A repeated lie

It's okay if it's for Jesus

The Institute for Creation Research likes to honor its founder, the late Henry M. Morris, by reprinting his articles in Acts & Facts magazine. The April 2011 issue recycles Morris's essay on “Defending the Faith.” According to the tag at the end, the article was originally published in January 1997. I presume the following paragraph was carried over intact from Morris's initial version:

The excellent book Of Pandas and People was written to present biology in terms of “intelligent design,” without any reference to God, the Bible, or creation, hoping that it could be adopted as a high school biology textbook. Again, nothing doing! It was merely a sneaky way of getting creationism into the schools, said its opponents, and they won.

How closely must one have followed the creation/evolution argument to laugh at Morris's claim? Anyone who has paid even a modicum of attention to the attempts by creationists to subvert public school science is aware that Pandas and People was not written as a intelligent design textbook. The original manuscripts conclusively demonstrated that “in the beginning” it was overtly a creation-science book. This was amusingly revealed during the Kitzmiller trial, when the search-and-replace revision of the manuscript was shown to have produced “cdesign proponentsists” as the undeniable intermediate form between creationists and intelligent design advocates.

We can try to be charitable about Morris's blatant mischaracterization of Pandas and People. It's possible that he took the published 1989 ID-based edition at face value and was innocently unaware of the book's true origins. It is not, after all, an ICR publication. However, what excuse does ICR have for republishing Morris's misrepresentation—deliberate or not—in 2011? Kitzmiller occurred in 2005. The current editorial staff at Acts & Facts has had more than five years to absorb its lesson. Nevertheless, they reprinted “Defending the Faith” without so much as a footnote to indicate that Morris was mistaken about Pandas and People. A decent respect by Christians for their own cherished scriptures should prompt them to pay attention to the injunction against bearing false witness.

They have no excuse.

Forrest in Sacramento

Darwin Day 2011

California's state capital observed Darwin Day on Sunday, February 13, 2011, at the La Sierra Community Center in Carmichael. The event was co-sponsored by several Sacramento-area organizations, including Sacramento Area Skeptics (the sponsors of last year's California tour by PZ Myers), the departments of biology and anthropology at Sacramento State University, the departments of astronomy and physics at Sacramento City College, Atheists and other Freethinkers, and local chapters of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

There were about two to three hundred people in attendance. They were welcomed by Mynga Futrell, co-chair of the organizing committee, who made a special point of emphasizing that the event was in honor of Charles Darwin and not a celebration of atheism. It was apparent that the organizers were at pains to make religious people feel welcome at the event, even at the cost of making them uncomfortable by stressing so earnestly that they were among friends. The Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento had a display table in the back of the hall, but no other religious organizations were visible. Perhaps the outreach to theistic evolutionists will succeed in drawing other sects to next year's Darwin Day, but it's not an easy task to construct a big-tent approach to Darwin Day when so many of Darwin's admirers consider him the man who made God an unnecessary hypothesis in biology. I expect that Darwin Day will continue to be dominated by people for whom religion is at best a cultural artifact and at worst the mortal enemy.

The master of ceremonies was Liam McDaid, the astronomy coordinator at Sacramento City College. McDaid made for a high-spirited emcee, lapsing occasionally into an Irish brogue when he deemed that the occasion warranted. He gave a laudatory introduction to the afternoon's featured speaker, Dr. Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, professor of philosophy in the department of history and political science, and co-author (with Paul Gross) of Creationism's Trojan Horse.

Back to the Future: Or, What Can We Learn from Louisiana's 2008 Science Education Act?

Dr. Forrest had a front-row seat in her home state of Louisiana as right-wing forces converged on Baton Rouge to push a creationist agenda through the state legislature and onto the desk of the Bayou State's new creation-friendly governor. Her Darwin Day presentation outlined the events and players that produced the nation's first anything-goes science curriculum for public schools.

The Louisiana Science Education Act is one of those legislative measures that supposedly promotes “critical thinking,” but only in the case of evolution or climate change or some other topic disfavored by the Christian right. It never seems important to fret about the lack of statutory critical-thinking guidelines in matters such as the roundness of the earth or the heliocentric nature of the solar system (but perhaps we just need to wait a little longer). It's evolution that must always be called into question and treated with arch-skepticism.

As Forrest pointed out, creationism has evolved over the decades under the pressure of natural selection. As one ploy after another fails, creationism adapts to the new circumstances and changes in response. The foes of evolution, however, never seem to notice the irony of their adherence to Darwin's model. Forrest chose her “Back to the Future” title because Louisiana had enacted an overtly pro-creationist measure in 1981. The U.S. Supreme Court famously declared the bill unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard as a violation of the separation between church and state. Having learned at least part of the lesson of the Edwards decision, creationists had redirected their efforts in the 2008 bill. Under the banner of “academic freedom,” they abandoned the mandating of creationism and focused on permitting it.

In the case of the Louisiana Science Education Act, the strategic retreat worked. The creationists crafted a permissive approach that empowered public school teachers to supplement state-approved science texts and instructional materials with whatever outside materials the teachers might choose. This opened the door wide for an influx of creationist literature that creation-minded science teachers (an unfortunately large minority among public-school faculty) could distribute to their students and use as the basis of anti-science instruction. As Forrest phrased it, under the Louisiana Science Education Act, a creationist teacher “can use whatever she wants until she gets caught.” To make matters even worse, the anti-evolutionists managed to co-opt the complaint process provided by the new legislation. Under the regulations approved by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), parents who complain about inappropriate classroom materials will find themselves dealing with a review process stacked in favor of the creationists.

The Louisiana Science Education Act of 2008 was not made out of whole cloth. It had its origins in model legislation promoted by the Discovery Institute. The DI's Casey Luskin was much in evidence during the progress of Senate Bill 733 through the enactment process (the vote was unanimous in its favor in the state senate and 94 to 3 in the state house of representatives) and its arrival on the governor's desk. When Gov. Jindal was supposedly pondering the measure, science organizations across the nation sent him messages exhorting him to veto it. Even his former biology professor, Dr. Arthur Landy, issued an earnest request that Jindal not make it more difficult for Louisiana students to become doctors by debasing their science education (Jindal once planned to go to medical school). The governor ignored them all and did not bother to respond to their arguments.

Although Gov. Jindal signed the bill without any publicity on June 25, 2008, someone apparently tipped off the Discovery Institute that he was about to approve SB 733. The DI posted a victory declaration on its website within minutes of the announcement from the governor's office that SB 733 was now state law. (It now resides on the Louisiana books as Act 473.)

In an appearance on Face the Nation shortly before signing SB 733, Jindal offered TV viewers a word-salad mash-up of nouveau-creationist talking points:

I don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them.… I want them to see the best data. I personally think human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally. I do think that there’s a creator.… Now the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science. I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness.

“Withholding information”? “Political correctness”? These phrases are mere screens for smuggling creationism into the public school classroom under the guise of promoting “the very best science.” Jindal was flying the combined banners of “teach the controversy” and “academic freedom.” Scientists told him very clearly that these framing devices were a distortion, but he chose not to listen to them. Jindal is, after all, the anointed one. Literally. As Dr. Forrest pointed out, Jindal went through a formal laying-on-of-hands ceremony in 2007 at a Christmas gathering of the Louisiana Family Forum, a group that vigorously lobbied for SB 733 the following year.

Despite the enactment of the Louisiana Science Education Act, creationism has suffered a few recent setbacks. First of all, and perhaps most significantly, BESE approved mainstream scientific textbooks for use in public school classrooms, beating back an attempt by creationists to forestall the adoption of evolution-based biology texts. In addition, creationists posing as science experts have been unmasked as frauds and exponents of discredited and outlandish theories. (Of course, this has seldom discouraged them in the past.)

