment by Scott Goodman, who really hits the nail on the head.

Hmmm. Apparently pointing out inaccuracies, oversimplifications, and misleading statements is unscientific in the world of scientific dogmatism. That can't do a whole lot for the reputation of the science about which Young seems so concerned.

And speaking of scientific dogmatism, which is what I was targeting in my post, Young doesn't seem to want to make the basic distinction between criticisms of such dogmatism (what I do in the post) and criticisms of actual science (which I don't do in the post), which, of course, is exactly the kind of distinction scientific dogmatists don't like to make.

And to commend for his readership a comment in the comments section of my blog which itself stretches the truth is another measure of extent to which standards of intellectual integrity are regularly dispensed with when it comes to the defense of certain scientific dogmas.

The comment inaccurately refers to me as a defender of Intelligent Design, blatantly mischaracterizes my arguments, and criticizes me for statements I did not make. Not that I expect this to make any difference to Young, since these are rhetorical tactics regularly employed at places like Panda's Thumb.

So far, neither Young nor the commenters on my blog even bothered to address the actual arguments I made in the post (with one exception, and this one got it wrong--as he usually does). I fact, no one as yet come to terms with the arguments I made in my original analysis of the Kitzmiller decision's reasoning in uncritically employing a faulty demarcation criterion between science and non-science and in a blatant inconsistency at the center of that part of the decision.

Instead, we get cheap ad hominem attacks like the comment from Young that I am "the Discovery Institute’s point man in Kentucky." Huh?

How does he know this? He heard it from "his informant." Never mind actually checking it out or verifying whether it was true. Mere random Internet rumor will suffice. One hopes he takes more care in the books he writes about evolution.

My only connection with Discovery is that they have co-posted some of my blog posts that have to do with criticisms of scientific dogmatism. I do not take a position on whether Intelligent Design is a legitimate scientific theory, as the commenter he refers to alleges. Never have. Nor have I ever done or been asked to do anything for Discovery in Kentucky.

But no misrepresentation is so far out that it cannot be justified by the fact that it is done in the defense of Darwinism.

Forrestry: noun: the practice of deliberately misrepresting someone else's position [see "intellectual fraud"]

I don't think that in the six years this blog has been in operation that I have ever had to delete a post for reasons of content. But today I deleted two (by the same author). They were comments on my post about the misinformed and sloppy article by Barbara Forrest in the journal Synethese, an otherwise reputable periodical, claiming that Beckwith is a "creationist."

Forrest is the self-appointed head of the Academic Committee on Unscientific Activities whose wild accusations of scientific subversion have garnered attention in the debate over evolution. And woe be unto the hapless academic who finds himself in the wrong place when she begins pointing fingers, identifying the creationists in our midst.

"I have here a list of 205 names of known creationists in academic departments," she seems to say. Or was it 57? It's hard for her to remember.

In her fevered tirade in Synthese, she identified Beckwith as a creationist enemy of science. Trouble is, not only is Beckwith not a creationist, he isn't even a proponent of Intelligent Design. In fact, his break with the Intelligent Design position, the result of a sort of philosophical conversion to the philosophy of Aristotelian Thomism several years ago (which accompanied his religious conversion to Catholicism at about the same time) is one of the more interesting and widely publicized intellectual stories of the last several years.

Forrest, however, writes as if the whole conversion thing really never happened. In fact, so bad was Forrest's handling of the whole matter in her article that the editors of the journal took the unprecedented step of distancing themselves from the article, publishing a disclaimer. Beckwith calls Forrest's charges "a professional embarrassment" and "philosophical malfeasance." That, quite frankly, is a charitable assessment.

In any respectable movement she would be intellectually shunned.

In any case, one of the more excitable commenters on this blog, "Human Ape" (a self-characterization the accuracy of which I will not challenge) joined in the conspiracy theory excitement and repeated Forrest's demonstrably false charges. Technically speaking, he also knowingly and brazenly (he even announced he was doing it) violated the posting rules. That, I might have let go.

But character assassination based on charges that are publicly known to be false seems to me to be a little over the top.

And speaking of over the top, just go look at what passes for intelligent commentary at Human Ape's blog. It's really something to behold. This is what we're being asked to accept at the cost of forsaking a 2,500 year old intellectual and cultural tradition. It's not fundamentally different from Forrest's approach--just a little more straightforward.

There comes a point at which your blunders begin to embarrass even your friends. Has it come to that with Forrest? Or are the intellectual standards among the Darwinist alarmists really that low?

I guess we'll see.

Beckwith responds to Forrest on Intelligent Design

Francis Beckwith has posted several excerpts from his response to Barbara Forrest in Synthese magazine. Forrest, the crusader against Intelligent Design and logically-challenged scourge of imaginary creationists everywhere, is bound and determined to prove that Beckwith is a creationist, despite the fact that, like, he's not.

One of her arguments is that, since Beckwith thinks that constitutionally-based arguments against teaching about Intelligent Design in schools are unsound, he therefore, must agree with Intelligent Design. Of course, that doesn't logically follow, but Forrest somehow finds it compelling.

I also have a response to Forrest in the works, focused, of course, on her sloppy reasoning. I'm sorry, but it's just hard for me to believe, given the really bad reasoning that characterizes virtually everything she writes, that the woman actually got a Ph.D in philosophy. This kind of thing wouldn't have passed muster in an undergraduate paper where I come from.

