Australian Lungfish update

I just received word from Per Ahlberg that the status of the Australian lungfish conservation efforts have reached a critical phase: letters are needed NOW. Here’s the situation:

The Traveston Dam proposal has moved into a new and critically important phase: it has been referred to the Federal Environment Minister (Mr Ian Campbell) for consideration under the Federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Ian Campbell has the power to stop the dam, but if he doesn’t it is unlikely that any other organisation or individual will be able to do so.

The first hurdle that must be crossed in order to stop the dam is to ensure that the Minister does not allow the Queensland Government to conduct the EPBC assessment of it’s own proposal – something that he is entitled to do. This would be a recipy for disaster as they would be certain to conclude that their own proposal is environmentally sound! The assessment must be carried out by the Federal Environment Ministry to ensure a proper process.

The Save the Mary River Campaign is asking supporters to write to Mr Campbell and a number of relevant senators to demand a proper assessment, and provides some very helpful information and instructions. This is URGENT: letters have to be received before 27 November.

You can get details here—start writing!

I should have kept reading

Casey Luskin’s ignorance is well-known, and this recent essay stopped most of us cold at his Ford Pinto comparison. We should have kept going. Karmen plucks out another particularly stupid statement, one that’s even dumber than the Pinto remark:

The article called evolution a “simple” process. In our experience, does a “simple” process generate the type of vast complexity found throughout biology?

Luskin apparently thinks the answer is “no.” I think Karmen could teach him a few things about fractals to get him started, but it’s trivially true that yes, biology is all about the simple becoming complex through natural processes.

My kind of meeting

The NY Times is reporting on a wonderful meeting, “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival”. I wish I could have been there, but at least there’s the promise that recordings will be available. A meeting that is denounced by a spokesman from the Templeton Foundation is my kind of place.

It sounds like there was a great deal of vigorous argument, which also makes for my favorite kind of meeting. And then there were all the scientists plainly making these kinds of statements:

Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its first minister.

She was not entirely kidding. “We should let the success of the religious formula guide us,” Dr. Porco said. “Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome—and even comforting—than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know.”

Dang it. That’s the theme of the book I’m working on. I need to get cracking.

These two statements really sum up my feelings.

With atheists and agnostics outnumbering the faithful (a few believing scientists, like Francis S. Collins, author of “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” were invited but could not attend), one speaker after another called on their colleagues to be less timid in challenging teachings about nature based only on scripture and belief. “The core of science is not a mathematical model; it is intellectual honesty,” said Sam Harris, a doctoral student in neuroscience and the author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

That was just the kind of accommodating attitude that drove Dr. Dawkins up the wall. “I am utterly fed up with the respect that we—all of us, including the secular among us—are brainwashed into bestowing on religion,” he said. “Children are systematically taught that there is a higher kind of knowledge which comes from faith, which comes from revelation, which comes from scripture, which comes from tradition, and that it is the equal if not the superior of knowledge that comes from real evidence.”

I’m sure there will be another volley of comments here that bandy about the terms “proof” and “disproof”, but that isn’t what this is about: it’s about a consistent pattern of unearned respect offered the failed paradigm of religion, and the need for scientists and citizens to honestly face up to the fact that there are no grounds for accepting the myths of your culture’s favorite myths, other than the constant dunning bombardment of religious propaganda on developing minds.

There’s another meeting in November 2007. I’m glad to hear the discussion isn’t going to stop, and that the godless are getting more and more active.

In which I am a prophet

Five days ago, I wrote about a creationist letter that was published in Nature. At that time, there was a discussion going on in email with the gang at the Panda’s Thumb, and someone said we ought to get a pool going on how long it would take before the Intelligent Design creationists would use this to argue that their case was being seriously discussed in the pages of a major scientific journal. Four months was suggested; I said one week.

I should have put some money down on that.

It turns out one of the PhD alumni in biology from Moran’s school (University of Toronto), a respected scientist and pro-ID creationist recently had his letter published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. This is news in itself that creationists and ID proponents are getting airtime now in scientific journals…

That was the unctuous clown, Sal Cordova, of course. It was four days before they were trumpeting this crank letter as a triumph for Intelligent Design creationism.

Have you ever considered atheism?

This is hilarious: a couple of atheists get some bicycles, white shirts and ties, and travel around Salt Lake City knocking on doors and bringing the good word of godlessness to the Mormons. One old guy is an LDS bishop, and thinks that’s a good enough reason for them to stop bothering him (although, of course, if someone is Catholic or atheist or Baptist, that’s not enough reason to stop proselytizing to them…besides, LDS bishops are thick on the ground out there); another feebly swings a broom at them; there is some door slamming going on. Although it’s funny, I think the Mormons would be oblivious to the irony—missionary work is a painfully intense part of the culture out there.

One other problem is that it isn’t quite fair to pull this stunt in Salt Lake. Salt Lake City is about half gentile, and especially if they were hitting up neighborhoods around the university they may have been pestering a fair number of unbelievers. They should have tried it in Price or Ogden or Provo. I suspect, though, that they probably didn’t want to risk getting shot, and more than a few people would have called the police on them…who would then have escorted them right out of town.

MADS boxes, flower development, and evolution

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I’ve been writing a fair amount about early pattern formation in animals lately, so to do penance for my zoocentric bias, I thought I’d say a little bit about homeotic genes in plants. Homeotic genes are genes that, when mutated, can transform one body part into another—probably the best known example is antennapedia in Drosophila, which turns the fly’s antenna into a leg.

Plants also have homeotic genes, and here is a little review of flower anatomy to remind everyone of what ‘body parts’ we’re going to be talking about. The problem I’ll be pursuing is how four different, broadly defined regions of the flower develop, and what that tells us about their evolution.

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Attack mouse of the DI crashes, bursts into flames, and explodes!

Casey Luskin has been posting a series of articles to argue with Carl Zimmer, and has finally posted his last attempt, which Zimmer has dealt with. We have a new catch phrase, thanks to Luskin, in reference to the shortcomings of the vertebrate eye:

Was the Ford Pinto, with all its imperfections revealed in crash tests, not designed?

You see, we’re not allowed to infer anything about the Designer from its handiwork in the natural world (that would be theology, after all), except perhaps when it’s necessary to speculate that life was designed by Ford to counter those annoying facts.