The Nevada Sagebrush

“Intelligent design” which means “The Magic Man Did It” was invented by the dishonest morons of the Christian creationist organization called the Discovery Institute, which employs mostly lawyers who have never discovered anything. Their goal is to destroy science education in America to please their uneducated Christian hick customers.

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Great article, but how come you didn’t mention the Flying Spaghetti Monster? :)) Pastafarianism was founded in Vegas only four years ago, but it’s already the most popular religion on the net. The idea behind it is ingenious: if intelligent design supporters insist on teaching ID in public schools, then the Flying Spaghetti Monster has just as much right to be there too. It’s all very scientific. :]

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Barry needs to aquaint himself with what intelligent design really is, not just what he reads online. The basis of ID is not the Bible or any other religious text, but rather the very same data, information, evidence that all scientists use. He should read Stephen Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell (http://www.signatureinthecell.com) which has nothing in it about the Bible. Or he can review articles about what ID is really about at http://www.intelligentdesign.org.

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In your sentence “The basis for almost all of the evidence for this theory is the Christian Bible and misinterpretations of scientific theories,” I disagree with most of this.

First, I wouldn’t grant ID the term “theory.” Call it an idea, but it’s not a scientific theory.

Next, ID doesn’t depend on the Bible (especially not the Christian Bible, because some of its advocates are Jewish), but strains to avoid the G-word in public. They always refer to some unnamed designer.

Finally, although many of its advocates misunderstand the Theory of Evolution, that’s not what it’s based on. I follow the ID movement pretty closely, and it’s based on two things: the argument from incredulity (that just looks so complicated that I don’t see how it could have evolved naturally) and a misunderstanding of information theory. They seem to be hung up on the idea that natural evolution (random mutation plus natural selection) couldn’t increase the information content of DNA, but they’re clearly wrong and no one who understands complexity and information theory has any doubt about that. Bill Dembski has come up with the idea of Specified Complexity as something different from what everyone else in the field refers to as complexity, but he can’t even define what it is exactly.

But the rest of your article was spot-on. ID is based on a pre-commitment to religious ideas and they use logical fallacies and their own undefined measures to say natural evolution couldn’t happen. But ID doesn’t even say what DID happen – just ask an IDer whether the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or 10,000 years old and watch them get real uncomfortable – they won’t even clearly take a position on THAT.

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Of course ID isn’t science without something that makes it scientifically plausible, like a very old alien spaceship with the blueprints for humans hanging from the drawing board, or something that supports something of the nature of Fred Hoyle’s ideas, but certainly not, when it is based on the projection of “appearances” that the scientific method will say are more plausibly going to be the result of law or probability. Even if “appearances” are indicative of some good physical reason that we’re not here by accident, the scientific method is going to say that a law of nature is still the most likely reason for it without an unfounded leap of faith that lacks the kind of supporting evidence that I previously mentioned.

But that’s not what bothers me, it’s this:

If by science you mean, ‘begin with your conclusion, (that we are here purely by the fate of random probabilities, rather than natural law), rework the evidence to fit, (automatically assume that the appearance of design that IDists often point to is of random or local nature, rather than natural law), ignore the plausibility for a natural law that the appearance carries because this appears to be an admission in favor of the creationists position, and then call everyone who suggests such a thing, a crackpot, or a troll or worse.’

Then I’d say that you’ve described your typical Copernicanism’ practicing left winged liberal evolutionist and your religion should not be allowed in school either.

Now, let the liars have at it…

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Robert Crowther, who left a comment here, is one of the compulsive liars who work for the Christian creationist organization called the Discovery Institute (also known as the Dishonesty Institute).

Here’s information about Crowther from the Dishonesty Institute website. Notice that Crowther is not a scientist, and obviously he doesn’t even know what science is.

“Robert Crowther holds a BA in Journalism with an emphasis in public affairs and twenty years experience as a journalist, publisher, and brand marketing and media relations specialist. From 1994-2000 he was the Director of Public and Media Relations for Discovery Institute overseeing most aspects of communications for each of the Institute’s major programs.”

Crowther and the rest of the theocratic morons of the Dishonesty Institute are traitors who want to destroy America’s science education. If it was up to me they would be put in prison for treason. They are enemies of America, no better than terrorists, and they should be treated like terrorists.

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Island are you calling Barry Belmont of the students for liberty a “left-winged liberal”?

