Wedgie World

The Panda's Thumb: Creationist Fears, Creationist Behaviors

2005-05-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

The Panda's Thumb: Creationist Fears, Creationist Behaviors

Many authors have correctly explained that the testimony of ID proponents in Topeka only criticized evolution. Indeed, in an effort to allay concerns that the rejected proposals were written to mandate the teaching of creationism, John Calvert articulated this point numerous times directly. Until Gumbel’s article, though, media coverage has failed to identify the desire by ID creationists to confuse the public. In other words, Gumbel is one of the first journalists to point out that, to an intelligent design creationist, the whole point of criticizing evolutionary theory is to criticize evolutionary theory.

It is important for advocates of science to recognize this strategy because there is a clear link between the beliefs creationists hold, the threats to those beliefs that they perceive from verified science, the fear they have from those threats, and the reactions to those threats that they make. Several points and implications about this understanding of creationist strategy merit mention and they will be developed below the fold.

Great article

Nature letters

2005-05-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

Scientists respond
Jerry Coyne, When science meets religion in the classroom p275

Rather, advocates of ID pretend to use scientific methods to support their religious preconceptions. It has no more place in the biology classroom than geocentrism has in the astronomy curriculum.

David Leaf, Teaching about ID helps students see its flaws p275

Although it seems to have been resurrected for religious or cultural agendas, ID's proponents have made empirical claims that can be examined. Many college students are curious about ID but have little knowledge of the claims made for it. In my experience, upper-level biology students with the appropriate background in molecular biology, genetics, developmental biology and evolution are capable of distinguishing the scientific merits of evolutionist and ID claims — to the great disadvantage of ID.

Students who themselves determine that ID does not cut the scientific mustard will be more effective in their support of teaching mainstream science. Students who remain creationists or fence-sitters will at least have a better understanding of why ID has not been widely accepted in the scientific community.

It may seem contradictory to offer a course on ID and evolution in colleges and oppose teaching ID in high schools. But high-school students are just learning the basics of science. To expect them to make a well-reasoned judgement about the status of any scientific theory, including evolution, is unrealistic.

Chris Miller, Evolution is a short-order cook, not a watchmaker p275

A terrific argument against ID came to me recently after two consecutive talks, one on the Wnt signalling pathway, the next on G-protein crosstalk in control of cellular calcium. Just look at the details, and you'll immediately abandon all thoughts that biological systems were designed with any intelligence whatsoever.

Douglas W. Yu, Seeking evidence of God's work undermines faith p275

The Bible throughout teaches that faith is more valuable when expressed in the absence of evidence. For a Christian, when science is allowed to be neutral on the subject of God, science can only bolster faith. In contrast, and I imagine without realizing it, ID proponents have become professional Doubting Thomases, funded by Doubting Thomas Institutes. When advocates of ID use the vocabulary of science to argue for God's presence in cellular machinery or in the fossil record, they too poke their fingers through Jesus' hands. In so doing, ID vitiates faith.

Rustum Roy, Leave well alone and stick to teaching what you know p276

There are some very skilled experts on the topic of how to deal with different cultures or belief systems. Their advice, from experience, would be: leave well alone. Act like a scientist, confident in your own — always tentative, always open to change — axioms and laws. Read the literature, for God's (or Darwin's) sake. It will prove to you that even graduates of MIT and Harvard do not know simple scientific facts that are irrelevant to their work, such as why the Earth experiences winter and summer, despite having been explicitly taught such facts several times during their education. This amazing ignorance does not affect their performance as scientists. I do not know a single materials scientist or engineer whose technical work would be affected by their beliefs about evolution/ID. My advice: relax. It can do very little harm. Ham-fisted efforts will simply alienate much larger numbers of people from the rest of science

Michael Lynch, Intelligent design or intellectual laziness? p276

Less widely appreciated is that evolution has long been the most quantitative field of biology, well grounded in the general principles of transmission genetics. Yet few students at university, and almost none at high school, are exposed to the mathematical underpinnings of evolutionary theory. The teaching of evolution purely as history, with little consideration given to the underlying mechanisms, reinforces the false view that evolution is one of the softer areas of science.

Dan Graur, Solidarity with the oppressed flat-Earthers p276

was disturbed by your News Feature "Who has designs on your students' minds?" (Nature 434, 1062−1065; 2005), in which the proponents of ID are mostly portrayed as a persecuted minority. They are said to be afraid to reveal their identity and to be frequently censured into silence by anti-democratic scientists and administrators.

Your reporter clearly does not realize that 'intelligent designers' are not the only minority bullied into submission by the scientific establishment. The vast majority of flat-Earthers, tea-leaf readers, astrologers, geocentrists and phlogiston theorists cannot publish their studies in respectable journals. It is rumoured that Nature has rejected without review a study showing that storks bring babies into the world. I have even heard of a physician who was fired from a university hospital for trying to cure his patients by altering the ratio of blood to yellow bile and phlegm to black bile.

Thanks to your News Feature, I am now convinced that by replacing "small, medium and large" with "tall, grande and venti" — as in my local coffee-shop — the disreputable theory of biblical creationism can be turned into a respectable scientific discipline called 'intelligent design'.

Followup

2005-04-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

And a followup where Myers points out some other problems with Berlinski’s arguments can be found http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/berlinski_babbles_some_more/

Glen Davidson at ARN (http://www.arn.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/13/t/002038/p/2.html#000062) makes a similar observation

Quoting Davisdson “The upshot is that the power of natural selection is not well known at present. Many studies have shown weak results, but then one should recognize that experimenting with “natural selection” is fraught with difficulty. That’s one reason why I just sort of went along with Berlinski’s comment previously, without really concerning myself too much with it. What I do think is interesting, though, is that the problem is not in simply differentiating between weak effects and strong effects, but also that the studies have generally lacked the resolution to detect “unrealistically strong” selection. Berlinski’s trying to make hay out of some rather difficult-to-resolve issues, and he really should treat the whole matter more appropriately.”

Comment by WedgieWorld — April 27, 2005 @ 8:46 pm

Kingsolvers Diverge Over Natural Selection

2005-04-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Dembski comments on a paper by . G. Kingsolver et al. in a meta-analytic statistical study titled “The Strength of Phenotypic Selection in Natural Populations,” published in the March 2001 issue of The American Naturalist.

Dembski 'argues' that “important issues about selection remain unresolved,” which ends up being a euphemistic way of saying that natural selection was found to have virtually no statistically significant effect (see here for David Berlinski’s fuller commentary).

Let’s look at the abstract…

abstract: How strong is phenotypic selection on quantitative traits in the wild? We reviewed the literature from 1984 through 1997 for studies that estimated the strength of linear and quadratic selection in terms of standardized selection gradients or differentials on natural variation in quantitative traits for field populations. We tabulated 63 published studies of 62 species that reported over 2,500 estimates of linear or quadratic selection. More than 80% of the estimates were or morphological traits; there is very little data for behavioral or physiological traits. Most published selection studies were unreplicated and had sample sizes below 135 individuals, resulting in low statistical power to detect selection of the magnitude typically reported for natural populations. The absolute values of linear selection gradients FbF were exponentially distributed with an overall median
of 0.16, suggesting that strong directional selection was uncommon. The values of FbF for selection on morphological and on life-history/ phenological traits were significantly different: on average, selection on morphology was stronger than selection on phenology/life history.
Similarly, the values of FbF for selection via aspects of survival, fecundity, and mating success were significantly different: on average, selection on mating success was stronger than on survival. Comparisons of estimated linear selection gradients and differentials suggest that indirect components of phenotypic selection were usually modest relative to direct components. The absolute values of quadratic selection gradients FgF were exponentially distributed with an overall median of only 0.10, suggesting that quadratic selection is typically quite weak. The distribution of g values was symmetric about 0, providing no evidence that stabilizing selection is stronger or more common than disruptive selection in nature.

And PZ Myers rebuttal to Berlinski’s ‘arguments’ can be found here: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/berlinski_says_he_is_not_an_astrologer/

Has Dembski even read the paper in question I wonder? What about the quote from the paper? In context it says

“This review demonstrates that our information about the strength of phenotypic selection in natural populations has increased dramatically in the past 2 decades, but many important issues about selection remain unresolved. Our analyses suggest some specific directions for future study.
First, higher methodological standards are needed for future studies of selection (Gurevitch and Hedges 1999; Fairbairn and Reeve 2001). Most studies to date are unreplicated and have sample sizes too small to detect selection of typical magnitude. To reduce problems with Type I errors, significance testing of selection gradients and differentials should adjust for multiple tests within studies. Future studies should also report phenotypic variances and covariances among traits and standard errors on selection differentials so that appropriate meta-analyses can be conducted.
Second, we have abundant information about directional selection on morphological traits. By contrast, selection on quantitative behavioral and physiological traits remains largely unknown and should be the focus of future studies.

Comment by WedgieWorld — April 27, 2005 @ 8:30 pm

Quoting, Misquoting, Quote-Mining

2005-04-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

On his Blog Uncommon Descent, Dembski discusses quote mining. Here is my response in case it is removed.

The problem with ID and the Cambrian explosion is that ID relies, as usual, on gaps in our knowledge to infer ‘design’ and represents the phyla as all having arise simultaneously during the Cambrian Period. When making their ‘arguments’ research is often quoted incompletely or the research is out-dated by new findings. The worst example is the use of the work by Valentine by ID when in fact Valentine is on the record as

Valentine wrote:

The title of this book, modeled on that of the greatest biological work ever written, is in homage to the greatest biologist who has ever lived. Darwin himself puzzled over but could not cover the ground that is reviewed here, simply because the relevant fossils, genes, and their molecules, end even the body plans of many of the phyla, were quite unknown in his day. Nevertheless, the evidence from these many additional souces of data simply confirm that Darwin was correct in his conclusions that all living things have descended from a commmon anscestor and can be placed within a tree of life, and that the principle process guiding their descent has been natural selection.

(Valentine On the Origin of Phyla 2004: Preface)

See Meyer: Cambrian Explosion and CSI? and Icons of ID: And the Wedge continues at for a more detailed description.
While the Cambrian explosion may have appeared to support creationist scenarios, increased knowledge and understanding shows that regularity and chance cannot be excluded, blocking a design inference. Since ID fails to present any scientific hypothesis of design, its reliance on this eliminative approach dooms it to irrelevance under the category of “God of the gaps” arguments (or as Dembski himself stated that if the filter would admit false positives, it would render it utterly useless. Given that the filter cannot exclude false positives, the conclusion seems simple.

Comment by WedgieWorld — April 27, 2005 @ 8:15 pm

The New York Times > Opinion > 'Intelligent Design'

2005-02-12T17:50:00.000-08:00

The New York Times > Opinion > 'Intelligent Design': "To the Editor:

In 'Design for Living' (Op-Ed, Feb. 7), Michael J. Behe quoted me, recalling how I discovered that 'the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered' some 40 years ago. Dr. Behe then paraphrases my 1998 remarks that 'the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.'

That I was unaware of the complexity of living things as a student should not be surprising. In fact, the majestic chemistry of life should be astounding to everyone. But these facts should not be misrepresented as support for the idea that life's molecular complexity is a result of 'intelligent design.' To the contrary, modern scientific views of the molecular organization of life are entirely consistent with spontaneous variation and natural selection driving a powerful evolutionary process.

In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because 'intelligent design' theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.

Bruce Alberts
President
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, Feb. 9, 2005"

ARN Board: What is the positive evidence for evolution #6?

2005-02-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

Rafe Gutman posted the following on ARN Board: What is the positive evidence for evolution #6?

(Also 'enjoy' the response by ID's Bulldog (vacuity of ID at work))

o how do we apply this to biology? if you were to compare the DNA sequence of a human gene, and a homologous mouse gene, they would probably be different by several nucleotides. for now let's restrict our analysis to the differences that do not result in a different amino acid, in other words, silent mutations. now imagine if you were to compare every human gene to its mouse counterpart, and score the number of silent mutations for each pair. what would you expect to see if the mutations were random? you would expect to see a distribution very much like a bell curve, which is in fact what we do see.

-
(note: this graph wasn't generated exactly how i described above, it's just to give you an idea. see here for the actual article)
you can apply this to any two organisms and get a bell curve out of it, with the average difference (i.e. peak of the curve) changing depending on the relatedness of the two organisms.

it's the success of these predictions from randomness that provide evidence for evolution, common ancestry, and RM+NS as the mechanism.

NPR : An Astronomer's View of Intelligent Design and the Heavens

2005-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

NPR : An Astronomer's View of Intelligent Design and the Heavens: "Morning Edition, February 8, 2005
Owen Gingerich, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University and senior astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, discusses the role of evolution and the creationist movement called Intelligent Design. Gingerich says he has a problem with Intelligent Design taught as an alternative to evolution."

Vacuity of ID: Accusations of censorship continue

2005-02-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

Salvador has 'responded' on Gross and Forrest's propaganda piece in the York Daily Record

Wesley has challenged Salvador to support his claims.

I'm putting them on notice by posting here, that I won't tolerate PvM's antics or anyone at PandasThumb. If they pull junk like that they'll be called on it publicly. They can't be pretending their forum is open to other posters while deleting posts which give the most incriminating evidence.

Of course, if they have now removed the auto-censorship feature (which seemed in place on one of the treads), the IDists might feel free now to keep posting the Forbidden URL quite frequently whenever they visit PandasThumb as means of exposing how critics use illegitimate tactics against IDists. [Wink] (hint, hint, hint).

Since Salvador promised to abide by the rules of Panda's Thumb and take the discussion to antievolution.org where Wesley Elsberry has maintained the discussion in spite of Sal's accusations that his comments are somehow censored, it seems clear that Sal's objections are mostly sophomoric.
The 'auto censorship' function is an annoying by necessary feature called SPAM filtering which disallows links which have too many hyphens. This can be easily addressed by using tinyurl.com to generate a short link. Of course, anyone who uses this to spam the boards with unrelated comments will likely end up on the Bathroom wall.

Speaking of 'illegitimate tactics', can Salvador explain why ARN has been censoring more and more ID critics? That's realy censorship going on here... While ID proponents seem to be able to mostly make any claim, ID critics end up being banned for simple jokes.

SO let's have a look at Sal's rebuttal

Now looking at
Elsberry and Shallit 2003

notice the following key phrases were missing:

1. "physical information"
2. "conceptual information"
3. "coincidence of"

[Eek!]

The crucial phrase is: CSI is "coincidence of conceptual and physical information". To write a paper to refute CSI and not include the most central definition of CSI is inexecusable.

That's it? Elsberry and Shallit succesfully refute the claims based on CSI and all Sal can do is accuse them of not using the 'central definition' of CSI? In order for this to be a rebuttal, Sal has to show that such omission is central to the claim by Elsberry and Shallit.
Which it of course isn't. So all Sal has done is erect a 'strawman' argument to allow him to ignore the devastating criticisms raised by Elsberry and Shallit.

Which may help explain his sophomoric behavior.

If people can't see through the rather sophomoric posturing Salvador engages in ("To write a paper to refute CSI and not include the most central definition of CSI is inexecusable", when we extensively critiqued the mathematics that instantiate CSI according to Dembski, for instance), I don't know that further discussion on my part will do much to correct the situation.

Wesley has extended the following challenge to Salvador

I posted that on August 31st. As far as I can tell, neither Salvador nor any other ID advocate has made the slightest headway in showing that I was inaccurate in either claim made above. Salvador has taken up an aggressive grandstanding technique, though I think that it is obvious to all that there is little to no substance as yet to back it up. If I were wrong on the two points above, it seems to me that it would be simplicity itself for some ID advocate to show that I was wrong, and I would have expected that to happen already. I predict that what I've written here will again disappear into the ID memory hole of inconveniently true criticisms.

If I'm wrong here, though, I'm willing both to take my lumps and acknowledge whoever it is that shows me to be wrong. I'm still waiting for the documentation. I suspect I will wait a long, long time.

We may indeed have to wait a long long time...

Vacuity of ID: Accusations of censorship

2005-02-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

Accusations of censorship at Panda's Thumb

Sal occasionally makes to claims. The first one is that he has 'debunked' Shallit and Elsberry's paper and the second one is that Panda's Thumb censors the link. I will show that neither one seems to have much relevance in supporting facts.

I will show the following:

1. Salvador's 'forbidden' URL is hardly forbidden. There are at least threads in which the URL can be found.
2. Salvador's posting problems are likely due to a recent update to the SPAM filter which removes links with multiple 'hyphens'. I believe the rule is three or more.
3. Salvador himself promised to take the discussion to antievolution.org
4. A few off topic postings by Salvador, and many others were not censored but moved to the bathroom wall.
5. Since PT has an open submission policy, the failure on Salvador's part to submit his 'forbidden URL' 'arguments' for consideration, further undermine his claims.

And finally, while Sal may think that he has rebutted Elsberry and Shallit's paper, the forbidden URL nor any other arguments so far presented by him, seem to support such a conclusion.

For many more examples of the vacuity of intelligent design, I suggest the reader checks the The Vacuity of Intelligent Design blogsite.

Wesley Elsberry has updated the this thread with his comments and observations.

If people can't see through the rather sophomoric posturing Salvador engages in ("To write a paper to refute CSI and not include the most central definition of CSI is inexecusable", when we extensively critiqued the mathematics that instantiate CSI according to Dembski, for instance), I don't know that further discussion on my part will do much to correct the situation.

In This thread Salvador responds to "Elsberry took a break from shadowing Bill Dembski" by asserting that:

Well, he was getting conistently hammered with the truth. PandasThumb began occasionally censoring my posts which contained:

The Forbidden URL

The Forbidden URL exposed the misrepresentations and uncharitable readings of Dembski's work by Elsberry. It exposed their illegitimate methods of attacking Dembski's work.

I mean, there were times, I tried to post, and I got the message about "can't post because of objectionable content". I figured how to redirect the URL and it got through. A couple other times Elsberry and PvM especially deleted my posts with a link to Elsberry's work to the bathroom wall.

I guess Elbserry got tired of getting called on his gaffes in the paper he wrote with Shallit (Dembski's former teacher) against Dembski.

I encourage all IDist anytime Elsberry gets on a public bulletin board, hammer him with the contents of The Forbidden URL. Make sure he's called into account for his misrepresentations and uncharitable readings of Demski's work.

and

This thread at ISCID: Response to Elsberry and Shallit 2003 has been apparently systematically monitored at PandasThumb.

When I tried to post a link to it at PandasThumb, it got blocked, I had to supply another URL to sneak it through. That is, they had a block on that specific thread and not the rest of the ISCID site. LOL! So I found an alternate URL to slip it through. Same with my website. Sometime I get through sometimes I don't.

What does that tell you? They don't like it when I call them on their misrepresentations. I can't post too much at PandasThumb because PvM and Elsberry delete my posts to the bathroom wall. I can't start a thread there like the critics can here. They don't want us exposing their misrepresentations which they used to attack Dembski and Meyer's paper.

Now I ask, is that a fair and civil tactic? Do I get irked seeing misrepresentations hurled at me and Bill Dembski and other IDists day in and day out on this forum and others?

Salvador is wrong, the thread is not systematically monitored. However due to the spam at PT, links with excessive hyphens did end up being blocked as potential spam.

Sal's posts are only removed to the Bathroom wall when his comments, like those of others, do not have any relevance to the thread. Since the Panda's Thumb has an Open Submission policy, and since as far as I know Sal has not taken any steps to submit his criticisms to PT, his objections seem hollow.

We at the Panda’s Thumb would like to develop an open submission policy to encourage guest contributions to our blog. We are currently looking at a two stage process. First abstracts are submitted and if accepted a full length post will follow. We are also looking into having a way for readers to alert us to news stories that we may have missed.

Now, the purpose of this post is to get feedback on this idea from the community. If you have any suggestions on how to structure the open submission policy, we’d like to hear from you in the comments.

Sal complains about vague 'misrepresentations' being hurled at him. If he has some specific examples then let him present them. It's one thing to complain about misrepresentations, it's another supporting them. Too often, such accusations seem to be more a way to avoid dealing with the arguments than based in reality. If Salvador has any particular arguments in mind, then I encourage him to submit a proposal to PT. Unlike other websites, PT is not intent on silencing its critics. On the contrary, I am on the record myself stating that I believe Sal makes an excellent ally :-)

Wesley Elsberry has discussed Sal's comments at Antievolution.orgwebsite.

On the Meyer 2004 Medley thread, Wesley tried again

I’ve pointed out to Salvador exactly what he needs to do to show that his boasting about the Elsberry and Shallit 2003 paper being the wrong citation to critique Meyer 2004 by was on track. These items are things that if I were wrong about, Salvador should quickly be able to show that I was wrong on. This is the FOURTH TIME I’ve entered this in response to Salvador’s comments here since August 31st. I’ll email them to him, too, just to eliminate any weak apologetic that he had somehow overlooked the previous presentations.

Wes observes that

I posted that on August 31st. As far as I can tell, neither Salvador nor any other ID advocate has made the slightest headway in showing that I was inaccurate in either claim made above. Salvador has taken up an aggressive grandstanding technique, though I think that it is obvious to all that there is little to no substance as yet to back it up. If I were wrong on the two points above, it seems to me that it would be simplicity itself for some ID advocate to show that I was wrong, and I would have expected that to happen already. I predict that what I’ve written here will again disappear into the ID memory hole of inconveniently true criticisms.

If I’m wrong here, though, I’m willing both to take my lumps and acknowledge whoever it is that shows me to be wrong. I’m still waiting for the documentation. I suspect I will wait a long, long time.

Salvador even stated that he would 'respect the forum conventions' and take the dicussion to antievolution.org boards

Dayton (Jack Krebs) advised me of the conventions of PandasThumb over at ARN.

I will respect this forum coventions and take my discussion over to www.antievolution.org as Jack Krebs suggested. The thread in question about CSI is

The so called 'forbidden URL' can be found in this posting on PT as well as in this thread

Sal seem to be quite wrong about these issues,. Again...

Speaking of censorship, it seems to me that ARN has been silencing many a critic since the Sternberg 'affair'. Does that not sound a bit ironic? While ID proponents seem to be free to make any assertion, ID critics are quickly called to 'justice'..

More vacuity of design

2005-02-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

Michael Behe writes in a New York Times OpEd

"The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious," Behe writes.

But that is not how design is inferred. Design is not based on 'it looks like a duck', it is based on an eliminative argument namely that evolution cannot explain X, thus it is designed. This is also known as an argument from ignorance or God of the Gaps.
ID proponents often try to argue that ID presents the best explanation or hypothesis but it is clear, by the absence of any such hypothesis beyond it looks like a duck, that ID is scientifically meaningless.

Michael Behe's concept of IC, which was once touted as evidence for ID, has not fared much better than other ID arguments.

More on Sternberg: DI Heal thyself

2005-02-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

The Island of Balta was quoted on the "Media Complaints Division" webpage of the Discovery Institutes Center for ~~the renewal of~~ Science and Culture:

In "Shooting the Messenger Indeed," and the resulting followup, Balta argues that the treatment of Rick Sternberg as described by David Klinghoffer in the WSJ article is much ado about nothing. If anything, Balta argues, it is Sternberg who violated the canons of science rather than those who attacked him.

The DI moves quickly to defend the Meyer paper. The first issue is quickly resolved "was the paper in line with the journal's guidelines"?

Balta quotes from the Journal's statement

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity. The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.

The DI strangely interprets this statement

Rather than identifying why the topic didn’t fit in the journal or wasn’t worthy on scientific grounds for publication, the Council simply asserted that there is no "credible scientific evidence" to support ID as an explanation for organic diversity, and then defers to an ex cathedra statement from the AAAS that ID is unscientific by definition. In Alice in Wonderland you have the verdict first and the trial later, but science deserves better.

First of all the Council was clear why the paper should have been rejected, irregardless of the issue whether or not the paper is of poor quality.

because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year histor

Indeed, poor quality is determined after the publication, too bad that the reviewers did not catch the many short comings before the paper revealed the scientific vacuity of ID. Namely by showing that ID is mostly based on incomplete review of literature, combined with a lack of any positive hypothesis how ID explains the data. In other words, the real scandal is not just the poor quality of the paper, but the fact that ID is unable to present any scientifically relevant hypothesis.

The second argument is a clear 'strawman'

Shouldn't we be skeptical of Sternberg's claims based upon his association with known creationists?

Sigh..

Then a real funny one

The Klinghoffer article marks a new stage in the debate over the respectability of ID. In the past the complaint was that ID hadn’t made it into peer-reviewed publications. While this criticism has problems of its own, there is no question that the publication of Meyer’s article was a bitter pill for ID critics to swallow. Instead of saying, “Okay, score one for ID. But it’s still 84,702 to 1,” the defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy raised a series of bogus objections to avoid even the appearance of a debate.

What did PT say in their introduction to their critique of the paper?

We congratulate ID on finally getting an article in a peer-reviewed biology journal, a mere fifteen years after the publication of the 1989 ID textbook Of Pandas and People, a textbook aimed at inserting ID into public schools. It is gratifying to see the ID movement finally attempt to make their case to the only scientifically relevant group, professional biologists. This is therefore the beginning (not the end) of the review process for ID. Perhaps one day the scientific community will be convinced that ID is worthwhile. Only through this route — convincing the scientific community, a route already taken by plate tectonics, endosymbiosis, and other revolutionary scientific ideas — can ID earn a legitimate place in textbooks.

So who is raising bogus objections here I wonder?....

In his post, Balta relies upon the Panda’s Thumb blog for the conclusion that Meyer is mistaken in his analysis, and for that reason his work should not have been published. But perusing the followup comments on the Panda's Thumb website, it is obvious that this is not a case of pathetically poor scholarship. It is a case of outrage that the dike separating good science from bad science has been breached. The principle that a scientist can disagree with the prevailing view without fear of reprisal apparently does not apply to neo-Darwinism.

Indeed, the contributors at PT have done an excellent job at exposing the many flaws and shortcomings in Meyer's paper. The DI may object to PT having an 'open comment policy', not found on the DI blogsite, where users can present their personal opinion. It's not that Meyer is not allowed to disagree with the prevailing view, it's the observation that he does such a poor job at it which is the focus of Panda's Thumb.

