I Got Accused . . . again . . . Of Not Being A Biologist

I really wish more folks would comment on here, mainly because then you can read their comments and any return comment I might have.  Today I was accused of not being a biologist, so my blog was a . . . let me quote . . . "a waste of time and energy".  They had a little more to say, but I am not totally clear on whether or not they thought my writing this blog was a waste of my time and energy, or that reading my blog was a waste of their time and energy.  In any event, here is my response.  It's a bit more long-winded than it would have been face-to-face, but the message would have been the same.

I am not, nor have I ever portrayed myself as a biologist, credentialed or otherwise.  I state quite clearly in the 'About Me' section of my blog that my areas of expertise are computers and Information Technology (IT).  I have three degrees in that area and in addition I have a background in electronics, teaching, and computers all thanks to my time in the United States Air Force.  This in no way makes me a biologist, nor did I spend last night in a Holiday Inn Express.

The biology in my background comes from school, both public and parochial.  My first biology teacher was a catholic priest.  In Jr. High and High School I had several biology teachers, including the unforgettable 'Efsavia', I mean how can anyone forget that first name!  I passed the New York State Regents Examination in Biology, which I think they now call "Life Sciences". During my military career I attended so many different schools (13 different colleges and a large assortment of military training courses) that my wife referred to me as a professional student.  During those years I took a number of Life and Earth Science courses.  So, at best you can think of me as a science and biology enthusiast, or to quote an old TV series I thoroughly enjoyed, "A talented amateur".  If you can guess the series, you are as old as I am :-).  Even with all this, none of it makes me an actual biologist.

Because of all that, if you feel my blog is a waste of my time, then I put to you that it's not only my time to spend how I wish and that you do not have the right to tell me how to spend it.  That might sound a bit adversarial, but think it thorough -- do you let others define how you spend your time?  Secondly, if you think my not being a biologist somehow disqualifies me from have anything of value to say, let me remind you of a few things:

1. The Discovery Institute is not aiming its marketing efforts at biologists, are they?  They are aiming at pretty much everyone else.  They want people who vote, people who are active in school organizations, or just about anyone who is willing to stand up and be heard.  They want these people because these are the people who can influence the behavior of politicians and school board members.  I am one of those people, and I feel that if they can take aim at me, I can take aim at them.
2. I get annoyed, as should you, when an organization hides their motivations and then uses tactics designed to confuse rather than illuminate.  Does it require being a biologist to identify most if their lies?  Their tactics and strategies rely far less on biology and nearly entirely on marketing.  Like an old-fashioned clock, which is right twice a day, the few times they point out something actually within the realm of science, they get taken down quickly by actual biologists (like PZ Myers and Larry Moran), so I am happy to bow to their expertise. However, when they say things like "Intelligent Design has nothing to do with religion" or they accuse scientific theories of actually being religious beliefs themselves . . . I am happy to point out the error of their ways.
3. One of the reasons I would like people to read this blog is because I am not a biologist, but because I am simply a person with an interest in science and science education, in particular the education of our children.  Everyone should be interested in that, regardless of credentials.
4. On my blog I was very clear why I do it:

"Why blog on this topic? Well after seeing the tactics of groups like the Discovery Institute, I couldn't stay silent on the subject. After the Discovery Institute spins their lies, after the defendants in the Dover trial LIED under oath, and after Texas fired their state science curriculum director for forwarding an email appropriate to her duties -- I couldn't sit back and just watch."  

I was even quite clear as to why I blog in general:

"Why blog? In all honesty, why not? It's fun, has been very educational, and it also has offered me insights into people and positions I may not have thought much about before. " 

Well, I hope that explains things.  Of course you are perfectly free to disagree and disregard my blog because I lack the credentials you may feel I need to have.  You might keep in mind that if, in the future, you decide to voice an opinion on a subject in which you aren't 'credentialed', remember this post.  Hopefully you won't use your own lack of credentials to avoid voicing an opinion!  Silence often implies consent and, as you can see, I refuse to consent to the distortions and lies coming out of groups like the Discovery Institute simply because I lack the credentials as a biologist.