But her non-sequiturs are apparently real crowd pleasers at places like Panda's Thumb, don't you know.

Beckwith's blog article on his response is here. Edward Feser's comment is here.

University of Kentucky: Higher ed's poster child for religious discrimination

When the Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" came out several years ago, Darwinists, critical of the movie's portrayal of several cases in which believers in Intelligent Design were discriminated against by the Darwinist establishment, denied that scientists who differed from the prevailing consensus were discriminated against in academia.

All of a sudden comes the case of Martin Gaskell, who was the top candidate for the position of observatory director at the University of Kentucky until a few professors, mostly in the biology department (New motto: "No Christians need apply"), got it in their heads that he was a creationist--or Intelligent Design advocate, they don't appear to know the difference-- at which point his candidacy was effectively over.

The main argument used by the Darwinists against "Expelled," was that the cases didn't actually constitute discrimination based on Darwinistic dogmatism. In the Gaskell case, their main argument is that they should be discriminated against because of his religion because his religion forces him into something less than Darwinist purism.

The irony of the case is that Gaskell is not a creationist. He has said he thinks creationism is bad science and that he has no problems with the standard theory of evolution. The worst thing he said about the theory of the theory of evolution is that it had some flaws.

But dogmatists brook no dissent, nor do they tolerate anything but complete acquiescence.

Had Gaskell been some sort of secularist, he might have gotten by with the remark and gotten the job. But Sally Shafer, who apparently acts as UK science's heresy hunter, determined, according to an e-mail now made public, that Gaskell was a "potential evangelical."

The University is claiming, in the face of the facts, that it didn't do anything wrong. And, of course, they're getting support from those we could have predicted would stick their heads in the sand, primary among which is P. Z. Meyers:

Of course, Gaskell has a predisposition: he's a devout Christian, so that persecution complex is rooted deeply. He claims he was denied the job because he's an evangelical Christian. I say he's just inventing rationalizations…something else his religion has made him very good at. And the newspapers are helping him out.

Never mind those damning e-mails and the entire discussion attested to by witnesses that it was his religion that did him in. And never mind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that some of these same people would club you over the head with if the institution had discriminated against a minority.

In fact, one of the arguments used to defend UK's actions in the Gaskell affair is to say that he would have public outreach responsibilities and that his religious views would embarrass the University. Okay, let's just simply apply this to a similar discrimination case against, say, an African American, another group protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Let's say that the University of Kentucky was looking for an agriculture extension officer for a certain part of the state. The job obviously involves public outreach. And let's say that this part of the state had few if any black population and a history of racist sentiment. And let's say an African American man applied for the job and was clearly the most qualified applicant on paper.

And let's also say that at the University there were faculty and staff in the agriculture department who indicated in their e-mails that they didn't think highly of blacks and that there was a concerted effort to torpedo his candidacy for the job, and that one of the reasons they gave for saying he was not qualified--in spite of his expertise and experience--was that they felt that his race would impair his ability to do outreach in this part of the state.

What then? Well, I think we know what would happen then: there would be an outcry the likes of which we have seldom heard.

The case has now gone viral. The New York Times covered it on Saturday, and the Washington Post on Friday.

Now the University that talks a good game about Tolerance and Diversity in its press releases is about to become higher education's poster child for religious discrimination.

NY Times features KY "Teach the controversy" bill on human origins, global warming

For Immediate Release
March 4, 2010

LEXINGTON--A Kentucky bill that calls for critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion concerning the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories was featured today in the New York Times. The bill, House Bill 397, was introduced by State Rep. Tim Moore (R-Elizabethtown).

"The Family Foundation is in full support of an open-minded approach to issues of human origins, global warming, and human cloning in our schools," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky. Cothran has also written for the Discovery Institute, which has worked for similar legislation in other states.

"Our students need to be learning how to think about all these issues," said Cothran, "they don't need to be indoctrinated with the current fads in science. Global Warming is just one issue in which some in the scientific community have decided which views are acceptable and which are not. We need to make sure our students are taught that there are others sides to some of these controversial issues."

The Bill, called the "Kentucky Science Education and Intellectual Freedom Act," allows a teacher to use materials other than state-approved textbooks, with the approval of the local site-based council, "to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

###

Top ten Intelligent Design stories of the year

Denise O'Leary on the top ten Intelligent Design stories of the year:

1. Authors William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II use computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. This paper is in many ways a validation of Dembski’s core No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without intelligence, which argued that some intelligent input is required to produce novel complex and specified information ...

Read the rest here.

Throwing coconuts at Stephen Meyer

Bradford at Telic Thoughts makes a great point about the convulsive response in the ape section of the science park to Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell, a book that argues the case for Intelligent Design, in response to the most recent review of the book by Darrel Falk:

Here's a challenge for those of you who agree with Falk. Cite something Meyer said in his book, show that there is a problem with Meyer's citation of facts or his reasoning from them and then back up your claim with links to papers supporting your position. This might be difficult for many of you because it requires that you actually take the effort to read Signature in the Cell. Then you would have to use your brains to analyze a specific passage from it and support your arguments with outside references. But why not break from the mold and give it a shot. Don't be afraid to lock horns with harmless tards. You have nothing to lose but your pride.

Just go around and look at the reviews of the book by its detractors and see if you can find much evidence that the people who criticize it actually read the book. Instead what you will find is the usual howling and chest beating characteristic of those who think they are merely a form of higher ape and who seem enthusiastic about proving it.

