Intelligent Design and ‘The Face on Mars’

As we all know, Intelligent Design advocates – led by people like William Dembski – insist that there are scientific and even mathematical techniques that can be used to identify things that are “intelligently designed”. They have focused their attention on issues relating to the biodiversity of life, primarily evolution and abiogenesis. But if their claims are true then there would be a number of other applications for their techniques.


For example, there is the rock formation called ‘The face on Mars’.

One of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976 revealed a rock formation that resembles a human face. The image resides on a mesa in the portion of Mars called “Cydonia” which lies in the planet's northern hemisphere. You can see pictures and a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars) .

As Wikipedia says, “Some commentators, most notably Richard C. Hoagland, believe the ‘Face’ to be evidence of a long-lost Martian civilization along with other features they believe are present, such as apparent pyramids, which they argue are part of a ruined city.”

Once the image was presented the focus was clearly on whether or not this face is “intelligently designed”. So clearly this “Face of Mars” would seem to present an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the techniques advocated by Dembski and others.

In fact, as you study the details, the ideal features of the match become more and more apparent.

First, the discussion is about whether or not carved faces in rocks are intelligently designed. We know that this is a perfect example of where ID techniques can be used because of the words of William Dembski himself!

At http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.08.Encyc_of_Relig.htm Dembski says:

“Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? To see what’s at stake, consider Mount Rushmore. The evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design is direct—eyewitnesses saw the sculptor Gutzon Borglum spend the better part of his life designing and building this structure. But what if there were no direct evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design? What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now?

“In that case, what about this rock formation would provide convincing circumstantial evidence that it was due to a designing intelligence and not merely to wind and erosion? Designed objects like Mount Rushmore exhibit characteristic features or patterns that point to an intelligence. Such features or patterns constitute signs of intelligence. Proponents of intelligent design, known as design theorists, purport to study such signs formally, rigorously, and scientifically. Intelligent design may therefore be defined as the science that studies signs of intelligence. “

Mount Rushmore, of course, consists of “intelligently designed” carved faces in rocks.

The “Face on Mars” is – at least potentially – is an “intelligently designed” carved face in a rock.

It would seem that we have a perfect fit!

Second, this “face” was very controversial. On September 8, 2000, an online poll produced the following results: 37 percent said it was made by aliens, 31 percent thought it was a natural geographical feature, and 32 percent answered that they thought there was not enough data to decide either way. It would be difficult to construct a set of statistics showing more indecision (and therefore more controversy) among the general public.

Third, the timing was nearly perfect. In 1998 – a mere two years before the poll mentioned above – William Dembski published his book titled "The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities". That book discussed ideas such as "specified complexity" that could be used as a tool to identify ID.

Fourth, Intelligent Design claims have been called religious. This has been true throughout the ID debate. Most significantly the Dover, PA, court decision stated, in part, that ID “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

But the face on Mars has no religious connotations at all. As mentioned on Wikipedia, even those who think that the face is intelligently designed say that some sort of Martian civilization – rather than some “god” or “God” - created it. So by examining the “Face on Mars” with their techniques ID advocates could clearly show that their claims are NOT only based solely on religion.

Fifth, the potential significance of this discovery could hardly be more significant. If, in fact, this rock really is intelligently designed, it would be, without any real debate, the most significant archaeological discovery in human history. We would have disputable evidence that some form of civilization lived on Mars or that some other alien civilization visited there and created this face.

So, all of the pieces come together here. I can’t imagine that anyone could construct, even in their imagination, a better opportunity for ID advocates to show the value of their hypotheses.

With such a significant opportunity presented to them, surely a number of papers were published in the ID literature on this subject.

Right?

Alas! No ID advocates seemed to pay any attention whatsoever to the “Face on Mars”. The Discovery Institute, for example, has no articles at all about “Cydonia” – the location of the “Face”.

What can we conclude from this?

It’s simple. ID really is religious and ID really has no intellectual, scientific or mathematical validity.

Sorry, ID advocates.

More Evidence that ID is NOT scientific

The post below that I am responding to is from a confirmed advocate of Intelligent Design. In fact he is SUCH a strong advocate of ID that he basically considers it to be inerrant. He’s never questioned a single claim ever made by any members of the Discovery Institute.

> In brief (and in the words of design theorist Stephen C.