The Very Definition of Irony

Please lower the gain on your irony-meters for this one, you might not want to replace it after you read this post.

 I was doing a little catch-up reading and caught this one over at Larry Moran's Sandwalk blog: "A refreshing admission on Uncommon Descent", without reading his post, I knew it was going to be fun.  The only sanity you get from Uncommon Descent is either unintentional or an attempt at obfuscation.  Unlike most ID Proponents, I will get to the whole article to see the context of the Uncommon Descent post.  If you aren't familiar with Uncommon Descent, it's the blog that used to belong to Wild Bill Dembski, who has since not only left the Discovery Institute fold, but a few years back he turned it over to a revolving collection of apologists.  I can't in good conscience refer to Uncommon Descent as 'UD' because here in Dayton Ohio that's the initials and common reference to one of the finest Catholic Universities in the country, the University of Dayton, and also one that teaches actual science in their biology classes.  In fact, as I mentioned in a previous post, UD doesn't even mention ID on it's website, but it does have classes on Evolution, quite a few of them in fact.

I've written about Uncommon Descent before -- a few times about how my comments on one of their posts or another magically disappears. One time it was because of something one of their posters claimed: "Creationists know more about Evolution?", which was really hilarious to read.  Another time was about something called an 'Intelligent Design (ID) Quiz', which was really nothing more than a survey and made little sense, "An Intelligent Design Quiz . . . not really" and for once my answers did make it on the site, not my direct comment, but part of another post by the 'quiz' author, who thought I was 'sneering and arrogant', (comment posted # 49).  Of course my posted response to him never found it's way onto their site, which is pretty much par for the course.  I find it funny that he asks for my opinion and because he didn't like it, I was sneering and arrogant.  But when I mention how his quiz was little more than a ploy to give those who already drank the DI's kool-aid to stroke his ego, the comment never makes it online.  Yet he was full of self-congratulations from the people who said nice things about ID, who he called thoughtful and kind.  Wonder why? 

As you can tell I have little to no respect for Uncommon Descent, whether it was under Dembski's moniker or one of the other posters.  So once I saw Larry's post, I knew it was going to be good.  I just have to post the opening paragraph from Uncommon Descent:

"Probably one of the most daunting aspects of carrying on debates either about proper critical thinking, theism vs atheism, or intelligent design and its implications is the seeming implacable nature of those we debate here and elsewhere. It most often seems that no amount of logic, evidence or even reasonable discourse makes one iota of difference to our interlocutors; however, I think this is probably because most of those who will take the time to seek our position out and criticize it on its home turf are already fully committed against such positions, and are often emotionally entrenched."(Uncommon Descent: The Benefit of Arguments at UD)

I just had to underline a couple of things to point out, and will address them, but I have to address the irony of the whole post.  If you read just this paragraph, you might not realize it was an ID proponent.  It would be easy to confuse because what you are seeing is a common DI tactic.  They take innocuous phrases and try and spin them for their own purposes.  The words sound so reasonable, but really?  Let's take a closer look.  If you read the rest of the post, William J. Murray, one of the multitude of ID apologists on Uncommon Descent, tells the story of how he 'taught' his granddaughter to a theist by telling why he was one.  Hmmm, sounds fishy to me, how about you?

I recall a book by Ann Coulter, you know the Bill O'Reilly for people who can actually read.  She decided to learn about the whole Evolution vs ID issue by visiting the Discovery Institute.  There she knelt down in front of a few of their usual talking heads and swallowed the kool-aid whole.  Now a reasonable person might have taken a little bit of time to get the scientific view from . . . oh, I don't know . . . actual working biologists, but not Coulter.  She prefers her science of the pseudo-science variety.  Why muddy up the waters with facts.  Like Coulter, Murray, isn't interested in an opposing view, so he tells his granddaughter one side and lo-and-behold, claims she's sold.  Isn't that such a cute story.

