So he is talking about creationism and ID. Remember, Bradford says Coturnix is wrong because science education has been in decline since before ID started. Bradford's argument fails whether he is talking exclusively about creationism or creationism and ID. Think about it.

Yes, think about it. Creation was taught openly in the USA since before independence was attained. America's relative educational and economic fortunes were on the rise during this historic era. After the teaching of evolution in public schools became institutionalized America peaked and then began a slow relative decline that continues today. Only within the last two decades have creation organizations (for example, Answers in Genesis and other standard bearing organizations) and ID come into their own. To claim that a vastly significant historic trend, impacting America's fortunes in the world, is attributable to Ken Ham, William Dembski… is worse than silly. It's stupid… or for those with a few ounces of brains- dishonest.

coturnix: Ed Darrell points out the competitive advantage this gives the rest of the world and how local the problem of Creationism is.

Bradford: I rarely label a statement as a lie even though I might believe it is and rarely use the term liar but will make an exception in this case.

Pixie: It is odd that you seem to ignore what Ed Darrell said to support his claim:

Ed Darrell: Can we afford to dumb down any part of our science curriculum, for any reason? Is it unfair to consider creationism advocates, including intelligent design advocates, as “surrender monkeys in the trade and education wars with China?”

Not a shred of evidence making causal linkages between trade and education issues and trade and education data causally linked to creation beliefs. Not surprising since that type of supporting evidence is hard to come by, so Ed simply assumes it. Look at another Darrell quote:

The top 10% of science students in China outnumber all the science students in the U.S.; the U.S. last year graduated more engineers from foreign countries than from the U.S.; the largest portion were from China. China graduated several times the number of engineers the U.S. did, and almost all of them were from China.

Hmmm. So a better understanding of genomic dynamics like mutations and natural selection would yield a larger crop of trained engineers? There are many holes in these arguments. Can you identify them?

Nothing is said about China's vast pool of very cheap labor which has drawn manufacturers to relocate there. Nothing about China's lax environmental regulations which allow manufacturers considerable leeway and fewer expenses compared to what they would encounter if factories were U.S. based. Ed employs a simplistic analysis devoid even of scholarly statistical studies.

Coturnix: You cannot bludgeon kids with truth (or insult their religion, i.e., their parents and friends) and hope they will smile and believe you. Yes, NOMA is wrong, but is a good first tool for gaining trust.

Bradford: In other words you have to manipulate others.

This is about persuading people to change their minds, and to see the truth. You can call that manipulation if you want, I suppose, if you want a debate based on emotions.

This is about refraining from honest teaching in favor of manipulation. Coturnix is willing to do something he acknowledges is wrong. The end justifies the means for him. Unfortunately this is all unnecessary because a straight forward presentation of scientific facts is what is called for.

Many have peddled the lie linking increasing adherents to Intelligent Design to a loss of competitive advantage for America vis a vis the rest of the world- in the educational, scientific and economic spheres. In the past I've gently corrected these misapprehensions by pointing out some simple facts. Michael Behe's landmark book Darwin's Black Box was published in 1996. The Dover PA case took place after the twentieth century was history. Most papers published, which argue for intelligent design, were published within the last decade. The decline in objective test scores among American students began decades ago. The relative academic and economic performance of the United States was much higher in the middle of the 20th century than it became during the final half of that century. If you're into spin you can try to link those believing in Intelligent Design to a decline.

Pixie: It is ironic – and not a little sad – that you accuse coturnix of dishonesty, and yet you attempt to refute him in this underhand manner. Coturnix specifically says "the problem of Creationism", and you counter that intelligent design has not been around more than a decade or so. I guess you are relying on the stupidity of the readers, eh?

No. It is you who is relying on the stupidity of readers. In the minds of most critics intelligent design is creationism. Creationism is used as a synonym for intelligent design. See how clever you critics are. And dishonest too. Creationism is a byword for ID but when push comes to shove you dishonestly pretend that the "clever" substitution is not really what you obviously intended it to be. Now creationism and ID are distinct and separate. Baloney. Own up to your own juvenile debating tactics. But don't take my word for it. In the words of Coturnix:

And, as Archy reminds us, Intelligent Design Creationism is just one form, the slickest and most dishonest, of Creationism.

ID is a form of creationism for these dolts.

As others have pointed out, simplifications are common in science education. And indeed in science. If a chemist wants to know the outcome of a process, he is not going to work out the wavefunction of all the particles involved. Children are taught aboit Newton's laws of motion, because they are a good approximation, but that is a temportary inaccuracy until they can handle relativity.

