Many critics have long complained about Intelligent Design books published for popular consumption. As one participant of our blog argued:

No one can stop you from inferring an intelligent designer, just as no one can stop you from inferring a real Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. If you want convince others, however, then get off your lazy a** and do some actual research that produces positive results. Pop pseudoscience books with wild unsubstantiated claims (i.e. Privileged Planet) and empty internet verbiage will never cut it in the rigorous scientific world…

While I can certainly appreciate the desire to see ID “cut it in the rigorous scientific world,” it’s not clear that ID hypotheses can be accommodated and processed in the current scientific milieu. But that’s not the main point for today.

There is a place for such popular books in the history of science. In fact, we can argue that one “pop pseudoscience book” played an important role in helping Charles Darwin get out his theory.

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Well, they're having at it again over at Science Blogs. The usual dog-eat-dog bruhaha over "framing," and whether or not the 'New Atheism' and its mean, nasty culture warriors are helping or hurting the cause of force-converting humanity to their way of thinking.

It begins (as usual) with Matthew Nibet's "Framing Science" blog, where he dared to post an opinion that Atheism is Not a Civil Rights Issue, saying:

This false spin serves as a very effective frame device for radicalizing a base of atheists into an ever more militant "us versus them" rhetoric, an interpretation that is used to justify sophomoric and polarizing attacks on religious Americans.

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More and more research continues to add to the plausibility of front-loading evolution. Consider the following discovery:

Hormones control growth, metabolism, reproduction and many other important biological processes. In humans, and all other vertebrates, the chemical signals are produced by specialised brain centres such as the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood stream that distributes them around the body. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] now reveal that the hypothalamus and its hormones are not purely vertebrate inventions, but have their evolutionary roots in marine, worm-like ancestors. In this week's issue of the journal Cell they report that hormone-secreting brain centres are much older than expected and likely evolved from multifunctional cells of the last common ancestor of vertebrates, flies and worms. (emphasis added)

The similarity is impressive:

Scientist Kristin Tessmar-Raible from Arendt's lab directly compared two types of hormone-secreting nerve cells of zebrafish, a vertebrate, and the annelid worm Platynereis dumerilii, and found some stunning similarities. Not only were both cell types located at the same positions in the developing brains of the two species, but they also looked similar and shared the same molecular makeup. One of these cell types secretes vasotocin, a hormone controlling reproduction and water balance of the body, the other secretes a hormone called RF-amide.

And check this out:

Both of the cell types studied in Platynereis and fish are multifunctional: they secrete hormones and at the same time have sensory properties. The vasotocin-secreting cells contain a light-sensitive pigment, while RF-amide appears to be secreted in response to certain chemicals. The EMBL scientists now assume that such multifunctional sensory neurons are among the most ancient neuron types. Their role was likely to directly convey sensory cues from the ancient marine environment to changes in the animal's body. Over time these autonomous cells might have clustered together and specialised forming complex brain centres like the vertebrate hypothalamus.

Mutlifunctionality correlates with the most ancient of types – remember this when a certain book eventually comes out.

And I really liked this too:

"These findings revolutionise the way we see the brain," says Tessmar-Raible. "So far we have always understood it as a processing unit, a bit like a computer that integrates and interprets incoming sensory information. Now we know that the brain is itself a sensory organ and has been so since very ancient times."

Exactly. Basic anatomy here, especially when you consider the reach of many cranial nerves. But the deeper part comes with the realization of how close the processing is to perception (i.e., start with front-loading and reach another MikeGene theme).

I hope Eric doesn’t mind me forcing him to be a guest contributor, but I thought his announcement shouldn't be buried:

Eric:

FYI to all regarding The Edge of Evolution, Behe has begun to post some responses to reviews by prominent academic Darwinists at his Amazon blog.

He is starting with responses to the reviews by

Jerry Coyne (professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago);

Sean Carroll (professor of developmental biology, University of Wisconsin); and

Michael Ruse (professor of philosophy at Florida State University).

After several other expected major reviews are published in the coming month, he plans to post a comprehensive response.

The blog also includes an early post that provides an interview style series of "Question & Answer With Michael J. Behe".

In a previous essay, we saw that a super-majority of evolutionary biologists self-identity as “pure naturalists,” providing us good reason to think that a non-teleological prism is used to shape our current mainstream understanding of evolution. Of course, since there is plenty of evidence for evolution, it is sometimes difficult to detect the residue of the non-teleological prism, especially when it becomes obscured by those who would conflate evolution with non-teleological metaphysics.

So perhaps we should focus on the origin of life, a field where there is no theory or impressive track record of success. We have seen that the evidence for abiogenesis is weak. Thus, how do we explain the general consensus that the Earth spawned Life? Could it be the non-teleological prism at work, in plainer sight for all to see?

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Today's New York Times carries a story in its 'science' section by Carol Kaesuk Yoon entitled From a Few Genes, Life's Myriad Shapes.

It's a story about Evo-Devo, with strong allusions to what we are familiar with around TT as Front-Loading. Some pertinent quotes from the article seem to speak obliquely to challenges Evo-Devo has presented to the standard Neo-Darwinian story line since it took off in the 1980s, a clear indication that it can take decades for new ideas and new evidence to rise to a level where the implications are marketed to a public universally taught the standard RM-NS pablum that still maintains its hegemony in public education by force of law…

…the advent of molecular biology reinvigorated the study of development in the 1980s, and evo-devo quickly got scientists’ attention when early breakthroughs revealed that the same master genes were laying out fundamental body plans and parts across the animal kingdom. For example, researchers discovered that genes in the Pax6 family could switch on the development of eyes in animals as different as flies and people. More recent work has begun looking beyond the body’s basic building blocks to reveal how changes in development have resulted in some of the world’s most celebrated of evolutionary events.

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We often hear from critics that they can safely label ID to be warmed-over Creationism because leaders of the ID 'Movement' are religious believers who sometimes speak about ID to religious audiences in terms of God and creation. In other words, ID can be judged by the company its promoters keep.

So I thought it was interesting that NCSE's Eugenie Scott is keeping some illustrious company herself. Scott will be speaking at The Atheist Alliance International convention and fund raiser at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Arlington, Virginia this September. Also on the roster are Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, along with a bevy of lesser known New Atheists and Brights.

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In a previous essay where I partially explored the God-of-the-Gaps argument, , I also noted that origin-of-life researcher George Cody was quoted as saying "No one knows anything about the origin of life." This moment of candor is consistent with what Paul Davies wrote in his book, The 5th Miracle: “Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.” Before we explore why it is that origin-of-life researchers feel the need to hide their bafflement from the public, it would be useful to demonstrate the truth of Davies observation with a recent paper by Eugene Koonin (HT to Paul Nelson ).

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