The Longest Running Failed Prediction in Creationism

AUTHOR: G.R. Morton

SOURCE: Answers in Science

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

First, today is the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. So many people have written about this event that it would be superfluous for me to write about it here. However, some of what has been written about the Origin lately, mostly by creationists and supporters of "intelligent design", is that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is "crumbling" and will soon be "dead".

Admittedly, I have written recently that the "modern evolutionary synthesis" is dead (see here for more), but in doing so I have taken pains to point out that the theory of evolution itself is most assuredly not dead. On the contrary, it is very much alive. Indeed, it has never been more vigorous than it is today.

But that's not what the creationists are saying. What they're saying (or trying to say) is that the whole concept of evolution itself is dead: the Earth and everything on it was created a relatively short time ago, and even if life on Earth has changed (a little), all of that change has been guided by the deity of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc.) Indeed, just this morning a new podcast was launched at the website of the Discovery Institute, in which neo-Paleyist and ID creationist John West asserts once again that "Darwinism is dead".

Is this news? And is it new? How long have creationists been predicting the demise of Darwin's theory of evolution? Apparently, they've been doing so since a few decades before Darwin published it. G. R. Morton has compiled a short list of quote from creationists predicting the impending overthrow of the theory of evolution (you can read it here). He introduces his anthology of science denialism with this:

In recent reading of [Dr. William] Dembski and other ID proponents I saw them make a claim which has been made for over 40 years. This claim is one that the young-earthers have been making. The claim is that evolution (or major supporting concepts for it) is increasingly being abandoned by scientists, or is about to fall. This claim has many forms and has been made for over 162 years. This is a compilation of the claims over time. The purpose of this compilation is two-fold. First, it is to show that the claim has been made for a long, long time. Secondly, it is to show that entire careers have passed without seeing any of this movement away from evolution. Third, it is to show that the creationists are merely making these statements for the purpose of keeping hope alive that they are making progress towards their goal. In point of fact, no such progress is being made as anyone who has watched this area for the last 40 years can testify. The claim is false as history and present-day events show, yet that doesn't stop anyone wanting to sell books from making that claim.

Morton's quotations from creationists begins with a quote dating to 1825, 34 years before Darwin published the Origin of Species. Apparently, what many historians have asserted was true: that the idea of evolution was "in the air" in the mid-19th century, and that Darwin simply codified and provided evidence for an idea that was already becoming generally well-known and at least partially accepted. The fact that Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the same mechanism that Darwin did for descent with modification — natural selection — is further evidence for the idea that evolution was "in the air" at the time.

It still is, and even moreso. Not only has the theory of evolution not "crumbled", it is currently undergoing its most rapid expansion since 1859. Darwin's original theory was limited strictly to biological evolution, but now his theory is being extended into astrophysics, geology, economics, psychology, sociology, and even literature and art history. It is this tremendous success that upsets the opponents of Darwin's theory, and that impels them (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that the most widely accepted, most generally applicable, and most analytically powerful theory in all of science is on its way out.

In other words (and true to their creationist roots), they stare reality in the face and deny it.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

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Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Banana Diet

There has been a lot of speculation lately about the status of "intelligent design". Last December, I posted an essay on the demise of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness clubs. At that time it was clear that the IDEA club movement at American colleges and universities was dead. Despite protestations to the contrary, the available data indicate that this is still the case.

Which leads to a more interesting question: what is the current status of the intelligent design "movement"? This question is even more significant this month, as November 24th marks the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the founding document of the science of biology and the most influential book ever published in the natural sciences. Although some ID supporters assert that ID is compatible with evolutionary theory, it is clear from even a cursory examination of their views that the majority of ID supporters are opposed to the idea of evolution in virtually all of its versions.

