Ever As Before: Creationists Still Resist Antibiotic Resistance

It's hard to believe that it's been over a year since I wrote about creationists' arguments against using antibiotic resistance in bacteria as an example of evolution. The creationists' refrain, if you don't remember, is typically:

1) “The genes for resistance are not the result of random mutation; they’ve been there all along, we just didn’t notice them!”
2) “Even if resistance DOES occasionally result from random mutation, it doesn’t count as evolution, because there’s always a price to be paid for gaining resistance.”

Both points are complete balderdash, as I've written before. In short: Evolution is about change in populations--neither for better nor for worse, rather simply for different--by any of several mechanisms. But if you're hung up on random mutation, then we have ample evidence that antibiotic resistance can be the result of random mutation. And if you're hung up on seeing mutations that improve general fitness of resistant bacteria, then, hell, we've got that, too.

I dipped into my archives for this one because the creationists have been dipping into theirs. The Young-Earth Creationist (or "YUCK" for short) evangelist website Answers in Genesis is, once again, trumpeting the first argument, this time by means of a moldering little article from May 2007. Looking at a population of bacteria under antibiotic selection, yuckmeister Ken Ham and his cronies want you to "recognize that the resistance is already present in the bacterial population" and therefore not an example of "the addition of completely different kinds of genetic information." Sound familiar? And apparently that was insightful enough to be worth repeating over a year and a half later.

I guess that's to be expected, though. Some of the nonsense they recycle is thousands of years old.

SMBC Continues to Deliver

I know we've all felt this way at one point or another:

Texas Education Threatened By Creationists

[This entry was originally written as a diary for the Daily Kos. It goes into more detail than my last post regarding education in Texas, so I'm reposting it here as well.]

The Houston Chronicle reported on 24 August that a majority of the current members of the Texas State Board of Education opposed requiring Intelligent Design be taught in public classrooms. This report comes a little over a month after Texas governor Rick Perry (R) appointed Don McLeroy, a vocal creationist, to chair the SBOE. According to the Chronicle, of the 15 members of the board, ten claimed they "wouldn't support requiring the teaching of intelligent design." One member, Pat Hardy, said she would be open to teaching ID. Four members (Rene Nuñez, Cynthia Dunbar, Terri Leo, and Ken Mercer) declined to be interviewed. Many people see this report as a sign of hope for science education in Texas. But I don't buy it for a minute.

What we're seeing now is a word game; the new name for creationism is going to be "evolution" (with the modifier "strengths & weaknesses").

It's a game the creationists have played before. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism (or "creation science") was founded in religion, not science, and was therefore unconstitutional to include in public school science curricula. The creationist movement responded by rebranding creationism as "intelligent design." However, in 2005 Judge John E. Jones III ruled in Kitzmiller v. Dover that intelligent design was also unconstitutional to include in school curricula. Expert witnesses like Barbara Forrest successfully demonstrated (using evidence such as the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Strategy" and the Foundation for Thought & Ethics' "textbook" Of Pandas and People) that intelligent design was rehashed creationism, promoted with the intent to drive a wedge between scientific materialism and education to the benefit of a religious worldview. Now, once again, they're changing their rhetoric instead of reanalyzing their argument.

The Discovery Institute, the creationist "think-tank" responsible for the Wedge Strategy, is now promoting a new book entitled Explore Evolution: the Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism. They also issued a video in 2005 entitled "How to Tech the Controversy Legally." The video offers five strategies for teachers who want to criticize evolution:

1. Keep the focus ON science

This is the creationists' most basic and most dangerous tactic. Creationists are desperate to have their views accepted as part of the scientific discourse. But any hack can write a book. Real science means having your research and interpretations pass peer review. Not one creationist claim has passed scrutiny by the scientific community. They're trying to bypass that process and gain scientific legitimacy by taking their false facts straight to the impressionable minds of students.

2. Keep the focus OFF religion

Creationists know they need to distance themselves from the religious rhetoric, which means covering their tracks and denying connection to terms like "creation science" and, in the wake of Dover, "intelligent design."

3. Teach MORE about evolution, not less

Here we see the strategy of rebranding the same old creationist talking points, not as a separate hypothesis of creation or design, but rather as supposed "weaknesses" of evolution.

4. Link the teaching of evolution to existing school district policies about teaching controversial issues

This is the "present both sides and let the kids decide" approach favored by those who don't count on students to be well enough trained to see through the false facts being presented by the creationist side.

5. Defend the academic freedom of teachers who want to teach the controversy

And when all else fails, threaten legal action against any school administration that gets in your way.