Forrest stated that she and her colleagues at the Louisiana Coalition for Science will be alert to future attempts by creationists to exploit Act 473 and in particular will assist parents who complain about anti-scientific materials being used in science classes. The deck has been stacked against science in Louisiana, but pro-science forces are vigilant and fighting back. Forrest cited the example of Zachary Kopplin, a high school senior in Baton Rouge who has taken on the ambitious project of repealing the Louisiana Science Education Act. Zachary has his work cut out for him, but he is working in earnest to restore science education's credibility in his home state. Forrest referred interested parties to Zachary's website.

Dr. Forrest's talk was followed by a Q&A session and a birthday party for Charles Darwin, complete with birthday cake. Longtime participants in Sacramento's Darwin Day observations seemed to agree that the fourteenth annual event in the state capital was one of the most successful. It was Dr. Forrest's first visit to Sacramento and her reception was both friendly and enthusiastic. At least one fan was seen getting her autograph on his hardback copy of Creationism's Trojan Horse.

Resources

The National Center for Science Education has posted a video of Barbara Forrest's talk as she delivered it on April 24, 2010. The video is marginal and the audio is poor, but the content closely parallels Forrest's presentation at Sacramento's Darwin Day.

Update: Dr. Forrest's presentation in Sacramento is now posted on the NCSE's YouTube account: Darwin Day 2011.

Believing your lying eyes

One picture is worth a thousand misstatements

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula is more pleased than he should be with some “flashy illustrations” of the creationism menace. “Use these!” he admonishes. Um, maybe not.

While the graphs are flashy and, in their way, are informative (though I'm not crazy about the choice of pale red [is not explicitly mentioned] as intermediate between green [is mentioned directly] and dark red [isn't mentioned]—pick a better color palette, guys!), there are significant scaling problems. When one ostensibly represents ratio data with the linear dimensions of objects possessing area, the visual impact is seriously misleading. Perhaps this sounds fancy, but it's not.

Suppose you want to compare a data value of 16% with a data value of 32%. The latter is twice as much as the former. In a bar chart, one would be twice as tall as the other. Simple:

You can't get much more basic than that. However, what if you decide to represent your data with cute little gingerbread men? It's quite obvious that the one representing 32% must be twice as tall as the one representing 16%, right? Except look at what happens:

It's the classic problem of scaling. Doubling the linear dimensions of a two-dimensional figure results in a quadrupling of its area, immediately creating an exceedingly misleading visual impact. To maintain a correct visual impression in a situation where two-dimensional area rather than one-dimensional length catches the eye, the linear scaling factor should be the square root of 2 (approximately 1.4142) rather than 2 itself. The results are much better:

This is exactly the problem with the Campus Explorer's iconic graph of teachers' personal beliefs in evolution vs. creationism and intelligent design creationism. The purple figure representing 28% looks like it's quite a bit more than twice the 16% icon. The 16% icon similarly looks a lot bigger relative to the 9% icon than it should. The Discovery Institute will certainly be delighted with the colossus representing adherence to ID creationism.

With some elementary (and not particularly elegant) picture editing, I offer this statistically improved version, whose visual impact is not misleading:

Darrell Huff warned us about misleading data graphs in How to Lie with Statistics, originally published in 1954. We have yet to learn the lesson he tried to teach us.

PZ does Rocklin

The Q&A at Sierra College

Three out of eight. That's how many of the talks by PZ Myers I attended during his California tour. PZ's presentation on Thursday evening at Sierra College in Rocklin (just north and east of Sacramento) was his valedictory. He chose for this occasion a slight variant of the presentation he gave his UC Davis audience last week. Ray Comfort was once again front and center as the embodiment of creationist stupidity, providing an all-too-easy target and generating lots of laughs from a capacity crowd in 110 Weaver Hall. (A sign on the wall said the lecture hall could hold no more than 133 people, but I suspect that a few more than that were actually present.)

While PZ's two-lecture repertoire for his “Complexity and Creationism” tour produces a series of similar talks for those of us who attended multiple events, each venue generated its own unique Q&A sessions with the audience. In my reports on the California tour, I've concentrated on this aspect of the presentations. After a brief recap of the main body of PZ's presentation at Sierra College, I'll give my account of the audience reaction. In my opinion, it was the most spirited of the three events at which I was present, although the number of attendees was also the smallest.

The main event

After a Mr. Deity clip, which PZ has been using at his stops to settle the crowd, Brett Ransford of Freethinkers of Sierra, the local sponsor of PZ's appearance, introduced the evening's speaker. Brett recounted PZ's expulsion from a screening of Expelled while Richard Dawkins was permitted to stroll into the movie theater unmolested. Upon taking center stage, PZ quipped that he was pleased to have been regarded as scarier than Dawkins and launched his presentation.

“Creationists have no good arguments for anything,” declared PZ, providing his audience with the central theme of his talk. He cited the example of Geoffrey Simmons, M.D., who has written a book titled Billions of Missing Links, only to demonstrate in a radio debate with PZ that he was completely ignorant of the existence of a rich trove of whale ancestors. PZ freely admitted that he was rude enough to label Dr. Simmons as ignorant (the usual definition of lack of knowledge, after all), which caused a lot of gasping and clutching at pearls among the radio station's delicate religionists.

It turned out that Simmons had limited his research on whales to a perfunctory reading of a Scientific American article on cetacean evolution—although apparently not turning enough pages to discover that the magazine had included a lengthy list of the whale's extinct ancestor species.

“That's just the standard creationist approach to research,” said PZ.

Several of PZ's slides served up jaw-droppingly stupid statements by Ray Comfort, famed banana connoisseur and the star of the evening's creationist freak show. These included Comfort's claim that Darwin thought human males and females had evolved independently, his similar statement about elephants and dogs.

It doesn't help Ray Comfort's credibility that his introduction to a special giveaway edition of Darwin's Origin of Species was a cut-and-paste job that included outright plagiarism.

PZ also touched on creationists' excessive literalness. (Well, they are rather hung up on “the Word.”) Michael Behe sees “little trucks and busses” in biological systems. “I mean, literally,” he says. In a similarly wacky vein, Ken Ham's Creation “Museum” sports signs boasting that the facility presents a “literal interpretation” of the Bible story of Genesis.

Literal interpretation? “Those are two words that don't go together,” said PZ.

Creationist Jerry Bergman once debated PZ over the question of whether intelligent design ought to be taught in school (presumably as a legitimate subject and not as a good example of pseudoscience). While PZ argued that ID creationism lacks the theoretical framework and evidence that science requires, Bergman responded that you don't need a theory—all you need are facts. (Huh?) Besides, according to Bergman even a carbon atom is irreducibly complex (Wha—?) and, as we all know, blah, blah, blah, Hitler!, blah, blah.

That sterling performance by Bergman qualified him for selection as PZ's example of the derangement of creationists. Hard to argue with that one.

PZ was also sorry to note the existence in his backyard of the Twin Cities Science Association. At its website, the TCCSA offers a gibbering essay by Bergman in which he states,

All functional systems that require two or more parts to function properly are irreducibly complex.

Michael Behe would beg to differ.

Both versions of PZ's “Complexity and Creationism” talk (the ones that I saw, anyway) conclude with his slide in support of the pillars of science—reason, evidence, critical thinking, and naturalism—and denouncing the myriad aspects of irrational belief—namely, gods, demons, angels, etc. He expressed the hope that religion would someday be nothing more than a mildly eccentric hobby, rather like knitting, playing Dungeons & Dragons, or writing poetry.

The Sierra College audience was engaged and vocal even before PZ officially inaugurated the post-talk question-and-answer session. Quips and comments abounded. (When PZ poked fun at the “design requires a designer” trope with a slide that asked, “Does thunder require a thunderer?”, an audience member asked, “Would someone who turned away from belief in a thunder god be a Thor loser?”) We also discovered that the audience included a famous young polemicist for whom Ed Brayton named an award for creationist inanity. It added some excitement.