Which brings me to the point of this blogpost: what impact has ID had on mainstream evolutionary theory, and which of these alternative explanations for the origin of adaptations and the diversity of life is gaining in veracity and which is losing? One way to answer this question is to analyze the frequency with which the terms "evolution" and "intelligent design" appear in internet searches and in news stories in the mainstream media. To assess this, Google has a marvelous tool: Google Trends. The following two graphs were produced using Google Trends. I have copied the graphs directly from the relevant web pages, adding only the red line at 1.5 (on the Y axis) to make possible comparison of relative values.


The first graph (above) shows the frequency of the term "evolution" as it appeared in Google searches and in news articles on the web over the past six years. What the upper graph shows is that Google search volume for the term "evolution" has fluctuated over the past six years, but held relatively steady. The lower graph shows that there has been a steady increase in news articles about evolution over the past six years.


The second graph (above) shows the frequency of the term "intelligent design" as it appeared in Google searches and in news articles on the web over the same six years. As you can see, these graphs are markedly different than those for "evolution". These graphs show that prior to 2005 there were very few searches and almost no news stories for "intelligent design". In 2005 this pattern changed abruptly: by the end of the year, there were over ten times as many Google searches for the term "intelligent design", and a concomitant spike in news articles on the same subject. This spike corresponds to the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trialin Dover, Pennsylvania, in the course of which the ID movement gained national attention. The decision in that trial, issued by Judge John E. Jones (a Republican, appointed by President George W. Bush), was widely hailed as a massive defeat for the ID movement.

This assessment is borne out by the remainder of the graph. As you can see, both internet searches and news articles on ID have declined precipitously since December of 2005, falling to almost unmeasurably low levels.


This graph (above), comparing the search volume and news article frequency of the terms "evolution" (in blue) and "intelligent design" (in red) is even more revealing. Here it can easily be seen that both search volume and news articles on "evolution" have consistently dwarfed those for "intelligent design", even during the period covering the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Furthermore, there is a steady upward trend in the frequency of news articles on evolution, while the frequency of news articles on intelligent design has fallen to almost unmeasurable levels.

So, what are we to make of these trends? Clearly, interest in evolution is on a steady upward course, which just as clearly reflects its importance in the sciences. As I have written elsewhere, the fundamental concepts of the theory of evolution by natural selection have been steadily spreading into all of the branches of biology, and have recently begun to transform such disparate fields as psychology, literature, and even diets and nutrition and art.

By contrast, interest in intelligent design exploded in 2005 and has crashed since then. What other phenomena exhibit this same "boom and bust" pattern? One such transitory phenomenon is the explosion in fad diets. For example, this graph shows the Google search volume and news article frequency for the term "banana diet" (the choice of this term was at least partly in honor of young Earth creationist and ID supporter, Ray Comfort):


The similarity between this graph (above) and the graph for "intelligent design" is striking, and is probably no accident. As many critics of ID have asserted, the ID movement has essentially consisted of a public relations campaign, rather than a scientific research program. Public relations campaigns, like advertising campaigns in general, often show the "boom and bust" pattern shown in the "intelligent design" and "banana diet" graphs. This is because public relations campaigns do not depend on veracity, but rather on appearance. The supporters of ID (such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA) have consistently promoted ID as a scientific research program, but even a cursory examination shows that, while there is abundant evidence that ID is a quasi-religious movement, there is virtually no empirical research being conducted by its supporters.

And so, as we approach the 150th anniversary of the founding of the rapidly expanding science of evolutionary biology, we may note in passing that this anniversary can also be used to mark the demise of the ID movement, a phenomenon with all of the earmarks of a passing fad and all of the scientific content of the banana diet.

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As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

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Phillip Johnson & "Theistic Realism"

AUTHOR: Allen MacNeill

SOURCE: Original essay

COMMENTARY: That's up to you...


Phillip Johnson, one of the founders of the intelligent design movement, has proposed an alternative form of reasoning to that used by modern scientists. He refers to his form of reasoning as "theistic realism", while the alternative could be called "empirical naturalism". In this blog post, I intend to contrast these two forms of reasoning, to determine what assumptions one must hold to apply them, and what consequences flow from adopting one or the other position, which I freely admit at the outset are essentially metaphysical (i.e. not scientific) positions.

