We'll see that IC remains as potent a weapon in ID's arsenal as it was in 1996.

While waiting patiently for the posts that will lay to rest any idea that Intelligent Design vs Evolution isn't a viable scientific controversy (as promised by the Discovery Institute here ) I read a couple of new posts over on the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views blog.

"Biophysicist Matt Baker Is an Intelligent Design Critic Who Doesn't Understand Irreducible Complexity" was one, and since apparently little casey luskin felt so strongly about it, he had to post a second one three days later: 

"Why the Type III Secretory System Can't Be a Precursor to the Bacteria Flagellum".

Typically what drove little casey to such lengths is an article by Matt Baker: "The bacterial flagellar motor: brilliant evolution or intelligent design?"  Good article and is a pretty typical example of something that happened during the Dover Trial.  Remember when Michael Behe, the father of Irreducible Complexity, was cross-examined?  You can read how he addressed one specific issue here.  He was presented with over 50 peer-reviewed publications, 9 books, and a number of textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; however, he insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not “good enough.”

Just so you know the players:

• Dr Matt Baker was awarded a John Monash Scholarship to complete a PhD in biological physics at Oxford University studying the effects of low temperature on the mechanism of the bacterial flagella motor. He returned to Australia in 2013 and is currently based at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute where he uses DNA nano-structures to modify bacterial flagella motors to understand how they have arisen. Matt was one of RN's top 5 under 40 scientists in 2015.
• Mr. Casey Luskin is an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law.

I know, doesn't seem like a fair fight, on the one hand you have someone who specifically studies bacterial flagellum and on the other you have one of the Discovery Institute's lawyers.  Little casey was mentioned in Lauri Lebo's book about the Dover Trial (The Devil in Dover), he was handing out pro-Id pamphlets during the trial.  But don't worry, casey quotes one of the big guns of the Discovery Institute, Wild Bill Dembski.  Maybe that will help his case.

Now I am not going to try and dissect any of the articles.  First of all, I am not a biologist and have never pretended to be one.  Yes, I know that might someday have the DI comment on one of my posts claiming that I am wholly unqualified to have an opinion.  It's one of my bucket list items that I will annoy someone at the DI enough to respond.  But as for being wholly unqualified, I have to disagree.  I am one of the people who the DI aim their marketing campaign toward.  They don't aim at  scientists, they aim at people who vote for various politicians, are school board members and parents of students who can influence the directions school curriculum can take, they aim people who don't have advanced science degrees because they have never offered any evidence that their 'work' is in any way scientific.  They also prefer to aim at people who already believe in their particular brand of kool-aid.  Well by that list I am mostly qualified then, but since they like aiming at people like me, I feel perfectly justified in shooting back. 

What I am mostly interested in tactics.  For example, what tactic did Michael Behe use in his original books 'Darwin's Black Box'?  He took a short list of very complex things, made some completely unsupported claims about they being irreducibly complex and called it a night.  Do you disagree?   Don't forget that during the Dover Trial, he admitted that no one, including himself, was doing any work to support his claims of irreducible complexity.  Has anything changed since he published in 1996?  Remember that he also said similar things in 1993 (his part of the infamous 'Of Pandas and People'), but hadn't coined the phrase 'Irreducible Complexity' yet.  So in the past 22 years, who has done the research and offered the real scientific proof supporting Intelligent Design or Irreducible Complexity?  No one, particularly not casey!

No support places Behe's claims strictly in the realm of supposition and wishful thinking.  Intelligent Design adherents wants there to be a designer they can later claim to be God (remember the Wedge Strategy made that very clear), so they see design where there is, at best, the appearance of design.  When faced with actual scientific evidence that is contrary to their claims, they simple say 'it's not enough'.  That's what I think it took Casey two posts to say.

Here is where little casey quotes Wild Bill.  He [casey] seems to agree that if the biologist cannot provide a complete evolutionary path, that it's not good enough.  My question is why is that?  Behe offered claims with no support at all.  Baker offers support for his example, as did the 50+ documents presented to Behe at the Dover Trial.  But there seems to be a dichotomy here.  On the one hand if you fail to offer an absolute 100% perfect explanation, along with some level of scientific support, your claim just 'isn't good enough', yet when you offer no support at all, it gets accepted as gospel by people like little casey.

