On Journalism,editorialising,literary composing and the design debate

Press Coverage of Darwin vs. Design Conference Reveals both Tolerance and Anti-ID Bias
Casey Luskin


The upcoming Darwin vs. Design conference at Southern Method University (SMU) has triggered controversy because some Darwinists are intolerant of discussion of ID taking place too close to their campus offices. When the DvD conference was held in Knoxville recently, the Knoxville News reported that an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Michael Gilchrist, was so concerned that he "petitioned Oak Ridge National Laboratory to remove Darwin vs. Design from its technical calendar." Gilchrist was quoted saying that "It is fine for people to think of these things, but it's a problem when they present it as science." It seems that for Gilchrist, he's OK with any view about ID being promoted as long as it is not the view which says ID is a scientific theory. The press has been sympathetic to free speech rights to discuss this debate over Darwin and design, but it has simultaneously revealed its anti-ID bias and its tendency to distort the arguments of ID proponents in favor of its own view. For example, Dallas Morning News religion reporter Jeffrey Weiss expressed dismay at the intolerance of SMU science faculty:

Not only did the professors misstate the facts, most of the protesters took actions guaranteed to help their opponents. By calling for the university to cancel the event (which was simply not going to happen. Contracts had been signed.), the science profs turned themselves into would-be censors and the ID side into victims standing up for free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
But Mr. Weiss also revealed his own bias against ID:
[T]he ID side jousted with me over the use of one word, "supernatural," using what I consider a sort of intellectual dishonesty that has nothing to do with whether ID is right or not, but makes many people suspicious of their point of view. ... Their bottom line: To describe the designer as "supernatural" is to limit the identity or nature of the designer. And they don't want to do that. I'll use the ID side's own strategy to explain why I think this is unfair word manipulation.
Perhaps Mr. Weiss does not understand the nature of scientific inquiry. Science only tries to answer questions which can be addressed via the empirical domain. We can look at the information in life and determine that there was intelligence behind it. But the information in the DNA encoding the bacterial flagellum does not tell you whether the designer was God, Buddha, Yoda, or any other designer. If you want to address the identity of the designer, you have to use methods other than science.
In contrast to what Mr. Weiss alleges, this is not some attempt to "manipulate" or be "dishonest," because ID-proponents have consistently given the principled explanation that ID's inability to specify the nature or identity of the designer stems from a desire to respect the limits of scientific inquiry. Moreover, ID-proponents are honest about their views on the designer, they just note that these views are their personal religious views and not the conclusions of intelligent design. Phillip Johnson gives a good example of this, writing: "[M]y personal view is that I identify the designer of life with the God of the Bible, although intelligent design theory as such does not entail that." Michael Behe gives another similar example in his quote given below.

Other Pro-ID Scientists and Scholars Agree
Mr. Weiss quotes from "a book co-authored by one of the scheduled presenters at the SMU conference" talking about the design of the universe. However, when it comes to biological design, ID-proponents are clear that the empirical data alone do not determine the nature or identity of the designer. Charles Thaxton, one of the first scientists to adopt "intelligent design" in the early 1980s, stated:

I wasn't comfortable with the typical vocabulary that for the most part creationists were using because it didn't express what I was trying to do. They were wanting to bring God into the discussion, and I was wanting to stay within the empirical domain and do what you can do legitimately there.
The textbook Thaxton helped write explicitly bore out this approach:
Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the progress of science. For example, the place of intelligent design in science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science. (Of Pandas and People, 1993, pgs. 126-127, emphasis added)
Other ID-proponents have consistently held this view:
The most important difference [between modern ID and Paley] is that [ID] is limited to design itself; I strongly emphasize that it is not an argument for the existence of a benevolent God, as Paley's was. I hasten to add that I myself do believe in a benevolent God, and I recognize that philosophy and theology may be able to extend the argument. But a scientific argument for design in biology does not reach that far. Thus while I argue for design, the question of the identity of the designer is left open. Possible candidates for the role of designer include: the God of Christianity; an angel--fallen or not; Plato's demi-urge; some mystical new age force; space aliens from Alpha Centauri; time travelers; or some utterly unknown intelligent being. Of course, some of these possibilities may seem more plausible than others based on information from fields other than science. Nonetheless, as regards the identity of the designer, modern ID theory happily echoes Isaac Newton's phrase hypothesis non fingo. (Michael Behe, "The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis," Philosophia Christi, Series 2, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2001), pg. 165, emphasis added.)
By contrast, intelligent design nowhere attempts to identify the intelligent cause responsible for the design in nature, nor does it prescribe in advance the sequence of events by which this intelligent cause had to act. . . . Intelligent design is modest in what it attributes to the designing intelligence responsible for the specified complexity in nature. For instance, design theorists recognize that the nature, moral character and purposes of this intelligence lie beyond the remit of science. As Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis remark in their text on intelligent design: 'Science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy.' (William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, pg. 247-248 (InterVarsity Press, 1999))

There is no 'Made by Yahweh' engraved on the side of the bacterial rotary motor--the flagellum. In order to find out what or who its designer is, one must go outside the narrow discipline of biology. Cross-disciplinary dialogue must begin with the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, and theology. Design itself, however, is a direct scientific inference; it does not depend on a single religious premise for its conclusions. (Thomas Woodward, Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, pg. 15 (Baker Books, 2006))

In the end, Mr. Weiss wrote: "I say to the Discovery Institute: Twaddle!" and he constructed in his Dallas Morning News article his own definition of ID, one that proposes "a designer with the power to shape the cosmos." But he still hasn't explained how the DNA encoding the flagellum can, on a scientific level, tell you if the designer is natural or supernatural.