According to Charles Darwin, Ernst Mayr (and most other evolutionary biologists), evolution has two stages:
• the origin of variations via various mechanisms
• the origin of adaptations via natural selection

Johnson's critique of evolution centers on the origin and patterns of variation, since he has repeatedly granted in various venues that natural selection occurs. However, according to Johnson, "God" (i.e. the supernatural entity/force behind "theistic realism") causes and/or guides the generation of variations, leaving natural selection as a mere "stabilizing force" that only maintains adaptations by weeding out unfit individuals. In this sense, Johnson's version of "natural selection" is virtually indistinguishable from that proposed in 1835-37 by Edward Blyth.

There are two fundamental problems with Johnson's position, one theological and one metaphysical:

• First, the idea that stabilizing selection maintains God-created variations is essentially a form of "statistical norming", and therefore violates the Judeo-Christian (and presumably, "theistically realistic") principle of "sanctity of the individual". If "not a sparrow falls, but that [God is] mindful of it", then God doesn't (indeed, cannot) treat individuals (including, presumably, individual humans) as instrumental entities (i.e. as means, rather than as ends) by weeding them out if they depart too much from the statistical norm of His created types. But, if God does pay attention and therefore intervenes on behalf of any and all individuals, then stabilizing selection doesn't really exist, and we are back to a theory of "theistic evolution" in which God directly intervenes in nature, controlling and guiding (i.e. determining) absolutely everything that happens at all times and in all places.

• Second, if Johnson grants that God directly intervenes only in the generation of variations (and lets stabilizing selection maintain the particular variations He specifies), there are still two alternatives:

- That God creates a multiplicity of variations, and then lets natural selection operate to choose which ones will become adaptations; or

- That God determines which variations will be adaptive at the instant of their creation, thereby rendering natural selection (and all naturalistic mechanisms of variation) superfluous.

In the first case, God not only commits the sin of "statistical norming" (as described above), the process by which He does so would result in a pattern of evolutionary change that would be virtually indistinguishable from purely naturalistic evolution by natural selection, which does not require God to intervene at all. He would, in other words, render Himself and His actions completely pointless and invisible.

But in the second case, the apparent stabilizing selection described earlier is illusory, since all created individuals would be ipso facto adaptive. Indeed, unless God deliberately intends to create maladaptive individuals that depart significantly from the adaptive norm (and which therefore would be eliminated by selection), there should be virtually no maladaptive individuals at all, which should be easily verifiable by empirical analysis.

Either Johnson must grant that stabilizing selection does, in fact, operate (and God is therefore not mindful of individuals, but only of types), or he must grant that it does not. In the second case, natural selection doesn't really happen at all, at any level, and God must therefore intervene directly in the survival and reproduction of every living organism that has ever existed, exists, or ever will exist. Furthermore, God does this despite the fact that only one type of organism, namely humans, has any choice about its behavior, about its living or dying (as far as we can tell).

To sum up, either:

• God (or the “Intelligent Designer”) intervenes directly in evolution via stabilizing selection, thereby destroying uncountable trillions of His creations (all of them innocent except humans, and even some of them, too) in order to "stabilize" His specified adaptations, or

• God (or the “Intelligent Designer”) doesn't intervene via stabilizing selection, in which case He's either irrelevant (i.e. natural selection "just happens") or He completely determines absolutely every event that occurs throughout all time and space, in which case "free will" (and therefore sin) is an illusion.

Furthermore, since Johnson grants that natural selection really does occur, but only as stabilizing selection, this limits God's intervention in the evolutionary process to the instant of the creation of variations. Under such conditions, the circumstances following this instant are empirically indistinguishable from pure naturalistic processes, regardless of whether God "specifies" such variations. Either that, or such variation is essentially random (and therefore "Godless" and “unspecified”).

