Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 533

Denmark: Slowly developing a conversation about design in nature

Karsten Pultz

From Karsten Pultz in Denmark: Recently a biologist and I held our second full day course for 8th – 9th-grade science teachers from Christian schools in Denmark. We aimed to equip these teachers with scientific facts to deal with the evolution/creation issues they encounter in their line of work.

The theory of evolution is mandatory in all schools, secular as well as Christian, private as well as public. But teachers are allowed, under Danish law, to mention alternative explanations for the origin of life. It is, therefore, appropriate to acquaint science teachers in the Christian schools with the intelligent design hypothesis.

ID is almost completely unknown in Denmark, and it is quite difficult to convey all the essential information with only four hours at one’s disposal. Giving a course in evolution would be a lot easier. As David Berlinski once wrote, it takes an afternoon to fully understand it, and about a week to become an expert. The reason for that is that a theory like unguided evolution is supported by very little evidence and therefore is quickly covered, while a theory like ID, supported by a huge amount of evidence requires a lot more time.

Kristian Østergård, with whom I work is, so far as I know, the only biologist in Denmark who actively and publicly opposes evolution. There are other Darwin-doubting biologists, but they tend to keep a very low profile—some of them have been severely heckled by mainstream media, so they have retreated for the time being. Lack of courageous biologists like Kristian has forced laymen like me, who run no risk of being expelled from academia, to engage in the ID cause and the fight for a return to honesty in what is being taught about the origin of life to our teenagers.

In this course, I emphasized explaining the difference between creationism and ID. Interestingly enough, teachers found the idea of keeping the science strictly separated from Biblical input very appealing. Private Christian schools in Denmark are constantly monitored by the authorities and, at the slightest sign of evolution being left out of biology classes, the hammer will fall. And by the way, no private schools are actually private, they are all partially subsidized by tax money. This makes them slaves to the public educational system because they must apply the same teaching standards as the public schools. So there is not much wiggle room to incorporate ID, despite it being permissible to teach.

The nice thing about ID, I explained, is that it deals only with empirical evidence, which makes it quite resistant to credible accusations of creationism. Shortly after teaching the course, I began to reflect on the need to teach the claims of evolution in order to specifically make the ID-related case against life being the result of blind, undirected processes. You actually have to teach more evolution than you otherwise would because evolution must be understood properly in order to really appreciate and understand the power of ID. It is also excellent to hold up two competing theories against each other; a theory will always be weak if it has no competing theory to be measured against. So there should be every reason to teach lots of evolution, especially when you want to make the case for ID. I will try to convey this idea the next time we give a course.

I gave the advice to these teachers that they just teach the evidence and let the students make up their own minds. I made the point that a fair, balanced presentation of the evidence for and against unguided evolution will necessarily lead to the rejection of the theory.

Kristian Østergård and I have both been involved in the translation and publishing of Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable, and it was very satisfying to be able to provide the teachers who attended the course with copies of this important work. We hope they can find inspiration in Axe’s book for their biology classes; unfortunately we still haven’t got any Danish ID educational material.

Østergård and I are part of a small group of ID proponents lead by professor Peter Øhrstrøm whose goal it is to translate and publish one new book critical of unguided evolution every year. <Undeniable by Douglas Axe is first and The Evolution Revolution by Lee Spetner is probably the next.

Karsten Pultz is the author of Exit Evolution

See also: Something Is Rotten In Something Is Rotten In The State Of Denmark

and

Denmark: Perhaps Not So Rotten After All

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Two plus two equals five is not good theology in a rational universe

Some of us try not to wade into theology as such very much for the same reasons as we try to avoid taking a whack at the tarbaby. Where theology is directly relevant – for example if someone claims that there is an “artistic license to lie” about traditional religious ideas about the universe, well, we don’t have much choice, do we?

Just recently, a troubling statement emerged: A notion of theology that suggests it is somehow counter-real or anti-real. A priest explains, in a post mainly devoted to issues in the Vatican’s media office:

But on the communications front, 2018 demonstrated amply that it is not the supposed “enemies” of the pope who cause the Holy Father the most problems. It is his most enthusiastic friends. In early 2017, Father Antonio Spadaro, the papal amanuensis and consigliere plenipotentiary, tweeted: “Theology is not mathematics. In theology 2 + 2 can equal 5. Because it has to do with God and real life of people….” His intent was to defend Amoris Laetitia [a controversial recent document].