Another from the Vault: The "Two Jones" Thesis on Intelligent Design

In response to my critique of the reasoning of Judge John Jones in the Dover v. Kitzmiller decision, which purported to have shown, among other things, that Intelligent Design was not science, Richard Hoppe at Panda's Thumb and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars both responded. This is the response to them that ran as the companion piece to the original critique. I rerun these because the state of the arguments has not changed appreciably over the last two years. There are still two Jones. Furthermore, this bipolar logical malady--whereby one affirms a blatant contradiction on the way to his preferred conclusion--is taken as a sort of logical presupposition in the argument that Intelligent Design is not science which must not itself be analyzed, as the article below demonstrates. Instead of actually defending this illogical maneuver, its practitioners merely restate it over and over, hoping by mere repetition to establish its legitimacy.

Well, it appears that my article about the inherent contradiction in an important section of the Dover vs. Kitzmiller decision is making evident some potentially dangerous developments among Darwinist opponents of Intelligent Design. Both Richard Hoppe at Panda's Thumb ("The Disco 'Tute's New Man") and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars ("ID and Testability") have offered arguments against my position, and with each other--and, it turns out (at least in Brayton's case), with themselves.

I had pointed out that Judge John Jones affirmed a blatant contradiction in his opinion. He argued that the alleged unsoundness of the argument from irreducible complexity is a blow to Intelligent Design, since it is "central to ID", and then later argues that even if irreducible complexity were true, it wouldn't confirm ID because it isn't central to it, but "merely a test for evolution, not design".

I also said that this kind of argument falls into the trap of affirming two more general contradictory positions: that ID is not falsifiable, and that it is false.

I argued two points:

1. That Judge Jones both affirmed and denied that irreducible complexity is "central to ID"; and
2. That, as a consequence, he only allowed irreducible complexity to count against ID, but not for it.

This was completely lost on Hoppe, who just ran on about how ID makes testable claims he says are false, and untestable claims that can't be judged true or false:

What Cothran is apparently unable to comprehend is that while ID proponents occasionally make testable empirical claims, ID theory itself does not.

No, sorry. Cothran comprehends Hoppe, but Hoppe doesn't comprehend Cothran. I understand Hoppe's point. In fact, I understand it so well that it is very plain to me that it doesn't address my argument. It's a convenient distinction to make, but it isn't a distinction the Dover decision makes.

Hoppe agrees with Jones--and he doesn't. He agrees with the Jones who says that irreducible complexity is not central to ID, but disagrees with the Jones who says that it does. But nowhere does he deny my central thesis: that there are two Jones', and that they disagree with each other.

So what does Ed Brayton say to this? First, that he has heard my argument "many times" before. Shucks. And I thought my "Two Jones" thesis was my very own discovery. Turns out, claims Brayton, that someone beat me to it, although he doesn't say who it was.

Brayton, it turns out, is not only unimpressed by my argument (or the one I thought was mine before Ed informed me it wasn't--although, in a Jonesian logical maneuver, he's going to hold it against me anyway) but is less than impressed with Hoppe's refutation of it, saying that he gives my argument "too much credit":

I think he's actually making things more complicated than they are. There is no "ID theory" and there never has been. What ID proponents call "ID theory" is nothing more than a set of bad arguments against evolution, all straight out of the creationist jokebook. They all take the form of a basic god of the gaps argument: "not evolution, therefore God."

Note carefully what is going on here. Neither Hoppe nor Brayton addresses the two central points of my argument. Hoppe agrees with the Jones who says that arguments against evolution are not central to ID, and disagrees with the Jones who says they are, while Brayton agrees with the Jones who says that arguments against evolution are central to ID and disagrees with the Jones who says that they aren't.

Neither, however, denies there are two Jones': they simply disagree on which is the better Jones. In fact, when you put them together, not only do Hoppe and Brayton not address my argument, they actually confirm it: in agreeing with different Jones' they implicitly recognize that there are two of them.

Yet, in the final analysis, even Brayton can't resist the apparently contagious logical schizophrenia that is increasingly infecting opponents of ID:

ID argument like this can be falsified because they are tests of evolution, not of the non-existent "ID theory." ID is a purely negative argument that invokes supernatural causation, and that is why it cannot be tested on its own merits.

In other words, Brayton too argues that ID is both false and unfalsifiable. Not only are there now two Joneses, there are two Braytons.

Is it only a matter of time before Hoppe too--and all the other ID opponents--begin to experience this peculiar form of alogical reproduction? Considering the consequences (such as the potential twofold multiplication of bad reasoning), let's hope not.

From the Vault: The Key Fallacy in Dover v. Kitzmiller

In honor of the 3rd anniversary of Dover v. Kitzmiller, the decision in which a judge, with a wave of his jurisprudential hand (a scientific procedure much favored by the those who, under any other circumstances, would criticize such an action for not being scientific), rendered Intelligent Design non-scientific--I am rerunning my analysis of the core logical flaw in the decision which ran on Dec. 4, 2007, the first anniversary of the decision. I will be re-running the companion post, "The Two Jones Thesis," on Monday.

