Climategate Recalls Attacks on Darwin Doubters

Human Events ^ | 12/22/2009 | Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

[SeekAndFind]

Believers in human-caused global climate change have been placed under an uncomfortable spotlight recently. That is thanks to the Climategate scandal, centering on e-mails hacked from the influential Climate Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia. The e-mails show scientists from various academic institutions hard at work suppressing dissent from other scientists who have doubts on global warming, massaging research data to fit preconceived ideas, and seeking to manipulate the gold standard “peer review” process to keep skeptical views from being heard.

Does this sound familiar at all? To me, as a prominent skeptic of modern Darwinian theory, it sure does. For years, Darwin-doubting scientists have complained of precisely such abuses, committed by Darwin zealots in academia.

There have been parallels cases where e-mail traffic was released showing Darwinian scientists displaying the same contempt for fair play and academic openness as we see now in the climate emails. One instance involved a distinguished astrophysicist at Iowa State University, Guillermo Gonzalez, who broke ranks with colleagues in his department over the issue of intelligent design in cosmology. Released under the Iowa Open Records Act, e-mails from his fellow scientists at ISU showed how his department conspired against him, denying Dr. Gonzales tenure as retribution for his views.

To me, the most poignant correspondence emerging from CRU e-mails involves discussion about punishing a particular editor at a peer-reviewed journal who was defying the orthodox establishment by publishing skeptical research.

In 2004, a peer-reviewed biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution published a technical essay of mine presenting a case for intelligent design. Colleagues of the journal’s editor, an evolutionary biologist, responded by taking away his office, his keys and his access to specimens, placing him under a hostile supervisor and spreading disinformation about him. Ultimately, he was demoted, prompting an investigation of the Smithsonian by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

The public has been intimidated into thinking that “non-experts” have no right to question “consensus” views in science. But the scandal in at the University of East Anglia suggests that this consensus on climate may not be based on solid evidence.

But what about the Darwin debate? We are told that the consensus of scientists in favor of Darwinian evolution means the theory is no longer subject to debate. In fact, there are strong scientific reasons to doubt Darwin’s theory and what it allegedly proved.

For example, contrary to Darwinian orthodoxy, the fossil record actually challenges the idea that all organisms have evolved from a single common ancestor. Why? Fossil studies reveal “a biological big bang” near the beginning of the Cambrian period (520 million years ago) when many major, separate groups of organisms or “phyla” (including most animal body plans) emerged suddenly without clear precursors.

While all scientists accept that natural selection can produce small-scale “micro-evolutionary” variations, many biologists now doubt that natural selection and random mutations can generate the large-scale changes necessary to produce fundamentally new structures and forms of life.

Thus more than 800 scientists, including professors from such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Rice universities and members of various national (U.S., Russian, Czech, Polish) academies of science have signed a statement questioning the creative power of the selection/mutation mechanism.

Increasingly, the Darwinian idea that living things only appear to be designed has come under scrutiny. Indeed, living systems display telltale signs of actual or intelligent design such as the presence of complex circuits, miniature motors and digital information in living cells. The information and information-processing systems that run the show in cells point with a particular clarity to prior design. The DNA molecule stores instructions in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code. As we know from our repeated experience -- the basis of all scientific reasoning -- systems possessing such features always arise from minds, not material processes.

Thus, despite the orthodox view that Darwin showed “design could arise without a designer” there is now compelling scientific evidence to the contrary.

The question of biological origins has long raised profound philosophical questions. Have life’s endlessly diverse forms been the result of purely material processes or did a purposeful intelligence play a role? It’s not surprising that such an ideologically charged issue would illicit strong passions, leading even scientists to suppress dissenting views with which they disagree.

All the more reason -- in this debate as in the one about global warming -- to let the evidence, rather than the consensus of experts, determine the outcome.

-- Dr. Meyer is director for the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He is author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, honored in the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2009. He received his Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University.

[bvw]

Are you at all familiar with either technique?

[Moonman62]

I know enough to ask a question you don’t want to answer.

[bvw]

What question is that?

[Moonman62]

The one you haven't answered yet:

How does monte carlo statistical analysis and genetic programming perform using randomness versus not using randomness?

[bvw]

Re-ask that question in a way that shows you understand anything at all about either technique.

[dmz]

I look forward to a world in which the debate is between myself and GGG over the actual pre-history of our world and universe

<<><><><><><<

And what is stopping you from having that debate now?

[Hank Kerchief]

I totally agree with the author’s criticism of the methods used by evolutionists in academia. Unfortunately, he seems to think “intelligent design” is a reasonable alternative, but it is every bit as much conjecture as evolution, and despite that crowd’s protests, “intelligent design” is just a euphemism for “creation.” A “designer” is a “creator.”