Reporters aren't supposed to editorialize. They're supposed to report. This presents a nice case study of how a reporter has imposed his own biases and misunderstandings upon the debate. For some unknown reason, Mr. Weiss refused to print the definition of ID coming from ID-proponents, so he created his own. That's not reporting -- that's creative writing.

Bats vs. Darwin

Bats as Fighter Pilots
Evolution News & Views 


Bam! Bam! That's how fast a bat can hit two targets separated by different angles. Japanese scientists were intrigued at the accuracy of bats hunting their prey, so they decided to investigate. They found out something interesting. Bats can plan their attack trajectories to hit multiple targets in sequence with a minimum amount of energy. To do this, they have to focus their attention on multiple targets at once. And, as we all know, they do it primarily with sound, not sight.

Most hunting animals focus on the immediate object of prey. It's quite a skill to sense multiple targets and quickly plan the best way to hit them. Good skeet shooters can do this with lots of practice, but bats come with the programming built in. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers summarize what they found:

When seeing or listening to an object, we aim our attention toward it. While capturing prey, many animal species focus their visual or acoustic attention toward the prey. However, for multiple prey items, the direction and timing of attention for effective foraging remain unknown..... Here we show that bats select rational flight paths to consecutively capture multiple prey items. Microphone-array measurements showed that bats direct their sonar attention not only to the immediate prey but also to the next prey. In addition, we found that a bat's attention in terms of its flight also aims toward the next prey even when approaching the immediate prey. Numerical simulations revealed a possibility that bats shift their flight attention to control suitable flight paths for consecutive capture.... These findings indicate that bats gain increased benefit by distributing their attention among multiple targets and planning the future flight path based on additional information of the next prey. These experimental and mathematical studies allowed us to observe the process of decision making by bats during their natural flight dynamics. [Emphasis added.]
A human fighter pilot with this ability would be able to dart into oncoming planes and shoot them down in rapid succession, turning on a dime between hits. This is Star Wars tech. Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon could hardly do better.

A bat can capture two insects in less than a second. What's required to achieve this level of flight performance? For one, the bat has to be able to adaptively change the characteristics of its sonar beam depending on the situation. It also has to be able to turn the beam quickly to the next insect while approaching the first. Then, it needs to design a flight path to hit them both in rapid succession by the most economical path.

Using both experimental and mathematical models, the scientists determined that bats routinely design the most "rational" flight path to successfully hit multiple targets.

Hence, wild echolocating bats plan their flight paths by distributing their attention among multiple prey items, which means that the bats do not forage in a hit-or-miss fashion but rather spatially anticipate their future targets for optimum routing.
If you've ever watched bats on the hunt in the evening, you know that they continue this rational flight planning continuously for hours, sometimes all night. It would be like a shooter facing a thousand skeet launched every 1-5 seconds in a 360-degree, 3D field and hitting every one for hours on end -- all while avoiding other individuals that are doing the same thing in the same space. And insects, we know, don't fly in straight lines or curves like skeet; they make sudden turns, too. Yet every night, each bat takes on this challenge as a matter of course.

In the past we have discussed optimization as an example of intelligent design science in action. One way the bat selects the optimum flight path is by getting both insects into the sonar beam.

This result demonstrates that the bats select their flight paths to effectively capture multiple prey items. Such parameter sets suggest that bats take a path in the direction of the next prey just before capturing the immediate prey, so that they can acoustically view both prey items (Fig. 1C). In other words, bats might select their flight paths to keep both prey items within their sonar beam.
The actual behavior of the bats, though, is even more complex than the scientists' mathematical model.

On the other hand, bats in the wild varied dynamically their parameter set (flight attention) from moment to moment as they approached multiple prey items (Figs. 3F and 4A). This result implies that the bats actually use a more complex behavioral strategy that has not been assumed by the current mathematical model.
Insect hunting on the wing is hard work. Bats expend 14 times their basal metabolic rate while hunting. They can't afford to waste energy. By rationally designing the most efficient routes, we might say they get the "most buck for the bang" -- i.e., the most caloric intake for the exercise.

Computer techs might be familiar with time-sharing algorithms. When multiple processes are competing for the same CPU, the operating system gives each one a time slice. It returns to unfinished work when a given process gets its next turn. But not all processes are equal; some have higher priority. An operating system designer's challenge is to rank the processes by priority and distribute the time slices fairly so that no process is ignored, but the higher priority processes get preference. Bats do this automatically. They have two competing processes, sonar and flight. In addition, each insect in the vicinity must get its share of attention:

For multiple targets, it is beneficial for bats in the wild to distribute their sonar attention and flight attention among multiple targets and to plan the future flight path based on the next prey for effective foraging. On the other hand, pipistrelle bats in the wild alternately and rapidly shift their sonar attention. This fact suggests that bats process echo streams from multiple targets in a time-sharing manner and then select the optimal flight path to capture and hunt a lot of airborne insects. These findings and suggestions originated from the unique capabilities of bats to fly while actively emitting sonar signals.

Does anybody know of a time-sharing central processor that was not designed by intelligent agents? Maybe that's why the Japanese scientists never referred to evolution in their paper. The scientists selected the bats, and the bats selected their targets, but "natural selection" never got a time slice in the research.

Darwinism vs.the real world XXVIII

Understanding Temperature: Cold-Blooded versus Warm-Blooded Animals
Howard Glicksman

Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.



Among the other dynamics of nature, the body must contend with heat (the transfer of energy from one object to another) and temperature (the random motion within an object or its internal energy). The body's core temperature is directly related to how much heat it produces through metabolism, the sum total of all of its chemical reactions. The human cell is able to harness only about one-quarter of the energy released from the breakdown of complex molecules like carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The remaining three-quarters is released as heat into the body. As with any working machine, the more active the body, the more heat it releases.

