“Explore Evolution”—displacing good science with ‘dumbed-down’ creationism

The various ID blogs are all atwitter over the new textbook the Discovery Institute is going to be peddling, Explore Evolution. I’ve seen a copy, but I’m not going to give an extensive review just yet. I will say that it’s taking a slightly different tack to avoid the court challenges. It does not mention gods anywhere, of course, but it goes further: it doesn’t mention Intelligent Design, either. The book is entirely about finding fault with evolution, under the pretext of presenting the position of evolutionary biology (sort of) together with a critique. The biology part is shallow, useless, and often wrong, and the critiques are basically just warmed over creationist arguments.

What it actually is is Jonathan Wells’ Icons of Evolution rewritten and reworked as a textbook.

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Keeping up with Behe

While we’re waiting for the Panda’s Thumb server to come back up, with some new material on Behe’s new book, I’ll recommend Blake Stacey’s dissection of the malaria mutants. This little fable that Behe summarized about the frequency of chloroquine-resistant mutations in the malaria parasite is the centerpiece of his book, and the important odds of 1 in 1020 was the yardstick by which he measured evolution — it was the magic number, the limit to evolution, the likelihood that a fairly simple set of mutations could occur … and the whole story is bogus. The book has been out for only about a week and the whole thing is just crumbling to pieces already.

Not that it will matter in the slightest, of course. The Edge of Evolution isn’t a science book, it’s a propaganda piece — and the big lies are just fine for that purpose.

That’s a sight to make a fellow toss his cookies

It’s an article titled “I love teaching evolution”…on the Chalcedon foundation page, in column on homeschooling, beneath a quote and a picture of crazy ol’ R.J. Rushdooney.

Evolution is a topic that repeatedly enters into our curriculum the same way that sin is a topic that gets covered in depth. How am I adequately educating my child if I fail to cover in detail the lies and deceptions that are prevalent in our humanistic culture? The Christian homeschooling parent must be prepared to understand, articulate, and refute the preposterous claims that currently serve as explanations for the origins of life and the presence of all creatures great and small. Fortunately, there are many good books and publishers that have taken the time to make this task much easier.

I think this one belongs to Greg Laden. I’m going to stagger off and rest my bedazzled, overloaded brains.

(thanks to Jesse for that horrible vision.)

If only banality disqualified one from running for president…

I passed on listening to the Democratic debates, so you can sure as heck bet I skipped the recent Republican debate. Just as well, too; the candidates got pressed on that evolution question again, and wouldn’t you know it, it simply triggered an avalanche of idiocy, with Mike Huckabee leading the way. Just look at these quotes.

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Hovind’s criminal memoirs

Speaking of unqualified dimwits trying to pass themselves off as competent scientist, take a look at this affidavit Kent Hovind filed in 2005. It’s Hovind’s history as Hovind himself sees it.

In his literature and in his talks, one of the subjects Hovind always brings up as part of his qualifications is his history as a high school science teacher. If I made a list of the most important jobs in America, I’d put teaching science in high school way up near the top, so that’s always been a discombobulating and disquieting claim from the man. When you read his history, though, you’ll discover that he never had a moment’s training in science—he went through a succession of bible colleges, worked as an assistant pastor and pastor, and then, with no background at all, starts teaching his version of “science” at Christian schools and a Baptist college.

It’s both reassuring—that clown and fraud did not earn a position deserving of much respect—and disturbing—these Christian educational institutions apparently have very low standards if they’re willing to accept ordination in the Baptist church as a substitute for actual knowledge in a discipline for their teachers.

The other thing that’s amusing about this document is that it is so freaking god-soaked, you want to wash the anointing oil off your eyeballs after reading it. And in the middle he tries to testify about Creation “Science” to the judge reading it. It makes me wonder whether judges and lawyers get tired of testimonials from criminals that mention god and jesus in just about every sentence.

Opportunity for geologists!