But this position puts Johnson inescapably in the position of arguing once again for a "God of the gaps" position, since the only intervention God is capable of under such conditions is into the generation of variations; what happens afterwards is essentially "Godless". This is a "God of the gaps" position because there are only two alternative scenarios:

• A mechanism that produces variations that does not rely upon supernatural intervention will eventually be discovered and applied to the entire fossil and genetic record, the "gap" will be closed, and God (like the Baker) will "softly and silently vanish away"; or

• No matter when one inquires, a mechanism that unambiguously does not rely upon supernatural intervention will not yet have been (and indeed, cannot ever be) discovered.

It would seem like the second situation would validate Johnson's position. However, the second situation involves a fundamental (i.e. metaphysical) problem: the only absolutely validating outcome for the second alternative is that every possible mechanical (i.e. "Godless") explanation for the origin of variations must have been tested and falsified. This is a metaphysical impossibility, as the empirical method relies on induction, and no amount of positive evidence for Johnson's hypothesis (i.e. negative evidence for a "Godless" origin of variations) is enough to absolutely validate it (unless Johnson wishes to declare himself a logical positivist, which seems highly unlikely).

Given the foregoing, it appears that Johnson's assertion that God guides the origin of variations directly violates Popper's falsifiability criterion (just as Johnson claims evolutionary theory does). This is because, no matter how fine a level of discrimination one specifies for ruling out supernatural intervention in the origin of variations, Johnson can claim that God's intervention lies somewhere "deeper" (even if we someday get down to the level of sub-subatomic particles).

But, at some arbitrarily fine level of discrimination, either God's intervention will "jump out" of the statistical analysis (i.e. it will violate accepted principles of statistical reliability) or it won't. If it doesn't, the hypothesis of God's direct intervention in the origin of variations will have once again become unnecessary, and by the standard of parsimony (i.e. "Occam's razor"), if a causal factor is unnecessary, it isn't included in a scientific (i.e. empirically grounded) explanation of a phenomenon.

When one examines Johnson's metaphysical positions on these subjects, it is clear that he doesn't give a damn about empirical validation or falsifiability or statistical reliability or anything else that could conceivably be called "scientific". For example, in Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds [1], Johnson states quite unequivocally:

"Truth (with a capital T) is truth as God knows it. When God is no longer in the picture there can be no Truth, only conflicting human opinions. (There also can be no sin, and consciousness of sin is that built-in moral compass [pro-Darwinian philosophers] reject...as illusory.)" [Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, page 89]

In my opinion, no more succinct a statement of anti-scientific thinking could be imagined. Johnson asserts that the only two alternatives are
(1) God-given Truth and
(2) conflicting human opinions.
Where, in either of these, is empirical verification? Is "God-given Truth" amenable to empirical verification? If Johnson thinks so, he flies in the face of centuries of both scientific and theological metaphysics, which has consistently concluded exactly the opposite. But what about the alternative: is Johnson asserting that all scientific principles, such as the law of gravity, are "human opinions"? This was the position taken by the author of the "Sokol Hoax", which of course was shown to be both a hoax and an indirect validation of the assumption that physical laws are not subject to human opinions. Ergo, if Phillip Johnson were of the opinion that the law of gravity does not apply to him, could he thereby escape its operation? Don't be ridiculous...

Johnson argues that we should, as scientists, conflate two totally incommensurate forms of "knowing":

• Deontological Absolutism - a universe in which God's direct intervention in events occurring in the real world is self-evident and does not require empirical verification (in fact, to attempt such verification would qualify as blasphemy), or

• Scientific Empiricism - a universe in which the assumption that God intervenes in any event that occurs in the phenomenal/physical universe is unnecessary, and therefore irrelevant to such an explanation.

That's what all this really comes down to: Johnson's "theistic realism" is semantically reducible to "its True because I say so, and I say so because I believe that God says so, too", since no amount of empirical evidence can either validate (or invalidate) his position. The only "proof" he provides (or requires) for his position is his assertion of it. Interesting, perhaps, as an exercise in theological metaphysics (not to mention hubris), but not, by any stretch of the imagination, science.