In addition to the heat released by its metabolism, the body's core temperature is also directly related to how much heat it loses to, or gains from, its environment. Sit directly in the sun on a tropical island and your body will quickly gain a lot of heat. Go out at night on the frozen tundra wearing just a T-shirt and jeans and your body will quickly lose a lot of heat. The body must take control of its core temperature because if it isn't just right, it can adversely affect enzyme function and the integrity of the plasma membrane and other cellular structures.

In my last few articles, I've shown that the body's normal core temperature is set by the hypothalamus at 97o- 99oF (36o-37oC). Studies indicate that this temperature range is the one in which the enzyme systems of the body work best. Thyroid function contributes to the core temperature by setting the basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is how much heat the body generates at complete rest. But life is a dynamic process where to survive the body must stay active, releasing more heat while living within an environment where temperatures fluctuate. The hypothalamus receives data from the central thermoreceptors and keeps the core temperature at its set-point by using both voluntary means (shedding or donning clothing) and involuntary means (shivering or sweating).

These irreducibly complex systems use their natural survival capacity to keep the core temperature right where it should be so the enzyme systems within the cells can work at peak efficiency. Clinical experience teaches that if our earliest ancestors could not have kept their core temperature within the normal range they never could have survived long enough to reproduce. Since humans, like other mammals and birds, can control and keep their core temperature relatively high through internal processes, scientists consider them warm-blooded. In contrast, the core temperature of most insects, amphibians, reptiles and fish is dependent on their surroundings and so they are considered cold-blooded. This article will look at what it means to be cold-blooded and warm-blooded and what might be required for one to develop into the other as evolutionary biologists claim.

Humans, like birds and most mammals, are able to regulate their core temperature at a level that is usually above their surroundings, and sometimes lower than it as well. They accomplish this through increasing their cellular respiration and releasing more heat from their metabolism, altering blood flow in the skin, sweating, panting, shivering, and releasing heat by breaking down fat. In this way they are able to control their core temperature from within. They are therefore called endotherms (endo = within + therm = heat). Since they can keep their core temperature relatively stable, they are also known as homeotherms (homeo = same). The increased need for energy to accomplish this type of thermoregulation requires a high resting metabolic rate, so these organisms have a tachymetabolism (tachy = fast + metabol = to change). In general, birds and mammals are endotherms and homeotherms with a tachymetabolism and are called warm-blooded.

Most insects, reptiles, fish, and amphibians, are not able to maintain a regular core temperature from within, and are therefore more dependent on the temperature of their surroundings. They are therefore called ectotherms (ecto = outside + therm = heat). Since their core temperature is quite variable, they are also known as poikilotherms (poikilo = varied). In order to live within these temperature guidelines, these creatures do not need to provide themselves with as much heat energy as those that are warm-blooded. These creatures tend to have a lower resting metabolic rate or bradymetabolism (brady = slow). In general, insects, reptiles, fish, and amphibians are ectotherms and poikilotherms with a bradymetabolism and are called cold-blooded.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being either cold-blooded or warm-blooded. In particular, since the efficiency of chemical reactions in the cell is dependent on the core temperature, being warm-blooded allows for more activity in colder environments. Warm-blooded animals are, in general, able to forage for food faster and defend themselves better in a wider temperature range than cold-blooded animals. Additionally, warm-blooded animals can support highly-complex energy-dependent organs like the mammalian brain.

However, to maintain a core temperature that is often far higher than its environment, warm-blooded animals must use more of the energy they obtain from food as heat. This means that warm-blooded animals require much more food (often about five to ten times more) than cold-blooded animals to survive. Compared to cold-blooded animals, warm-blooded ones are nature's equivalent to the gas-guzzling and energy-inefficient automobile, since they use so much energy to maintain their core temperature to keep their organ systems working properly. Cold-blooded ones are eco-friendly, energy efficient, and more in tune with their environment because they don't need to use up as much fuel to keep their organ systems working properly.

Conventional scientific wisdom says that warm-blooded animals evolved from cold-blooded ones. Little else is said about how this evolutionary development could have taken place or what viable transitions between these two steps would look like. Converting a cold-blooded animal into a warm-blooded animal would be like converting a Model-T Ford into a Lexus. Instead of cranking the engine to start, sitting in a drafty vehicle, and moving in a herky-jerky motion from shifting gears, the modern driver electronically starts the engine from a distance, sits comfortably in a climate-controlled airtight vehicle, and enjoys smooth acceleration from the automatic transmission.

An Exercise in Critical Thinking

The more you understand what it takes for life to survive within the laws of nature, the more you realize how inadequate and simplistic the theories of evolutionary biologists are. Imagine an exercise in critical thinking: Given the facts of current biology, determine the challenges that face evolutionary biologists in explaining how cold-blooded animals evolved into warm-blooded ones. Consider these three questions and responses for the exercise.

(1) Whether cold or warm-blooded, all life forms, even bacteria and amoebae, have some sort of thermoregulatory mechanism. Since temperature is one of many physiological parameters that must be controlled to maintain life, shouldn't evolutionary biologists have to describe each of these thermoregulatory mechanisms and how they became more sophisticated?

Each of these thermoregulatory mechanisms requires that the organism sense the change in temperature, decide what needs to be done, and then effect an adequate change in function to correct the situation. For example, when the core temperature of warm-blooded animals drops below the set-point, they can automatically increase their production of heat while at the same time limiting heat loss. Most cold-blooded animals, on the other hand, can only get warmer by lying out in the sun. How could such an irreducibly complex system have evolved while remaining functional and allowing for survival?