But it had the opposite effect, as the pope’s inner circle gave off a creepy authoritarian vibe. Ever since George Orwell’s 1984, insisting that 2+2 can equal 5, or whatever the party line is, has become shorthand for totalitarianism. Indeed, in 1980s Poland a frequent anti-communist slogan was that, “For Poland to be Poland, 2+2 must always equal 4.” Raymond J. de Souza, “Friendly Fire” at First Things

The people involved are unlikely totalitarians but they could make life easier for such by being as witless as they sometimes seem. Anyway, for the record, it’s not true that the Catholic Church thinks that 2+2 = 5 or that totalitarianism is good government.

See also: Michael Keas: Stephen Hawking Among Worst Offenders ForScience vs. Religion Myths

Bill Nye’s “Christianity vs. The Big Universe” Myth

Neil deGrasse Tyson and “the artistic license to lie”

and

The progressive war on science takes dead aim at math

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How can a naturalist atheist believe in the existence of evidence?

A philosopher warns Jerry Coyne against presumption in philosophy:

Last month, The Conversation published biologist Jerry Coyne’s article, lovingly served up for audiences at Christmastime, “Yes, There is a War Between Science and Religion.” Coyne fancies himself a participant in a perceived war between faith and reason, science and religion. His mission: To show people they can’t believe the account of Christ’s birth—as depicted, for example, in the Book of Luke, Chapter 2—while simultaneously believing there’s crackers in the pantry. You use your eyeballs for the latter, but not the former, and it’s simply irrational to go through life with a bifurcated mind!

…

However, notice that Coyne’s notion of right evidence is insufficient to serve as evidence for all the things we believe are true. First, the concept of evidence is quite a bit more complicated than Coyne supposes. Second, on Coyne’s conception of evidence, it’s hard to see how he can adjudicate the very debate about faith and reason he’s engaged in. What empirical evidence does he use to decide between his view on the one hand, and Richard Swinburne’s or Paul Helm’s on the other? Third, above I listed a few things which we don’t believe on empirical evidence, such as the uniformity of nature, the existence of a past, and the existence of other minds. We could add the truths of mathematics, moral truths, the nature of the laws of logic, and philosophical claims, like the nature of causation, to the list. Fourth, what empirical evidence does Coyne have for his claim that only empirical evidence matters? Paul Manata, “Is There A War Between Science And Religion?” at Arc

A naturalist atheist’s problems are not just with religion but also with philosophy. we can’t believe that our brain is shaped for fitness, not truth, and still expect to have a chance at discovering truth.

See also: Michael Keas: Stephen Hawking Among Worst Offenders For Science Vs. Religion Myths

Bill Nye’s “Christianity Vs. The Big Universe” Myth

Neil deGrasse Tyson and “the artistic license to lie”

and

Darwinian Jerry Coyne muses on hashtag hate and the media

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If naturalism wins, math is over

Essentially, we live in the age of the meaningful illusion:

The more scientists learn about the human brain and how it operates, the more obvious it is that being human is no big deal. We’re just animals, complex biological systems operating according to the laws of nature—from physics to biology and chemistry. Many scientists, like the late Stephen Hawking, and philosophers like Duke University professor of philosophy and neurobiology Owen Flanagan and SUNY University professor of philosophy Gregg Caruso in a recent issue of The Philosopher’s Magazine argue that we have no soul, no fixed self, and no inherent purpose. We exist simply because we exist, tiny specks on a small planet in an infinite universe, and not because a god made the Earth for us. This conception, called “naturalism,” leaves many people feeling deeply uneasy—consciously or unconsciously—and casting about for meaning.Ephrat Livni, “Feeling anxious? It’s not just you, it’s our philosophical era of neuroexistentialism” at Quartz

Livni makes the case quite clear. It’s his conclusion that doesn’t work:

Ignoring evidence isn’t going to resuscitate dated notions of god or the soul or the self or human specialness, and it won’t make life meaningful. Instead, we have to transform our anxiety, individually and societally, because at this point, as they put it, “naturalism is the only game in town.”

The reality is that naturalism is culminating in the war on math. And it’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse. As long as naturalists are in charge.