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Robert Crowther needs to acquaint himself with the actual contents of “Signature in the Cell”, which after 150 pages of Stephen Meyer’s self-congratulatory personal biography, goes on to COMPLETELY miss the point on evolution. Meyer works very hard to build up the strawman that life jumped into complex existence through some random event. He fails to mention what anyone who has ever written a simple evolutionary algorithm understands – IT ISN’T RANDOM.

Meyer is clever, no doubt. And as he stated in “The Wedge”, he will use that cleverness and will use “Design Theory” as a mechanism to make science more accepting of the Christian God. That’s his goal, spelled out in black and white.

Mr. Crowther – if the Discovery Institute is supposed to be doing research into “Intelligent Design”, why does it seem to consist primarly of journalism majors and lawyers? Why does the visible output from the Discovery Instutute seem to consist solely of press releases and blogs that don’t allow comments?

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Island thinks the universe is an intelligent being, or some such nonsense.

No, I’m not kidding. Look up “anthropic principle” on Wikipedia.

Then giggle – or feel pity.

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GalapagosPete, you are lying about what I think, which is not even relevant to anything that I said, and that was purely factual in nature. But once again, you prove that you do not know the first thing about how honest science works because you are a clueless ideologue.

“Really?”
No, I was simply stating the facts as they exist, and you should read the following if you want an honest representation of the Anthropic Principle that doesn’t include the ideological distortions that were the very reason for its formalization:

http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2

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Robert Crowther reveals the intellectual dishonesty of the Dishonesty Institute by failing to reveal that he is a member of the Dishonesty Institute.

Stephen Meyer’s new book, “Signature in the Cell,” was published by HarperOne, a religious publishing house – not by an actual science publishing house. Go to your local bookshop – you will see “Signature” is in the “Religion and Philosophy” section – not the “Science” section. It’s not science, but pseudoscience.

And anybody can “review articles about what ID is really” – but not at intelligent design creationism websites, because there you will get only propaganda about what the intelligent design creationists want you to believe – not what it actually is. Read the Wedge Document – or read Dr. Barbara Forrest’s paper, “Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals” at http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/intelligent-design.pdf” to see what intelligent design creationism is reall about. It isn’t pretty.

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Yo, Robert Crowther, give us your definitive answer:

Is the earth 6,000 years old, or is the earth 4.5 billion years old? Which age is closer to reality, Robert?

Was the earth created in 4004 BC, Robert? Yes or no, Robert.

Let’s have an answer, Robert. We’re waiting….

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I find it of note that the anti-Intelligent Design advocates often post nasty, name calling, ignorant, and often just plain slanderous comments on websites but the ID supports rarely respond in kind. I guess ID supporters must be Christens where as the other side sure are not, judging by their hateful behavior. This website is no different.

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In the early 1940s, many of the German militants occupying France were known to be real polite as well. But you know what, Isreal Cohen?

THEY WERE STILL NAZIS!

Good manners don’t excuse ID supporters for the filth they’re pushing to the public. If anything, it just reinforces that the entire Institute is made of spin-doctors with NON-scientific degrees.

And it’s hilarious that you say ID supporters are obviously “Christens” (your spelling is off by the way) because they’re not hateful. HA. Christianity is all about hate. Look at the Mormons and their “high moral standards” or the Boy Scouts and their banning of gays and atheists (yeah, they’re controlled by Mormons too) or the Spanish Inquisition or just the idea that a group of people hold more correct morals than other groups of people, giving rise to separation, persecution, intolerance, bigotry, racism, hypocracy, injustice, etc. Now THAT is hate.

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Again I read all the words expressing belief in the theory of Darwin’s Evolution yet, in all the comments I notice that there is no evidence provided to support their faith in the theory. Just statements put out as fact, with no scientific basis or evidence put forward, like Global warming and Co2 we are to accept their supposed consensus that Co2 causes global warming when all the actual science points to a different conclusion.

Common sense dictates that if Macro-evolution is true and has occurred, as professed by those with unwavering faith in the Darwin movement, there would be literally millions upon millions of transitional fossils. But what do we find, not one fossil that we can show beyond a reasonable doubt to be a transitional fossil. We do find hundreds of thousands of fossils that look the same today as they did millions of years past, if they have not suffered extinction in the meantime.