(2) One of the main differences between warm-blooded and cold-blooded organisms is that the former can generate more heat from their metabolism than the latter. It is important to note that when cold-blooded animals increase their level of activity, they give off more heat just like warm-blooded ones do. The key difference between them is that, in general, whether at complete rest or with activity, warm-blooded animals tend to give off more heat than cold-blooded ones. Wouldn't you think that in trying to show how cold-blooded animals evolved into warm-blooded ones, evolutionary biologists would first need to explain the mechanism behind this phenomenon and the changes that must have taken place along the way?

In fact, it appears that not only do the cells of cold-blooded organisms have fewer mitochondria and so release less heat through cellular respiration, but the process of cellular respiration seems to be different as well. In the last few decades, scientists have shown that there are uncoupling proteins (UCPs)within the cells of most organisms, which, particularly in warm-blooded ones, seem to reduce the amount of energy their cells store as ATP and cause the release of more heat. Although thyroid activity is present in most invertebrates and vertebrates, it would appear that one of its unique functions in warm-blooded animals is to activate these UCPs and increase the production of heat. The production and control of thyroid hormone is irreducibly complex and requires natural survival capacity because having too little or too much of it is incredibly harmful. This is a second very important point that should be addressed by evolutionary biologists before claiming to understand how cold-blooded animals evolved into warm-blooded ones.

(3) If, to keep the enzyme systems that make up the metabolism in their cells working at peak efficiency, warm-blooded animals must maintain their core temperature within a certain range to survive, how do cold-blooded animals stay alive at these lower temperatures? In other words, before claiming to know how cold-blooded animals evolved into warm-blooded ones, don't you think evolutionary biologists should address this other obvious difference in basic cellular function?

It appears that, when it comes to very important metabolic reactions, most cold-blooded animals have several different enzyme systems in place that are able to work at different temperatures to allow for survival. This means that, in general, when it comes to the genes that code for important metabolic processes, the cells of cold-blooded organisms usually have more than warm-blooded ones. This would mean that while cold-blooded animals were evolving into warm-blooded ones they would have been removing the genes for these various important metabolic processes at each step along the way. How the intermediate organisms could have survived during this transition -- involving a loss of metabolic flexibility and the development of increased heat production along with thermoregulatory control -- is another conundrum that evolutionary biologists need to address.

As biologist Ann Gauger has pointedly noted here at Evolution News, "Evolutionary biology's explanatory power is inversely proportional to its rigor." I maintain that if thoughtful adults were educated not just about how life looks, but how it works to survive within the laws of nature, views about evolution would look very different from how they do today.

Is Darwinism playing with loaded dice?

Evolution Appears to Converge on Goals -- But in Darwinian Terms, Is That Possible?
Denyse O'Leary 

Very different life forms frequently converge on eerily identical patterns of development (convergent evolution). That is odd if evolution is purely undirected and unplanned. There isn't enough time, given the history of the universe.

And, as I've noted before, the welter of data coming back from paleontology, genome mapping, and other studies are changing paleontology from a discipline dependent on grand theories to one more like human history, dependent on identified facts.

A century or so ago, British anatomist St. George Mivart noted that Darwin's theory of evolution "does not harmonize with closely similar structures of diverse origin" (convergent evolution). There is more evidence for Mivart's doubts now than ever.

According to current Darwinian evolutionary theory, each gain in information is the result of a great many tiny, modest gains in fitness over millions or billions of years, due to natural selection acting on random mutations. The resulting solutions should then follow inheritance laws, in the sense that the more similar life forms are according to biological classifications, the more similar their genome map should be.

That just did not work out. Different species can have surprisingly similar genes. For example, kangaroos are marsupial mammals, not placentals. Yet their genes are close to humans. Researchers: "We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not."

Kangaroos? Shark and human proteins, meanwhile, are also "stunningly similar." Indeed, sharks are genetically closer to humans than they are to aquarium zebrafish. Researchers: "We were very surprised... "

Sharks? But does all this not raise a serious question? The popular science literature claims that a near identity between the human and chimpanzee genome is irrefutable evidence of common descent. Why then do we hear so little about any of these findings, which muddy the waters? Why are science writers not even curious?

There is also the question of how easily a life form can "evolve" a complex solution to a difficult problem. Birds are said to have evolved ultraviolet vision at least eight times.

Similarly, whether large bird and mammal brains arise from common descent or convergent evolution is actually uncertain. Two distantly related groups of reptiles are thought to have given rise to mammals and birds, both featuring a much higher brain to body weight ratio than in their ancestors. Paleontologist R. Glenn Northcutt writes that the matter is "contentious and unresolved," because brains rarely fossilize.

It's not just mammals and birds. Two different species of deadly sea snake, with "separate evolutions," were found to be identical. Dolphins and insects, we are told, share components of a hearing system.

The smartest invertebrates, the molluscs (including squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish), seem to have evolved brains four times. From one study we learn, "The new findings expand a growing body of evidence that in very different groups of animals -- and mammals, for instance -- central nervous systems evolved not once, but several times, in parallel."

Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris's Map of Life website provides many other examples of convergence, listing, for example, the convergent evolution of foul smelling plants ("Love me, I stink"), convergence in sex (love-darts), eyes (camera-style eyes in jellyfish), agriculture (in ants) or gliding (in lizards and mammals).

Convergent evolution is evidence that evolution can happen. But the Darwinian model does not seem to be the right one. The life forms appear to be converging on a common goal.

That said, the problem presented for Darwinism by convergent evolution has hardly penetrated the world of pop science writers, high school teachers, politicians, judges, theologians, and entertainers. Mere evidence could not compete with a position so compelling as Darwin's.

