Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ

When Paul Krugman said that if the Bush administration announced that the earth was flat newspaper headlines the next day would read "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ," he thought he was joking:

In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash - New York Times.

Darwinists have done a great deal to explain life's complexity. "Doubters" have done nothing at all to do so.

Shame on the New York Times.

Comments

[cm]

Hey, at least they are "fair and balanced".

[tante aime]

That's because you've never been out in the park on a sunny Sunday, and had that booming voice whisper in your ear, "Have a nice day!" There are more things on heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your feeble science.

Darwin dealt with how some few species differentiate through eons, or maybe just a few dozens of years, he didn't know. He was trapped in a mindset of his times. Look at how different we *appear* than our ancestors, things we learn how to do, and have forgotten how to do.

Let's listen in on the discussion...

"Here is "modern man", as different a species from homo aboriginalis as you could imagine. Taller, but less muscular. Far weaker, brutally incompetent in survival. Nevertheless, our homo electronicus has developed a new appendage, independent of its body, called a "mouse".

This mouse appears to do many of the tasks that former homo aboriginalis had to do for themselves, with their own labor. In a sense then, homo electronicus is the superior species, for it has created a network outside itself that allows the subjugation of homo aboriginalis, both within its local biome, and throughout the globe."

"Professor, are homo aboriginalis a sub-species then?"

"Well, I'm glad you asked that, Jane. Yes, in a way, you could say their inability to use electronic tools puts them on par with homo neanderthalis, probably only one step higher. Certainly homo aboriginalis v. middleeastus might just as well be bombed back into the Stone Age."

"Professor, if I sleep with you, will I get an "A"?"

"Oh, my, aren't you a clever little homo electronicus!"

[lash marks]

Darwinism is just a dwarf varietal of creationism.
Here's all you need to know, to bracket "Origin".

Gregor Mendel: Experiments in Plant Hybridization
A monk's tome setting the genetics theory

Carl Linnaeus: Systema Naturae
A physician's volume setting the taxonomic order

Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science
A mathematician's massif setting the basis of order, disorder and chaos

The natural variation of Creation makes it perfect.

Birds breed with other birds that look like them.
Iguanas will breed with anything that holds still.
Ergo, pretty bird varietals, but not truly species.
And that New World Order of really ugly reptilians!

[tom]

But seriously, why do such articles note Behe's claims of design, but never follow with quotes from Dawkins about the stupid design in eyes and other traits, anatomical features that no intelligent designer would set up that way, as strong evidence _for_ evolution by natural selection?

[cafl]

After reading the article, I think the NYTimes actually did a pretty good job of debunking DI assertions. The worst part of the article, as usual, was the headline.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/20/national/20beliefs.html

August 20, 2005

A Catholic Professor on Evolution and Theology: To Understand One, It Helps to Understand the Other
By PETER STEINFELS

John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian who, in a long series of learned, eloquent books and essays, has explored the religious significance of the contemporary understanding of evolution.

On July 7, Professor Haught was dismayed to find in The New York Times an Op-Ed article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna flatly declaring this understanding to be false, followed two days later by a front-page article suggesting that the cardinal's stance might signal that the apparent peace treaty between Catholicism and evolutionary theory was about to be renounced.

Professor Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University, was by no means alone. Sir Martin Rees, a leading British astrophysicist, expressed hope that the Pontifical Academy of Science, to which he belongs, would dissociate itself from Cardinal Schönborn's sentiments. The Aug. 6 issue of The Tablet, an international Catholic weekly published in London, carried an article by the Rev. George Coyne, a Jesuit priest and director of the Vatican Observatory, rebutting the cardinal's view. Numerous scientists and nonscientists, Catholics and non-Catholics, raised similar protests.

"Does Schönborn's essay mean that the church has changed its position on evolution?" Professor Haught asks in the current issue of Commonweal. "In a word, no." Nonetheless, he says, "it is a setback in the dialogue of religion and science."

"Today most Catholic theologians and philosophers agree that it is not the job of science to make any reference to God, purpose, or intelligent design," Professor Haught insists. "If some scientists go on to maintain that evolution is therefore conclusive evidence of a godless, purposeless universe, this is a leap into ideology, not a scientifically verifiable truth."

