How STILL Not to Debate Intelligent Design (Liars for Evolution)

FOLLOW-UP STATEMENT BY WILLIAM A. DEMBSKI ON THE PUBLICATION OF ROBERT PENNOCK'S NEW BOOK WITH MIT PRESS

Robert Pennock has just published _Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics_ with MIT Press. It includes two essays by me. In a press release dated yesterday, I claimed that Pennock never contacted me about their inclusion. Pennock now claims that he did. He said. She said. Who's right?

Consider the facts. Pennock published two essays of mine in his new book: "Who's Got the Magic?" and "Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information." With regard to the second essay, did he ever in any way refer to that essay, whether directly or indirectly, in any of our correspondence prior to the release of his book? No. He never even hinted at it, and there's no way it could be said that he contacted me about its inclusion in his volume. Pennock therefore never laid out which essays of mine he intended to include.

What about the other essay, "Who's Got the Magic?" Did Pennock ever advert to that essay in any of our correspondence? In April 2001, Pennock sent an email to my colleague Paul Nelson asking him to forward it to me. Nelson did forward Pennock's message to me. I had received no email from Pennock before that date and nothing after until the publication of his book. I read Pennock's email with only two pieces of relevant background knowledge: (1) that he was putting together an anthology for MIT Press titled _Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics_ and (2) that my colleague Paul Nelson was a contributor to the volume and that he had been explicitly informed that he would be a contributor. My working assumption before receiving Pennock's email was that I would not be a contributor since I had not been similarly informed.

Pennock's forwarded message contained two items relevant here: (1) a short biosketch of me with a request that I correct it for inclusion in "my anthology" (no description of the anthology beyond this was mentioned -- Pennock simply assumed I knew what he was referring to) and (2) an engimatic reference to being able to "add our Meta exchange when I sent in the ms [sic]."

Regarding the biosketch, Pennock did not state that this was a contributor biosketch. With a title like _Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics_, I took it that Pennock was compiling a "rogues gallery" of ID proponents and simply listing me as one of the rogues. He never used the word "contributor" or anything like it to refer to me in connection with his anthology.

Regarding Pennock's reference to "our Meta exchange," he never referred to my actual essay by title. The Meta exchange comprised my piece on www.metanexus.net titled "Who's Got the Magic?" and his response there titled "The Wizards of ID." I had never signed over the copyright for "Who's Got the Magic?" to Pennock or anyone else for that matter. Was it therefore our entire exchange that he was planning to add, with copyright permissions requests (that never came) still down the road ? Or was it just his portion of the exchange and a summary of mine that he was planning to add to "the ms"? Was his mention of adding it to "the ms" a reference to the MIT anthology or to some other work? Finally, the one other ID proponent whom I knew to be a contributor to Pennock's anthology (i.e., Paul Nelson) had been explicitly contacted about being a contributor. I hadn't.

Pennock's forwarded message was ambiguous at best. Indeed, it came as a complete surprise when I learned last week that my essays were included in his volume. My surprise was not unjustified. I therefore continue to maintain that Pennock never contacted me about the inclusion of my essays in his volume. Indeed, the very fact that Pennock's one piece of communication with me was a forwarded message should give one pause. Pennock, who casts himself as the defender of scientific correctness against ID reactionaries, has been remarkable for being able to uncover obscure work of mine (cf. his previous book with MIT Press titled _Tower of Babel_).

Pennock has been following the ID movement intently for at least ten years. I'm one of the most prominent people in the ID camp. My association with Baylor University and Discovery Institute is common knowledge. Pennock could easily have contacted me directly and informed me explicitly that I was to be a contributor to the volume. Instead, he sent a letter through an intermediary. There was a hint in that forwarded letter that one paper of mine might be appearing in some mansucript, which after the fact proved to be more than a hint. But I saw no reason to give it a second thought without further clarification from Pennock -- clarification he never offered. And what about the other paper, about which there was no hint?

So much for he-said-she-said, my-word-versus-your-word. Such clarifications are needed to clear the air. But they really sidestep the central issue. By not contacting me about the inclusion of my essays in his volume, Pennock merely added insult to injury. The central issue, however, is not the insult but the injury. The injury is that Pennock situated my essays in a book that from its inception cast me and my colleagues as villains and demonized our work.

I'm still a junior scholar, early in my academic career. I don't have tenure. When my contract runs out at Baylor University, I'll have to hustle for another academic job. Under normal circumstances, I would love to have articles of mine (popular or technical) appear with prestigious academic presses like MIT Press. But the inclusion of my essays in _Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics_ do not constitute normal circumstances.