Possibly the Darwin faithful are confusing transitional fossils with fossils exhibiting variation within a species, such as Darwin did when he confused the change in size of the Galapagos Island finch beaks with Macro-evolution when in fact it was the result of micro-evolution (variation within a species). A bird is a bird is a bird is a bird.

I would suggest that some of the above commentators might spend a little time catching up of the latest science of the living cell. Basically it goes like this; inside each cell is a nucleus, inside the nucleus are, among other things, chromosomes. Inside the chromosomes are genes. Inside the genes is the complicated chemical structure called DNA. Each gene has a thousand or more such DNA units within it. Inside each cell are tens of thousands of such genes, grouped into 23 pairs of chromosomes. Inside the DNA is the total of all the genetic possibilities for a given species, sometimes called the gene pool of genetic traits or genome. The limits of the variation within a species is determined by the genes. No finch will ever grow as big as a blue whale because the genes will not provide a blueprint for such growth.

When Dawkins talks about poor design, I suppose he knows something that most of us have missed when he explains about the poor design found in living beings. Let look at the case of the human design, I understand that it works like this. A human female egg is fertilized by the male of the species, thus forming the first cell. This cell contains all the design information and equipment to build the entire human body. This first cell without any help from the adult, except for food and oxygen, begins to build its own body. It must be pretty smart to start with one cell and build a body containing approximately 100 trillions living cells.

Not one of those 100 trillion cells will ever have a brain. So how can a single cell, without a brain, begin the process of building an entire human body without any tools except for tools and machines already inside the first cell or built using DNA code to form protein tools and machines inside that same cell. A cell so small you would need a microscope to properly see it. Imagine the size of the construction drawings you would need for such a project.

We know that it takes, beginning with the first cell, typically nine months of construction before the body can disconnect itself from the mother’s food and oxygen supply. At the proper time, the body disconnects itself from the mother and begins to use its own food conversion process for construction raw materials and begins to use its new lungs for oxygen. Of course, we all know the rest of the story. The same brainless cells continue to repair and build new cells necessary to complete the construction of the adult form of the human body. The adult human form has a limited time until the cells take upon themselves to gradually shut down the repair and building process and eventually the body shuts down by a process we refer as dying from old age.

We now know that instead of a brain, the cell uses DNA code to provide the information that enables the first cell to build its own construction machines and tools. The machines and tools schedule and build the various parts as needed following the DNA specifications. Now you know why we talk about INTELLIGENT DESIGN. The DNA contains the information that makes all this possible. Because the DNA contains the intelligent informational code that must be read and properly implemented we know that there is no possibility of this to occur by accident in a trillion years or a trillion times a trillion years.

No scientist can scientifically demonstrate that three or more simultaneous helpful mutations can or has ever occurred in the history of the universe. For Macro-evolution (changing from one living body plan into another living body plan or from one species into a new and different species) to take place would require tens of thousands of simultaneous helpful mutations without any deleterious mutations. Not possible!!

See Dr. Michael Behe’s book “Edge of Evolution” for details on the limitations of mutational Evolution and DR Stephens Myers “Signature in the cell” for a discription of the inner working of the living cell..

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Creationism advocate “tfagan” demonstrates the willful ignorance of another creationist lie: “But what do we find, not one fossil that we can show beyond a reasonable doubt to be a transitional fossil.”

To disprove this common creationist lie, take a look at Dr. Kevin Padian’s expert witness testimony and slideshow which were part of his sworn Federal Court appearance in the 2005 Dover (which the creationists lost) – see http://ncseweb.org/news/2007/05/meet-padians-critters-001159

“tfagan” clearly demonstrates another common creationist fault: the logical fallacy “argument from incredulity” with his exclamations of “Not possible!!” and “…we know that there is no possibility of this to occur by accident…” Creationists think improbable is the same as impossible, not realizing that in billions of years (not 6,000 years!) and in billions of cubic miles of potential biosphere, the likelihood if life is not impossible.

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tfagan says: “Again I read all the words expressing belief in the theory of Darwin’s Evolution yet, in all the comments I notice that there is no evidence provided to support their faith in the theory. Just statements put out as fact, with no scientific basis or evidence put forward…”

tfagan, I’m going to give you the benefit of a doubt and assume you are just uneducated and not a professional liar like the Discovery Institute morons you invoked.

Just read this book please, then get back to us.

“Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne.