I do not believe in any kind of deity, but also cannot accept any of the evolutionary hypothesis. Evolutionist seem so desparate to prove there is no God, they will go to any lengths to prove their evolution—and the theist are so desparate to prove there is a God, they will go to any lengths to prove existence was designed. I cannot accept the evolutionary hypothesis because there is too little evidence, evolutionists cook the data, and they evade all the serious scientific questions, but one thing is certain, if the universe were, “designed,” the “designer” of it would be fired from any engineering company in the world.

Hank

[Stultis]

I cannot accept the evolutionary hypothesis because there is too little evidence, evolutionists cook the data, and they evade all the serious scientific questions

Really? Such as?

I'm genuinely mystified where you get this impression. Granted I'm not a scientist, and granted I haven't done it in quite some years, but back in the 80's and early 90's I used to regularly read scientific journals, and occasionally attend scientific conferences (a couple AAAS conventions, and several semipopular symposia).

In terms of criticizing each others' ideas, and attempting to deconstruct controversies to crucial questions, I found professional scientists in evolutionary fields quite as aggressive -- if not more so -- as those in any other.

For instance, a series of presentations I attended in human evolution -- relating to the then hot topic of the "out of Africa" hypothesis versus the theory of regional evolution with gene migration -- was astonishingly aggressive. No actual shouting or name calling, no overt ad hominems, but very direct and detailed challenges by each side to the other during Q&A.

I noted, BTW, that Q&A at scientific conventions was always at least as long as the presentation, and usually longer. So, if an hour was available, it would typically be 15 minutes for presentation and 45 for Q&A. (As a layperson who hadn't gotten a preprint and read the paper in advance, this was sometimes a bit irritating to me. But, to the extent I could follow the debates, I could see that it was worthwhile.)

Whenever I attended creationism conventions the pattern would be exactly reversed. The presentation would be 45 minutes and the Q&A, if there was one, 15 minutes.

At the scientific conventions, if a questioner seemed to zero in on a flaw or weakness in the presenter's case, it generated obvious interest in the audience. Even before the Q&A started, you could see scientists scanning the rest of the audience, smiling in anticipation if they spotted an opponent ready to challenge the speaker.

By contrast, at the several creationism conventions I attended, if someone (even a fellow "creation scientist") dared to ask an aggressive or challenging question (a rare occurence) there would be an immediate and palpable discomfort and embarrassment on the part of the audience, as though someone had farted, and done so loudly.

To be blunt, the intellectual equivalence you draw between evolutionary science and creationism strikes me as thoroughly delusional (unless you've just never been directly exposed to each?). It bears no relation to reality, at least as I have experienced it.

Further apologies for psychoanalyzing, but I frankly suspect that you find "a plague on both their houses" posture to be self satisfying or aesthetically pleasing. But if you have better reason, I'll listen.

It could be I'm projecting. As a young man, having read a few popular, more or less (i.e. some more and some less) antievolutionary books, along with some pro-evolution, but also popular, books -- but before exposing myself extensively and directly to professional science and creationism -- I had an outlook not too much different from your own. I was sincere in this, but in retrospect I see my attitude then as smug and self-satisfying, and based in conclusions drawn without a remotely adequate examination of the evidence.

Maybe you've been less hasty and more circumspect than I was, and have a better case than I did, but I'm not seeing it at present.

[Stultis]

I look forward to a world in which the debate is between myself and GGG over the actual pre-history of our world and universe

<<><><><><><<

And what is stopping you from having that debate now?

My guess: That would be the fact that medved's views of pre-history are, shall we say, very "distinctive" (read, "lunatic") and detailing them under the "wendy1946" identity would be rubbing it maybe too much in the mods' faces that "wendy1946" is, in fact, the banned user "medved" returned (in drag).

Don't get me wrong. I'm opposed to banning much of the time, and would like to see bannees given a second chance most of the time, save for obvious seminar disruptors, racists and the like. But it's not my site.

[Hank Kerchief]

Your interesting response deserves a decent response, I think. I’ll begin here:

“Maybe you’ve been less hasty ...”

This will be my 70th year on this planet, and I’ve studied these things for all time of those 70 years that I could read and think. I’ve not been too “hasty” I think.

I’m not truly interested in debates at all, since they are really nothing more than demonstrations of one’s power of speech and rhetoric and almost never of careful objective reason. So most of your comment addresses something I’m not interested in, since most journals and conferences are to me, variations of the same. (I regard the entire “peer review thing as academic thuggery).

I’ve recently republished a paper, “Problems of the Evolutionary Hypothesis” by a friend and micro-biologist, for another friend who asked for it. If you are interested it raises some of the technical questions evolutionist perenialy evade. It is here:

http://usabig.com/atnmst/jrnl_ii.php?art=55

Not that it matters, because truth is truth (unless you are a post-modernsit), the author is not a theist.

I’ll not be accusing you of being, “delusional,” (the kind of thing I’ve become accustomed to from those who have no real argument), even though I do think you’ve been somewhat duped by the evolutionary academics, as so many were by the global warming academics.