And as I have pointed out: The simplifications you cite are posed to advance understanding of conceptually difficult concepts. That was not the idea behind inaccuracies. The inaccuracies cited in the blog were to be used to counter religious and cultural norms the writer found odious. There is a huge difference in intent. I don't want teachers appointing themselves gods able to determine what cultural values are to be uprooted and which ones are OK.

And surely Obama and McCain and their considerably talented teams of analytical advisors would have noticed the link between Intelligent Design and America's woes and raised the political stakes accordingly.

Is this really true? I am none too familiar with US politics, so correct me if I am wrong here. I thought a huge slice of the US population reject evolution (is it something like 50%?). Any presidential candidate who goes on record as rejecting creationism (and it was creationism that Coturnix was talking about remember, not ID), he risks alienating a lot of voters. Is it possible that those talented teams of analytical advisors are advising the candidates to keep it quiet, to avoid commiting to one side or the other?

It is certain that the smart advisors surrounding Obama are aware that claims that America's economic woes are attributable to creationists is hogwash. Educated people know that America's educational and economic woes began decades ago. Long before current controversies got traction.

Thanks for picking up the EAM discussion. I couldn't come close to giving it the justice you have.

You seem to be proposing violation of Crick's central Dogma, in that an existing attribute can be incorporated into genetic code. Would this not be commonly describes as Lamarkism?

Yes, EAM is neo-Lamarckian in that it does propose that adaptations are not primarily accidental gene mutations, but epigenetic gene expression suiting organized by the system in response to selection pressures, or work-arounds (against damage) as the organism struggles for survival. These aren't always useful over time and can even become harmful, so can revert to original patterns if they don't work out. They get encoded only if they prove adaptive over time.

EAM is, unlike NDS, not gene-centric, and doesn't view organisms as passive vehicles for 'selfish' genes accidentally constructed and weeded mercilessly by exterior forces. Selection, in terms of evolution, is just differential rates of survival and reproductive prowess over generational time. Life is the struggle to survive and reproduce. Genes don't get selected, whole organisms do. NDS die-hards often can't see the forest for the trees.

We already know that epigenetic mechanisms are or can be heritable. We know they can change in response to stress. We know they're often reversible. And we know they can sometimes produce rather spectacular results in everything from coloring (camoflauge) to disease resistance to full-life developmental traits.

We might find dozens of individual genes in which SNPs, missing pieces, inverted elements and aa substitutions make them risks for developing cancer. Even though I am fairly convinced cancer is mostly an environmental issue per triggers. But if you stepped back for a moment and put theoretical loyalty aside for the sake of a larger, less deterministic view, you could consider an apparently epigenetic phenomenon like spontaneous remission of advanced cancer. It happens, doctors have seen it happen, they've no explanation at all for it. Whatever mutations may have contributed to its type, development, and course are immaterial at that point (though might show up again 20 years later if the same triggers are encountered).

I'd suggest it's a complex, rarely initiated (may need some specific genetic and epigenetic history) expression suite capable of literally eliminating cancerous cells overnight. If we could identify and understand it we could cure cancer. That certainly seems like reason enough to look with fresh eyes.

NDS is all about what goes wrong. Then it asserts as some sort of absolute that what goes wrong rarely produces something that just happens to go right for a specific individual organism in a certain environment with certain selective stresses. EAM is about what goes right – how the system is designed to work. I think that if our focus were on what goes right, we'd better understand what goes wrong. The primary, most useful and most lucrative application of this part of biological science is all about medicine. A better understanding would also help techno-applications in bioengineering, but medicine and pharmaceuticals are where the action is. The #1 reason we want to know what we are, where we came from, and how we work.

The current theoretical situation has scientists busy defending their 'orthodox' turf, central dogmas and ideological faith against heretics – often in their own ranks. They've turned the noble human quest for knowledge into a Culture War about whether or not God/gods exist! Obviously, this is a corruption. One that serves no scientific purpose at all.

Just the view of an EAMer. It made sense to me when I first heard about it, and it makes sense more and more as we learn more and more about life on the sub-cellular level. Something Charlie Darwin and Gregor Mendel never conceived of and would be completely amazed by. A design approach doesn't threaten Richard Dawkins' atheism one bit unless he's incredibly insecure in his faith. But it might prove immensely useful to humanity in terms of expanded knowledge, understanding and ability to shape or control.

