The Onion on "Intelligent Design Trial"

From the Onion:




(Monkeys make anything funny.)

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Podcasts I Recommend

In case you are not aware of them, I want to draw your attention to a few podcasts. If you are unfamiliar with the term "podcast," never fear. As far as I can tell it is just a fancy term for recording someone talking and making an mp3 of it. You don't need special software, other than something to play mp3 files. Just right-click and save the files. (You need to follow the links on this page first.)

First up is an interview of Duane Jeffery (BYU Zoologist) at a Sunstone Symposium a few years ago. The interview was also published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 35 No. 4. However, the Dialogue article is not freely available yet. The two match pretty well, although there are a couple of extra gems in the audio version.

John Dehlin as a few good ones at Mormon Stories. He has interviewed Gregory Prince about his new biography on David O. McKay. Part 1 is more general--and includes a brief discussion of Joseph Fielding Smith and Man, His Origin and Destiny. Part 2 is specifically about Blacks and the Priesthood, and the Civil Rights movement.

John has also interviewed a Mormon Mason.

They are all interesting listening. Here's a tip: do the dishes while you listen and your family will likely leave you alone.

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Ancient Oxygen Levels Correlate With Animal Evolution

A paper in this week's Science correlates rise in atmospheric oxygen with the evolution of large placental animals.

The concluding paragraph of the paper states:

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The data presented here provide evidence of a secular increase in atmospheric oxygen over the past 205 My that broadly corresponds with three main aspects of vertebrate evolution, namely endothermy, placentation, and size. Particularly notable are high stable O2 levels during the time of placental mammal origins and diversification and a close correspondence between marked increases in both atmospheric oxygen levels and mammalian body size during the early to middle Eocene. Although increases in mammalian body size, morphological disparity, and inferred ecological heterogeneity during this interval may have been influenced as well by other environmental factors such as warm global temperatures and the spread of tropical and subtropical habitats, the correlation between evolutionary changes in mammalian body size and increased atmospheric O2 has a physiological basis related to placental mammal reproduction. The changes in oxygen appear to have been driven by tectonics and increased burial efficiency of organic matter on continental margins.

The correlations are represented in this accompanying figure (click to enlarge):



Here are a few more details from news@nature.com:

They have found that the amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere 200 million years ago was only about half what it is today. And the appearance of large placental mammals, around 50 million years ago, happened at the same time as the oxygen level more or less doubled.

This is also about the same time that the Atlantic Ocean opened up: a supercontinent split into the Americas, Africa and Eurasia, creating the ocean between them.

This continental movement created thousands of kilometres of coastline that helped to wash organic carbon into the sea, locking it away from the process of decay. Because such carbon escapes chemical processes that would turn it into carbon dioxide, the more carbon is washed away, the more oxygen remains in the atmosphere...

Placental mammals began to appear at the end of the Cretaceous, but they were small, rodent-sized creatures. "We don't really see large mammals until the Eocene," says Falkowski.

This, he suggests, was made possible by the sudden oxygen rise at that time. Large mammals have a lower density of capillaries than small mammals, so they can only distribute oxygen around their bodies efficiently if there is a lot of oxygen in the air. Placental reproduction also needs a lot of ambient oxygen, because only a small proportion of that in the mother's blood reaches the fetus.

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Philosopher of Science: Robert Pennock

Robert Pennock is a philosopher of science and has also been a prominent critic of the intelligent design movement. He is the author of Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism, and testified as an expert witness in the Dover trial.

His website is one you may want to check out. He has done work on modeling evolution using digital organisms and his site provides the original Nature paper, as well as Carl Zimmer's article in Discover Magazine describing the work. He has a number of his other publications available as well--including "Creationism and Intelligent Design," which was published in the 2003 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.

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Biologist: Kenneth Miller

Kenneth Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University. He is a prominent defender of evolution and critic of intelligent design. As a vocal defender of evolution, Brown in somewhat unique in that he is also a believing Catholic--which combination is the impetus for his book, Finding Darwin's God. (I have not read the book, but Jeff summarized some of it at Mormons and Evolution.) Brown has a website that you may want to look through.

Here is a partial transcript of Miller's testimony in the Dover, PA trial:

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Q. (By Witold Walczak) The School District argues, you know, it takes a minute to read this statement. I haven't timed it. It takes about a minute to read this statement. What's the big deal? What's the harm in reading this to Dover School District students?

A. (By Kenneth R. Miller) That's a very interesting point. And if they raised the issue, what is the harm in reading it, one might well turn around and say, well then why read it in the first place, if it makes so little difference, if it is of so little consequence? Then why have you insisted on doing this and why are you in court today? The only thing I can infer from turning that question around is that the Dover School Board must think this is enormously important to compose this, to instruct administrators to read it, to be willing to fight all the way to the court. They must think that this performs a very important function.