Personally, I’d have no interest in the “evolutionary” fairy tale if it were nothing more than something some people believed. When it becomes a political issue, involving tax dollars that are going to be spent on education, and is being used to reinforce the vile psychological principles that let’s the most vile of people off the hook (in courts, for example), I think the evil of the evolutionary hypothesis, as it presently exists needs, to be pointed out for the fraud it is.

Hank

[Stultis]

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

You have a slight problem. Asserting the generation of a whole new animal "with new organs, a new basic plan," etc, all at once, describes creationism, not evolution.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

Ooops. More problems. Despite your arm waving (non) calculations, all those features are now known in pre-avian reptiles (dinosaurs).

For instance, as to "a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs," I posted THIS INFORMATION just a couple weeks ago:

Not only did many dinosaurs have hollow bones, for a genus described last year, there is specific evidence that these bones possessed the same special respiratory function they (otherwise uniquely) do in birds! Full article is online at the link:

Sereno PC, Martinez RN, Wilson JA, Varricchio DJ, Alcober OA, et al. (2008) Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3303.

In this YouTube video you can see one of the authors holding one of the hollow bones.

The following figure from the article shows some of the pneumatopores (where the air sacs entered the bones) in the fossils from this dinosaur, which btw is named Aerosteon, Greek for "air bone":

So, we find a very specialized adaptation, otherwise utterly unique to birds, in a group of dinosaurs which were previously identified (about 150 years ago, btw) as closest to modern birds. Coincidence? For creationists, I suppose it has to be.

[Stultis]

I’ve recently republished a paper, “Problems of the Evolutionary Hypothesis” by a friend and micro-biologist, for another friend who asked for it. If you are interested it raises some of the technical questions evolutionist perenialy evade. It is here:

http://usabig.com/atnmst/jrnl_ii.php?art=55

Oh, c'mon. You can't be serious!? That's one of the most laughably pathetic screeds I've ever read, and I've read a lot of laughably pathetic screeds.

It's mostly vague (often barely coherent, can't tell what the author is driving at, points left hanging, facts -- or factoids -- introduced with no apparent purpose) rambling (and it's a real challenge to ramble in an article that short) and when not vague it's just wrong.

I don't find a single example in that article of the "serious scientific questions" you assert evolutionists "evade". It lacks the clarity to formulate a remotely clear or specific question. Referring to a vaporous, incompetent, error filled article like that one is in itself an evasion.

You just can't mean that to have been an example of the kind of arguments that you find convincing, or even relevant?! Seriously. Are you having us on? Was that a joke? (I mean an intentional joke?)

[wendy1946]

The light bone structure is the least of the thing you'd need before you became a flying bird. The hardest item would likely be flight feathers. Aside from that, you'd need mutations which selectively mutated the pre-existing insulation/down feathers into flight feathers on wings, fail feathers on tails, and left the down feathers alone on the rest of the proto-bird.

Which side is it which is talking about miracles??

[Gumlegs]

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

That ill-considered cut 'n' paste screed wasn't valid when you were medved, it wasn't valid when you were tomzz, it wasn't valid when you were jeddavis, it wasn't valid when you were varmintman, and it isn't valid now.

A definition of insanity comes to mind, Ted, and the shoe fits you.

[Stultis]

The hardest item would likely be flight feathers. Aside from that, you'd need mutations which selectively mutated the pre-existing insulation/down feathers into flight feathers on wings, fail feathers on tails, and left the down feathers alone on the rest of the proto-bird.

The latest research suggests that all you need to form all the feather types are a couple additions to a basic activator-inhibitor system, which already explains the formation of downy feathers. See (full text):

Molecular evidence for an activator-inhibitor mechanism in development of embryonic feather branching. PNAS August 16, 2005 vol. 102 no. 33 11734-11739

Since we have the identity of the basic activator and inhibitor, finding the additional activator and another local inhibitor -- if this theory is accurate -- shouldn't take too long. Then you'll have to move the goal posts again. (Or, more likely, just ignore it.)

[wendy1946]

Whatever you’re trying to accomplish doesn’t appear to be working, does it? Lonely over there at DC??

[Hank Kerchief]

“... often barely coherent, can’t tell what the author is driving at, points left hanging ...”

Don’t worry about it. Those for whom the article was written will have no problem understanding it.

Your reaction to it, by the way, is excellent evidence of the kind of “reasoned response” one always gets from evironmental and evolutionary true believers. I’d be alarmed if you had liked it. It’s reassuring that you didn’t.

Hank

[Gumlegs]

When you post to people other than me you make no sense, cut & pasting the same old medved rubbish you've been trying to peddle for years.

When you post to me, it's either an attempt at an insult, something entirely extraneous to the subject of the thread, or, in a sudden burst of novelty, something already exposed as false just a few posts prior to yours in the same thread.

You also refuse to answer the question I've been asking you for months: how many times have you been banned?

[wendy1946]

Like I say, whatever you're trying to do doesn't seem to be working any more. You and your DC brethren must have convinced everybody here that you're a bunch of *******s.

[wendy1946]

I mean, I can see the basic problem...

Have you tried Yuppie Dating sites??