Media Complaints Division's stellar performance.

2005-02-04T19:38:00.000-08:00

The Media Complaints Division of the Center for ~~the Renewal of~~ Science and Culture reports on the Sternberg case. While they seem to be mostly interested in defending the Meyer paper, they do end up taking sides with Sternberg in a dispute where the data are scarce and the stories contradicting.

Witt, speaking about the infamous Meyer paper, states that:

When it appeared, major science journals and media outlets launched a smear campaing against Sternberg, questioning his motives and claiming he violated the journal's procedures.

Most media reports seem to mention the detailed critique on Panda's Thumb which shows the many problems with Meyer's article.

Examples include The Scientist, or Nature

The Biological Society of Washington issued a statement on September 7, 2004, reading, in its entirety:

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer in the Proceedings ("The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239) represents a significant departure from the nearly purely taxonomic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 124-year history. It was published without the prior knowledge of the Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, or the associate editors. We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.

...

Remember also that contrary to the claim made by Witt

an essay by Stephen Meyer arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the Cambrian Explosion of animal forms.

, Stephen Meyer did little to show that intelligent design was the best explanation. Which is not surprising since there is no scientific hypothesis or theory of intelligent design. Intelligent design is based on the age-old "God of the Gaps" argument due to its eliminative nature.

While the Media Correction Division seems to be allergic to mentioning the Panda's Thum, let alone link to it or allow people to add comments, the Panda Thumb does not feel threatened by the existence of the Discovery Institute Website. A detailed list of links relevant to the Meyer episode can be found at The "Meyer 2004" Medley.

Follow the links and see for yourself if the claims by the Media Complaints Division are supported by fact. Remember what Panda's Thumb authors of the critique said:

The important issue is whether or not the paper makes any scientific contribution: does it propose a positive explanatory model? If the paper is primarily negative critique, does it accurately review the science it purports to criticize? The fact that a paper is shaky on these grounds is much more important than the personalities involved. Intemperate responses will only play into the hands of creationists, who might use these as an excuse to say that the “dogmatic Darwinian thought police” are unfairly giving Meyer and PBSW a hard time. Nor should Sternberg be given the chance to become a “martyr for the cause.” Any communication with PBSW should focus upon the features that make this paper a poor choice for publication: its many errors of fact, its glaring omissions of relevant material, and its misrepresentations of the views that it does consider.

DI Link: Evolution News & Views

Creating controversy - Nature Cell Biology

2005-02-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Creating controversy - Nature Cell Biology: "Editorial"

Of course, there is no scientific controversy over the basic tenets of evolution, and 'Intelligent design' has not been shown valid by any scientific criterion. Even so, the anti-evolution movement has had recent success with local school boards in the US. For example, the Cobb County School District in Georgia mandated that a disclaimer, stating that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things" be inserted into appropriate textbooks. This policy is currently under challenge in the US District Court. Also under court challenge is an October 2004 decision by the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania requiring biology teachers to present 'Intelligent design' as an alternative to evolution.

AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner: Science Classes are for Science, Not Faith

2005-02-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

AAAS - AAAS News Release

As we search for common ground, it is important to remember that science is not by definition opposed to religion, and our work is not intended to impose science and its values on religion. Science is as broad and diverse as our country itself, and among the millions of people working in science-related professions, many are guided by their faith. Einstein himself was profoundly spiritual, with beliefs that paralleled the God-in-nature deism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

Where evolutionary science and the philosophy of intelligent design part ways is over the central questions of how and why evolution has progressed as it has. Intelligent design theory holds that an enlightened designer is responsible for the unfolding of life and the emergence of humanity. While individual scientists may agree or disagree, science, as a discipline, takes no position. It is a central tenet of science that any theory must be testable and grounded in evidence, not belief. Intelligent design cannot be tested or proven, and therefore it falls fully short of the criteria to be called "science."

Proponents of intelligent design say there are gaps in the science of evolution, but that proves nothing. Yes, there are some gaps; that is the nature of all human knowledge. When they lack solid evidence, scientists might initially rely on intuition to build a plausible and testable hypothesis, and then systematically subject the hypothesis to testing and further experimentation. And it is true that evolutionary scientists at times have suggested conclusions based on limited evidence. But then, when a new fossil or other new evidence is discovered, the conclusion is confirmed or disproved, in which case refined theories emerge. Even now, fascinating questions remain unanswered, and scientists of integrity and passion are at work in many fields to answer those questions so that the story of life can be told in greater detail.

Intelligent design has gone through no process like that. And so, until there is verifiable evidence to support the theory, it remains a matter of faith. As such, it can be discussed in churches and temples and religious schools, even in public schools during classes that deal with government, philosophy, literature or current events. But just as matters of religious faith are not the province of science, faith should not be imposed in the science classroom to undermine fact.

Theory, fact and the origin of life - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

2005-02-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

Theory, fact and the origin of life - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

So the next time you are asked about evolution and intelligent design you can avoid the more hot button issues—lack of objective scientific support and separation of Church and State—and instead take the philosophical highground and talk about the importance of knowing the difference between theories and facts and why Darwinism and evolution have nothing to do with how living things came to be, just what happened once they were here.

Newsweek reports on ID

2005-01-30T14:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6884904/site/newsweek/

Doubting Darwin looks at the 'controversy' surrounding intelligent design.

Well, so does the pope, but the Vatican has said it finds no conflict between Christian faith and evolution. Neither does Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Institute at the National Institutes of Health and an outspoken evangelical. He wrote recently of his view that God, "who created the universe, chose the remarkable mechanism of evolution to create plants and animals of all sorts." It may require some metaphysical juggling, but if more people could take that view, there would be fewer conflicts like the one in Dover. In the debate over I.D., both sides acknowledge that most scientists accept evolution, but they agree that scientific disputes are not settled by majority vote. School-board elections, however, are.

Pharyngula::Wanna see James and Cheri Bogart humiliate themselves?

2005-01-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

Pharyngula::Wanna see James and Cheri Bogart humiliate themselves?

Philip Johnson defines Intelligent Design

2005-01-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.

(American Family Radio, Jan 10, 2003 broadcast.)

There you have it.

Beckwith on Intelligent Design

2005-01-14T07:59:00.000-08:00

I do agree that if the ID arguments fail, as a matter of policy, ID should not be taught in science classes as a viable alternative to materialist accounts of the order and nature of things. In fact, even if ID arguments don't obviously fail--that is, if they are merely plausible--there are good policy reasons not to teach it.

Francis Beckwith ARN forum "More Forrest/Gross Mistakes?" 06-25-2004 05:44 AM

Francis Beckwith is author of: Law, Darwinism, & Public Education: The Establishment Clause & the Challenge of Intelligent

ID is not about religion? ID proponents speak out

2005-01-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Phillip Johnson

The second goal was to establish a position which would tend to unify the religious world. ...

It would involve the simple question of creation - do you need a Creator to do the creating, or don't you.

In the beginning was the Word - in the beginning God created: true or false.

State of the Wedge address, DDD2

It's a great time to be a young Christian who is excited about using his or her mind in the service of the Lord because we will discover that "in the beginning was the Word" is fact not fantasy. It's as true scientifically as it is spiritually or Biblically or whatever....

And it's through this spiritual understanding, I think, ... it's the right entry into the whole Biblical system of thinking.

Northshore Church, 2002

William Dembski

If we take seriously the word-flesh Christology of Chalcedon (i.e. the doctrine that Christ is fully human and fully divine) and view Christ as the telos toward which God is drawing the whole of creation, then any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.

(William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 1999)

The world is a mirror representing the divine life... Intelligent design readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

"Since Darwin, we can no longer believe that a benevolent God created us in His image,'Intelligent Design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ., And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view. It's important that we understand the world. God has created it; Jesus is incarnate in the world."

Jonathan Wells

He [Reverend Moon] also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity. ...

Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism.

John Calvert

God is using this [debate] to bring people to know Him better, commented IDN's John Calvert, citing Romans 1:18-32. This passage teaches that God is revealed in nature, but those who reject Him and worship the 'creature' instead are given over to unrighteousness.

Article in Family Voice

Robert Lattimer

"If you want to say something about the designer, that's religion and not science," Lattimer says. "It's God, sure," he answers when pressed for his own belief. "But everyone doesn't have to say that. I suppose it goes back to the status of the legal situation, that if they can pin down [who ID proponents think the designer is], it might affect" whether the courts view ID as an attempt to endorse a religious belief.

Nancy Pearcey

Quote:
Our view of origins shapes our understanding of ethics, law, education- and yes, even sexuality. If life on earth is a product of blind, purposeless natural causes, then our own lives are cosmic accidents. There's no source of transcendent moral guidelines, no unique dignity for human life. On the other hand, if life is the product of foresight and design, then you and I were meant to be here. In God's revelation we have a solid basis for morality, purpose, and dignity.

See also Claim CI001.1: Intelligent Design (ID) is scientific, not religious.

and The horse's mouth

If ID were about science, where then is the scientific hypothesis of intelligent design?

Creationism: Origin of the Specious

2005-01-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

Origin of the Specious Why do neoconservatives doubt Darwin? By Ronald Bailey in Reasonline

Dover: The New Monkey Trial

2005-01-10T19:59:00.000-08:00

The New Monkey Trial By Michelle Goldberg 2005-01-10 Salon.com News

How it all started

But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such."

Casey Brown and her husband, fellow board member Jeff Brown, were stunned. "I was picturing the headlines," Jeff said months later.

"And we got them," Casey added.

The switch to 'intelligent design'

Although Buckingham first argued for teaching creationism in Dover biology classes, he soon started using the phrase "intelligent design" instead. The change in language was significant because intelligent design was created in part to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal for public schools to teach creationism. Masquerading as a science, it aims to convince the public that evolution is a theory under fire within the scientific community and doesn't deserve its preeminent place in the biology curriculum.

I am glad to hear that the author recognized that Intelligent Design is NOT a science but rather an argument from ignorance.

About Irreducible Complexity

Indeed, some "scientists" do believe this -- the ones who work at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Outside the precincts of the religious right, though, the scientific consensus about evolution is very close to unanimous. For decades, biologists at the world's major universities, and in esteemed peer-reviewed journals, have proven that cellular processes have indeed evolved in sync with Darwin's theories. In November 2004, National Geographic ran a cover story asking, "Was Darwin Wrong?" Its subhead provided the answer: "No. The Evidence for Evolution Is Overwhelming."

The Wedge Strategy

The Center for Science and Culture also aims, in a far more elliptical way, to put God at the center of civic life. Originally called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, CSC usually purports to be motivated by science, not religion. At times, though, it's refreshingly candid about its true goal -- a grandiose scheme to undermine the secular legacy of the Enlightenment and rebuild society on religious foundations. As it said in a 1999 fundraising proposal that was later leaked online, "Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."

The proposal was titled "The Wedge Strategy." It began: "The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built ... Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art."

The Center for the renewal of science and culture

Oddly enough, although Santorum is supporting the Dover school board's policy, the Center for Science and Culture isn't. On Dec. 14, CSC put out a statement calling Dover's policy "misguided" and saying it should be "withdrawn and rewritten." The statement quoted CSC's associate director John West as saying that discussion of intelligent design shouldn't be prohibited but it also shouldn't be required. "What should be required is full disclosure of the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory," said West, "which is the approach supported by the overwhelming majority of the public."

This, of course, is a departure from the position laid out in "The Wedge Strategy," which specifically calls for the integration of intelligent design into school curriculum.

Why the change? Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, is convinced that the CSC wanted to wait for a better test case and a friendly Supreme Court, which they'll get if Bush is able to nominate a few new justices. The Dover policy, Matzke said, probably won't survive a court challenge right now, and if it's overturned, the precedent will be a setback for the missionaries of intelligent design.

"Their current strategy is not to have an intelligent-design policy passed," Matzke said. "They just want a policy that says students should analyze the strengths and weakness of evolution." CSC did not return calls for comment.

Irony: Thomas More Law Center gives science advice

2005-01-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

Just recently the Thomas More Law Center was heard chastizing professors for not understanding policy and law issues. And what did I run across?

Evolution Bookmarks

We've put together 10 questions that we think students are entitled to ask their biology teacher about whether or not standard textbooks present an honest evaluation of Darwin's theory of evolution. We put these questions on a bookmark, but there is a lot more information that is available on each of these topics. A web page describing a recently published book by Dr. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution, is an excellent reference in this regard.

See Icons of Intelligent Design why Icons of Evolution fails to be an 'excellent reference' in this regard...

Unsupported: Jay Richards on Intelligent Design

2005-01-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Intelligent Design Theory: Why it Matters by Jay Richards, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for ~~the Renewal of~~ Science and Culture

Jay makes some interesting claims about Intelligent Design, too bad that most of them remain unsupported or plain wrong.

We now have a reliable scientific method, formalized by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski (in The Design Inference, Cambridge University Press, 1998), for detecting designed objects and distinguishing them from the products of chance and impersonal laws. Scientists already use the design inference intuitively in fields such as cryptography, archaeology and forensics. When applied to nature's fine-tuned laws, DNA sequences and Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems, the clear conclusion is that they are intelligently designed.

Let me list the problems with Jay's claims

The design inference is not reliable
Scientists indeed uses methods for detecting ID and they do not use Dembski's limited use method
Since the design inference is unreliable, it cannot provide support for the faith based conclusion that they are intelligently designed
There is no theory of intelligent design

Ironically when Jay applies the 'design inference' for the scientifically vacuous "Privileged Planet" thesis he omits regularity as a node. In other words, regularity (laws) can indeed be intelligent designers after all. Showing once again the vacuity of the ID thesis.

Jay ends with an interesting comment

What Darwinism and scientific materialism have dismantled, intelligent design theory could help restore.

Indeed as the Wedge Document explains, restoring God is a top priority of the Discovery Institute.

Misleading: No Child Behind act and teaching intelligent design

2005-01-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

I came across the following misleading statement on the Christian Communication Network

Nevertheless, a growing number of credible scientists now subscribe to the theory of intelligent design. Additionally, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 encouraged schools to inform students of the controversy surrounding the theory of evolution and make them aware of alternative theories like intelligent design.

Read No Child Left Behind Act of 2001

From the creative website of the Discovery Institute's Center for [s]the renewal of[/s] science and culture we read

where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.” Commonly called the “Santorum amendment” (because Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania offered the original version of the wording), this declaration was included as part of House Report 107-33

Notice how the DI somewhat misleadingly suggests that the Santorum amendment item 78) was part of the act, it was not. It was part of the House report which has no legal standing. Additionally, notice how the act does not call for the teaching of Intelligent Design.

Santorum Amendment (part of the House report not the act):`The Conferees recognize that a quality science education should prepare students to distinguish the data and testable theories of science from religious or philosophical claims that are made in the name of science. Where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society.'

In a letter to the National Center for Science Education, the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. George Miller (Calif.), wrote that “the report language should not be construed to promote specific topics within the subject areas … [S]uch decisions are best left to the scientific community, rather than legislators.”

Read Rep. Geaorge Miller's letter

Intelligent Design could not fall in the category of alternative theories since it does not qualify as such.

When will they learn...

Flew: He has seen the evidence

2005-01-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

Thus starts a thread on ARN by JeffM

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe.

Recent updates however show that Flew did not see the evidence and that his "conversion to Intelligent Design" was, as is so often the case, based on ignorance rather than fact.

On Panda's Thumb Matt Yong reports of an update on the Flew story.

Seems that much to Flew's own embarassment, he was not aware of the evidence and was misled by some.

Once again we see a good example of how "Intelligent Design" is just an argument from ignorance.

JeffM did not respond well to the news

Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the Flew episode is in the reaction of his former associates. Here are the defenders of reason in all their glory. Now that Mr. Carrier has completed this smear, you can almost hear him going back to his recitations. Listen:

"I am objective and reasonable, I am objective and reasonable, I am objective and reasonable..."

Similarly Jonathan Witt, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for [s]the renewal of[/s] Science & Culture, writes:

Flew insists that the scientific establishment has simply failed to answer this question persuasively, and he singles out Richard Dawkins, another influential British atheist and leading proponent of Darwinism: “Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers.”

Will Witt update his letter? Is ID really self-correcting?

Time will tell

Relevant links

My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism An Exclusive Interview with Former British Atheist Professor Antony Flew
Antony Flew's Conversion to Deism: An Update
ntony Flew Considers God...Sort Of by Richard Carrier

DIS Information update: ID's Religous motivations

2005-01-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Discovery Institute's Center for ~~the Renewal of~~ Science and Culture Blog site seems to be upset that the NCSE has shown how good science and religion need not conflict.
When Dover Pastors released an open letter opposing Intelligent Design they showed how Intelligent Design is not based on scientific knowledge but of faith. This is self evident since there is no scientific hypothesis of intelligent design other than an 'argument from ignorance' aka 'God of the Gaps' argument.

The Grantsburg Board's use of the term 'controversies' shows the creationist foundation of these claims. Richard Colling observed that

Prof. Richard Colling wrote:
In his new book, “Random Designer,” he writes: “It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods” when they say evolutionary theory is “in crisis” and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. “Such statements are blatantly untrue,” he argues; “evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny. [1]”

Of course the Discovery Institute's Center for ~~the Renewal of~~ Science and Culture's (DIS) comments are particularly ironic given their Wedge Stragegy which outlines (at least to their sponsors) the following goals

GOALS

Governing Goals
To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Five Year Goals
To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals
To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

And who says that ID does not make predictions?

"I predict that in the next five years intelligent design will be sufficiently developed to deserve funding from the National Science Foundation."

Just not very successful ones... 5 years from 1998 would have been 2003...

It's time that Christians realize that evolution and religious faith do not contradict eachother and that Intelligent Design is, as a friend of mine observed, dishonest as it hides religion under the guise of science. As Christians we have to realize the potential cost of Intelligent Design on not just science but also religious faith. The costs may be quite high...

Breaking news: Discovery Institute and censorship

2005-01-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

In an ironic twist, the Discovery Institute's Center of Science and Culture blogging website has been involved in censoring user comments. Adding to the irony is the fact that the comments were to a posting accusing KNME of censoring the airing of "Unlocking the Mystery of Life".

The posting in question was by Robert Crowther, Director of Public and Media Relations Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture.:

KNME waging misinformation campaign
Posted By: Robert Crowther, Discovery Institute @ 01:01:22 pm, Categories:

PBS station KNME is lying today in an effort to shrug off claims of censorship because of their banning of Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Three comments had been added to this posting but after a few hours, the comments were quickly removed by staff without any explanations. The author has contacted the blog owners but has so far not received any response.

Of course the owners of the website have the right to delete any of the comments submitted but it somehow seems to make their complaints about KNME 'censoring' a bit hypocritical. After all KNME should be granted the right to make programming decisions as much as the DI should be allowed to deleted comments which expose the flaws in Intelligent Design. Of course KNME is not arguing to 'Teach the controversy' and it seems that the concept of controversy is somewhat one-sided.

The comments however were saved from their ultimate censoring fate and are reproduced below:

Comments, Trackbacks, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Wedgie World [Visitor] · http://wedgieworld.blogspot.com
The original PDF file showing the religious foundation of this video has since long been removed from the Illustra Media Website but has been archived.

Unlocking the Mystery of Life The cut-off date to order this incredible video is Friday, November 22, 2002. Until then you can pay the retail price for 8 copies and get 50 (which comes out to $3.69 each postpaid). This is the most impressive evangelistic tool ever made. Using the latest computer graphics it displays the wisdom of God in the creation of the inner workings of the human cell.

Read more at http://wedgieworld.blogspot.com/2005/01/who-promotes-unlocking-mystery-of-life.html
Permalink 01/07/05 @ 19:49

Comment from: PvM [Visitor] · http://www.pandasthumb.org
A good website which discusses the argument from ignorance used by Intelligent Design can be found at www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000602.html (Icons of ID: Argument from Ignorance)

Enjoy to read more about why Ryan Nichols wrote

R. Nichols wrote:

Proponents of Intelligent Design theory seek to ground a scientific research program that appeals to teleology within the context of biological explanation. As such, Intelligent Design theory must contain principles to guide researchers. I argue for a disjunction: either Dembski’s ID theory lacks content, or it succumbs to the methodological problems associated with creation science-problems that Dembski explicitly attempts to avoid. The only concept of a designer permitted by Dembski’s Explanatory Filter is too weak to give the sorts of explanations which we are entitled to expect from those sciences, such as archeology, that use effect-to-cause reasoning. The new spin put upon ID theory-that it is best construed as a ‘metascientific hypothesis’-fails for roughly the same reason.

R. Nichols, Scientific content, testability, and the vacuity of Intelligent Design theory The American Catholic philosophical quarterly , 2003 , vol. 77 , no 4 , pp. 591 - 611

or why Richard Colling observes
In his new book, “Random Designer,” he writes: “It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods” when they say evolutionary theory is “in crisis” and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. “Such statements are blatantly untrue,” he argues; “evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny. [1]”

Sharon Begley in Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2004; Page A15

Or

Patrick Frank author of “On the Assumption of Design”, Theology and Science, Volume 2, Number 1 / April 2004, pp. 109 - 130.

Abstract: The assumption of design of the universe is examined from a scientific perspective. The claims of William Dembski and of Michael Behe are unscientific because they are a-theoretic. The argument from order or from utility are shown to be indeterminate, circular, to rest on psychological as opposed to factual certainty, or to be insupportable as regards humans but possibly not bacteria, respectively. The argument from the special intelligibility of the universe specifically to human science does not survive comparison with the capacities of other organisms. Finally, the argument from the unlikelihood of physical constants is vitiated by modern cosmogonic theory and recrudesces the God-of-the-gaps.

The cost of ID to science is self evident, some may have underestimated the cost of ID to religious faith
Permalink 01/07/05 @ 20:03

Comment from: PvM [Visitor] · http://www.pandasthumb.org
It is also worth realizing that there is no censorship involved. Censorship applies to government not to public entities such as PBS who are free to determine what to air and what not to air.
It is sad to hear that the DI is using such poorly thought out arguments to support their case for intelligent design. Doing a disfavor both to science and religion.

I am glad to hear that PBS has decided to drop the video as it surely fails to be a scientifically relevant video and much better fits in with the DI's much publicized Wedge strateggy

Governing Goals

* To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
* To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

Five Year Goals

* To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
* To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
* To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals

* To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
* To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
* To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

Source: http://www.kcfs.org/Fliers_articles/Wedge.html
Permalink 01/07/05 @ 20:14

Dover teachers refuse to read antievolution disclaimer

2005-01-08T01:09:00.000-08:00

Dover teachers refuse to read antievolution disclaimer Breaking news

To: Dr. Richard Nilsen

From: Bertha Spahr
Jennifer Miller
Robert Linker
Robert Eshbach
Leslie Prall
Brian Bahn
David Taylor
Vickie Davis

Date: January 6, 2005

Re: Reading Statement on Intelligent Design

We have individually reviewed the statement you presented yesterday for presentation to our students at the beginning of the Biology unit dealing with evolution. You have indicated that students may "opt-out" of this portion of the class and that they will be excused and monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to "opt-out" of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students. This request is based upon our considered opinion that reading the statement violates our responsibilities as professional educators as set forth in the Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators promulgated by the Professional Standards and Practices Commission and found at 22 Pa. Code section 235.1 et.seq. As noted in the introductory paragraph of the Code, section 235.2 (a): "Generally, the responsibility for professional conduct rests with the individual professional educator." Further, the Code provides in section 235.2 (b): "This chapter makes explicit the values of the education profession. When individuals become educators in this Commonwealth, they make a moral commitment to uphold these values."

Central to the teaching act and our ethical obligation is the solemn responsibility to teach the truth. Section 235.10 (2) guides our relationships with students and provides that "The professional educator may not Knowingly and intentionally misrepresent subject matter or curriculum."

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.

I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students to "Of Pandas and People" as if it is a scientific resource breaches my ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.

Reading the statement places us in violation of the following ethical obligations. Section 235.3 of the Code requires Professional educators to develop "sound educational policy" and obligates us "to implement that policy." Section 235.3 (b) makes it explicit that "Professional educators recognize their primary responsibility to the student and the development of the student's potential. Central to that development is the professional educator's valuing the pursuit of truth; devotion to excellence; acquisition of knowledge; and democratic principles." The same section goes on to provide: "Educators encourage and support the use of resources that best serve the interests and needs of students. Within the context of professional experience, the educator and the student together explore the challenge and the dignity of the human experience."

Section 235.4 (b) (2) provides: "Professional educators shall be prepared, and legally certified, in their areas of assignment. Educators may not be assigned or willingly accept assignments they are not certified to fulfill." Section 235.5(b) (8) provides: "Professional educators shall be open-minded, knowledgeable and use appropriate judgement and communication skills when responding to an issue within the educational environment." Section 235.4 (b) (10) provides: "Professional educators shall exert reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions which interfere with learning or are harmful to the student's health and safety."

Why Intelligent Design Fails

2005-01-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

Many authors, scientists, philosophers and religious people have spoken out against the claims made by Intelligent Design proponents. Please enjoy... More to be added soon.

Books

Young and Edis (editors) “Why intelligent design fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism”

In thirteen chapters contributors Gert Korthof, David Ussery, Alan Gishlick, Ian Musgrave, Niall Shanks, Istvan Karsai, Gary Hurd, Jeffrey Shallit, Wesley Elsberry, Mark Perakh, Victor Stenger and of course Taner Edis and Matt Young show how the foundations of ID are without much scientific support. As experts in their various fields, these scientists take on various aspects of Intelligent Design claims and methodically take them apart.

This book is the lastest in a line of excellent books in which authors have addressed various aspects of the Intelligent Design movement and have shown how Intelligent Design has failed to live up to its scientific claims.

Unintelligent Design by Mark Perakh, Prometheus Books (December 1, 2003)
God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory by Niall Shanks
Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Barbara Carroll Forrest
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe by Victor J. Stenger
Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? by Michael Ruse

Publications

Patrick Frank is the author of “On the Assumption of Design”, Theology and Science, Volume 2, Number 1 / April 2004, pp. 109 - 130.

