Once more into the breach

Hmmm. That creationist who emailed me a question the other day has sent me another. It’s like feeding raccoons—pretty soon they get the idea they should hang out in swarms around your house, they’re digging in the trash, and they’re pooping all over your lawn. Oh, well, one more time:

Here is another question for you kind consideration:

There are a very large number of species on earth; so many that no one has
been able to count them. Many of them are much older than humans, yet none
of them – not even one of them – evolved to a level comparable to that of
humans? What stopped them? Or, should I say, Who stopped them; and why?

First of all, Mr Creationist, both of your questions so far have been very, very poor—everybody has to start somewhere, I know, but they reflect a near total lack of understanding of anything about evolution or biology. Given that you know zip about biology, isn’t it rather arrogant of you to be questioning the fundamentals of the science? Aren’t you presuming a bit much to be pestering a biology professor with these things rather than cracking a book first and catching up on the basics? I have a list of recommended books; you might want to start with some of the kids’ books first. If you’re more ambitious, try Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Zimmer—it’ll give you the overview you need, with more meat that you can dig into.

But to answer your question briefly now…

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A little godless amusement

What’s gotten into the Huffington post? There’s a flood of entries making

fun of

Christian self-pity. Two possible interpretations: liberals are all god-hating elitists, or fundamentalist fanatics have made easy targets of themselves lately. I’ll let you guess which hypothesis I favor.

Laugh long and hard, everyone, and let’s all sing out, “I told you so!” Prayer is worthless. Despite his job description, I think I’d rather like Dr Koenig:

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center, who did not take part in the study, said the results did not surprise him.

“There are no scientific grounds to expect a result and there are no real theological grounds to expect a result either,” he said.

Science, he said, “is not designed to study the supernatural.”

Once again, the Templeton Foundation throws another bucket of money down a rathole of foolishness.

This is a very well-timed result since “The National Day of Prayer” is coming up on 4 April. How about celebrating a National Day of Reason instead? And how about doing something with an actual medical benefit?

Counter the “Day of Prayer” with Positive Action! Donate Blood!
If you decry the so-called “National Day of Prayer” as a forced encroachment of religion into our official
calendar, join us, the Center for Atheism (CFA) in celebrating
the supremacy of reason by donating blood on 4 May 2006 in a nationwide program.
Blood is a simple way that any secular person can observe the Day of Reason
in a positive way. Everyone can take part: There is no marching or picketing, no placards to make or carry, no
permit is necessary, there is no confrontation with authorities or the religious community. We call
our blood donation program B.L.O.O.D., an acronym for Benefiting Lives Of Others Donations, and we intend to do it every year on the Day of Reason.

No more coffee for Mr Witt

Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute has lost it. The string of defeats for the cause of Intelligent Design creationism has had its toll, first Dover and now the Ohio ID lesson plan, and the poor man is clearly suffering from the strain, as you can tell from his latest hysterical screed.

First we get evolution compared to Castro’s newspapers, with no criticism allowed; then the defense for including ID in Ohio is that there is a 3:1 margin of popular support. Two fallacies in one paragraph! Sorry, Jonathan, hyperbolic comparisons to communism and an appeal to popular opinion on matters of fact do not a defense of ID make.

Then he gets confused.

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I wish we’d had the internets when I was a kid

i-ec116064d45a0bd8ffcd7bfc1ef2308e-enterobus.jpg

The New England Journal of Medicine sometimes provides great stuff to read over breakfast, like this story of a man who returned from a trip to Hungary with his guts infested with worms, Enterobius vermicularis. OK, so it’s not much of a story…but the cool thing is that they provide a movie clip of his colonoscopy, and you can watch the worms writhe.

(via Over My Med Body)

At last…a specific Intelligent Design hypothesis

Nick Matzke has unearthed a treasure: an article from the Interdisciplinary Bible Research Institute that uses “Intelligent Design theory” to explain such phenomena as parasitic ichneumonid wasps and the panda’s thumb. You’ll be able to get an idea of the nature of the explanation from the title alone:

“Rumors of Angels: Using ID to Detect Malevolent Spiritual Agents.”

It’s serious, not a joke.

The point to be made here is this: organisms which possess incredible complexity beyond what natural selection could “design” from the available offerings of chance, and which also seem to be clearly malevolent, might well be the work of malevolent spirit beings. There are, of course, other possibilities. They may be the direct or indirect work of God and we are mistaken in viewing them as malevolent. They might be the work of non-spiritual intelligences (extra-terrestrials). I cannot see any other alternatives that are consistent with a biblical theism.

I guess he’s assuming that theistic evolution is inconsistent with his bible.

The fellows has a proposal for a “research program”, too, something beyond what the run-of-the-mill IDists have accomplished.

Could predation be malevolent design? That was certainly the way Darwin viewed the matter. As I read the geologic record, predation goes all the way back to the Cambrian period. If it is malevolent, then the fall of Satan is much earlier than that of Adam, and creation is already not so good by the time Adam comes along. These are things that theologians, scientists and philosophers need to think about.

I’m picturing a bunch of guys in clerical collars sitting around, arguing about the geological era in which the fall of Satan occurred…it’s funny, but it’s no real research program.

So, we end this paper with a call to some dedicated Christian historians and biologists to take some time (and risk some ridicule) to see whether there is anything to be said for taking the biblical pictures of angels, demons and Satan seriously as a picture of the real world, rather than an ancient mythological worldview.

The real way to test this would be to have a collection of evidence that persuaded atheists, muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. that biblical angels and demons existed. That he has to assume only Christians who share his preconceptions will be able to accomplish this is telling.

Cloning as solace

You all may recall the memorable, late Tito the wonder dog. Hank Fox has done something thought-provoking: he has frozen away some of Tito’s cells, on the chance of cloning him.

At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps.

I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company that stores tissue samples of pets, and they told me the culturing of the samples I’d sent them was successful. I now have about 10 million cells waiting for the future moment — if ever — when the technology and the money coincide to allow me to clone him.

This is a personal decision, and I wouldn’t argue one way or the other about what Hank should do; it sounds like he’s wrestled over the issues already. All I can say is what I would do if I were in his sorrowful position.

I wouldn’t even try cloning.

I disagree with his first sentence up there: the essence of Tito isn’t reducible to a few million cells or a few billion nucleotides. While the genome is an influence and a constraint—a kind of broadly defined bottle to hold the essence of a dog—the stuff we care about, that makes an animal unique and special, is a product of its history. It’s the accumulation of events and experience and memory that generates the essentials of a personality and makes each of us unique.

Even if cloning were reliable and cheap, I wouldn’t go for it. It would produce an animal that looks like Tito, and would be good and worthy as an individual in its own right, but it wouldn’t be Tito.

Hank mentions that “Even we atheists grapple with mortality, and entertain hopes.” That’s true. But I think that what we have to do, the honest part of being an atheist, is to recognize that mortality is inevitable and that things end. Grief and loss are the terrible prices we pay for living in a world that changes, and that has produced us, so briefly. The dead are gone forever, never to return, and all we can do is fight as hard as we can to delay it, rage at our inevitable failures, and eventually, reconcile ourselves to the reality.

I think Hank is still fighting when the battle has already been lost. That’s a noble effort, I suppose, but Tito is not in that dewar of liquid nitrogen, I’m sorry to say.