In the Dover decision, Judge Jones unwitting lays a trap for himself, and then spends a good part of the decision falling into it. On p. 64 of the decision, Jones gives three reasons for determining that ID is not science:

1. It permits supernatural causation
2. It assumes a "contrived dualism" in the argument for irreducible complexity
3. Its negative arguments against evolution (like irreducible complexity) have "refuted by the scientific community"

In all of this discussion, there is a particular view of how to demarcate science from non-science. It is philosopher Karl Popper's demarcation criterion: that in order for something to be science it has to be falsifiable, or testable. We see this in the following comment by Jones:

Accordingly, the purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations. (3:101-03 (Miller)). ID is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in this world. While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory. (p. 82, emphasis added]

It is in his statement of the second point where Jones sets himself up. He says that the argument for irreducible complexity is "central to ID". Otherwise, why would he include it in a discussion of whether ID is science? And, in reason 3., he also says it has been "refuted": in other words, falsified. But if the argument for irreducible complexity is, as Jones later determines, falsified, then ID is falsified, since irreducible complexity is "central to ID".

But if ID is not falsifiable, then (if you assume Popper's criterion, which is far from noncontroversial among philosophers of science) it is not science--and it cannot therefore be falsified. So how does Jones get around the fact that he just said both that ID is not science because it can't be falsified, and that an argument "central to ID" has been falsified?

His method is simply to skip back and forth between the two arguments hoping the reader will not notice.

He says first that the truth or falsity of arguments for ID are irrelevant:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science.

Judge Jones then goes on an extended argument explaining why he thinks the argument or irreducible complexity fails (the argument for which essentially consists of the fact that lots of evolutionists say so). But then, obviously cognizant of the inherent contradiction in his argument (that the court takes no position on the truth of the arguments for ID and that it does), he points out that irreducible complexity is an argument against evolution, not an argument for Intelligent Design:

Irreducible complexity is a negative argument against evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert Professor Minnich. (2:15 (Miller); 38:82 (Minnich) (irreducible complexity “is not a test of intelligent design; it’s a test of evolution”). [p. 68, emphasis added]

He says this, in fact, in several places:

As irreducible complexity is only a negative argument against evolution, it is
refutable and accordingly testable, unlike ID, by showing that there are intermediate structures with selectable functions that could have evolved into the allegedly irreducibly complex systems. [p. 76, emphasis added]

Jones' argument is that the alleged failure of irreducible complexity can be charged to ID's account only if irreducible complexity is not a part of Intelligent Design theory itself, since ID itself is not science and therefore not falsifiable. And yet, if it isn't a part of ID, then it obviously cannot undermine the theory itself.

Importantly, however, the fact that the negative argument of irreducible complexity is testable does not make testable the argument for ID.

How can this be if irreducible complexity is "central to ID"? He wants to use the alleged refutation of irreducible complexity against Intelligent Design, but he doesn't want to do it at the cost of his argument that it isn't science. And he does this by employing an explicit contradiction: that irreducible complexity is both central to ID and not central to it.

He then complicates his position even further:

...[E]ven if irreducible complexity had not been rejected, it still does not support ID as it is merely a test for evolution, not design. [p. 79, emphasis added]

In other words, what Jones is saying is that the falsity of irreducible complexity can be held against ID since it is "central" to it, but that, even if it were true, it wouldn't count in favor of it, since it is not central to ID!

It is a clever bit of sophistry. No, take that back. It's just sophistry.

If anyone was in any doubt as to whether the debate over Intelligent Design was rigged, Jones dispels it here. In the duel between the scientific mystics and the advocates of Intelligent Design, the scientific mystics are the only ones allowed a loaded gun.

How can Jones justify this? The short answer is that he can't--not, at least, if he wants to maintain any kind of rational credibility. But if it is not clear how he can do this and remain within the bounds of reason, it is clear why he does it.

ID is science insofar as irreducible complexity (and other similar arguments) is part of it, and unfalsifiable insofar as it is not. And Jones knows this, but wants to have his cake and eat it too.

If opponents of ID want to hold irreducible complexity against ID, then they will have to abandon their argument that ID is not science. And if they want to preserve their argument that ID is not science, they will have to stop using arguments against irreducible complexity against ID.

Until they do, they are simply being irrational.

Revival Meeting at the Church of Darwin

So now they're having revival meetin's at the Church of Darwin. Click here for pictures of the singin' and clappin' at this years revival, which commemorates the Dover v. Kitzmiller decision striking down Intelligent Design.

HT: Ed Brayton.

One Flew Over the Darwinists' Nest

Sean Carroll is one of those open-minded science types who are always generously offering the rest of us lectures on the importance of intellectual freedom and open inquiry--at least when the subject of discussion is buried in the annals of history. When it comes to people debating issues today, however, there are other things which must be taken into consideration.

Like whether Carroll agrees with them.

He is particularly upset about Bloggingheads.tv running a dialogue between John McWhorter and Intelligent Design advocate Michael Behe, a professional scientist. "Unfortunately," he says, "I won’t be appearing on Bloggingheads.tv any more."

So there.

Bloggingheads.tv is a site that bills itself as "a place where great minds don't think alike," a slogan that sounds suspiciously like a description of a place where great minds don't actually think alike. Carroll's problem with the site is that it included a dialogue with someone he doesn't think like--namely, Michael Behe--and he doesn't think this is something that a site designed for discussion between people who don't agree should do.

