Unguided evolution

Some folks like to pooh-pooh evolution as "unguided," inferring that something unguided could not have produced what looks to be the product of an intelligent designer. As a simple test, the above image is useful.

At first glance, it looks like a tattoo with a barcode, something a designer could have created. In reality, however, it evolved in a quite different way on a different planet.

The whole Intelligent Design movement being thrust on us by the marketing arm of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, is a rehash of hundreds of years old arguments about how life is too complex to have come about without the help of some outside mover/shaker. What most people ignore, forget, or are unaware of, is how much time it has taken for life to reach this point. People who rely on literal translations of ancient texts, such as the Bible, think our world has only been around for 60 to 100 centuries. Science has shown, however, that the Earth is over 3.5 billion years old and that's over 35 million centuries.

If something as complex and beautiful as the image above can happen in the virtual blink of an eye, is it so hard to imagine that nature's sculptor (evolution) built life as we know it from the building blocks of DNA, given such vast amounts of time?

Some may try to make a distinction of the micro- macro- evolution variety. However, as David Eller points out in an article on the subject, "... macroevolution is merely the accumulation of microevolutionary changes."

The ironic thing about intelligent designers -- of the human variety -- is that they are also responsible for the collateral damage they cause. Let's hope that we do not ultimately extinguish our own species because we ignored or underestimated the potential collateral damage of things like our contribution to global warming.

SBOE Mangling Texas Science TEKS -- Act Now

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) revises it's science curriculum (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills -- or TEKS) once every ten years. That time is now and this year, new science TEKS (pdf) were written and recommended by science writing panels and experts appointed by the SBOE.

At their January meeting, Don McLeroy and members of his hard-right faction of the SBOE managed to make some unscientific amendments to the proposed recommended science TEKS. This SBOE revised document (pdf) was then approved as the first reading by the SBOE of the science TEKS and was filed with the Texas Register. On March 25, 26, and 27, the SBOE will meet again and could make these TEKS the final ones.

The National Center for Science Education has produced a detailed description and analysis of the January amendments and why they are scientifically unsound.

If you reside in Texas, you can help by writing, telephoning, or emailing your SBOE member (enter your zip code to look up). Check this page to see how your member voted on these amendments at the January meeting. If your member voted against these amendments, thank your member and encourage him or her to continue to support sound science at the March meeting. If your member voted for these amendments, encourage him or her to promote the best science education for Texas schoolchildren by voting to remove these unfortunate amendments and support the TEKS as drafted by the writing panels and experts. In either case, let your SBOE member know that you are their constituent and why you think the amendments that were passed in January should not become part of the new science TEKS.

Any member of the SBOE may be emailed via sboesupport@tea.state.tx.us. Email pertaining to details of the TEKS should be sent to sboeteks@tea.state.tx.us. Comments on the first reading TEKS may also be made online.

The SBOE will hear public testimony on March 25 from noon to 6pm, with registration starting at 8am Friday, March 20th. (Registration form here (pdf).) Please attend and/or testify, if you can. The SBOE meets at 1701 Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78701 (see map).

See the SBOE web page for more information.

Alternative Science?

It would appear that one of the tactics being employed by the Discovery Institute (DI) and others interested in keeping evolutionary science from being taught in public schools these days is to claim that there are alternative scientific explanations for science. Huh?

Read what Steven Schafersman, President of Texas Citizens for Science, writes in "What Critiques of Darwin?".

Maybe they figure if it works for quackery (CAM) it will work for creationism.

Don't Mess with Texas Education

As recent developments have shown, evolution denialist elements of the Texas State Board of Education (SBoE) are about to try and screw over the Texas science education standards which are due their 10-year review in 2008. This report makes it clear that there is an effort underway by some Texas Education Agency (TEA) administrators and some members of the SBoE to distort and diminish evolution instruction in Texas public schools by requiring that the "weaknesses" and "controversies" of evolutionary biology be presented. These are strategies which the Discovery Institute advocates and they dovetail with their Intelligent Design Creationism advocacy as part of their objective to subvert science education in public schools.

We are at a critical juncture in this process since there is currently a conservative majority on the SBoE and half of the SBoE seats are up for (re)election. At least seven members of the fifteen-member SBoE support the Discovery Institute's "teach the controversy" and teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution strategy. I urge anyone willing to defend science education in Texas and eligible to run for election to the SBoE in their district to unseat some of these folks and help bring sanity to science education in Texas. Please help us avoid the inanity of another Dover-like federal trial over the teaching of religious pseudo-science.

The districts up for (re)election in 2008 are:

SBOE       Name                         City
District
2          Mary Helen Berlanga (D)      Corpus Christi
6          Terri Leo (R)                Spring
7          David Bradley (R)            Beaumont
8          Barbara Cargill (R)          The Woodlands
11         Patricia Hardy (R)           Weatherford
13         Mavis B. Knight (D)          Dallas
14         Gail Lowe (R)                Lampasas

To enter the election you must file an application for a place on the ballot with your respective party by Jan. 2, 2008. The filing fee is $300. The primary election will be on March 4, 2008, the general election will be in November, 2008.

Republican Party (512)477-9821
Democratic Party (512) 478-9800

For more details on the election process, go here: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/guide/demorrep.shtml

For more on the Chris Comer story, go here: http://www.wikio.com/news/Chris+Comer.

Barbara Forrest on the Chris Comer affair: http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/ForrestComer.pdf.

Read Judge Jones's opinon on the Dover trial here: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf

Answering Creationist Challenges to Evolution

Science, and in particular evolutionary theory, is under attack by creationists (mostly Young Earth Creationists). Even though there is no doubt about the fact of evolution within the scientific community, the number and diversity of the objections to evolution raised by creationists can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. John Rennie, editor at the Scientific American, has compiled 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense (pdf) which can be a useful resource for those encountering such people.

Here is a list of the challenges Rennie addresses:

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.
   
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.
   
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
   
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.
   
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.
   
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
   
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
   
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.
   
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.
   
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
    
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
    
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.
    
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.
    
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
    
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.
    

Head on over and check it out.

ED = { CS, ID, ... }

Since Dover it has been obvious that the creationists would morph their attacks on Evolution once again. We've seen Creation Science (CS) turn into Intelligent Design (ID) and now speculation is on what the next instantiation will be called. CS, ID, and whatever the next one will be called fall into the category of Evolution Denial (ED).

Thanks to folks like those at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, the evolution deniers are being supplied with more and more material to bolster their "teach the controversy" propaganda campaign. The upcoming film Expelled will yet again try to put some lipstick on the ID pig and portray some fifth column scientists as victims of scientific oppression, thus fanning the "controversy" flames where there is no controversy.

Unfortunately, as long as there are those who persist in taking ancient texts as equivalent or superior to modern knowledge, we will be pestered by these deniers, as has been the case each time science has shown them to be wrong.

The Evolution of Denial

I think this is spot on.

(click for full size version)

See more of Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller.

Update: The original comic is no longer in the archive, sorry.

Resistance to Science in America

[The] developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest. P. Bloom & D. S. Weisberg

From WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE? By Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg

Well worth a look.