Abstract: The assumption of design of the universe is examined from a scientific perspective. The claims of William Dembski and of Michael Behe are unscientific because they are a-theoretic. The argument from order or from utility are shown to be indeterminate, circular, to rest on psychological as opposed to factual certainty, or to be insupportable as regards humans but possibly not bacteria, respectively. The argument from the special intelligibility of the universe specifically to human science does not survive comparison with the capacities of other organisms. Finally, the argument from the unlikelihood of physical constants is vitiated by modern cosmogonic theory and recrudesces the God-of-the-gaps.

Ryan Nichols is the author of Scientific content, testability, and the vacuity of Intelligent Design theory, The American Catholic philosophical quarterly , 2003 , vol. 77 , no 4 , pp. 591 - 611,

Abstract: Arguments of the following form are given against theories like psychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis implies X. Psychoanalysis also implies NOT(X). Hence, no observations of X or of NOT(X) can falsify psychoanalysis. Since an important proportion of propositions implied by psychoanalysis are similar to X in this respect, psychoanalysis is not falsifiable. Since psychoanalysis isn’t falsifiable, it is not a science.
In my argument against Intelligent Design Theory I will not contend that it is not falsifiable or that it implies contradictions. I’ll argue that Intelligent Design Theory doesn’t imply anything at all, i.e. it has no content. By ‘content’ I refer to a body of determinate principles and propositions entailed by those principles. By ‘principle’ I refer to a proposition of central importance to the theory at issue. By ‘determinate principle’ I refer to a proposition of central importance to the theory at issue in which the extensions of its terms are clearly defined.
I’ll evaluate the work of William Dembski because he specifies his methodology in detail, thinks Intelligent Design Theory is contentful and thinks Intelligent Design Theory (hereafter ‘IDT’) grounds an empirical research program. Later in the paper I assess a recent trend in which IDT is allegedly found a better home as a metascientific hypothesis, which serves as a paradigm that catalyzes research. I’ll conclude that, whether IDT is construed as a scientific or metascientific hypothesis, IDT lacks content.

Michael J. Murray NATURAL PROVIDENCE (OR DESIGN TROUBLE)

Recent work in Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) reopens a number of questions concerning God's providence over nature. Friends of IDT claim that their "explanatory filter" allows us to detect design empirically and that this provides a way to make appeal to supernatural design in properly scientific explanations while at the same time undercutting methodological naturalism. I argue here that the explanatory filter is fatally flawed, and that detection of detection of design would not undercut methodological naturalism in any case. Friends of IDT fail to see this because they adopt a Newtonian conception of natural providence, while failing even to consider a preferable Leibnizian conception.

Or listen to Del Ratzch's wise words.

So typically, patterns that are likely candidates for design are first identified as such by some unspecified (“mysterious”) means, then with the pattern in hand S picks out side information identified (by unspecified means) as releavant to the particular pattern, then sees whether the pattern in question is among the various patterns that could have been constructed from that side information. What this means, of course, is that Dembski’s design inference will not be particularly useful either in initial recognition or identification of design

(Del Ratzsch Nature design and science p. 159)

and

“I do not wish to play down or denigrate what Dembski has done. There is much of value in the Design Inference. But I think that some aspects of even the limited task Dembski set for himself still remains to be tamed.” “That Dembski is not employing the robust, standard, agency-derived conception of design that most of his supporters and many of his critics have assumed seems clear.

(Del Ratzsch Nature design and science)

or Bill Wimsatt

Unfortunately “popular” presentations of “Intelligent Design” have tended to give the impression that it rested solely on mathematical demonstrations. Anyone who could have succeeded in showing that natural selection is incapable of generating biological structures according to standards from mathematics or logic would have constructed a mathematical proof that would have dwarfed Godel’s famous Undecideability theorem in importance. As one who read Dembski’s original manuscript for his first book, found much to like in it, and had appreciative remarks on the dust jacket of the first printing, I can say categorically that Demski surely has shown no such thing, and i call upon him as a mathematician to deny and clarify the implications of this advertising copy.

(Wimsatt on Yahoo Evolutionary Psychology discussion group)

Now the 'offending' quote...

"It's chilling that suddenly in the midst of a national debate over intelligent design PBS, funded by taxpayer dollars, decides to suppress an educational film that provides a scientific examination of the theory," said Rob Crowther, director of communications for Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. "At a time when many in the public are wondering what intelligent design theory is, here comes PBS deciding what the public will learn about intelligent design and what it won't."

Source

ID chutzpah

2005-01-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

Spot the errors in the last paragraph of this posting containing a statement by DI's director of 'communications'.

1. There is no national debate over intelligent design
2. The movie is not an educational film and certainly does not provide a scientific examination of the theory
3. It cannot present such examination since there is no theory of intelligent design other than appeal to ignorance.
4. PBS has no requirements to teach religiously motivated arguments camouflaged as science

For a better understanding of the Discovery Institute's religious and political motivations please read the Wedge Strategy.

For a better understanding of why Intelligent Design fails as a science read the following resource:
Why Intelligent Design fails

Dover School board backs down

2005-01-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

Seems that the Dover School board has decided to give in to the request of its teachers to not be forced to make the 'intelligent design' statement. Instead the administrators will read the statement to the students. Students can be excused to leave the class room. Of course forcing students to leave the classroom in front of their peers is reason enough to take the school board to court.

The teachers at least recognized that Intelligent Design is not science. There is hope after all for Dover.

The defendents' law firm (Thomas More law center) argued

"The Dover faculty have no right to opt out of a legal directive," Thompson said. "Having said that, because there is pending litigation ... we are going to accommodate their request.

They should familiarize themselves first with the vacuity of intelligent design before making such silly arguments. Forcing teachers to read a religious statement
of faith or forcing students to leave the class room during the 'service' are clearly in violation of separation of Church and State.
Students, teachers to be excused from 'intelligent design' statement By MARTHA RAFFAELE, AP Education Writer

This is a beautiful tactical move

Confused lawyers

2005-01-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

The theory of intelligent design, which is endorsed by a growing number of credentialed scientists, helps explain the complex, information-rich structures observed by biologists. The ACLU along with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State filed a federal lawsuit in December challenging the Dover school policy on the grounds that the intelligent design theory was inherently religious.

Source

Intelligent design provides no explanations for the observations of information rich structures. All it does is rely on our ignorance to argue for a conclusion not supported by scientific arguments.

Intelligent design has no standing as a scientific argument.

read more about the vacuity of intelligent design

A new website

2005-01-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

The Vacuity of Intelligent Design

Enjoy

Good news from Dover

2005-01-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Dover teachers want out

All but one of the high school’s science instructors want to opt out of reading a statement on intelligent design

“We believe that reading the (‘intelligent design’) statement violates our responsibility as educators as set forth in the code,” Miller said. “Students are allowed to opt out from hearing the statement. We should be allowed to opt out from reading it.”

Source

Dover update Jan-05-2005

2005-01-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

Penn Faculty Responds to Dover School Board

5 January 2005
Dover Area School Board
2 School Lane
Dover, PA 17315

An Open Letter to the Dover Area School Board:

As scientists, scholars, and teachers, we are compelled to point out that the quality of science education in your schools has been seriously compromised by the decision to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” along with evolution. Science education should be based on ideas that are well supported by evidence. Intelligent design does not meet this criterion: It is a form of creationism propped up by a biased and selective view of the evidence.

In contrast, evolution is based on and supported by an immense and diverse array of evidence and is continually being tested and reaffirmed by new discoveries from many scientific fields. The evidence for evolution is so strong that important new areas of biological research are confidently and successfully based on the reality of evolution. For example, evolution is fundamental to genomics and bioinformatics, new fields which hold the promise of great medical discoveries.

According to the York Daily Record (November 23, 2004), you issued a statement claiming that “Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” This is extraordinarily misleading. While one can refer to the general body of modern evolutionary knowledge as “theory,” the same is true of all other scientific knowledge, such as the theory of relativity or the theory of continental drift. It is one of the hallmarks of scientific inquiry that all such ideas are open to testing and reinterpretation. That theories are open to testing, however, does not mean that they are wrong. Evolution has been subject to well over a century of continual testing. The result: Its reality is no more in dispute among biologists than, for example, the existence of atoms and molecules is among chemists.

Our students need to be taught the method and content of real science. We urge you to alter the misguided policy of teaching intelligent design creationism in your high school science curriculum. Instead, empower students with real, dependable scientific knowledge. They need this knowledge to understand the world around them, to compete for admission to colleges and universities, and to compete for good jobs. They deserve nothing less.

Sincerely,

Paul Sniegowski

Associate Professor
Department of Biology

Michael Weisberg

Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy

Members of the Departments of Biology and Philosophy:
Prof. Edwin Abel
Prof. Andrew Binns
Prof. Anthony Cashmore
Prof. Brenda Casper
Prof. Dorothy Cheney
Prof. Karen Detlefsen
Prof. Zoltan Domotor
Prof. Arthur Dunham
Prof. Samuel Freeman
Prof. Warren Ewens
Prof. Steven Gross
Prof. Greg Guild
Prof. Paul Guyer
Prof. Gary Hatfield
Prof. Michael Hippler
Prof. Daniel Janzen
Prof. Peter Petraitis
Prof. Scott Poethig
Prof. Philip Rea
Prof. Dejian Ren
Prof. Marc Schmidt
Prof. Paul Schmidt
Prof. Richard Schultz
Prof. Tatanya Svitkina
Prof. Kok-Chor Tan
Prof. Lewis Tilney
Prof. Doris Wagner
Prof. Eric Weinberg
Prof. Scott Weinstein
Prof. Sally Zigmond

Associate Dean David Balamuth (Natural Sciences), Department of Physics

See also College biologists blast Dover

York College faculty members said the 'intelligent design' decision goes against science.

Who Promotes Unlocking the Mystery of Life?

2005-01-05T22:36:00.000-08:00

The Discovery Institute is whining that a PBS station is 'censoring' because it has withdrawn its plans to air the controversial program "Unlocking the Mystery of Life".

The original PDF file showing the religious foundation of this video has since long been removed from the Illustra Media Website but has been archived.

Unlocking the Mystery of Life The cut-off date to order this incredible
video is Friday, November 22, 2002. Until then you can pay the retail price for
8 copies and get 50 (which comes out to $3.69 each postpaid).

This is the most impressive evangelistic tool ever made. Using the latest computer graphics it displays the wisdom of God in the creation of the inner workings of the human cell.

November-December 2002 Mission Frontiers Link

The PBS station in Albuquerque, N.M., has canceled a scheduled showing of a documentary on the theory of intelligent design, eliciting charges of "politically correct censorship."

New Mexico teacher Phil Robinson says he worked with staff at KNME-TV to arrange for the documentary, "Unlocking the Mystery of Life," to air on Friday night. Robinson discovered Monday that the show had been pulled and newspaper advertising for it had been canceled.

The station says the scheduling of the program was a mistake caused by a miscommunication related to the transition to a new program manager and that there was concern about the fact that those who funded the film have religious ties.

It's good to hear that PBS stations are wisening up to the Discovery's Institute's Wedge projects and correctly identify the program as religiously motivated and not based on any scientific foundation beyond the usual appeal to ignorance so common with ID arguments.

The makers of the documentary were 'caught' marketing it as an evangelical tool and the inability of ID to formulate a scientifically relevant theory of design indicates that one should applaud the actions of this PBS station.

In fact I encourage PBS supporters to contact PBS and encourage them to drop the selling of this religiously motivated documentary and which is of little scientific relevance. Find your local PBS affiliate's email and send them the relevant information.

Other stations have also recognized the religious nature of this documentary although unfortunately they did decide to air the program.

WNYE's Disclaimer
When WNYE broadcast Unlocking the Mystery of Life on July 6, 2003, the following disclaimer appeared:

WNYE presents documentaries that represent many different viewpoints. The following documentary supports the thesis that Creationism rather than Evolution is the explanation for the history of life on our planet. WNYE believes that this is a position worth studying, but makes no representation as to its factual accuracy.

Domning's Letter to Maryland Public Television

Who Promotes Unlocking the Mystery of Life?

by Skip Evans, NCSE Network Project Director

According to the copy on the box containing the videotape of Unlocking the Mystery of Life, the tape "tells the story of contemporary scientists who are advancing a powerful but controversial idea -- the theory of intelligent design." Throughout the approximate sixty-five minute program, religion is barely discussed. You might expect that the video is being promoted by scientific organizations. Type "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" into the Google search engine, however, and the results might surprise you.

Unlocking is promoted almost exclusively by fundamentalist Christian organizations, who sing its praises as a tool to strengthen faith while converting skeptics. In ten pages of a Google search engine query on the title in mid-May 2003, virtually every link was to a fundamentalist Christian organization.

# The web site of Illustra Media, credited with producing Unlocking, appears near the top of the search results. (For documentation of the link between Illustra Media and Discovery Media, whose mission is "to utilize every form of available media to present the reality of [God's] existence through compelling scientific evidence and academic research," see Unlocking the Mystery of Illustra Media.) Purchases of the video from the Illustra Media web site are handled by Campus Crusade for Christ.

# The web site of Illustra Media also contains a page, not currently linked but still residing on the server, describing a special offer for the tape published in Mission Frontiers magazine, which described the tape as "the most impressive evangelistic tool ever made" (Mission Frontiers, November-December 2002). In an editorial comment in the same issue, Ralph D. Winter stated that "[n]othing in the last 100 years so powerfully displays the glory of our Creator God as does this video for the thinking intellectual who is overwhelmed by the secular perspective of our time." As its name suggests, Mission Frontiers is focused "on helping Bible-believing followers of Christ worldwide to bring the Gospel of Christ to every people and nation, as seen in Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 of the Bible."

# Focus on the Family claims on its web site to have "published" the video along with Illustra Media. Focus on the Family's mission is "[t]o cooperate with the Holy Spirit in disseminating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, and, specifically, to accomplish that objective by helping to preserve traditional values and the institution of the family."

# Coral Ridge Ministries, which also sells the video, has as its mission "to evangelize, nurture Christian growth through biblical instruction, and act in obedience to the Cultural Mandate by applying the truth of Scripture to all of life, including civic affairs."

# Writing on Breakpoint, Chuck Colson claims that Unlocking "tells such a good scientific story that, earlier this year, PBS made the program available to all of its national affiliates". (This is false; PBS is not the distributor.) Breakpoint is a production of The Wilberforce Forum, whose mission is "to engage directly an increasingly secular culture with the weight of the Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition, and to equip the Church for that engagement."

# On its web site, the C. S. Lewis Society announces a project called Tsunami 2003. "God is building, through Unlocking ..., a great 'tsunami' -- a cultural sea wave," the group claims. The goals of the project include having the tape air on PBS stations nationwide and sending copies to 1,000 Christian leaders on university campuses in the hope of seeing "[y]oung lives transformed by the revelation of the love of their Creator and His gift of Jesus Christ for their sins." The purpose of the C. S. Lewis Society's web site is "to present Christianity as such an understandable, defensible, and compelling world view that any honest investigator will accept its truth and purpose for his or her life."

Added 7/28/03: The C. S. Lewis Society has notified NCSE of the following changes to its web site after this article appeared. First, mention of Unlocking has been removed from the sentence above about God's creating a great 'tsunami'. Second, all mentions of PBS's broadcasting the video have been removed. NCSE would like to thank the C. S. Lewis Society for notifying us of these changes.

In contrast, not a single national scientific organization, such as the National Academy of Sciences or the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recommend the tape. Nor do national science education organizations such as the National Science Teachers Association or the National Association of Biology Teachers.

It is clear from the statements made on these web sites that the motivating factor behind the distribution of Unlocking is evangelism.

Evangelism is of course a protected constitutional right. NCSE has always been religiously neutral, and supports religious free speech. Our members range from atheists to evangelical Christians, and include among them Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and practitioners of other faiths. NCSE's main objection to Unlocking is that it presents substandard science and misleads viewers about the strength of the science behind evolution, as discussed elsewhere on this web site.

But it is worth noting that this supposedly scientific video is not being promoted by scientific or science education organizations. Rather, Unlocking is being heavily promoted for religious purposes by fundamentalist Christian organizations for which its chief value is as an evangelical tool, rather than as an accurate documentary about science. We hope that the program directors of PBS stations take note.

July 3, 2003

Unlocking the Mystery of Illustra Media

by Skip Evans, NCSE Network Project Director

In the "Wedge" document setting forth the twenty-year plan of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (now called the Center for Science and Culture), an early objective is a "PBS show such as NOVA treating design theory fairly." Supporters may have achieved a simulacrum of this part of their agenda. The intelligent design video Unlocking the Mystery of Life is receiving PBS distribution: on April 27, 2003, the video was made available to public television stations via satellite feed from the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).

Although it is being aired on some PBS stations, Unlocking decidedly was not made by NOVA, or any other PBS producer. Who did make this video, then? It turns out that the company identified with Unlocking traces back to the Moody Institute of Science, a well-known producer of fundamentalist Christian videos. The connections require some detective work to uncover, however.

Unlocking was produced by Illustra Media. Its executive producer is James W. Adams and it was produced and directed by Lad Allen and Timothy Eaton. The script was written by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and W. Peter Allen. Unlocking is the only production listed on the web site of Illustra Media, and no video production staff -- or any Illustra Media employees -- are listed on the site. Most film production companies' web sites have links to an "About Us" section detailing who is on the staff; the site for Illustra Media does not.

Illustra Media is linked with another production company, Discovery Media, which in turn is the successor to the Moody Institute of Science. When one conducts a "whois" search at the Network Solutions web site on two URLs, illustramedia.com and discoverymedia.org, the following information is provided:

illustramedia.com

Registrant:
Discovery Media Productions (ILLUSTRAMEDIA-DOM)
PO Box 2711
La Habra, CA 90632-2711
US

Domain Name: ILLUSTRAMEDIA.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Discovery Media Productions (20335406O) j.harned@GTE.NET
PO Box 2711
La Habra, CA 90632-2711
US
562-943-0914 fax: 562-943-0914

discoverymedia.org

Registrant:
Discovery Media Productions (DISCOVERYMEDIA3-DOM)
PO Box 2711
La Habra, CA 90632-2711
US

Domain Name: DISCOVERYMEDIA.ORG

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Discovery Media Productions (20335406O) j.harned@GTE.NET
PO Box 2711
La Habra, CA 90632-2711
US
562-943-0914 fax: 562-943-0914

There are other links between Discovery Media and Illustra Media. Discovery Media lists its current president as James W. Adams, the executive producer of Unlocking. Jerry Harned, who is credited with editing the video, is Discovery Media's Post Production Supervisor. The Discovery Media team is rounded out by Lad Allen and Timothy Eaton, credited for producing and directing Unlocking. These links strongly suggest that Illustra Media was created as a shell company by Discovery Media for the purpose of marketing Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Why might Discovery Media want to separate out this video from its other offerings? Unlocking is being marketed to PBS and to public schools as a "straight science" program. But Discovery Media is clearly in the fundamentalist film business. Their mission statement reads, "We believe that God reveals Himself, today, through His creation and the Biblical record. Our mission is to utilize every form of available media to present the reality of His existence through compelling scientific evidence and academic research."

Discovery Media's current video release is The Exodus Revealed, a documentary-style hunt for evidence to demonstrate that the Israelites' journey across the Red Sea was a true historical event. The video takes the viewer along the route the Israelites may have taken to the Red Sea, and also promises to show "coral encrusted remains possibly from the chariots of Pharaoh's 18th dynasty army," and "archaeological treasures [that] have been concealed for more than 3000 years." Its other productions include The End Times, "a compelling presentation of the major events that will immediately precede and unfold during the Tribulation including The Rapture of the Church, a time when Jesus Christ will appear and take the faithful to heaven instantly," and Heaven and Hell, which is intended to "strengthen the faith of those who believe and challenge the skepticism of those who doubt the existence of either place."

The fundamentalist flavor of Discovery Media's productions is understandable since, according to the "Wonders of Science" web site, Discovery Media is the successor of the earlier Moody Institute of Science, a well-known producer of fundamentalist science videos beginning in the 1940s. A further tie is that Unlocking's executive producer Adams is also listed as a former Executive Producer for Moody Institute of Science from 1972 to 1988.

In his glowing review of two "intelligent design" videotapes, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and Icons of Evolution in Christianity Today, Thomas E. Woodward writes "The stories they tell challenge the myth that Intelligent Design is a movement driven by religious bias." But if it is a "myth that Intelligent Design is a movement driven by religious bias," why do its proponents have to work so hard to hide their fundamentalist roots?

July 1, 2003

Bottaro's Letter to WNYE

by Andrea Bottaro

The following letter was originally sent to the WNYE PBS station in anticipation of their programmed broadcast of the Intelligent Design "documentary" "Unlocking the Mystery of Life". Eventually, WNYE aired the program with a disclaimer regarding its contents (see the NCSE site for the text of WNYE's disclaimer and other comments about "Unlocking").

Mr. Laing Kandel
General Manager
WNYE
New York

Dr. Joe Klein
Chancellor
Dept. of Education
New York

Dear Mr. Kandel and Dr. Klein:

It was recently announced by the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA, that the New York Department of Education's WNYE television station is planning to broadcast the documentary video "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" (hereafter, UML) on July 6, 2003. While I realize that the purpose of WNYE is to provide its viewers with the broadest and most diverse information from different sources and points of view, there are a few background issues about this video that I believe you and WNYE viewers should be made aware of.

UML presents itself as a well-crafted, purely scientific documentary, while it is factually misleading in many respects, and its main purpose is propaganda for a pseudo-scientific movement known as Intelligent Design Creationism. UML has its (strategically concealed) origins close to religious fundamentalist and Creationist circles, and displays a pattern of poor scholarship, including misrepresentation/omission of key scientific evidence. Ultimately, these result in a misleading picture of the facts and of current scientific knowledge, as well as of the ultimate goals of the documentary itself. (More details about these problems are found in the attachment to this letter.)

While as a scientist I fully subscribe to the free dissemination of opinions from any source, I think you owe WNYE viewers that such background information is made available to them, so that they may properly judge the documentary's message. Addition of a disclaimer to the broadcast, explaining that the documentary presents a one-sided view of a fringe, pseudo-scientific idea rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists, and that its main purpose is religious/philosophical in nature, would probably be sufficient to alert your viewers of the true significance of "Unlocking the Mystery of Life".

Thank you very much for your consideration. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions or require additional information.

Sincerely

Andrea Bottaro
University of Rochester Medical Center
Rochester, NY, 6/30/03

UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF LIFE - MORE OMISSIONS THAN FACTS

The source:
"Unlocking the Mystery of Life" is the first and only production of an entity called "IllustraMedia". In fact, "IllustraMedia" is one and the same with "Discovery Media Productions"1. Discovery Media is a production company whose previous videos are devoted to evangelical topics, such as "Heaven and Hell" and "The End Times"2. While there is nothing wrong with an evangelical video company producing a science documentary, the fact that to do so it was felt necessary to create a "shell" production outfit highlights the aura of ambiguity that pervades the entire enterprise (more examples to follow). Furthermore, the purpose of the video as a propagandistic and religious, rather than scientific/educational tool is underscored by how UML is being publicized within fundamentalist circles. For instance, Mission Frontiers, the Bulletin of the evangelical U.S. Center for World Missions, hails it as "the most impressive evangelistic tool ever made"3.

The contents:
As a documentary, UML is a skillful and sophisticated production, showing some well-made computer animations of cellular processes at the molecular level. In discussing such mechanisms, the video claims that the scientific evidence points to insurmountable difficulties for standard evolutionary theory, and supports instead the hypothesis that a superior intelligence directly intervened to create and/or diversify life (hence the name "Intelligent Design", or ID, Creationism4). The video discusses such purported evidence and devotes much of its time to the historical origins and philosophical underpinnings of the ID movement.

The fundamental question is whether ULM conforms to basic scientific standards of adherence to evidence and facts. In this, it fails at several levels. First of all, throughout the documentary mainstream scientific views, supported by the overwhelming majority of scientists, are not even independently presented. Instead, oversimplified, sometime downright scornful presentations of mainstream scientific theories and hypotheses are provided by supporters of ID (as a counterexample, the recent PBS "Evolution" series, though clearly favoring a scientific view, featured the opinions of several prominent representatives of Creationism). In UML, therefore, the viewers are treated to descriptions of scientific evidence and theories that have little connection with what is in fact going on in the science world. For reasons of space, I'll just mention a few examples.

The most glaring omission deals with UML's discussion of Origins of Life (OoL) science. The only non ID-based views on OoL discussed in the video are those proposed, in the late '60s, by one of the current ID proponents, Dr. Dean Kenyon. According to UML, those models have been later shown by Kenyon and colleagues to be insufficient to explain key aspects of early molecular and cellular evolution. In fact, most of Kenyon's original views have long been superseded by more thorough, and better empirically supported, scientific hypotheses - indeed, it was those hypotheses and evidence that led to the demise of Kenyon's ideas in scientific circles long before ID Creationism appeared on the scene. Alas, what is arguably the current (and has been for more than a decade now) favored hypothesis about OoL, the so-called "RNA World" model,5 finds no mention whatsoever in UML. This is not surprising, perhaps, since the objections raised in UML by ID proponents to Kenyon's original theory would not stand against this new model. Thus, the viewer is given the false impression that the current scientific choice is between ID Creationism and its outright miraculous Origin of Life, or Dr. Kenyon's outdated 1960's theory. Of course, our understanding of OoL is still very limited, and highly speculative. Nevertheless, it is far more advanced and scientifically solid than the UML parody would want its audience to believe.

Other mistakes in UML include an equally superficial, almost mockingly simplified discussion of cooption, a crucial evolutionary mechanism for which in fact significance evidence exists in the biological world. UML's "experts" even commit a basic error regarding the role of nucleic acids in the cell, which are presented as uniquely involved in genetic information storage and transfer, while it is now well known that they are directly active in crucial molecular processes functionally comparable to those carried out by protein enzymes - a key piece of evidence in favor of the "RNA World" hypothesis mentioned above (and the possible reason why it also went unmentioned).