There was “no evidence provided” because evolution is a basic scientific fact that does not need defending, and listing all the evidences for evolution here on this thread would take several years because there’s so much of it. Any idiot can read a book. Why don’t you do that, then you will understand why biologists say the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

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Isreal Cohen, what I hate is professional liars for Jeebus.

Do you like liars? Do you think liars should be respected?

Your problem, Isreal Cohen, is you believe in magical creation. Should we respect your childish belief in magic? I don’t think so. That would be like respecting terrorists who think they can get to heaven by flying airplanes into buildings.

The time for respecting religious stupidity is over with. Get used to it.

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Jumbalaya, so Christians are Nazis? And Christianity is all about hate (your words)? Do you know that an estimated 160,000 Christians are murdered each year for their faith? Militant Anti-Catholics Julius Streicher and Dr. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. Do you think that spreading false information, such as you did on your post, helps educe this slaughter? Read: In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans.” Also good is “Persecution of Christians worldwide: Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations. Congress, second session, February 15, 1996.” Another good book is “A Fragrance of Oppression: The Church and Its Persecutors by Herbert Schlossberg and Marvin Olasky.” (Marvin is Jewish as well) Don’t tell me this is justified because Christians deserve it. This was the same response to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany, they deserved it. Are you also anti-Semite? You are obviously anti-Mormon. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Are you saying nasty people are really nice underneath? Also, you need to study up on the Spanish Inquisition. An excellent book is The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (Yale University Pass) by Henry Kamen (A Jew, by the way). Read it. As I said, I find it significant that the anti-Intelligent Design advocates often post nasty, name calling, inaccurate and often just plain slanderous comments on websites but the ID supports rarely ever respond in kind. I guess ID supporters must be Christians where as the other side surely are not, judging by their hateful behavior. This post is no different.

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bobxxxx I have read “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne. All I can say is that this book indicates the deplorable state of science education in this country. My cell biology students could easily rip it apart. I admit that he does have a lot of good interesting material in it, but when he tries to justify the “from the goo to you by way of the zoo” evolution theory, it is absolutely unconvincing. So is Dawkins new book, which I am reading now.

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Isreal Cohen wrote “My cell biology students”

You’re an evolution denier and you teach cell biology?

You should be fired and publicly humiliated for incompetence and excessive stupidity.

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The argument isn’t really “ID/Creationism” versus “Evolution”. Evolution happens – creatures evolve. We evolved from earlier forms. The evidence is there, the mechanisms are well understood. The evolutionary model makes successful predictions all the time. The Theory of Evolution is a solid as atomic theory, tectonic plate theory, and the germ theory of disease.

Many creationists believe in natural evolution – they believe God set off the Big Bang and let it run from there. Others believe the Book of Genesis is 100% factual history and life on Earth started in 4004 BC, in October. So there is no consistent “creationism” viewpoint.

So the argument is really “evolution acceptance” versus “evolution denial”, where evolution denial is no different than any other form of reality denial. Evolution denial = Holocaust denial = lunar landing denial = round Earth denial.

Evolution is a solid theory, simple at the core and complex in the details. It employs well-understood mechanisms:

Replication + Variation + Selection = Evolution

It has evidence to support each component, it has mountains of evidence found in the fossil record, in vestigial traits in living creatures, in atavisms, in morphology, in genetics and in molecular biology. The facts of evolution are supported by and mesh with other sciences like geology, paleontology, physics, other aspects of biology, cosmology, etc. And it is supported by thousands of critical scientists trying to prove each other wrong, or trying to add their own insights to the theory.

For evolution to NOT be true, many other sciences must have also made major mistakes.

Evolution-deniers claim Evolution is “only a theory” because they say “theory” = “guess” or “hunch”. But in science the word “theory” means a complex model to explain many facts. The theory that life evolved from earlier life is as well supported as the “theories” that the continents drift, that germs cause disease and that stuff is made of atoms. You can bet you life on all of those “theories”.

Evolution-deniers claim there is no evidence for Evolution. This is a lie. Here are a long list of strong evidence for evolution, and even a list of how you’d disprove evolution, and why the evidence supports evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html

Evolution-deniers claim scientists are “abandoning” evolution because some scientists signed a statement saying they are skeptical that Darwinian evolution accounts for all the variation in the species. But (1) this doesn’t mean those scientists believe it takes divine or non-natural intervention for evolution to happen, and (2) the list is a fraud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1Bo6GmPqM

Not only that, but there are nearly 12,000 Christian CLERGY who’ve signed a statement supporting evolution and rejecting the teaching of creationism as science. Science isn’t about voting, but even if it was, evolution still wins.
http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/Christian_Clergy/ChrClergyLtr.htm

Evolution-deniers claim the fossil record does not support evolution, and that there are no intermediate species or transitional fossils. This is an outright lie.

