The other day, the Time magazine blog strongly criticized the DI’s list of irrelevant, unqualified scientists who “dissent from Darwin”, and singled out a surgeon, Michael Egnor, as an example of the foolishness of the people who support the DI. I took apart some of Egnor’s claims, that evolutionary processes can’t generate new information. In particular, I showed that there are lots of publications that show new information emerging in organisms.

Egnor replied in a comment. He’s still completely wrong. The Discovery Institute has posted his vapid comment, too, as if it says something, so let’s briefly show where he has gone wrong.

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I guess Phillip Johnson stepped down from on high to deliver a thunderbolt of a defense of Intelligent Design creationism. At least that’s the impression you get from the IDists.

Ho hum. To me, it sounds more like an old man farted.

You can get an assessment from the rational people on the side of evolution, like Shalini, John Pieret, and Joe Meert. I think Larry Moran summarized it most succinctly.

Like most IDiot arguments, this one relies on two main points: (1) evolution is wrong, (2) the bad guys are picking on us. There isn’t one single scientific argument in favor of intelligent design.

Johnson whines and whines and whines, and is disappointed that “influential scientific organizations formed a solid bloc of opposition to the consideration of whether evidence points to the possible involvement of intelligent causes in the history of life.” There’s a reason they’ve opposed ID; the proponents never get around to offering any of that evidence we’re supposed to consider, and Johnson’s latest emission is no exception. Instead, we get a lot of nonsense about how Anthony Flew converted, sorta, and how we shouldn’t be afraid to let God into our science.

The gasbag of ID is slowly deflating, and the intellectual flabbiness is becoming apparent. Rather than rejoicing, the IDists ought to be dismayed that this is the best they can do, after years of phony triumphalism.

Take a look at this interesting discussion of a recent PLoS article in which publications in medical journals are reluctant to use the word “evolution”:

According to a report released last week in PLoS Biology, when medical journals publish studies about things like antibiotic resistance, they avoid using the “E-word.” Instead, antimicrobial resistance is (euphemistically, I suppose) said to “emerge,” “arise,” or “spread” rather than “evolve.”

This decision has consequences, too—popular press descriptions of the work then tend to avoid using the word “evolution”, too. This is exactly the kind of run-around that allows kooks like Phil Skell to claim that modern biology doesn’t actually need evolution (although, truth be told, Skell is so looney that he claims papers on evolutionary biology that use observations of fossils or gene frequencies don’t really need evolutionary theory).

Of course, what this is all about is really just to have an opportunity to tweak the noses of the good doctors here at Scienceblogs, like Orac and Revere and Charles and Craig—what’s wrong with these M.D.s? Are they poorly educated, cowardly, or do the granting agencies or journal publishers actually pressure them to avoid ‘controversial’ words?

There is some degree of seriousness to the question. This habit has effects; what can we do to correct it?

Larry Moran takes apart the Marcus Ross case in some detail. Ross is the young earth creationist who recently received his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island.

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Edward Humes, the author of Monkey Girl, has an excellent op-ed in the Lawrence Journal-World.

The talk-radio version had a packed town hall up in arms at the “Why Evolution Is Stupid” lecture. In this version of the theory, scientists supposedly believe that all life is accidental, a random crash of molecules that magically produced flowers, horses and humans — a scenario as unlikely as a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747. Humans come from monkeys in this theory, just popping into existence one day. The evidence against Darwin is overwhelming, the purveyors of talk-radio evolution rail, yet scientists embrace his ideas because they want to promote atheism.

These are just a few highlights of the awful and pervasive straw-man image of evolution that pundits harp about in books and editorials and, yes, on talk radio, and this cartoon version really is stupid. No wonder most Americans reject evolution in poll after poll.

This is really why scientists either get angry or dismiss creationism as a joke: the proponents are annoyingly ignorant of the ideas they are arguing against, so there is no reason to take them seriously. My first clue that someone is a babbling fool is when they start calling it “Darwinism”—then I know that I’m going to be wasting my time, because the first thing I have to do is clear the army of straw men out of the room, and even then, the joker probably isn’t going to pay any attention to what I have to say about evolution, because he still has that cartoon version of biology taught to him by his preacher whirling around in his head, complete with calliope music.

This is also the second time in a week I’ve heard talk radio brought up in this argument. I wonder if that’s an angle we haven’t been pushing hard enough—I know in those few instances where I’ve accidentally tuned in to some ranter on the AM side of the dial, I just go “Gaaaaa!” and turn it off. Maybe I shouldn’t do that; maybe some of us should be calling up the talk radio stations and offering to go on and discuss the non-cartoon version of evolution.

As I might have guessed, it seems to have been rather unimpressive. No genuinely outré exhibits, just more average work with bible verses slapped on. He does observe that quote-mining the bible means these kiddies are going to burn in hell someday, which does add a little frisson of horror to the exhibit, but since it’s just as much an unsympathetic fantasy as the Christian belief that we godless people are hellbound, I’m afraid it’s still not enough reason to have compelled me to drive across the state to see it.