As usual, the following is not a literal transcript (except in the few instances where I dare to enclose text in quote marks). It's an abridged narrative based on my notes and it tries to present the gist of the exchanges rather than a verbatim account. To the best of my ability, I try to give an accurate sense of the discussions. A few asides from yours truly appear in brackets. Anything labeled with a “Q.” is from the audience, but sometimes I add “[Audience]” to highlight that an exchange is occurring among the attendees (while PZ watches in bemusement).

The Q&A

Q. I feel like I must be missing something that everyone else seems to understand. What is a crocoduck?

A. In a debate between the Rational Response Squad and Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, Cameron pulled out a large picture of the “crocoduck” as an example of something that evolutionists are supposed to believe in. And it's not even original with them. They apparently got the idea from a Worth 1000 chimera contest. It's an example of how creationists don't even understand what they are attacking. This crocoduck tie was designed by Josh Timonen and is one of only two in existence. Richard Dawkins has the other one. If you see someone wearing this tie, it's either me or Richard.

[PZ may be unaware that the world of fashion is notorious for knock-offs. Zazzle.com is advertising a “Crocoduck tie like Richard Dawkins wears!” We'll all be wearing them the next time PZ comes to California.]

Q. [Robert O'Brien] “I don't know if you recognize me, PZ. In your own words, your contributions to science are piddling. Those are your words, not mine. I just happen to agree with them. To that I would add that your arguments against God are just as risible as those of Dawkins and the other occupants of the new atheist clown car. Given that, why should anyone who is not already one of your chamchas pay attention to you as opposed to others who are far more accomplished and rational?”

[O'Brien appeared to be reading his remarks and he spoke faster than I could write. As previously noted, this report is not a literal transcript. However, O'Brien showed up in the comments, as you can see below, and was kind enough to provide a definitive take on his screed. The use of the word “chamchas” is rather affected when perfectly good words like “sycophants” and “kiss-asses” are available, but perhaps it merely means that O'Brien and I share a penchant for vocabulary building.]

A. Well, it seems we have a creationist in the audience after all. And you did a standard creationist thing. You took my words out of context. When I say that my research is “piddling,” it means that my work—like that of many others—is a small contribution to the aggregate of science. That's what science is, a collection of evidence in a theoretical framework. Religion and creationism is not based on evidence.

Q. [Robert O'Brien] We have evidence, too!

A. Where, for example, is the evidence for the existence of God?

Q. [Robert O'Brien] There are many proofs for the existence of God.

A. So give us one. Which is your favorite? Which is the strongest argument for the existence of God?

Q. [Robert O'Brien] I like Gödel's ontological argument, which is a mathematical proof. The definition of God is that he possesses all positive properties. If he exists, then he has all of those positive properties. Not existing would be a negative property, which he cannot have, so he has to exist.

Q. [Audience] That begs the question. You said, “If he exists.”

Q. [Robert O'Brien] That's a starting point in the argument. It's more complicated than that. I'm not presenting a formal proof.

Q. [Audience] That's just “proof by definition.”

Q. [Robert O'Brien] No, it's not.

Q. [Audience] Yes, it is.

Q. [Audience] PZ, I won't presume to speak on behalf of all of my fellow mathematicians, but I'd like to point out that Gödel's ontological argument would make 99.99% of us into theists if it were really a rigorous proof. However, mathematicians are as big a hodgepodge as any other segment of the population. Gödel's argument is clearly not regarded as a proof by the mathematical community.

Q. [Robert O'Brien] It is a proof. Speaking as a statistician—

Q. [Audience] Then you're not a mathematician!

Q. PZ, could you not see religion used as a hypothesis for formulating things like a basis for morality?

A. Yes, but religion is a primitive hypothesis that has been falsified many times, as one religion gives way to another. And you don't need religion as a basis for morality.

Q. Isn't atheism just a dogmatic assertion that there is no God? Doesn't science require at least agnosticism?

A. There is no assertion of any proof of no God. Science is “operationally” atheist, not dogmatically. The God hypothesis is useless in the pursuit of science.

Q. If God is the sum of all positive and all encompassing, then doesn't the lack of negative qualities mean that he's not all encompassing?

Q. [Audience] That depends on what you mean by positive and negative.

Q. [Audience] Relativism for the win!

Q. What would it take to serve as evidence for the existence of God?

A. Believers need to provide a hypothesis that I can test and measure.

Q. Why is it always the Judeo-Christian God? Why not some other God or Creatrix? And what about the diversity of evolutionary beliefs among religions. The Catholic Church says that evolution is not just a hypothesis.

A. That was the previous pope. The current pope is not as clear about it.

Q. He hangs out with ID creationists like Cardinal Schönborn.

A. Right.

Q. Atheism says that there is no absolute basis for right or wrong. What if everyone agreed that the Nazis were right. Would what the Nazis did still be wrong?

A. If everyone agrees, then there would be no one to point out that they were wrong. “But the natural world will eventually bite you in the ass if you act on the basis that mass-killing is a good thing.”

Q. [Professor Vernon Martin] Moral objectivism is not a way out of the woods. It's a tricky business.

Q. [Audience] Thomas Schick has a disproof of God based on the original argument of Parmenides.

Q. Our notion of what is reasonable is always changing. Years ago it would have been perfectly reasonable for me to light up a cigarette while sitting in this lecture hall (and having quit within the past year, I really want to), but today it's unthinkable. We indulge in lots of practices without thinking about them, such as clipping the ears of Dobermans, because that's what we're used to at the time we do it.

A. That just goes to show that there is no objective morality.

Q. In your role as a figurehead of science and atheism, how would you direct all atheists to deal with religionists. What would be the most utilitarian approach?

A. If I were the figurehead, I would immediately resign. I value the diversity in the community of nonbelievers. I'm a biologist. I value biodiversity.

Q. It would be like herding cats anyway.

A. I am so tired of that analogy!

Q. Atheism is not a formal philosophy. It doesn't impose a uniform perspective on people.

Q. [Audience] But religionists are dogmatic and dangerous.

Q. [Audience] But not uniformly so.

Q. [Brett Ransford] Excuse me for interrupting, but could you please direct your questions to PZ? Mental masturbation is nice, but—

A. Masturbation? Oh, no, this is intercourse!

Q. Tell us about your blog! How do you manage to post so much on it?

A. I attribute it to poor impulse control. The key to a successful blog is to write several posts a day.

Q. Were you given a religious upbringing?

A. I was raised in a mildly religious family as a Lutheran. I consider that I was inoculated against religion by having been infected at a young age by a weak strain.

Q. I accept evolution, but I'm not an atheist.

A. You have my permission to go to church. Just don't use religion to interfere in the secular rights of others.

Q. I don't go to church. I hug trees.

A. There is the example of Loyal Rue, who is completely rational in his approach but is still a believer. He has a number of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and a Templeton Foundation fellowship.

Q. Have you had any conversion successes?

A. It doesn't work that way. You present believers with your evidence in as persuasive a way as you can and then you wait and see. It might be years later before anything happens. There are examples like Kurt Wise, who studied under Stephen Jay Gould, but decided he had to accept Jesus and could not accept science. That's a failure.

Q. My friend believes that evolution is God's way of working in the world.

A. Then he doesn't understand evolution. The nature of evolution is stochastic and nonteleological. It's not guided and it has no predetermined goal except survival. Religious figures like Rick Warren need God in the process to provide meaning. I haven't written much about Warren. He thinks we're all supposed to be happy slaves under the absolute dictatorship of God.

