Unfortunately, I have to provide the disclaimer that I don't agree with everything Kurt Vonnegut says in this interview (no I don't think ID should be taught in science classes and no I won't tell you whether I' m a secular humanist or not), but for a sharp cultural critique…it is worth the listen.

Forward to about 4 minutes. Or, if you want to listen to a wise man, hear the whole thing.

A question to ask yourself: how much of your involvement in ID is tribal and how much is genuine interest and/or skepticism.

The article Effects of a Distal Mutation on Active Site Chemistry, now available on the web is well worth the read and suggests a ready method for analyzing the effects of mutations on the parts of cellular machinery. The approach articulated in the paper might be especially useful for understanding the constraints of functional evolutionary change by, perhaps, investigating the degree of modification/perturbation that a system can undergo and still retain some useful function. A slightly different angle to consider, again an extrapolated use of the quantitative approach taken in this paper, is how narrow and contrained the pathway of intermediate functional stages is between evolutionarily related systems.

There has been quite a bit of talk lately at telicthoughts on the design of evolvable and adaptive systems. In the past, we've also emphasized robustness. It is fitting, then, to mention this book which appears to address these very issues:

Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems
by Andreas Wagner
Princeton University Press

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I think Laudan has it right.

If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like "pseudo-science" and "unscientific" from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. (Laudan 1983, 349)

Hollow, rhetorical phrases to be employed in warfare not rational discourse.

Ever seen a group of science nerds having fun?

Now that you've had your daily dose of humor, on to more serious, but related things: Incompetent Design. In this interview with Seed Magazine, Don Wise suggests that the detection of intelligence in a physical design is empirical. According to him, here's the critical question: Is there, or is there not, intelligence in the design?"

This is, of course, a brilliant play on words. When Wise talks of "intelligence in the design" he means something like elegance, sophistication, brilliance, etc. As a descriptor, Wise is using intelligence to contrast with dumb or stupid or "Something only an ogre would do." Ogres aren't very intelligent, afterall.

When proponents of ID use the descriptor "intelligent" they mean something different. They mean to indicate a very specific kind of cause: one that has the capacity to direct and organize events in the service of some goal. Surely a design can have an intelligent cause, but not be elegant, sophisticated, brilliant, etc.

Let's say that Wise is correct and biological design is pervasively incompetent (inelegant, stupid, convoluted, etc.)*. Wise thinks that this fact is compelling against the suggestion of intelligent design. But he's wrong for at least two reasons:

1. Some designed things whose origin is best explained by reference to intelligent causes are not themselves brilliant, elegant, perfect, sophisticated, etc. (Witness the sheer stupidity of many crimes).

2. Wise fails to consider real-world design constraints in an evolving world of organisms that need to adapt and survive over millions of years. He takes a much more simplistic and primitive approach to engineering systems.

*By the way, I should be forthright in acknowledging that most of my doubts about intelligent design stem from concerns about the pervasiveness of incompetent design. I do think that there is a minimum threshold for the elegance of detectable design. At a certain point, sloppiness drags you down into indiscernable chaos. However, incompetence needs to be considered against the context and design requirements of biological history; not some toy labratory in Wise's mind.

This message is aimed at that minority of individuals who 1) acknowledge that Intelligent Design (ID) is immature as a scientific research program, 2) recognize that the current generation of intelligent design theorists have laid a unique foundation for exploring the biotic world, and 3) want to be participants (and possible failures) in the development of a telic science.

The next 3 years should prove to be pivotal for any prospective intelligent design research program. It really is time (er, has been time) to stop arguing about the scientific status of ID and to let history play itself out by conducting research and doing the hard work.

Just do it, as they say.

Here's some primitive guiding advice for the small minority.

1. Start small and be meticulous
2. Don't aim for "smoking-gun" results
3. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; take chances - speculate and imagine
4. Don't extrapolate wildly from the data and don't look for grandiose results
5. Explore the world with unfettered curiosity
6. Don't force the data into your model.
7. Ignore the buzzbots and cherish the true skeptics.
8. Resist the temptation to spectate.
9. Don't hold your breath for Mike Gene to publish a book;-)

I support the outcome of Judge Jones' ruling: intelligent design should not be taught as science in public schools. But there are aspects of Judge Jones' opinion that I disagree with.

According to Jones, science can't employ intelligent causes as a means of explanation. So wtf are we going to tell the ancestors of the little microbes that Dr. Venter is building in his labratory?

Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it: "We're going from reading to writing the genetic code," he said in an interview.

So we all know that Richard Dawkins gets a little pissed off when he gets asked whether evolution is completely random

You said in a recent speech that design was not the only alternative to chance. A lot of people think that evolution is all about random chance.

That's ludicrous. That's ridiculous. Mutation is random in the sense that it's not anticipatory of what's needed. Natural selection is anything but random. Natural selection is a guided process, guided not by any higher power, but simply by which genes survive and which genes don't survive. That's a non-random process. The animals that are best at whatever they do"”hunting, flying, fishing, swimming, digging"”whatever the species does, the individuals that are best at it are the ones that pass on the genes. It's because of this non-random process that lions are so good at hunting, antelopes so good at running away from lions, and fish are so good at swimming.

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There are at least 25 BIG questions and 100 not-as-big questions to motivate and keep scientists busy over the next 25 years.

A useful exercise for the genuine skeptic about intelligent design (not of the Wedge-centric type) would be to conceptualize different investigative approaches that one might be take to some of the big problems like the following:

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http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus%5Fonline/spiral/#evolution

1. Evolutionary biology is a well established science. Overwhelming evidence indicates that the Earth has a very long natural history in which more complex species evolved from less complex species (and sometimes also the reverse).

2. There are legitimate debates within contemporary evolutionary biology about whether random genetic variations and natural selection alone are able to account for the florescence of life found on the planet. These debates in no way challenge our understanding of a long Earth history and the evolution of species.

[bipod: since when have you heard a general statement about evolution that was so fact based, clear and undeceiving?.]