Baker never intended for his claim to be a complete answer, but it does contradict several of the points specified by Behe.  Points that were also presented during the Dover Trial which pretty well ruined Behe's day.  In fact, rarely is real scientific work ever complete.  People work on a part and parcel and other scientists come along and add to the knowledge pool.  This tactic of demanding 100% absolute perfection in evolutionary examples and yet offer no corresponding level of support when pushing forth Intelligent Design is, unfortunately all to common.  These two articles are perfect examples.

I do have one last question for little casey.  Why did he quote Wild Bill Dembski's "Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses"?  This was written in 2005 in response to reports of the 6 expert witnesses that were going to be testifying for the plaintiffs in the Dover Trial.  In case you forgot, Dembski was not on the side of the plaintiffs.  Wouldn't Dembski's responses gone over better during the court case itself?  I mean if his rebuttal is such a wonder piece of scholarship, why is it hidden away on a website to be used  a decade later in a very defensive way.  Let us all not forget that Dembski had his chance to testify and backed out.  So I take  his rebuttal with a large bag of salt.  He didn't present it where it might have done his side some good.  but here we are a decade later and little casey trots it out like it is a viable rebuttal.

So when little casey said "We'll see that IC remains as potent a weapon in ID's arsenal as it was in 1996."  I can only agree with him, although I might word it a little differently.  I think the word 'potent' is not used correctly here.  Usually when something has the 'potency' that IC has had over the past couple of decades, the better turn of phrase is 'impotent', unless the object is to sell books to believers, then I guess it did its job.  Hasn't impacted science very much, but it did help Behe's book sales.

That's deception, not concern

I have a Google News alert for stuff coming out of the Discovery Institute.  They have quite a bit of stuff coming out, but most of it is geared strictly for the drinkers of their particular Kool-aid and if I wrote something up for each of them, blogging would be a full time job and not a particularly well-paying one at that.  However sometime that news feed drops something worth thinking about.

However, before you get your hopes up, it is not an article by the Discovery Institute, but one about them.  In particular "Controlling Language Controls the Euthanasia Debate" caught my eye.  It's not a usual topic for this blog, but I wanted to highlight the tactic of 'Controlling Language'.  The author of the article goes into the DI's Wesley J. Smith complaining about using the 'v-word'.  The word is vegetative, as in a vegetative state, a medical term describing someone with few cognitive abilities usually due to accident or illness. Apparently they don't like the term ostensibly because of negative connotations about the word 'vegetable'.  They even go as far as associating it with the 'n-word' and all the negatives there.  Does that sound familiar, associating something you don't like with something no one likes and you gain support with little effort.  I know vegetative does have negative connotations, but then don't many medical terms have them?  Telling someone they have a 'dysfunction' makes people feel OK, doesn't it?  How about 'Walleyed'?  I have to ask, is 'Yellow Fever' the next target on the political politeness express?

The real question raised is more along the lines of is the DI the least bit interested in political correctness?  The author of the article doesn't think so. For some reason he thinks that they have a religious agenda when dealing with the concept of ending a life.  Are you kidding me, the Discovery Institute having a religious agenda and trying to use words to change the playing field!  How can he possibly think that?  My guess would be he's had experience with the DI before.

I think you know where I am going with this and how this ties into their position and tactics on science education.  I would like to remind you about a few words:  theory, belief, controversy, Darwinism, Materialism, weaknesses, academic freedom . . . We've talked about many of them before.  The tactic is common from the DI.  They frequently change how words are used in order to control the debate.  My favorite example, of course, is the word Theory.  Science uses the word with one definition that is very different from the colloquial definition.  The phrase 'Evolution is only a Theory!' is designed to try and cast doubt and make people think that as a theory, it's only an idea, a concept and one not with much actual support.  Of course, in science, the word 'theory' is about the highest pinnacle anything can achieve.  It has tremendous levels of support and applicability that a run-of-the-mill 'idea' cannot compete with.  If an idea cannot compete with a theory, then you either have to raise the idea up, or tear the theory down.  How much work has the DI done raising their idea of Intelligent Design up as compared to how much effort they have put into trying to tear evolution down?  Pretty lopsided if you ask me.  In fact how much actual work have thy put into Intelligent Design?  Haven't seen much, have we?

The word 'Darwinism' is another example.  The suffix 'ism' is a derived word used in philosophy, politics, religion or other areas pertaining to an ideology of some sort (definition from from Wikipedia).  The definition goes on to say that it is frequently used derogatorily.  Now, a long time use of 'ism' is 'Creationism'.  It certainly applies as a philosophy and religious concept.  It is also frequently used in a derogatory way because of the connotation of ignoring science, denying evidence, and attempting to push a strictly religious agenda into any aspect of education.