Professional evolution-deniers like Kent Hovind or Harun Yahya claim that a “transitional fossil” is some unworkable mutant like half-crocodile/half-duck or half-starfish/half-flounder. They paint these ridiculous pictures of absurd creatures, then say “see! Evolution is false because these don’t exist!”.

Of course they’re just being dishonest because evolution doesn’t work that way. Evolution works by tiny changes in populations over a long time, so that species slowly morph into different forms. When you grow from an infant to an adult, your left leg doesn’t grow to full size first, then your right arm, then your head. Similarly, evolution doesn’t put a crocodile’s head on a duck’s body.

Evolution deniers say “you expect me to believe a reptile one day gave birth to a bird?” Of course, it doesn’t work that way, any more than a Latin-speaker one day decided to teach their child French.

Here is a devout Christian explaining about all sorts of intermediate species and how the fossil record absolutely supports evolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9a-lFn4hqY

Here is an example of how scientists used evolutionary theory to predict a particular undiscovered species should exist, when it should have existed, and where to dig NOW to find a fossil of it. They went to that spot and found five examples. What successful predictions has creationism ever made?
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/searching4Tik.html
(click the hard-to-see “next” button to page through this site’s story)

Here is a fantastic video explaining many many transitional species:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU&feature=PlayList&p=258CAE2F4546AA95&index=8

Evolution-deniers, unable to refute the actual theory of evolution, then say “evolution doesn’t explain the creation of the first life or the creation of the universe.” That is also dishonest, because the theory of evolution doesn’t ATTEMPT to explain those. Evolution has nothing to do with those. It’s like saying all of chemistry is false because it doesn’t explain where the elements came from.

The birth of the universe is cosmology, not evolution. And non-life to life is abiogenesis and organic chemistry. The theory of evolution is about how different species formed.

Evolution-deniers claim we’ve never SEEN evolution – that’s a lie, because we have:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26lab.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13845002/

This example even ADDED information (through gene duplication), something many evolution-deniers say is impossible:
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/15/8/931

Finally, bad scientific theories get killed by the scientific process: The Four Humours, Polywater, N rays, cold fusion, etc. The mechanisms of evolution have only become stronger and better understood over the past 150 years. Again, you can bet your life on it.

So only by rejecting knowledge and denying reality (or by lying) can you deny that life evolved and continues to evolve.

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“You’re an evolution denier and you teach cell biology?”
“You should be fired and publicly humiliated for incompetence and excessive stupidity.”

How amusing, not unexepect though. bobxxxx clearly are a product of your generation. You obviously cannot think for yourself, using terms like denier is more akin to idology than science. Congratulations for showing us your true colours.

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I find it absolutely hilarious that Godwin’s Law was invoked a mere fourteen comments into an argument about intelligent design.

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Isreal Cohen says: October 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 am

“I have read “Why Evolution is True” by Jerry Coyne…My cell biology students could easily rip it apart.”

Really? And what exactly would their argument be?

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“I find it absolutely hilarious that Godwin’s Law was invoked a mere fourteen comments into an argument about intelligent design.”

I was pleased that the lying didn’t begin until the third comment.

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First of all, this article is innacurate! Mr. Belmont claims to be a “proud evolutionist”, but in this article he shows his ignorance by making some really bold claims, many of which have already been falsified by science.

“Evolution by natural selection can explain the existence of oddities such as the human appendix and tailbone and the vast genetic similarities between diverse organisms, show the reason for body symmetry, the prevalence of five fingers, four limbs, two eyes and why beetles account for 25 percent of all known living organisms.”