REFERENCES CITED:

[1] Johnson, Phillip (1997) Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, ISBN #0830813624, 137 pages.

As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are warmly welcomed!

--Allen

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Darwin Day in America

TITLE: Darwin Day in America

AUTHOR: John West

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill:

Meanwhile, back at the Discovery Institute/Neo-Creationism Propaganda Ministry, John West has published a much-balleyhooed book that makes the case that virtually all of society’s ills can be traced to poor old Charles Darwin and his latter-day minions. I’m going to force myself to read Darwin Day in America, not because I expect to find any new arguments or evidence in it (IDers like John West and his fellow creationists aren’t interested in new ideas, and are positively repelled by evidence, especially if it involves entering a lab or going out into the field), but because I want to be prepared for the mini-tidal wave of disinformation that it might generate vis-a-vis the pernicious effects of “Darwinism” on society.

This despite the fact that (according to the DI/NCPM’s favorite statistics), less than 10% of Americans believe in non-theistic evolution, and even fewer are atheists. Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

• Shouldn’t the prisons be stuffed with evolutionary biologists and atheists (i.e. greater than 10% of the prison population), and

•Isn’t this in a perverse way empirical evidence that evolutionary biologists and atheists have an influence on society out of all proportion to our numbers?

Ah, but that would imply a direct contradition in logic: something that the DI/NCPM is, of course, perfectly comfortable with, but which strikes the <10% of the population that attempts to be rational as…well, irrational.

So it goes…

--Allen

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Scientists Say Darwin's 'Tree of Life' Not The Theory Of Everything

ARTICLE: physorg.com

AUTHOR: Lisa Zyga

COMMENTARY: Allen MacNeill

First the news item, followed by some commentary:

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There is only one figure in On the Origin of Species, and that is a tree diagram. As Darwin’s model for the theory of evolution, he used the Tree of Life (TOL) to clearly and visually explain the interrelatedness of all living things, implying that from one common ancestor (the root) sprung branches, which produced smaller offshoots as genetic progeny, etc.

In this model, similarities between species reveal a common ancestor, and differences result from (and explain) Darwin’s main catalysts: competition and natural selection, which generate improvement in future generations. As a simile, the TOL served a vital purpose for introducing the theory of evolution to the community in an understandable way. Although there is no external evidence to support the idea that evolution is inclusively hierarchical, many evolutionists believe the TOL provides an accurate general representation of the history of life, which could potentially be completely reconstructed by knowing the relevant data.

In recent times, however, a minority of biologists and evolutionists have questioned the accuracy of the TOL hypothesis, including W. Ford Doolittle and Eric Bapteste. In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Pattern Pluralism and the Tree of Life Hypothesis,” the scientists investigate the shortcomings of the TOL, as well as propose alternative models that would better explain how to classify the history of evolving life forms.

Much of the initial concern over TOL was provoked by biologists studying the complex relationships among prokaryotes, the most primitive life forms that include bacteria and archaea. Prokaryotes have a much simpler DNA structure than eukaryotes (all other life forms). Because of this, prokaryotes often transfer their DNA via processes such as lateral gene transfer as opposed to vertical gene transfer (direct transmission form parent to progeny) which is the basis for the “phylogenetic” (evolutionary relatedness) TOL scheme.

“Surely a tree is the right model for most multi-cellular animals and plants,” Doolittle explained to PhysOrg.com. “Thus the TOL is great for fossils and museums and dinosaurs and most of visible life, over the last billion years. But unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes represent the bulk of the biomass and diversity of life on earth, as well as the first two-thirds of its history.”

In their paper, Doolittle and Bapteste highlight research that shows other causes of genetic modification, suggesting that evolutionary history is more complex than described by the TOL. For example, recombination, gene loss, duplication, and gene creation are a few of the processes whereby genes can be transferred within and between species, causing variation that’s not due to vertical transfer. These transfer methods give results that don’t fit on the TOL, including species that cannot be traced to a common ancestor.

