Sometimes my email contains a few good and sincere questions — and here’s an example. This is probably the most common rock on which creationists founder: a profound misconception about what evolution says, and a natural human desire to see a guiding plan to the world.

I’m tormented.

I appreciate the struggle many creationists are having about evolutionary science. I find myself tormented as I observe the world around me.

What I seem to be focused on is how a plant or animal is self aware of it’s need to evolve? How does a tree know how to “evolve” it’s seed to fly on the wind? How would a lizard “know” that it needed to develop camouflage to survive?

I can’t imagine who any plant or animal other than human would have the ability to “know” and as well as pass it along via DNA to future hundreds of thousands of generations?

I’d appreciate your feedback…this is really starting to bother me.

The first part of the answer is that the organism doesn’t know that it must evolve. There is no plan, no guidance, no goal imposed ahead of time, the tree or lizard are not following a program that says they have a goal. The outcome emerges as a consequence of selection and chance.

The tree did not plan ahead. In a population of trees, there was chance variation in how far seeds fell from the parent; seeds that fell in the shade of the parent would not flourish, while seeds that were fortuitously caught by the wind and fell further away were more likely to thrive, and produce more offspring. Lizards that blended in with their environment were less likely to be eaten, and had more offspring that, inheriting their parents inconspicuousness, were also less likely to be eaten, and variation in their progeny was selected further approximations to camouflage.

There is no “know”, no awareness. Darwin’s insight was that life didn’t need it to produce a pattern of change — unguided random variation, filtered after the fact by natural selection, produces an appearance of design.

And yes, this is a fact that many people find troubling. We’re brought up thinking we’re cuddled in the swaddling hands of a god who has a grand plan for us all, and that every little up and down in our life is the product of some cosmic intent — it’s reassuring and makes us feel important. It’s an interpretation unsupported by any evidence, too, and often contradicted. We live in a world of chance, and we’re all on our own.

OK, readers, maybe you have a better explanation. Go ahead, chime in with a comment and explain how we’re going to wean the general public away from their imaginary sky father.

One of the fun things about traveling to strange places like Seattle is getting to meet new and interesting people — or, at least, people who are made of meat rather than the more familiar bit patterns of the net. I’ve had a few occasions now to talk to Alan Boyle, who has just summarized my NWSA talk…and done a pretty good job of it, too.

One thing I want to expand on a little bit is something I brought up for the Seattle audience: I think the Discovery Institute is toast, and are going to be increasingly irrelevant. The Wedge document is dead and gone; their strategy of pretending to have a secular goal has failed; and everyone can see through their claim that “Intelligent Design” is something other than creationism. All along, the buzzword has been a front for old school creationism, of the type favored by more traditional, openly Biblical groups like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, and what’s driving the base is not the attenuated rationalizations of the DI, but the Jesus-lovin’ evangelical beliefs of its supporters.

I should have said more about a remaining concern. Creationism is not dead, but is still a dangerous force for ignorance. And of course, the Discovery Institute is going to be trying hard to reinvent itself. We’re looking at several new strategies already: there’s the clamoring for “academic freedom” bills, and also the magic words of “strengths and weaknesses”. Note that they still have the common thread of misleading with labels — their version of “academic freedom” isn’t about freedom at all, but about giving preferential treatment to ideological inanity, and when they talk about “strengths and weaknesses”, they intend to overlook the strengths of modern biology and focus on imaginary weaknesses invented by ignorant creationists.

So more accurately, what I should have said is that one line of rhetorical noise is failing fast, but that they’re rapidly generating new clouds of obfuscatory squid ink that they hope will stick and confuse another generation of innocent students. Liars and con men just have to keep moving to keep their misdeeds from catching up with them, and the DI is going to have to scramble to redefine their intellectual swindle.