Come on! Anyone can make up a story to try and explain what we see, but whether or not that story is true is the question. We need evidence. Stories are not evidence. Evolution does NOT explain the appendix. I assume he is claiming that the appendix is a vestigial organ. Mr. Belmont is behind the times. It is not a vestigial organ. It has function. In fact the whole idea of vestigial organs is an evolutionary embarrassment. Before we understood the function of the tonsils, doctors routinely removed them if there was the slightest problem because they were thought to be vestigial. Imagine how many people have been harmed by this evolutionary concept that was applied to medicine! Almost every single organ they ever claimed to be vestigial has been proven with more research to have a function. Here is a list of all the organs Darwin claimed to be vestigial but have been proven not to be so. It’s kind of embarrassing! This article also deals with the tailbone. I assume he is claiming that the tailbone is evidence that we once had a tail or evidence of recapitulation – that hoax that evolutionist Earnst Haeckl used to deceive the world for so many years. (Another embarrassment for evolutionists.) http://www.creationinthecrossfire.com/documents/VestigialOrgans/VestigialOrgans.html
http://creationsafaris.com/crev200908.htm#20090821b

Then Mr. Belmont talks about the “vast genetic similarities between diverse organisms”. There are similarities as well as differences and the similarities only add up as evidence if you believe in evolution. You could also say that the body symmetry, genetic similarities, prevalence of 5 fingers, toes, etc etc is evidence for a common designer. That works just as well. Why wouldn’t the Designer use the same pattern and design in living creatures? All artists have their own unique style that identifies the work as their own. So, if the Designer hit upon a good design, it makes sense to go with it. There is plenty of diversity amid the common design to show his creativity and intelligence. So, genetic similarities are not necessarily evidence for evolution.

So much for the bluff in Mr. Belmont’s first paragraph! I guess we can’t blame him too much because science textbooks still talk about the appendix as a vestigial organ and they teach the whole vestigial concept as evidence for evolution. But the vestigial organ debacle is one case where Darwin and his followers have been led down the wrong path by their worldview. They have been led to make faulty conclusion conclusions about their observations because they are trying to fit all the facts into their theory. The idea of “Junk DNA” and “Junk RNA” are other more modern examples of how evolution misleads scientists. (Click here to read an article on science daily entitled “No such thing as Junk RNA” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091013105809.htm)

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Next Mr. Belmont informs us that “Natural selection, the process by which inheritable traits that aid in an organism’s survival and reproduction become more common throughout a population over generations, working with only the genetic materials available can easily account for such diverse aspects of nature.”

I’m not sure where he gets his facts from. If this is really true, it seems to me there wouldn’t be anything to debate about, but the fact that there are significant numbers of scientists who do not interpret the facts in this way makes me think he is overstating his case just a bit. In fact, it seems to me that Mr. Belmot is indeed a man of great faith to believe that natural selection can account for all the volumes of information, specified complexity, irreducibly complex systems, thousands of molecular machines in the cell, etc etc.

First we need to understand more clearly what he means by natural selection. If he simply means that that natural selection can aid an organism in survival(micro-evolution), then fine. No arguments there. However, if he is claiming that natural selection can explain the building of new genes, body plans, organs, etc so that a one celled organism can turn into a person, (macro-evolution), then he is making bold claims that have not been scientifically substantiated. Just as he was behind the times when it came to vestigial organs, here again, he seems to be a little bit behind the times. I guess he can be forgiven though since this article is rather recent. For a current look at the very serious problems with natural selection, please look at this article: Jay Odenbaugh,“Evolution: A Fresh Theoretical Framework,” Science, 16 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5951, pp. 368 – 369, DOI: 10.1126/science.1176940.

Here is a revealing commentary on the above article:
Folks, you have just watched the undoing of Darwinism and natural selection. Pray tell, what remains after this gentle demolition derby? Everything you have been taught about natural selection is wrong. Is there any concept left on which you can hang your hat and say, “this is natural selection in action”? No; now you have to worry whether the reproducer was simple, collective, or scaffolded. Now you have to worry whether selection acts on the gene, the individual, the group, or the population. Now you need to draw meaningless graphs of arbitrary parameters that might omit key concepts, without knowing how to score them objectively. You need to be able to talk out both sides of your mouth: demonizing teleology on one side, using “functional notions” on the other. All the while, you need to keep the Great Cover-Up covered up. You need to hide the elephant in the room, the “emergence” of specified complexity (such as entirely new body plans in the Cambrian explosion) in rhetorical blankets like “marginal Darwinian populations moving to paradigmatic ones.”
(taken from this site: http://creationsafaris.com/crev200910.htm#20091016a By the way, this is a great website because he simply brings to light the problems in evolution that the evolutionists themselves admit in their scientific papers as opposed to simply swallowing the watered down “truths” that make it into texbooks.)