Alternatively, however, there is the position taken by many great physicists: The universe is about information and consciousness, not matter. A sense of the results having been directed would not, then, be surprising. For more on that, consult William Dembski's Being as Communion.

Concern about inequality,a big deal about nothing?:Pros and Cons.

How a bill becomes a fruitless talk session.

Darwin of the gaps logic continues to collapse. II

Behold, a Further Use for Body Hair

David Klinghoffer 

purported incompetence or nonexistence of design reflected in bodies, but the hair on your arm or face or elsewhere turns out to have yet another use that was previously unknown. Hair follicles, along with the folds and oil-producing glands in the skin, form a habitat for microorganisms that are vital to the skin's ability to fight off harmful pathogens.

Nature News summarizes:

The folds, follicles and tiny oil-producing glands on the skin's surface create a multitude of diverse habitats, each with its own community of microbes.1 Most of these "commensals" live harmlessly on the skin, and their presence is thought to stop pathogenic microbes from invading the skin's habitats. But these benign residents are not just innocent bystanders -- according to a paper published today in Science, skin-specific bacteria also influence the response from the host's immune system to help fight off infection.2

Immunologist Yasmine Belkaid and her team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, decided to investigate the immunological role of the skin's resident microorganisms, known collectively as the skin microbiome. "For the first time, we've shown that the skin needs microbial signals for proper immune-cell function," says study author Shruti Naik, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, who is based in Belkaid's lab.

Mice raised in a sterile germ-free environment, thus without their normal complement of skin microbiota, were unable to mount an effective immunological response to attack by a particular pathogen -- but the ability was restored after scientists introduced a normally friendly bacterium, Staphylococcus epidermidis.

We have a dear friend who's quite germophobic and whose kids play with our kids. She's always insisting that nobody may come into her house without a severe scrubbing of the hands, face, etc. I need to remember to bring this to her attention.

In the Netherlands the abyss stares back.

The Culture of Death Is Like the Universe

 Wesley J. Smith 

Once set in motion, it never stops expanding.

Euthanasia boosters, as we know, are so full of baloney. To get the death agenda adopted, they promise the moon, that medicalized killing will be strictly limited, and always restricted to competent adults. Then, once society widely accepts killing as an answer to suffering, the age limits drops -- because how in the name of compassion can a (now) "right" to die be limited to competent adults? 

Belgium has already legalized assisted suicide for children deemed, by their death doctor, mature enough to decide. Now the Dutch Pediatric Association wants to go there too, where the current age limit -- once 16 -- is now 12. But that's not low enough! From the deVolkskrant story (Google translation):

The Dutch Association of Pediatrics (NVK) comes to the position after intense debate. If a child is incompetent, parents should be able to consult with the doctor to decide on euthanasia...

The 12-year-age limit for euthanasia is a problem for pediatricians: they see in practice that even younger children are often well able to see the consequences of their decisions.

Still, doctors are not allowed to do anything when a child between 1 and 12 years asks for euthanasia. The NVK therefore proposes to include "real mental competence" as a benchmark, rather than chronological age.

For children who can not make the decision, the physician in consultation with the parents can decide. This happens already in children between 0 and 1, but doctors believe it should also be possible for incapacitated children under 12 years.

Two points. Infanticide is legally (still) murder in Netherlands and yet, as the story admits, killing sick and disabled babies is an accepted part of Netherlander euthanasia practice.

You see, when it comes to euthanasia, "protective guidelines" and legal boundaries soon don't matter. Netherlander pediatricians and neonatologists kill babies in their cribs without consequence, proving that protective guidelines aren't worth the time it takes to read them. (See the Groningen Protocol, a published bureaucratic check list for deciding which babies can be killed.)

Second, note that the "suffering" would not have to be a terminal illness, which is not a required criterion for euthanasia in Netherlands. This means a depressed child with disabilities, who feels isolated and marginalized, could ask for euthanasia and be killed! Perhaps even a mentally ill child deemed, by a death doctor, sufficiently "competent" to decide that life is not worth living.

How Darwinism undercuts reason.

Lawyer, Scientist, or Animal? Choosing Between Evolution and Human Reason

Sarah Chaffee 

psychologist Tania Lombrozo asks, "Is the Mind's Approach More Like a Scientist or a Trial Lawyer?" She praises advances toward greater scientific objectivity, suggesting this holds promise that humans can overcome their natural biases. But the case for scientific objectivity only makes sense in a context where we can trust our reason. And guess what? That's an assumption more compatible with intelligent design than with an evolutionary framework. 

Lombrozo asks whether we tend to reason like scientists -- that is, examine the evidence and draw conclusions based on it -- or more like trial lawyers -- cherry-picking data to fit our case. She notes:

People are capable of impressive scientific thought (indeed, the best scientists are all people!). And at the same time, people are quite capable of fooling themselves into thinking the evidence does support their beliefs, even when a more objective assessment would suggest otherwise.

But she offers hope: Science is becoming more objective. Therefore we as human beings could be improving too. 

But optimists can point to a critical respect in which we might just be like scientists. Science is continually reinventing itself: We develop new statistical tools, better practices and better theories.

As one example, some scientists have recently adopted a practice called "blind analysis," which guards precisely against the kinds of confirmation biases that could otherwise influence scientific research. With blind analysis, scientists make all decisions about how data will be analyzed prior to seeing the data itself. As a consequence, these decisions can't be guided by their expectations or preferences about the conclusions the data will ultimately support.

