King of the planets?

 

Now why didn't I think of that?

An Open Letter to the Amazing Randi

David Berlinski
Discovery Institute

Dear Amazing Randi:

I just read your widely publicized letter to the Smithsonian about its decision to air The Privileged Planet, Discovery Institute's film on intelligent design. You find it "impossible to comprehend" why the Smithsonian has chosen to screen such a film. And, I see that you are willing to pay the Smithsonian Institute $20,000 so that they don't do it. 

I want you to know, you're doing the right thing. I figure the American people are dumb as posts. Who knows what ideas a film like that could put into their heads? You haven't seen the film either, am I right? See no evil, see no evil is what I always say.

But here's the thing, Randi. I was sort of planning to screen the film right here in my apartment in Paris. I've got a little screening room I call The Smithsonian right between the bathroom and the kitchen, I sort of figured I'd invite some friends over, open a couple cans of suds, sort of kick back and enjoy. Now you fork over $20,000 to the Smithsonian not to show the film and right away I'm showing the film here in Paris — that's just not going to work for you, if you catch my drift.

But hey, what are friends for? I mean for $20,000, I can make my screening of the The Privileged Planet go away too. An extra $10,000 and we spend the evening reading aloud from Daniel Dennett's autobiography. I hear it's a real snoozer, no chance at all that anyone's going to walk away from an evening like that with poor thoughts about the cosmos or anything like that. You handle the refreshments — nothing much, some cocktail franks maybe, a few kegs of French beer — and I knock ten percent off the price. What do you say?

Now I know what you're thinking, Randi, because to tell you the truth, I've been thinking the same thing. You;re thinking, hey, I'm out forty thousand seminolas to can this film in Washington DC and Paris, and right away, some yutz is going to figure it's show time in Oklahoma or Nebraska or even in New York, and what do I do then? I'm way ahead of you on this one. I've talked with my buddies at the Discovery Institute and for the right kind of donation, we poleax the film completely. That's right. It disappears itself, if you catch my drift. You get to keep the negatives, we keep the director's cut in our safe for insurance. Is this some sort of deal, or what? Now I know what you're thinking because I've been there myself. I know what you're thinking, the Discovery Institute? Bunch of right-wing weirdoes, am I right? Hey, it's not like that at all, Randi, I got to tell you. We here at the Discovery Institute, we're businessmen, if you catch my drift. We want to do the right thing and we want to do it at the right price. Look at it this way. The right kind of donation gets you total peace of mind. You really can't buy that kind of protection, only in this case you can. 

So give me a ring, or send me a note. I'd like to tell you we take checks, but you're a businessmen, too, am I right? It's got to be cash. More than you've got lying around? Not a problem. Just give George Soros a call. Tell him it's for a friend. Do it now. 

You'll sleep better at night.

Your admirer,

David Berlinski

PS: I write a lot of stuff for Commentary, too. For the right price, I don't have to write anything at all. Think it over. Let me know.

David Berlinski received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University and was later a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics and molecular biology at Columbia University.

Darwinists v. The real world?

Here Is How Evolutionists Respond to the Evidence
Cornelius Hunter

Mutations are rare and good ones are even more rare. One reason mutations are rare is because there are sophisticated error correction mechanisms in cells. So according to evolution, random mutations created correction mechanisms to suppress random mutations. And that paradox is only the beginning. That is because error correction mechanisms, as with pretty much everything else in biology, require many, many mutations to be created.

If one mutation is rare, a lot of mutations are astronomically rare. For instance, if a particular mutation has a one-in-a-million (one in 10^6) chance of occurring in a new individual, then a hundred such particular mutations have a one in 10^600 chance of occurring. It’s not going to happen. How do evolutionists reckon with this scientific problem?

First, one common response is to dismiss the question altogether. Evolution is a fact, don’t worry about the details. Obviously this is not very compelling.

Second, another common answer is to cast the problem as a straw man argument against evolution, and appeal to gradualism. Evolutionists going back to Darwin have never described the process as “poof.” They do not, and never have, understood the process as the simultaneous origin of tens or hundreds, or more mutations. Instead, it is a long, slow, gradual process, as Darwin explained:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case […] Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection

The Sage of Kent could find “no such case”? That’s strange, because they are ubiquitous. And with the inexorable march of science, it is just getting worse. Error correcting mechanisms are just one example of many. Gradualism is not indicated.

What if computer manufacturers were required to have a useful, functional electronic device at each step in the manufacturing process? With each new wire or solder, what must emerge is a “long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor.”

That, of course, is absurd (as Darwin freely confessed). From clothing to jet aircraft, the manufacturing process is one of parts, tools, and raw materials strewn about in a useless array, until everything comes together at the end.

The idea that every single biological structure and design can be constructed by one or two mutations at a time, not only has not been demonstrated, it has no correspondence to the real world. It is just silly.

