On the difference between technology and magic.

Intelligence Is Not Magic. It's a Cause We Know.
Evolution News & Views

Thought experiment: You are a science writer for the Land of Ozma (Ozma being a fictional queen of note in the history of SETI). Your assignment is to explain the origin of life without reference to intelligent design for your munchkin readers, who are all looking to you for enlightenment. The munchkins have a natural inclination to believe in a designer behind the life they see all around them, but they have been taught in school that life emerges naturally. Your job is to reassure them that it does.

One big problem stares you in the face before you write. It's the hard, cold mathematics of probability. As Illustra Media shows in their recent film Origin, getting one functional protein to self-assemble without design is so outrageously, mind-blowingly, inconceivably improbable that it will never happen in uncountable quintillions of universes under the most ideal conditions imaginable -- and that's an understatement! Even if it did happen, it would be one lifeless protein. The same problem exists for DNA, RNA, and the other information-rich molecules of life. Tim Standish is overly kind when he remarks in the film that getting all the components for life in one little membrane-bound compartment at the same place and time is "the next best thing to impossible."

Facing this small difficulty, what do you do? The smart thing would be to quit, saying, "Take this job and shove it" as you storm out the door. Assuming this is your chosen livelihood, however, you can still get paid by using some rhetorical tricks (remember, the job is not to prove it happened, but just to reassure the munchkins it might have happened). If you're looking for a master magician to show you the ropes, you can hardly do better than to follow the example of Michael Gross, a science writer in Oxford, England, who pulls multiple rabbits out of hats in a feature for Current Biology, "How life can arise from chemistry." He tells readers that rabbits naturally emerge from hats without magic. Here are some principles extracted from his article.

Ridicule anyone else's position. Munchkins may become unsettled if they see any other teachers around, so all other contenders must be disqualified. Gross dispenses with them right in his first paragraph, using the straw man tactic. "Life, in many people's view, is special and different from all non-living matter to an extent that ancient cultures tended to credit its existence and astounding diversity to an almighty creator" (emphasis added). No modern munchkin wants to identify with "ancient cultures." In one masterful stroke, Gross equates belief in a creator with being behind the times. He rubs it in with a medieval-looking painting of God calling life into being.

Roll call some heroes. Name-dropping helps you appear to be in good company, even if the names did nothing to help solve the origin of life. Gross conjures up some familiar faces: "Since then [ancient times, that is], Darwin and his successors have rationalised the diversity, Wöhler [who synthesized urea] has shown that the molecules of life are chemicals like everything else, and science has abandoned the ancient concept of a vis vitalis or life force that was supposed to set living matter apart." Notice the use of ancient again.

Side with science, not philosophy. Don't let on that science and philosophy are inseparable. The munchkins need to feel that you intend to tell them about "science" as opposed to "philosophy," which Gross lumps in with religion -- a matter of faith, not fact. Here's how Gross gets the ID folk out of the way, lumping them with the other throwbacks from ancient times:

And yet, to this day, some philosophically inclined authors like to emphasize the 'sense of purpose' of living beings, a resurgent vis vitalis now known as teleonomy, and argue that Darwin does not reveal how organisms 'purposefully' using energy to counter the unifying effects of entropy may have arisen from purely chemical systems simply obeying the laws of thermodynamics.
Cultivate the imagination. We see Gross tickling the imagination in the previous quote, suggesting life "may have arisen" on its own. He continues this practice throughout the article, using may have ten times and could another ten times, along with a smattering of superwords that leap tall impossibilities in a single bound, using the power of suggestion.

Hide your materialism. Materialism? What materialism? I'm not doing philosophy, Gross thinks, when he says that life "may have arisen from purely chemical systems simply obeying the laws of thermodynamics." That's just simple chemistry, not philosophy.

Promise progress. A good rhetorician helps the audience feel they are getting warmer solving a puzzle together. Long forgotten are those laughable probabilistic odds. We're better than those who need that medieval God, he assures the munchkins. We stand with progress! We stand with science! We're getting closer to our goal of understanding! "Rapid progress in investigations into the origin of life is adding to our understanding of how the emergence of evolving systems from prebiotic chemistry may have happened -- without the need for magic." Emergence. Interesting word. Sounds kind of magical.