More fodder for the irony meter, his last line:

"Every once in a while it’s nice to be reminded that, sometimes, reason and evidence can actually get through to a person."(Uncommon Descent: The Benefit of Arguments at UD)

Reason and evidence? I am almost curious at what he considers reason and evidence? He does list a few things -- cosmological fine-tuning, bio-semiotics and cellular nano-technology, and also first-cause and moral arguments -- but are those things based on reason and evidence or based on wishful thinking and conjecture?  Has there been anything actually resembling evidence presents that supports a theistic position on any of those topics?  Now, remember, claiming to have evidence and actually having evidence are radically different things.

I do want to address a few of the things I underlined in the first quote: 

First of all, Critical Thinking, is the ID community really interested in Critical Thinking?  Has anyone actually seen any evidence of this?  I would like to remind everyone of one of the lines from the judicial decision from the Kitzmiller v. Dover et al:

"ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM [Intelligent Design Movement] is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID." (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, p89)

They use the term all the time, but they really don't want people thinking critically about Intelligent Design, their idea of critical thinking is an effort to damage science education on the assumption that it would allow ID to wedge it's way into the science classroom.  So far, it's been an abject failure . . . primarily because ID proponents haven't managed to support their version of Creationism with anything but wishful thinking.

OK, next up, Theism vs Atheism.  How many times has this come up in a debate about ID, and yet people like those at Uncommon Descent keep claiming that ID is not a form of Creationism.  If that were true, then why should theism vs atheism even come up?  We all know why, because Intelligent Design is Creationism minus any specific reference to the Christian God.  Therefore any debate quickly boils down to one apologist or another defending their religious faith while trying not to use religious terms.  How many times has an ID proponent unofficially identified the 'designer' as the Christian God?  How many times have their denied their religious roots while speaking at religious meetings, organized by religious organizations, and published in the religious press?  So there is a definite 'theistic' side, but then where does the 'atheism' come in?

So here is another example where an ID proponent is using the same sort of 'evidence' they claim supports ID as the support for their religious beliefs . . . Yes, read the whole post for yourself.  An ID proponent is publicly acknowledging that his ID beliefs are based on and the basis for his religious beliefs.  I know it won't impact the DI's constant denial of their religious beliefs, but here it is, again.  And I love the head-patting and sucking up many of the commenters gave Murray.  So they obviously agree! 

Here's one part I will never be able to forgive the ID supporters, the accusation that science is in some way atheistic.  That is a lie and nothing more than another gutter level tactic. They try and sell the idea that if you support science, you are obviously an atheist.  They are trying to create an artificial binary choice as a tactic to push theists into the Creationism/ID side.  But most theists haven't bought into it.  Creationists, like the DI and the posters at Uncommon Descent, are not making much headway against not only actual scientists, but the religious groups and schools where they believe pushing their religion would be an advantage -- but major religious groups haven't bought into their snake oil.  Just check out the Clergy Letter project again to see what I am talking about, over 14,000 signatures of Christian, Jewish, Unitarian, and Buddhist clergy supporting real science over pseudo-science.

The third things I underlined, ID and it's implications.  Just what implications are they talking about?  What has the ID Movement (IDM) actually accomplished?  What implications are their for science?  So far, with the exception of a few politicians pandering for votes, exactly what has the impact of the past 20 years of the DI's marketing campaign been on science and on science education?  Pretty minimal.  They have achieved none of their goals, they have done nothing in the way of actual scientific research, and their collection of tactics and strategies relies on lies and mis-direction.

Finally, no amount of logic, evidence or even reasonable discourse, really?  Scientific theories get changed all the time.  Real scientists working in actual labs and studying biology have updated and augmented the Theory of Evolution since Darwin.  Logic and discourse are two of the tools they use regularly.  Although I have heard that the discourse isn't always considered 'reasonable', and you can always find examples of scientists who are dug in so deep it takes something like dynamite to get them to accept change, but if you look at the changes over the decades, you can see even the most entrenched 'evolutionist' has changed considerably over time.  Can Creationists say the same thing?

