Although the origin of humans lies far beyond my ID interests, I still found this comment, by anthropologist John Hawks, refreshing:

That's the same old saw you hear a lot: "Evolution doesn't say our ancestors were apes, it just says we share common ancestors with apes."

That's true to a point — our ancestors were not chimpanzees, or gorillas, or any other living species of ape. Those species did not exist at the time of our common ancestry with them.

But the thrust of the claim is that these ancestors weren't apes at all — that they were some kind of mysterious other-being that somehow isn't quite so repulsive as an ape. That is just a lie. Our common ancestors with chimpanzees were not chimps, but they were apes. Ditto for all our ancestors from around 7 million years ago all the way back to around 30 million or more — they were all apes!

The arm-waving sophistry that tries to escape this fact just makes evolution look bad — like whiny wishy-washery. After all, those arms can wave because they inherited shoulder mobility from our arboreal ape ancestors! Accept it! Embrace it!

Krauze first brought Geerat Vermeij’s paper to our attention. There is a nice summary found here. The best excerpt from the article?

Most of the unique innovations — with the exception of human language — are ancient, more than half a billion years old.

Now, now, I’ll bet its older than that.

The plausibility of front-loading evolution continues to grow.

According to this article at Answers in Genesis, Henry Morris has died at 87. As a co-author of The Genesis Flood, Morris was more than anyone responsible for the birth of creationism, and as founder and president for the Insitute for Creation Research he kept the issue alive in the mind of the public.

I've never met Morris, but he still had some roundabout influence on me, as it was my opposition to creationism that led me to intelligent design. Years ago, I went to the local library, where I found a copy of What Is Creation Science?, written by Morris and Parker. I wasn't very impressed by the arguments, and as a young atheist who loved to argue, I soon found myself involved in discussions about evolution and creation on the internet. It were these discussions who would later lead me to intelligent design, which I found far more interesting that those arguments against evolution and an old earth which Morris and Parker had presented. And it was my interest in intelligent design which led me to the crew here at Telic Thoughts.

I'm sure thousands of stories could be told of good old Morris' influence. If he could see what his work had accomplished, I hope he would see the humor of it all and have a good laugh.

Despite what some of you may have heard, speculating about intelligent design involves more than quoting scientists out of context, going to revival meetings, and helping the forces of darkness destroy science and democracy. Seriously, evolutionary biology is a fascinating and vibrant field, and whether ID supporters accept evolution or not, they should be up to date with recent developments in the field. To give you a small taste of what is out there, here's a small sampling from the blogosphere.

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A member of the Secular Movement contacted the Chairs of various biology departments to confirm there is no “controversy” to teach. No problem there. But what’s interesting is that he also captures the perception of ID among those who would peer review any hypothesis related to ID. Keep these words in mind the next time someone demands that an ID hypothesis/experiment be published in the peer-reviewed literature:

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Did I hear an Atheist in the room?

While on the topic of Steve Verdon, who accused an ID supporter of potentially quote-mining, here's a snippet from the NYT review of Daniel Dennett's book:

Dennett flatters himself that he is Hume's heir. Hume began "The Natural History of Religion," a short incendiary work that was published in 1757, with this remark: "As every enquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature." These words serve as the epigraph to Dennett's introduction to his own conception of "religion as a natural phenomenon." "Breaking the Spell" proposes to answer Hume's second question, not least as a way of circumventing Hume's first question. Unfortunately, Dennett gives a misleading impression of Hume's reflections on religion. He chooses not to reproduce the words that immediately follow those in which he has just basked: "Happily, the first question, which is the most important, admits of the most obvious, at least, the clearest, solution. The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion."

There are two polar opposite pictures of Darwinism, when viewing evolution as a whole:

1. The determined view (Morris?). If you were to run evolution again on any planet like earth, things would come out the same, with flagellums, eyes, and finally rational humans with an interest in their own origin.

2. The chance view (an extreme Gould?). If you were able to run evolution again, things would come out wildly different. Only by merest happenstance would things like flagellums, eyes, and rational humans come about.
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Macht is linking to this post by developmental biologist PZ Myers, in which Myers sings his usual song:

We need more atheists speaking out - that's how we're going to get people used to the fact that we exist. The fact that we are content to work with the religious, while many of the religious will not reciprocate that tolerance and even some of our fellow scientists want to hide us away, is a good example of who is holding the moral high ground here, and Ruse's condemnation is yet another reason why I don't hold much respect for the guy.

As Macht already pointed out, Michael Ruse is himself quite open about his agnosticism, and isn't saying anything about "hiding atheists away". What I find truly ironic is that it was Myers himself who was making the "let's not offend their sensitivities" argument when Islamic riots were burning down embassies over the Mohammed drawings.

Added, a few seconds later: Oh yeah, don't miss Myers accusing Ruse of being condescending towards Christians. We all know how respectful Myers is towards that group.

There has been a lot of discussion lately in the blogosphere about the public understanding of science and how scientists can better communicate scientific ideas to laypeople (see here, for example). That's why I'm kind of amazed at some of the reactions to the whole Ruse-Dennett debacle. The question is whether Ruse's style or the Dawkins/Dennett style of promoting evolution is the best way to go.

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