The crucial argument underlying the whole ID philosophy, widely discussed in the video, is the concept of "irreducibly complex" systems, and the purported impossibility of conventional evolutionary mechanisms to generate them. Although it was quickly rejected by biologists on theoretical and empirical grounds,6 "irreducible complexity" has remained the main staple of ID Creationism. Ironically, this argument was just recently delivered a fatal blow in the prestigious science journal Nature, where a computer simulation based entirely on evolutionary principles (undirected random mutation and selection) was shown to be able to generate "irreducibly complex" outputs7. While of course the video cannot be faulted for not predicting the results of future scientific research, this episode serves as a good example of the shaky grounds on which ID reasoning is built. Indeed, not only does scientific evidence continue to accumulate contradicting the ID arguments, but even more damningly, in over 10 years from the onset of the "movement", no single scientific result supporting ID has been published in the scientific literature, despite its supporters continuing claims of the existence of such results. Indeed, even the ID advocates' own journal, the electronically published Progress in Complexity, Information and Design, has failed to publish any experimental result supporting ID8.

In short, despite the appeals by ID advocates to "let the evidence speak for itself", there is in fact no positive scientific evidence in support of ID, and on the contrary the theoretical arguments of its advocates are constantly being proven erroneous in the professional literature. To avoid facing this lack of evidence, UML resorts instead to systematic distortions of mainstream science theories and omissions of key ideas and pieces of evidence.

The people:
The experts interviewed for UML, and ID advocates in general, are fond to present themselves as "scientists", often accompanied by the qualifier "a small but growing number of". In fact, most ID advocates are not scientists by any meaningful definition of the term, and their numbers (for which "small" is an overstatement) are anything but growing.

Of the experts who appear in UML, 4 can in fact qualify as bona fide scientists: Michael Behe, Scott Minnich, Dean Kenyon, and Jed Macosko. The first two hold tenured positions in Biochemistry and Microbiology, respectively, at mainstream universities, but despite their own research experience and active labs, as discussed above they have failed to produce any evidence in support of the ideas they so eloquently argue for. Dean Kenyon was scientifically active until the mid-'70s, after which he has not published further in the scientific literature (however, he has since co-authored the notorious Creationist school textbook "Of Pandas and People"9). 16 Jed Macosko, whose image is accompanied in UML by the qualifier "Molecular Biologist, UC Berkeley", although a Berkeley graduate and former postdoctoral trainee, in fact is not, or has ever been, on the Berkeley faculty, as that title could suggest. Indeed, Dr. Macosko is apparently not even affiliated with UC Berkeley anymore; if he was at the time of interview, he certainly was there as a junior postdoc trainee, hardly an "expert" in the field by any standards. Currently, Dr. Macosko is listed on some ID web sites as teaching chemistry at the religious La Sierra University in Riverside, CA10, although he does not appear on the faculty list there either11. Such "generous" use of credentials is not unique in the documentary. One of the leading proponents of ID, William Dembski, is labeled as a "mathematician - Baylor University" in UML, although he is affiliated with Baylor's Institute for Faith and Learning, which focuses on theology and philosophy12. Indeed, almost the entirety of Dr. Dembski's vast published opus, with the exception of a mathematics paper in 1990, is about various aspects of theology, apologetics and philosophy13 (Dr. Dembski holds PhDs in Mathematics and Philosophy, and a M.Div. in Theology). Finally, Jonathan Wells, presented as "biologist" in UML, does hold a PhD in Developmental Biology from UC Berkeley. By his own words, however, he entered the program not based on any genuine interest in science and biology, but following the direction of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, with the expressed goal to "devote his life to destroying Darwinism"14. Not surprisingly, there is no record of Dr. Wells performing any meaningful research work after his training at Berkeley, and he has since entirely dedicated himself to anti-evolutionist propaganda (including the book "Icons of Evolution", some editions of which even contained stickers for students to deface biology textbooks15).

Thus, the definitions of professional background and academic affiliation used throughout UML are at the very least ambiguous, and clearly result in an inflation of the apparent academic clout and relevant expertise of the participants.

In summary, "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" is a depiction of a fringe, at best semi-scientific philosophical movement very close, ideologically and organizationally, to religious Creationism. The documentary misrepresents itself, its goals, the existing scientific evidence and its own experts in several significant ways. While it is your prerogative to air the programs that you believe best suit your audience's needs and interests, it is equally important that your viewers be provided with information that may help them put this product's contents and purpose in the appropriate context. This is necessary not only in the spirit of openness and full disclosure, but also to avoid that your broadcast of the documentary appear as an implicit endorsement of this new form of "stealth" Creationism by one of the largest Departments of Education in the country.

Notes
1. Verifiable by a "WHOIS" search for the domain name "illustramedia.com": http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=illustramedia.com&SearchType=do Accessed 6/30/03
2. http://www.discoverymedia.org/dm_products_page.htm Accessed 6/29/03
3. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/2002/06/PDFs/Unlocking_Mystery.pdf Accessed 6/28/03
4. For an in-depth discussion of ID Creationism, see "Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics", Robert T. Pennock, ed, MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 0-262-16204-0; review in http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~cheathwo/Phil100/nytimes.html Accessed 6/30/03
5. http://www.lawrenceroberge.com/RNAWORLD.htm Accessed 6/30/03
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/21438?fulltext=true Accessed 6/30/03
6. see for instance several articles by Dr. Ken Miller, Brown University: http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/ Accessed 6/30/03
7. Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, Adami C. "The evolutionary origin of complex features." Nature. May 8 2003; 423 (6936):139-44
8. http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php Accessed 6/29/03
9. http://63.74.14.138/page/001/PROD/BOFPA1 , reviewed at the National Association of Biology Teachers web site http://www.nabt.org/sub/evolution/panda1.asp Both accessed 6/30/03.
10. http://www.iscid.org/jed-macosko.php ; http://www.lasierra.edu/ Both accessed 6/30/03
11. http://www.lasierra.edu/resources/phonelists/phonename_m-s.html Accessed 6/30/03
12. http://www3.baylor.edu/IFL/ Accessed 6/28/03
13. http://www.designinference.com/documents/05.02.CV.htm Accessed 6/30/03
14. http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/DARWIN.htm Accessed 6/30/03
15. Links to reviews of Icons of Evolution can be found at the National Center of Science Education's web site http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/9855_reviews_of_icons_of_evolution_10_31_2002.asp Accessed 6/30/03
16. Note added July 8, 2003: After this letter first appeared on the NCSE web site, Dr. Kenyon kindly and quickly informed me that he has in fact one scientific publication later than the mid-'70s: "A Comparison of Proteinoid and Aldocyanoin Microsystems as Models of the Primordial Protocell", in Molecular Evolution and Protobiology [K. Matsuno, K. Dose, K. Harada, and D. L. Rohlfing, eds.], pp. 163-188, Plenum Press, 1984. My original statement was based on a search of the main scientific literature databases available: Pubmed, BasicBIOSIS, CSA Biological Sciences, and the Institute for Scientific Information's "Web of Science" Science Citation Index. The book article in question does not seem to appear in any of these databases, nor has it apparently ever been referenced by any other later publication also in the database. Nevertheless, for the record, the existence of Dr. Kenyon's 1984 paper should be noted.

Addendum, 8/5/03: Dr. Dembski has recently charged that my critique of "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" misleads readers. He's wrong: http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/demskiscompass.html.

Media strategy

Source: Geotimes Website

Helping support the ID effort, a number of PBS stations around the country have been airing a documentary, entitled “Unlocking the Mystery of Life,” about ID and its proponents. The documentary is co-written by a senior scholar at the Discovery Institute. After the documentary ran on Maryland Public Television, a Howard University medical school professor aptly described it as an infomercial for ID creationism.

While harsh, such a description is appropriate for ID proponents who have opted to take their message directly to the people and thence the nation’s schools, rather than to publish papers in scientific journals or to present their results to other scientists at meetings. They invest their effort in unscientific polling rather than in producing new evidence to support their theory, continuing to rely on the same small suite of examples that have long since been refuted in the scientific literature.

ID proponents are quick to point out that, as is often the case with revolutionary new theories, they have been blocked by an entrenched old guard. But what they fail to grasp is that such opposition is only part of the picture — true scientific revolutions are characterized by a swelling flood of new data and findings that eventually wash away the old thinking. Instead, ID offers a trickle, and, a recirculating trickle at that.

Until an Edwards-like Supreme Court ruling settles the acceptability of ID as classroom science, these skirmishes will continue. Meanwhile, at a time when scientific literacy is at an ebb, this battle is not the one we should have to be waging. Our economic security, health and vitality as a nation depend on teaching the best science to the next generation and not hewing to a narrow ideology being promoted outside of science.

The vacuity of Intelligent Design

2005-01-05T17:36:00.000-08:00

Others have already shown how Intelligent Design is a vacuous concept but it is always nice to hear ID proponents themselves show supporting evidence. Here we hear how Dembski describes how Intelligent Design fails as a science.

It is not only we critics who point out that ID fails to qualify as science in this regard. In his Biola speech, Dembski mentioned one sympathetic geneticist who was intrigued with ID, but who felt pessimistic about its prospects, writing: "If I knew how to scientifically approach the question you pose, I would quit all that I am doing right now, and devote the rest of my career in pursuit of its answer. The fact that I have no idea how to begin gathering scientific data that would engage the scientific community is the very reason that I don't share your optimism that this approach will work" (Dembski 2002). Dembski told his audience that he himself remained optimistic that ID had research potential, but, tellingly, he admitted that he had no specific research proposals to offer, just some possible "research themes."

Source: DNA by Design? Stephen Meyer and the Return of the God Hypothesis by Pennock

Plenty of scientists are intrigued with intelligent design but for now don't see how they can usefully contribute to it. I recently had an exchange with one such scientist (a geneticist). I asked him, "What sort of real work needs to go forward before you felt comfortable with ID?" His response was revealing:

If I knew how to scientifically approach the question you pose, I would quit all that I am doing right now, and devote the rest of my career in pursuit of its answer. The fact that I have no idea how to begin gathering scientific data that would engage the scientific community is the very reason that I don't share your optimism that this approach will work.

Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and Reality Check for ID by William Dembski

Dembski Quotes

2005-01-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

Who says ID does not make predictions?

"I predict that in the next five years intelligent design will be sufficiently developed to deserve funding from the National Science Foundation."

1998 Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design p. 29

Just not very successful ones... 5 years from 1998 would have been 2003...

[A]ny view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill., pg. 206

I've just gotten kind of blase about submitting things to journals where you often wait two years to get things into print. And I find I can actually get the turnaround faster by writing a book and getting the ideas expressed there. My books sell well. I get a royalty. And the material gets read more.

December 21, 2001, Chronicle of Higher Education

The world is a mirror representing the divine life... Intelligent design readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

July/August, 1999 Touchstone Magazine

Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action. (p. 13)

Intelligent Design: The Bridge between science and theology, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press

Two animating principles drive intelligent design. The more popular by far takes intelligent design as a tool for liberation from ideologies that suffocate the human spirit, such as reductionism and materialism. The other animating principle, less popular but intellectually more compelling, takes intelligent design as the key to opening up fresh insights into nature. The first of these animating principles is purely instrumental -- it treats intelligent design as a tool for attaining some other end (like defeating materialism). Presumably if other tools could more effectively accomplish that end, intelligent design would be abandoned. The second of these animating principles, by contrast, is intrinsic -- it treats intelligent design as an essential good, an end in itself worthy to be pursued because of the insights it provides into nature. [p. 1] That said, we need to be very clear when we are doing the nuts-and-bolts scientific and conceptual work on ID and when we are engaged in cultural and political activity. What’s more, these aspects of ID need to keep pace. We have done amazingly well in creating a cultural movement, but we must not exaggerate ID’s successes on the scientific front. [p. 4] Because of ID’s outstanding success at gaining a cultural hearing, the scientific research part of ID is now lagging behind. [p. 4]

Dembski, William A. (2002) "Becoming a Disciplined Science: Prospects, Pitfalls, and Reality Check for ID." Keynote Address, RAPID Conference (Research and Progress in Intelligent Design). Biola University, La Mirada, California, 25 October 2002. RAPID Conference, Biola University http://www.iscid.org/papers/Dembski_DisciplinedScience_10280

and his final parting words

Theology is where my ultimate passion is and I think that is where I can uniquely contribute ... I am looking forward to engaging students and theological students have always been my favorite to deal with because for theology students, it’s not just a job, but a passion, especially at a place like Southern, because they want to change the world

Robinson, Jeff. "Dembski to head seminary's new science & theology center." BP News. Sep 16, 2004. http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=19115

Witty World: Ducking the debate

2005-01-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Since Witt seems to have disabled comments to his blog I will continue my comments here.

Witt: Valentine is a Darwinist who does raise serious problems with the Darwinian model for the origin of phyla. He does not do this in the preface. He does this in journal articles and in the body of "The Origin of Phyla."

Let's revisit the issue here. Meyer suggested in his 2004 paper that

Meyer: Though Gilbert et al. (1996) attempted to solve the problem of the origin of form by proposing a greater role for developmental genetics within an otherwise neo-Darwinian framework,1 numerous recent authors have continued to raise questions about the adequacy of that framework itself or about the problem of the origination of form generally (Webster & Goodwin 1996; Shubin & Marshall 2000; Erwin 2000; Conway Morris 2000, 2003b; Carroll 2000; Wagner 2001; Becker & Lonnig 2001; Stadler et al. 2001; Lonnig & Saedler 2002; Wagner & Stadler 2003; Valentine 2004:189-194).

Thus suggesting that Valentine doubts the efficacy of the Neo-Darwinian framework. While Valentine may address the problems surrounding our understanding of the Cambrian explosion, it is incorrect to portray his book and papers as doubting the adequacy of the neo-Darwinian framework.
I also provided a Meyer quote of earlier work by Valentine about CSI and complexity where the paper actually contradicted Meyer's assertions.

Confronted with these examples all Witt can do is try to distract with unsupported accusations.

Witt:
That he begins his book with a eulogy to Darwin is little wonder. Look what the Darwinist community did to evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg when he sent out for peer review, edited, and published Stephen's Meyer's review essay arguing against the Darwinian model for the origin of the Cambrian phyla. Sternberg was attacked and slandered from many sides.

Witt is totally speculating as to why Valentine made his comments in the preface. In addition his portrayal of how Sternberg was treated seems biased.

I can't pretend to know Valentine's motives. I assume he has a genuine respect for Darwin. But notice that very few people are attacking Valentine for raising serious questions about the present adequacy of the Darwinian mechanism as an explanation for origin of phyla. Intentionally or accidentally, Valentine cleared a space for himself in the preface to do dispassionate analysis of the Darwinian explanation in the body of his book.

Valentine may raise serious questions but does not seem to consider Darwinian mechanisms as being inadequate in explaining the origin of phyla. Of course unlike some ID proponents, Valentine is not suggesting that Darwinism is a theory in crisis.

Witt may take notice of Professor Richard Colling's wise words

Prof. Richard Colling wrote:
In his new book, “Random Designer,” he writes: “It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods” when they say evolutionary theory is “in crisis” and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. “Such statements are blatantly untrue,” he argues; “evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny. [1]”

(Sharon Begley in Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2004; Page A15 )

Witt continues to accuse critics of Sternberg of slander.

Witt: As for Sternberg, the rumor mill even floated the slander that he had made up his peer reviewers. However, this slander was shot down when Sternberg produced the relevant evidence for his bosses at the Smithsonian Institution. The best the naysayers can do now is claim that the peer reviewers were surely not from prestigious institutions and surely lacked relevant degrees. As proof they point to the supposed errors in Meyer's article. The central "error," of course, is that Meyer broke with the dogma of Darwinism.

The central error is that Meyer's paper is full of errors and unsupported assertions. Given the arguments of Meyer's paper, it is indeed surprising that it passed peer review. But then again, the journal in question was not really specialized in the topic raised by Meyer.

As Sternberg explains, the reviewers are from reputable institutions and do have relevant degrees. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is morally and legally obligated to preserve the anonymity of the peer reviewers. That's how peer review works. Moreover, why would the peer reviewers want to get trashed like Richard Sternberg has been trashed? Is it any wonder they haven't "fessed up"?

Give the poor arguments in Meyer's paper, I am not surprised that the reviewers have not 'fessed up'. They would have a lot of explaining to do.

Witt: Finally, I want to return again to the ongoing attempt to eliminate intelligent design by labeling it an eliminative argument. Is the design inference we make when we see Stonehenge an eliminative argument? We can label it whatever we want, but it's still a reasonable inference. It's based, in part, on what we know about what intelligent causes have done.

I'm aware of the contortions some enter into to counter this common sense approach to science. But at some time it's best to lay aside the mental games and merely follow the evidence wherever it leads. At the beginning of the 21st century, that's where the real scientific adventure lies, not with definitional games.

Unwilling to address the claims, Witt resorts to ad hominems: making unsupproted accusations such as 'contortions', 'mental games' etc. What Witt however has failed to show is that Dembski's filter has any relevance as to how archaeologists infer design in case of Stonehenge. It is based on what we know about intelligent causes and designers as Witt correctly points out, which is totally opposite from the explanatory filter as proposed by Dembski. Through conflating the explanatory filter with 'common sense approaches', Witt gives the impression that there is a similarity between these methods when such similarities seem far fetched at most.

An interesting sidenote is that on the one hand ID proponents argue that ID adds something to science while on the other hand admitting that science already deals with design. In other words, ID is superfluous... Will the real ID argument please stand up... Witt is correct to observe that science does perform design inferences, he is however wrong that such inferences have much similarity to Dembki's proposal.

Let's indeed follow the evidence wherever it may lead but let's also not pretend that the design inference is more than an appeal to ignorance based on an eliminative approach.

Del Ratzsch, a well known ID proponent observed

Del Ratzsch: So typically, patterns that are likely candidates for design are first identified as such by some unspecified (“mysterious”) means, then with the pattern in hand S picks out side information identified (by unspecified means) as releavant to the particular pattern, then sees whether the pattern in question is among the various patterns that could have been constructed from that side information. What this means, of course, is that Dembski’s design inference will not be particularly useful either in initial recognition or identification of design.

and a warning to ID supporters (are you listening Witt?)

Del Ratzsch: “I do not wish to play down or denigrate what Dembski has done. There is much of value in the Design Inference. But I think that some aspects of even the limited task Dembski set for himself still remains to be tamed.” “That Dembski is not employing the robust, standard, agency-derived conception of design that most of his supporters and many of his critics have assumed seems clear.

Intelligent Design and the argument from ignorance

2005-01-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

At Panda's Thumb you can find Icons of ID: Argument from Ignorance and other logical fallacies

Enjoy

ID proponents still confused

2004-12-31T10:18:00.000-08:00

Despite the detailed descriptions why Intelligent Design is a typical argument from ignorance, some ID proponents still show a lack of familiarity with the design inference used by Dembski.

On ARN, Salvador presents an excellent case for the unfamiliarity of ID proponents with the approached chosen by ID:

Brayton then tries to use pin "argument from ignorance" as the basis of ID, and that is not true. Barrow and Tipler are a classic examples people who does not use that arguement to support ID. He paraodies ID by saying insinuating IDists will infer ID as soon as scientist admit they don't know something about a certain phenomenon. Not true. Witness Dean Kenyon

Let's quickly discuss the design inference.

Can the event be explained by chance?
If NO, Can the event be explained by regularity?
If NO, Is the event specified?
If YES, then design is inferred

Using the same approach as chosen by ID proponents to claim design in biology, Brayton has shown how the earthquake and the following Tsunami would lead to a design inference due to much of the same appeal to ignorance as chosen by ID proponents in biology.

What is interesting is that in his reply, Salvador seems to distantiate himself from the traditional ID proponents such as Dembski or Behe. Not surprisingly since their methods to infer design are based on an "appeal to ignorance".

Salvador then further confuses the issues when he stated

The reason the analogy does not apply is that what is of interest in biological phenomenon are the information architectures, the software, the designs (conceptual entities). The mystery in biology is how physical processes (hardware) created informatic relationiships (software). With the tsunami's its trying to explain how hardware affects hardware. The two realms of inquiry are not even in the same category.

Nothing in the design inference makes the distinction between software and hardware. Such ad hoc reasoning does not bode well for ID which seems to have to move its goal posts regularly. Information as defined in the design inference refer simply to low probability under chance scenarios and is often confused with other concepts of information.

Educators, Scientists and religious people speak out against Intelligent Design

2004-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:00

In addition to the more than 500 Steves in NCSE's Project Steve many other scientists have started to speak out against Intelligent Design.
To appreciate the number, there are about 1% of people in the US with the name Steve or Stephanie. In addition, less than 1% of the population in the US has a PhD.
The NCSE has collected the position of Civil Liberty organizations, Educational organizations, Religious organizations and Scientific and Scholarly organizations in their Voices for Evolution project.

National Organizations
Oklahoma
Georgia
Kansas
Texas
Washington
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Missouri
Wisconsin
Michigan

National Organizations

National Science Teachers Association

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) strongly supports the position
that evolution is a major unifying concept in science and should be included in the K-12 science education frameworks and curricula. Furthermore, if evolution is not taught, students will not achieve the level of scientific literacy they need. This position is consistent with that of the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and many other scientific and educational organizations.
NSTA also recognizes that evolution has not been emphasized in science curricula in a manner commensurate to its importance because of official policies, intimidation of science teachers, the general public's misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, and a century of controversy. In addition, teachers are being pressured to introduce creationism, "creation science," and other nonscientific views, which are intended to weaken or eliminate the teaching of evolution.

Source: NSTA Position Statement The Teaching of Evolution

AAAS Board Resolution Urges Opposition to "Intelligent Design" Theory in U.S. Science Classes American Association for the Advancement of Science

The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry. It is the foundation for research in many areas of biology as well as an essential element of science education. To become informed and responsible citizens in our contemporary technological world, students need to study the theories and empirical evidence central to current scientific understanding.

Over the past several years proponents of so-called "intelligent design theory," also known as ID, have challenged the accepted scientific theory of biological evolution. As part of this effort they have sought to introduce the teaching of "intelligent design theory" into the science curricula of the public schools. The movement presents "intelligent design theory" to the public as a theoretical innovation, supported by
scientific evidence, that offers a more adequate explanation for the origin of the diversity of living organisms than the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution. In response to this effort, individual scientists and philosophers of science have provided substantive critiques of "intelligent design," demonstrating significant conceptual flaws in its formulation, a lack of credible scientific evidence, and misrepresentations of scientific facts.

Recognizing that the "intelligent design theory" represents a challenge to the quality of science education, the Board of Directors of the AAAS unanimously adopts the following resolution:

Resolution

WHEREAS, ID proponents claim that contemporary evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the origin of the diversity of living organisms

WHEREAS, to date, the ID movement has failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claim that ID undermines the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution

WHEREAS, the ID movement has not proposed a scientific means of testing its claims

Therefore Be It Resolved, that the lack of scientific warrant for so-called "intelligent design theory" makes it improper to include as a part of science education

Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of "intelligent
design theory" as a part of the science curricula of the public schools

Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that AAAS calls upon its members to assist those engaged in overseeing science education policy to understand the nature of science, the content of contemporary evolutionary theory and the inappropriateness of "intelligent design theory" as subject matter for science education

Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS encourages its affiliated societies to endorse this resolution and to communicate their support to appropriate parties at the federal, state and local levels of the government.

Approved by the AAAS Board of Directors on 10/18/02

Source: AAAS Board Resolution Urges Opposition to "Intelligent Design" Theory in U.S. Science Classes

Botanical Society of America

Evolution represents one of the broadest, most inclusive theories used in pursuit of and in teaching this knowledge, but it is by no means the only theory involved. Scientific theories are used in two ways: to explain what we know, and to pursue new knowledge. Evolution explains observations of shared characteristics (the result of common ancestry and descent with modification) and adaptations (the result of natural selection acting to maximize reproductive success), as well as explaining pollen:ovule ratios, weeds, deceptive pollination strategies, differences in sexual expression, dioecy, and a myriad of other biological phenomena. Far from being merely a speculative notion, as implied when someone says, “evolution is just a theory,” the core concepts of evolution are well documented and well confirmed. Natural selection has been repeatedly demonstrated in both field and laboratory, and descent with modification is so well documented that scientists are justified in saying that evolution is true.

Some people contend that creationism and its surrogate, “intelligent design,” offers an alternative explanation: that organisms are well adapted and have common characteristics because they were created just so, and they exhibit the hallmarks of intelligent design. As such, creationism is an all inclusive explanation for every biological phenomenon. So why do we support and teach evolution and not creationism/“intelligent design” if both explain the same phenomena? Are botanists just dogmatic, atheistic materialists, as some critics of science imply? Hardly, although scientists are routinely portrayed by creationists as dogmatic. We are asked, “Why, in all fairness, don’t we teach both explanations and let students decide?”

The fairness argument implies that creationism is a scientifically valid alternative to evolution, and that is not true. Science is not about fairness, and all explanations are not equal. Some scientific explanations are highly speculative with little in the way of supporting evidence, and they will stand or fall based upon rigorous testing. The history of science is littered with discarded explanations, e.g., inheritance of acquired characters, but these weren’t discarded because of public opinion or general popularity; each one earned that distinction by being scientifically falsified. Scientists may jump on a “band wagon” for some new explanation, particularly if it has tremendous explanatory power, something that makes sense out of previously unexplained phenomena. But for an explanation to become a mainstream component of a theory, it must be tested and found useful in doing science.
Read more here
Source: Botanical Society of America's Statement on Evolution

The American Society for Cell Biology

Main Website

American Geological Institute

American Geological Institute Political Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution (12-8-04)

List of Organizations at EvoWiki

list of scientific organisations

Oklahoma

Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education

Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE)

OKLAHOMA’S PROPOSED TEXTBOOK DISCLAIMER ON EVOLUTION

OKLAHOMA’S PROPOSED TEXTBOOK DISCLAIMER ON EVOLUTION:

This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory, which some scientists present as scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants and humans.
No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact. The word evolution may refer to many types of change. Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White moths, for example, may evolve into gray moths). This process is micro evolution, which can be observed and described as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing into another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called macro evolution, has never been observed and should be considered a theory.
Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of living things. There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life, which are not mentioned in your textbook, including: Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the fossil record, known as the Cambrian Explosion? Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record in a long time? Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional forms in the fossil record? How did you and all living things come to possess such a complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body?
Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on earth.
Source: OKLAHOMA’S PROPOSED TEXTBOOK DISCLAIMER ON EVOLUTION:

Oklahoma: Statement of OU Science Faculty

As scientists and historians of science at the University of Oklahoma, we protest the use of disclaimers or censorship of textbooks that explain biological evolution. The disclaimer approved by the state textbook committee not only misconstrues the theory of evolution, it misrepresents the meaning of scientific theory, which is a system of interconnected ideas that have been repeatedly supported by evidence and is the closest thing to explanatory truth in any science. By their action, the textbook committee demonstrates that it is either unaware of or has chosen to ignore the extraordinary wealth of factual evidence, from biology, biochemistry, and the physical and earth sciences, that supports the theory of evolution. Their decision also fails to recognize the overwhelming acceptance of evolution by the international scientific community as the only and sufficient natural explanation for diversification of life on earth.