While such diverse methods might appear to obviously point to a more complex nonhierarchical evolutionary scheme, Doolittle and Bapteste explain that the TOL thinking persists due to confusion between the roles of “process” and “pattern.” The above methods are processes and are widely accepted by modern evolutionists, whereas the TOL is a pattern that, as Doolittle and Bapteste explain, has been ingrained in biologists’ minds from early education as a single, unifying model. As the researchers explain of the current biology scene, “We may be process pluralists, but we remain pattern monists.”

If this combination of thinking seems to clash, Doolittle and Bapteste suggest that the Western philosophical tradition of thinking in universal patterns has caused biologists to cling to classification without realizing it. The authors point out that many algorithms used to study evolutionary hierarchies impose or extract the TOL structure due to their intrinsic design. TOL is a paradigm that has stuck. But Doolittle sees ways to alter this mentality.

“Sure we can [re-train Western thinking]. That's what ‘postmodernism’ is about,” he said. “I would agree that the need to classify might be built in, but the coupling of this practice to a specific theory about what classifications are ‘natural’ is surely not.

As an alternative to the TOL, the scientists suggest that relationships among life forms may be represented by whatever model fits for a certain purpose, a certain taxonomic group, or a certain scale. In contrast to pattern monism, they call this belief “pattern pluralism.” While parts of evolution certainly are tree-like, other parts may be nets or webs or other complex models. Most importantly, however, there seems to be no “theory of everything” in evolution, no metanarrative to unify all life forms.

“In 2006, our understanding of evolution at the molecular, population genetic, and ecological levels is rich and pluralistic in character,” the scientists conclude, “and does not require (or justify) a monistic view of the phylogenetic pattern.”

As for any blow to Darwin’s ego, the scientists point out that he never wrote about reconstructing the tree in an attempt to relate every living thing, but rather used the model as a general guide.

“I'd like to think he would adjust,” Doolittle said about Darwin. “After all, his theory was developed before there was any understanding of genetics and when bacteria were still believed to be spontaneously generated.”

REFERENCES CITED:
Doolittle, W. Ford, and Bapteste, Eric. “Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis.” PNAS, February 13, 2007, vol. 104, no. 7, 2043-2049.

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COMMENTARY:

Ford Doolittle has been saying this for many years, and has been joined by Lynn Margulis, who has argued that the concept of "species" does not apply to prokaryotes.

But, that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how "intelligent design theorists" quote-mine and otherwise distort reality to the point of outright lying. Why do I say this? Because former lawyer and professional propagandist, Casey Luskin, has a postat Evolution News, propaganda outlet for the Discovery Institute in which he says

"By invoking insufficient data, horizontal gene swapping, rapid evolution, and other ad hoc explanations, Darwinists reveal that neo-Darwinism is trying explaining away the data; it is not explaining the data. Perhaps the inability to construct robust phylogenetic trees using molecular data stems from the fact that common descent is simply wrong."

And the alternative? Why, magic of course. All of the living forms on Earth today were created, all at once, on Tuesday 25 October 4004 BC at 9 AM...or some other time in the past, exact date unspecified. Because, of course, that is the only alternative to common descent. Either you and your siblings are the offspring of your parents (i.e. common descent) or you aren't, and if the latter is true, then you must all have been created separately, not by your parents, but rather by God...excuse me, the Grand Omnipotent Designer. And with your memories of your childhood already inserted into your minds, so that the jarring discontinuity of your separate creations would not disturb you too much...would lead you, in fact, into the damning conclusion that you were, in fact, the offspring of your parents, and thus consign yourself to everlasting torment in the lake of fire.

Or not. You see, this is what the kind of egregious propagandizing of the folks of the Disco Institute leads to. Not discussion of the science of biology on its merits, on the basis of reason and evidence, but pure assertions without any alternatives at all (not that they want you to read in public, anyway).

I'm tired (our new baby is keeping Leah and me awake at night), and so I'll sign off now. But damn, people like Luskin just make me want to scream sometimes...

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."
- Friedrisch Schiller

--Allen

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