To fair-minded individuals in the middle with no significant stake in the controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design, I ask: Would you like your work subjected to the same treatment that Pennock and MIT Press gave to my work and that of my colleagues? If you were a feminist scholar, would you want your work to appear in a book titled _Misguided Liberationist Women and Their Critics_? If you were a Muslim scholar, would you want your work to appear in a book titled _Fanatical Believers in Allah and Their Critics_? If you were a Marxist scholar, would you want your work to appear in a book titled _Marx's Theory of Surplus Value and Other Nonsense_?

"Creationism" is a dirty word in contemporary academic culture and Pennock knows it. What's more, as a trained philosopher, Pennock knows that intelligent design is not creationism. Intelligent design refers to intelligent processes operating in nature that arrange pre-existing matter into information-rich structures. Creation refers to an agent that gives being to the material world. One can have intelligent design without creation and creation without intelligent design.

The central issue is not that Pennock and MIT Press wanted to publish my essays but that they wanted to situate them in such a way as to discredit me, my work, and that of my colleagues. When I debated Darwinist Massimo Pigliucci at the New York Academy of Sciences last November, he stated: "Any debate between creationists and evolutionists is caused by the failure of scientists to explain how science works and should in no way be construed as a genuine academic dispute whose outcome is still reasonably doubtful." Pennock would agree, though he would add that the failure is also on the part of philosophers and not just scientists.

According to Pigliucci and Pennock, intelligent design proponents are not scholars to be engaged on the intellectual merits of their case. Rather, they are charlatans to be discredited, silenced, and stopped. That's the whole point of _Intelligent Design Creationists and Their Critics_. It's not a work of scholars trying to come to terms with their differences. It's not a work attempting to bring clarity to a "genuine academic dispute." It's a work of damage control to keep unwanted ideas at bay. It's what dogmatists do when outright censorship has failed.

Regarding Stanleys, longshadow freepmailed me with this web article, which makes clear the dependence on frequent water stops:

But the Stanley Steamers did have two failings. The first was range. While the Gentleman’s Speedy Roadster could travel at 75 mph, it couldn’t travel more than 50 miles or so on a filling of water. Odd as it may seem, some say the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic that occurred in the New England area in 1914 was one of the keys to the Stanley Steamer’s eventual demise, since it hastened the removal of many of the roadside horse troughs that steamer drivers relied on for water. The other failing was start-up time. Often it would take a Stanley Steamer 10 to 15 minutes to build up its steam level before it could be driven, and once the self-starter was designed for the gasoline car, that inconvenience became too much.

Your 1000-mile claim struck me and others as fantastic because steam engines are after all boiling water into vapor and using the large increase in volume to do work. That's going to chew you through a lot of water, no matter how you're heating it.

Three tetrapods from Greenland have been described to date: Ichthyostega, Acanthostega, and Ichthyostegopsis…
…It seems clear that at least one of the earliest tetrapods was a swimming predator capable of pursuing fish and other large prey, using its legs as paddles and its fish-like tail for sculling through the water…
…Acanthostega also had internal gills for breathing water in a very fish-like manner.

The text then goes on to describe the immediate ancestors of the tetrapods (literally "four feet"), the lobe-finned fishes such as Eusthenopteron.

Also reference The New Findings (or, "Fishes With Legs")

So, the "Intelligence" in ID boils down simply to "God."

So what? ID theory doesn't "invoke God", ID theory invokes mathematics and implies God. I think the real problem people have with ID is that it can imply God. People seem terrified of the prospect that they may have a higher authority to which they are subject.

ID theory does invoke "God" (the ultimate designer must not have, himself, been designed). I can use mathematics to invoke and imply the existence of UFOs, too, but that does not make UFOs any more real.

The tablet usually does not consist of random words or sentence fragments interspersed among random letters.

Your problem is that you've assumed a priori that genetic sequences are random! Do living things appear to be the result of random genetic sequences? How would you define 'random'? I think this is at the heart of the matter.

The discovery of DNA revealed that at the core of life is a molecular message that contains a staggering quantity of information. A single cell of the human body contains as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica-all thirty volumes of it-three or four times over. As a result, the question of the origin of life must now be recast as the origin of biological information.

DNA also contains an incredible amount of junk, including sections that obviously began existence as parts of viruses and bacteria. There are whole sections no longer used (human DNA contains coding for both gills and tails.

Please explain specifically how it is that you have determined genetic information to be 'random'.

Maybe random would not be a good word. How about "garbage?"

Says who?

Says every information theorist and mathematician alive. Specified complexity is a well understood concept. I would suggest that you visit your local college library and pick up a book on advanced mathematics in information theory.