> Meyer), "the theory of intelligent design holds that there

> are telltale features of living systems and the universe

> that are best explained by an intelligent cause - that is,

> by the conscious choice of an intelligent agent - rather

> than by an undirected process."


> With respect to the biological world, the science of

> intelligent design is committed to the following

> propositions (elucidated by design theorist William Dembski

> in "The Design Revolution" and paraphrased here by me):

Here we begin a list of things that supposedly show that ID is both true and scientific.
It is, in fact, neither.
One thing that we need to look at is how specific the claims of ID advocates are. One of the requirements of a truly scientific hypothesis is that it must be specific. If it is not specific, then it is not really testable.
I’ve had creationists tell me that God must have created nature because much of it is so “beautiful”.
But what does that even mean? How do you specifically and objectively define “beauty”? So clearly that is a non-scientific argument. (As a matter of fact, we probably evolved to develop a sense of beauty based on how the natural world looks. Regardless of how flowers looked, we would probably consider them to be beautiful because that’s how they look and we’ve grown accustomed to that look.)
The examples given below include many that strongly demonstrate how this requirement is not followed.
Evolution makes MANY very specific claims. An obvious example is the one that has come close to being a cliché:
Evolution would be falsified if a mammalian fossil was found in pre-Cambrian rock.
Note how specific that is, both in the type of fossil as well as in the age of the rock.
ID can't come close to matching any such thing. That's how we know that it is CERTAINLY not science and almost certainly untrue. (ID cannot be falsified.)
Also, of course, ID is competing against Darwinian evolution. So if ID is making some sort of claim or prediction, that claim must be something different from what Darwinian evolution would claim or predict. Otherwise there is no reason to discard evolutionary hypotheses in order to adopt ID.
Finally, a scientific hypothesis must make some claim about what we will find (or can guarantee something that we won’t find) in the future. If all it does is look at evidence retroactively then it is not science. Our understanding of cosmology allows us to understand what caused eclipses in the past. But it also predicts future eclipses. Similarly evolution looks at things that happened in the past, but then it applies its theories to that evidence and makes specific predictions about the future. ID can’t do that.
> 1) Specified complexity is a reliable indicator of

> intelligent design. (Note: Design theorists develop the

> concept of specified complexity in several ways, such as

> complex specified information, irreducible complexity,

> functional complexity, etc.)
Ironically, lack of specificity noted.
How "complex" does it have to be?
How "specified" does it have to be?
An ID advocate would point out that many words have been written describing “specified complexity”. But those many words don’t really apply. William Dembski has written many of them and he specifies in his “Explanatory Filter” that if an event occurs with a probability of less than 10-150 power then it is necessarily the result of design. The problem is that none of those calculations seem to apply when a specific genetic feature is found. No one ever seems to calculate the specific odds of that feature evolving or not. They simply point to it and insist that it must be the result of Intelligent Design.
Can anyone identify some specific species or family of animals that would exhibit this characteristic? Can someone say, for example, that some genetic feature will be found to be “irreducibly complex” before it is studied?
Of course not.
What specific genetic characteristic will exhibit this feature?
No ID advocate can say.
Darwinian evolution can make very specific predictions. Darwinian evolution didn't specifically predict DNA. But once DNA was discovered and sequenced, evolution could make very specific predictions about what will be found in specific samples of DNA in the future. Example: No primate will have a working GULO gene. If we find additional specimens of the so-called 'Hobbit' (Homo floresiensis) on islands in SE Asia and are able to sequence their DNA, as was done for Neanderthals, evolution says with certainty that it will not have a working GULO gene.
That's the sort of specific claim – involving a specific gene in a specific type of organism - which evolution can make. Clearly ID falls far short of making any such specific prediction. That's one of the many reasons why ID is totally useless.
Effectively this "prediction" [cough, cough] can be summarized like this:
In the future ID advocates will continue to use the God-of-the-Gaps argument.
To that extent, the prediction is guaranteed to come true.
Putting it another way, all this is saying in essence is that all living things will have intricate DNA that "does stuff". Genes "do stuff". In that sense this is also something that Darwinian evolution would predict.
**IF** some organism had a very non-intricate genome (say a few thousand base-pairs) that would falsify Darwinian evolution.
So Darwinian evolution also predicts that living things would have intricate DNA with genes.
Note that there is even reasonable to expect an Intelligent Designer would create genomes lacking intricacy. Often the most elegant designs are the simplest ones. A procedure in a computer program taking, say, three lines is often considered to be a "better" design than one that takes, say, ten lines. So there is no reason for intricacy to be a necessary consequence of Intelligent Design. Obviously this is a feature of living things that ID advocates are trying to embrace that doesn’t really support their claims.
Oh-for-one.
> 2) Many biological systems and subsystems exhibit