Now turning it around back to my side of the table, do I think this is important? You bet I think this is important for a couple of reasons. One of which, first of all, as I mentioned earlier, it falsely undermines the scientific status of evolutionary theory and gives students a false understanding of what theory actually means. Now that's damaging enough. The second thing is, it is really the first attempt or the first movement to try to drive a wedge between students and the practice of science, because what this really tells students is, you know what, you can't trust the scientific process. You can't trust scientists. They're pushing this theory. And there are gaps in the theory. It's on shaky evidence. You really can't believe them. You should be enormously skeptical. What that tells students basically is, science is not to be relied upon and certainly not the kind of profession that you might like to go into. And thirdly, that third paragraph that we haven't talked about very much right now points out that intelligent design, which has implicit endorsement in this statement, because we don't hear that it's just a theory, we don't hear that it's being tested, it sounds like it's a pretty good explanation. It's available. It's good stuff. And students will understand immediately, as anybody does who reads Pandas, that the argument is made on virtually every page of Pandas for the existence of a supernatural creator designer. And by holding this up as an alternative to evolution, students will get the message in a flash. And the message is, over here, kids. You got your God consistent theory, your theistic theory, your Bible friendly theory, and over on the other side, you got your atheist theory, which is evolution. It produces a false duality. And it tells students basically, and this statement tells them, I think, quite explicitly, choose God on the side of intelligent design or choose atheism on the side of science.

What it does is to provide religious conflict into every science classroom in Dover High School. And I think that kind of religious conflict is very dangerous. I say that as a person of faith who was blessed with two daughters, who raised both of my daughters in the church, and had they been given an education in which they were explicitly or implicitly forced to choose between God and science, I would have been furious, because I want my children to keep their religious faith. I also want my students to love, understand, respect, and appreciate science. And I'm very proud of the fact that one of my daughters has actually gone on to become a scientist. So by promoting this, I think, this is a tremendously dangerous statement in terms of its educational effect, in terms of its religious effect, and in terms of impeding the educational process in the classrooms in Dover.

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ID Prediction Is Malarky

The Washington Post has an article explaining the strength of evolutionary theory. I want to focus on this portion:

Asked to provide examples of non-obvious, testable predictions made by the theory of Intelligent Design, John West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based ID think tank, offered one: In 1998, he said, an ID theorist, reckoning that an intelligent designer would not fill animals' genomes with DNA that had no use, predicted that much of the "junk" DNA in animals' genomes -- long seen as the detritus of evolutionary processes -- will someday be found to have a function.

(In fact, some "junk" DNA has indeed been found to be functional in recent years, though more than 90 percent of human DNA still appears to be the flotsam of biological history.)

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This is malarky. That prediction does not follow from intelligent design (at least the type the DI pushes) any more than evolution predicts that "junk DNA" should exist. All evolution predicts is that if "junk DNA" exists, unless there is a mechanism to remove it, it should be found in organisms in a pattern consistent with common descent. (As an aside, I should point out that to the extent that "junk DNA" has been found to have function, it is not the ID folks who have made the discoveries.) Now let's turn back to intelligent design.

ID proponents have repeated over and over again that intelligent design is about identifying features of the universe where design can be inferred because of their complexity. When scientists point out the many design flaws (or oddities) in nature--and even in the human body--ID proponents respond that the motivations of the designer are not relevant to the discussion about whether something is designed or not. They argue that we can infer design from the thing itself--questions about who the designer is or what his/her/its motivations were are not relevant. Further, although they do not repeat it much, they claim that ID can be compatible with much of evolutionary theory.

If they were sticking to their rules, they would say that intelligent design is silent on the issue of "junk DNA". Now West is trotting out a prediction that is clearly rooted in assumptions about what a designer would or would not do. He cannot have it both ways. Either issues of poor, inefficent, or malevolent design are legitimate in this debate or they are not.

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Evo-ID Smackdown Begins

Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District goes to trial today in Pennsylvania. Most of the major news sources have stories--here is one from MSNBC.com.

Why the court battle?

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It all stems from a science policy that the Dover, PA school district adpoted that required the following statement to be read to students:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.
Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, “Of Pandas and People,” is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.

As I understand it, many science teachers refused to read the statement so administrators did it for them.

The NCSE has a website that is tracking the case. It has background information and copies of court documents. The book "Of Pandas and People" was published in the late '80s. The NCSE has many reviews of the book. The Panda's Thumb also has links to various information sources, including previous posts relevant to the case.

The Foundation for Thought and Ethics, the publisher of the book, sought to intervene in the lawsuit. Their request was denied, but what is interesting is some of the information that came out in the process. Althought the FTE claimed not to be a religious organization, tax documents said otherwise. Also, early drafts of the book used forms of the word "creation" where "intelligent design" ultimately appeared. The publisher claimed that "creation" was only used as a placeholder term.

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Whales: From Land to Sea

A couple of months ago I read Carl Zimmer's book, At The Water's Edge, which deals with the transition of aquatic life to land and back again. The "back again" part concerns the evolution of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc.) If you are interested in these two steps in evolution then you should read the book.

Now Zimmer has a post dealing with whale evolution and the creationist attack thereon. Here are a few links to go along with it.

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The webpage of the Thewissen lab is definately worth exploring. (Thewissen is a major player in the discovery of transitional whale fossils.)

This article, originally from the NCSE has some good background information, although it looks slightly out of date. One of Thewissen's important papers was published in Nature about a month after the above article was posted on talk.origins.

And then there is this illustration of whale transition--and this too.

Although not a scholarly source, Wikipedia seems to have a pretty good page.

On a final note, a reminder of why gap arguments are a bad idea:

"Finally, and most glaringly obvious, if random evolution is true there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the mesonychid and the ancient whale: Where are they? It seems like quite a coincidence that of all the intermediate species that must have existed between the mesonychid and whale, only species that are very similar to the end species have been found."

- Michael J. Behe

Anti-Darwinian, Intelligent Design conjecturist,
writing against the validity of evolution less than a year before three transitional species between whales and land-dwelling Eocene Mesonychids were found.

P.S. I forgot to include this. Note that not all relationships are set in stone.

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