Hide your party politics. Notice his use of "believed" in the following sentence: "Recently, however, progress in understanding and recreating elements of the RNA world, believed to have been an evolutionary phase preceding and enabling the emergence of DNA and proteins, has advanced to a point where an understanding of how life might arise -- on our planet or on one of the many others that are now being discovered -- comes within our grasp." Believed? Believed by whom? By materialists, of course. Use of a passive voice verb keeps Gross from having to identify the believers. (This one sentence is densely packed with several of the rhetorical tricks above.)

Use jargon sparingly. Toss in a few unfamiliar words here and there to create an air of sophistication, even if they have nothing to do with the main problem of getting life by chance. Create a "eutectic mix" with ammonium formate; add some formidopyrimidines to the mix, etc. But don't overdo this tactic; your goal is to make everything look simple. Assure them that the "'nightmare' of highly heterogeneous mixtures of chemicals" that pioneers dealt with "may be more manageable than thought." Thought? Thought by whom? By materialists, of course. Progress is in the air! "the RNA world has emerged as a plausible and practical model enabling scientists to study many aspects of the early evolution of life and the functioning of simple life forms," Gross assures readers, furthering an "optimistic view" of the origin of life.

Use your enemy's gun. Notice this trick; he discounted the idea of a "life force," but then turns around and imagines something equivalent: "the initial spark" that ignited life. See this word in the next quote, too.

Remain confident. Gross knows that bravado can backfire, so he backpedals just a bit toward the end. It's OK to admit a little ignorance, as long as you keep the myth of progress going, and pound the pulpit as necessary. Don't ever say "I don't know." Say "We don't know." That brings the munchkins into the collective ignorance. Misery loves company, after all.

We may never know how the spark was lit [Lit? Lit by whom?] that led to some kind of molecular self-propagating, evolving system and onwards to the RNA world and more complex cellular life. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a way in which this initial breakthrough could have left a trace that we might detect.
The important part is, however, that it did happen. It may have happened multiple times in different versions, but seeing that the successful ignition meant an onwards progression of exponential proliferation, a single spark followed by four billion years of evolution would be more than sufficient to explain the entirety of today's biosphere. Even though we may never find a trace of that spark, synthetic chemical thinking can provide us with realistic models of how it may have happened on our own planet and on many others.

The important thing is that it did happen! The impossible odds were overcome! It happened somehow! No magic needed!

We could go on with other tricks of the trade in this article, but you get the point. Gross is an absolute master. He completely ignores the elephant in the room, the probability case against materialism described earlier. Not one aspect of the origin-of-life experiments he describes bears on the question of probability. That question obliterates everything else in his toolkit, making his article an exercise in pure rhetoric, convincing readers that the impossible is somehow possible, given enough imagination.

Gross champions the RNA world, neglecting to tell his readers that Harold S. Bernhardt called it "The worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others)." In Origin, Discovery Institute biologist Ann Gauger explains how delicate RNA is, making it useless for origin-of-life models. Additionally, ribose is devilishly hard to synthesize in plausible early earth conditions, where all kinds of undesirable cross-reactions would quickly destroy it. But worst of all is the sequencing problem: without intelligent guidance, its only "information" must come about by chance -- the same impossibility as with proteins. With these problems in mind, look how Michael Gross explains where the RNA came from: "This could have happened directly, or via some simpler form of evolving molecular system yet to be identified." And this is to be sanctified with the name "science"? Gross has cleared the room of magicians, only to play master magician himself.

Had enough? There's more. Listen to his last sentence: "We [we?] can conclude from all of this that the emergence of life in a universe that provides a suitable set of conditions, like ours does, is an entirely natural process and does not require the postulate of a miracle birth." Take that, you Christian readers out there. Actually, your miracle is too tame for Gross. He multiplies unguided miracles ad infinitum, saying they happen everywhere all the time, by chance.


If you like scientific realism, watch Origin, along with our films Revolutionary, Fire-Maker, and The Information Enigma. Intelligence is neither magic nor a miracle. It is the only cause we know that explains the complex specified information that is abundantly evident in this phenomenon we call life.

A clash of Titans.XLIII

 

A clash of Titans.XLII

 

Education v. Indoctrination.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" In Biology Instruction
Stephen C. Meyer
The Washington Times

July 4, 1996

In many circles, to question Darwin's theory of evolution is to invite ridicule. Darwinism seems so obviously true that criticizing it is tantamount to saying the earth is flat or that gravity doesn't exist-a sure sign of mental defect. 