The Discovery Institute isn't the only one pushing this strategy. Sal Cordova of the major ID weblog Uncommon Descent writes:

As much as I advocate that ID is correct, it is not the time to teach it in the public schools. Creationist Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas School board, agrees.
. . .
There are individuals who may be pro-ID out there who want to lobby to teach ID in the public schools. I think this is ill advised. I encourage rather than lobbying for the teaching of ID or creation science, one should lobby for teaching MORE evolution, and in the way Darwin would have wished it taught. The was beautifully accomplished in the book: Explore Evolution.

But do we have to worry about this strategy coming from the Texas SBOE? I fear we do. McLeroy is certainly in on the strategy; let's look at the rest of the board.

The Texas textbook curriculum was last up for review in 2003. At the time, McLeroy and others were fiercely advocating replacing the biology text with one more critical of evolution. The board eventually voted 11-4 to approve the existing text. The minority vote consisted of McLeroy, David Bradley (the current vice-chairman of the board), Gail Lowe, and Terri Leo, all of whom still sit on the board. (Note that McLeroy, Bradley, and Lowe all claimed not to advocate teaching ID in the Chronicle interviews.)

However, according to a CNN article, the textbooks for all subjects were approved in a batch vote. McLeroy wanted to vote on each textbook separately, presumably because he felt other members' disapproval of the treatment of evolution was outweighed by approval of other texts. In 2005, McLeroy gave an address on intelligent design at the Grace Bible Church in Bryan, TX. In his speech, he was quite open about the association between intelligent design creationism and religion, and said of the 2003 textbook decision:

[Quoting Phillip Johnson] "This is not to say that the Biblical issues aren’t important, the point is the time to address them will be after we have separated materialistic prejudice from scientific fact."

And let me say it again: in the 2003 biology book adoption in Texas this principle was followed strictly. There wasn’t a board member that wasn’t trying to get the weakness of evolution into the debate. We never brought up religion. We never brought up intelligent design. All we brought up was evidence.

"Evidence," of course, meaning creationist talking points--anything from gaps in the fossil record to slow mutation rates--refuted by the scientific community.

Besides the four minority voters in the 2003 decision, six other current board members were also serving in 2003: Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, Mary Helen Berlanga, Mavis Knight, and Bob Craig (all of whom said "no" to advocating teaching ID); Pat Hardy (who is open to teaching ID); and Rene Nuñez (who declined interview). According to McLeroy in 2005, any or all of these members could be sympathetic to the creationist strategy of highlighting "weaknesses" in evolution.

The next round of textbook review for Texas is scheduled for 2011. With McLeroy now chair of the Texas SBOE (and Bradley vice-chair), it's entirely possible that creationists will manage to smuggle their agenda into public schools. We'll have to be on guard. The real danger of the creationist movement isn't in terms like "creation science" or "intelligent design", but rather in the false facts that these terms encompass and their corruption of the scientific method. Science means unbiased, reproducible research and rigorous, continuous peer review. We need to be prepared to repel not just the creationist name, but their false facts. As Darwin himself wrote:

"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened."
--Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man p. 385

Creationists rule the Texas Board of Education

It's been two whole weeks since I've had to write about creationists. But duty calls.

From the Houston Chronicle: The Texas State Board of Education appears to be against including Intelligent Design in school curricula. 10 of 11 board members interviewed (the board has 15 members) claim they "wouldn't support requiring the teaching of intelligent design." The 11th interviewee, Patricia Hardy, openly advocated teaching ID.

Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy) thinks this is good news.

In fact, [McLeroy's stance] is standard creationist rhetoric, and it’s a lie. This is all part of the leaked Wedge plan to get religion taught as science; first they try to show the weaknesses of science, then they make the "if not A then B" argument, which is bad logic (the only kind most promoters of creationism are capable of). If one scientific explanation is weak, why then, creationism must be right!

Feh.

But let’s be positive here: Other board members who said they believe the curriculum should continue to include evolution and not be changed to accommodate intelligent design were:

Geraldine “Tincy” Miller, R-Dallas; Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands; Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas; Bob Craig, R-Lubbock; Mavis Knight, D-Dallas; Rick Agosto, D-San Antonio; Lawrence Allen, D-Houston; and Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi.

Show them your love, folks. They need our support, for surely they have an uphill battle.

But as much as I admire Phil's optimism, I don't buy for an instant that these school board members are really opposed to ID.