Q. Why do so many religious people reject science?

A. Because science is in competition with their religion. Evolutionary science attacks the sense of self and purpose that they need in their lives, which they can't seem to find without deriving it from religion.

Q. There will be a talk on Relics of Eden, the evidence for evolution in human genetics, on the last Friday in February. [Details, anyone? —Z]

A. Creationists think that attacking the fossil record is the best way to attack evolution. They don't seem to understand that the best evidence is being found in biology, in genetics.

Q. Creationism keeps shifting. We've had “creation science,” “scientific creationism,” “intelligent design,” and “teach the flaws.” What's next?

A. I'm hoping it's complete collapse. Creationism has not been able to gain any scientific credibility. Groups like the Discovery Institute—which pretends to be scientific—are getting more and more fundamentalist. They don't make much headway with abstract arguments. Look at Dover, which was supposedly about intelligent design and Of Pandas and People. It was pushed by the old-fashioned creationists on the school board, who probably felt betrayed when the Discovery Institute ducked out. The Discovery Institute doesn't bring in much money anymore, at least not from their creationist activities. Answers in Genesis is the big money maker.

Q. Won't creationists just create their own schools and teach their anti-scientific ideas there?

A. Many already have. They want to destroy public education, which is like the Republican strategy.

Q. Would you say the Wedge strategy has failed?

A. Yes. It has not worked out the way they once hoped.

Q. Science flourishes in an atmosphere of opposition and questioning. Haven't creationists therefore done science a favor?

A. I'd disagree. Science grows with questioning, but creationists are a side-show. Their arguments are beside the point and are not part of the scientific discussion.

Q. Groups like Wallbuilders are trying to rewrite history.

A. Yes, that's one of the things they're trying to do in Texas right now. The Texas School Board has a great influence on the nation's textbooks. The extremists on the board are turning toward history, citing non-historian David Barton as an authority.

Q. I've heard a lot of mudslinging tonight, but we won't get anywhere if we constantly disrespect each other. Religion has been part of society for thousands of years and should be treated with more respect.

A. Bad sanitation has been part of society for thousands of years, too.

Q. You can't tell people what they believe is bullshit. You need to educate them.

A. You can do both. Bad ideas deserve to be treated with complete and utter disrespect. The ideas, not the people who hold them. Getting people to understand critical thinking and evidence is a long-term effort. It doesn't happen overnight.

Q. Will people eventually evolve beyond religion?

A. No, I don't think so. Sanitation has advanced a great deal over the years, but there are still dirty people. Society has become more civilized in many ways, but we still have crime. Crime will always exist. Religion will, too. I'm perfectly fine with people having the freedom to practice their religions in private and in their churches. I don't, however, support their right to impose their religious beliefs on me or other people. I'm rather optimistic—perhaps irrationally so—because I think progress is possible and that most people just want peaceful lives to enjoy themselves and raise their families.

Q. Should we perhaps downplay evolution and emphasize critical thinking instead?

A. Better science education is important, but that includes evolutionary theory as well as critical thinking. We can't ignore it. I also think we need to teach more mathematics as part of a better science education (although I know that Zeno will think I'm pandering to the mathematicians when I say that).

Q. I'm a nonbeliever who is worried that people will know what I think. It's great for groups like this to meet and provide a safe environment to interact with others. The Internet helps, too.

A. It can be a problem to deal with family members and friends who don't have an appreciation for the scientific approach. The Internet has been a big help in getting the message out there that you're not alone. Otherwise you might feel completely intimidated. But you also need to speak out. Isn't it better to be a tiger than a mouse?

Q. Why don't most people believe in evolution?

A. Evolution doesn't generate belief in itself. There's no reason to suspect that belief in evolution contributes to the survival of a species. Some humans believe in evolution, but most creatures don't believe in it at all.

Q. More people believe in religion than in evolution.

A. There are a lot of stupid people. Evolution does not necessarily promote intelligence as a survival trait.

Q. Perhaps part of the problem is that science isn't exciting enough. You get an endorphin rush from adventures, not from rational thought?

A. Really? You don't? There is no greater rush than learning something you've never known before, in discovering something that no one knew before. “All the best drugs are from science, you know. Discovering the truth about the universe is a real rush.”

Aftermath

As some people began to disperse and others gathered around PZ, Robert O'Brien came over to brace me with a question or two, since he had discerned that I was one of the mathematicians in the audience. (The other best-represented academic department at PZ's talk was philosophy.)

“Do you deny the existence of Gödel's ontological argument?” he inquired.

“Not at all,” I replied. “I merely observed that it's not widely accepted as a proof of anything.”

“Oh, okay. I thought you might be denying its existence. But it is a proof.”

“Not likely. Not if most mathematicians aren't willing to accept it. And we don't.”

And when I say “we,” I'm not including self-described statisticians like Robert.

A day later, Robert posted a comment on his blog concerning the Sierra College event and his confrontation with PZ Myers:

I also did not expect to be asked to defend Kurt Gödel's Ontological Argument, which I was unprepared to do. (Although, even if I were prepared, I do not think I could have done it justice as a critical respondent among an, umm, unsympathetic audience.) I give credit to PZ for unexpectedly turning the tables and essentially catching me flat-footed; it won't happen again.

Want to bet?

PZ at Sacramento City College

The Q&A session

Sacramento City College has pride of place as one of the oldest community colleges in California. The campus is full of old-fashioned brick buildings, including the newer structures. City College lies only a few miles from the State Capitol building. Back in 1980, when I was a legislative staffer, a bunch of us traveled down to SCC for the dedication of the sprawling brick-and-glass office-classroom structure at the front of the campus in honor of a local legislator (who had been a professor at City College in a previous life).

The PZ Myers grand tour of California college towns was in Sacramento on Tuesday night for the sixth of its eight stops. The Sac City Freethinkers were the local sponsors of PZ's speaking tour. They booked him into the Student Center, where over 200 people were on hand to hear what PZ had to say.

Having attended PZ's appearance at UC Davis, I thought I knew what to expect. While PZ was using the title “Complexity and Creationism” for all of his presentations, it turns out he has a couple of different presentations that he serves up in alternation at these stops. To my best recollection, there were only three slides in common between the two presentations I saw (including the title slide). In Sacramento, PZ concentrated his fire on Stephen Meyer, author of the egregious Signature in the Cell, whereas in Davis he focused more on arch-idiot Ray Comfort.

The core of PZ's talk, of course, was essentially the same in both variants: critical thinking is a key component of science and is anathema to creationism. That may be one of the reasons that creationists think that complexity is an indicator of design (rather than a sign of the chaotic constructions of biology).

PZ typically talks for an hour and then spends a second hour taking questions from the audience. He followed this pattern at City College, fielding a wide range of queries. One person in attendance seemed to be trying to pin PZ down on the significance of “information”—necessitating a designer, perhaps?—and another asked lengthy and rambling questions that had people shifting impatiently in their seats, but for the most part PZ found himself dealing with friendly and engaging queries.

As with my report on the UC Davis Q&A, the following is not a transcript. I dare to put a few phrases of sentences in quotes because my notes indicate that PZ spoke those actual words, but this is mostly a narrative paraphrase and summary of the many questions and answers.

Questions & Answers

Q. What do you teach and study?

A. Developmental biology and neuroscience.

Q. If the pre-Cambrian protists contained information in their genomes that prefigured the Cambrian lifeforms, obviating the need for any extraordinary explanations for Cambrian complexity, where did the information in the protists come from?

A. It's like Russian dolls, where each doll contains a smaller doll inside. If you go back far enough, you're starting to talk about abiogenesis and that's chemistry, the development of self-replicating forms that can evolve.

Q. Abiogenesis is so unlikely, so low in probability, we have to ask where the first cell came from. Isn't this like a whirlwind assembling a 747 from a junkyard?