Cardinal Schönborn "has every reason to defend Catholicism against materialist philosophy, since these are indeed incompatible," Professor Haught continues. But when the cardinal "fails to distinguish neo-Darwinian biology from the materialist spin that many scientists and philosophers place on evolutionary discoveries," he "does no service to the nuances of Catholic thought."

And to claim, Professor Haught adds, that science itself can demonstrate divine design is only to fall into a mirror version of "the same conceptual mix-up." ...

[PaulC]

There seems to be a disturbing trend over the last few months of the media conferring legitimacy on so-called Intelligent Design. It's not as if they have offered any new arguments, so I can only assume it's a very deliberate PR effort by these thinktanks. I wonder why now?

I would like to note one bright spot, which is that even if there is no equivalent of Mellon Scaife funding to counter the ID thinktanks, there is the talk.origins FAQ http://www.talkorigins.org/ which probably has all the talking points you could want. Maybe this is a rare example of the open source model applied to thinktanks.

I thought the NYT article was good on some levels, despite the "opinions differ" tone. For instance, if you take out the deferential wording, this is a compelling empirical refutation of an ID claim:

"Dr. Behe argues, if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for instance, clots will not form properly."

...

"... while Dr. Behe and other leading design proponents see the blood clotting system as a product of design, mainstream scientists see it as a result of a coherent sequence of evolutionary events."

"Early vertebrates like jawless fish had a simple clotting system, scientists believe, involving a few proteins that made blood stick together, said Russell F. Doolittle, a professor of molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego."

It seems like ID people are forever puzzled about phenomena that are a little counterintuitive but which are the only thing that makes any sense when you start to think about it.

E.g., why do so many systems like clotting appear to be minimal--i.e., take out one part and it fails? Well, for one thing evolution predicts that in any non-minimal system, there is no selective pressure to preserve the unnecessary parts, so there is no reason to expect to find a lot of superfluous bits (evolution does not predict that you won't find any, nor that there is anything globally minimal or otherwise globally optimal about what you do find, only that modifications accessible by small genetic changes will be explored and beneficial ones retained with reasonable probability in a sufficiently large population).

But maybe there's even a simple explanation. When a biologist writes a paper on the process of clotting, they don't put in unnecessary things, because these are not part of the process. Therefore, minimality arises from the definition of process itself.

The other thing that strikes me as either obtuse or dishonest is the continued prevalence of combinatorial strawman arguments. Yes, the probability of spontaneously creating one particular protein that an ID theorist knows will confer bacterial immunity to penicillin is vanishingly small. On the other hand, no biologist ever claimed that this is what happens. The probability of modifying existing defenses slightly to confer greater resistance to an antibiotic is not only high enough to be worth considering, but high enough to be observed in practice. This only has to be iterated over generations before a series of changes in degree becomes a change in kind (though of course there is no reason to ever expect the development of one particular protein such as penicillinase).

Finally, I'd like to see Dembski's mathematical criteria for identifying design. He's possibly going out on thin ice here, because he's at risk of forming a falsifiable hypothesis. All you would need is an computer simulation that demonstrated a tendency to move from "undesigned" to "designed" systems. Of course, in a human-observable time frame you would not generate systems as sophisticated as those found in biological systems, but you might get patterns with as high a Dembski score as Mount Rushmore.

[Jonathan W. King]

cafl writes:
>
> After reading the article, I think the NYTimes actually did a pretty good job of
> debunking DI assertions. The worst part of the article, as usual, was the headline.

I have to disagree pretty strongly. What Chang and the NYTimes did was play the usual game of he said/she said, except that in this case, she had tremendously better arguments. The problem with this "fair and balanced" approach is that the message that is REALLY being sent is:

Intelligent Design is worthy of a long drawn-out discussion in the NY Times, so maybe it should be taught in school, too.

Remember, the ID proponents are always telling us we should teach the controversy. All they can really hope for is to sew enough doubt or cause enough trouble to make schools under- or down-play the basic tenants of biology. From what I've seen, they're doing a pretty good job.

Man, is this getting depressing. At first I thought Brad was going to point to one egregious paragraph in a Times story from the day before (something like "Evolutionists contend...") But no: they gave up a whole article on the "controversy". If it keeps on going like this, scientists are going to have to take back the teaching of science, one school district at a time.

[tom f]

Very similar to a recent article in the New Yorker but with less space given to the scientists.