Biological evolution, or descent with modification, is repeatedly observed in natural populations and is inferred from 3.5 billion years of fossil record and from DNA sequences of living organisms; it is characteristic of all forms of life. The theory of evolution, which explains the processes by which biological change occurs, is the central unifying concept in biology, with explanatory power on an even footing with quantum mechanics and general relativity in physics.

The same evolutionary processes that produce adaptations and species in nature (i.e. nonrandom natural selection acting on random mutations) are being borrowed by industry to produce computer-evolved designs for products as diverse as computer software, antibiotics, electronic circuits, and airplanes. By redirecting microbial evolution, Darwinian medicine is revolutionizing the way physicians combat public-health problems. Actions intent on stifling the teaching of evolution not only deprive Oklahoma's children of basic science, they are likely to have a negative impact on
producing the educated workforce needed to attract high tech industry to the state.

Dr. Ola M. Fincke, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Caryn Vaughn, Associate Professor, Zoology; Director, OK Biological
Survey
Dr. William Shelton, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Michael Kaspari, Assistant Professor, Zoology
Dr. Gary Wellborn, Assistant Professor, Zoology
Dr. Thomas S. Ray, Professor, Zoology
Dr. J. Bastian, GL Cross Professor, Zoology
Dr. Ari Berkowitz, Assistant Professor, Zoology
Dr. P.M. Hopkins, Professor, Zoology
Dr. David S. Durica, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Barbara Safiejko-Mroczka, Instructor, Zoology
Dr. Frank J. Sonleitner, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, GL Cross Professor, Zoology
Dr. Don Wilson, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. P.L. Schwagmeyer, Professor, Zoology
Dr. Edith C. Marsh-Matthews, Assistant Professor, Zoology & OMNH
Dr. Richard E. Broughton, Ph.D., Oklahoma Biological Survey
Dr. Rosemary Knapp, Assistant Professor, Zoology
Dr. James N. Thompson, SR Noble Professor & Chair, Zoology
Dr. Douglas Mock, EGH Presidential Professor, Zoology
Dr. Marielle Hoefnagels, Assistant Professor, Zoology and Botany &
Microbiology
Dr. Regina Sullivan, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Doug D. Gaffin, Associate Professor, Zoology
Dr. Paul Bell, Professor, Zoology; Dean, Arts and Sciences
Dr. Laurie Vitt, Professor, Zoology; Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. Lawrence J. Weider, Associate Professor, Zoology; Director, OU Bio.
Station
Dr. William J. Matthews, Professor, Zoology; Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. Janalee P. Caldwell, Associate Professor, Zoology; Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. Gary D. Schnell, Professor, Zoology; Assoc. Director of Research, SNOMNH
Dr. R. Cifelli, Professor, Zoology; Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. M. Mares, Professor, Zoology; Curator and Director, SNOMNH
Dr. Nick J. Czaplewski, Staff Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. Janet K. Braun, Staff Curator, SNOMNH
Dr. Bruce Hoagland, Assistant Professor, Geography; OK Biological Survey
Dr. Eddie Carol Smith, Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Dr. Mark V. Lomolino, Associate Professor, Zoology; OK Biological Survey
Dr. Mia Molvray, Assistant Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. Paul J. Kores, Assistant Professor, Botany and Microbiology; OK Bio. Survey
Dr. Wayne Elisens, Associate Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. Ralph Tanner, Associate Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. John Skvarla, GL Cross Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. Leonard Beevers, GL Cross Professor and Chair, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. John Fletcher, Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. John Downard, Associate Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. John Lancaster, Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. David McCarthy, Associate Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. YiQi Luo, Associate Professor, Botany and Microbiology
Dr. Jimmy Ballard, Assistant Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. Joseph Suflita, GL Cross Research Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. Lee Krumholz, Assistant Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. Linda Wallace, Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. David Nagle, Associate Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. Scott Russell, Professor, Botany & Microbiology; Director of Noble
EM Lab
Dr. Michael McInerney, Professor, Botany & Microbiology
Dr. Bruce A. Roe, GL Cross Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Michael R. Abraham, Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Roland E. Lehr, Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Michael T. Ashby, Associate Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Kenneth M. Nicholas, Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Ann West, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Dick van der Helm, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Radi Wehmshulte, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Robert P. Housa, Assistant Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Ronald L. Halterman, Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. Philip E. Klebba, Associate Professor, Chemistry & Biochemistry
Dr. George B. Richter-Addo, Associate Professor, Chemistry &
Biochemistry
Dr. Paul F. Cook, Kerr Centeni Professor and Chair, Chemistry &
Biochemistry
Dr. Michael Nunley, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Patricia Gilman, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr, Susan Vehik, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Richard Pailes, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Morris Foster, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Circe Sturm, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Robert Brooks, Adjunct Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Paul Minnis, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Lisa Lefler, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Margaret Bender, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Marcia Haag, Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Lesley Rankin-Hill, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Karl Rambo, Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Dr. John Monaghan, Visiting Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Don Wyckoff, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Dr. Stewart Ryan, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Ryan E. Doezema, Professor and Chair, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Sheena Murphy, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. John Cowan, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Matthew B. Johnson, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Gregory A. Parker, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Neil Shafer-Ray, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. William Romanishin, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Eric Abraham, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Edward Baron, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Bruce Mason, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Kimball A. Milton, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Philip Gutierrez, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Kieran Mullen, Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. George R. Kalbfleisch, Professor Emeritus, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. John E. Furneaux, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Michael B. Santos, Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Robert Petry, Professor Emeritus, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Patrick Skubic, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Richard C. Henry, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Mark Keil, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. David Branch, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Ronald Kantowski, Professor, Physics & Astronomy
Dr. Thomas A. Dewers, Associate Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. R. Douglas Elmore, Klabzuba Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. M. Charles Gilbert, Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. David London, Professor & Interim Director, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Richard A. Lupia, Assistant Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Kevin J. Smart, Assistant Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Michael Soreghan, Lecturer, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Barry L. Weaver, Associate Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Stephen R. Westrop, Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Gerilyn S. Soreghan, Assistant Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Charles W. Harper, Jr. Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Judson L. Ahern Associate Professor, Geology & Geophysics
Dr. Peter Barker, Professor, History of Science
Dr. Katherine Pandora, Assistant Professor, History of Science
Dr. Michael S. Reidy, Visiting Assistant Professor, History of Science
Dr. Marilyn Ogilvie, Curator, History of Science Collections; Adjunct
Profesor
Dr. Judith C. Whitecotton, Visiting Instructor, History of Science
Collections
Dr. Kenneth L. Taylor, Professor, History of Science
Dr. Philippe Foret , Assistant Professor of Geography; Affiliate History of
Science
Dr. Teresa K. DeBacker, Assistant Professor, Educational
Psychology

Georgia

Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education

website

Georgia: Jimmy Carter on Evolution 2004

Statement: Jimmy Carter on Evolution

Read the full statement from former U.S. President and Georgia native Jimmy Carter regarding a proposal in January 2004 to remove the word evolution from
textbooks in Georgia's public schools, as submitted from The Carter Center:

"As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University, I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students. Her recommendation that the word "evolution" be prohibited in textbooks will adversely effect the teaching of science and leave our high school graduates with a serious handicap as they enter college or private life where freedom of speech will be permitted."

"Nationwide ridicule of Georgia's public school system will be inevitable if this proposal is adopted, and additional and undeserved discredit will be brought on our excellent universities as our state's reputation is damaged."

"All high school science teachers, being college graduates, have studied evolution as a universal element of university curricula, and would be under pressure to suppress their own educated beliefs in the classroom."

"The existing and long-standing use of the word "evolution" in our state's textbooks has not adversely affected Georgians' belief in the omnipotence of God as creator of the universe. There can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology, biology, and astronomy. There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat earth in order to defend our religious faith."

"Fortunately, it is the responsibility of the State Board of Education to make the final decision on the superintendent's ill-advised proposal."

Source: The Carter Center

- Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education
Source:: The Carter Center

Georgia: Georgia Academy of Science Endorsement of AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory

Resolution

WHEREAS, the Georgia Academy of Science, established in 1922 and affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), has as its purpose "the promotion of the interests of science, particularly in Georgia";

WHEREAS, opponents of evolution, including proponents of so-called "intelligent design theory," have attempted to circumscribe the teaching of evolution in public schools in Georgia;

WHEREAS, the AAAS Board of Directors has issued a resolution on "intelligent design theory," stating that the lack of scientific warrant for so-called "intelligent design theory" makes it improper to include as a part of science education; that AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of "intelligent design theory" as a part of the science curricula of the public schools; that AAAS calls upon its members to assist those engaged in overseeing science education policy to understand the nature of science, the content of contemporary evolutionary theory and the inappropriateness of "intelligent design theory" as subject matter for science education; and that AAAS encourages its affiliated societies to endorse this resolution and to communicate their
support to appropriate parties at the federal, state and local levels of the government;

And whereas, the Georgia Academy of Science has previously addressed issues surrounding the teaching of evolution (in 1980 and in 1982);

Therefore Be It Resolved, that the Georgia Academy of Science endorses the AAAS Board resolution on "intelligent design theory";

Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that the Georgia Academy of Science publishes this resolution in the Georgia Journal of Science, that it shares this resolution with members of the Georgia Junior Academy of Science, and that it communicates this resolution to appropriate parties at the state and local levels.

Passed by the plenary session of the Georgia Academy of Science on 22 March 2003.
Source: Georgia Academy of Science Endorsement

Georgia: RESOLUTION approved April 13, 2004, by the College of Arts and Science, Georgia State University

WHEREAS we, as faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences at Georgia State University, depend upon K-12 education to instill in students the skills and knowledge needed to carry out more advanced studies and contribute to
Georgia's economy;

WHEREAS science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, based on observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, and theory building, that leads to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena, explanations that are open to further testing, revision, and falsification, and may be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence;

WHEREAS we favor reform in the K-12 curriculum that better trains students in the skills and knowledge of science;

WHEREAS the theory of biological evolution by natural selection is the accepted basis of the biological sciences, including medicine and agriculture, and whereas a scientific theory is a unifying concept that explains many observations and facts and explains how nature works using only testable ideas;

WHEREAS "intelligent design" and other religion- or supernatural-based explanations of natural phenomena do not meet the evidentiary standards of the scientific method or a scientific theory;

WHEREAS the Georgia Department of Education's initial draft proposal for the new K-12 state-wide Georgia Performance Standards in the natural and physical sciences omitted key scientific ideas such as evolution and its mechanisms as well as the age of the earth, plate tectonics, and the Big Bang, and encouraged the teaching of 'creationism', 'intelligent design' and related ideas in Georgia public school science courses without providing students information about the motivations behind them, and thus placing these doctrines on a false plane of intellectual equality with theories confirmed by the scientific method;

WHEREAS lesson plans or test questions should not be developed as a means of teaching ideas outside of well-accepted scientific evidence;

WHEREAS the state's science achievement tests should measure knowledge of science only;

BE IT RESOLVED that we, as faculty:

*support continuing and improving the practice of presenting the theory of evolution and other empirical science-based explanations of natural phenomena,
*oppose introducing intelligent design and other non-empirical explanations into Georgia public school science curricula, lesson plans, and testing that would in any way accommodate approaches based on either religious beliefs or other sources that
are not amenable to the scientific process of inquiry, scrutiny, testing, and revision,
*request to be involved in the future development of K-12 state-wide Georgia Performance Standards to facilitate preparing students for college-level science classes and for contributing to Georgia's economy.

RESOLUTION approved April 13, 2004, by the College of Arts and Science, Georgia State University

Clergy Statement of Support for Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education

We, the undersigned, are a diverse group of clergy members who firmly support the notions that religion and science are not, in principle, antagonistic, mutually exclusive nor to be promoted one at the expense of the other.

We support Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education and endorse their call for strict adherence to the principle of the Separation of Church and State as expressed in the non-establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We believe this principle protects all citizens from the use of public institutions, such as the public schools, for the promotion of one religion or religious belief over another. This protection also allows each of us to explore our chosen faiths without the constraint or coercion of governmental power.
As science strives to understand the world, we view new discoveries not as assaults on our beliefs but as insights that can enrich our appreciation of the complex beauty and awe-inspiring magnificence of the natural world. We welcome scholarly scientific investigation because it encourages us to actively reflect on the depths of our chosen faiths so that they can continue to be vibrant, relevant communities in the world. We are confident that our religions are capable of responding to new discoveries constructively and able to recognize their significance in our quest for personal meaning and study of religious context. Rather than being opposed, religion and science enrich and complement each other, together providing a more comprehensive understanding of our lives.
Those of us signed below come together not only to express our support for Georgia Citizens for Integrity in Science Education, but also as an expression of religious tolerance, respect for a wide spectrum of religious opinions and as a celebration of religious diversity.
Most respectfully submitted,
Signatories:

Dr. Robert C. Ballance Heritage Baptist Church Cartersville, GA
Rev. David Key Georgia Interfaith Alliance Lawrenceville, GA
Rev. Marti Keller Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church Dahlonega,GA
Rev. Paul M. Turner Gentle Spirit Christian Church Atlanta, GA
Rev. Angeline Theisen Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Gwinnett
Dr. Edward Frost Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta Atlanta, GA
Rev. Greg Ward Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North Congregation
Rabbi Steven Lebow Temple Kol Emeth Marietta, GA
Rev. Mrs. Laura H. Jernigan Presbytery of Greater Atlanta

UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA BIOLOGY ACADEMIC ADVISORY COMMITTEE STATEMENT ON EVOLUTION

Biological evolution is a major unifying concept in modern biology and provides a conceptual framework that helps make biology a unified science. The centrality of evolution to modern biology has been acknowledged by a number of major scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences. As the appointed representatives of college and university biology professors from around the state, we expect that all students entering our colleges and universities have a clear and accurate understanding of the basic tenets of biological evolution so that they will be prepared for college-level biology classes.
Furthermore, we oppose attempts to have creationism (or its variants “scientific creationism” or “intelligent design”) taught as science because these ideas are outside the scope of science. In order to properly prepare scientifically literate citizens/students, it is necessary for schools to teach biological evolution.
As professional scientists and educators, we offer our services to any faculty, administrator or school board who needs advice about how to best teach biological evolution.

Adopted 07 November 2003 by the following members of the USG Biology Academic Advisory Committee:

Ray Barber, Ph.D.; - Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
Kenneth Relyea, Ph.D., - Armstrong Atlantic State University
Emil Urban, Ph.D., - Augusta State University
Greg Hampikian, Ph.D., - Clayton College & State University
Eugene Keferl, Ph.D., - Coastal Georgia Community College
William S. Birkhead, Ph.D., - Columbus State University
John Lugthart, Ph.D., - Dalton State College
Steve Schenk, Ph.D., - Darton College
Bill Wall, Ph.D., - Georgia College & State University
Sheryl Shanholtzer, Ph.D., - Georgia Perimeter College
Stephen Vives, Ph.D., - Georgia Southern University
Steven Kudravi, Ph.D., - Georgia State University
Ronald H. Matson, Ph.D., - Kennesaw State University
Eric L. Sun, Ph.D., - Macon State College
John Pasto, Ph.D., - Middle Georgia College
Terry Schwaner, Ph.D., - North Georgia College & State University
Harpal Singh, Ph.D., & Gene Mesco, Ph.D., - Savannah State University
Timothy Rhoads, Ph.D., - South Georgia College
Bill Burnett, Ph.D., - Southern Polytechnic State University
David L. Bechler, Ph.D., - Valdosta State University

Kansas

Kansas Citizens for Science

: Website

Kansas: Kansas Rejects Evolution:A Response from the Geoscience Community October 1999

Source: Kansas Rejects Evolution:A Response from the Geoscience Community

The Kansas State Board of Education voted Aug. 11 to eliminate all references to evolution—as well as to the Big Bang theory, the age of Earth or biological macroevolution—from the state’s science curriculum. Geotimes asked members of the geoscience community to respond to this decision. Their letters follow:

: Creation Science: Bad Science, Bad Religion!
: Active scientists make the difference
: Scientists on school boards
: Science Evolves!
: Evolution: Not in Kansas Anymore
: Scientists are the solution

Texas

Evolution debate continues in Texas

Trying to impress upon the board the importance of teaching evolution, many notable Texas scientists testified at the meeting, including Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate and physics professor at the University of Texas, Robert Dennison, president of the Texas Association of Biology Teachers, and Terry Maxwell, biology professor and curator of birds at Angelo State University. Evolution is one of the great unifying concepts in the natural sciences and not teaching it, or teaching what some call the weaknesses of it, would place extra hurdles in students' paths, they said.

Source: Evolution debate continues in Texas

Texas: 550+ Texas scientists and educators agree on teaching evolution

On November 1, 2003, a statement was released urging the Texas Board of Education to resist pressure on it to undermine the treatment of evolution in biology textbooks now under consideration. Signed by over 550 Texas scientists and educators, the statement observes that "Any dilution in textbooks of the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution should sound an alarm to every parent and teacher."

The statement was sponsored by the American Institute of Physics; the American Institute of Biological Sciences and several of its member societies, the American Geological Institute, and the American Astronomical Society also encouraged their members in Texas to sign the statement.

November 5, 2003
Source: 550+ Texas scientists and educators agree on teaching evolution

November 1, 2003
Dear Board of Education member,

As scientists and teachers who live and work in Texas, we write to urge the Texas State Board of Education to choose only textbooks that present accepted, peer-reviewed science and pedagogical expertise. We believe that such a process leads to strong curricula of the highest quality, accuracy, and pedagogical appropriateness.

An institution known for promoting the inclusion of religious tenets in science curricula is trying to water down the strong, peer-reviewed science in the textbooks and to influence the Board of Education to choose these unacceptable books.

At a time when our nation’s welfare increasingly depends on technology, it has never been more important for students to understand the basic ideas of modern science. Evolution is not a belief, a hunch, or an untested hypothesis; it has been extensively tested and repeatedly verified. Any dilution in textbooks of the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution should sound an alarm to every parent and teacher.

We urge you to continue supporting high standards in Texas science textbooks and not to be swayed by misleading information. Your diligence will ensure that Texas students will be better equipped for higher education and the workplace. Very Truly Yours,

Affiliation for identification purposes only

Dr. Steven Weinberg The University of Texas at Austin Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979
Dr. Neal Lane Rice University Former White House science advisor
Dr. Michael Brown The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, 1985
Dr. Johann Deisenhofer Regental Professor and Investigator, HHMI The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1988
C.A. Quarles Department of Physics Texas Christian University and Chair, TexasSection of the American Physical Society
Arthur H. Harris Department of Biological Sciences University of Texas at El Paso
John E. Smaardyk, Ph.D. Halliburton Energy Services
Dr. Robert Andreas Austin Rohvic Scientific
Julia Powell Plainview High School Science Department
Shannon Starnes Department of Science Tarrant Community College
Jasmina Marsh Astronomy Department University of Texas at Austin
Bob Perchonok Principal Scientist Schlumberger
Duane Buhrmester Professor of Psychology University of Texas at Dallas
Andrey Bakulin, PhD Research Geophysicist Shell International Exploration and Production Inc.
Dr. Steven G. Henry Manager GeoLearn, L.L.C.
Mary Kay Hemenway, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin Department of Astronomy Member, Texas Hall of Fame for Science, Mathematics, and Technology
Christine Morshedi, Ph. D. Geophysical Associate ExxonMobil Exploration Company
Dr. Ronald J. Wilhelm Department of Physics /> Honors College Texas Tech University
Norman L. Markworth Department of Physics and Astronomy Stephen F. Austin State University
Esther Betran Ph.D. Biology Department University of Texas at Arlington
Kimberly Willis Principal Scientist Lockheed Martin Space Operations
John V. Shebalin, PhD NASA Johnson Space Center Dan Schultz-Ela Research Scientist - Applied Geodynamics Laboratory Bureau of Economic Geology The University of Texas at Austin
Jean C.C. Hsieh Chevron Texaco
Ted Dohmen Corporate Geophysical Advisor Burlington Resources
Scott Painter, Ph.D. Southwest Research Institute
Ryan Stepler Geophysicist Marathon Oil Company
Robert McKee Principal Engineer, Southwest Research Institute Father of a successful PhD student
Steven D. London Professor of Mathematics University of Houston-Downtown
Christopher T. Baldwin Professor of Geology Sam Houston State University
Mona E. S. Hochman Research Associate Seafood Safety Laboratory Texas A&M University at Galveston
Monica A. Menz Assistant Professor/Director Lab. for Plant Genome Technology Institute for Plant Genomics & Biotechnology Texas A&M University
Dr. John V. Walther Mathews Professor of Geochemistry Southern Methodist University
Dr. Jill Marshall Science and Mathematics Education University of Texas at Austin
Nicholas Sterling The University of Texas Department of Astronomy
William H. Jefferys Harlan J. Smith Centennial Professor in Astronomy Department of Astronomy University of Texas at Austin
Debra Weeden Sr. Petroleum Geophysicist ExxonMobil Exploration Company
Dr. B. Prabhakaran Dept. of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas
Mario C. Diaz Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Texas at Brownsville
Thomas R. Williams Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers Ret. Visiting Scholar in History, Physics and Astronomy departments Rice University
Gordon MacAlpine Chair of Physics and Astronomy Department Trinity University
Alan Morris Professor of Geology Earth and Environmental Science University of Texas at San Antonio
Augusta Era Golian Licensed Geophysicist President Seismic Quality Control, Inc.
Dr. Jonathan Bohmann Dept. of Chemistry Texas Lutheran University
Ray H. Baughman Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and Director of the NanoTech Institute University of Texas at Dallas
Dale Handlin Senior Staff Research Scientist KRATON Polymers, LLC
W. Dennis Dean, Ph.D. Alcon Laboratories
A. J. Syllaios Raytheon
Robert J. Riggins Teacher, Science Academy of South Texas 550+ Texas Scientists, Teachers Agree on Teaching Evolution
Ed Darrell Irving Independent School District
Dr. Jonathan Bohmann Dept. of Chemistry Texas Lutheran University
Catrina M. Hamilton, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate Department of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Paul Harvey Professor Astronomy Department University of Texas
Neal J. Evans II University of Texas at Austin Department of Astronomy
Jerry D. Johnson, Ph.D. Professor Department of Biological Sciences The University of Texas at El Paso
Ed Barker Research Scientist McDonald Observatory The University of Texas at Austin
Carlos Allende Prieto Research Scientist at the University of Texas
Christopher M. Johns-Krull Assistant Professor Department of Physics & Astronomy Rice University
Beverley J. Wills Astronomy Department University of Texas at Austin
Fritz Benedict McDonald Observatory
Christopher M. Olsen Division of Neuropharmacology University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Giovanni Fossati Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Paul Shapiro Professor Dept. of Astronomy The University of Texas at Austin
Henry J. Leckenby, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Physics/Geosciences Department Texas A&M University – Kingsville
Dr. Kurt D. Retherford Department of Space Sciences Southwest Research Institute
James T. (Jim) Collins, Ph.D. Zoologist and instructor of biology at Kilgore College
Edward L. Robinson William B. Blakemore Regents Professor in Astronomy
Dr. Ben Liles, Jr., Chair Department of Biology Temple College
Ted von Hippel, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory
Walter F. Huebner Southwest Research Institute
Dr. Verne V. Smith Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy, University of Texas at El Paso Research Fellow, McDonald Observatory University of Texas at Austin
William Lee Powell Jr. Department of Physics Texas Tech University
Jay A. Raney Bureau of Economic Geology The University of Texas at Austin
Ramón H. Treviño The Bureau of Economic Geology Jackson School of Geosciences The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Robert J. Ferguson Assistant Professor Department of Geological Sciences The University of Texas at Austin
Patricia E. Ganey-Curry Research Scientist Associate V The University of Texas at Austin Member Liberty Hill ISD Board of Trustees
Dr. G. Shanmugam Adjunct Professor Department of Geology The University of Texas at Arlington
Earle F. McBride Gregory Chair in Sedimentary Geology Department of Geological Sciences University of Texas at Austin
C. T. Hallmark Professor Soil and Crop Sciences Department Texas A&M University
Dr. Lorraine van Waasbergen Department of Biology University of Texas at Arlington
Lisa M. Gahagan Institute for Geophysics The University of Texas at Austin
Steffen Saustrup Institute for Geophysics The University of Texas at Austin
Bethany D. Rinard Assistant Professor of Geosciences Department of Chemistry, Geosciences, and Environmental Science Tarleton State University
Sean Sandifer Gulick, Ph.D., Research Associate Jackson School of Geosciences Institute for Geophysics University of Texas
Julianne I. Moses Lunar and Planetary Inst.
Dr. Martha R. Scott Associate Professor Dept. of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Benjamin S. Giese Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Christopher J. Bell Department of Geological Sciences The University of Texas at Austin
John Haglund Geology teacher Tarrant County College
F. Curtis (Curt) Michel Physics Rice University
Dr. Peter H. Santschi Professor of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Terry L. Wade Deputy Director-Environmental Science Geochemical and Environmental Research Group Texas A&M University
Robert Hetland Assistant Professor Texas A&M University
Robert A. Duce, Professor Depts. of Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University
Jean-Philippe Nicot, Ph.D., P.G., P.E. Research Associate Bureau of Economic Geology The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. W. P. Roberts Department of Geology Stephen F. Austin State University
Caroline L. Breton Research Associate, Bureau of Economic Geology Jackson School of Geosciences The University of Texas at Austin
Grady Price Blount, Ph.D., Chair Department of Physical and Life Sciences Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Worth D. Nowlin, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Oceanography Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Bruce Herbert Geology & Geophysics Texas A&M University
Mitchell Malone Staff Scientist Ocean Drilling Program Texas A&M University
Dr. Larry Jay Friesen Astronomy University of Houston
Dr. Dmitry Bizyaev Postdoc Research Associate University of Texas at El Paso
Wilford D. Gardner Department Head and Professor Department. of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Anne Raymond Cook Professor Dept. of Geology and Geophysics Texas A&M University
John Mace Grunsfeld, PhD Houston, TX Astronomy and Aerospace Industry
Dr. Aaron S. Yoshinobu Assistant Professor Department of Geosciences Texas Tech University
Peter Trabant, Ph.D. Consultant Oceanographer Gail Christeson University of Texas at Austin
James C. Gibeaut, Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin Andrew Hajash, Professor Department of Geology and Geophysics Texas A&M University
Bob Krantz, PhD Upstream Technology - Integrated Geological Analysis ConocoPhillips Inc.
Dr. Stephen Karner Texas A&M University
Dr. Eric William James Research Scientist Associate, Department of Geological Sciences The University of Texas at Austin
J. Maximilian Koehne, PhD Assistant Research Scientist Dept. of Biological & Agricultural Engineering Texas A&M University
Don Collins Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University - College Station
Charles Jackson Institute for Geophysics The John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences The University of Texas at Austin
James A. (Jim) Thomson BP EPT Geodrilling Services Team British Petroleum
Stephen C. Ruppel, PhD Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology The John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Bobby J. Presley Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Mark T. Adams McDonald Observatory University of Texas at Austin
Patrick Hartigan Professor, Physics and Astronomy Rice University
William W. Sager Professor and Jane and R. Ken Williams ’45 Chair in Ocean Drilling Science, Education, and Technology Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Barbara J. Mahler, Ph.D., P.G. Research Hydrologist U.S. Geological Survey
Tracy Villareal Associate Professor Marine Science Institute The University of Texas at Austin
Bassett Maguire Emeritus Professor Integrative Biology& Marine Science The University of Texas at Austin
Katerina Petronotis Ocean Drilling Program
David Rajmon Shell EPT - Exploratory Research
E. William Behrens Ret. Faculty in Dept. of Marine Science The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Andrew D. Cunningham BP
Frank Toffoletto Rice University
Brian A. Tinsley, Professor of Physics, University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Kirk McIntosh Jackson School of Geosciences University of Texas at Austin
Russell Hamman ExxonMobil Development Company
Timothy S. Dulaney Geoscientist ExxonMobil Exploration Company
Dr. Robin Brinkmeyer Molecular Microbial Biologist Texas A&M University at Galveston
Adrian Lenardic Assistant Professor of Geophysics Department of Earth Science Rice University
Rainer Amon, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Marine Sciences and Oceanography Texas A&M University at Galveston
Julia S. Wellner Department of Earth Science Rice University
Patrick Wheatley Jackson School of Geosciences Department of Geological Sciences University of Texas at Austin
Ann Molineux, Ph.D. Collections Manager Non-vertebrate Paleontology Texas Memorial Museum
Robert J. Stern Professor & Head of Department Geosciences Department University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Jessica Maisano High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility Department of Geological Sciences University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Alyson Ponomarenko Department of Earth and Environmental Science University of Texas at San Antonio
Dr. Eric R. Swanson Professor of Geology University of Texas at Austin
Thomas E. Jones Research Assistant Stable Isotope Laboratory Department of Geology & Geophysics Texas A&M University
Wilford D. Gardner Department Head and Professor Department. of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Richard J. Weiland, Ph.D. Shallow Hazards Geologist BP America, Inc. Geo-Drilling Services
Kim M Bates U-Houston/ExxonMobil
John W. Nielsen-Gammon Professor and Texas State Climatologist Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University
Andreas Kronenberg Professor Texas A&M University Department of Geology and Geophysics
Craig Pollock Southwest Research Institute Randy Gladstone Institute Scientist Southwest Research Institute
Matthew J. Grove, Ph.D. Exploration Geologist Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
Hans G. Ave Lallemant Professor of Earth Science Rice University
Noel T. Clemens Associate Professor, Robert and Francis Stark Centennial Fellowship in Engineering Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics University of Texas at Austin
Robert Deegan Research Associate Center for Nonlinear Dynamics University of Texas at Austin
Jennifer Steele Applied Physics Rice University
Hugo Sanabria University of Houston
Thomas Moore Southwest Research Institute
Michael R. Matthews Ph.D 3M Company
Wolfgang Donner Department of Physics University of Houston
Hong-Wen Ren Applied Optoelectronics Incorporation Damien Gray, PhD Senior Software Engineer National Instruments
Thomas C. Killian, PhD Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Nelson E. Claytor, Ph.D. President Fresnel Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Michael Ibison Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin Valery Pokrovsky Department of Physics Texas A&M University
Dr. Randall C. Furlong, Esq. Vinson & Elkins L.L.P.
Richard Matzner Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Matthew LeBourgeois Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials University of Houston
Prof. R. Bruce Weisman Department of Chemistry Rice University
John C. Hardy Professor of Physics Texas A&M University
Thomas Barber Schlumberger
Eshel Faraggi Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Roy Schwitters Chair, UT Austin Dept. of Physics
Jaan Laane Professor of Chemistry Texas A&M University
Laura Gough, Assistant Professor Department of Biology University of Texas at Arlington
Dr. Rafael López-Mobilia Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Texas at San Antonio
Sally Hicks Associate Professor Department of Physics University of Dallas
Tracy N. Tipping Deputy Radiation Safety Officer Environmental Health & Safety University of Texas at Austin
G. King Walters Rice University
Francis Redfern Professor of Physics Texarkana College
Ahmet Y. Aydemir Institute for Fusion Studies University of Texas at Austin
Alex Kalamarides, Ph.D. Executive VP and Managing Director, AMI-Partners
Dr. Anthony E. Stephens MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc.
Simon C. Moss M.D. Anderson Chair of Physics University of Houston
Paul G. Rudolf, Ph.D. Forward Vision, Inc.
Len Trombetta Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Houston
James E. Boggs University of Texas at Austin
Carlos Gonzalez Lepera, Ph.D. Vice President - CYCLOTOPE Adjunct Professor - MD Anderson Cancer Center
Fabrizio Gabbiani Assistant Professor Division of Neuroscience Baylor College of Medicine
Carl A. Gagliardi Physics Dept. Texas A&M University
Fred Olness Professor & Chair Department of Physics Southern Methodist University
Gustavo E. Scuseria Robert A. Welch Professor Department of Chemistry Rice University
Professor Kenneth S. Ball, Ph.D., P.E. Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellow Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Texas at Austin
Werner Horsthemke Department of Chemistry Southern Methodist University
Jairo Sinova Assistant Professor Texas A&M University
Alvaro S. Nunez Physics Department University of Texas at Austin

