"i am going down to Yasgur's farm to join....an Evolution Woodstock?

Interesting! The real scientists give the Intelligent Design folks a much needed spanking.

Here is some of the disagreement within the scientific community that give the ID'ers so much hope that the Evolutionary theory is in trouble.

The next lecture would have sent Darwinian fundamentalists into skeptical paroxysms, as Leticia Aviles, a zoologist at the University of British Columbia, summarized the evidence for "multilevel selection." Darwinian fundamentalists (an intentionally pejorative term coined by Stephen Jay Gould) believe that the individual organism is the sole target of natural selection. Aviles said that below the individual, selection may occur at the level of genes, chromosomes, organelles, and cells. Above the individual, selection may occur at the level of social groups, demes, species, and multispecies communities. In that sense, Aviles said, "individual" depends on the frame of reference. She then applied multilevel selection to research on sex ratios, cooperation among non-relatives, and multicellularity. Social spiders are an example of group selection, Aviles continued. And sex ratios that depart from 1:1 cannot be accounted for by inbreeding alone, so group selection is here invoked. Likewise, the equilibrium of sex ratios is explained by both within-group selection and between-group selection. "When cooperation is not costly, groups, grouping, and cooperation evolve readily. But with increasing costs of cooperation, levels of cooperation decrease."

This sort of falls short of discounting the veracity of Evolutionary biology doesn't it?

Here is where the group confronts the Creationists and ID'ers attack on their science.

I was slated as the keynote entertainment for Saturday night, and gave a lecture on Intelligent Design creationism. Since I certainly did not need to explain evolution to this eminent group, I focused instead on the IDers own works, beginning with their intellectual leader (these are slides from my Powerpoint presentation):

"Intelligent design is a strictly scientific theory devoid of religious commitments. Whereas the creator underlying scientific creationism conforms to a strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible, the designer underlying intelligent design need not even be a deity." --William Dembski, The Design Revolution, 2003

Baloney. (I used a stronger descriptor this evening.) The fact is that virtually all Intelligent Design creationists are Evangelical Christians who privately believe that ID and God are one and the same. There is nothing wrong with that, but if they would at least be honest about it I would respect them more. In point of fact, this is just a public façade constructed for public school consumption. In other venues they are forthright. For example:

"Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration." --William Dembski, "Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris," 2005

"The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'" --Phillip Johnson, "Missionary Man." Church & State magazine, 1999

As I also demonstrated in my talk, IDers are disingenuous about their "science." They are not doing science and they know it. To wit:

"Because of ID's outstanding success at gaining a cultural hearing, the scientific research part of ID is now lagging behind." --William Dembski, "Research and Progress in Intelligent Design," 2002 conference on Intelligent Design

"We don't have such a theory right now, and that's a problem. Without a theory, it's very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity'--but, as yet, no general theory of biological design." --Dr. Paul Nelson. "The Measure of Design." Touchstone magazine, 2004.

To drive home the point, I show that even Christian biologists have no use for ID, as in this observation from Dr. Lee Anne Chaney, Professor of Biology at the Christian-based Whitworth College, from their house publication Whitworth Today, 1995:
"As a Christian, part of my belief system is that God is ultimately responsible. But as a biologist, I need to look at the evidence. Scientifically speaking, I don't think intelligent design is very helpful because it does not provide things that are refutable--there is no way in the world you can show it's not true. Drawing inferences about the deity does not seem to me to be the function of science because it's very subjective."

I then summarized the cognitive style of ID thusly:1. X looks designed2. I can't think of how X was designed naturally3. Therefore X was designed supernaturally

This is the old "God of the Gaps" argument: wherever there is a gap in scientific knowledge, God is invoked as the causal agent. This is comparable to the "Plane problem" of Isaac Newton's time: the planets all lie in a plane (the plane of the ecliptic). Newton found this arrangement to be so improbable that he invoked God as an explanation in Principia Mathematica: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." Why don't IDers use this argument any more? Because astronomers have filled that gap with a natural explanation.

I also summarized ID in practice thusly:1. Scientists do not accept ID as science 2. Therefore ID is not taught in public school science classes 3. I think ID is science 4. Therefore I will lobby the government to force teachers to teach ID as science.

This is what I call the "God of the Government" argument: if you can't convince teachers to teach your idea based on its own merits, ask the government to force teachers to teach it. By analogy, in the early 1990s, I published a series of articles applying chaos and complexity theory to history. It is, of sorts, a theory of history, and I had high hopes that historians would adopt my theory, put it to practice, and perhaps even teach it to their students. They haven't. Maybe I didn't communicate my theory very clearly. Maybe my theory is wrong. Should I go to my congressman to complain? Should I lobby school board members to force history teachers to teach my theory of history? See how absurd this sounds? I particularly like this approach to ID because most IDers are Christians, most Christians are politically conservative, and most conservatives are in favor of small government. In fact, I close my lecture with an analogy between natural selection in nature and the invisible hand in the economy, where both produce design complexity without a top-down designer. Since most conservatives understand and support the workings of free markets, they should intuitively embrace the analogy.

Any questions class? Good.