> specified complexity.
Vague, and ironically "unspecified" assertion noted.
How "specified" is it?
How much "complexity" is needed?
“Complexity” (as synonymous with “intricacy) is not a necessary sign of Intelligent Design. If you compare a telephone pole to a typical oak tree, the oak tree is many orders of magnitude more intricate. But it is the telephone pole that is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-two.
> 3) Undirected material mechanisms do not suffice to

> explain specified complexity in the biological world.
TRUE!
Surprised?
But Darwinian evolution is FAR from "undirected". It has a very powerful directional force called "natural selection". ID advocates should learn something about it. A Victorian gentleman named Charles Darwin wrote a few books about that subject. Before Darwin people made the very same argument that is being made here. After Darwin those same people recognized the existence of such a "directed" force – natural selection.
So this is also a prediction made by Darwinian evolution. So it doesn't count as an argument in favor of ID.
Oh-for-three.
> 4) Intelligent design is the best explanation for

> biological systems and subsystems exhibiting specified

> complexity. (Note that ID doesn't concern itself with

> speciation, which is the central concern of Darwinian

> evolutionary theory.)
Wrong and wrong.
Intelligent design actually explains exactly NOTHING in the natural world. That's true of any "God of the Gaps" type of argument - which is all that ID is. Secondly, even the phrase "specified complexity" is totally meaningless because it is inconsistent to the point of being contradictory.
Oh-for-four.
> To flesh out those propositions and give them

> scientific rigor, ID theorists use these tools:

> probability theory, recursion theory, stochastic

> process theory, information theory, bioinformatics,

> biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology,

> microbiology, genetics, computer science,

> paleontology, Dembski's explanatory filter, abductive

> and inductive reasoning, and philosophy of science

> (to name only the tools that readily come to mind).
Wow. That's a LONG list.
Strange indeed that NONE of it supports ID and ALL of it supports biological evolution instead. Most obviously the “Philosophy of Science” doesn’t support ID! That philosophy says that scientific hypotheses must make specific predictions that can imply tests that could potentially falsify them. As we see here, there are no such specific predictions and, therefore, no such tests.
I don't see here a single example of how any of those things support ID in any way that evolutionary theories aren't also supported.
Oh-for-five.
> ID also makes a number of testable predictions, such as:
> 1) Natural structures will be found that contain many

> parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a

> specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
Define "many". Is that ten? Is it 100? How about 1000?
Define "intricate". Exactly how many components are needed to meet this claim?
Define "specific".
Obviously this is complete non-scientific nonsense. There isn't a single word here that has, very ironically, any "specificity". Anything so vaguely defined can be matched by anything in nature.
We KNOW that "specified complexity" is intellectual and scientific nonsense. We also KNOW that "intricacy" says absolutely NOTHING about whether or not something is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-six.
> 2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information

> will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without

> similar precursors.
Define "large".
Define "novel".
Define "information".
Also note that this claim doesn't demonstrate why this is necessarily a prediction of ID. Humans are intelligent designers. Their designs often change gradually over time. Look at a series of pictures of the Chevrolet Corvette for each model year from its inception until now. Automobiles are obviously intelligently designed. Yet these designs change gradually over time. So in what possible way are sudden design changes a necessary requirement of ID?
In fact, just about everything that humans have designed has changed gradually over time. Computer designs have changed gradually over time. Airplane designs have changed gradually over time. Even the human design of things like golf clubs has changed gradually over time. Gradual change over time is a much more common sign of intelligent design than not, at least if we look at humans designs.
At best, what we are talking about here are the imperfections in the fossil record and not evidence for or against ID or evolution. Clearly this is just another very obvious example of the "God-of-the-Gaps" argument - which is the sum total of ALL ID theories.
Oh-for-seven.
> 3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and

> other functional parts will be re-used in different and

> unrelated organisms.