Charles Bloch, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Radiation Physics Univ. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Bruce R. Johnson Rice University
Charles W. Myles, Ph.D. Professor of Physics Co-Director, Engineering Physics B.S. Program Department of Physics Texas Tech University
Dr. Robert L. Ray Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Robert Glosser University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Ronald Bravenec Research Associate Fusion Research Center University of Texas at Austin
Alan Sill Research Professor of Physics Texas Tech University
William J. B. Oldham Professor Emeritus Texas Tech University
Klaus W. Zieher Associate Professor Texas Tech University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carl W. Hardin, M.D. South Texas Radiology Group
Kendra L. Wallis Physics Department University of Texas at Arlington
Prof. John T. Markert Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Raymond Goldstein Southwest Research Institute
Roland E. Allen Physics Department Texas A&M University
Edward S Fry Physics Department Texas A&M University
Joseph H. Ross Jr. Dept. of Physics Texas A&M University
Robert N. Cherry, Jr., Ph.D. Certified Health Physicist
Dr. Marc in het Panhuis Assistant Professor of Physics Department of Physics and NanoTech Institute University of Texas at Dallas
Richard Fink Vice President Applied Nanotech, Inc.
William McCormick Professor of Physics Emeritus University of Texas at Austin
David Toback Assistant Professor of Physics Texas A&M University
Sharath S. Girimaji Aerospace Engineering Department Texas A & M University
William H. Marlow, Professor Nuclear Engineering Department Texas A&M University
Randall G. Hulet Fayez Sarofim Professor of Physics Rice University
Daniel Mittleman ECE Department Rice University
Dr. John A. Holy BWXT Pantex
M. Suhail Zubairy Professor Department of Physics Texas A&M University
B. Paul Padley Assistant Prof. of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
A. Wilson Nolle Prof. Of Physics Emeritus The University of Texas at Austin
F. L. Waelbroeck Institute for Fusion Studies University of Texas
Stefan K. Estreicher, Ph.D. Paul Whitfield Horn Professor Physics Department Texas Tech University
Dr. G.E.Hite Professor in the Department of Marine Science Texas A&M University-Galveston
James L. Kinsey D. R. Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Science Rice University
Lawrence L. Griffin, Associate Professor Department of Marine Sciences Texas A&M University at Galveston
Mathew Fitzpatrick Postdoctoral Researcher The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Michael Gorman Department of Physics University of Houston
David Bixler Assistant Professor of Physics Angelo State University
Kuang-An Chang, Assistant Professor Coastal & Ocean Engineering Division Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University
Bea Aton Ph.D. Physiology Software Engineer, Texas Instruments
Harvey M. Fishman, Ph.D. Professor, Physiology & Biophysics University of Texas Medical Branch
Tom Aton, PhD TI Fellow, Texas Instruments
Dr. Stanley J. Kleis University of Houston Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Ramon E. Lopez C. Sharp Cook Distinguished Professor Department of Physics University of Texas at El Paso
Prof. Wayne Saslow Department of Physics Texas A&M University
Leonard Kleinman Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Stephen A. Fulling Professor of Mathematics and Physics Texas A&M University
W. L. Anderson, Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Houston
Donald G. Naugle Physics Department Texas A&M University
Anatoly B. Kolomeisky Assistant Professor Department of Chemistry Rice University
Billy E. Bonner Professor of Physics Rice University
Lynn L. Hatfield Physics Department Texas Tech University
David W. Ross Fusion Research Center The University of Texas
Kenneth Duerksen Tokyo Electron America
Julia C. Wickett Department of Physics University of Houston
Richard Knight Physics and Astronomy Department University of Texas at San Antonio
Jorge A. Munoz, Jr. The University of Texas at El Paso
E. G. (Jerry) Bylander, PhD, President, Bylander Associates, Inc. Elder, Grand Avenue Presbyterian Church
Professor Gene O. Carlisle Department of Physics West Texas A&M University
Duane G. Laurent, Ph.D. Senior Design Manager STMicroelectronics, Inc.
Jay S. Chivian, Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control (retired)
Bill Maier PDX, Inc.
Jose N. Pecina, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Brownsville
Qiming Zhang Associate Professor of Physics University of Texas at Arlington
Vikram Kodibagkar, Ph.D. Department of Radiology UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
Arthur H. Thompson Division of Condensed Matter Physics Fellow, American Physical Society
James Stephens, PhD Microseismic, Inc.
Dr. Gerhard G. Paulus Associate Professor Department of Physics Texas A&M University
Zoltan A. Schelly, Professor Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Texas at Arlington
Mario C. Diaz Professor of Physics Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Gravitational Wave Detection 2003-4 University of Texas at Brownsville
David F. Brower University of Texas at Austin – Retired
Anthony Chan Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Paul Bernazzani, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Chemistry and Physics Lamar University
Richard Stroynowski Professor of Physics Southern Methodist University
Gregory Mulhollan, Ph.D. Saxet Surface Science
Douglas J. Klein Dept. of Marine Sciences Texas A&M University at Galveston
Chia-Ren Hu Professor Department of Physics Texas A&M University
Dr. R. S. Rubins Professor of Physics University of Texas at Arlington
Robert Helleman Professor of Physics, retired University of Houston
John W. Keto Thornberry Prof. of Physics
Matteo Pasquali Assistant Professor Department of Chemical Engineering Rice University
Doug Verret, Ph.D. Texas Instruments Fellow
Austin M. Gleeson Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Uwe Oberlack Assistant Professor Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Mike Knewtson Schlumberger
Andrew Cole Institute for Fusion Studies Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
David Denley, Ph.D. Shell Chemicals
Mykhailo Fomytskyi Institute for Fusion Studies Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Elizabeth Covington Texas State University
Kevin M Lee Fusion Research Center Physics Deptartment University of Texas at Austin
David Gavenda Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Robert A. Graham, retired American Physical Society Fellow, AAAS Fellow, Senior Member Emeritus, IEEE The Tome Group
David Walker Mountain View High School Biology Teacher
William G. Durrer Physics Department University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Daniel Suson Chair, Department of Physics/Geosciences Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Andreas Mershin, PhD Texas A&M University Dept. of Physics
Warren Lieu BECK
David L. Griscom impactGlass research international
Wiley L. Parker General Electric
William Madigan, Ph.D. Baker Hughes Oilfield Services
Elmer Eisner Adjunct Professor Computer and Applied Math Rice University
Dr. David Shiner Associate Professor of Physics University of North Texas
Donald E. Woessner Adjunct Professor of Radiology Rogers Magnetic Resonance Center
Peter McIntyre Professor of Physics Texas A&M University
Prof. Arno Bohm Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Bonnie Valant-Spaight Research Physicist PathFinder Energy Services
Joseph Christensen Department of Physics McMurry University
Clark W. Beasley Department of Biology McMurry University
Sivaram Arepalli, Ph.D GBTech/> NASA-Johnson Space Center
Dr. David Donnelly Department of Physics Texas State University
Stephen D. Baker, Professor of Physics Department of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Yuri Gartstein Associate Professor Department of Physics University of Texas at Dallas
H. Adam Stevens, M.A. Manager, Maya Muon Tomography Project Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
John Reading, Texas Distinguished Scientist, Texas A&M, Physics
Carlos R. Ordonez Physics Department University of Houston
Dr. John L. Margrave Butcher Professor of Chemistry Rice University
David Loyd Dean of Sciences Angelo State University
W. D. Deering Department of Physics University of North Texas
H. Nate Bachman, PhD Senior Physicist Schlumberger
Douglas Reinelt Southern Methodist University
Stephan Bless, ScD University of Texas at Austin
Prof. Emeritus Lorin L. Vant-Hull University of Houston, Physics Department
Dr. James Waggoner Schlumberger Well Services (ret)
Barry Friedman Department of physics Sam Houston State University
Donald G. Brunder, Ph.D. IS Team Leader Academic Resources University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
Henrietta L. Kohn Medical Technologist, ASCP
Jorge A. Lopez University of Texas at El Paso
Richard C. Herrick, Ph.D. University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Frank W. Guy, PhD. and Roberta Buchanan Guy, RN President, Texas State Board of Directors Health Occupations Students of America
Lawrence C. Shepley Associate Professor, Retired Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Ted G. Byrom, PhD Texas A&M University, Retired
Terry C. Maxwell, PhD. Department of Biology Angelo State University
Alex Rimberg Department of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Ted W. Reid, Ph.D. Professor Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Science Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
C. Magnus L. Rittby, Ph. D. Chair Department of Physics and Astronomy Texas Christian University
Dr. William R.M. Graham Professor, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Director, Graduate Program Texas Christian University
Dr Deborah Leddon University of Texas
Thomas E. Coan Southern Methodist University
Qiming Li Sugar Land Product Center Schlumberger
Rebecca Reichenbach, science teacher Mountain View High School
Robert D. Rathmell Chief Scientist Axcelis Technologies
Brian Clark, Ph.D. Schlumberger Fellow Schlumberger
Prof. Thomas W. Hill Physics & Astronomy Dept. Rice University
Curt Wyman Program Manager Motorola, Inc.
Joseph M. Izen Professor of Physics University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Dennis Hamill Board Chairman Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
Todd Flippo Senior Scientist Alcon Labs, Inc.
Stan Treanor Calculus & Physics Teacher Merkel High School
Michael Downer Jack S. Josey Professor Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Richard J. Cassin, Retired geologist Member Geological Society of America, West Texas Geological Society
Katherine Brown Downey, PhD Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities University of Texas at Dallas
Michael A. Shelley, P.E. Dr. Ed Stone Senior Lecturer, Mathematics University of Texas at Dallas
Eyal Gilboa Center for Particle Physics The Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Susan P. Chizeck, Ph.D. MS GR 26, Interdisciplinary Studies University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Geoffrey S. D. Beach Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Troy T. Byrne Science Chair Americas High School
Rick Holt, B.S.Ed., M.Div Secondary Science Teacher, Americas High School
Aubra Anthony High Energy Group Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Carl Knutson Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Will Grigsby The University of Texas
Leah Shackman Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Prof. Jonathan L. Sessler Roland K. Pettit Centennial Professor of Chemistry Editor, Supramolecular Chemistry Associate Editor, J. Porphyrins & Phthalocyanines University of Texas at Austin
Nicholas Matlis Femtosecond Spectroscopy Group University of Texas at Austin
Jerome Bellian Research Scientist Associate Bureau of Economic Geology University of Texas at Austin
Michael Wolf Professor of Mathematics Rice University
Ronald S. Hanson Engineering Manager at Motorola, Inc.
Richard Wheelus Motorola eMC SRAM Program Management
Robert Hardt William Moody Professor of Mathematics Rice University
Britt C. Cain Adjunct Instructor of Mathematics Austin Community College
Gary W. Sykes, Ph.D. Director, Institute for Law Enforcement Administration Vice President, The Center for American and Intern’l Law
Robert G. Tull, PhD Sr. Research Scientist Emeritus McDonald Observatory University of Texas
Jeffrey D. Olson Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Joseph R. Davis, PhD Davis Exploration Consulting
Edward B. Flagg Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Walter L. Borst Professor of Physics Department of Physics Texas Tech University
Dr. John R. Hedstrom Retired from Raytheon University of Texas at Dallas
Dr. Vladimir Horvat Research Scientist Texas A&M University
Dr. Edwin H-M. Sha, Professor Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas
Prof. Rory Coker Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Harry L. Swinney Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair Physics Department and Center for Nonlinear Dynamics University of Texas at Austin
Purna Murthy, B.Sc, M.Sc., MBA Engineering Manager, Hewlett-Packard Company
Dr. Sonia Paban Physics, Theory Group University of Texas at Austin
Sanjay Banerjee Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Electrical & Computer Eng. Director, Microelectronics Research Center University of Texas at Austin
Lenore Dai Department of Chemical Engineering Texas Tech University
Enrico Rossi Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Meng Tao, Ph.D. NanoFAB Center University of Texas at Arlington
Paul Bracken University of Texas, Edinburg
Victor G. Hadjiev, PhD Research Scientist Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials University of Houston
Richard D. Hazeltine Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Karol Lang Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Robert C. Webb Physics Department Texas A&M University
Allan MacDonald Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Ramon Ravelo Physics Department and Materials Research Institute University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Mark R. Skokan Member, Group Technical Staff DRS Infrared Technologies, LP
Nasir Basit, Ph.D. Research Engineering Scientist, NanoFAB R&T Facility University of Texas at Arlington
Kevin F. Kelly Assistant Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Rice University
David H. Hough Assistant Professor of Physics Trinity University
Paul H. Cox Professor of Physics Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Dr. Yang LI Physics Department Texas A&M University
Dr. Thomas O. Bush Dallas Baptist University
Simon C. Moss M.D. Anderson Chair of Physics University of Houston
Dr. Jose Perez Assistant Professor Department of Physics University of North Texas
Peter J. Rossky, Marvin K. Collie-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry and Professor of Chemical Engineering Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry University of Texas at Austin
Robert E. Tribble Professor of Physics Texas A&M University
Gordon Mutchler Professor of Physics Rice University
Daniel R. Spiegel, Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy Trinity University
Jean George, PhD President and Owner Open Sky Software, Inc.
Lowell Wood Department of Physics University of Houston
M. A. K. Lodhi, Professor Department of Physics Texas Tech University
Elena Montalvo Valley Research Corporation
Daniel J. Heinzen Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Duane A. Dicus Professor, Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Prof. Eric R. Bittner Department of Chemistry University of Houston
Ayan Guha Postdoctoral researcher Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Prof. Philip L. Varghese Stanley P. Finch Centennial Professorship in Engineering Director, Center for Aeromechanics Research University of Texas at Austin
Muhammad I. Bhatti University of Texas Pan American
Heather C. Galloway Department of Physics Texas State University - San Marcos
Li Gao, PhD Research Department Halliburton Energy Services
Dr. Bruce Miller Texas Christian University Brian Cooper, Ph.D. Geology Program Coordinator Department of Geography and Geology Sam Houston State University
Pascal Mickelson Rice University Professor Arun Mitra, ret. Mathematics and Statistics Texas Tech university
Dr. Wiley Kirk Electrical Engineering Dept University of Texas at Arlington
Frederick J. Kontur Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Dr. P. Mark Henrichs Consultant
Tom Aton, PhD BA, Physics, Rice University, 1970 TI Fellow, Texas Instruments
Surbhi Lal Rice University
Prof. Mark Holtz Physics Texas Tech University
Dr. Paul Chu University of Houston
Dr. Rand L. Watson Professor of Chemistry Texas A&M University
Dennis R. Ruez, Jr. University of Texas at Austin
Elia Benitez-Marquez Environmental Science and Engineering University of Texas at El Paso
Thomas E. Macrini Department of Geological Sciences University of Texas at Austin
Eric G. Ekdale Department of Geological Sciences University of Texas at Austin
Doug Campbell University of North Texas
Shahnoor Habib University of Texas at Arlington
Heather Appleby Department of Physics University of North Texas
Jose Ricardo Correa University of North Texas
Shivakumar Jolad Department of Physics Texas A&M University
Becky Glynn Retired fifth grade teacher University of Texas at San Antonio
Dr. Geary Eppley Staff Scientist Rice University
Philip Smith Femtosecond Spectroscopy Group University of Texas at Austin
Manish Mithaiwala Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Raymond Scurek Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin Finch University of Health Sciences
Laura Feeney University of Texas at Austin
Nathan Harrison Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Bryan Benaway Physics University of Texas at Austin
Denis Langlais Tecmag
David L. Andrews Rice University
Martin Bitner Department of Astronomy University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Mark Lewis Trinity University
Dr. Ed Vinson Chemplex, LLC Kevin Burke Dept of Geosciences University of Houston
Walter S. Kiefer Staff Scientist Lunar and Planetary Institute
Mr. Brian G. Hanks Blinn College Division of Natural Science
Dr. Douglas Biggs Professor, Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University
Dr. Amanda Palmer Julson Division of Natural Sciences Blinn College
Ray Conrow, Ph.D. Assistant Technical Director Chemical Preparations Research Alcon Research, Ltd.
Akhtar H. Mahmood Assistant Professor University of Texas - Pan American
Dr. Karen K. Vardanyan Department of Physics and Astronomy Trinity University
Kevin M. Curtin, Ph.D. Assistant Professor - Geographic Information Science School of Social Sciences University of Texas at Dallas
Karen Huxtable-Jester, Ph.D. Adjunct Lecturer, Psychology University of Texas at Dallas
Padmakumar Nair, Ph.D., D.Sc., MBA Organization, Strategy and International Management School of Management
Dr. Scott E. Robinson School of Social Sciences University of Texas at Dallas
Larry Reitzer Professor Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of Texas at Dallas
Iftikhar Ahmad Texas Tech University J.C. ‘Buck’ Field, PMP, MCP, CPM Dimensional Topology, American Physical Society Independent Consultant Field Operative Information Systems Project Management
James C. Thompson University of Texas at Austin and a Native Texan
James L. Allen, PhD The Boeing Company International Space Station Program
Anne Gillis, Ph.D. Department of Physics The Victoria College
Francesco Stefani Institute for Advanced Technology University of Texas at Austin
Spurgeon E. Smith (ret.) Former director of research for TRACOR, Inc.
Scott J. Levinson, Ph. D. Research Engineer/Scientist Assoc. V Institute for Advanced Technology University of Texas at Austin
Frederic Mikulec, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar Dept. of Chemical Engineering University of Texas at Austin
Rollie Schafer Professor of Biological Science University of North Texas
Glen Dillow, Ph.D. Alcon Laboratories
Hossain Baghaei, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Experimental Diagnostic Imaging University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Glenn Agnolet Professor, Physics Department Texas A&M University
Eric J. Hooper Astronomy Department University of Texas at Austin
Robert C. Dowler, Ph.D. Professor of Biology Angelo State University
Rebecca C. Smyth Research Scientist Associate Bureau of Economic Geology University of Texas at Austin
Mary Jo Richardson Interim Dean College of Geosciences Texas A&M University
David Hillis Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor Section of Integrative Biology University of Texas
Pamela R. Owen, PhD Texas Memorial Museum The University of Texas at Austin
Joshua M. Peschel Texas A&M University
Wayne M. Ahr, Professor of Geology Certified Petroleum Geologist Department of Geology & Geophysics Texas A&M University
Vincent M. Cassone, Ph.D. Professor and Head Department of Biology Texas A&M University
David L. Carlson Anthropology Department Texas A&M University
Shuying Yang Mechanical Engineering Department University of Texas Pan American
Arvind Mahajan Lamar Savings Professor of Finance Texas A&M University
James W. Erickson Associate Professor Department of Biology
Texas A&M University Joachim Schambach Physics Department University of Texas
Thomas D. McKnight Professor and Associate Head Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Susan S. Golden Distinguished Professor Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Ira F. Greenbaum, Professor Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Dr. F. W .de Wette Professor Emeritus University of Texas at Austin
James W. Golden Professor Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Deborah A. Siegele, Ph.D. Associate Professor Dept of Biology Texas A&M University
Enamul Huq Assistant Professor Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology University of Texas at Austin
John M. Ivy, Ph.D. Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Lawrence L. Espey, Ph.D. Cowles Distinguished Professor Department of Biology Trinity University
Alan Lloyd, Ph.D. Associate Professor Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology The University of Texas at Austin
Norman Schaeffer, Ph.D. retired physicist
Robert H. Walker Professor Emeritus University of Houston
Barbara Finlay Department of Sociology Texas A&M University
Nick Brette Professor of Chemistry Collin County Community College
Natsumi Matsuda Physics University of Texas at Austin
Ry Young Professor Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Dr. Bruce B. Riley Associate Professor Biology Department Texas A&M University
Emily Hollister NASA Earth Systems Science Graduate Fellow Department of Rangeland Ecology and Management Texas A&M University
Linda Stearns Math Teacher Bryan High School
Jim Manhart Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Associate Professor Biochemistry and Cell Biology Rice University
Jim Hu Associate Professor and Associate Head for Graduate Programs Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Kwong Lau Professor of Physics University of Houston
C.O.Patterson Dept. of Biology Texas A&M University
Radha Krishnan, PhD Computer Science Faculty University of Texas at Dallas
Andrew Kuhs Department of Physics University of Texas at Austin
Patricia LiWang Assoc. Prof. Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Mary Bryk, PhD. Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Qimiao Si Department of Physics & Astronomy Rice University
Dr. Sumana Datta Associate Professor Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Merrill Sweet Professor emeritus Texas A&M University
Elizabeth C. Berigan, M.D. Diplomate, American College of Physicians Assistant Clinical Professor, Texas A&M Health Science Center Senior Staff, Scott and White Clinic
Timothy W. Sinor, Ph.D. Chief Scientist-Image Intensifier Tubes Northrop-Grumman EOS
Andy C. LiWang Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics Texas A&M University
Jerry Tsai Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics Texas A&M University
Michael Polymenis, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Edward A. Funkhouser Professor of Biochemistry Texas A&M University
Lawrence J. Dangott, Ph.D. Research Scientist Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics Texas A&M University
J. Martyn Gunn Professor of Biochemistry Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs Texas A&M University
Rosemarie Swanson Research Scientist Biochemistry & Biophysics Dept Texas A&M University
Karl M. Koshlap, PhD Manager, Biomolecular NMR Laboratory Texas A&M University
Bryant W. Miles Lecturer Texas A&M University
Riki Kobayashi Louis Calder Professor Emeritus Department of Chemical Engineering Rice University Prof. C.
Nick Pace Medical Biochemistry Department Texas A&M University Medical Center
Geoffrey Kapler Associate Professor of Medical Biochemistry and Genetics Chair, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Genetics Texas A&M College of Medicine
Alan E. Pepper Associate Professor Department of Biology Texas A&M University
Dorothy Shippen Professor Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Texas A&M University
Arthur M. Hobbs Professor Department of Mathematics Texas A&M University
Herbert L. Berk Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin
J. Creighton Miller,Jr. Department of Horticultural Sciences Texas A&M University
David L. Adelson, Ph.D. Associate Professor - Animal Genomics Dept. of Animal Science Texas A&M University
Renée M. Tsolis, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Medical Microbiology & Immunology College of Medicine Texas A&M University Health Science Center
Yiwei Jiang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Medical Biochemistry & Genetics Texas A&M University System Health Science Center
Dr. Thomas J. DeWitt, Assistant Professor Department of Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences Texas A&M University
Andreas J. Baumler, PhD Associate Professor Dept. Med. Microbiology. & Immunology Texas A&M University System Health Science Center
Dr. Jean Gould Assistant Professor, Plant Cell Biology Director, Plant Transformation & Gene Expression Group Texas A&M University
Niescja E. Turner Department of Physics University of Texas at El Paso
Deborah Bell-Pedersen Associate Professor of Biology Texas A&M University
Richard Gomer Howard Hughs Medical Institute Professor of Biochemistry Rice University
Deborah T. Kochevar, DVM, PhD Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology Texas A&M University
Daniel Ebbole Professor Department of Plant Pathology & Microbiology Texas A&M University
Laurie A. Jaeger, DVM, PhD Texas A&M University Timothy C. Hall, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Biology at Texas A&M University
Mimi Zebrick Lawrence Applied Research Laboratories, University of Texas at Austin
Omar Vargas Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Duane Buhrmester Professor of Psychology University of Texas at Dallas
Larsson Omberg Physics Assistant Instructor University of Texas at Austin
César Rodríguez Physics Department University of Texas at Austin
Behrang H. Hamadani Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Rice University
Martha Casquette University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College