This is part of a series of NYTimes articles on Intelligent Design. Today's article tracked the heavy Christian Right financial resources of the Intelligent Design political movement. Perhaps future articles will give greater time with scientists and less time on the fringe.

Then again, maybe the Times feels that scientists get their voice heard enough on evolution. Religious ideologues don't have their own section of the nations most influential newspaper; scientists do.

My favorite part of the series so far? A Discovery Institute philosopher is quoted as saying something like "All ideas go through 3 phases: rejection, ridicule, and acceptance. I'd say [Intelligent Design] is beginning the ridicule stage".

That's perhaps some kind of record. Given that a)your identified as an intellectual and b) your given two sentences to say something, what's the most contrived BS you can offer up?

[Larry Y.]

Useful article, which for me at least settled a long-unresolved issue: Is it worth paying $1/day for tne Times, since I can't subscribe only to the Tuesday Science Times edition?

Clearly not, if the paper is going to pimp its science reporters in the quest of "balance."

No rebuttal of the sort I can easily find on the web. Burying the actual news (not-yet-released paper on bacteria evolution). Clearly, the assignment was to provide "balance".

I'm less concerned about shape of earth debate than the following headline: "Cause of German Malaise Examined: Role of Jews at Center of Debate."

Anyway, with one question solve, here's one I throw out to Brad and other readers. I'm planning on reapportioning my $365+ print subscription payments to The New Yorker, The Economist, The Atlantic and New Scientist. Any other recommendations for original hard copy reporting?

[Steve LaBonne]

PaulC, htis paper should be of interest to you:
http://www.antievolution.org/people/wre/papers/eandsdembski.pdf

[tom f]

from "Politicized Scholars Put Evoloution on the Defensive"; NYT 8/22:

"All ideas go through three stages - first they're ignored, then they're attacked, then they're accepted," said Jay W. Richards, a philosopher and the institute's vice president. "We're kind of beyond the ignored stage. We're somewhere in the attack."

...except the ideas that are empirically verifiable and proven wrong; those are just ignored and attacked. What an idiot.

Then, later on, we get Intelligent Designer as victim:

"All ideas that achieve a sort of uniform acceptance ultimately fall apart whether it's in the sciences or philosophy or politics after a few people keep knocking away at it," [Dr. Chapman] said. "It's wise for society not to punish those people."

Yeah, your friends are being "punished" with 6 figure grants and 5 figure salaries to do...what exactly?

And more than a few people have been knocking away at the idea of society being influenced by political-economic elites and their ideolgical appendages. Apparently that idea hasn't fallen apart.

Oh, sorry, did I actually bother to think about the rubbage your shoveling? My apologies.

[PaulC]

> My favorite part of the series so far? A Discovery Institute philosopher is quoted as saying something like "All ideas go through 3 phases: rejection, ridicule, and acceptance. I'd say [Intelligent Design] is beginning the ridicule stage".

That too was one of my favorite parts, but what strikes me is that as quoted it appears to make no distinction between the correctness of the ideas in question.

The scientific method may indeed shepherd the counterintuitive yet accurate notions through the valley of ridicule, but it isn't doing its job unless the truly ridiculous ideas are left there to bleet at each other.

[anne]

An excellent lecture:

http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk/news/boyle2004.htm

Professor Haught is internationally known for his theological work, particularly his recent writings which challenge the perception that Darwinian evolution poses a dangerous threat to Christian religious faith. In Deeper Than Darwin: Evolution and the Question of God (2003) and God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (2000) Professor Haught sets out his claim that Darwinian evolution in fact offers Christians a profound opportunity to change the way in which they understand and respond to God's ongoing care for his creation. To fully appreciate this, however, we must leave behind our focus on the search for "design" in nature -- a focus which dominated the thinking of many of the original Boyle Lecturers -- and reflect instead on the biblical notion of God's promise to his creation, a promise which is realized in part in the evolutionary unfolding and development of the world.

[anne]

http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk/docs/Boyle%20Booklet1.doc

St Mary-le-Bow revived the Boyle Lectures to one of its original sites. On the evening of Wednesday 4th February 2004 we welcomed Professor John F Haught, Thomas Healey Distinguished Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. to lecture on the theme:

"Darwin, Design and the Promise of Nature"

[tom f]

Paul C

Notice that, according to Philosopher Richards' formulation [he who is no less than a (the?) Vice President at the Discovery Institute] all ideas are accepted. They only need be first ignored and then ridiculed.