Define "routinely".  Should we see it 90% of the time?  How about 50%?
Define "convergence". How closely do two genetic traits in two different organisms have to be in order to make them "convergent"?
Moreover, the natural world consists of MANY examples of places where such convergence would make complete sense to an "intelligent designer" but, instead, NO such convergence exists.
Using the example I often point to: fish and cephalopods (squids and octopi) have different eye "designs". Yet they live in precisely the same environment. This would seem to be a PERFECT opportunity for routine "convergence".
Right?
Alas. Fish have the same eye design as all other vertebrates. Cephalopods (squids and octopi) have a different eye design.
This would seem to represent a perfect opportunity for ID to make a specific prediction. It could predict that all organisms living in the ocean would have a “convergent” eye design. That would be actually testable and could make ID something like science. But, of course, ID can’t make specific predictions. That’s why ID is totally useless as well as not scientific.
Evolution has an explanation for these non-convergent designs. Eyesight provides very strong adaptive advantages for any organism capable of movement. I don’t even need to explain those advantages. So that once something such as a light-sensitive spot appears on an organism that, at least, allows night to be distinguished from day, it is easy to see how changes improving that spot’s ability to “see” would be strongly influenced by natural selection. But we would expect to see different “designs” if they were the result of different random genetic changes influenced by natural selection. That's precisely what we see.
ID has NO explanation.
Another example of non-convergent “designs” where we might expect them: cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) are comparable in size to sharks and they also move through precisely the same environment – the water in the oceans.
This would appear to be another perfect example of an opportunity for convergence in the design of their tails.
Alas. The tails of cetaceans move vertically. The tails of fish, including sharks, move horizontally. They are different, non-convergent "designs".
Why?
Evolution has an explanation. The tails of cetaceans evolved from the back legs of land animals. If you put your legs together it is obvious that they move more easily up-and-down than they do from side-to-side. That’s true for all mammals. So the proposed evolution of cetaceans from land mammals makes perfect sense in the context of the way that cetacean tails move.
ID, obviously has no explanation.
Convergence --> NO support for ID.
Oh-for-eight.
> 4) Much so-called "junk DNA" will turn out to perform

> valuable functions.
Define "much".
ID advocates can’t do so. This may be the single most egregious example of ID advocates lacking any specificity in their predictions.
If an ID advocate had said "most" instead of "much" then we would have an implied number - 51%. But "much"? What does that mean? How do we measure that? If 1% of “junk DNA” is found to be useful, that would mean that some 30 MILLION base pairs now have a function. You could argue that is “much”. But it would still leave well over 90% without a use. That would argue that our hypothesized 1% isn’t “much” at all. So, ID advocates are simply making a rhetorical argument rather than a scientific one.
Furthermore, how long do we have to wait? What if a century from now we haven't found "much" (whatever that means) functional junk DNA. What will happen? Clearly ID advocates will simply say that we have to wait longer.
Evwn evolutionists predict that SOME "junk DNA" will turn out to perform valuable functions. In fact it is the mainstream scientists - those who accept evolution – that are discovering these functions.
It is NOT the ID "scientists" [cough, cough] doing that sort of research.
So the difference between ID and evolution here is the difference between the definitions of the word "much" and "some".
Oh-for-nine.
> The above predictions are taken from:
> http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/becbd98b35e8e07260d4e8e92784cbb/b/miscdocs/thepositivecasefordesign_v3.pdf

Clearly that web site is nothing but non-scientific nonsense.

Borders

Intelligent Design advocates often say that “intricacy” is one of the indications that something was designed rather than the result of naturalistic processes. For example, one of the leading ID promoters and a fellow at the Discovery Institute, Casey Luskin, said this[1]:

"Intelligent agents think with an 'end goal in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in INTRICATE patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information)..." [emphasis added]

In fact, intricacy says nothing at all about whether or not something is intelligently designed. As a matter of fact, intricacy often indicates a natural process rather than something that is intelligently designed.

I’ve given other examples before, but one interesting example is the shape of the borders of the states of the United States.

One of the most easily recognizable states is California. A silhouette is shown below.

Note that the western border is very intricate while the northern border (and most of the eastern border) is not intricate at all. They are straight lines.

Does that tell us anything?

Of course it does!