This letter has been signed by scientists throughout the Texas science and technology enterprise including prominent researchers in major corporations, small businesses, and our research universities. Distinguished teachers in all levels of the Texas education system, including K-12, community colleges, colleges and universities, have signed.

Source: 550 Texas scientists and educators at NCSE

Texas Baylor: Intelligent design is NOT a science: Baylor

Cliff Hamrick, Biology Department, Baylor University.
Robert Baldridge, Professor of Biology, Baylor University.
Richard Duhrkopf, Associate Professor of Biology, Baylor University.
Lewis Barker, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Baylor University.
Wendy Sera, Assistant Professor of Biology, Baylor University.
Darrell Vodopich, Associate Professor of Biology, Baylor University.
Sharon Conry, Biology Department, Baylor University.
Cathleen Early, Biology Department, Baylor University.
Source: Intelligent design is NOT a science

Professor at Baptist University calls intelligent design ‘dumb’
Dr Duhrkopf was quoted by the Associated Press (July 2) to say, "We want to get the word out that we in the biology department are unanimously opposed to this. People in intelligent design do not understand what science is."

Dr Duhrkopf Biology Professor Baylor University

Washington

Washington Gonzala: Biology Department rejects intelligent design

On National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday program of November 19, GU Law Professor David DeWolf participated in a discussion on teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. Although Professor DeWolf is on the faculty of Gonzaga University Law School, his views on intelligent design do not represent those of the University as a whole. In particular, the faculty of the Biology Department at Gonzaga are unanimous in their acceptance of evolutionary theory as a fundamental underlying tenet of the science of biology. The principles of evolution are as well-established as any other body of scientific knowledge, and a full and correct appreciation for those principles is necessary for understanding the nature of life. Intelligent design is not a scientific alternative to evolution. The flaws in the idea of intelligent design have been amply and publicly exposed, and the Biology Department feels that the teaching of intelligent design has no place in a science curriculum at any level.

For additional information on the issue of intelligent design vs. evolutionary theory, visit the National Center for Science Education.

Faculty includes:
Kirk Anders, Assistant Professor Genetics and Evolution, Cell Biology
Julie Beckstead, Assistant Professor Community Ecology
Maria Bertagnolli, Associate Professor Diversity of Life, Cell Biology, Genetics and Evolution
David Boose, Associate Professor Diversity of Life, Ecology, Advanced Evolution, Conservation Biology
William Ettinger, Associate Professor Cell Biology, Genetics and Evolution, Plant Physiology, Molecular Biology, Intro Microbiology
Joseph Haydock, Assistant Professor Diversity of Life, Ecology, Vertebrate Biology, Genetics and Evolution
Hugh Lefcort, Professor Diversity of Life, Ecology, Parasitology, Behavioral Ecology
Peter Pauw, Professor Cell Biology, Microbiology, Histology, Immunology
Robert Prusch, Professor and Dean of Arts and Science Diversity of Life, Cell Biology, Advanced Cell Biology

Nancy Staub, Professor and Chair Genetics and Evolution, Vertebrate Biology, Advanced Evolution
Source: Biology Department rejects intelligent design Gonzaga

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Dover: York College profs disturbed by Dover

We are extremely disappointed and concerned about the recent decision by the majority of members on the Dover Area School Board to make intelligent design an official and required component of their biology curriculum.
The inclusion of intelligent design in their curriculum as an "alternative" evolutionary theory reflects a genuine lack of knowledge about the data supporting evolution by natural selection.

It also reflects a profound misunderstanding of the scientific process, and an equally profound disregard for the science educators and students in the Dover School District.

Scientific research takes place on all continents and in most countries. Despite their cultural and religious diversity, scientists from all over the world share a common methodology.

Science works because there is a shared universal understanding of a scientific process that includes the following fundamental conventions.

*Scientists systematically collect and organize information about the natural world. In doing so, we look for recurring patterns and relationships among events and processes.

*Science probes the material world by using a repeatable and standardized methodology that makes no reference to supernatural or theistic influences. In the course of working on difficult research problems, scientists do not use concepts such as "designer" or "creator." Instead, we assemble a coherent view of nature by persistently applying the methods of science.

*Explanations ("hypotheses") in biology must be testable. The invoking of Intelligent Design as a hypothesis to explain natural phenomena has no merit among scientists since no test can be designed that would generate observations or data to support such a mechanism.

*Scientists attempt to construct theories that explain a large number of observed events. The theory of evolution by natural selection is the unifying theory of biology.

No theory in biology is more tested, appreciated, resilient, and explanatory than the theory of evolution by natural selection. And, scientists from a variety of disciplines have amassed an overwhelming collection of testable, reproducible, and observable data to unequivocally support this process.
The inclusion of intelligent design in any science curriculum as an "alternative" to evolution by natural selection is inappropriate. As educators, we urge the Dover Area School Board to review this disappointing decision, and include its own biology teachers in discussions concerning curricular issues. As scientists and educators, we urge the school board to exclude theism and the supernatural from its science curriculum.

Tony Botyrius,M.S., Cornell University. Mr. Botyrius teaches the laboratory component in Biology I and II, Genetics, and Field Natural History. Mr. Botyrius also supervises secondary education biology student-teacher candidates. His research interest is plant ecology.
Rod Waltemyer
Ron Kaltreider, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Kleiner teaches Ecology, Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Field Natural History, Senior Thesis, and Tropical Ecology. His research interests include plant-insect interactions, plant physiology, and forest ecology.
Karl Kleiner,Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Kleiner teaches Ecology, Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Field Natural History, Senior Thesis, and Tropical Ecology. His research interests include plant-insect interactions, plant physiology, and forest ecology
Carolyn Mathur, Ph.D., Auburn University. Dr. Mathur teaches Microbiology and Immunology. In 2003 she received a Summer Research Fellowship from the American Chemical Society/American Petroleum Institute to conduct geomicrobiological research on the availability of organic reserves in rocks to microbial degradation. She is collaborating with researchers at Penn State.
Jessica Nolan, Ph.D., Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dr. Nolan teaches Introduction to Oceanography and Marine Biology. Her research areas include the role of plankton in the oceanic carbon cycle, genetic and ecological diversity of picoeukaryotes in the coastal ocean, and the evolution of plankton lineages.
Brad Rehnberg, Ph.D. Oregon State University. Dr. Rehnberg teaches Fundamentals of Human Biology, Animal Physiology, Animal Behavior, Introduction to Scientific Research, Senior Thesis, and Zoology. His research areas include sensory physiology and behavioral thermoregulation.
Debbie Ricker, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Ricker is the chairperson of the department. She teaches Biology I, Introduction to Scientific Research, Reproduction and Development, and Senior Thesis. She studies reproductive biology, with an emphasis on male fertility.
Barbara Taylor, M.S., Towson State University. Mrs. Taylor teaches Fundamentals of Human Biology, Microbes: Unseen Life on Earth, and lab sections in Microbiology, Immunology, and Marine Biology.
Jeffrey Thompson,Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Dr. Thompson teaches General Biology, Biology I, Biochemistry, and Senior Thesis. His cancer therapy research is based on developing targeted delivery of cytotoxic compounds that "seek and destroy" cancer cells.

MEMBERS OF YORK COLLEGE BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT
Source: York College profs disturbed by Dover

College biologists blast Dover York College faculty members said the 'intelligent design' decision goes against science.
Kleiner said two members of the department declined to sign the letter. Elizabeth Hodgson, a lab coordinator who teaches general biology, declined to comment on her reasons for not signing it. Bruce Smith, a biology and botany professor, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

PENNSYLVANIA PARENTS FILE FIRST-EVER CHALLENGE TO 'INTELLIGENT DESIGN' INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

'Intelligent Design' Is Religious Argument, Not Science, Say Parents
HARRISBURG, PA-The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and attorneys with Pepper Hamilton LLP filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of 11 parents who say that presenting "intelligent design" in public school science classrooms violates their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.

"Teaching students about religion's role in world history and culture is proper, but disguising a particular religious belief as science is not," said ACLU of Pennsylvania Legal Director Witold Walczak. "Intelligent design is a Trojan Horse for bringing religious creationism back into public school science classes."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United Executive Director, added, "Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we must resist any efforts to make them so. There is an evolving attack under way on sound science education, and the school board's action in Dover is part of that misguided crusade. 'Intelligent design' has about as much to do with science as reality television has to do with reality."
Source: ACLU

Ohio

Ohio Citizens for Science

* Website

Ohio: Case scientists oppose creationist lesson in school curriculum

Faculty support legislation restoring genuine science education to the state's public school curricula
Lawrence Krauss, chair and Ambrose Swasey Professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University, said the proposed curriculum includes thinly veiled creationism and hoped the governor would "come down on the side of good science."

"The people behind intelligent design creationism find science to be incompatible with belief in God," Krauss said. "That's not the case; most scientists do believe in God. The issue is this: Intelligent design is scientifically untestable. It's not science."

Professeor Lawrence Krauss, chair and Ambrose Swasey Professor of physics
Professor Patricia Princehouse
Professeor Cynthia Beall, Case's Sarah Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology

Case Western Reserve University
Source: Case scientists oppose creationist lesson in school curriculum
See also Case faculty vote to oppose Ohio's proposed evolution plan

Ohio Faculty Council Resolution on Guidelines for Teaching the Geological and Biological Sciences

Biological Sciences Adopted February 13, 2004

Regarding the reinstatement of proper teaching guidelines for the teaching of Geological and Biological Sciences

WHEREAS, it is a responsibility of the Ohio educators to present science and encourage scientific inquiry; and

WHEREAS, science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, based on observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, and theory building, which leads to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena, explanations that are open to further testing, revision, and falsification, and while not “believed in” through faith may be accepted or rejected on the basis of evidence; and

WHEREAS, the theory of evolution, as presently developed, fully satisfies these criteria, especially when its teaching considers the remaining debates concerning its detailed mechanisms; and

WHEREAS, a recent decision by the State Board of Education establishes a module for the “critical assessment of evolution,” which simultaneously attacks the theory itself and facilitates the introduction of pseudo-scientific approaches such as “Creationism” or “Intelligent Design,” which have no scientific validity,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Ohio Faculty Council supports legislation reversing the State Board’s decision and restoring genuine science education to the state’s public school curricula, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Ohio Faculty Council urges citizens, educational authorities, and legislators to oppose any alteration of the science curriculum or state proficiency tests in science that would in any way accommodate approaches based on either religious beliefs or other sources that are not amenable to the scientific process of scrutiny, testing, and revision.

Ohio Faculty Council members include:

Bowling Green State University
Central State University
Cleveland State University
Kent State University
Medical College of Ohio at Toledo
Miami University
Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
The Ohio State University
Ohio University
Shawnee State University
University of Akron
University of Cincinnati
University of Toledo
Wright State University
Youngstown State University

Source: Ohio Faculty Council Resolution on Guidelines for Teaching the Geological and Biological Sciences

Ohio University Presidents Oppose Intelligent Design

While we recognize the great value of spirituality and faith in today's society, we urge you to reject the concept of intelligent design creationism as a part of the science curriculum. We also request that you establish the foundation for a preeminent science curriculum in Ohio dedicated to rigorous testing and experimentation, strengthened with thorough teaching of evolution in our science requirements.

Robert Glidden President, Ohio University Chair, Inter-University Council
On behalf of IUC presidents:

Luis Proenza, University of Akron
Sidney Ribeau, Bowling Green State University
John Garland, Central State University
Joseph Steger, University of Cincinnati
Michael Schwartz, Cleveland State University
Carol Cartwright, Kent State University
Frank McCullough, Medical College of Ohio
James Garland, Miami University
Robert Blacklow, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
William Kirwan, Ohio State University
Michael Field, Shawnee State University
Daniel Johnson, University of Toledo
Kim Goldenberg, Wright State University
Daniel Sweet, Youngstown State University

Source: Ohio University Presidents Oppose Intelligent Design

CWRU faculty report findings on evolution, intelligent design poll of Ohio's scientists

For immediate release: October 4, 2002

CLEVELAND—Nine out of 10 Ohio scientists from secular and religious colleges and universities responding to a survey say that intelligent design is primarily a religious view and not part of science. Case Western Reserve University faculty reported on the findings of the Internet poll during a news conference October 10.
*Nine out of 10 scientists (91 percent) felt the concept of intelligent design was unscientific and the same number responded that it was a religious view
*A vast majority (93 percent) of the scientists were not aware of "any scientifically valid evidence or an alternate scientific theory that challenges the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution"
*Almost all scientists (97 percent) said they did not use the intelligent design concept in their research
*Ninety percent of the responding scientists stated that they felt no scientific evidence supports intelligent design, while 2 percent were unsure
*Approximately 7 percent felt that intelligent design had some support from scientific evidence
*Some 84 percent felt acceptance of the evolution theory was "consistent with believing in God
Source: CWRU faculty report findings on evolution, intelligent design poll of Ohio's scientists

The American Society for Cell Biology

NATIONAL OFFICE: 8120 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 750 Bethesda Maryland 20814-2762
TEL: (301) 347-9300 FAX (301) 347-9310 E-MAIL ascbinfo@ascb.org www.ascb.org
March 6, 2002

We write on behalf of the American Society for Cell Biology, a non-profit professional society of 10,000 basic biomedical research scientists in academia, industry, and government laboratories throughout the United States and the world. About 200 ASCB members are Ohioans.
We were pleased by the Ohio State Board of Education's decision to solicit an outside review of state science curriculum from educators and scientists. As scientists, we concur with the panel's recommendations that the teaching of the theory of evolution be part of the state curriculum guidelines, because we believe that a basic science education without a firm grounding in evolutionary
concepts would leave the student ill-prepared for further study or a career in the life sciences.
For this reason, we are appalled by recent attempts to inject the teaching of "Intelligent Design" into Ohio science curriculum guidelines. "Intelligent Design" is nothing but thinly veiled "Creationism." It is not a scientific theory but a matter of faith, and it does not belong in a science curriculum. Darwin's theory of natural selection is a central unifying concept in modern biology. It enables scientists to explore and understand natural processes from ecology to molecular and cellular biology. Imposing the doctrine of "Intelligent Design" in the science classroom will compromise students' understanding of
modern biology and leave them with devalued academic credentials. Justifying the teaching of "Intelligent Design" to Ohio's science students with an equal-time argument is foolish.
This is also an issue for Ohio's economic future. The American Society for Cell Biology calls upon Ohio's educational leaders to work with Governor Taft in his initiative to foster high-tech and biotech industry in the state. Promoting "Intelligent Design" in science classrooms would undermine Ohio's scientific
credibility, tarnish its reputation in the global scientific community, and compromise the state's ability to attract scientists and scientific entrepreneurs.
We urge the State Board of Education to avoid this divisive, counterproductive, and ultimately pointless controversy. Evolutionary theory has an immense impact on everything from controlling antibiotic resistance to treating cancer, and provides a platform that helps scientists understand
diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and congestive heart failure. If the Ohio State Board of Education opens the doors of our science classrooms to theology, the uproar will only get louder and louder, damaging Ohio's reputation, its economy, and most of all, its children.
Respectfully,
Paul Berg, Ph.D. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research & Biochemistry,
Emeritus Director Emeritus, Beckman Center for Molecular & Genetic Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1980 Chair, The
ASCB Public Policy Committee
Tom Egelhoff, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Physiology & Biophysics Case
Western Reserve School of Medicine Member, The ASCB Public Information
Committee

Missouri

Scientists and Educators for Quality Science Education

More than 450 Missouri scientists and educators have endorsed a statement (see below) opposing the teaching of "intelligent design," a form of creationism, in public school science classes. Intelligent design is the idea that the biological world is so complex that it can only be explained by reference to a "designer," not necessarily a divine being. Missouri House Bill 911, filed by Rep. Robert Wayne Cooper of Camdenton, would mandate equal treatment for intelligent design alongside biological evolution in public elementary and secondary schools, including classes in "Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Health, Physiology, Genetics, Astronomy, Cosmology, Geology, Paleontology, Anthropology, Ecology, and Climatology."

The Statement

Let's Teach Science in Science Classes

Missouri House Bill 911 wants to change the Education statutes to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design" creationism alongside Darwinian evolution in public school science classes. Missourians of all persuasions should reject this attempt to force non-science into the science curriculum.

Proponents of Intelligent Design advertise it as an "alternative" to biological evolution. Advocates of HB911 frame their argument in terms of fairness, pointing out that it is necessary to teach all sides of a controversy. If the controversy about Darwinian evolution vs. Intelligent Design were truly scientific, we would enthusiastically support its inclusion in the curriculum. As educators, we know that one of the best ways to engage students in studying science is to present them with an unsolved problem. Look at how the current search for evidence of past life on Mars excites students at all levels.

Intelligent Design, however, isn't science. The characteristics of science that are accepted in U.S. law derive from a 1982 court decision, McLean vs Arkansas Board of Education.

:[T]he essential characteristics of science are:
:(1) It is guided by natural physical or biological law;
:(2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
:(3) It is testable against the empirical world;
:(4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and
:(5) It is falsifiable or, more accurately, makes predictions that can be tested by observation

Intelligent Design doesn't meet these tests because it is a philosophical or theological perspective, not a scientific one. The Intelligent Design movement was started by a Berkeley law professor, Phillip Johnson. As Johnson's own writings assert, anti-evolution is a "wedge" to get religious "values" inserted into the public school curriculum. Thus, the motivation behind Intelligent Design has nothing to do with advancing science.

Even without considering their motives, Intelligent Design proponents haven't shown that there is anything in it that meets the criteria for being judged as science. Intelligent Design advocates presuppose the existence of a Designer and then try to debunk existing data; science works the other way around. The Designer explicitly does not follow the known processes of physics or chemistry so it isn't guided by, nor can it explain things by referring to physical or biological law. Intelligent Design fails to make predictions that we can test by observation or experiment. What if we found alien bacterial life on the moons of Jupiter? Would that be evidence for or against multiple instances of Design?

The court left out the final, and for scientists, definitive, test of whether something is science or not. An idea is judged first by whether it leads to new experiments or observations that make sense in light of the idea. Any theory or hypothesis, no matter how attractive, is discarded if it doesn't prove useful in this sense. Johnson started his wedge strategy over a dozen years ago, and the Intelligent Design advocates have published numerous books, position papers, essays and so on. In all that output, however, there has not been a single peer-reviewed paper in a scientific journal that uses Intelligent Design as a guide to a new experimental result or observation. To the contrary, a number of claims made by the Intelligent Design advocates have been tested scientifically - and they haven't held up. We are forced to conclude that Intelligent Design, despite all the publicity, hasn't contributed anything to the physical or biological sciences and therefore has no place ! in the public school science classroom.

By contrast, evolution through natural selection has been tested ever since Darwin proposed it. Its principles and predictions fit with our observations of the contemporary and ancient natural world. We see examples of natural selection operating at molecular, organismal and species levels at the present time. Practically, we use evolution every day: to help select drug molecules, to follow the development of new species, to explore Earth and other planets, to develop new computer algorithms and to understand the human genome. It remains a vital and exciting area of science.

Missourians are working to build Life Sciences for the economic development of our state. We hope to discover new crops to feed the world, new medicines to comfort our lives and new materials that are more efficient and environmentally friendly than what we have now. Our state has important advantages in this effort: a central location, commitment and cooperation across the region, and strong educational institutions. Let's not throw these advantages away by undermining the science education of our young people. After all, we expect them to lead the way.