A. Cells are chemistry. There are many, many models for prebiotic forms that give rise to life. There are RNA-based models. Models based on generation of metabolism. Any given outcome is unlikely, but only one needs to succeed. Early cells were not like modern cells. They were very different. See Robert Hazen's Genesis for a good introduction to scientific thinking on the origins of life.

Q. What do you think about free will?

A. It's a concept based on ignorance. An illusion.

Q. Given our difficulty in finding fossilized cells on earth, should we be looking to the astronomers for new biological discoveries in space?

A. It would answer lots of questions if we were able to find an example of a different kind of biology. Perhaps there's something on Mars. Right now, however, we are dealing with a population of size zero.

Q. Have you read the work of Nick Lane? Are you familiar with Life Ascending: the Ten Great Inventions of Evolution?

Nick Lane is a very good writer and I recommend his books. I have not, however, read Life Ascending.

Q. In Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, Nick Lane says that it's very unlikely for eukaryotes to have formed by fusion in the way people think occurred.

A. The process is not unlikely. What's unlikely is the occurrence of a particular form of life, such as our ATP-based mechanism. That was quite by chance.

Q. Why do protist genomes contains genes for proteins for eukaryotes?

A. Protists have genes for producing proteins that they must use in ways different from the ways that eukaryotes use those same proteins. They make the proteins, but we aren't sure why. It's an area of active research.

Q. Thank you for your final slide with the list of things that critical thinkers should refuse to take seriously. [The slide listed gods, demons, angels, souls, spirits, original sin, virgin births, ascensions, transubstantiation, prayers, miracles, heaven, hell, and reincarnation.]

A. You're welcome. That's my cranky slide.

Q. I'm from Lodi, where the city council is abandoning nonsectarian prayer to open their meetings in favor of prayers celebrating Jesus. One of our public school principals is looking for novel ways to put God into the classroom.

A. Public school classrooms should have topics based on evidence. The supernatural doesn't belong in science classes, which are based on nature. It's important to support good teachers. Talk to them and encourage them when they're doing the right thing. But also talk to the principals and get in their face when they're encouraging bad things. So far the noise machine is very one-sided. We need to make noise, too.

Q. How do we combat the constant rebranding of creationism?

A. Creationists keep trying to hide what they're doing. A good example is intelligent design. They are creationists. That's why I don't call them “intelligent design theorists.” I always say “intelligent design creationists.” They don't like that.

Q. What about the concept of irreducible complexity? Is that a contribution of intelligent design to science?

A. Irreducible complexity is real, but it's not new. Hermann Muller was talking about this back in 1919, and he saw it as supporting evolution. It's wrong when creationists say irreducible complexity cannot evolve incrementally. We have lots of examples.

Q. What is the book you're supposed to be working on?

A. I feel extremely guilty because here I am in California doing a speaking tour instead of working on my book. It's a book about atheism.

Q. What about scientists who have room in their lives for God?

A. I have the same response to them as I have to theologians. Scientific training doesn't make you immune to bullshit. The Language of God by Francis Collins has no arguments to support his religious faith. He just keeps saying he believes.

Q. That's not true. Collins makes a strong case that evolution cannot explain the existence of altruism.

A. I'm sorry, but Collins is utterly ignorant of the huge body of research on altruism. It has been studied a great deal and Collins demonstrates that he is familiar with none of it. How can Collins use altruism as an argument for God when he never addresses the work of Hamilton and others in that field?

Q. I've been reading The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins. What other books would you recommend?

A. It's a great book. You should also look at Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True and Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish.

Q. [A little girl] Why does your last slide have that dot-dot-dot at the end?

A. That's because there's a lot more nonsense than I could fit on one slide. It tells you the list goes on and on.

Q. What about Stephen Hawking? In A Brief History of Time he keeps talking about knowing the mind of God.

A. Hawking is an atheist who uses the Einsteinian metaphor of identifying God with the universe. It's the way physicists like to talk. I don't understand them.

Q. Since you teach neuroscience and have a strong opinion about free will, you should check out this great neurolaw site. [Possibly The Law and Neuroscience Blog; if someone caught more detail, please let me know. —Z]

A. I'm not familiar with that one.

Q. Steven Pinker touches on free will in How the Mind Works. On another topic, there's the anthropic principle, which in some formulations is used to argue that universes evolve to eventually produce life. We're the end result.

A. It's not surprising that we live in a universe that is compatible with our existence.

Q. I'm a writer who is very interested in your topic of complexity, but I understand exactly nothing of what you said during the past hour. Is there a Science for Dummies book you could recommend?

A. Then I have failed. You should read anything by Carl Zimmer. He writes very clearly. Perhaps you were not exposed to enough science in your education. It's important to encourage kids at an early stage. Be advocates for your children by talking with their teachers and encouraging good science education.

Q. Why don't rational thinkers go on the attack? Why don't we challenge creationists? We should demand that they answer the question of who designed the Designer.

A. That is definitely happening. Read Dawkins, The God Delusion. The “New Atheists” are speaking out. We thought for a long time that we had to be polite. While those of us who are teachers don't attack—shouldn't attack—our students when they believe nonsense, we must confront the irrational ideas. We are getting louder and noisier every day.

Q. There are science supporters who don't want to be associated with atheism.

A. We do have an image problem. Personally, I am proud of being an atheist. We shouldn't hide our dedication to rational thinking. Creationists shouldn't call us arrogant when they go around claiming that only they know the truth.

Q. The National Academy of Sciences is dominated by a majority of atheists and nonbelievers, right? Is there any movement toward speaking out more?

A. There is a growing attitude that favors speaking out because we've seen the consequences of remaining silent. We can't afford to just assume that things will work out in the long run.

Q. The most rabid atheist is less scary to me than the real religious zealots. Who invented burning at the stake?

A. Right.

Q. I see a similarity to gay rights and the rights of racial minorities in the struggle for acceptance of atheists as part of society. Even today we hesitate to help racial minorities in Haiti and in New Orleans.

A. We should be angry rather than calm when we see examples of prejudice.

Q. So many religious people think that there will be chaos if people stop believing in the existence of a God who can serve as a supercop.

A. They're trying to fill in a vacuum. They don't believe that you can be moral without God. It makes you wonder about them.

Q. You can't beat militant fundamentalists when it comes to extremism. Scientists don't go blowing things up. It's religious people who do that. And they destroy culture. Look at Branson, Missouri, which is my own personal definition of hell.

A. There is a double standard because the fundies are the ones in charge. The Christian right is privileged, even though we've seen more domestic terrorism from them than from other groups.

Q. I'm concerned that atheism may be growing, but the movement's diversity is not.

A. Oh, it's improving. Some years ago, any meeting of atheists and freethinkers would be almost entirely male and mostly people in their sixties. Now we have more young people and more women are involved. Minority involvement is less than it might be, but let's be fair and admit that they have other fights that are more immediate and pressing.

Q. We can be good without some guy in the sky watching us. We should teach philosophical ideas and history in schools to show that non-Christian cultures such as the Greek civilization also had notions of moral behavior.

A. There is a dearth of comparative studies of societies in schools. We spend too much time in school emphasizing details. We need to spend more time on critical thinking skills and mathematics. Give people the tools they need. I think philosophy in grade school would be good, but Dennett would disagree strongly. He'd say we'd mess the students up and they'd have to spend years relearning things that they learned wrong.

Q. What is your opinion of evolutionary psychology?

A It's an interesting idea, but all too often it becomes wild extrapolation. The evolutionary psych people seem to disregard the complexities that make it difficult to find explanations for everything.

Q. I'm an agnostic and I understand that science is based on evidence for things and evidence against things. In your list of things we shouldn't believe, you say we shouldn't believe in an afterlife. If that's so, where is the evidence against an afterlife.