Nowhere does such certitude reign more vehemently than in America's science education establishment, where substantive objections to Darwinism are deemed unworthy of discussion and viewed as a religious intrusion into the science classroom. California's influential science guidelines, for example, admonish teachers to tell students: "I understand that you may have personal reservations about accepting the scientific evidence, but it is scientific knowledge about which there is no doubt." The skeptical student is advised to "discuss the question further with his or her family or clergy." 

Nevertheless, all across the country-from Maine to California, from Virginia to Washington state-school boards, teachers and parents have begun to defy the expertise of professional science educators. Many are now insisting that students to gain access to scientific information challenging the contemporary Darwinist account of biological origins. 

Such initiatives have earned scorn from many in the media and the science education establishment. Yet far from threatening science education, greater openness in the biology curriculum is now necessary if students are to achieve scientific literacy and to escape ideological indoctrination. 

Current biology instruction presents only half the scientific picture. For example, none of the standard high school biology texts even mentions the Cambrian explosion, arguably the most dramatic event in the history of life. Indeed, fossil studies reveal "a biological big bang" near the beginning of the Cambrian period 530 million years ago. At that time, at least fifty separate major groups of organisms or "phyla" (including all the basic body plans of modern animals) emerged suddenly without clear precursors. Fossil finds have repeatedly confirmed a pattern of explosive appearance and prolonged stability in living forms-not the gradual step-by-step change predicted by neo-Darwinian theory. 

Yet students aren't told about these findings. Some science educators justify the omission on the grounds that it would confuse students. But scientific literacy requires that students know all significant facts whether or not they happen to support dominant theories. 

Or consider another example. Many biology texts tell about the famous finches in the Galapagos Islands whose beaks have varied in shape and length over time. They also recall how moth populations in England darkened and then lightened in response to varying levels of industrial pollution. Such episodes are presented as conclusive evidence for evolution. And indeed they are, depending on how one defines evolution. 

Yet few biology textbooks distinguish the different meanings associated with "evolution"--a term that can refer to anything from trivial change to the creation of life by strictly mindless, material forces. Nor do they explain that the processes responsible for cyclical variations in beak length or wing color do not explain where birds, moths and biologists came from in the first place. As a host of distinguished biologists (e.g. Stuart Kauffman, Rudolf Raff, George Miklos) have explained in recent technical papers, small-scale "micro-evolutionary" change cannot be extrapolated to explain large scale "macro-evolutionary" innovation. Leading evolutionary biologists know this distinction poses serious difficulties for neo-Darwinism. Students should too.

Indeed, students should not only know the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian theory, they should know about alternative theories, whether materialistic, evolutionary or otherwise. Most importantly, they should know that many scientists do not accept the Darwinian idea that life arose as the result of strictly mindless processes-that many scientists see powerful evidence of intelligent design. 

Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, for example, has just written a book entitled Darwin's Black Box (The Free Press) that examines the intricate design evident in the microscopic world of the cell. Behe explains that during Darwin's time the biochemistry of life was as mysterious to scientists as the wires and chips inside a computer are to small children today. As long as scientists didn't know how the biochemical machinery worked, they could reasonably believe that life had gradually self-assembled. Now that we know the inner workings of living systems, however, we can no longer entertain such superstitions. 

In one section, Behe examines the complex machinery of an acid powered rotary engine. What does this have to do with biology? Curiously this engine does not power a lawnmower or an automobile, but the propellor-like tails of certain bacteria. Behe shows that this molecular motor requires the coordinated interaction of some two hundred complex protein parts. Yet the absence of almost any one of these proteins would result in the complete loss of motor function. To believe this engine emerged gradually in a Darwinian fashion strains credulity. Natural selection only selects functionally advantageous systems. Yet motor function only ensues after the necessary parts have independently self-assembled-an astronomically improbable event. Behe concludes that a designing intelligence played a role.

The A.C.L.U. and the National Center for Science Education (N.C.S.E.) have opposed supplementary textbooks that expose students to such scientific developments and perspectives. One text written by Professor Dean Kenyon, a prominent evolutionary theorist turned design advocate, has encountered particular opposition. The N.C.S.E. has tried to equate his book, Of Pandas and People, with fundamentalist religion and the discredited "creation-science" movement, despite the book's endorsement by scientists from Princeton, Yale and Oxford. 