Behe’s book, The Edge of Evolution, also presents some evidence as to how far natural selection can and cannot go.(Although Behe does believe in the common descent of all animals.)

Plus, he seems to be unaware that even creationists believe in natural selection(micro-evolution) up to a point. They just believe that it is limited by Mendel’s laws of genetics. For example, Creationists believe that natural selection is responsible for all the various species of dogs. They don’t believe natural selection can create new genes though which means that the changes that were produced by natural selection to come up with the wide variety of dogs that we now see, have resulted from the loss of genetic information from the original created pair. Breeders know very well the limits of genetics. They know there is a limit as to how small a dog you can get. Natural selection is under these same limitations. Mendel’s Laws still hold true today. http://www.creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4.htm
Indeed, almost every evolutionary change that is mentioned in the literature is the result of a loss of genetic information. For instance going from a coat of color to a white coat of fur happens simply by selecting all the genes that code for white color – but another way to look at it is they lose all the genes that code for color. Unless these genes are recessive and remain in the gene pool somewhere, unless they are reintroduced into the gene pool, you can never again get color even if there is a need for a colored coat to survive.

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Creator, outside of time, not bound by laws. Thank you very much for your permission! His reasoning? “If God is supernatural, there is not a single thing science can say on the issue. Science deals with the observable, quantifiable and natural.”

Fine. We agree that science cannot prove or disprove the existence of a Creator God. However, that is not to say that it cannot give evidence to suggest one conclusion over the other. I mean, if there is a Creator, then there should be evidence that would support that truth. There is a difference between proof and evidence. This is where the supernatural and the natural can and do overlap.

He claims that “by making God a scientific hypothesis, religious fundamentalists are simultaneously pissing on the very idea of the God they glorify and scientific authority.”

Cute, but first of all, no one is making God a scientific hypothesis. We agree that science cannot disprove or prove God. However, as I said, we should be able to make hypotheses based on the idea that there is an Intelligent Designer and Creator. What would some of those hypotheses be?

There are limits to what natural selection can produce by chance.
There should be evidence of design in the universe, and hence, if we study living things, we can learn how they work. (Hence the development of science in the West.)
There should be order to the universe.
Etc.

These presuppositions come more from the creationist view than from the intelligent design view. Intelligent Design differs from creationism in that they do not begin by looking for evidence for a Creator, but arrive at that conclusion from the scientific evidence they examine. They believe that there is evidence of design in nature which points to the logical conclusion of intelligence. So, for example, they do not believe in a young earth because that idea is thought to be first derived from the Bible and then imposed on science.

But back to the idea of religious fundamentalists pissing on their faith. Why does he believe this? Simply because we have the audacity to claim that, if it there is a Creator, there should be scientific evidence for this view. Imagine if we didn’t claim that. Imagine how people would look down on believers then. They would say: “You believe in something that is totally unscientific. You aren’t even willing to examine the scientific evidence to see if your faith is true or not. Who is going to believe your ridiculous claims if you aren’t even willing to examine them to see if they are true or not? You are running from the truth.”

So we don’t run from the truth. We believe that there should actually be evidence for our beliefs all around us in nature and actually that is what the Bible tells us to expect as well.

Granted that your were limited to what you could say in this article out of necessity, but Mr. Belmont, from what you chose to include in your editorial, I personally don’t see any evidence for evolution or anything to be proud of, only things to be embarrassed about.