A. You have to show evidence that fits your hypothesis. If you think there's an afterlife, then you are obligated to present evidence supporting it. If you don't have it, Occam's razor says we're justified in not taking it seriously. Lack of evidence means you have no basis for your claim. You may as well believe in fairies and unicorns, for which there is no evidence.

Q. Why would you want to disbelieve in unicorns?

A. Well, I can't disprove unicorns.

Q. How long till we have an openly atheist president?

A. I don't know. A long time, probably. Perhaps twenty years? It would be nice if it happened in my lifetime, but I have my doubts.

Q. There are measures of complexity other than Claude Shannon's. For example, we use a different system of measure in figuring the complexity of software.

A. Yes, I picked Shannon although there are other measures. The important thing is that creationists don't have any standard for complexity. They don't even have any units for their complexity, whereas Shannon's information theory has a solid mathematical basis.

Q. Dawkins has a complexity argument against the existence of God, where he points out to creationists that any God able to follow the path of every particle in the universe would necessarily be even more complex than the entire universe itself. Such a God is therefore excessively complex and a universe without such a God would be simpler and therefore more likely.

A. Yes.

Q. Why do creationists keep using the second law of thermodynamics as an argument against evolution.

A. Because they don't understand it. They don't realize their argument could just as well be used to disprove growth.

Q. What is the role of the agnostic in advancing critical thinking and advancing science?

A. Please get off the fence and join us. Waffling is a waste of time. We need you with us.

Denying Darwin

Massive ignorance helps

The Tulsa Beacon is disinclined to join the celebrations in honor of the bicentennial of Darwin's birth (and the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Origin of Species). Instead, the Beacon chose to mark the occasion by publishing an editorial decrying the state university's involvement in Darwin Day festivities and the expected arrival of the Antichrist Richard Dawkins as a featured speaker.

The Beacon's editorial writer chose an interesting strategy with which to combat the enthusiasm of Oklahoma's intelligentsia for Darwin's legacy. How better to combat pointy-headed intellectualism than with slope-browed creationism and a display of densely concentrated ignorance and misinformation? By that token, the Beacon editorial is a brilliant success.

Evolution indoctrination at OU

February 5th, 2009

What is the difference between education and indoctrination?

The line between conveying information with an open mind and a mindset that parallels religion is being crossed this year at The University of Oklahoma with a 12-month celebration of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin.

While devoting huge resources to a campaign to “prove” that evolution is not a theory, the scientific brain trust at OU will virtually ignore parallel theories of the origin of man—including Creation Science and Intelligent Design.

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If indeed the University of Oklahoma has set out to “prove” evolution, it must be the only educational institution in the world doing so. Scientists don't “prove” evolution. They seek out and compile the results of experiments and field work. Do the results strengthen the theoretical framework in which they operate or do they argue for changes? The framework (the “theory”) within which biology operates is evolution (and has been for more than a hundred years). The Beacon editorial writer is evidently of the “only a theory” school of thought—although “thought” is probably the wrong word. He doesn't know that theories are organizational principles for the organization of observed facts.

OU will trot out Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, to try to convince students and the public that there is no God and science has all the answers.

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We can be quite certain that Dawkins will give no aid or comfort to the god-botherers while he's in Tulsa, but we can be just as certain he will not argue that science has all the answers. No scientist argues that. None.

Of course, so far science has all the good answers; that is, the answers that do anyone any good. Answers derived from religion or faith are notoriously weak, unreliable, and disputed by the thousands of contending sects. Pity, that, but true.

Darwin became infamous 150 years ago when he wrote The Origin of Species. He speculated that all life evolved from lower forms and that men were derived from the apes.

His unproven theories were all that the humanist movement needed to attack the Bible and any belief system that hints at the existence of a supreme being.

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One more time: Darwin did not say that we descended from apes. He argued that humans and apes have a common ancestor. The ancestor certainly had many apelike characteristics, but it wasn't a gorilla or chimp or orangutan. Could we finally get this right, pretty please?

OU has a website devoted to this worship of Darwin and evolution. It’s clear from the content of that website that organizers believe that evolution is a fact and that if other theories are mentioned, they will be discounted or ridiculed.

Do things change? Certainly. But species don’t evolve into other species. Dogs don’t turn into cats. Monkeys don’t turn into men.

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The “worship of Darwin and evolution”? Excuse me while I take a moment to genuflect.

It's not worship, Mr. Editorial Writer. It's acceptance of a successful theory. “Other theories”? Sorry: there aren't any. It's simple: no results, no acceptance. Those who prate about intelligent design and irreducible complexity and curiously warped versions of information theory won't get any respect until they produce some results. That's the reason for the well-deserved ridicule. Sad, perhaps, but completely understandable.

In fact, even secular scientists are doubting the viability of evolution concerning the origin of life. The laws of thermodynamics and common sense tell us that things don’t get better—they deteriorate.

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In a word: No. Even the tiny, tiny handful of credentialed scientists who deny evolution know better than to use the laws of thermodynamics. They leave that to the hardcore creationists (some of whom probably also know better, but can't resist an argument that still stirs up the troops).

While we're at it, how about a nice list of those “secular scientists” who doubt evolution's viability? Unless you count a batch of goofy engineers, an addled semi-mathematician or two, and the occasional wacky physician, you don't have any, do you?

The biggest case against Darwin’s evolution is the fossil record. There are no viable transition fossils when there should be millions if you buy into his theory.

Where is the missing link? There isn’t one in the fossil record.

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The “missing link”? No “transition[al] fossils”? If we were playing creationist bingo, there's hardly any possible configuration of entries on a bingo card that wouldn't have scored a win by now. The writer has packed so many tired old creationist talking points into one editorial that it must be under tremendous pressure. Surely we must be close to the point of a massive explosion.

Evolution science is not really science but a religion. That is why it cannot stand honest scrutiny or tolerate other views. It takes more faith to believe that men came from monkeys or a primal soup struck by lightning than it does to believe that God created the Earth and mankind in seven days.

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Boom! Ka-pow!

Both are religious beliefs. Oklahoma students should be exposed to both theories (including Intelligent Design). Instead, the public school system in Oklahoma has bowed to the pressure of secular humanists and insisted that there is only one theory to explain the origin of man—evolution.

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Now we're back to worshiping Darwin some more.

Incidentally, the origin of life cannot be proven by the scientific method, which requires observation and testing. No one was around when life began and no scientist—no matter how many degrees he or she has—has been able to recreate life in the laboratory.

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“Were you there?” Ken Ham would be so proud!

Here’s the worst aspect of this story. State tax dollars are going to support the celebration of a mad scientist who infected the world with a new religion that teaches that God cannot exist.

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Damn those schools who use tax dollars to teach science when they could be teaching religion! The writer began by asking the difference between education and indoctrination. He is firmly on the side of indoctrination, isn't he?

OU has stacked the deck for humanism and against other religions. Creationism and Intelligent Design should get equal time in this huge “celebration” of Charles Darwin.

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That's right: humanism is a religion, too. And see how “equal time” just slipped in? Other creation myths need not apply, though. There's only two theories!

There is a God and that belief is held by the vast majority of Oklahoma taxpayers. Withholding that truth from our students does them a disservice and damages our society.

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This just in: Tulsa editorial writer proves the existence of God by simple declarative statement. Nice job! Let me try:

Evolution is a fact. Evolution is a very successful theory. Evolution has no credible competition. Get used to it.

I slipped into imperative mode at the end there, but the simple declarative sentence is fun to write. It's harder to prove the assertions that simple declarative sentences contain, but the content of my sentences derive from a vast intellectual enterprise known as science. The Beacon's editorial writer prefers faith, so in a debate over scientific matters, he loses. Sorry, guy, but science is evidence-based.

When we tell our college students that they are nothing more than animals, why do we act surprised when they act like animals?