The intricate borders are those that interface with natural barriers or borders – an ocean, a river, a stream, etc. The borders that lack intricacy are “intelligently designed”! At some point in history human beings got together and decided on where those borders were to be located. They then drew the border with the least intricate line possible – a straight line.

Of course most of us are very familiar with the map of California and know that the Pacific Ocean is to the west. That naturalistic cause forms the intricate western border of the state. The intricate portion of the south-eastern border is the result of another naturalistic cause – the Colorado River.

In fact this rule-of-thumb seems to apply to all borders, including international borders. The border between the Western United States and Western Canada is a straight, horizontal line lacking any intricacy. Obviously that portion of the border was “Intelligently Designed”. In contrast the border between the Eastern United States and Eastern Canada is very intricate. Obviously that border is the result of naturalistic forces – the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.

So as a general rule, when looking at international and state borders, we see:

1. Where it is intricate, it is the result of natural forces.
2. Where it lacks intricacy, it is the result of “Intelligent Design”.

There are many other similar examples.

Of course Intelligent Designers DO create complex things as well. Super-computers and the Space Shuttle are obvious examples.

Therefore, the only rational conclusion is that the amount of intricacy in something has nothing whatsoever to do with determining whether or not it is Intelligently Designed.

---

[1] http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=986, referenced on May 25, 2010

Intelligent Design – useless or worse than useless?

It is very unlikely that Intelligent Design will ever be accepted by the scientific community. The primary reason for that is very obvious – ID is not science.

ID cannot be science because it can never be falsified – a requirement of a scientific hypothesis. ID never can be falsified – and therefore cannot be science - as long as one possibility for the designer is an omnipotent and omniscient God. Such a God, by definition, can do anything and do so for reasons that we mere humans might not be able to understand. As long as such a God is a possible designer – even if not the only possibility – any natural phenomenon is possible. Because of that, until the possibility of an omnipotent and omniscient God is specifically excluded as a possible designer, ID cannot possibly be science.

But what if the extremely unlikely happens and ID is accepted by the scientific community, what happens next? Even if that were to happen, ID would prove to be useless or even worse than useless in its effects on science.

One philosopher of science, Bruce L. Gordon, in an essay titled "Is Intelligent Design Science?" says:

"Is intelligent design (ID) a 'science stopper'? In a word, no. Every viable research program generates its own set of questions. While many of the questions that are natural to an ID approach to science will be different from those that are pursued under the rubric of evolutionary naturalism, they will be no less scientific and, I suspect, no less fruitful. It is also important to realize that ID theorists are NOT advocating a cessation of research from the perspective of neo-Darwinian or self-organizational complexity theories. These approaches are tremendously interesting and fruitful in their own right, and it would be foolish to abandon them.”

The lack of specific examples should be noted.

Let’s apply a little common sense.

First of all, it would seem that it would be very important to identify the designer. In particular it would be important to know whether or not the designer was a supernatural being. There’s a group of people called “Raellians”. They believe in a form of ID. Specifically they claim that life on Earth is basically a science experiment being performed by an alien species. This alien species visits Earth, plants new species of organisms and then periodically tests them to see how viable they are. It is this species that is responsible for the alien abductions that people occasionally report.

If the designer was an alien species, as the Raellians believe, then it would be very useful to know that. Because, in that case, whatever mechanisms were used by those aliens might be duplicated by humans since they would be naturalistic mechanisms.

On the other hand, if the designer was a supernatural God, then there is really no point in trying to understand the mechanisms. That’s because humans can’t perform supernatural mechanisms – i.e. perform miracles.

Alas, ID evidently won’t be able to help us out with this. As one ID advocate said:

“Indeed, no matter how widely accepted ID theory becomes, it is likely that science will never ascertain the identity of the designer.”

So it appears that ID will be useless in this regard.

Another possible benefit to accepting ID is that it might allow us to identify where we should invest out scientific research funding. For example, there is a quite a bit of research going into the study of “abiogenesis” – which is the search for an explanation of how life could have arisen from chemicals. Many ID advocates insist that even the first life form was too complex to have come about from the combination of chemicals. Therefore they insist that the very first living thing (and maybe all “kinds” of living things) only could have come through the intervention of an Intelligent Designer. If the ID advocates are correct, abiogenesis research is doomed to be useless.