What Joy! What Freedom from Mental Enslavement! All Roads Lay Open Before Me!

Wait, alas, I sense danger. Is the Discovery Institute and its "Teach the Controversy" advocacy really a Post Modernist front? Did a cackle of defunded humanity professors who had de-constructed, de-reified, and de-spectacled until their referents lost relevance go underground?

Actually, the truth can be conceived of as even more sublimely ironic.

In the humanities, where ideas are either inherently speculative, purely subjective, or accepted merely by social convention, one can readily imagine that the Discovery Institute's array of conservative intellectuals would support an anti-relativist ignore-and-avoid-the-contraversy grade school curriculum.

However, in the sciences, where we at last emerge from the Cave and modestly claim some fixed understanding of natural phenomena, the intellectuals revolt: teach the controversy! all ideas are opportunities for insight and knowledge! long live discourse! Meaning is textual fascism!

[Roger Albin]

The headline was poor but the article is solid. The article makes clear that intelligent design is regarded as a fringe idea by the scientific community. One interesting statement came from one of the ID folks who made a claim to the effect that their activities portend the beginning of a scientific revolution. If so, this would be the first scientific revolution of the modern era where the so-called revolutionaries almost completely eschew attempting to publish in the peer-reviewed literature and resort to PR campaigns and lobbying tactics aimed at state education boards and state legislatures. Not only is ID not science, its proponents are not even trying to behave like scientists in any professional sense. This is an implicit admission of failure to do real science.

[Cokie Dum-Dum]

Per usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

[Slocum]

"Intelligent Design is worthy of a long drawn-out discussion in the NY Times"

Yes, it is -- because (unfortunately) many millions of Americans believe it (or something like it) and this popularity is having powerful effects on both politics and education policy. The Times can't very well ignore ID, can it?

As for the headline--it is clearly true that ID'ers clash with scientists in explaining life's complexity. Yes, the ID'ers explanations happen to suck, but that doesn't make the headline wrong or misleading.

[PaulC]

I started looking at the paper on Dembski: http://www.antievolution.org/people/wre/papers/eandsdembski.pdf

It does sound that as of 2003 anyway he was skirting around presenting a falsifiable hypothesis. This part is telling:

"Indeed, in response to one such challenge (the natural nuclear reactors at Oklo) he says
'But suppose the Oklo reactors ended up satisfying this criterion after all. Would this vitiate the complexity-specification criterion? Not at all. At worst it would indicate that certain naturally occurring events or objects that we initially expected to involve no design actually do involve design.' In other words, Dembski's claims are unfalsifiable. We find this good evidence that Dembski's case for intelligent design is not a scientific one."

[PaulC]

> Notice that, according to Philosopher Richards' formulation [he who is no less than a (the?) Vice President at the Discovery Institute] all ideas are accepted.

I was just pondering the idea that Richard Mellon Scaife should provide me with a $15 million grant to take up the banjo. How long does this reject/ridicule/accept process take, anyway?

[tom f]

In the arts? I don't know, there's kind of a convergence of ridicule and acceptance. Can you get Rudi Gulliani to attempt a ban your banjo playing?

[bakho]

EVANGELICAL SCIENTIST REFUTE GRAVITY WITH NEW 'INTELLIGENT FALLING' THEORY

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

Intelligent Design is bad theology. It is a 'God of the Gaps' theology that relegates God to tinkering with a few DNA bases. The problem with placing God into the gaps in our scientific knowledge has to do with science continuing to shrink the gaps. Science creates a "continually shrinking God" that puts science at odds with theology. A better theology avoids this conflict by placing God elsewhere (not in the gaps) where she belongs. Why do they want our schools to teach bad theology?

[Larry Y.]

I don't think the article was solid. The facts and reporting were solid. But the editing reflects the headline: The goal is a "balanced" piece on "both" sides of the Jews-poisoned-the-wells question. I imagine that the "balance" of the piece was set by the front section editor, and that if Chang had been told he could run wild for 6,000 words on the topic the article would have looked very different.

In fact, I wager it would read something like: Even as I.D. gains political ground, more and more claims are refuted in the laboratory.

[Anna Haynes]

"The worst part of the article, as usual, was the headline."

