Intelligent Design

William Dembski stopped blogging at “Uncommon Descent,” but then turned the keys over to Dave Scot and a few others. A recent post there, quickly deleted, gave a quote from Dr. Raj Baldev criticizing evolution. It was no doubt deleted once the poster became aware that Baldev is an Indian astrologer and swami who endorses palmistry, numerology, and “occult reading,” and who gave private consultations to Saddam Hussein when he was in power. Ed Brayton commented on this posting before it disappeared, and now “crandaddy” at Uncommon Descent has the nerve to criticize Ed for being “bigoted” in pointing this out. As a commenter on Ed’s blog has pointed out, Michael Behe did say in the Dover case that astrology would count as science under the definition of science that admits intelligent design.

Casey Luskin offered a commentary (on the Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News & Views” blog) on Kenneth Miller’s testimony in the Dover case in which he expounded on chromosomal fusion and evidence for common ancestry between apes and humans. Mike Dunford and P. Z. Myers responded, pointing out numerous errors and misunderstandings in Luskin’s argument. Luskin’s commentary has been enshrined as a paper at the IDEA Center website called “And the Miller Told His Tale." If Luskin or the Discovery Institute were serious about “teaching the controversy,” they’d at least acknowledge the existence of these responses. But even the trackbacks for the blog entry remains empty…

Ed Brayton gives a rebuttal to what is perhaps the most egregiously dishonest critique of the Dover decision so far, by Phyllis Schlafly. John West of the Discovery Institute links to the Schlafly piece with approval. Two examples which support the heading I’ve chosen: Schlafly writes of Judge Jones: He smeared “fundamentalists,” impugned the integrity of those who disagree with him by accusing them of lying and issued an unnecessary permanent injunction.Judge Jones’ accusations of lying were directed at two individuals who testified in the trial, Dover board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, not at “fundamentalists” or “those who disagree with him.” And he made the accusations because those two board members were lying, as I’ve previously described (about Bonsell here, about Buckingham here, and there’s more in the decision here) and may end up facing perjury charges. Schlafly further expands upon her misrepresentation of Jones’ criticism of these two dishonest board members: He lashed out at witnesses who expressed religious views different from his own, displaying a prejudice unworthy of our judiciary. He denigrated several officials because they “staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public."Jones never mentions his religious views, and does not denigrate these board members for expressing religious views different from his own, but for lying. Here is the passage from Jones’ decision that Schlafly is dishonestly commenting on: It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. (p. 137 of the decision)Ed addresses more of Schlafly’s dishonesty at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Jeff Shallit has an interesting comparison of Stephen Wolfram and William Dembski, and their shared apparent unwillingness to admit mistakes. Over at Recursivity.

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in the Washington Post about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision: “This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.” Apparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry’s “Life in Our Anti-Christian America." Timothy Sandefur rebuts Land’s nutty comment at The Panda’s Thumb. UPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry’s “Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

It’s an excellent decision. I did spot nineteen errors, none of significance to the legal arguments (three are typos, one’s a mistaken word choice, and fifteen are instances of the same erroneous character substitution, probably facilitated by the ever-helpful Microsoft Word). Will ID advocates find them and make rhetorical use of them? The typos are on pp. 51, 114, and 120, the mistaken word choice is on p. 96, and the three examples of the incorrect character are on pp. 104, 106, 117, 118, 120, 124, 129, and 130. Warning: Reading these pages (which I strongly recommend–in fact, read the whole thing) will expose you to documentation of dishonesty and sleaziness by Christian school board members, including taking a mural depicting evolution from the classroom and burning it. Buckingham and Bonsell come across as sleazy, lying, manipulative bastards, and the rest of the board come across as ignoramuses rubber-stamping their actions. The citizens of Dover certainly did the right thing by voting out the entire school board. The science teachers of Dover, however, come across as very reasonable people who made a few compromises with the board early on in order to get the textbooks they needed to teach, but who were unwilling to teach unscientific materials or read a misleading disclaimer to their students.

Judge John E. Jones III has issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case–Dover’s ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of Of Pandas and People in the library. The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way Judge Overton’s McLean v. Arkansas creation science decision was in 1982. Ed Brayton has the text of the decision and some key quotes and commentary up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Of late I’ve often thought that drugs developed on the basis of evolutionary biology should have warning labels indicating that their effectiveness is predicated upon the fact of evolution, and creationists should not make use of them. Today’s Doonesbury is along similar lines. (Of course, creationists will say that this is microevolution, not macroevolution, and they only disbelieve in the latter.) This is as good a place as any to recommend Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams’ book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1996, Vintage). ...

I’d like to call attention to two recent articles over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The first is about Casey Luskin, blogger for the Discovery Institute. The second is about William Dembski, the “Isaac Newton of information theory." In the first piece, Brayton writes about how Luskin has referred to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education as “Darth Vader.” Brayton quotes Luskin: “In the past I’ve compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she’s lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of …well, I’m not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It’s certainly not truth." Yet Luskin provides no examples of lies or ulterior motives, and has used false statements to argue against statements she has made. In one example: “I asked her why she thinks ID isn’t science. She said it isn’t science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse’s testimony which he later recanted).” Brayton, speaking directly to philosopher Michael Ruse, asked him if, in the face of criticisms from other philosophers about his position on the demarcation between science and non-science (e.g., see Larry Laudan’s piece in Ruse’s book But Is It Science?), he holds that Intelligent Design is non-science. As Brayton writes, “He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it." As Brayton notes in the same piece, when he’s made charges of dishonesty against William Dembski, he’s backed them up–and he’s done so yet again, showing that Dembski has continued to misrepresent the work of Douglas Axe. In a 2000 paper, Axe did work which focused on a particular gene which confers resistance to certain antibiotics. As Brayton summarizes the paper, “it showed that this particular enzyme could retain most of its function even if it was hit with a major mutational event that resulted in changing as many as 10 of its amino acid residues simultaneously, could retain some of its function (and thus still be capable of selection) even if a mutation resulted in as much as 20% of its total amino acid residues being substituted simultaneously, and that if 40 mutations happened simultaneously, it would stop functioning." Dembski, however, summarizes it this way: “But there is now mounting evidence of biological systems for which any slight modification does not merely destroy the system’s existing function, but also destroys the possibility of any function of the system whatsoever (Axe, 2000)." Brayton points out that Matt Inlay criticized Dembski for this misrepresentation on The Panda’s Thumb back in February, and that Inlay has shown that Dembski has known this is a misrepresentation for at least two years. Brayton concludes: Dembski has crossed over a line at this point, I think. I don’t think it’s any longer possible to maintain that he is merely an ideologue undergoing cognitive dissonance, or that he’s just engaging in wishful thinking of the type we are all probably prone to when defending ideas we have a personal stake in. He is now simply lying outright, and he has to know that.

Dembski still doesn’t admit error–he says his copy of the filing (plaintiff’s response to defendant’s motion for summary judgment) doesn’t have the Shallit deposition, implying that it wasn’t part of the filing and Ed Brayton must be mistaken. The Shallit deposition (in uncorrected form–the draft transcript of the deposition without errors corrected and edited) has been online at the NCSE’s website at least since September 21. It has been pointed out that the link above is to Shallit’s expert witness statement, not the uncorrected deposition, which is in Appendix III, Tab O of the plaintiff’s brief opposing the defendant’s motion for summary judgment. Tab N is Shallit’s disclosure statement. ...