Here is Carroll, expounding on his reasons from opposing open discussion on bloggingheads.tv:

Here’s the distinction I want to draw, which might admittedly be a very fine line. If someone wants to talk about ID as a socio/religio/political phenomenon worth of study by anthropologists and sociologists, that’s fine. (Presumably the right people to have that discussion are anthropologists or sociologists or historians/philosophers of science, not biochemists who have wandered into looney land.) If someone wants to talk to someone who believes in ID about something that person has respectable thoughts about, that would also be fine with me. If you want to talk to a theologian about theology, or a politician about politics, or an artist about art, the fact that such a person has ID sympathies doesn’t bother me in the least.

But if you present a discussion about the scientific merits of ID, with someone who actually believes that such merits exist — then you are wasting my time and giving up on the goal of having a worthwhile intellectual discussion. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. But it’s not an endeavor with which I want to be associated.

In other words, a site dedicated to discussions between people who don't agree shouldn't run any dialogues that includes people who don't agree with Carroll. And if it does, then Carroll's not going to be associated with it. He'll just go back over to his own blog, where the only people to disagree with are the people who agree with him.

This is a man who stands on principle.

G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw once debated the question, "Do we agree?" Carroll and Bloggingheads.tv are now debating the question of whether two people who don't agree should debate the question of whether two people who don't agree should debate. About whether two people who don't agree should debate, that is.

Of course, the difference is that Chesterton and Shaw conducted their debate in full knowledge that it was a joke.

After Bloggingheads-tv posted the dialogue, it apparently received complaints from Carroll and his allies, on the grounds that people like Behe were "crackpots." So it took the post down. But then the hard-to-please Carroll, who complained that the site should never have posted the dialogue in the first place, got upset when the site took it down:

Then, to make things more bizarre, the dialogue suddenly disappeared from the site. I still have very little understanding why that happened. The reason given was that it was removed at McWhorter’s behest, because he didn’t think it represented him, Behe, or BH.tv very well. I’m sure that is the reason it was removed, although I have no idea what McWhorter was thinking — either when he proposed the dialogue, or while he was doing it, or when he asked that it be taken down.

In other words, Carroll complained about the post being put up. Bloggingheads.tv took the post down. Then Carroll complained that the site took the post down.

If only Bloggingheads.tv would act in as non-erratic a fashion as Carroll, maybe he would come back and be associated with the site again. Then it wouldn't, like, be so bizarre.

But Carroll gives the reason he was upset that the site took the post down:

That feeds right into the persecution complex of the creationists, who like nothing more than to complain about how they are oppressed by the system.

Carroll is against giving people he disagrees with any excuse to complain that they are oppressed by the system. And the best way to do that, he suggests, is by never giving them a chance to speak in the first place. It's so simple, really.

Oh, but then there's the last part of the saga: Bloggingheads.tv put the post back up! And if you think this pleased the dyspeptic Carroll, why, you're just not paying attention.

Remember, these Intelligent Design people are crackpots. Unlike Carroll. Who's not.

A Dilemma for Darwinists

The new crop of atheist Darwinists argue that the Resurrection of Christ is impossible because there are so many observations of people dying who, in fact, stay dead. But at the same time, they claim it is possible (indeed, for them, necessary) that life came from non-life despite the equally impressive number of observations of living things generated always and only from other living things.

Despite just as much evidence against one as the other, they accept the latter and reject the former. Why? Because it fits their worldview. But somehow, I suspect, they will continue to claim they are more rational than their religious peers.

Go figure.

Brian Leiter disagrees with Frank Beckwith--and himself

Brian Leiter is a University of Chicago philosopher and one of the frantic voices warning of the Evil Creationist Plot to Take Over America. He has recently taken Christian philosopher Francis Beckwith to task for being a "notorious and sleazy shill for 'Intelligent Design' creationism." Now of course it would be notoriously sleazy to accuse someone of believing something they don't actually believe.

Wouldn't it?

Since his religious conversion to Catholicism (and philosophical conversion to Thomism), Beckwith has renounced his belief in Intelligent Design. Apparently Leiter sees nothing amiss in charging someone who is intellectually honest enough to publicly announce his change of mind on a very controversial issue with misrepresention and lying in the very process of engaging in these things himself.

It doesn't involve a terribly complex intellectual procedure to distinguish between someone's past beliefs and what they believe now, particularly for a University of Chicago philosopher. Yet Leiter seems to be having some trouble managing it.

But this is just garden variety hypocrisy, and Leiter is no garden variety hypocrite.

Leiter's most recent screed comes after Beckwith criticized one of the more recent attempts to politicize the academy by forcing ideological uniformity on colleges and universities in the name of "Diversity." This time, Leiter and other members of the Tolerance Police have targeted religious colleges and universities who have the nerve to employ policies that allow them to hire people who, like, agree with them. In any other world than the ideologically uniform and politically charged one Leiter inhabits, people who talk till they are blue in the face about Diversity would be expected to actually practice it, an activity that would involve tolerating the existence of institutions that take a different view on issues like human sexuality than your own.

It would be an interesting philosophical exercise--perhaps one Leiter could pursue after a hard day on Uniformity Patrol--to try to intellectually justify the position that the belief in Diversity somehow obligates you to try and stamp out the opinions of those with whom you disagree.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

...and Diversity is Uniformity

To Leiter, like so many thinkers on the left, ideological political considerations take precedence over everything else--professional decorum included. Leiter's posts on Beckwith don't even attempt to meet Beckwith's remarks with any kind of academic detachment. Honest disagreement with his political ideology is, by definition, impossible. Those who take any another view than the Approved one are simply evil.