Case in point: Sal Cordova (of UncommonlyDense) also thinks this is good news:

As much as I advocate that ID is correct, it is not the time to teach it in the public schools. Creationist Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas School board, agrees.
. . .
There are individuals who may be pro-ID out there who want to lobby to teach ID in the public schools. I think this is ill advised. I encourage rather than lobbying for the teaching of ID or creation science, one should lobby for teaching MORE evolution, and in the way Darwin would have wished it taught. The was beautifully accomplished in the book: Explore Evolution

Don McLeroy, the creationist appointed to head the Texas SBOE, said the following in his 2005 lecture at Grace Bible Church in Bryan, TX:

According to Johnson, the first thing to do is to get the Bible out of the discussion. Remember, even if you don’t bring the Bible into the discussion, the naturalist has already put it into the discussion. And Johnson states “it’s vital not to give any encouragement to this prejudice and to keep the discussion strictly on the scientific evidence and the philosophical assumptions. This is not to say that the Biblical issues aren’t important, the point is the time to address them will be after we have separated materialistic prejudice from scientific fact.”

And let me say it again: in the 2003 biology book adoption in Texas this principle was followed strictly. There wasn’t a board member that wasn’t trying to get the weakness of evolution into the debate. We never brought up religion. We never brought up intelligent design. All we brought up was evidence.

That's the same speech wherein he quite plainly connected ID to religion, asserting (among other things) that evolution must be wrong because it contradicts the Bible.

Note that remark in the second paragraph: there "wasn't a board member" in 2003 who wasn't trying to highlight the weakness of evolution. Of the current board members, who was serving on the board in 2003? Don McLeroy (current chair), Geraldine "Tincy" Miller (chair in 2003), Rene Nuñez, Mary Helen Berlanga, Patricia Hardy, Mavis Knight, Terri Leo, Gail Lowe, David Bradley, and Bob Craig. 10 out of 15 current members, 8 of whom were interviewed by the Houston Chronicle.

So I'm sorry, Phil, but these other people are not on our side. Texas is doomed.

This is further warning that the new name of creationism and intelligent design is going to be "evolution." (These people have some serious legitimacy envy!) But as one of Phil's commenters pointed out, maybe it's a good thing this is happening in Texas. The success of actions to keep creationism out of schools thus far has largely been leveraging of the separation between church and state. And though the creationists try to play linguistic games, their religious motivations are ever-present, especially in Texas.

Cordova has linked to a Discovery Institute video about circumventing the law to teach ID. So I'm going to have to watch that next... if you don't hear back from me within the next few days, don't worry, the brain hemorrhaging probably won't be too severe.

UPDATE: New post up with more details on the 2003 textbook vote.

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.

More LOL Creationists

Kent Hovind's turn.

Happy LOL Day!

I never thought I'd ever contribute to a meme like this, but give me the right theme, and boy howdy...

Creationism comes to Dartmouth

With the onset of the Dartmouth College trustee election, creationism has found its way into college politics. Trustee candidate Stephen Smith '88 is a Roman Catholic who has in the past been harshly (and ignorantly) critical of evolution and science education. In a recent editorial in "The Dartmouth," Professor Roger Sloboda exposed Smith's anti-science slant:

As a member of the faculty of the department of biological sciences at Dartmouth College, I find many of the comments made by Smith in this article not only scientifically incorrect but also personally offensive. Smith appears unsupportive of College faculty in general, unsupportive of science in particular and unsupportive of the theory of evolution, the linchpin of modern biology.

I had thought that that would be the last word on Stephen Smith. A few subsequent editorials echoed some of Prof Sloboda's criticisms, giving me hope in the scientific integrity of Dartmouth.

But last night, the campus conservative paper "The Dartmouth Review" released its latest issue, featuring an endorsement of Smith. Smith's campaign seems primarily focused on putting academics above administration. It's a commendable goal in principle, wanting to provide a better education, but given Smith's previous attitude toward science, I doubt he would direct the same benefits toward the Biology department as he might (for instance) toward his majors, History and Philosophy. Especially worrisome is his comment in the TDR interview:

To my mind, a College is a place where student education comes first, and that needs to be the reality at Dartmouth, and it's not going to be the reality if instructors are given all sorts of incentives to spend their most productive time on research outside of the classroom. Students need to be the focus of professors. That's not to say there shouldn't be research; it's to say that nothing should trump the importance of educating the students at a place that truly is a College.

Such a statement isn't terribly damning off the bat, but it does merit further discussion. I hope Smith realizes how critical research is both to attracting the greatest minds in the fields and to giving students experience in practical applications of what they learn. I have personally never felt my education suffer as a result of a professor's research. Quite the opposite, in fact.

To be fair, Smith's anti-science article was written about ten years ago. It's possible that he has since changed his mind, but I have yet to see any indication to that effect.

This should serve as a warning: the threat of creationism to legitimate science education is not isolated to the occasional Kentucky school district. It is here at an Ivy League college. We need to be ready to handle it.