If we're like scientists in this sense -- in the sense that we can recognize problems with our thinking and develop better practices, at least some of the time -- then there's room for a more optimistic view of the human mind. Instead of fooling ourselves into believing what we expect or want to believe, we can develop better ways to get ourselves to make the best decisions -- be it through education, artful nudges or better technology.

Blind analysis is a good idea. 

But notice this. Lombrozo places her confidence in science -- a human endeavor -- to reveal truth about the universe. Is that confidence justified? Well, it depends. Judging from her earlier blogging, Lombrozo seems to be in favor of materialistic evolution, but that same viewpoint undermines our trust in reason, or ought to do so if you're consistent. In The Magician's Twin, John West describes C.S. Lewis's views: 

The scientific method is premised on the idea that "rational inferences are valid," but the Myth [of materialistic evolution] undercuts human reason by depicting it as "simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true." Darwin's own gnawing doubt rears its head yet again: "If my own mind is a product of the irrational... how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about evolution?" 

Lewis is joined in this argument by Nancy Pearcey in Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, and Alvin Plantinga in Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism. 

Darwinism, in other words, undermines itself as a scientific idea. It asks that we trust the theorizing done by human minds, yet tells us those minds are a step away from irrational animals. How did trustworthy reason "evolve" ex nihilo? Materialists sidestep that conundrum.

But if study of the universe reveals evidence of intelligent design, we may have reason to trust our minds after all. Yes, sometimes we evaluate facts objectively and revise our actions accordingly -- while other times we look for data that supports our preconceived notions. Scientists included.

Under materialistic evolution, we are neither scientists nor trial lawyers -- but animals. Under ID, at least there is the chance of human beings exercising right reason and, on that basis, making real scientific progress.

Maths in the dock for design.

How Did Mathematics Come to be Woven Into the Fabric of Reality?

Posted by Barry Arrington

We all learned pi in school in the context of circles.  Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  It is an irrational number approximated by 3.14.

It turns out that pi shows up all over the place, not just in circles.  Here is just one instance.  Take a piece of paper and a stick.  Draw several lines along the paper so that the lines are the length of the stick from each other.  Then randomly drop the stick on the paper.  The probability that the stick will land so that it cuts a line is exactly 2/pi, or about 64%.  If one were to perform millions of trials, one could use the results to perform a very precise calculation of the value of pi without ever considering its relation to circles.

This is just one of many places pi pops up in reality, and pi is just one of several mathematical constants that appear to be woven into the fabric of the universe. One mathematician likened it to looking out over a mountain range, where the bases of the mountains are shrouded in fog, and the symbol for pi is etched into the top of each mountain – one intuitively knows that it is all connected at some basic level even if one has no idea why.

What are we to make of what physicist Eugene Wigner called the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in describing reality?  The word “unreasonable” makes sense only in the context of expectations.  If one expects the mathematical structure of the universe to be elegant and beautiful, the fact that it turns out to be elegant and beautiful is not unreasonable at all.  It is only unreasonable if one approaches it from the perspective of the metaphysical materialist.  In his universe reality consists of nothing but particles in motion randomly bumping into each other.  In that universe there is no reason to expect any underlying mathematical order, no reason to expect mountain tops etched with pi to pop up all over the place, and no reason to suspect that those mountain tops are connected by a unifying order at the base.

Given materialist premises, none of this makes the slightest bit of sense.  It is just a brute fact.  It cannot be denied or explained.  Yet there it is.

MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark has a theory.  He says consider a character in a computer game (let’s call him Mario) that is so complex and sophisticated that he is able to achieve consciousness.  If Mario were to begin exploring his environment, he would find a lot of mathematical connections.  And if continued to explore, Mario would ultimately find that his entire world is mathematical at its roots.  Tegmark believes we live in a universe that is not just described by mathematics; he believes that mathematics defines all of reality, just as the reality of Mario’s computer game world is defined by mathematics.

Here is the interesting part.  Tegmark makes no design inference.  (He is a multiverse fanatic).  This is astounding.  All he needs to do is take his own analogy one step further.  Why is Mario’s computer game world connected mathematically?  Obviously, it is because that mathematical structure was 
imposed on the game by the game designer.

Why is the universe we live in connected by an unreasonably beautiful, elegant and effective mathematical structure?  Come on Max.  You are a smart guy.  I know you can figure it out.

Cicadas vs. Darwin

The Cicada Challenge to Darwinian Evolution

Evolution News & Views They'll create quite a commotion next month, but they're mostly a harmless nuisance or a wonder of nature, depending on your outlook. They're the northeast brood of Magicicada, the so-called 17-year locusts. Smithsonian Magazine tells about them:

Residents in the Northeast U.S. waiting for warm temperatures may get a surprise along with their May flowers: When the soil reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit, they'll also get a visit from billions and billions of cicadas.

This latest brood is composed of several species including Magicicada septendecim, M. cassini and M. septendecula, and is expected to take over West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a tiny spot on Long Island. 

In an event that only happens once every 17 years for this brood, the creatures will soon dig their way out of the soil, shed their exoskeletons and emerge en masse. The swarm will spend two to six weeks mating and singing their grating, sing-song call before dying and blanketing the ground with their crispy brown corpses. [Emphasis added.]

Here's a natural wonder worth thinking about. There are 14 identified species of periodic cicadas in the United States. A southern brood on a 13-year cycle came up in 2011 (see Live Science). Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers. Evolutionists have long touted their adaptive story about why this is. Smithsonian says:

Researchers have theorized that the insects spend such a lengthy time underground in an effort to outlive parasites that may harm them, Eoin O'Carroll wrote for The Christian Science Monitor in 2013. Other researchers speculate that the 13 and 17-year life cycles, both prime numbers, are an evolutionary adaptation and a mathematical trick that keeps cicadas from emerging during peak population periods for their predators. 