This is a common characteristic of essentially religious beliefs, which is what the Diversity Crusade has become. In this movement, there is simply no sense in even considering your opponent's position. It is simply heresy.

It's a strange thing to see a guy who gives the creationists down the road for essentially the same kind of approach to scientific issues engaging in it himself. But I guess I'm appealing to intellectual consistency here, a characteristic that these days is apparently too much to ask of an otherwise reputable philosopher.

Tolerance Police expel Ben Stein from University of Vermont graduation ceremony

University of Vermont president Daniel Fogel has uninvited Ben Stein, the star of the pro-Intelligent Design movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," as its commencement speaker in order to be inclusive. In order to be less divisive, the university is replacing Stein with ... Howard Dean.

Apparently former Columbia University speaker Ahmadinejad was unavailable.

The Evolution of the Gaps

The 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth is fast upon us--February 12 to be exact--and the occasion will undoubtedly spawn prolific comment on his legacy. Add to that the fact that this year is the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species and you have the makings of a real celebration. He was, after all, one of four or five great influences on modern thought, along with Sigmund Freud, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, and Karl Marx.

One of the more interesting comments on Darwin and his legacy is the recent article by Jerry Coyne on why science and religion can never be reconciled, in the most recent New Republic. Coyne reviews two recent books on Darwin, both of which argue that evolutionary theory and religious belief are reconcilable, and in the process makes his own case against the possibility of any reconciliation between religion and science at all.

I'll be making a few observations over the next couple of weeks about Coyne's article and the many reactions to it by important modern thinkers.

The "God of the Gaps" Argument
The first has to do with a comment Coyne quotes from Karl W. Giberson's book, Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Coyne quotes the passage approvingly:

The world is a complex place, and there is much about the universe that we still don't understand. We are centuries away from closing the many gaps in our current scientific understanding of the natural world.... But it is the business of science to close gaps, and it has long been the central intuition of theology to find a better place to look for God.... Promoting "design" in isolation from God's other attributes is a dangerous and ultimately self-defeating way to get God back into science. [italics mine]

There are several things going on in this paragraph, but the one I want to draw attention to is the italicized part. It is one brief statement of one of the assumptions behind the "God of the Gaps" argument against theism, an argument alluded to throughout Coyne's piece. This is an argument used frequently by Darwinists against anyone who would presume to believe in some account of nature that involves anything outside of nature.

According to this argument, there is a body of questions about the world, many of which are still unanswered. Fewer of these are unanswered now than in previous times, since Science answers more and more of these questions every day. Those of a religious bent, it is charged, have always taken refuge in God as the answer to unanswered questions. If there is an unanswered question, proponents say, "God did it." But Science will one day answer all these questions, we are told, and then there will be no need for the silly hypothesis of God.

In short, the God Hypothesis is only a sort of intellectual stopgap measure to plug the holes in our knowledge about nature that becomes less and less necessary as Science advances, and the outstanding questions decrease. Furthermore the plausibility of the Hypothesis even for explaining those things that are still unexplained by Science becomes suspect because it has so often been replaced by a scientific explanation.

The static analysis fallacy behind the argument
But there is an assumption behind the God of the Gaps Argument that is ridiculous on the face of it. In fact, it is a great example of the static analysis fallacy.

The assumption is that there is a fixed number of questions about the natural world, some of which have been answered and some of which have not, so that every question that is answered reduces the number of unanswered questions by the same amount, leaving the body of unanswered questions reduced by one, and leaving the need for the God hypothesis reduced by 1 divided by the number of unanswered questions.

Now this is obviously absurd, since science (as opposed to "Science") does not operate in a world in which there is a fixed number of questions. As science proceeds in its path of discovery, it discovers new questions which it never would have thought to ask before. Because of this there are some who would argue that the number of unanswered scientific questions is not diminishing at all: that, in fact, because of the rate of the appearance of new questions compared to number of questions having obtained answers, the number of unanswered questions is actually increasing all the time.

It's a bit like the situation with oil reserves. I don't know if the situation still holds, but several years ago, there was a debate about the availability of oil and how long the world had until it ran out. Someone came up with the exact number of years they thought we had until we ran out of oil. They simply took the amount of known oil reserves and divided it by the amount of oil consumed each year. Presto: a reliable prediction of how long we had.

But the analysis failed to take account of the discovery of new oil reserves each year. At any one time, there are so many gallons of oil reserves discovered. But the next year, they will have discovered more oil reserves. So any static analysis will completely miss the change in available oil and its affect on the analysis. In fact, someone pointed out, the rate of discovery of new oil reserves in any given year consistently outpaces the amount of oil used in that year so that at the end of each succeeding year, there is more available oil.

Again, I don't know if this situation still holds--and, of course, there is obviously a fixed amount of oil on the earth known and unknown--a situation, by the way, that does not necessarily apply to the number of mysteries in nature.

There is also the matter of the nature of the newer questions in relation to the old. I can't prove it, but I wonder if the questions scientists face get increasingly intractable. As they delve deeper into the mysteries of nature, do they realize how much deeper the mysteries are than they thought before? This seems to be a theme in some writing by physicists.