N.C.S.E. spokesmen claim that any reference to intelligent design constitutes religion not science, since a preexistent intelligence cannot be observed. Yet scientists often detect unobservable entities-quarks, forces, fields, the big bang-from their observable effects. Darwinists themselves postulate unobservable "transitional" organisms and allegedly creative processes that occur too slowly (or too quickly) to be observed. 

Others object to presenting design theory simply because it may have religious implications. Yet origins theories often have religious or philosophical implications. The present crop of biology texts makes no attempt to hide the anti-theistic implications of contemporary Darwinism. Douglas Futuyma's book tells students that Darwinism makes "theological explanations" of life "superfluous." Kenneth Miller's book insists that "evolution works without either plan or purpose." Indeed, by denying any evidence of intelligent design in nature, Darwinism promotes an anti-theistic philosophy known as materialism. 


The threat of indoctrination does not come from allowing students to ponder the philosophical issues raised by the origins question. Instead, it comes from force-feeding students a single ideological perspective. Rather than censoring Darwinist texts or asking teachers to avoid the origins issue, parents and school boards concerned about anti-theistic indoctrination should now demand full scientific disclosure. Honest liberals will insist on nothing less.

Stephen Meyer v. Darrel Falk.

Response to Darrel Falk’s Review of Signature in the Cell
By Stephen C. Meyer

In 1985, I attended a conference that brought a fascinating problem in origin-of-life biology to my attention—the problem of explaining how the information necessary to produce the first living cell arose.  At the time, I was working as a geophysicist doing digital signal processing, a form of information analysis and technology. A year later, I enrolled in graduate school at the University of Cambridge, where I eventually completed a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science after doing interdisciplinary research on the scientific and methodological issues in origin-of-life biology. In the ensuing years, I continued to study the problem of the origin of life and have authored peer-reviewed and peer-edited scientific articles on the topic of biological origins, as well as co-authoring a peer-reviewed biology textbook.  Last year, after having researched the subject for more than two decades, I published Signature in the Cell, which provides an extensive evaluation of the principal competing theories of the origin of biological information and the related question of the origin of life. Since its completion, the book has been endorsed by prominent scientists including Philip Skell, a member of the National Academy of Sciences; Scott Turner, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York; and Professor Norman Nevin, one of Britain’s leading geneticists. 

Nevertheless, in his recent review on the Biologos website, Prof. Darrel Falk characterizes me as merely a well-meaning, but ultimately unqualified, philosopher and religious believer who lacks the scientific expertise to evaluate origin-of-life research and who, in any case, has overlooked the promise of recent pre-biotic simulation experiments. On the basis of two such experiments, Falk suggests I have jumped prematurely to the conclusion that pre-biotic chemistry cannot account for the origin of life. Yet neither of the scientific experiments he cites provides evidence that refutes the argument of my book or solves the central mystery that it addresses. Indeed, both experiments actually reinforce—if inadvertently—the main argument of Signature in the Cell. 

The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell.  I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form).  Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power.  Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals.  In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question.

Nowhere in his review does Falk refute this claim or provide another explanation for the origin of biological information.  In order to do so Falk would need to show that some undirected material cause has demonstrated the power to produce functional biological information apart from the guidance or activity a designing mind. Neither Falk, nor anyone working in origin-of-life biology, has succeeded in doing this. Thus, Falk opts instead to make a mainly personal and procedural argument against my book by dismissing me as unqualified and insisting that it is “premature” to draw any negative conclusions about the adequacy of undirected chemical processes.

To support his claim that I rushed to judgment, Falk first cites a scientific study published last spring after my book was in press.  The paper, authored by University of Manchester chemist John Sutherland and two colleagues, does partially address one of the many outstanding difficulties associated the RNA world, the most popular current theory about the origin of the first life. 

Starting with a 3-carbon sugar (D-gylceraldehyde), and another molecule called 2-aminooxazole, Sutherland successfully synthesized a 5-carbon sugar in association with a base and a phosphate group.  In other words, he produced a ribonucleotide.  The scientific press justifiably heralded this as a breakthrough in pre-biotic chemistry because previously chemists had thought (as I noted in my book) that the conditions under which ribose and bases could be synthesized were starkly incompatible with each other.