After all, if there is no soul, self, or inherent purpose, no fixed right or wrong, there is also no math that matters. Progressive educators understand that.

Hat tip: Heather Zeiger

See also: The progressive war on science takes dead aim at math

How naturalism rots science from the head down

and

Which side will atheists choose in the war on science? They need to re-evaluate their alliance with progressivism, which is doing science no favours.

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Darwinian Jerry Coyne muses on hashtag hate

Darwinian PZ Myers has been doing some thinking about what the new atheism didn’t accomplish and now we have Darwinian Jerry Coyne seems to be doing some thinking too, in the wake of the Covington meltdown, which revealed the nullity of traditional media:

Quoting Andrew Sullivan on the abyss of hate vs. hate, he says,

This is about the Covington Mess and how both social and mainstream media, by going with their confirmation bias, is ruining America. And I agree. I’ll give a couple of good quotes:

Yes, the boys did chant some school riffs; I’m sure some of those joining in the Native American drumming and chanting were doing it partly in mockery, but others may have just been rolling with it. Yes, they should not have been wearing MAGA hats to a pro-life march. They aren’t angels; they’re teenage boys. But they were also subjected for quite a while to a racist, anti-Catholic, homophobic tirade on a loudspeaker, which would be more than most of us urbanites could bear — and they’re adolescents literally off the bus from Kentucky. I heard no slurs back. They stayed there because they were waiting for a bus, not to intimidate anyone.

. . . To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about “micro-aggressions” for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face.

Jerry Coyne, “Weekend Reading” at Why Evolution Is True

Musing from his own reading experience, Coyne also directs us to Britain’s Guardian, one of whose writers seems determined to present the story as he wishes it had been:

When Wilson writes something like this, did he ever care about the truth? I don’t think so; he just wanted to maintain that the Covington students were still pariahs while dissing the conservative media that painted them as heroes. Nobody was a hero in that narrative, but neither were the boys nor the Native Americans pariahs.

Jerry Coyne, “Weekend Reading” at Why Evolution Is True

He then turns to other current events topics and seems to have found some good reading.

But now, speaking as a news writer of about five decades standing, I (O’Leary for News), find that the biggest single change from decades past is the relative lack of interest among major media figures in getting things correct.

I first became interested in the topic with Rathergate in 2004, when CBS news icon Dan Rather promoted to the public a dossier on George W. Bush that, by any media standard had to be suspect.

As Canadian newsman Rex Murphy asked at the time, “What were they thinking?” Okay so they didn’t want Bush to be president again. Then didn’t they think their own reputations for accurate Watergate-style reporting mattered?

Unlike Watergate, Rathergate slammed back on the news team, not the president. That can happen when media go with clearly suspect documents.

And just before the Covington uproar, where both conservative and liberal media rained down condemnation on the heads of a group of teens waiting for the bus without getting all the relevant facts, another story grabbed attention that, as veteran newsman Phelim McAleer says, should never have run. There were too many legitimate questions about the accuracy of one of the journalists preferring it. No surprise, it collapsed in ruins but that was eclipsed by the social media meltdown and libel law threats around the Covington boys waiting for their bus.

These are deeply sick media. They no longer care about getting stuff right. I read about a thousand journalists losing their jobs and I wonder, how much worse is that than a thousand bartenders losing their jobs? Will society really be worse off?

It will be interesting to see how or if the major media decline affects public discussion of the riddles of design in nature.

* Mind you, this was the guy who — abandoning the usual prostration of Big Science before the Raging Woke, started calling out the mob’s anti-Semitism* So let’s see what happens next.

Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is the author of a book, also called Why Evolution Is True. He’d started to call out the anti-Semites among the Marching Woke recently. Couldn’t happen soon enough.

and

About the facts of life, Darwinian Jerry Coyne is still being stubborn … Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne continues to refuse to follow Nature down the primrose path of political correctness and is doubling down on what people used to be allowed to accept as biological fact (Coyne was president of an evolution society which has started to wobble on whether sexes are real divisions.)

and

Is Darwinist Jerry Coyne starting to get it about SJW “science”? Ah, not a moment too soon.; Here is a perfect specimen of sp. SJW, Trollus inyerfaceus. We have certainly dealt with them. Coyne may find some in his own backyard.

See also: New atheism is over, says Darwinian PZ Myers To judge from PZ’s post, it looks as though the new atheists are turning on each other instead of on the rest of us. Doesn’t a proverb somewhere cover that?