By most accounts, Sir Isaac Newton spent more time doing research into alchemy than anything else. That research was fruitless. Based on our understanding of how atoms work we know why it was fruitless. If, in the early days, someone had proven to Newton that alchemy research was doomed to be pointless, presumably he would have invested his time in other areas of research. Since he was such a brilliant scientist, he may have made scientific discoveries centuries earlier than what became the case. Our entire world might be different than it is now if only Newton had been convinced not to spend so much time on alchemy.

The ID advocates would have us believe that abiogenesis research will be as fruitless as Isaac Newton’s research into alchemy.

In that case, we are better off stopping such research right now. Why invest time and effort researching things that can never reach their desired scientific goals?

Why indeed?

But apparently ID won’t benefit us in this way either. If you go back and read the quote presented at the beginning of this post you read:

“It is also important to realize that ID theorists are NOT advocating a cessation of research from the perspective of neo-Darwinian or self-organizational complexity theories. These approaches are tremendously interesting and fruitful in their own right, and it would be foolish to abandon them.”

So we would just continue to do science just as we are now.

So it appears that ID will be useless in this regard as well.

It is very important to note, however, that there are some real dangers implicit in the acceptance of ID.

Much scientific research is HARD WORK. When doing things like sequencing DNA, you have to be very careful not to allow any contamination of any kind. Often time-consuming experiments have to be performed over and over again. Undoubtedly the amount of time required exceeds the initial expectations of the scientists.

If ID was accepted as an explanation for naturalistic phenomena, scientists engaged in such difficult research would always be tempted to say, “Gee, this research is a lot more difficult and time-consuming than I initially expected. Wait! I know! I’ll declare this naturalistic phenomenon to be intelligently designed. I’ll write a paper saying that and move onto some other form of research.” Dr. Michael Behe’s hypothesis of “irreducible complexity” could be used in many such situations. If something is “irreducibly complex”, there’s no point in trying to reduce it any more.

In this sense, ID would be less than useless. It would provide an excuse for terminating potentially rewarding scientific research due to providing an excuse to terminate such research early.

Moreover, as a practical matter, it is difficult to imagine research organizations spending valuable research dollars on things that have been determined by ID advocates as being intelligently designed. None of those organizations are funding alchemy research now. It is unrealistic to expect that they would fund research into a naturalistic source for life on Earth if there is a committee somewhere that determines that the first life forms on Earth were not the result of naturalistic processes.

So, realistically, some scientific research would be terminated due to a lack of funding. This would be another example of where ID is less than useless.

So we seem to be faced with only two alternatives:

1. ID is useless.
2. ID is worse than useless.

In either case, ID research should not be pursued.

ID Science Journals

One of the arguments that Intelligent Design opponents make is that ID is not science. As evidence they point to the paucity of articles about ID that are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

To defend themselves against this attack ID advocates say that the editors of those journals don’t accept articles about ID because they have the preconception that ID isn’t science. They contend that even legitimate articles aren’t published because of that preconception.

As one piece of evidence to support their claims, they point to the example of Dr. Richard Sternberg. He was the editor of a scientific journal associated with the Smithsonian Institute titled Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. He handled the review and personally edited the only article published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal advocating intelligent design. The journal subsequently publicly declared that the paper "does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings" and would not have been published had usual editorial practices been followed”. As a result of the controversy Sternberg received widespread criticism. ID advocates point to that criticism and claim that it has had an intimidating effect on the willingness of other scientific journal editors to publish such articles.

To bypass that alleged bias by editors of mainstream scientific journals, the ID community has set up a few pro-ID journals with editors who are open to approving pro-ID articles. So IF the ID advocates are correct then we should see these journals thriving. We should expect to see more and more articles published each year as scientists recognize the scientific “benefits” of Intelligent Design and write articles about those benefits.

So let’s see if that is the case.

First, let’s consider PCID - "Progress in Complexity Information and Design". It is a peer-reviewed journal published by the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design
(ISCID). The goal of the society is "retraining the scientific imagination to see the purpose in nature".

The web site at http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php lists past issues of the journal. It was first published in January-March 2002. It has become more and more sporadic over time. Three issues were published in 2002. Two issues were published in 2003. One issue was published in 2004 and one in 2005. There have been NO issues published since November 2005. That's nearly five years ago.

Very ironically, Dr. Richard Sternberg is a fellow at ISCID. It’s reasonable to expect that he might be one of the reviewers of articles submitted to the journal. If so, it’s rather funny to see that he has nothing to review because no one is submitting any articles to the journal.