How different are the DI's arguments from the William Paley "Natural Theology" arguments of the early 19th century?  While the terminology is different, the basic arguments are the same.  Said of Paley's Watchmaker Analogy:

" . . . creationists revived versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker argument. They related the analogy to the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God, as well as for the intelligent design of the universe." (Wikipedia: Watchmaker Analogy)

All in all, I was entertained. I hope that Murray's granddaughter takes an actual science class from a school that teaches science, not the pseudo-science that Murray appears to like so much. OK, you can re-set the gain on your irony-meters back to normal. I just didn't want to be responsible for you having to replace them . . . yet again.

What is the probability of a Creationist actually calculating the Odds of Evolution occurring?

Over the years I have had a number of problems with the calculations of folks who try and mathematically prove the impossibility of evolution. If you've been following this blog, you know about my Playing Card Analogy.

If you have, you can skip the rest of this paragraph because I will re-state it just to make sure we are all on the same page. The analogy goes like this: You take a plain deck of 52 playing cards. You shuffle them up and deal them out face up. Look at the order you dealt them out. The odds of dealing them out in that particular order are astronomical, 52 factorial (52!), which is 1*2*3 . . .*52). The question is did you beat those odds when dealing out the cards? The answer is no! Unless you predicted the order before dealing, which you did not do, then you did not beat the odds. The applicable odds were that the cards would be in some order, and the odds of that happening are 100%!

OK, now you are familiar, or you already were familiar with my analogy. Larry Moran, over on his Sandwalk blog, had an interesting post "Targets, arrows, and the lottery fallacy". He relates the most common problem when Creationists (Yes, I include the Discovery Institute in that list.) calculate the probabilities for evolution. It is an assumption that the outcome was in some manner predetermined, or that it is the only possible outcome.  As with my card analogy, the odds calculation makes no sense unless the order of the cards was the only possible outcome or the predicted outcome.

So the question, and it's certainly a philosophical one and not a scientific one, is whether or not the human form is the intended outcome? If you claim 'yes', then my next question will be for you to prove it. I can imagine someone whipping out an appropriate Biblical reference about being 'created in his image', but that does not constitute proof. Obviously there isn't anything that mandates the human form.  We are a result, no one can prove we are a predicted, or the only possibility.  We are only a result.

So let's apply this to the 'thinking' of folks like Behe and Dembski. When they declare something as Irreducibly Complex and use a 'design filter' to support that declaration, what they are in fact saying is that looking at the present state of the example, claiming it was the only possible outcome, therefore the odds are astronomical. They don't see, by intent, that the current state is a result, not a prediction. The reality is that some magical hindsight is nothing more than wishful thinking. Something like "I want there to be a God, so therefore I have to invent things that the God had to have done in order to fulfill my desire." Isn't that exactly what folks 'calculating' such probabilities are really saying?

Larry had this to say:

"Do you see the fallacy? Just because we observe a complex adaptation or structure does NOT mean that it was specified or pre-ordained. There are certainly many different structures that could have evolved—most of them we never see because they didn't happen. And when a particular result is observed it doesn't mean that there was only one pathway (target) to producing that structure"

Assuming only one possible outcome is just that, an assumption.  Folks like Behe and Dembski make that assumption and then reinforce it with their religious belief set.  They want to see design, therefore there must be design!  When are the folks from the DI going to acknowledge all the other possible outcomes other than the present state?  I have to assume never, because to admit that other outcomes were even possible would pretty much be a mortal hit to the whole Creationism/Intelligent Design idea.  Humans have to have been the intended outcome, in fact the only outcome, or ID is meaningless.

So, what is the probability of a Creationist actually calculating the odds of Evolution occurring?  How close to absolute zero can we get?  I think we found the both the theoretical and physical limit.

In short . . . we don't know!

Larry Moran, over on Sandwalk, asked several times for the Discovery Institute to explain Intelligent Design, preferably in such a way that makes any sense.  Rarely do they stir to make much of an effort, however recently Ann Gauger, you know the one with the make-believe lab over at the DI's pet Biologics Institute, made several long drawn-out attempts address Larry's question.