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Who is acting surprised? Young people have always acted like animals. Of course, it's just possible that Mr. Editorial Writer was a virgin all the way through college and alcohol never touched his lips during the entire four (five? six?) years he was an undergrad. Unlikely, but at least possible. Unlike any of the arguments in his editorial.

Specified prolixity

PZ Myers cited in vain

We nonbelievers grew weary a long time ago from the efforts of proselytizing Christians to “explain” Christianity to us and “share the good news” with us. Sorry, guys. We've heard the so-called good news, but it's like watching a news report on Fox: We simply don't believe it. The recruiters for the cult of Christianity assume we don't know what the Bible says, but a lot of us do know. We just reject it.

We find it insulting to be assumed ignorant.

Creationists are trying to borrow this page from the nonbeliever's book. You see, they understand evolution and natural selection. They just reject it.

Oh, really?

We probably need to make some allowances for the conscious liars who use discredited arguments because they're effective rhetorical devices for advancing their holy cause. (Does anyone really think that Duane Gish doesn't know that his argument about the second law of thermodynamics is invalid? He was refuted in detail time and time again, but he never abandoned it in his public presentations because people continued to fall for it.) They know their arguments are bogus, but the “noble lie” is a pragmatically mendacious approach to redeeming souls for Christ. (Apparently the ends justify the means.) But many of the anti-evolution polemicists are likely to be entirely sincere. Their arguments reveal their profound ignorance rather than their willful dishonesty.

A case in point is this month's issue of Acts & Facts from the Institute for Creation Research. The December 2008 edition contains an essay titled More Than Just “Complex.” The author is Brian Thomas, who is described as a “science writer.” Thomas cites a remark by PZ Myers that criticizes creationists:

The lesson of Darwin is that unguided natural processes have the ability to generate complex functionality, so it takes more than just showing complexity and function to demonstrate purpose. Creationists don't understand that at all, so they keep whining “it's complex!” as if they have brought up an irrefutable argument for design, when they've done no such thing.

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In typical creationist fashion, Thomas goofs up the quotation a bit. He truncates PZ's final sentence by deleting his conclusion and moves the exclamation point outside the quotes (“it's complex”!), as if PZ were not imputing the exclamation to the creationists. Sloppy, but not surprising.

After the Myers quote, Thomas rolls out the we-know-but-reject argument:

The reason that “the lesson of Darwin” is rejected by creationists is not because they don't understand it. Rather, it is because they rightly observe that “unguided natural processes” cannot generate both complexity and functionality...

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(By the way, I truncated the final sentence in my quote from Thomas's article. Go check out the original to see if I did violence to it.) Thomas goes on to complain that natural selection is incapable of generating “specified complexity,” but then falls promptly into a creationist's classic post-hoc misconstruction of the problem. He does this by rhapsodizing about the protein complexes known as chaperonins:

Chaperonins have a precisely-placed enzymatic active site, detachable caps, flexible gated entryways, a timed sequence of chemical events, and precise expansion and flexion capacities. Each of the parameters—size, shape, strength, hydrophobicity distribution, timing, and sequence—represents a specification. With each additional specification, the likelihood of a chance-based assembly of these parts diminishes…to miracle status.

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A miracle! God is obviously required.

Let's try a simple explanation of this inane interpretation of complexity. If I draw a hearts royal flush from a standard deck of cards, that's pretty close to a miracle. (No, this has never happened to me.) There's only 1 chance out of 2,598,960 of drawing the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten of hearts in a random selection from a standard deck. (That big number is ₅₂C₅, the number of ways of choosing 5 items from a set of 52 distinct things.) We could choose even less likely things for our illustration, but this will do as an example.

We understand, of course, that any hand of five cards has one chance in 2,598,960 of being drawn, but most of those hands are nondescript and insufficiently interesting to catch our attention. A hearts royal flush, however, is a killer winning hand. If you were to predict (specify) in advance of a deal that you were going to get a hearts royal flush, it would be a pretty miraculous example of meeting your specification if the dealer were then to deal out those cards to you. (People might call for an investigation.)

But a hearts royal flush is not the only “killer winning hand” that the dealer could have given you. There are two royal flushes made up of red cards. Would you be unhappier with a diamonds royal flush? I think not. It would serve your purposes quite as adequately. It would look a little odd if you had “specified” hearts and then drew diamonds, but you're still a winner. And your chances of a red royal flush are twice that of a hearts royal flush alone. You know what you did? You over-specified.

Did you grasp the lesson? Even if we don't go on to talk about equally satisfactory outcomes with black royal flushes and results that are nearly as good with other straight flushes and four of a kind?

While Thomas waxes eloquently over all the details of chaperonins (I wonder how much he really knows about them?), listing all the specific features they have as they exist today, he completely misses the possibility (likelihood, actually) that there are millions (billions?) of other formulations that would have created alternate-universe chaperonins of equal functionality.

Try this little experiment the next time you're playing poker: When you pick up your five cards, recoil in amazement at the hand you're holding (no matter what it is, strong or weak), throw the cards down on the table face up so that your companions can see them, and scream, “Oh, my God! It's a miracle! This hand occurred in the face of odds greater than one in two million! Surely an Intelligent Dealer was involved in specifying this hand!”

Depending on the intelligence of the dealer in question, he may lean over and punch you on the shoulder.

Contrapositing Berlinski

Derbyshire gets it right

The columnists who hang out at National Review Online are a peculiar assemblage of right-wing flacks who can be relied upon to distinguish themselves from the reality-based community. John Derbyshire, however, occasionally breaks ranks. In addition to being a conservative columnist, The Derb is also a mathematician. I have read and enjoyed Prime Obsession, a history of the Riemann hypothesis, and Unknown Quantity, a history of algebra and the iconic “x the unknown.” Mathematicians tend to respect the formal aspects of argument and proof. This may be why Derbyshire recoiled in horror from Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

He must pay for this apostasy.

And today here comes David Berlinski to take Derbyshire to the woodshed. While Berlinski is also a popularizer of mathematics (of the snob-appealing obscurantist school of overwriting), he has also aligned himself with the Discovery Institute and serves as one of Ben Stein's shills in Expelled. What better nemesis could intelligent design creationists hope to sic on Derbyshire than Berlinski? It is a grudge match made in heaven (although both combatants decline to affirm belief in heaven's existence).

Topping off the bile reservoir on his word processor, Berlinski gets right to work in his rebuke of Derbyshire:

John Derbyshire has declared that the documentary Expelled contains a blood libel against Western Civilization. His is an exercise of striking vulgarity, the more so since, as he insouciantly admits, he has not “seen the dang thing.” A blood libel, one might recall, refers to the charge that the Jewish people are irredeemably stained by their occasional, if modest, need for Christian blood. Some terms have acquired through their historical associations a degree of repugnance that persuades sensitive men and women not to use them. If Derbyshire has been repelled by the smell of blood, it is a revulsion that he has successfully overcome.

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For the uninitiated, permit me to point out that Berlinski has unleashed here the powerful reflexive-rebuttal rhetorical device, also known in less sophisticated circles as the “I know you are, but what am I?” argument.

Expelled's audience has been less than its producers might have hoped for, box office receipts indicating an outside chance of earning back the costs of production and promotion. Nevertheless, no interested party can be unaware of the specific points being made by Ben Stein's propaganda piece. In a nutshell, Expelled asserts that (a) intelligent design is a worthwhile scientific hypothesis that the research establishment is successfully suppressing, (b) evolutionists are epitomized by atheism and hostility to religion, and (c) evolutionary thinking set the stage for the Nazi atrocities of the 20th century. The movie trailers, reviews, and interviews with Expelled's principals make all of that clear, whether or not one has endured the entire movie itself.