Nevertheless, Sutherland’s work does not refute the central argument of my book, nor does it support the claim that it is premature to conclude that only intelligent agents have demonstrated the power to produce functionally-specified information.  If anything, it illustrates the reverse. 

In Chapter 14 of my book I describe and critique the RNA world scenario.  There I describe five major problems associated with the theory.  Sutherland’s work only partially addresses the first and least severe of these difficulties: the problem of generating the constituent building blocks or monomers in plausible pre-biotic conditions. It does not address the more severe problem of explaining how the bases in nucleic acids (either DNA or RNA) acquired their specific information-rich arrangements. In other words, Sutherland’s experiment helps explain the origin of the “letters” in the genetic text, but not their specific arrangement into functional “words” or “sentences.”

Even so, Sutherland’s work lacks pre-biotic plausibility and does so in three ways that actually underscore my argument.

First, Sutherland chose to begin his reaction with only the right-handed isomer of the 3-carbon sugars he needed to initiate his reaction sequence.  Why?  Because he knew that otherwise the likely result would have had little biologically-significance. Had Sutherland chosen to use a far more plausible racemic mixture of both right and left-handed sugar isomers, his reaction would have generated undesirable mixtures of stereoisomers—mixtures that would seriously complicate any subsequent biologically-relevant polymerization. Thus, he himself solved the so-called chirality problem in origin-of-life chemistry by intelligently selecting a single enantiomer, i.e., only the right-handed sugars that life itself requires. Yet there is no demonstrated source for such non-racemic mixture of sugars in any plausible pre-biotic environment. 

Second, the reaction that Sutherland used to produce ribonucleotides involved numerous separate chemical steps.  At each intermediate stage in his multi-step reaction sequence, Sutherland himself intervened to purify the chemical by-products of the previous step by removing undesirable side products.  In so doing, he prevented—by his own will, intellect and experimental technique—the occurrence of interfering cross-reactions, the scourge of the pre-biotic chemist.  

Third, in order to produce the desired chemical product—ribonucleotides—Sutherland followed a very precise “recipe” or procedure in which he carefully selected the reagents and choreographed the order in which they were introduced into the reaction series, just as he also selected which side products to be removed and when.  Such recipes, and the actions of chemists who follow them, represent what the late Hungarian physical chemist Michael Polanyi called “profoundly informative intervention[s].” Information is being added to the chemical system as the result of the deliberative actions—the intelligent design—of the chemist himself. 

In sum, not only did Sutherland’s experiment not address the more fundamental problem of getting the nucleotide bases to arrange themselves into functionally-specified sequences, the extent to which it did succeed in producing more life-friendly chemical constituents actually illustrates the indispensable role of intelligence in generating such chemistry.  

The second experiment that Falk cites to refute my book illustrates this problem even more acutely. This experiment is reported in a scientific paper by Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce ostensibly establishing the capacity of RNA to self-replicate, thereby rendering plausible one of the key steps in the RNA world hypothesis. Falk incorrectly intimates that I did not discuss this experiment in my book.  In fact, I do on page 537.

In any case, it is Falk who draws exactly the wrong conclusion from this paper.  The central problem facing origin-of-life researchers is neither the synthesis of pre-biotic building blocks (which Sutherland’s work addresses) or even the synthesis of a self-replicating RNA molecule (the plausibility of which Joyce and Tracey’s work seeks to establish, albeit unsuccessfully: see below). Instead, the fundamental problem is getting the chemical building blocks to arrange themselves into the large information-bearing molecules (whether DNA or RNA). As I show in Signature in the Cell, even the extremely limited capacity for RNA self-replication that has been demonstrated depends critically on the specificity of the arrangement of nucleotide bases—that is, upon pre-existing sequence-specific information. 

The Lincoln and Joyce experiment that Falk describes approvingly does not solve this problem, at least not apart from the intelligence of Lincoln and Joyce. In the first place, the “self-replicating” RNA molecules that they construct are not capable of copying a template of genetic information from free-standing chemical subunits as the polymerase machinery does in actual cells. Instead, in Lincoln and Joyce’s experiment, a pre-synthesized specifically sequenced RNA molecule merely catalyzes the formation of a single chemical bond, thus fusing two other pre-synthesized partial RNA chains. In other words, their version of ‘self-replication’ amounts to nothing more than joining two sequence specific pre-made halves together.  More significantly, Lincoln and Joyce themselves intelligently arranged the matching base sequences in these RNA chains. They did the work of replication.  They generated the functionally-specific information that made even this limited form of replication possible. 

