Over at Allen MacNeill’s class blog, there is a blog written by Hannah where she claims, “Scarcely anything in science will ever be proved or disproved.”

A molecular biologist has joined the comments section to “correct” Hannah:

This is plainly false unless you are proposing new definitions for “proved” or “disproved.” Do monkeys reproduce sexually? Yes. Science proved that. Do some bacteria reproduce by fission? Yes. Science proved that. Can white light be separated into its component colors? Yes. Science proved that. I could go on and on and on and on.

Let me give you some friendly advice, Hannah, at this early stage in our discussion. Re-read every sentence you type and ask yourself if you are distorting the truth to make your argument more compelling. If the latter, then rewrite the sentence. Hopefully, I do not need to explain why this is good practice.

Now, if you go over to this website and work your way through the links, you’ll eventually find this page on Concepts for Grades 9-12. Scroll down to the section on “Nature of Scientific Concepts.” And what do you find?

Science does not prove or conclude; science is always a work in progress.

The molecular biologist also used PubMed to find many places where scientists use the term “prove.” Sure, just as the same type of search will uncover many places where they also use the term “theory.”

I've quoted from Kirschner's & Gerhart's The Plausibility of Life before, but here's another goodie, which could be adopted as the position statement of every front-loader:

"Much of the skepticism over the years about the capacity of random mutation or genetic reassortment to generate phenotypic change has arisen from the assumption that genetic change must create very specific, multiple, complex phenotypic changes. Our view is that specificity and complexity are already built into the conserved processes, as is the propensity for regulatory coupling. It is not necessary for genetic change to create those characteristics, though they are still needed for heritable change."
Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma (Yale University Press, 2005), p. 142

This thread also doubles as an open thread. So talk about front-loading or something else. I'm like, whatever.

Remember that post from biologist PZ Myers that I mentioned the other day? Well, it has spawned a huge discussion (555 replies and counting) over at the anti-ID blog The Panda's Thumb, in which the pandas have some disagreements about how best to handle intelligent design. No, scratch the last part: They're screaming at each other, throwing feces around like it was bead necklaces at a Mardi Gras festival. Bill Dembski has collected the highlow-lights over at Uncommon Descent, but he didn't catch the most amazing comment. Go here to read ex-panda Gary Hurd viciously slander his previous co-bloggers, calling them as "scum", "swine", "the party of fanatics and death", and even referring to co-Panda Jack Krebs as "Gruppen Fürer" [sic]. Ed Brayton, another Panda, has responded, disclosing that Hurd has a drinking problem and was often writing when drunk.

Back when the bloggosphere was abuzz with speculation about what had happened to religious studies professor Paul Mirecki, Gary Hurd used The Panda's Thumb to post a thoroughly bizarre theory, accusing the police of beating up Mirecki (see commentary here). Unsatisfied with his fellow Pandas' refusal to accept this theory, he then announced that he was quitting the blog. Apparently, he's been sitting on a lot of anger, and the general slime-fest gave him an opportunity to let it all out.

This nicely complements my post from yesterday, in which I predicted that as whatever threat intelligent design might have posed to education goes away, the fanatics among the ID critics will start turning on each other. Or, as Lenny Flank put it in a comment at Panda's Thumb:

We're a room full of highly motivated well-trained big-game hunters armed with large-caliber weapons, who suddenly find themselves without a live target. So we begin to fidget a bit, glance sideways at the person next to us and say, "ya know, I never *did* like the way that guy looks at me …."

I've saved Hurd's comment for posterity, and tucked it beneath the fold.

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A sense of imminent danger can be useful in the right circumstances, rousing people to work together at solving a problem or fighting an enemy. But as everyone who has read "The Road to Serfdom" knows, this situation can lead to even bigger problems. As the initial threat is disposed of, the witch hunters will want to stay in charge. The fanatics you embraced to "get things done" will start looking for ever-smaller nuisances, and are soon attacking the very thing you tried to protect in the first place.

In the post-wedge world, there is no threat of intelligent design being taught in schools. So now would-be witch hunters have to direct their gaze inwards:

[Biology professor Jim Sparks] is upset about the new text his peers at VCU have chosen for him to use in teaching Biology 101. Sparks says it omits critical chapters in evolutionary theory and is biased toward creationism and intelligent design, which argues life is too complex to have evolved over millions of years solely through Darwin’s theory of natural selection and must have come at the direction of a supreme being or a supernatural force.

The book Sparks faults is "Essentials of Biology" by prolific science writer Sylvia S. Mader and published by the mainstream McGraw-Hill press.

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It's a well-known fact that the evil Discovery Institute uses a very narrow definition of creationism, so as to claim that they certainly aren't creationists. Fortunately, we have the pro-science Rev. J. D. Wright to give us the correct definition of creationism:

Creationism is not "the belief that the universe was created by a supreme being or deity". That God is the creator of all things is the first article of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, and so it is presumably the faith of all Christians, many of whom also accept evolution, and see no conflict between the two.