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Curt Cameron says: October 20th, 2009 at 6:25 am
I follow the ID movement pretty closely, and it’s based on two things: the argument from incredulity (that just looks so complicated that I don’t see how it could have evolved naturally)
No, I disagree with you. There is such a thing as evidence of design. When archeologists search for old artifacts, they are looking for things that were made. There are certain clues that tell them something was designed as opposed to occurring naturally. Mt. Rushmore shows evidence of design. It is theoretically possible that life was designed, is it not? You may not be willing to entertain that possibility because of your arbitrarily chosen worldview of naturalism, but that is just your opinion. No proof that your worldview is true. Living things are not bound to the rules of your naturalism – unless it is really true. So ID scientists are simply trying to identify what constitutes evidence for design. They believe they have identified things that show definite evidence for design. They are seeking to delineate just what evolutionary processes are able to accomplish and what they are not. I think Behe’s recent book shows excellent hard evidence that random evolutionary processes have clear limitations. There is no proof that random evolutionary processes can actually produce anything meaningful, other than lengthening and shortening bird beaks, changing colors of moths, etc. Micro-evolutionary changes are proven, but changes on a macro scale are unproven.
And you have to admit that the thousands of molecular machines that defy human wisdom and understanding on the nanoscale, the volumes of meaningful information stored in code in the DNA molecule, all the irreducibly complex systems in living things, etc etc certainly would seem to be a challenge for random processes. At least you would think that this amount of complexity would keep scientists humble and open for other interpretations, but they aren’t about to give an inch.
In 100% of our human experience, any system we see – without exception – was deliberately and purposefully designed. Just saying it happened doesn’t cut it. If Darwin had known how complicated life was, he would never have been able to convince even himself that his ideas held any merit. In order to account for what we see in this world, evolutionists are forced to believe in countless miracles of chance. There are seemingly no limits to what can be accomplished by these random processes and yet we, who believe in an Intelligent Designer, – a much more rational and logical position, are the ones who are ridiculed in my opinion. At least we have reason to believe in the miracles we believe in.

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Curt Cameron continues:
“I follow the ID movement pretty closely, and it’s based on two things: the argument from incredulity and a misunderstanding of information theory. They seem to be hung up on the idea that natural evolution (random mutation plus natural selection) couldn’t increase the information content of DNA, but they’re clearly wrong and no one who understands complexity and information theory has any doubt about that. Bill Dembski has come up with the idea of Specified Complexity as something different from what everyone else in the field refers to as complexity, but he can’t even define what it is exactly.”

No where in our human experience is information produced by random chance. No where! And when it comes to DNA, we’re talking about volumes and volumes of information! If you have enough faith to believe that random evolutionary processes are able to write the software and create the hardware as well for all the life forms we see, more power to you. I guess we need a bit more evidence before we are willing to put our faith in random chance. When you can give us that evidence, then you can turn the tables on this debate and silence IDers for good, but until then, bald assertions mean little to us. Bill Dembski is right on when he differentiates between Shannon information and specified complexity. Copying a gene with one mistake in it does not constitute new information.

Take for example the idea of birds evolving from dinosaurs. Imagine the amount of new genetic programming that would be necessary to get feathers, beaks, wings, muscles to support the wings, an avian lung(changing the dinosaur lung into an avian lung would require huge comprehensive changes in the body) etc etc! No way. That kind of change and a simple copying error are a whole different ballgame! That is the difference between specified complexity and the kind of information you are referring to.

And I’m sorry, Curt, but this following quote is just plain old wrong:
“ID is based on a pre-commitment to religious ideas and they use logical fallacies and their own undefined measures to say natural evolution couldn’t happen. But ID doesn’t even say what DID happen – just ask an IDer whether the Earth is 4.5 billion years old or 10,000 years old and watch them get real uncomfortable – they won’t even clearly take a position on THAT.”

ID is NOT based on a pre-commitment to religious ideas. Creationists believe that the Bible is God’s truth and records an eyewitness testimony to creation in Genesis 1 so they begin with that. That is why creationists are mostly young earthers, but this is not true of IDers. They do not begin with Scripture, but with science.

Not sure what “logical fallacies” you are referring to, but if you don’t believe in a Creator, you have no basis for believing that the laws of logic are even true. You just take it by faith that they are, but believers have a logical reason for believing in logic and truth. The Creator Himself gives us that reason. Without a Creator though, there is no reason for order, logic, truth, etc. In other words, you borrow from the Christian worldview every time you use logic. That is a logical fallacy of naturalism. By the way, if you believe in laws of logic, then you are admitting that naturalism is not true, because they are immaterial entities.

For a more detailed explanation of why atheists cannot rationally use laws of logic, see this website: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/atheism-irrational

And oh yeah. You are wrong about IDers being wishy-washy about the age of the earth. True ID science begins with science and not religion. I’m not sure if ID takes a position on the age of the earth, but I know almost all of the ID scientists who write defending it are long-agers and they clearly make that known immediately to try and distinguish themselves from creationists.
Creationists are the ones who believe in a young earth. However, most evolutionists lump both creationists and IDers into one camp and call them creationists in order to purposefully try and belittle them. It is true of course, that all creationists believe in an Intelligent Designer, but they are NOT viewed as IDers by the ID people.

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