If you light a lantern in the darkness, you see the area that it lights--and the darkness all around. But if you make the lantern brighter, although you see more by its light, you also see more that is dark. The circle of light increases, but with the increase in the size of the circle comes an increase in its circumference outside of which one sees the increasing extent of the darkness. With the increase in the size of the circle comes the increasing realization of the amount of the darkness all round.

Science is a light in the darkness of physical reality, but as its light increases, so does its estimate of the amount of darkness that is in need of light.

What accounts for the argument's popularity?
So why does this static analysis maintain an air of plausibility to so many people?

My theory is this: that they infer from the fact that we can manipulate nature and predict its behavior better, that we must therefore be closing in on some ultimate terminus in which our powers to control nature--and to understand it--are perfect. A sort of Scientific utopia. But is this inference valid?

I can do things with my computer now that I could never have done 30 years ago. Through the development of new software applications, I can manipulate text and images, as well as facts and figures, in a way the people of a generation ago could never have dreamed. I can access information with a speed and facility that is simply astounding. I can manipulate these things much better than before, and I can order information with an increasing competence.

But is this increasing ability to control and order information commensurate with my knowledge of how I am able to do this?

I took computer programming classes in college in the early 1980s. There were a limited number of computer languages at the time, and even a beginning student could comprehend the scope of the tools available to him to learn and master computer programming. But as the ability to manipulate information on the part of the computer user has increased, so have the tools and technology that makes that manipulation possible. In fact, the level of complexity that goes into making such manipulation easier on the part of computer users far outstrips their limited understanding of how they are able to do it.

When the Internet was in its infancy, you had to know html, and you could make a competent web page if you learned some basic commands. But go try to figure out how some modern state of the art web page operates now--a web page that makes something you want to do easier--and you will discover that just knowing html does little to help you understand it. There is php, and java, and numerous other languages and tools that seem to multiply by the week.

It doesn't take you long to realize that even though you can do more and more incredible things with the tools that are available to you, you understand less and less about the incredibly complex world of computer technology that allows you to do those things--a world getting more complex and harder to understand by the day.

Of course there is someone--or various someones--who know these things, else they would not exist. These someones--intelligences we presume--are inventing new things all the time to make it easier for those of us who use computers to do more and more things. What is interesting, however, is that if you talk to any one of these intelligences, you quickly discover that, although they may be very sophisticated themselves, they still do not understand very many things about the world in which they operate, so terribly complex is that world becoming.

I suppose there are those who would respond that this analogy breaks down when you consider that the world of technology is one that is, in fact, getting more complex all of the time because there are people constantly developing more complexity, as opposed to the natural world, which does not have such intelligences doing this. But the whole irony here is that those who are most prone to invoke the God of the Gaps argument are the very ones who believe in a theory (Natural Selection) that, over time, creates a more and more complex world.

Isn't this, after all, the lecture we are constantly having to endure? That things "higher" on the evolutionary tree are only "higher" in the sense that they are more complex? And that the evolutionary movement in nature is from the less complex to the more complex?

Other problems with the argument
Of course, those who wield the God the Gaps Argument against theism probably need to be asked who they are trying to refute, since there are very few intelligent theists who argue that evidence for God is restricted only to the things that science has yet to explain. "We are to find God in what we know," said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "not in what we don't know."

And anyway, scientific explanation is not necessarily a full explanation. Often scientific explanation takes the form of appeal to prior, unexplained phenomena. Science doesn't even purport to give ultimate explanations for things. It only explains how, and cannot explain why, so even those things that are supposedly explained by science still inhabit the domain of things that await some more ultimate explanation.

In other words, not only are the gaps not diminishing, but they aren't even really gaps.

Is the denial of Intelligent Design unscientific?

There are certain issues that seem to attract more readers than others on this blog. And looking at the posts from the past year, it is clear that the issue of Intelligent Design is one of them. Every time I post on this issue, hits to this blog go up. Now of course that isn't a sufficient reason to post about something. It may be the case that writing posts about Britney Spears might drive up traffic. But it just so happens that I am not interested in Britney Spears, whereas I am interested in the issue of Intelligent Design.

So why not start the year off with a bang?

I know the Darwinists get aggravated whenever I bring it up, but the question of the status of Intelligent Design as a scientific theory still fascinates me--largely because the whole question of where science ends and other disciplines such as philosophy begin is something I find fascinating.

Despite constant claims to the contrary by those who seem to like to shoot from the hip on what in the philosophy of science is called the "demarcation" question, I have professed repeatedly that I don't know whether Intelligent Design qualifies as science strictly speaking or not. But to further the discussion (or should we say "resume hostilities), I'll ask a question that came to mind the other day.

This has been said before in different ways, but, put very simply, if you say that the assertion that the universe as a whole or any particular part of it are intelligently designed is by necessity a non-scientific assertion, then have you not also committed yourself to saying that the opposite assertion--that the world or the things in it are not intelligently designed--is equally non-scientific?

If so, then what are the ramifications for Darwinism, since Darwinism necessarily involves the denial of the assertion of Intelligent Design?

In other words, if the question of whether the world is intelligently designed is a non-scientific question, then isn't any answer to the question--affirmative or negative--equally non-scientific? To put it another way, isn't a negative answer to a non-scientific question just as non-scientific as an affirmative answer to it? And if so, then what does that say, not only about the anti-Intelligent Design proclamations of some in the scientific community, but about the scientific status of Darwinism insofar as it is a denial of the Intelligent Design assertion?