Next we can look at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab which does “design- theoretic research”. Their journal is described at: http://evoinfo.org/publications/ . That web site lists a total of five articles. The most recent one was published in March, 2010. The other four were published in 2009.

If you examine the articles, you will see that every single one has its sole authors, or included as authors with a small number of others, "William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II". So what we have here is a private publishing group for Dembski and Marks with no articles published that doesn’t include those names as authors.

Yet again we see an irony. The web page listing those five articles also lists 11 articles supporting ID that were published in OTHER journals. The articles listed go back as far as 1993 and they are published in what are really computer and mathematical journals rather than science journals. Yet they are referenced on the same web page. Therefore, if anything, those articles show that it is possible to get pro-ID articles published without requiring a specifically pro-ID journal.

Not surprisingly, The Discovery Institute has a list of published "ID friendly" articles (and books) at: http://www.discovery.org/a/2640 If we look at the articles listed we see that the total number of articles published since 2005 is…hold your breath…ONE! That single article is authored by our old friends, William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II. It is also mentioned in the previous resource – Evolutionary Informatics Lab. If we don’t count that article twice, then there are NO articles published since 2005.

A final list of published "ID friendly" articles can be found at http://biologicinstitute.org/research/

There are a total of 28 articles listed, going back to 1993. On average that’s less than two per year. ALL of the articles listed are from non-ID journals. They include the articles listed by the other ID references. At that site we see that the total articles published in either 2009 or 2010 is ZERO.

Moreover if you read the abstracts for the articles you see that any references to ID are nonexistent. The abstract for the oldest article – from 1993 – which is referenced from a number of these references, is shown below.

“Kinesin light chain (KLC) complexes with the kinesin heavy chain (KHC) to form native kinesin. Proposed functions of KLC include coupling of cargo to KHC or modulation of KHC ATPase activity. In this paper we use the KHC tail, which binds specifically to KLC in blot overlays, as a probe to clone a cDNA encoding KLC from a Drosophila expression library. The identified clone encodes a protein with 70% amino acid identity to rat KLC. Drosophila KLC is predicted to form an alpha-helical coiled-coil between residues 34 and 129, followed by five imperfect tandem repeats of unknown function and a sixth shorter motif. These repeats are highly conserved across species. The Drosophila KLC gene is located at 69D on the third chromosome and is widely expressed, with 1.8-kb transcripts in most tissues, and slightly smaller transcripts in gonads. Finally, we present evidence that the heptad repeats of KLC are required for interaction with the KHC tail. Since the KHC tail used in our assay includes about 20 heptad repeats, this result suggests that KHC and KLC interact via coiled-coils. Such an interaction could provide stability to the KHC-KLC complex in vivo.”

That’s obviously very technical, but any reference to ID is not obvious. Are DNA repeats that “are highly conserved across species” evidence for ID? If so, there is nothing in the abstract to make us come to that conclusion.

If, in fact, the articles are pro-ID, you wouldn’t know it from the abstracts.

It appears that the authors of the articles are pro-ID, even if the articles themselves are not. For example, six of the articles listed list Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez – an alleged victim of anti-ID bias – as the author. But the articles themselves apparently don’t discuss ID. That fact argues against the claims of the ID advocates. The article shouldn’t be listed as pro-ID because they don’t discuss ID. Moreover, anti-ID discrimination is not so significant if ID advocates can have articles printed in mainstream journals.

So we can safely conclude:

There are very, very few pro-ID articles printed even if you include ID-friendly journals.

It is clear that the argument that ID is not science because no one is publishing ID friendly articles is quite valid.

Geocentrism is not dead!

The web site

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/nice_to_know_we_dont_have_a_mo.php

has a link to a video where some creationists in the UK – they actually call themselves creationists – say that they can absolutely falsify evolution. Their argument? They can prove that the universe is geocentric. The creationist argument used in this particular video relates to the Michelson – Morley experiment. As the video states, that is “the most famous non-result in scientific history”.

It is, of course, completely ludicrous to believe that the universe is geocentric. But the video is interesting for two reasons.