Endorsers

(Affiliations listed for identification purposes only)

Public Institutions

University of Missouri-Columbia (116)

Sandra Abell
John Adams
Jim Allen
Lloyd Barrow
Karen Bennett
Robert Blake (emeritus)
Sarah Bush
Michael Calcutt
John Cannon
James Carrel
Anand Chandresekar
Linda Chapman
Gordon Christensen
Edward Coe
Leah Cohn
Karen Cone
Deborah Cunningham
Bruce Cutter
John David
Joshua A. Deily
Christopher Duncan
John Dwyer
David Eide
Janice Faaborg
John Faaborg
Mark Flinn
William Folk
Leonard Forte
Craig Franklin
Patricia Friedrichsen
Shari Freyermuth
Kevin Fritsche
Candace Galen
Clark Gantzer
Peter Gardner
Walter Gassman
Jennifer C. Geib
Miriam Golomb
Noah Gordon
Jennifer Graham
Thomas Guilfoyle
Richard Guyette
Gretchen Hagen
Allen W. Hahn
Calvin Hale
Michael Harmata
Gerald Hazelbauer
Ann D. Havey
Tim Holtsford
Sarah C. Humfeld
TC Hwang
Philip J. Johnson
Jack Jones
Robert Karoly
Marc Linit
Robert Livingston
Sudarshan Loyalka
Dennis Lubahn
Alan Luger
R. Lee Lyman
Ruth MacDonald
Robin Hurst-March
Kelly Maynard
Thomas Mawhinney
Bruce McClure
Matthew McClure
John McCormick
Mark McIntosh
Gabe McNett
Chris Merkord
Jan Miernyk
Joshua Millspaugh
Rose-Marie Muzika
Stephen Nothwehr
Dennis O'Brien
Beryl Ortwerth
Deborah Pearsall
Philip Peters
Tom Philips
Joseph Polacco
M. Shane Pruett
Linda Randall
Chada Reddy
Tracy Rittenhouse
Mitch Rosenholtz
Michael Roveto
Ralph Rowlett
Leona Rubin
Lisa Sattenspiel
Thomas Scanlon
K. L. Schaffer
Frank Schmidt
Johannes Schul
Dennis Sentilles
Kevin L. Shelton
Stacy Small
George Smith
Gary Stacey
Matthew Struckhoff
Jack Tanner
Jay Thelen
Kathy Timms
Randall Tindall
Michael Underwood
Alber Vogt (emeritus)
Mark Volkmann
Reed Wadley
Judy Wall
Carol Ward
Jan Weaver
Daniel Wescott
Carol Wicks
Lee Wilkins
W. Raymond Wood
David Worcester
Mark Yates
Steven Young

University of Missouri-Kansas City (16)

Keith M. Ashman
Deendayal Dinakarpandian
Leonard Dobens
Michael Ferrari
Saul Honigberg
Orisa J. Igwe
Douglas J. Law
Appie Van de Liefvoort
Lee Likens
Anthony Persechini
Jerry P. Place
Peter Rogan
Thomas Schuman
Ann Smith
Jakob Waterborg
Karen Williams

University of Missouri-Rolla (30)

Ralph Alexander
Ron Bieniek
Frank D. Blum
Robert Dubois
Ron Frank
Leslie Gertsch
Jay M. Gregg
Barbara Hale
John Hogan
David E. Hoiness
Robert Laudon
Paula M. Lutz
Don Madison
Anne Maglia
Melanie Mormile
Dev Niyogi
Tonya Numbere
Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe
Paul Parris
Barbara Patterson (emeritus)
Gary Patterson
John L. Schmitt
Michael Schulz
Ekkehard Sinn
Agnes Vojta
Thomas Vojta
Dave Westenberg
Gerald Wilemski
Terry Wilson
David J. Wronkiewicz

University of Missouri-St. Louis (8)

Carol M. Bourne
Charles Granger
Robert Marquis
Colin McDiarmid
Patricia Parker
Zuleyma Tang-Martinez
Marc Spingola
James Trager

Central Missouri State University (14)

Aaron Alford
Ruth S. Burkett
Stefan Cairns
Kurt Dean
Richard Frazier
John Gole
John B. Hess (emeritus)
Steve Mills (emeritus)
Steve Mohler
Selene Nikaido
Jay Raveill
John Sheets
Frank Ray Voorhees
Stephen Wilson

Harris-Stowe State College (1)

Terry F. Werner

Lincoln University (2)

Jim Borgwald
Mike Scott

Missouri Western State College(1)

David C. Ashley

Northwest Missouri State University (12)

Gregg Dieringer
David A. Easterla
Barrett Eichler
Kurt A. Ken Jones
Haberyan
Peter Kondrashov
Patricia Lucido
Phillip J. Lucido
Janette Padgitt
Karen L. Schaffer
John Shaw
Jeff Thornsberry

St. Louis Community College (1)

George Heth

Southeast Missouri State (20)

Allan J. Bornstein
James E. Champine
Philip W. Crawford
Gary J. Cwick
Bill Eddleman
Allen Gathman
Hamner Hill
Alan Journet
Timothy M. Judd
James M. Knapp
Karen A. Lawrence
Walt W. Lilly
Cara Lunn
Rosemarie Mier
Carol Morrow
Steve Overmann
John S. Scheibe
David Starrett
Nicholas Tibbs
Steven N. Trautwein
Margaret Waterman
Diane L. Wood

Southwest Missouri State University (46)

Douglas P. Aubrey
M. Christopher Barnhart
Daniel W. Beckman
Richard N. Biagioni
Michelle Bowe
Justin Boyles
Bryan E. Breyfogle
Pam Brown
William J. Burling
Adam Crane
Dean Cuebas
Bradley J. Fisher
Mark D. Given
John Havel
Charles W. Hedrick
John S. Heywood
Frank A. James
Steven L. Jensen
Robert P. Jones
Brianna Kaiser
Roy King
Joe Martire
Alicia Mathis
Robert Mayanovic
Mark L. McKnight
Miranda Milam
Thomas D. Moeglin
Brad Mormann
James Puckett
Paul L. Redfearn Jr.
Mark M. Richter
Lynn W. Robbins
Russell G. Rhodes
Georgianna Saunders
John G. Steiert
John Strong
Tina M. Tamme
William E. Thomas
Bob Thurman
Tom Tomasi
Anthony P. Toste
Alexander Wait
Yang Wang
Robert J. Whitaker
Nathan Windel
George W. Wolf
Jim Zimmerman

Truman State University (38)

Michael J. Adams
Dawood Afzal
Matthew Beaky
Dawn Beaulac
Jon Beck
Anne Bergey
Michele Y. Breault
Marijke Breuning
Brent Buckner
Scott Burt
Mark Campbell
David Christiansen
Cynthia Cooper
Maria C. Di Stefano
Taner Edis
Roger Festa
Stephanie Fore
Suren Fernando
Alan Garvey
Jon C. Gering
Peter Goldman (emeritus)
Rob Graber
Wolfgang Hoeschele
Elisabeth Hooper
Michael Ira Kelrick
Barbara Kramer
Patrick Lobert
Elaine McDuff
Judith M. Misale
Jeanne Mitchell
Anne Moody
Jeffrey M. Osborn
Peter J. Ramberg
Marc Rice
David Robinson
Peter Rolnick
Pam Ryan
Michael Seipel
George Shinn
Jeffrey R. Vittengl

Private Institutions

Central Methodist College (1)

Paul Porneluzi

Culver-Stockton College(1)

Joseph R. Coelho

Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine (6)

Robert Baer
Garrett Edwards
Michael Lockwood
Julia E. McNabb
Philip C. Slocum
Karen Snider
Melissa Stuart

Rockhurst University (1)

Chad Scholes

St. Louis University (15)

Greg Comer
Carmine Coscia
David Crossley
Vijai Dixit
John Encarnacion
Karen A. Gregerson
John C. James
Ronald T. Kellogg
Mark Knuepfer
Lacy Kolo
Andy Lechner
Heather Macarthur
Brian J. Mitchell
Jim Moore
Larry M. Stacey
William D. Thacker
Peggy Weidman

Southwest Baptist University (1)

Mike Dickerson

Washington University, St. Louis (111)

Joseph Ackerman
Mark Alford
Garland Allen
Paul M. Allen
Aaron DiAntonio
Nathan Baker
David C. Beebe
Carl M. Bender
Claude Bernard
Stan Braude
Michael Brent
James H. Buckley
Peter M. Burgers
Jonathan Chase
Roberto Civitelli
Josephine E. Clark-Curtiss
Barak Cohen
Patricia Collin-Osdoby
Jane Phillips-Conroy
John Cooper
Roy Curtiss III
Willem H. Dickhoff
Tamara Doering
Sean Eddy
Elliot Elson
Timothy Fleming
Carl Frieden
Regina Frey
Michael Friedlander
Peter Gaspar
Lev Gelb
Patrick C. Gibbons
Jeremy Gibson-Brown
Alison Goate
Edward Gogol
Daniel Goldberg
Ursula Goodenough
Timothy Graubert
Diana L. Gray
Michael Gross
Daniel F. Hanson
Erik Herzog
Thomas Hoerr
Tim Holy
Bradley Joliff
T.J. Kappock
Ken Kelton
David Kirk
Daniel Kohl
Vjolica Konufca
Rachel Kopan
Robert Krantz
Kristen Kroll
Marilyn Krukowski
Barbara Kunkel
Harold L. Levin
Petra Levin
Walter Lewis
Timothy Lohman
Fanxin Long
Jonathan Losos
Elaine Mardis
Charles W. Markman
Garland Marshall
Rebecca P. McAlister
Kathryn Miller
Kelle Moley
Michael Mueckler
Michael Neff
Randall Odem
Mike Ogilvie
Karen O'Malley
David Ornitz
Himadri Pakrasi
Rohit Pappu
William C. Parks
Marshall Alan Permutt
Steve Peterson
Roger J. Phillips
Barbara Pickard
Craig Pikaard
Linda Pike
Joel Price
Ralph Quatrano
Janet S. Rader
Eric Richards
Carmelo Romano
John H. Russell
J. Evan Sadler
Meera Saxena
Barbara Schall
Stephen Scholnick
James Schreiber
Andrey S. Shaw
Joshua Smith
William Hayden Smith
Jennifer Smith
Erica Sonnenburg
Thomas H. Steinberg
Wai-Mo Suen
Nobuo Suga
Alan Templeton
Douglas Tollefson
Robert Tucker
Thomas Vaid
Herbert Virgin
L. Lewis Wall
Ralf Wessel
Douglas Wiens
Clifford M. Will
Ernst Zinner

William Jewell College (7)

Judith Dilts
Stephanie Fiedler
Dan Heruth
Milton Horne
Paul Klawinski
Randall Morris
Anne Nickel

Research Institutions

Donald Danforth Plant Science Research Center (2)

Roger Beachy
Jan Jaworski

Missouri Botanical Garden (2)

Peter Hoch
Peter Raven

Stowers Institute (5)

James Coffman
Joan W. Conaway Robb Krumlauf
Linheng Li
Arcady R. Mushegian

National Science Foundation - PRISM (1)

Marilyn Rhea (Project Director)

Schools

Public School Teachers (5)

Robin S. Hankinson (Cape Girardeau HS)
Becky Litherland (Columbia Public Schools)
Gary Midkiff (Farmington HS)
Chris Reeves (School of the Osage HS)
Carol Schatz (Holt HS)

Not included in the overall count - but still concerned

Parents and Citizens (10)

Brian Beckmann
Bill Boll (see website below)
Kimberly Bordeaux (Inklings Creative)
Alan Jacobs
Dan Stefacek (parent)
Mari Winn Taylor (Editor/Publisher The Joplin Independent)
Bernard M. Ross (Senior at Lindenwood College)
Janet I. Stanford (grandparent)
Debra Sullentrup (Student at Truman State)
Gene Woodford

Out of State Scientists and Educators(3)

Stepen L. Timme (Pittsburg State University - KS)
Marc Whitaker (Hillsdale Middle School - CA)
Linda Hand (College of San Mateo - CA)

Source: Missouri Scientists and Educators for Quality Science Education

Missouri: Intelligent Design and the Missouri Standard Science Act (April 14, 2004)

WHEREAS, This bill has been introduced for consideration by the Missouri State legislature; and

WHEREAS, This bill proposes to require all primary and secondary schools to teach the proposed curriculum; and

WHEREAS, The Faculty of the University have authority for maintaining academic standards and for determining standards for admission to the University, and

WHEREAS, "Intelligent Design" has not been used as the basis for any contemporary peer reviewed scientific publication in the Biological or Physical Sciences and therefore does not meet the standards for accepted scientific knowledge, and

WHEREAS, the teaching of this material will displace accepted scientific knowledge and thereby interfere with students’ ability to meet requirements for admission to the University; therefore be it

RESOLVED, That HB 1722 should be rejected by the state legislature; and be it further

RESOLVED, That the Faculty Council requests the faculty governance bodies of other institutions of higher education in the State of Missouri to study this bill and join us in calling for rejection of this bill by the Missouri State legislature.

Faculty Council University of Missouri, Columbia
Source: Intelligent Design and the Missouri Standard Science Act (April 14, 2004)

Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Grantsburg

On Oct. 12, the Grantsburg school board passed a motion: "When theories of origin are taught, students will study various scientific models or theories of origin and identify the scientific data supporting each." This motion revised a policy first passed unanimously on June 28, "to direct our science department to teach all theories of origin."

Although 42 deans throughout the University of Wisconsin system on Oct. 18 urged the board to rescind the policy, and more than 300 faculty members in Wisconsin on Nov. 1 signed a second letter of protest, the board is so far obdurate.

Not coincidentally, the president of the school board, David Ahlquist, is a pastor at a local Baptist church, which has previously invited a "young-earth" creationist to speak.

The main problem is the mandate to study not just "scientific models" but "theories of origin."

Contact:

:Grantsburg Schools
:480 E James Ave
:Grantsburg WI 54840-7959
:715/463-5499
:fax 715/463-2534
:Dr. Joni Burgin, District Administrator jburg@grantsburg.k12.wi.us

School Board Member Email Addresses:

:David Ahlquist dahlquist@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:David Dahlberg ddahlberg@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:Christine Erickson cerickson@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:Russell Erickson rerickson@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:Cindy Jensen cjensen@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:Eric McKinley emckinley@grantsburg.k12.wi.us
:James Sundquist jsundquist@grantsburg.k12.wi.us

You may also wish to send a letter or email to the Burnett County Sentinel, Box 397, Grantsburg WI 54840, fax 715/463-5138.

Wisconsin Grantsburg: Over 350 educators signed the following letter to the Grantsburg School board

As science teachers and members of the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers (WSST), we are writing to you because we are concerned about the recent action the Grantsburg School Board has taken with respect to the teaching of evolution in the Grantsburg Schools. First, permit us to introduce ourselves. WSST was founded in 1958 and with a current membership of almost 2,000, we are the largest organization in Wisconsin devoted to the advancement of science education. Our purpose is to promote, support and improve science education in the state of Wisconsin by providing leadership, advocacy, and programs to enhance the teaching and learning of science. WSST is a chapter of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), long a leader in science education nationally.

The motion recently adopted by the Grantsburg Board, “When theories of origin are taught, students will study various scientific models/theories of origins and identify the scientific data supporting each,” is, in our professional opinion, terribly misguided. To our knowledge, the only viable scientific theory in this area is the theory of evolution. Your motion, by its simple presence, implies that the Board believes that there are other, competing scientific theories. The fact that your motion is limited to “theories of origin” and not to the entirety of science, similarly suggests that the Board has something specific in mind with respect to the teaching of “origins.”

We encourage you to closely examine the NSTA position statement on The Teaching of Evolution. This statement can be viewed on the web at:

http://www.nsta.org/main/pdfs/PositionStatement_Evolution.pdf>

The statement says quite clearly that “evolution has not been emphasized in science curricula in a manner commensurate to its importance because of official policies, intimidation of science teachers, the general public’s misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, and a century of controversy. In addition, teachers are being pressured to introduce creationism, ‘creation science,’ and other nonscientific views, which are intended to weaken or eliminate the teaching of evolution.” The statement goes on to say that “evolution is a unifying concept for science,” and points out that “scientific disciplines with a historical component, such as astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology, cannot be taught with integrity if evolution is not emphasized.”
With respect to “alternative” views, the statement says, “’Creation science’ is a religious effort to support special creationism through methods of science. Teachers are often pressured to include it or other related nonscientific views such as ‘abrupt appearance theory,’ ‘initial complexity theory,’ ‘arguments against evolution,’ or ‘intelligent design theory’ when they teach evolution. Scientific creationist claims have been discredited by the available scientific evidence. They have no empirical power to explain the natural world and its diverse phenomena. Instead, creationists seek out supposed anomalies among many existing theories and accepted facts. Furthermore, ‘creation science’ claims do not lead to new discoveries of scientific knowledge.”

We can well believe that you may have passed your motion in the belief that doing so would encourage critical thinking skills among your students. If this is the case, we believe your motion is wide of the mark because there is no way students can learn critical thinking skills when they are told that nonscientific material has an underlying scientific basis. Rather than introducing students to critical thinking skills, we believe that such instruction will simply confuse them about the very nature of science. Given the large number of vitally important scientific issues currently confronting our society, confusion of this sort cannot be in society’s best interest. Additionally, we fear that your students will simply not be able to effectively compete academically in college with students who have been exposed to high quality science instruction in high school.

Please remember that WSST is a non-partisan, non-political group whose sole interest lies in promoting high quality science instruction throughout Wisconsin. Our letter is intended to bring information to your attention about which we believe you may be unaware. Our hope is that you will rescind your motion and not interfere in the science curriculum.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. We hope to be hearing from you in the near future.

Source: To the Grantsburg School Board and #sign Sign this letter

Wisconsin Grantsburg: Wisconsin Academics Decry Move to Water Down Darwin, Science 2004 306: 1113

Wisconsin academics are rallying to reverse a decision last month by a local school board that would require students to "study various scientific models/theories of origins" rather than stick with Darwinian theory only.

The Grantsburg school board's action spurred Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, to organize a flurry of letter writing by hundreds of scientists and theologians from universities around the state as well as high school science teachers. "We want to send as a strong a message as we can," says Zimmerman. Although Wisconsin state standards mandate the teaching of evolution, the board contends that the district has a right to make the standards more "inclusive."
Source: Science -- 306 (5699): 1113b

and
On October 18, Zimmerman and 42 fellow deans sent a letter to the Grantsburg school board and superintendent of schools. The letter urged the school board to withdraw the policy and advised that "alternative theories" consist of misinformed, spurious attacks on evolution combined with misleading, simplistic versions of evolutionary theory. A second letter signed by over 300 biology and religious studies faculty from 43 institutions of higher learning, both public and private, from across Wisconsin was sent on November 1.

Source: NCSE link

Wisconsin Grantsburg: Pastors protest district policy Fri, Dec. 17, 2004

Pastors protest district policy

Letter says evolution, Bible can coexist

BY KEVIN HARTER

Pioneer Press
Nearly 200 Wisconsin clergy want school officials in Grantsburg, Wis., to ensure evolution remains at the center of scientific teaching in the schools.

The district drew criticism for approving a policy earlier this year calling for scientific theories and evidence other than evolution to be taught. It changed the policy earlier this month, explicitly ruling out teaching creationism and “intelligent design,” a theory that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

But the revised policy contained an expectation that students be able to explain “the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.” Such language is “a standard creationist tactic,” according to a news release accompanying a letter signed by 188 pastors from Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist and other churches.

The pastors want evolution to be treated “the same as all scientific theories” and not singled out for special scrutiny, said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Zimmerman organized the letter-writing effort, which he called unprecedented.

TEXT OF THE PASTORS' LETTER:

Mr. David Ahlquist

President

Board of Education

Grantsburg School District

Grantsburg, Wisconsin 54840
Dear Mr. Ahlquist,

"Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible — the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark — convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey information but to transform hearts.

"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rest. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."

Source: Pastors protest district policy

Michigan

Michigan Citizens for Science

* Website

Issues

MCFS is currently working to defeat two pieces of legislation recently introduced into the Michigan House of Representatives (HB 4946 & 5005). Each of these bills would weaken the quality of science education in Michigan as well as introduce non-scientific and faith-based ideologies into the public classroom.

Anti-Evolution/> Intelligent Design Bill Introduced into Michigan House (HB 4946)
A bill introduced into the Michigan House would require all references to "evolution" and "how species change through time" in the science standards to be modified to indicate "that (evolution) is an unproven theory" by adding the phrase "All students will explain the competing theories of evolution and natural selection based on random mutation and the theory that life is the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a Creator".
The bill would require that "In the science standards for middle and high school, all references to evolution and natural selection shall be modified to indicate that these are unproven theories by adding the phrase 'Describe how life may be the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a Creator'."

HB 4705 from the 2001-2 legislative session has been reintroduced as HB 5005 in the current House. HB 5005 would require that "The teaching in a public school science class of the methodological naturalism hypothesis as an explanation for the origin and diversity of life shall not preclude also teaching the design hypothesis as an explanation for the origin and diversity of life." The bill states that "A public school official shall not censor or prohibit the teaching of the design hypothesis."
As used in this bill, "design hypothesis" is defined as "the theory (sic) that life and its diversity result from a combination of chance, necessity and design. Methodological naturalism is defined as "the theory that nature is all there is and that all phenomena, including living systems, result only from chance and necessity.

Source: Source

A Michigan Science Teachers Association Position Statement

Approved August 5, 2003

The Teaching of Evolution and Michigan House of Representatives Bills No. 4946 and No. 5005
In adopting the position statement of the National Science Teachers Association ( NSTA) (1997) regarding the teaching of evolution, The Michigan Science Teachers Association (MSTA) supports the position that evolution is a major unifying concept of science and should be included as part of K-College science frameworks and curricula. The MSTA recognizes that evolution has not been emphasized in science curricula in a manner commensurate to its importance because of official policies, intimidation of science teachers, the general public’s misunderstanding of evolutionary theory and a century of controversy. Furthermore, teachers are being pressured to introduce creationism, creation "science", and other nonscientific views, which are intended to weaken or eliminate the teaching of evolution.
In accordance of the Michigan State Board of Education’s March 10, 1982 resolution regarding the "Teaching of Religion and Creationism in Michigan Public Schools", the MSTA agrees with the position that the "...State Board of Education oppose the teaching, in public educational institutions, of any course in religion which is outside of the realm of a secular program of education and be it further resolved that the State Board of Education recommend that any school district currently teaching creationism or any course in religion in an attempt to indoctrinate toward any particular belief or disbelief cease and desist such teaching."
In recognition of the Michigan State Board of Education’s resolution on the teaching of evolution and the MSTA adoption of the NSTA position statement on teaching evolution, the Michigan Science Teachers Association advocates that HB 4946 & HB 5005 be removed from any further consideration by the House of Representatives.

Wedgie's World: Stung not bitten

2004-11-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

ID proponents are stumbling over themselves in their haste to come to the defense of the Meyer 2004 review paper. But rather than defending the paper (given the critiques, an unenviable task now delegated to unnamed 'DI Staff', they quickly readjusted their sights and settled for strawmen to shoot down (see for instance the 'response' by DI Staff to Meyer's hopeful monster. Only by creating a strawman argument as to what Gishlick et al were arguing can they even hope to make their case. And I won't even mention the poor reading comprehension of the papers which were given to Meyer as examples of relevant papers missed by Meyer in his 'review paper'.

Another example is a recent article by Mark Hartwig.

Although the article itself has received a share of the abuse—mostly in the form of a "critique" published on the Panda's Thumb blog—the main target has been the editor who published the piece, Richard Sternberg.
Mark Hartwig in Bitten

I understand that to ID proponents, peer review can feel like 'abuse' but that is mostly because typical ID 'research' tends to be based on appeal to ignorance and a restricted view of science. Unfamiliar with peer review, it may come as a shock when scientists expose the many flaws and shortcomings in what some may have hoped would be a glorious entry of ID into the world of science. But as the critique on Panda's Thumb has shown, ID cannot really withstand the scrutiny of critical peer review. (A conclusion further supported by the response by the DI staff)

And that must sting...
Contrary to the musings of other ID proponents Hartwig seems to consider the Meyer 2004 paper as the first peer reviewed ID paper)

For years, now, the anti-ID party line has been that intelligent design should not be considered legitimate science because it has never been published in peer-reviewed scientific publications. This claim surfaces over and over again—whenever the origins controversy makes the news.

Right now, however, many of them may be regretting that line.
Mark Hartwig in Bitten

Hartwig misses the point. Science proponents are not regretting the publication of the first peer reviewed article (isn't it time that ID proponents get their story straight as to what counts as peer reviewed articles?). On the contrary, the paper serves to strengthen the argument by science proponents that ID is scientifically meaningless and even detrimental to scientific research as it has to rely on ignorance and incomplete scientific knowledge to make its case. Most importantly the paper shows that ID is unable to present a positive hypothesis of intelligent design. Even ID proponents like Del Ratzsch are highly critical of the eliminative appeal to ignorance approach chosen by ID

I think that some are certainly too far in the materialist direction, and they claim that science backs them up on that. ID can at least serve a ‘keeping em’ honest’ function, even if nothing else. I think that ID may very well have things to offer science, but I think that it is too early for ID to claim that it has done so. I don’t think that it is just obvious that ID will contribute substantively to science, but I think it has that potential, and that it should be pushed as far as it can be made to legitimately go.

Del Ratzsch on ISCID chat

Hartwig then continues to focus on a strawman namely the disagreement between the claims by the editor of the Journal in question and the Council of the Biological Society of Washington. Contrary to the statement by the Council, Hartwig repeats the assertion by Sternberg that the article was well within the scope of the journal. A quick perusal of the journal's content shows that it focuses mostly on taxonomy.

Hartwig, rather than addressing the scathing rebuttal and critique by Gishlick et al tries to refocus the issue:

At every point in the process, then, Sternberg acted ethically and adhered to customary practice at the journal. Because of this, Meyer’s piece is a bona fide peer-reviewed article.

Mark Hartwig in Bitten

But contrary to Hartwig's assertion the journal's Council clearly ruled that the article was outside the scope of the journal. And given that science proponents have documented the many flaws and omissions in the paper, a conclusion that it is a bona fide peer-reviewed article seems to be suffering from the observation that peer-review does not end with the publication but rather starts. In this case peer-review has presented a compelling case that Meyer's article is scientifically irrelevant.

ID opponents have invested heavily in portraying ID proponents as being unable to publish in peer-reviewed literature, which allegedly proves that ID is inherently bad science.
Mark Hartwig in Bitten

Hartwig misses the point once again. The lack of peer review is just indicative of the scientific irrelevance of ID. The recent paper exemplifies and strengthens this observation because it shows that when ID is provided with an opportunity to present its best case, it is a scientific failure. A failure because it cannot and does not present any scientifically relevant hypothesis of design. A failure because it is flawed in its representation of scientific knowledge. A failure because it relies on appeal to ignorance. Hartwig may argue that the paper was reviewed by three reviewers and found to be acceptable. I would be interested for these reviewers to explain why they considered Meyer's paper to be acceptable.

In this context, the story of the Scorpion and the Frog is quite appropriate. The scorpion, despite being fully aware that, by stinging the frog who is carrying him across the river, he is going to die, still stings the frog. When asked by the dying frog "why? Now we are both going to die", the scorpion responds

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

And such is the nature of ID. The paper has become ID's scorpion sting. ID was presented an opportunity to make its case and failed miserably on at least two fronts. First, it pretends to be an "extensive review essay" when in fact it fails to reference much of the research which undermines its claims. But more devastating, the paper fails to present any scientific hypothesis relevant to ID.

Finally let's remember the real argument of the Meyer paper

In the article, entitled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”, Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms.
Introduction to the Meyer paper on Discovery's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture website

When looking at the Meyer 2004, Gishlick et al and others have shown that not only do many of the papers quoted not support the thesis but additionally that many papers which show how science proposes testable hypotheses for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms. Even more 'shocking' is that Meyer fails to present ANY scientifically relevant hypothesis of ID.

Even in ID friendly 'peer-reviewed' publications such as PCID, the absence of much of any ID relevant scientific contributions is self evident. The site has mostly turned into a ghost town since the decision to limit posting to invited contributors only, even after ISCID had lowered its acceptance standards
ID, even when in friendly waters, cannot really produce much of anything scientifically relevant. But one would have expected that it would have shown more interest in presenting its best case in the mainstream peer reviewed literature. When such an opportunity arose, ID failed once again to make its case scientifically.

And that is 'the wedge' of the story...

Wedgie's world is an irregular contribution to discuss and explore how ID is pulling a 'wedgie' [1] on science.

[1] wedgie 2. The condition of having one's clothing stuck between the buttocks, often from having had one's pants or underwear pulled up as a prank.

[2]Quote Mining:
The definition is clear enough: It is the use of a (usually short) passage, taken from the work of an authority in some field, "which superficially appears to support one's position, but [from which] significant context is omitted and contrary evidence is conveniently ignored" .