The article has a byline, so we know that Kenneth Chang wrote it. But how do we find out who wrote the headline?
(Would Kenneth Chang know? if so, how do we find his email address?)

Accountability is good.

[BoyWonder]

Harvard recently announced that it is beginning a research project to study the origins of life. David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology optimistically announces "My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."

I amused myself with the following hypothetical scenario: Harvard succeeds in creating life through "a very simple series of logical events". A global catastrophe (asteroid impact?) occurs at some point which wipes out all life except those simple organisms created in Harvard laboratories. Eons go by until evolution takes life to the humanoid level once again. Those humans debate their origins. One side says we were created by god, the other says we are nothing more than a fluke of the universe (see National Lampoon - Deteriorata).

[JRossi]

In the article, Behe stated that "it could have all been programmed into the universe...." and "It is possible that a designer acted continuously....
Two points: 1. He might be right. 2. Even if he is right, this is clearly religion, not science.

[PaulC]

I'm not really up on the names in ID, but I now feel pretty confident in saying Dembski's a hack. Here's an article that shows him misrepresenting a quote by a biologist to suggest that Cambrian fossils pose a problem for evoluation. http://evolutionblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/study-in-id-duplicity.html An honest scientist would not use rhetoric in the way Dembski does.

It must be kind of a burden having to safeguard evolutionary biology writing against these attacks. An engaging way to present a result is often to emphasize its counterintuitive nature. For instance, in algorithmic theory one often begins with a naive characterization of the work involved before showing that it can be cleverly improved. If I started an explanation of the Fast Fourier Transform by saying "This would seem to require n^2 multiplications." I'd expect to be pounced upon by "quadratic work theorists" who would use this as evidence that "when caught offguard, computer scientists admit that the idea of an O(n log n) fourier transform poses insurmountable problems to their theory." Bleh.

Evolutionary biologists may be forgiven if they hammer home the "only way to make sense of biology" theme to the exclusion of invoking a sense of wonder at this beautiful process.

I also liked the blog comment from the link about that it was "the equivalent of saying that Miss Marple can't identify the murderer, and proving it by quoting from chapter 2 of the novel."

[fifi]

Chemistry makes life inevitable. But one question that puzzles me is why, then, has it happened only once?

[PaulC]

> But one question that puzzles me is why, then, has it happened only once?

What exactly makes you think it has happened only once?

That it doesn't happened repeatedly where life already exists to compete with it is not very surprising either.

[lysenko]

For a good overview of the Darwinian response to ID see "The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name" on the New Republic Online website (circa 8/11/05). It is much more comprehensive than the NYT article but still relavtively succinct. The author is Jerry Coyne who I believe is a biologist at the University of Chicago.

[fifi]

What exactly makes you think it has happened only once?

All of life on earth is drawn up from a single set of blueprints. The most profound true statement of biology is all life is one. As the geneticist Jacques Monod put it, "everything that is true of E. coli must be true of elephants, except more so." But my point is if the facts of chemistry are such that the appearance of instructions to make protein-like substances with a certain dull fidelity is inevitable -- and in the metaphysics of modern biology it would be an uncommon universe if such complexity didn't happen commonly -- then why isn't it more common?

That it doesn't happened repeatedly where life already exists to compete with it is not very surprising either.

I don’t have a problem with it having to "compete", even if only for a short while before it dies (to the extent protein or protein-like substances live in the first place.) How does it know not to happen more than once just because something like it already exists?

[PaulC]

> All of life on earth is drawn up from a single set of blueprints.

Sure, but who's limiting the discussion to earth? That was my point. I'm inclined to think that abiogenesis is inevitable under suitable conditions and has happened over again and again, just not here.

> How does it know not to happen more than once just because something like it already exists?

Clearly it doesn't "know" anything. There are two possibilities I can think of. One is that that current conditions just aren't suitable to any kind of abiogenesis. E.g.. it's not warm enough, or the chemical concentrations are not high enough. That might be true, but it's unnecessary to assume. Nobody ever said that the emergence of some kind of self-replicating proto-life was a frequent event. It's probably extremely rare. But if it happens in a lifeless context, the result will be a rapid transformation of chemicals into copies of itself. If it happens in the context of more robust life forms, on the other hand, it doesn't make it very far.