Basically Larry, to me, was asking for any pertinent details on how Intelligent Design happened or how it works.  I think he was after some explanation that would make sense all the recent posts trying to tie the use of intelligence as examples of Intelligent Design.  You know my position on that, in a nutshell the use of human intelligence IS NOT an example of Intelligent Design 'Theory' in action because there is no Intelligent Design Theory.  (Intelligent Design vs intelligent design) I think Larry is trying to get them to lay down something more like a real science theory. Did Ann Gauger succeed?  You tell me.

In the first she tries to make fun of Larry for even asking the question, "From Biochemist Larry Moran, More Gratuitous Misrepresentations".  She even implies that Larry didn't even read the book:

"If he's read the book, he should know by now what intelligent design theorists like Stephen Meyer really think."

I an pretty sure Larry read 'Darwin's Doubt', if he hadn't, it would have been quite hard for him to critique it so devastatingly.  I mean do these posts read like someone who failed to read the book?

• Darwin's Doubt: A Synopsis
• Darwin's Doubt: The Genes Tell the Story?
• The Cambrian Conundrum: Stephen Meyer Says (Lack of) Fossils Trumps Genes
• Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Evidence Must Be Wrong Because Scientists Disagree About the Exact Dates
• Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Data Must Be Wrong Because Different Genes Evolve at Different Rates
• Stephen Meyer Says That Constant Mutation Rates Are a "Questionable Assumption"
• Stephen Meyer Says that "Homology" Is a Problem in Molecular Evolution

Apparently Ann wasn't happy and had to follow-up with a post in which she tries to . . . well in a nutshell, and I am sure if she read this she would put it down to a mis-characterization, but she pretty well states that not only is there not a 'mechanism', but anyone who looks for one isn't going to find it.  Here is her post: "What's the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?"  And here a quote in which she summarizes things:

"We can't really say how our own minds work to interact with the world, yet we know they do. It is our universal, repeated, personal experience that shows us that our consciousness interacts with our bodies to produce information, but exactly how it works is not known. So why should we expect to know how the agent(s) responsible for the design of life or the universe may have worked? "

I disagree, I think we know a great deal about how our minds work, much more than 150 years ago.  But admitting that would be counter-productive to the marketing done by Ann and her pals.  Since they [the DI] claim we don't know, they can use that claim to justify as to why they cannot determine how a deity's mind works.  Oh, I'm sorry . . . agent . . . not deity :-)   It is true we do not know 100% of how the human mind works, but what Ann seems to be doing is just restated the 'God of the Gaps' argument.

In the third response she quotes Stephen C. Meyer from 'Darwin's Doubt', "More on the "Mechanism" of Intelligent Design"   I find this more ironic than anything else, here is my thinking why:

1. Larry Moran wrote a number of devastating critiques on Darwin's Doubt (as noted above).
2. The DI wrote a follow-up to 'Darwin's Doubt' called 'Debating Darwin's Doubt', which they claimed addressed the criticisms of the original 'book'.
3. "Debating Darwin's Doubt' failed to address the criticisms put forth by Larry.
4. Ann uses a long quote from Darwin's Doubt to address Larry's question.

Don't you find that ironic?  Maybe a bit of a circular argument?  If Ann is going to use Meyer to address Larry's question, wouldn't it be better to first address his critiques?  Well that would make logical sense to me . . . but apparently that's just me.


If Intelligent Design wishes to be taken seriously as science and as a scientific theory it has to offer more than conjecture and wishful thinking.  To date it has failed and Ann's rather verbose responses boil down to 'We Don't Know!'  Even more so, I think she pretty clearly states that the DI is never going to propose anything stronger than what they already have.  Oh I think they will continue to dress it up in different lab coats, but each effort will fail as dramatically as Darwin's Doubt -- or if you wish something more optimistic, I think each effort will be equally as successful as DD.  They have to keep up the effort or they might become as irrelevant a religious marketing group as they are a scientific organization.