First, I think that it is a good example of the sorts of arguments that creationists are fond of. The Michelson – Morley experiment had unexpected results (or more accurately, a lack of results) that surprised scientists. While it is a fairly well-known experiment, it’s likely that 90% or more of the general population has never heard of it. I first heard of it during a college physics class. Not many people take college physics classes.

Of course the vast majority of people do know that mainstream science overwhelmingly believes that the universe – as well as the solar system – is NOT geocentric. Even elementary school science classes talk about the Earth rotating on its axis every 24 hours and revolving around the sun every 365-1/4 days.

But, if you want to make an argument that will impress a relatively unsophisticated audience, do this:

1. Describe an experiment with results that surprised scientists.
2. Point out that this shows that scientists don’t know everything.
3. Claim that the fact that scientists don’t know everything shows that they are wrong about geocentrism.

The Michelson-Morley experiment actually showed that there is no ‘aether’ – a weightless medium through which light propagates. But most people haven’t heard of the ‘aether’ either. (Hey, that rhymes!)

Unsophisticated people end up saying, “Hey! We should teach the controversy!”

At this point you’d expect common sense to kick in. The Michelson-Morley experiment took place in 1887. That’s 123 years ago. If it confirmed geocentrism, wouldn’t someone have noticed over all that time? After all – even so many years later - it is surely still the case that science rejects geocentrism. How can that be the case if this experiment so long ago showed otherwise?

It seems to me that, if we had never heard of that experiment, our common sense would tell us that while it is interesting, we should look into it a little more. Maybe a Google search would work or you could check it out on Wikipedia. People who would simply accept such a claim at face value are the same sort of people who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a stranger.

As we’ve discussed, a scientific consensus doesn’t prove anything. The scientific consensus before the Michelson-Morley experiment was that an aether existed. That was wrong.

But surely a strong consensus indicates that there must be SOME evidence supporting that consensus. So shouldn’t a rational person be a bit skeptical about individual experiments – especially ones performed long ago – that supposedly falsify some widely-held scientific hypothesis?

OF COURSE THEY SHOULD!

For some reason, creationists don’t do that. Creationists who claim that “There is NO evidence supporting evolution” are necessarily totally deluding themselves. Evolution may be wrong (though I surely don’t think that it is). But it is impossible to believe that there is NO evidence supporting evolution!

But, of course, a second question from this video is very obvious:

How could geocentrism falsify evolution?

Hopefully some creationist can answer this question. Note that I don’t expect anyone to actually believe that geocentrism is true. Instead I’m asking that IF geocentrism was true, how would that falsify evolution?

CSA Fraud

The article on the web site titled “What Is Science? How Does It Apply To Discussions of Origins?” By Tom Willis (on the web page http://www.csama.org/csanews/nws199509.pdf )betrays a rather complete misunderstanding of what science is and what religion is.

“The birth of first life, the first fish, a fish giving birth to a salamander millions of years ago is simply not testable by this method because you cannot repeat the birth of the first of anything.”

That’s clearly a silly, juvenile comment. Even things that happened in the past can often be expected to leave evidence that can be predicted to be found in the future. Ironically one of the very best examples of this is found in the predictions of fish evolving into salamanders.

(I hope, of course, that the comment about a “fish giving birth to a salamander” is hyperbole. No person on Earth believes that such a thing ever happened. In fact IF a fish DID give birth directly to a salamander that would falsify mainstream evolutionary theory. Instead the descendents of fish can evolve into salamanders – and then into land animals – over many, many generations.)

I suggest that you investigate the fossil called “tiktaalik”. An excellent, quite detailed, description of that fossil and how it was found can be read in the book “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin – one of the scientists who discovered the fossil.

It turns out that there fossils of fish beginning to have the characteristics of “salamanders” (such as Panderichtys) that were known to have lived about 380 million years ago. There were also early tetrapod fossils (four-legged land animals) such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega) that lives about 365 million years ago.

It made sense, that there should be a fossil of a “salamander” (half-fish and half-tetrapod) that could be found in rocks about 375 – 360 million years old.

It was also known that Greenland and Northern Canada had exposed rocks that were 375 – 360 million years old

Therefore, if evolution is true, we would expect to find fossils of such a “salamander” in those rocks.

So some scientists looked for such fossils in those rocks.

Guess what they found?

They found “tiktaalik” – the fossil of an organism that was basically a salamander.

Clearly this Tom Willis person has no idea what he is talking about.