For all I know, some kind of abiogenesis occurs somewhere on earth every year. The effect would be so local and short-lived, however, that you'd miss it. Most of the chemical resources it would need are tied up already in living things, and they guard them pretty effectively.

[PQuincy]

IDer may be dizzily excited, but they've chosen to roost on a branch that is steadily being sawn away. As a poster above noted:

___"It is a 'God of the Gaps' theology that relegates God to tinkering with a few DNA bases. The problem with placing God into the gaps in our scientific knowledge has to do with science continuing to shrink the gaps. Science creates a "continually shrinking God" that puts science at odds with theology."___

In the long run, it is strategically insane to base a theory on the unexplainability of what is not explained YET. ("Appeals to designer==refusal to attempt explanation": if anyone can show that this is not correct, please let me know!)

Modern biology already explains a lot, and the nature of the scientific project ensures that -- barring a destruction of the conditions that allow cumulative scientific research -- it will continue to provide more and better explanations. One by one, the "examples" that IDers cite will become lamer and lamer, since plausible and non-interventionist explanations will be available.

Of course, IDers happily ignore the fact that for many of their "unevolvable characteristics", the evolutionary explanation is already pretty advanced and detailed, so perhaps they don't care.

Or, in a more sinister vein, perhaps their goal in the long run is to ensure that the conditions for scientific research are firmly terminated. Certainly, their theocratic friends on the fringe evangelical right are headed in that direction, pretty fast.

[tom f]

Take it as a victory that this group (IDers) accepts the old earth and natural selection theories. Another hundred years they'll come around.

[Paul Callahan]

The position of ID is even more precarious than I realized. The Avida project already claims to have in silico evolution experiments that generate systems with Behe's so-called "irreducible complexity". See http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000062.html

"Evolving Complex Stuff: “Darwinian” Evolution and Irreducible Complexity"

"As I noted in an earlier posting, research using computational models of evolution are a thorn in the side of Intelligent Design proponents. That thorn is becoming sharper and more penetrating as computer models of evolution become powerful and versatile enough to begin addressing biologically interesting questions. An example from last year is Lenski, et al.’s The evolutionary origin of complex features, published in Nature."

I always thought of ALife as a fun fring^H^H^H^H^Hinterdisciplinary area, but according to above link, the Avida project has struck enough of a nerve that creationists have been downloading it to find flaws.

If Behe and Dembski are ever willing to settle on rigorous mathematical definitions of "Complex Specified Information" or "Irreducible Complexity" I have little doubt that their impossibility claims will be refuted to the satisfaction of nearly anyone other than committed IDers.

[cm]

When I said "fair and balanced", I meant it in the sense of FOX. Perhaps not obvious.

[tom f]

Well, the next NYTimes article is up. My prediction is fulfilled (I'm gonna play god and change that to "manifested"). The whitecoats speak.

Summary: Some scientists believe in God. Others don't. Some theist scientists think the atheists are ignoring human realities such as meaning and moral sense, some atheist scientists approvingly agree; some atheists don't know why the theists are thinking about God but do know that its not science, some theist scientists approvingly agree.

The payoff: "This belief in science sets them [scientists who believe in God] apart from those who endorse creationism or its doctrinal cousin, intelligent design, both of which depend on the existence of a supernatural force."

Did you read closely? Lemme rephrase: Intelligent Deisign is irrelevant to Evolution. Not another theory. Not a scientific controversy. Irrelevant.

Thus when the Discovery Institute proposes its "teach the controversy" educational policy about Intelligent Design and Evolution, they might as well propose teaching the controversy over pond salinity and proper indentation of the business memo.

[tom f]

NYTimes 8/23

Dr. Collins lays down the Law:

"You will never understand what it means to be a human being through naturalistic observation"...

no, that takes billions of neurons, a pulse, and a few Beethoven piano sonatas. Oops, there I am whispering in Church again. The sermon continues...

"You won't understand why you are here and what the meaning is..."

so let's all agree to pretend we do understand Now...wait, okay, sorry, I dropped something...Now!

..."Science has no power to address these questions - and are they not the most important questions we ask ourselves?"

Amen. If your done, I'd like to violently subjugate the people who aren't pretending to have the answers now. That is, if its okay with you.

[Urinated State of America]

Y'know, if the next Titan probe confirms the hypothesis that the high methane levels and low acetylene & H2 levels seen are the result of some form of microbial respiration, I wonder how the IDers would react.