So, when you are fighting an uphill battle with the negative connotations of 'Creationism' why not take a two-fold approach.  First distance yourself from Creationism and constantly deny any connection.  Sound familiar?  It took a Federal Court (Kitzmiller v. Dover) to remind everyone that Intelligent Design is Creationism in the same way 'Creation Science' was nothing more than Creationism dressed up a little bit. 

The other plank in this platform is trying to make the scientific theory of Evolution nothing more than another 'ism'.  I guess 'Evolutionism' would have been to weird to say, so why not attack Charles Darwin and the scientific theory at the same time?  Let's see, how many things have they blamed Charles Darwin for?  Pretty much everything bad in the 19th and 20th century.  Now in reality, what is Darwinism?  It has nothing to do with Evolution because the current state of evolutionary theory would be barely recognizable to Darwin, but facts like that have no room in the DI's version of reality.  Doubt about Darwin could very well cause some to doubt the theory.  Never lose sight that the DI's target audience are not scientists, it's politicians, school board members and the general public who vote for them and who contribute to causes they support.

Without going through every term, briefly consider how they try and equate belief in God with belief in a scientific theory, how they denigrate the naturalistic philosophy of science and try and include the supernatural, and how they treat science's ability to adjust as we learn new things as a weakness in science.  The list is pretty much endless.

I hope you would think about the DI's use of words and realize that while they are prolific when it comes to marketing and send out lots of articles, books, and frequently comment on any subject near and dear to their hearts, their use of terminology is very deliberate and designed [pun intended] to aid in their objectives.  They aren't concerned with political correctness, they are only interested in their own righteousness and any tactic, even trying to redefine the words involved, is fine with them if they think it changes the playing field in their favor. 

Words have meanings

I read a post over on the NCSE's blog, that is the National Center for Science Education.  Normally I really enjoy reading their blog and frequently refer to their site to keep abreast of science education in this country.  Often I learn a few new things as well.  However, this particular entry, Misconception Monday: Hypotheses, Theories, and Laws, Oh My!, left me rather perplexed.  In a nutshell the author, Stephanie Keep, defined Hypothesis, Theory and Law.  I was looking forward to it, especially since I've posted on this topic before (Arguments XIX -- Hypothesis, Theory, and Law), but the article rather blurred the lines between them to the point they were barely recognizable, well at least to me.  Now granted my science education from HS and college was a while ago, but what I learned put a much sharper demarcation between them than was described here.

I understand there is no absolute universal definition of the terms, the generally accepted differences were not simply one of scope, but of applicability.  A hypothesis is an idea, a testable idea about some given phenomena.  It can be very narrow or fairly broad.  Hypotheses are tested and from there they can be rejected, confirmed, or even modified.  Over time, as the modifications grow less and less encompassing, the hypothesis becomes stronger and more well supported.  Hypotheses can get rolled up into a Scientific theory.  Now there rarely is a one for one relationship here, but the Theory is much more encompassing than a hypothesis and has undergone considerable testing and constant confirmation.  In fact pretty much all the evidence supports a hypothesis, or hypotheses, before they can be considered a theory, or part of a theory.  It's a process that's been defined time and time again.

Sure, the reality is less than absolute.  New hypotheses can come out of existing theories, theories can be made up of multiple theories and hypotheses.  But as an explanation or terminology, I think the complicated reality only confuses the issue.  Before you can appreciate the complex reality, you have to understand the basics of the terminology.

Now a law is a manifestation of a theory/hypothesis.  It's much more narrow than either a hypothesis or a theory.  It's an application under a very specific set of parameters.  It's often expressed mathematically, but that's not always true.

What is true is that while hypotheses can become theories, they never 'grow-up' to be laws.  That's a common Creationist myth about science.  I actually have heard people say things like 'If Evolution is so strong, why isn't it a law!"  There I agree with Stephanie!  What bothers me the most about how blurry she defined the terms, it opens the door for this exact sort of behavior.  If we cannot firmly define our terminology, we tend to be fighting an uphill battle when other people misuse the terminology.

Out of curiosity, I searched the NCSE website for 'theory' and found this:

• Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true”. Truth in science, however, is never final and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.
• Hypothesis: A tentative statement about the natural world leading to deductions that can be tested. If the deductions are verified, the hypothesis is provisionally corroborated. If the deductions are incorrect, the original hypothesis is proved false and must be abandoned or modified. Hypotheses can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.
• Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances.
• Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
  

I think Stephanie should have consulting the NCSE site before being to vague.