Philosopher Thomas Nagel on Intelligent Design as science

This article by philosopher Thomas Nagel is one of the better treatments I have seen of the Intelligent Design issue.

What is Intelligent Design?

The opponents of Intelligent Design are constantly trying to muddy the distinction between creationism and Intelligent Design. They do this in several ways. The first is to employ a deliberately sloppy and indefinite definition of Intelligent Design; the second is to simply misrepresent it.

To the left is an attempt through logical division to show the several distinctions visually. Note that this is only one limited way to define something--through showing it's parts--and does not take the place of a real definition.

By "weak case" Intelligent Design, I mean anyone who holds that the universe is the product (by whatever mechanism) of Intelligence. By "strong case" Intelligent Design I mean the belief that the design can be scientifically verified. This analysis misses a lot of subtleties in the differences, but I think it captures the main categories.

What the Intelligent Design movement per se calls "Intelligent Design" is simply Strong Case Intelligent Design, which would include both Intelligent Design evolutionists and creationists of both the young and old earth stripes, although many young earth creationists would disavow connections with other Strong Case Intelligent Design advocates because of the latter's heavy reliance on a literal interpretation of Genesis.

What many ID opponents try to obfuscate is the very real differences between Intelligent Design evolutionists and creationists. It serves their rhetorical and political purposes, but does very little to further understanding about the issue.

Darwinists who don't want to debate

If you thought the scientific community was a place of free and open discussion, you'd better think again. Northern Kentucky University recently announced a mock trial involving a fictional public high school teacher who is fired for teaching creationism in a biology class. The program is part of a series the university is sponsoring on controversial issues. But there are some people who don't want the debate to happen at all.

According to Inside Higher Ed, NKU University president James C. Votruba has received hundreds of e-mails asking him to call off the debate. It isn't the conservatives who are complaining, says the article, "scientists are." “Evolution is science and creationism is faith,” Vortuba told the online education magazine, but, he added, that's no reason to be afraid of a debate on the issue.

But there are those in the scientific community who think otherwise, and their voices seem to be growing louder by the day. “What this really is is an attempt to contrive a debate between science and superstition in which the superstition side gets to pretend they have equal status. [sic] And, of course, science issues are not settled in a courtroom, ever,” said PZ Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris, whose weblog Pharyngula, purports to be a watchdog on anti-evolution activity.

Myers is just one of many voices that in recent years have tried shout down any debate about issues involving human development and origins on the grounds that any debate would give undeserved credibility to the anti-Darwinist side. The dogmatic tone Myers strikes is one being heard increasingly among those who hold to Darwinism, the reigning paradigm in the scientific community.

Earlier this year, advocates of Darwinism strongly opposed a bill passed by the Louisiana State Legislature that advocated objectivity, logical analysis, and critical thinking skills in the discussion of science and other controversial issues in state schools, claiming that the measure was a thinly veiled attempt to impose creationism in the classroom.

When you are reduced to arguing that objectivity is a creationist plot, you'd better start revising your public relations strategy. And when you have to abandon the very principles that you advocate on every other occasion in order to protect your beliefs, it's probably time for an intellectual gut check.

Tolerance and diversity are the academic watchwords when it comes to views that challenge other dominant paradigms, so why are they abandoned so quickly when it comes to discussion of controversial issues like evolution?

Why is there such a fear of debate?

"Within the larger scientific community, the issue is settled, but in the public policy arena, it’s not a settled issue,” Mark Neikirk, executive director of the university’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, told Inside Higher Ed. Scripps Howard, along with the university’s law school, is sponsoring the event. “In the real world, there is a public policy debate over how to handle this topic. Many Americans believe in intelligent design. Many Americans believe it should be taught."

Advocates of Darwinism are understandably frustrated. Despite the fact that they have had control of the nation's science education for decades, a majority of American's still hold to some form of creationism, or at least intelligent design, a broader theory that would include creationism but also includes those who belief in some form of evolution guided by a designer.

Maybe one of the reasons there are so many people in this country who maintain a suspicion of Darwin's theory is the behavior of those who are its most ardent advocates. If the evidence for Darwinism is as airtight as its advocates claim, then why are they so opposed to the discussion of the issue in an academic forum?

In other words, their failure to convince the larger public may turn out to be their own fault.

British official, operating without law, proposes teaching creationism as science

A British official is calling for the teaching of creationism alongside evolution despite the fact that the country has not passed a Science Education Act like that recently passed in Louisiana. Critics of the Louisiana legislation, SB 733, claimed that the law, which calls for the application of critical thinking, logical analysis, and objectivity in the teaching of science subjects, would bring on a flood of creationist propaganda in Louisiana schools.

So far, however, there have been no reports of any significant creationist activity in Louisiana schools, while in Britain, which is limping along with no such law, is apparently way ahead of Louisiana.

How can this be? Do the British not understand that they first need to pass a bill requiring objectivity in science instruction before they can teach creationism? Here we go and help them in two world wars and they go and do this. It's enough to make the critics of SB733 look bad.

Louisiana passed the bill, which detractors opposed on the grounds that it would open the floodgates to the teaching of Genesis in public schools. Part of the concern could have stemmed from the fact that it could result in students learning about how Noah took 2 animals of each kind aboard the Ark, and public school children can't count that high.

We need to put Barbara Forrest, the philosopher of science who led the opposition to SB733, on a plane and send her over to explain to these people proper procedure on this kind of thing.

They can even keep her for a while.