"A cicada that emerges every 17 years and has a predator with a five-year life cycle will only face a peak predator population once every 85 years," writes Patrick di Justo in The New Yorker, "giving them an enormous advantage over less well-adapted cicadas."

Live Science adds that the sheer numbers provide an advantage, too: no predator could possibly devour so many of them. But it's the prime number quirk that attracts evolutionists' attention:

The key factor is that both numbers are prime; they can't be divided evenly by any smaller numbers (except one). It is no mere coincidence that cicadas have evolved indivisible life cycles. As explained by the entomologist Stephen Jay Gould, prime cycles have a major evolutionary advantage over cycles that are multiples of smaller numbers of years, and for a simple reason: They make cicadas more elusive.

"Many potential predators have 2-5 year life cycles. Such cycles are not set by the availability of cicadas (for they peak too often in years of non-emergence), but cicadas might be eagerly harvested when the cycles coincide," Gould wrote in his best-seller "Ever Since Darwin" (Norton 1977). "Consider a predator with a life-cycle of five years: if cicadas emerged every 15 years, each bloom would be hit by the predator. By cycling at a large prime number, cicadas minimize the number of coincidences (every 5×17, or 85 years, in this case)."

In summary: "Thirteen- and 17-year cycles cannot be tracked by any smaller number."

We could leave it at that, and agree that evolutionary theory is wonderful the way it explains things. Yet think again. Don't the two explanations work against each other? If predation is a problem, why the billions at once? With so many, they could come up every year and do just fine. Why wait? And if selection pressure helps the cicadas, can't it help the predators the same way? Where are the 17-year predators? Besides, you wonder what the predators are eating outside the two-to-six week window the cicadas are active. 

Like the peppered moths and the Galápagos finches, the evolutionary story of cicadas offers a certain intuitive satisfaction, until you start asking questions. Worse, it distracts from the really interesting aspects that really need explaining. To wit:

• The remarkable timekeeping ability of the nymphs to silently count 13 or 17 years.
• The trigger that makes all of them emerge simultaneously. The temperature gauge needs to coordinate with the clock, otherwise they would emerge every year.
• The "incomplete metamorphosis" they undergo (i.e., unlike butterflies shown in the film Metamorphosis, cicadas do not have a chrysalis or pupa stage; the nymphs grow directly into adulthood). Even so, the larvae have to transition from one body plan into another that has completely new structures, like wings, eyes, antennae and reproductive organs. 

Other amazing facts about cicadas tend to get drowned out in the rush to explain the evolution of prime numbers. For instance, cicadas have amazing wing surfaces that burst bacteria. Three years ago, Nature News described nanoscopic pillars on the wings that pop bacterial membranes, shredding them to pieces (see videos in the article). It was such a clever method for disinfection, scientists envisioned creating similar materials that "could one day be applied to public surfaces that commonly harbour disease, such as bus railings." 

PhysOrg mentioned other advantages: "In marked contrast to the biochemical mechanisms of antibiotics, which are subject to acquired resistance, physical mechanisms are non-specific, and cannot be reversed or altered, tackling bacterial cells as a whole." This kind of "anti-microbial physics" could be designed to simultaneously nourish human cells, supporting "a variety of biomedical implants, anti-fouling surfaces or biosensors."

Obviously, any creature capable of powered flight deserves our admiration for impeccable design. Add to that all the other systems required for complex animal life: (e.g., reproductive, digestive, respiratory) and traits characteristic of insects (e.g., articulated legs, compound eyes, antennae) and we see a whole package of systems that challenge blind processes of natural selection.

Rogues II

Barbarians at the gate III:Rogues.

Barbarians at the gate II:The opening engagement.

Wistar and DNA Day: A Fifty-Year Fuse Under Neo-Darwinism

Evolution News & Views 

Today, as we noted on Friday, marks two momentous anniversaries -- of the elucidation of the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick (they published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953), and that of the opening of the Wistar Institute conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution" (1966). 

The latter, if only because fifty years is a nice round number and because Wistar is less familiar to the public, may for us be the more significant of the two. Wistar was the beginning of the end for neo-Darwinism, and in a sense the inception of the modern intelligent design movement. 

How should you celebrate? First of all, for the background on Wistar, watch Discovery Institute's Paul Nelson, below. Dr. Nelson predicts that the upcoming Royal Society meeting will be a replay or update of Wistar (see "Intelligent Design Aside, from Templeton Foundation to the Royal Society, Darwinism Is Under Siege"):econd, the truth is the mathematical challenge to Darwinism is alive and well today. We describe it, and more about the Wistar conference, in the Discovery Institute documentary The Information Enigma, featuring the work of Stephen Meyer and Douglas Axe. See it here if you haven't already:his math, quite accessible really, also forms the background to Richard Dawkins's recent dispute with Dr. Meyer. See Meyer's post, "Dawkins's Dilemma: Misrepresent the Mechanism...or Face the Math."

Called forth by MIT's Murray Eden, Wistar commenced with the memorable words of Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar:

[T]he immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian Theory. ... There are objections made by fellow scientists who feel that, in the current theory, something is missing ... These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them. The very fact that we are having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them.

But, finally, of course there would be no Wistar, and no consideration of DNA as life's celebrated information carrier, were it not for the vital first step -- Watson and Crick's description of the molecule's double helix structure. How long ago that seems. Just how far we've come since 1953, and the light that distance sheds on evidence for design in the genome, is the subject of a new website, "DNA and Beyond," from our friend, the tireless scholar Thomas E. Woodward. team of science educators and medical professors, is staging "DNA and Beyond" as a month-long celebration. It begins today, DNA Day, with the unveiling of a new DNA model that illustrates the latest discoveries in the genetic control system -- "epigenetics."