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New atheism is over, says Darwinian PZ Myers

He says it’s a train wreck:

Mainly what happened is that the credibility of science was stolen to bolster rationalizing prior bigotries. People were drawn into the Church of the New Atheism by Islamophobia, but rather than being enlightened about the unity of humanity, they instead learned that bastardized evolutionary theories could be weaponized to justify all kinds of abuses, because that’s what the self-appointed “leaders” were doing.

And that’s another thing — who put Dennett, Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens in charge? They got profiled in Wired with ominously shadowy portraits (omens of the “Intellectual Dark Web” to come), and they made a video in which they appointed themselves “The Four Horsemen”. Whatever the New Atheism was, it was structureless, so it was easy for a couple of early popularizers to fill the vacuum. Watching a PR move rapidly turn into a de facto powerbase that would quickly dominate conferences and writings left me uneasy — but as long as we weren’t building idols and golden thrones for the Tetrarchs I figured this, too, would pass. Unfortunately, while it didn’t get to the golden thrones stage, for too many people the four turned into oracles whose dicta should not be questioned, and dissent would lead to being ostracized. It only took a year to build a cult of personality.P. Z. Myers, “The train wreck that was the New Atheism” at Pharyngula

To judge from PZ’s post, it looks as though the new atheists are turning on each other instead of on the rest of us. Doesn’t a proverb somewhere cover that?

See also: And Now For Something Completely Different… Darwinian PZ Myers Laments The Sad State Of Atheism Today That was mid-last year. Seems to have gotten worse.

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Evolutionary Teleonomy: Support from Mainstream Evolutionary Biologists

Two years ago, I started suggesting not only should the modern synthesis be dropped, I suggested an alternative (ID-friendly) paradigm that could be used in its place in evolutionary biology. This week, a near-identical concept was suggested by a major evolutionary biologist in a mainstream journal.

I coined the term “evolutionary teleonomy” to refer to the new paradigm. You can see the video that I introduced the term with below, or read the Bio-Complexity paper on it here.

Additionally, a week and a half ago, I posted a video describing in detail various evidences for the cellular processes involved in evolutionary teleonomy here:

I have other research towards that end, which, if interested, you can find here.

So, just the other day, a friend pointed out that Eugene Koonin proposed the exact same topic just a few days ago. The paper is CRISPR: a new principle of genome engineering linked to conceptual shifts in evolutionary biology.

So what is this conceptual shift in evolutionary biology?

Put somewhat boldly, but I think appropriately, these are dedicated devices for genome evolution. It is crucial to emphasize that the emerging concept of the role of IAC in organismal evolution is fully founded on distinct, elaborate molecular systems that do not involve any new elementary mechanisms. The familiar molecular biology and biochemistry account for all these processes but the combination of the elementary mechanisms can be unusual, and the emergent phenomena are the “Lamarckian-type” routes of evolution.

What is the description of evolutionary teleonomy?

the idea that organisms can actively affect their evolution

Additionally, the Bio-Complexity evolutionary teleonomy paper shows how this makes a quantitative difference in genetic analysis.

So, if you want to know the future of biology, you should check out the present of Intelligent Design.

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It takes a smart robot to mimic a Permian “reptile”

It takes a smart robot to mimic a reptile

When researchers built a robot to sprawl like a prehistoric reptile, they were in for a surprise

Early Permian era Orobates’ skeleton was “exquisitely preserved,” which created an excellent opportunity for researchers in paleontology to try to figure out how the lizard-like animal moved. And reverse engineering its movements can tell us a lot about how it lived. “It takes a smart robot to mimic a reptile” at Mind Matters

It turns out walking, as opposed to sprawling, did not come about by the Darwinian method:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

The Permian period was 280 to 290 million years ago – a while back – and it seems most likely that Orobates walked back then.

See also: Winston Ewert: Remember the Luddites! The Luddites became famous for breaking machinery during the Industrial Revolution. Were they entirely wrong? People often think that the Luddites were merely anti-technology because they opposed automation during the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840). The story is more complex. As we face increasing automation today, we might want to see what we can learn from their history.

