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Saturday 30 April 2016

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.