Looking for a job? Want to travel, meet people, promote good … uh, “science”? Then here’s your chance: the Creation “Museum” is hiring! They really, really want someone with a doctorate in geology to work with them and use their degree to lend them a little credibility (don’t worry, it won’t help them at all—but after you’ve worked there a while, your degree won’t have any credibility, so you’ll be able to use it as toilet paper).

To apply, they want a “resume” and a few other things that I don’t remember ever having to submit when I was on the job market.

  • Salvation testimony
  • Creation belief statement
  • Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG Statement of Faith

I guess you don’t have to fill out an affirmative action form with AiG.

The Statement of Faith is an intensely loony document, and one of their beliefs ought to be posted outside their “museum”.

No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

In other words, any evidence that contradicts their religious beliefs is rejected by definition. If I had a grad student trying to earn a Ph.D. in a science, I wouldn’t let them have it if they could endorse such an anti-scientific sentiment.

(via McCranium)

It just gets worse for Behe

Nick Matzke has dug into the literature on evolution of chloroquinone resistance in a comment so substantial it ought to be a post on the Panda’s Thumb. This magic number of 1 in 1020 as the probability that a specific two-amino acid change could evolve that Behe uses as his linchpin metric for evolvability throughout his book turns out to not actually describe the probability of a pair of mutually dependent mutations…

So it looks like resistance actually occurs by the gradual accumulation of several mutations, and that what you are seeing in the wild is not a few rare double-mutation events, but instead a few much-evolved strains that have accumulated a large number of resistance mutations.

…and the number itself is of rather shaky provenance.

The evolution of malaria really is the major theme running throughout the book, and it’s looking like he hasn’t gotten any of it right. I wondered how such sloppy scholarship could have passed muster, so I took a look at the acknowledgments page to see who had helped him out. Here’s the roster of great minds:

Lydia and Tim McGrew, Peter and Paul Nelson, George Hunter, David DeWitt, Doug Axe, Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Tony Jelsma, Neil Manson, Jay Richards, and Guillermo Gonzalez read the manuscript, and Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, John West, and Rob Crowther provide support.

In other words, his reviewers were the gang of incompetent philosophers, theologians, and creationist ideologues who willingly associate themselves with the Discovery Institute, with nary a real biologist among them. No wonder such bad science could slip into publication.

Behe’s Edge of Evolution, part Ia

Let me add a quick addendum to the previous post. People aren’t appreciating yet how hard-core a designist Behe actually is; one comment mentions that “apparently God is directly responsible for the creation of drug-resistant malaria.”

No. The Designer, who must have godlike powers, specifically created malaria itself. The drug resistance is the one thing that evolved.

Here’s something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed. The molecular machinery with which the parasite invades red blood cells is an exquisitely purposeful arrangement of parts. C-Eve’s children died in her arms because an intelligent agent deliberately made malaria, or at least something very similar to it.

Got that? Plasmodium falciparum was explicitly and intentionally constructed to infect, make ill, torment, and kill human beings. He goes farther than most YECs—the parasite was not simply a product of corruption at the Fall, it had to be carefully modified, built, and released to carry out its designed job of causing suffering.

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Behe’s Edge of Evolution, part I

I peeked.

I was reading Michael Behe’s new book, The Edge of Evolution, and I was several chapters into it. All he seemed to be saying was that evolution has limits, limits, limits, and those limits are so restrictive that you can’t get from there to here, and he was repeating it over and over, in this tediously chipper narrative voice. Behe insisted that he accepted common descent, though, and acknowledged all this evidence that, for instance, chimpanzees and humans are related by common descent, while saying that it was impossible for them to have evolved naturally from one to the other. So I was getting awfully curious to learn how they were linked by descent while evolution was impossible, and I jumped ahead to the end of the book.

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Brain melting…

I want you all to know that I finished Michael Behe’s drecky The Edge of Evolution, and that I really will have a review up soon. Although, actually, I suppose I could put up a review right now:

Sucks.

But you probably want details, don’t you? So give me a little time to whittle this thing into shape. The book is awful throughout, and I’m more than a little embarrassed for Behe, who has just committed a whole pile of common creationist errors. Inane errors. Some errors so stupid I have to believe he’s intentionally trying to fool someone.