Gee, we have a number of mathematicians, information theorists and just regular scientists on these threads, and many of them disagree with your conclusions. Therefore only a fraction of mathematicians and information theorists say so.

Copernicus, Galileo, et al did their research in spite of, not because of, church doctrine.

Are you aware that this is the 21st Century? Again, you need to address my points and stop reciting history. Specifically tell me what in ID theory will stifle scientific inquiry. Please explain specifically why we would want any less to know how biology operates simply because we believe that genetic information has its origin in intelligence.

Yes I am aware this is the 21st century. I am also aware that history is a record of human nature and human nature does not seem to change all that much. If anything threatens the status quo there is usually an attempt to suppress it (cf. the current attempt to remove the teaching of evolution from public schools). Plus ca change …

#1 “Evolution calls for the development of life itself and subsequent life forms from a purely natural process. Life does not function without the strictly controlled conversion of raw solar energy into useable energy. What are the specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes that led from zero such conversion capability in raw matter to the multiple and varied mechanisms and processes that are inherent in every living organism as we know them?”

I don't believe there is zero energy conversion in the inanimate world. Heat and light are constantly causing chemical reactions naturally -- a form of energy conversion. Hell, entire ecosystems rely upon external energy conversions to exist, cf. hydrothermal vents.

#2 “Evolution calls for the development of ever more volume and ever greater variety and complexity of data in the genetic code of living organisms as they allegedly first emerged, then progressed from, simplest forms to the present broad spectrum of variety. What specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes have led from zero genetic data in raw matter to the vast array of voluminous genetic data inherent in living organisms as we know them?”

Once more, there is evidence the information preceded the organism, so to speak. One of the current theories is that of the "RNA world" which postulates the existence of self-replicating molecules as the predecessor of life. With the discovery of a primitive form of self-assembling cell walls in interstellar dust clouds researchers discovered they had found a possible way the early self-replicating molecules had protected their operations from outside influence. As for the increase in the genetic code, as has been pointed out before viral and bacterial genes get incorporated into "higher" organisms DNA regularly, thereby icreasing the amount of information to work with. Additionally, DNA is often subject to transcription errors and gene "doubling." Both of these latter add additional information with which to work.

I can use mathematics to invoke and imply the existence of UFOs, too, but that does not make UFOs any more real.

I can do far better than the Intelligent Design crowd. Anyone can claim to prove ID (or UFOs). But I shall now invoke math to prove that I am Marilyn Monroe:

1. All humans are divided into two classes, Marilyn and all others.
2. The number of members of the class of Marilyn is ONE.
3. The number of members of the class of PatrickHenry is ONE.
4. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
5. One equals one.
6. Ergo ... I am Marilyn Monroe!

Ain't math wonderful? I must warn you, however, that in another currently-running thread about cosmology, I am also "Captain Crunch."

#1 “Evolution calls for the development of life itself and subsequent life forms from a purely natural process. Life does not function without the strictly controlled conversion of raw solar energy into useable energy. What are the specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes that led from zero such conversion capability in raw matter to the multiple and varied mechanisms and processes that are inherent in every living organism as we know them?”

actually earliest life almost certainly did not use sunlight as its energy source. best current research points rather to life originating at hot mineral vents at the bottom of the ocean. The original energy source was energy rich compounds coming from the vents in solution.

#2 “Evolution calls for the development of ever more volume and ever greater variety and complexity of data in the genetic code of living organisms as they allegedly first emerged, then progressed from, simplest forms to the present broad spectrum of variety. What specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes have led from zero genetic data in raw matter to the vast array of voluminous genetic data inherent in living organisms as we know them?”

while not proof there is much very interesting material in the field of evolutionary computing, especially Genetic Algoriths, that demonstrates how geneticed encoded information is created and concentrated thru processes of natural selection. An excellent introduction can be found in John Holland's Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems .

I went to the link, and I don't really see what I was asking for. First of all Acanthostega, according to the site itself, didn't evolve into a purely land based life form:

Acanthostega, with its four limbs, pelvic girdle and assorted other features, was clearly a tetrapod, but its lineage probably never left the water.

I also don't see where it indicates Acanthostega ever left the water. It seems to imply the opposite:

Together with Michael Coates, Clack realized that this animal was clearly a tetrapod, but that it was a poor excuse for a land animal. Its legs were ill-suited to support its weight and the wrists were absent.

Also, I couldn't find where they talked about Eusthenopteron at the site, but it seems irrelevant, since they don't say Acanthostega evolved into a land tetrapod anyway. I was looking for 3 different species: A purely aquatic one with legs and lungs, which Acanthostega perhaps is, one that lived in water and also sometimes came out of the water, and finally the one who descended from it into a full time land animal.

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