What evolution requires is that biology is different, but there is no reason to believe such a heroic claim. The response that multiple mutations is a “straw man” argument does not reckon with the reality of the science.

Third, some evolutionists recognize this undeniable evidence and how impossible evolution is. Their solution is to call upon a multiverse to overcome the evidence. If an event is so unlikely it would never occur in our universe, just create a multitude of universes. And how many universes are there? The answer is, as many as are needed. In other words, when confronted with an impossibility, evolutionist simply contrive a mythical solution.

Fourth, another common response from evolutionists is to appeal to the fitness of the structure in question. Biological designs, after all, generally work pretty well, and therefore have high fitness. Is this not enough to prove that it evolved? For evolutionists, if something helps, then it evolves. Presto.

To summarize, evolutionists have four different types of responses to the evidence, and none of the responses do the job.

Sons of Adam and Eve?

Adam and the Genome and Neanderthal Cave Art
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

As if on cue, science news today reports a remarkable discovery: cave art in Spain from upwards of 64,000 years ago, apparently by Neanderthals. The  Wall Street Journal  aptly summarizes the takeaway:

Neanderthals, once considered the low-brows of human evolution, may have been among the world’s first artists, creating cave paintings long before modern humanity arrived on the scene…

“Once considered”? This is timely because in the book  Adam and the Genome, which we’ve been reviewing here, theistic evolutionist and biologist Dennis Venema discusses DNA that has been extracted from fossils of extinct members of the genus Homo, including Neanderthals and the recently discovered Denisovans. He claims these groups were “not members of our own species” (p. 62). Yet apparently, they were so genetically similar to humans that we could interbreed with them.

And Neanderthals, as the journal Science now reports, had the capacity to create art. In the photo above, that is what looks like a ladder, suggesting that the artist was capable of “a much richer symbolic behavior than previously assumed.” The paintings, in three separate caves, are evidently not by “modern humans” since the latter would not reach Europe for another 20,000 years.

Very interesting. We have virtually no fossil evidence for Denisovans, so it cannot be said that they represent a non-human-like form. As for Neanderthals, here we have plenty of fossil evidence, and what we know shows that they were virtually indistinguishable from modern humans. Dennis Venema notwithstanding, some would consider Neanderthals to be members of our own species.

Casey Luskin explains in “The Genus Homo: All in the Family”:

Though Neanderthals have been stereotyped as bungling, primitive precursors to modern humans, in reality they were so similar to us that if a Neanderthal walked past you on the street, you probably wouldn’t notice many differences. Wood and Collard make this same point in drier, more technical language: “The numerous associated skeletons of H. neanderthalensis indicate that their body shape was within the range of variation seen in modern humans.”

He concludes:

We saw earlier that Leslie Aiello said “Australopithecines are like apes, and the Homo group are like humans.” This is consistent with what we see in the major groups of Homo like H. erectus and Neanderthals. According to Siegrid Hartwig-Scherer, the differences between these humanlike members of the genus Homo can be explained as microevolutionary effects of “size variation, climatic stress, genetic drift and differential expression of [common] genes.” These small differences do not supply evidence of the evolution of humans from earlier ape-like creatures.

Now exactly what the DNA evidence of Neanderthals and Denisovans means for Adam and Eve is still not completely clear. Here’s how Ann Gauger, Ola Hössjer, and Colin Reeves interpret Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA in their chapter “An Alternative Population Genetics Model” in the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique:

Archaic Populations, Humans or Not? As mentioned in Section 4, significant fragments of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA have been found among present day humans, so researchers suggested that some interbreeding took place between archaic populations and the ancient humans that supposedly emigrated out of Africa. This admixture is believed to have happened at least 50 000 years ago, and probably later on as well. It is in fact well known that gene flow between closely related populations is helpful in order to increase genetic variability and to avoid inbreeding, and indeed, the archaic introgression is believed to have had positive effects, like helping the Tibetans to adapt to high altitudes, and the non-Africans in general to adapt to colder temperature and to ward off infections. But the common descent model predicts a split between humans and archaic hominins more than 500 000 years ago. It would therefore be remarkable if two populations, after such a long time of separation, were still able to have fertile offspring.  But even if this were possible, because of the long separation, it is reasonable to believe that the offspring had low fitness, since our archaic ancestors had, most likely, accumulated many alleles which were deleterious for humans, before the admixture took place.

In view of this, it seems that the large fraction of archaic DNA among present-day humans is more reconcilable with a unique origin model, in which Neanderthals and Denisovans are descendants of Adam and Eve and hence our fully human relatives.

Even if they did exist as groups that were distinct from our own species, Homo sapiens, that in no way precludes the possibility that Adam and Eve were real people who were the progenitors of all modern humans.

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