FAPP. For All Practical Purposes. The job description of the collective endeavor we call "Science."

EAM postulates that adaptation in life forms arises first in the phenome, and only encoded in the genome (via epigenetic mechanisms primarily) after it has proved successful.

By phenome, do you mean the suite of phenotypes for a particular organism? "Phenome" does not seem to have established itself as a scientific term. You seem to be proposing violation of Crick's central Dogma, in that an existing attribute can be incorporated into genetic code. Would this not be commonly describes as Lamarkism?

You omit to mention what is the source of the new "phenome". ToE postulates mutations (plus HGT etc) as the source of new information. Is there a similar process with your "phenome"?

After all, it's entirely obvious that if life were immortal, there would be no purpose in reproduction or evolution. Evolution absolutely relies upon mortality.

Evolution is impossible without death and reproduction, sure. So?

You omit to mention what mechanism matches the "phenomes" to the right organism in its particular environment. ToE postulates that natural selection results in differential survivability and inheritance so that adaptations are driven by an organism's* immediate environment.

(*breeding group of organisms)

substituting EAM for front loading if you think there are significant differences between the two ideas.

Front loading is compatible with EAM, but is not EAM. EAM postulates that adaptation in life forms arises first in the phenome, and only encoded in the genome (via epigenetic mechanisms primarily) after it has proved successful. IOW, it's an expression-related situation. The front loaded genome could be considered to contain the 'toolkit' from which all information is drawn, but it's the system itself that creatively organizes expression suites that serve its own survival and reproductive successes.

As the adaptive suites spread in the population, the various mechanisms of genome change can be put to use to "hardwire" the traits. Gene duplication, rearranging some transposable elements, moving genes from here to there to better allow for chromatin presentations of the entire multi-element suites, etc. Accidental/random SNPs are not one of the primary mechanisms, though they do occur via ionization, error, etc. These are retained if useful or neutral, selected out over time from the pool if harmful. EAM considers "random mutations" – primarily caused by what goes wrong with the processes of replication or exposure to mutagens – as the cause of diseases.

For the practical purposes of evolution (but not life itself in any individual organism), any disease-causing or contributing peculiarities of accumulated genetic damage that do not serve to hinder the reproductive success of the organism may persist in the population. IOW, if your genetic inheritance predisposes you to die of heart disease when you're 50 or 60, those genetic factors are not likely to be selected out of the population readily because they have no effect whatsoever on the number of children you produce.

Thus EAM postulates a genome that is, after 3.5 billion years of existence and evolution, a mixed bag of creative development and expansion serving telic purposes for the organism (any organism), plus accumulated damage and errors that serve evolution's telic purpose of limiting the life span of any individual member of any given population. After all, it's entirely obvious that if life were immortal, there would be no purpose in reproduction or evolution.

Evolution absolutely relies upon mortality. Life, on the other hand, strives mightily (and in vain) against it. The dynamic tension explains what we observe about these phenomena, but does not explain the actual nature of life itself. That's a different question altogether.

Mike Turner (EAM) might be another candidate, but I don't know how active he is.

No sightings since he was expelled from ARN. But Turner was possibly more erascible than John Davison with his PEH when it came to answering queries on his EAM, which appeared to be just another "front loading" variation. If you think the EAM had legs, you might offer an answer to:

How does front loading create its information and how does front loading ensure that the particular information ends up in the right environment for the right organism?

Just to be clear, in your front loading hypothesis:

1) Where does the information come from, initially?

2) What mechanism ensures that information is expressed in the appropriate environment?

substituting EAM for front loading if you think there are significant differences between the two ideas.

Surely the point of NOMA is it is unnecessary to address religious issues at all, when discussing things scientific. Reality and imagination need not impinge.

Add imaginary to real and things get complex.

However, I don't remember if Pixie is a NOMA embracer or a NOMA rejector.

I think it depends on what religion (or subset thereof) you are talking about. I can readily see how a Christian could embrace NOMA, but a YEC Christian certainly cannot. For me personally as an atheist, it is kind of like asking me if God is male: a non-question. I will argue against specific religious beliefs where they contradict science, without worrying about whether I embrace or reject NOMA.

Pixie, do you think you know the one and only Truth for us all?

I am far too modest to admit that around here!

If you look back at the context, I had just quoted Coturnix, "You cannot bludgeon kids with truth". When I said truth, I meant the truth as Coturnix believes it to be. I would guess that I agree with that truth, but that is the tentative truth of science, certainly not the Absolute Truth of religion.