Berlinski does not accept this, and mocks Derbyshire for not going to see Expelled:

Having not seen the documentary that he proposes to criticize, Derbyshire is nonetheless quite certain that he knows what it conveys. “It is pretty plain,” he asserts, “that it is a piece of creationist porn.” Perhaps I will be forgiven for suggesting that John Derbyshire’s late-night scrutiny of the Internet may have corrupted his habitual search for le mot juste. Expelled has nothing to do with creationism, and if it is pornographic, the details have not become widely known.

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See how Berlinski pokes gentle fun at Derbyshire for the latter's choice of words and amusingly implies that The Derb has looked at too many naughty pictures on the Internet? Naughty, naughty Derb! Funny, funny Berlinski!

Expelled makes a point far plainer than pornography and points to a phenomenon just as widespread.

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Hey! Wait a minute! How does Berlinski know so much about the pervasiveness of porn? By his own reasoning in twitting Derbyshire, Berlinski is admitting to a certain expertise, n'est-ce pas? Let's be charitable and put that down to an inadvertent slip.

After first considering the possibility that Ben Stein was financed by secret Saudi funds—Je m’imagine cela—Derbyshire at once reprises two errors. The first is that the animations in Expelled were copied.

They were not.

And the second is that the brief segment of a John Lennon song used in the film required Yoko Ono’s permission before it could be aired.

It did not.

The facts are easily available from the Expelled website.

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It's good of Berlinski to cite such an unimpeachable source as documentation for his statements. It's a good choice, too, because Berlinski would not have found support for his categorical statements had he gone elsewhere. For example, David Bolinsky is the medical illustrator who led the team that created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard University and he argues strongly that Expelled's version of his team's original creation is a point-by-point rip-off. (Perhaps, unlike Berlinski, Derbyshire did not limit his reading to the special pleadings on the Expelled website.) And, of course, the United States has a draconian copyright law that severely inhibits “fair-use” claims, so it's not at all clear that Yoko Ono's lawsuit is an inherently frivolous nuisance action.

Derbyshire’s generous conviction that Expelled is an exercise in dishonesty owes much to the charge that those participating in the film were duped. It is an accusation made by both P. Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins. I appear in the film, and I read and signed the same release that Myers and Dawkins did. I knew precisely what the film proposed to do. So did they.

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In reality, in case Berlinski still cares about such things, neither Myers nor Dawkins knew the intent of the proposed documentary. Both Myers and Dawkins have provided accounts of the dishonest way they were approached.

Myers and Dawkins now regret their appearance. This is because they seriously overestimated their own ability to think nimbly before a camera. They are as result appalled either by how they look or by what they said. A veritable Internet scourge, Myers sits before the camera in solemn stupefaction. He has nothing to say and says nothing. Dawkins goes much further. Without ever once realizing that he is about to topple into the badlands of absurdity, he allows Ben Stein to force him into the acknowledgment that life as it appears on earth may well have been designed by space aliens.

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Being mild-mannered is the same as “solemn stupefaction” to Berlinski. (Perhaps P.Z. disappointed by breathing no fire.) I wonder how Berlinski would characterize his own appearance in Expelled, sitting on the back of his neck with his knees up in the air, nonchalantly declaring that Darwin was a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the rise of the Nazis and the implementation of their program of mass-murder. Not stupefaction, surely, but stupefying, certainly.

Berlinski also mischaracterizes the response of Dawkins to Stein's badgering him over how intelligent design could be true. Despite having his remarks edited to his maximum disadvantage, Dawkins still manifests his underlying exasperation in conceding to Stein that it is, of course, conceivable that a highly advanced alien race could foster life on a barren planet. (Nothing Dawkins says justifies Berlinski's phrasing: “life as it appears on earth may well have been designed by space aliens.” He spun that version out of whole cloth.) For some unaccountable reason, the editors of Expelled let stand Dawkins's statement that such a science-fiction scenario was scarcely a triumph for ID. It would merely push off the question of origins to a different world—the world where the aliens evolved by natural means. Since there is ample fossil evidence to document humanity's development on this planet, the scenario prompted by Stein is not even a live proposition. Like intelligent design itself, it's a crank hypothesis without substance. Dawkins looked embarrassed while he outlined it in response to Stein's insistence.

Berlinski cranks up the engines of his rhetoric for the home stretch of his essay, confident that he will leave Derbyshire in shreds:

Having found in Expelled an occasion to exercise his organs of indignation, Derbyshire proceeds in his essay to squeeze them until they squeal. The Discovery Institute is a special target. He regards its very existence as an affliction. His indignation has prompted him to impertinence. Knowing nothing of my life, he has nonetheless concluded that I am one of a number of “eccentric non-Christian cranks keen for a well-funded vehicle to help them push their own flat-earth theories.”

Non-Christian? There is no need for euphemism. I am a secular Jew, reason enough apparently for Derbyshire carelessly to suggest that I am in it for the money.

Ah, that old familiar smell—blood, I mean.

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Observe Berlinski in full martyr mode. It is a deeply affecting spectacle.

As for my eagerness to affirm that the world is flat, I believe it round, and have said so many times.

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Berlinski seems to believe that Derbyshire was being literal in his criticisms, or—could it be?—he is cleverly pretending to take them literally.

Berlinski moves deftly from his pose of martyrdom to his pose of agnosticism on the question of ID itself:

Beyond this settled conviction, I have no theories to offer—not even theories of intelligent design, which I have rejected in the pages of Commentary.

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Berlinski, you see, is the bad boy of intelligent design creationism. He merely—almost reluctantly—points out over and over again that “Darwinism” is fatally flawed and doomed to reside on the ash-heap of history. What will replace it? Oh, dear, he really couldn't say. And then the Discovery Institute, having discovered an opportunity to demonstrate its own universal tolerance of divergent points of view, snatches Berlinski up and makes him a Senior Fellow (as in “he's a jolly good”).

All this would be trivial, if tawdry, were it not for the single serious charge that Derbyshire makes: That Intelligent Design is a disguised form of creationism.

In the United States, at least, creationism is a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. Intelligent Design is otherwise. It is the thesis that living creatures appear designed because they are designed. It is said to be Darwin’s great merit that he successfully dissolved the appearance of design in life. Those who believe that the design of living systems is real believe correspondingly that Darwin’s theory is false, or, at best, incomplete.

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Here Berlinski conveniently forgets that Expelled vigorously seeks to link evolution with atheism. That's exactly why the producers insisted on nonbelieving scientists to represent the scientific side of the evolution mini-controversy. While many ID exponents are careful to declare with some frequency that the identity of the intelligent designer is not addressed in ID, others (like Dembski) are quick to acknowledge it's the G-o-d of Genesis. That's creationism, folks, and it pervades the ID movement.

Like so many men who have reached late middle age, John Derbyshire suffers the impression that the “the barbarians are at the gate.” Women no longer topple blood-ripe into his lap. A “gaggle of fools and fraudsters” is everywhere disturbing his tranquility. Things that he treasures are under ceaseless attack.

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Berlinski unkindly forgets to mention he is three years older than Derbyshire.

And where awe is merited, none is forthcoming. “And now here is Ben Stein,” Derbyshire objects, “sneering and scoffing at Darwin.”

Stein is, in fact, doing no such thing, and I have seen the documentary in which he appears. He is asking that certain possibilities in thought not be struck from the table prematurely. In so doing, he is offering Darwin the homage that a serious thinker deserves. It is the only homage to which he is entitled.

As for the rest of John Derbyshire’s agitated geschrei, what can one say? A talented writer is entitled to make a fool of himself at least once.

Why not Derbyshire?

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And that is why you have to love David Berlinski! Who else could so casually write that a “talented writer is entitled to make a fool of himself at least once”? I suspect he thinks this does not apply to him. Could it be because of the adjective in front of “writer”?