IDiot Rundown

Dacook of UncommonlyDense quote-mines a recent National Research Council report:

On Page 8 of a Report from the National Research Council there is an interesting admission:

“Natural selection based solely on mutation is probably not an adequate mechanism for evolving complexity.”

Of course the report itself supports the concept of Darwinian evolution. But I think the admission that mutation is an insufficient mechanism is significant. They invoke lateral transfer of genes as the alternate explanation:

“More important, lateral gene transfer and endosymbiosis are probably the most obvious mechanisms for creating complex genomes…”

Of course this begs the question; where did the genes come from that are being laterally transferred?

The genes come from mutation. The report admits that mutation alone is not sufficient for evolution (not a new revelation), but it's certainly necessary. The point is, you're not looking at one single genome being continuously mutated over time. You have a bunch of different genomes mutating, and then mixing and matching the parts that work to create entirely new genomes.

Meanwhile, turnabout is fair play. Several months ago, Time magazine made the insulting decision to have Michael (Fucking) Behe write Richard Dawkins' profile for their list of the year's 100 most influential people. Now, Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute is flustered because the New York Times Review of Books chose Dawkins to review Behe's The Edge of Evolution. Let me give it to you straight: Dawkins is respected in the scientific community. Behe is not. It's dishonest enough to pretend that they're equals without going further to say Behe is above Dawkins.

Next, the media made a hubbub over recent hominid fossils, and DI's Casey Luskin wasn't going to let the sensationalism go by untouched. Rather than write about everything that's wrong with his interpretation of the fossils, I'll just let you choose from a few other bloggers: 1 2 3 4 5. I'll just add that I found scordova's (UD) remark on the matter highly ironic:

It [sic] understandable that scientists make mistakes, but one would hope an entire scientific discipline could get at least one fact right once in a while.

Strong words, from someone who thinks ID counts as a scientific discipline.

We've got a transcript of a 2005 speech by creationist Don McLeroy, now head of the Texas State Board of Education. Texas is screwed. That might deserve a post of its own.

William Dembski apparently thinks animated .gifs and Beatles lyrics are accurate representations of evolutionary theory. This is a problem.

Finally, our old friend Michael Egnor still insists that questioning evolution in schools is a federal crime:

It’s a federal crime to violate a federal court ruling, such as the
ruling by federal judge John E. Jones banning criticism of Darwin’s
theory in the curriculum of biology classes in Dover, Pennsylvania
public schools.

There's just one problem with Egnor's logic: Judge Jones' ruling doesn't ban questioning of evolution. Questions are a good thing. It does, however, ban teaching of intelligent design, on the grounds that ID is rehashed creationism bent on sneaking religion into science curricula. (Don't believe that? Check out the Don McLeroy transcript.)

Why Intelligent Design is Creationism

There's been a lot of buzz lately over the distinction (or lack thereof) between creationism and intelligent design.

Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute wrote last week that ID wasn't just a protestant Christian movement: an orthodox Jew was in on it, too! (I'll give you a second to get over the shock that Xians and Jews could agree on the origins of life.)

Denyse O'Leary once again mumbles praise of the Creation Museum under her breath. Notice how she praises the museum for not aligning itself with ID, rather than condemning it for using false science. That's because O'Leary doesn't give a damn about real science. As long as the CM helps her undermine evolutionary biology, it's okay in her book. She just doesn't want her version of creationism to be

Mike Dunford at the Panda's Thumb agrees (reluctantly) with O'Leary that Creationists and IDiots are different; the difference being, Creationists aren't afraid to admit that their ideas come from their faith, whereas IDiots like O'Leary are afraid to admit to the metaphysical beliefs at the foundation of ID.

Larry Moran doesn't want to let O'Leary off the hook so easily. Creationism, he says, encompasses Young Earthers, Old Earthers, IDiots, and even Theistic Evolutionists (to varying degrees). I agree. If you think God created us, whether you think you can prove it or not, then you're a Creationist.

Meanwhile, Michael Egnor took offense to Dunford's post. Mark Hoofnagle gave Egnor a thorough thrashing.

For my part, I'm convinced that Intelligent Design is a subspecies of Creationism. The only way you can make a reasonable design inference is if you have reason to believe there could have been a designer present. I don't care how unlikely you think a pattern is. If I pour a bowl of alphabet soup and find the phrase "You're a douchebag, and by the way we're almost out of milk," I'm still going to have to chalk it up to coincidence unless you can give me some other evidence that I have pantry gremlins. Suppose we find artifacts such as stone tools and crockery at a new site in Wisconsin, dated confidently to 7000 years old. We could make the reasonable inference that people had left them behind, because we have other evidence that tool-making people existed on Earth 7000 years ago.

Even if you don't have evidence for a designer apart from whatever it is you think has been designed, you sure as hell would normally look for more evidence of the designer to back up your design inference. Imagine if we found what we thought were stone tools dated with all confidence to 125 million years old. We'd variously be questioning our dating techniques, looking for toolmaking dinosaurs, looking for evidence of time travelers, or coming up with natural explanations for the stones' appearance. If we found "tools" on Mars, we wouldn't sit back in our recliners and take that as unequivocal proof of Martians, we'd keep on looking.

The Intelligent Designers time and again deny being interested in who their designer is, how he did it, or why he did it the way he did. Every single thing that humans identify as "designed" has been accompanied by at least a vague guess based on our best evidence as to who the designer was. After all, how can you have design without a designer? No, the truth is, IDiots already have an idea who the intelligent designer is, and they don't want to admit it because that intelligent designer is God (or Rael, or whatever your faith of choice dictates). They have no evidence of the designer, nor will the seek it, because they have their faith. That's why ID is Creationism, and decisively not science.