The "DNA and Beyond" teaching group highlights recent research on the mysterious epigenetic system of chemical markers, comprising millions of chemical flags and tags that have been discovered "above" or "on top of" (Greek, -epi) the genetic code. The area is not only one of the hottest fields in biology; it is dynamically related to health factors such as diet, exercise, and stress management.

DNA Day is, in addition, the kickoff for the release of a series of short videos, some of which feature CGI action clips of the "dance" of DNA, all available for free streaming at dnaandbeyond.org. Celebrate by learning more there -- and by reading Dr. Woodward's fine books, which include The Mysterious Epigenome and Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design.

Another failed Darwinian prediction XX

Cell death

According to evolutionary theory, biological variation that supports or enhances reproduction will increase in future generations—a process known as natural selection. The corollary to this is that biological variation that degrades reproduction will not be selected for. Clearly, natural selection could not result in destructive behavior. Here are two representative statements from Origins:

we may feel sure that any [biological] variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. (Darwin, 63)

Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. (Darwin, 162-3)

But are not examples of such “injurious” behavior obvious? When the rattlesnake rattles its tail, is this not injurious to its hunt for food, and ultimately to its reproductive chances? Darwin argued that this and other such examples are signals to frighten away enemies, not warn the intended prey.

But today we have many examples of injurious behavior that falsify Darwin’s prediction that natural selection “will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being.” In bacteria, for example, phenomenally complicated mechanisms carefully and precisely destroy the individual. Clearly, this suicide mechanism is more injurious than beneficial to the bacteria’s future prospects.

One such mechanism consists of a toxic gene coupled with an antitoxic gene. The toxic gene codes for a protein that sets the act of suicide into motion and so ultimately kills the bacteria. The antitoxic gene inhibits the toxic gene from executing its mission. Except, that is, when certain problems arise. Lack of proper nutrients, radiation damage and problems due to antibiotics can all cause the antitoxin to be diluted, thus allowing the toxin to perform its mission. (Chaloupka, Vinter; Engelberg-Kulka, Hazan, Amitai; Engelberg-Kulka, Amitai, Kolodkin-Gal, Hazan; University Of Nebraska)

This bacterial suicide is probably good for the bacteria population on the whole. If nutrients are running low, then better for some bacteria to die off so the neighbors can live on. Not only will the reduced population require less nutrients, but the dismantled bacteria help to replenish the food supply. Therefore evolutionists can explain the suicide mechanism as having evolved not for the individual bacteria, but for the population. But the explanation introduces major problems for the theory.

Suicide is probably good for the bacteria population, on the whole, in challenging conditions. Since gene sharing within a bacteria population is at its maximum, evolutionists have no problem explaining such altruism as a result of kin selection (see Altruism). Such a facile response, however, misses the profound problem of how such a design could arise in the first place, for the mechanism is immensely complex.

In this example of bacteria suicide, the antitoxic gene normally inhibits the toxic gene from executing its mission. When the antitoxic gene is diluted then the toxic gene can perform its mission. The toxin does not, however, single-handedly destroy the cell. The toxin is an enzyme that cuts up the copies of DNA (i.e., messenger RNA, or mRNA) that are used to make other proteins. By slicing up the mRNAs, the cell no longer produces the proteins essential for normal operation. But the toxin does not cut up all mRNAs. Some mRNAs escape unscathed, and consequently a small number of proteins are produced by the cell. These include death proteins that efficiently carry out the task of disassembling the cell.

Death proteins are not the only proteins that the toxin allows to be produced. As researchers reported, the toxin “activates a complex network of proteins.” (Amitai) While some of the proteins bring death to the bacteria, others can help the cell to survive. The result is that most cells in the population are destroyed, but a fraction is spared. This of course makes sense. The suicide mechanism would not help the bacteria population if every individual was destroyed. Instead, some survive, and they can be the founders of a new population when conditions improve.

This suicide mechanism and “behavior” is altruistic. Some bacteria die off to save others. And the explanation that this bacteria suicide is due to kin selection adds tremendous complexity to the theory of evolution. Kin selection can select from only that which is available. This elaborate suicide mechanism must have just happened to arise from some combination of random mutations, and then remained in place until the time when it would succeed in surviving a stressful environment. The toxin and antitoxin genes with their clever functionality, the death and survival proteins, the inter cellular communications—all these were needed to be in place and to be coordinated before the kin selection could even begin to act. This is highly unlikely and adds considerable complexity to the theory.

References

Amitai, Shahar, Ilana Kolodkin-Gal, Mirit Hananya-Meltabashi, Ayelet Sacher, Hanna Engelberg-Kulka. 2009. “Escherichia coli MazF leads to the simultaneous selective synthesis of both ‘death proteins’ and ‘survival proteins’.” PLoS Genetics 5:e1000390.

Chaloupka, J., V. Vinter. 1996. “Programmed cell death in bacteria.” Folia Microbiologica, 41:6.

Engelberg-Kulka, Hanna, Ronen Hazan, Shahar Amitai. 2005. “mazEF: a chromosomal toxin-antitoxin module that triggers programmed cell death in bacteria.” J Cell Science 118:4327-4332.

Engelberg-Kulka, Hanna, Shahar Amitai, Ilana Kolodkin-Gal, Ronen Hazan. 2006. “Bacterial programmed cell death and multicellular behavior in bacteria,” PLoS Genetics 2:e135.

University Of Nebraska. 2007. “New Hope For Fighting Antibiotic Resistance,” ScienceDaily April 27.