Robert J. Marks: Pursuing Nerd Quality Over Nerd Quantity Reducing math and science to practice is what engineers do. Scientists didn’t put a man on the moon. Engineers did. Overall, computer applications will impact our society and culture as much as electricity did. And we’re living smack in the middle of the transformation.

and

Jonathan Bartlett: Are you a software developer or business leader? Here’s where you want to be this year Do you ever feel frustrated when you hear about significant AI developments and you can’t be sure how—or whether—they relate to your organization? Are you missing out? Will a competitor “get it” ahead of your firm? The best strategy is to take a bit of time to get to know the technology, the companies, the people, and the ideas personally.

and

Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

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Rob Sheldon on the Canadian lab “solving” the origin-of-life problem

Impact crater/NASA

It’s an RNA world thesis that relies on wet and dry cycles:

McMaster researchers have pioneered ground-breaking technology that could – for the first time – provide experimental evidence of how life was formed on the early Earth and show whether life could have emerged elsewhere in the universe.

McMaster’s new Origins of Life Laboratory which features a Planetary Simulator, a highly sophisticated climate chamber – the only one of its kind in the world – enables researchers to mimic the environmental conditions present on the early Earth, or on Earth-like planets, to explore how the building blocks of life were assembled and how these prebiotic molecules transitioned into self-replicating RNA molecules, the first genetic material found in all life today.

…

Many scientists theorize that life on Earth began 3.5 billion to 4.5 years ago in what Charles Darwin called “warm little ponds” – hydrothermal springs found in volcanic environments in which nucleotides, the essential biomolecules needed for the emergence of life, mixed with the amino acids, lipid molecules, clays and rocks, and inorganic salts contained in the ponds.

According to exhaustive research published last year by Pudritz and Ben K. Pearce – both of McMaster’s Department of Physics and Astronomy – chains of RNA polymers were created when nucleotides, formed from nucleobases delivered by meteorites into these ponds, were bonded together as a result of wet and dry cycles of precipitation, evaporation and drainage.Erica Balch, “” at Brighter World (McMaster University)

Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon responds,

I love physicists! Their hubris knows no bounds. If only our hearts could remain as pure and simple as a physicist’s in a chemistry hood. Only a physicist could look at an insoluble biochemistry problem and say, “We’ve built a chamber which we can change the temperature and gas content. PV=nRT, and poof!, we’ll show the chemists how their tough problem is solved properly. Pressure and temperature, and maybe some cosmic rays, and that OoL conundrum will fall apart like boiled chicken.”

So here’s my prediction. After a few million dollars, 100 graduate student lifetimes and about 10 years, they will say. “Well, what do you know–we learned a lot about non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and by gum it’s impossible to solve OoL with a gas chamber and a bicycle pump! But look at what we can do with our computer simulations!

https://xkcd.com/793/

Well, you have to admit that they do sound pretty self-assured for so difficult a problem.

Note: McMaster is the home of Bert Brockhaus, who won a Nobel in physics in 1994, neutron spectroscopy but that doesn;t justify self-assurance here.

Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent.

See also: Welcome to RNA World: The five-star hotel of origin-of-life theories

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Paul Davies: Life’s defining characteristics “better understood as information”

From a review of cosmologist Paul Davies’s The Demon in the Machine:How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life:

Davies claims that life’s defining characteristics are better understood in terms of information. This is not as absurd as it may seem. Energy is abstract, yet we have little trouble accepting it as a causal factor. Indeed, energy and information are closely related through entropy.

He thinks that instead of looking for chemical signatures of life elsewhere in the universe, we should be looking for informational signatures.

What practical difference does it make to see life as informational? We don’t yet know, but can speculate. For one thing, if the essential characteristics of life are entropic, extraterrestrial searches based on chemistry could be misguided. It might be more useful to look for phenomena such as ‘anti-accretion’ — in which matter is regularly transferred from a planet’s surface into space. Earth has experienced this since the 1950s, when the one-way traffic in asteroids and meteorites plunging into the globe was finally counteracted by the launch of the first artificial satellites. Arguably, such situations are not merely consistent with the presence of life, but almost impossible to explain in any other way. Timo Hanay, “Maxwell’s demon and the hunt for alien life” at Nature

The problem with taking information seriously in the evolution of life, as in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, is that it may rule out favorite “evolution” claims. Taking it seriously and discounting it whenever it matters is a fancy dance.

See also:

The Information Enigma

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