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.

I know there's a lungfish, but that's lungs with no legs.

Lungfish are believed to be the closest living relatives of the tetrapods, and share a number of important characteristics with them. Among these characters are tooth enamel, separation of pulmonary blood flow from body blood flow, arrangement of the skull bones, and the presence of four similarly sized limbs with the same position and structure as the four tetrapod legs. However, there is still debate about the relationships among the Sarcopterygii.

Intro to the Dipnoi (the lungfish)

The fins do seem to be going the right way.

I read recently that humans, chimps, and gorillas all have a gene for vitamin C, but that the same mutation occurs in all three species, rendering it useless. Evolution has an obvious explanation for this. Does any other theory? In fact, Darwinism predicts that other genes will also show mutations common to us and the great apes, but not found in other creatures. If the prediction is validated, it seems to me that this is an example of a true prediction made by Darwinian reasoning. Do any Id-ers or creationists have a comment?

Re: observed speciation

When you said speciation had occurred in a laboratory, I thought you meant speciation from natural selection. However, this was artifically induced, which is more like intelligent design.

The site itself notes that before you can discuss speciation, you have to determine what defines a species. For the observed speciations in nature and also the lab observation, it appears they are using the Biological Species Concept of species as their definition:

2.2 The Biological Species Concept Over the last few decades the theoretically preeminent species definition has been the biological species concept (BSC). This concept defines a species as a reproductive community.

In other words, they have to both mate and be able to bear offspring to be in the same species. Is this definition relevant for a discussion of Darwinian transmutation of species? For starters, you have to determine why the two different strains in the examples no longer reproduce. Is it because one added some capability that it previously lacked? Is it due to added complexity?

This is what the Darwinian debate is about. That's why a new strain of bacteria that's immune to antibiotics is irrelevant. I have no idea why the two populations can't reproduce with each other, but this by itself isn't especially meaningful from an evolutionary standpoint.

When you said speciation had occurred in a laboratory, I thought you meant speciation from natural selection. However, this was artifically induced, which is more like intelligent design.

In the case of the lab rat worm it was simply isolation, not genetic manipulation, which resulted in the new species. This is akin to what occurs naturally when new mountains, rivers, oceans, isthmuses (isthmusi?), whatnot separate two populations of the same species -- no "intelligent intevention" is even required (unless you believe someone is making those mountains, etc...). As these two populations no longer exchange genetic information the mutations building up in the genome of one are not reflected in the other, and vice versa. Eventually the two genomes are completely incompatible. This is all speciation is about, really.

I'm well aware that Behe's been deluged with criticisms of his irreducible complexity theories. He has also responded effectively to many of them, including a ludicrous attempt to show that his mousetrap isn't really irreducibly complex. Subsequently there were responses to his responses, etc.

Here's a web site with a defense of Behe:
http://www.origins.org/science/disilvestro-dbb.html

Great work.

New developments which tie into topics you've brought up before:

1) Recent (or current) mutations in humans:
Lactose tolerance is a recent mutation and confers advantage to humans over the default lactose intolerance.

2) "Junk" DNA:
Biological dark matter.

3) Epigenetics...I'm too lazy to look these up, but two recent articles, either in Science or Nature, one discussing maternal finch influence in chick gender sex selection and another discussing maternal influence in gene expression in murine cloning experiments. Both interesting articles. If I remember correctly, you have access to Nature. I'll assume you have access to Science as well.

Lactose tolerance is a recent mutation . . .

I'd often wondered about the very high incidence of lactose intolerance among orientals and the lack of diary products in Chinese food. Clearly, that's no coincidence but what, I wondered, is the cause and what is the result? Now, it seems we know. The intolerance dictated the diet and not vice-versa.

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