Creationism is rather the belief that God created the world exactly in the way described in Genesis chapter one (strangely, always ignoring the completely different account in chapter two), with all species exactly as they are today, and that therefore evolution cannot have happened, despite all the evidence.

I believe that should settle it. (HT: Red State Rabble)

You've all gotten used to "anti-science", the label used by ID critics to describe those who disagree with them? Then get ready for the next label! Here's Mark Drapeau, a neuroscientist and geneticist, telling scientists how to influence the political process:

While I cheer scientists like Dawkins and Gould for "popularizing" science and won't critique them directly, the reality is that only a small, unique subset of people read those books. … We cannot worry about the extremes - very pro-science and very anti-science or pro-god - but rather about the "soft middle" - people who might believe more in science if they heard more about it from convincing, interesting, and even entertaining sources.

Listening to ID critic Paul Z Myers always makes me think of this advice for lawyers: "When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. If both the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and cry for justice." In my last post, I mentioned historian of science Ronald Numbers dispelling some myths about hostility between science and religion, and you just knew that Myers would give his desk a good thrashing over it.

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My fellow Telician Mike Gene alerted me to this short interview with historian of science, Ronald Numbers. Most ID critics tend to dislike historians of science, because they know that history is far too complex and nuanced to be put into the "heroic scientists vs. evil religionists" stereotypes that some critics are fond of pushing. For example, here's Numbers on Galileo:

Contrary to common myth, Galileo suffered very little abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church. He was never tortured, he never faced death. In fact, he was never imprisoned. His penalty was house arrest at a pleasant villa on the outskirts of Florence, Italy.

Galileo's problems with the church stemmed far less from his astronomical and physical views than from his lack of diplomacy, and from his impertinence in trying to instruct the church on how to interpret Scriptures, as some Protestants had attempted to do in the previous century. Furthermore, in writing his controversial book, Galileo had the impertinence to attribute the Pope's views to a simple-minded character named Simplicius. This Pope [Urban VIII] had once been a patron of Galileo's and had supported his scientific efforts, so such a lack of diplomacy turned even the Pope against his one-time friend.

Numbers doesn't appear to have much brief for the "anti-science" label. Speaking of creationists, he writes: "If you read their literature, you'll rarely come across an anti-scientific notion. They love science. They love what science can do. They hate the fact that science has been hijacked by agnostics and atheists to offer such speculative theories as organic evolution. So, they don't see themselves as being antagonistic to science any more than many of the advocates of evolution - those who see evolution as God's method of creation - view themselves as hostile to Christianity."

In my next post, I'll be looking at the response to Numbers from a prominent ID critic. Keep your eyes peeled!

In his article, Evolutionary Theory And Continuous Creation, Keith B. Miller explains his theological objections to Intelligent Design. Miller argues, “Creation was not merely a past accomplished act, but rather is a present and continuing reality. The best term for this view of God's creative activity is "continuous creation." He later adds, “God's creative activity is clearly identified in the Bible as including natural processes, including what we call chance or random events. According to scripture, God is providentially active in all natural processes, and all of creation declares the glory of God. The evidence for God's presence in creation, for the existence of a creator God, is declared to be precisely those everyday "natural events" experienced by us all.”

Miller’s theology is both respectable and widely-shared. It is also used to argue against the hypothesis that Life itself was designed (one expression of ID). As Miller notes, “I would argue that an interventionist view of God is much closer to deism than my view. It implies that God is somehow withdrawn, or at least uninvolved in creation, except during special exceptional events. As others have noted, a doctrine of God's occasional intervention is really a doctrine of God's usual absence.” Thus, a denial that geochemical processes spawned the first cells would be to deny “continuous creation” and move closer toward deism.

This basic theological objection is not new. For example, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) once noted, “Life and organization are products of nature, and at the same time results of the powers conferred upon nature by the Supreme Author of all things and of the laws by which she herself is constituted: this can no longer be called into question. Life and organization are thus purely natural phenomena…” Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) extended the implications of such a view:

If we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, then at this one point of the history of development we must have recourse to the miracle of a super-natural creation. The Creator must have created the first organism, or a few organisms, from which all others are derived, and as such he must have created the simplest Monera, or primeval cytods, and given them the capability of developing further in a mechanical way. I leave it to each one of my readers to choose between this idea and the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. To me the idea that the Creator should have in this one point arbitrarily interfered with the regular process of development of matter, which in all other cases proceeds entirely without his interposition, seems to be just as unsatisfactory to a believing mind as to a scientific mind.

Yet it would seem to me that these theological objections to the Design of Life fail.

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Throughout history religious adherents have attempted to defend their positions against other systems and critics. This effort is often called apologetics. Now apologetics can come in many forms depending on the epistemic resources chosen. For example, within a given religious tradition the scope of an apologetic may be restricted to how scripture is interpreted. One finds this in the apologies presented by various "denominations" within a particular religious tradition. Or apologetics may branch out beyond a particular tradition to defend itself against other religious systems, i.e. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, etc. When apologetics branches out from its provincial borders, as it has often had to, in order to be successful it must find some common epistemic ground upon which to argue. Otherwise it runs the risk of being defeated due to circular arguments.

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