The Lincoln and Joyce experiment actually confirms three related claims that I make in Signature in the Cell.  First, it demonstrates that even the capacity for modest partial self-replication in RNA itself depends upon sequence specific (i.e., information-rich) base sequences in these molecules. Second, it shows that even the capacity for partial replication of genetic information in RNA molecules results from the activity of chemists, that is, from the intelligence of the “ribozyme engineers” who design and select the features of these (partial) RNA replicators. Third, pre-biotic simulation experiments themselves confirm what we know from ordinary experience, namely, that intelligent design is the only known means by which functionally specified information arises.

For nearly sixty years origin-of-life researchers have attempted to use pre-biotic simulation experiments to find a plausible pathway by which life might have arisen from simpler non-living chemicals, thereby providing support for chemical evolutionary theory.  While these experiments have occasionally yielded interesting insights about the conditions under which certain reactions will or won’t produce the various small molecule constituents of larger bio-macromolecules, they have shed no light on how the information in these larger macromolecules (particularly in DNA and RNA) could have arisen.  Nor should this be surprising in light of what we have long known about the chemical structure of DNA and RNA.  As I show in Signature in the Cell, the chemical structures of DNA and RNA allow them to store information precisely because chemical affinities between their smaller molecular subunits do not determine the specific arrangements of the bases in the DNA and RNA molecules.  Instead, the same type of chemical bond (an N-glycosidic bond) forms between the backbone and each one of the four bases, allowing any one of the bases to attach at any site along the backbone, in turn allowing an innumerable variety of different sequences.  This chemical indeterminacy is precisely what permits DNA and RNA to function as information carriers.  It also dooms attempts to account for the origin of the information—the precise sequencing of the bases—in these molecules as the result of deterministic chemical interactions.  

Nevertheless, for Professor Falk, drawing any negative conclusions about the adequacy of purely undirected chemical processes—or worse—making an inference to intelligent design, is inherently premature.  Indeed, for him such thinking constitutes giving up on science or making “an argument from ignorance.”  But this betrays a misunderstanding of both science and the basis of the design argument that I am making.  

Scientific investigations not only tell us what nature does, they also frequently tell us what nature doesn’t do. The conservation laws in thermodynamics, for example, proscribe certain outcomes. The first law tells us that energy is never created or destroyed.  The second tells us that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease over time.  Moreover, because these laws are based upon our uniform and repeated experience, we have great confidence in them.  That is why physicists don’t, for example, still consider research on perpetual motion machines to be worth investigating or funding.    

In the same way, we now have a wealth of experience showing that what I call specified or functional information (especially if encoded in digital form) does not arise from purely physical or chemical antecedents.  Indeed, the ribozyme engineering and pre-biotic simulation experiments that Professor Falk commends to my attention actually lend additional inductive support to this generalization.  On the other hand, we do know of a cause—a type of cause—that has demonstrated the power to produce functionally-specified information.  That cause is intelligence or conscious rational deliberation.  As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler once observed, “the creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.” And, of course, he was right. Whenever we find information—whether embedded in a radio signal, carved in a stone monument, written in a book or etched on a magnetic disc—and we trace it back to its source, invariably we come to mind, not merely a material process.  Thus, the discovery of functionally specified, digitally encoded information along the spine of DNA, provides compelling positive evidence of the activity of a prior designing intelligence.  This conclusion is not based upon what we don’t know.  It is based upon what we do know from our uniform experience about the cause and effect structure of the world—specifically, what we know about what does, and does not, have the power to produce large amounts of specified information.


That Professor Falk rejects this knowledge as knowledge, and the case for design based on it, reflects his own commitment to finding a solution to the origin of life problem within a strictly materialistic framework. Indeed, he and his colleagues at BioLogos have made clear that they accept the principle of methodological naturalism, the idea that scientists, to be scientists, must limit themselves to positing only materialistic explanations for all phenomena. Of course, it is their right to accept this intellectual limitation on theorizing if they wish. But it needs to be noted that the principle of methodological naturalism is an arbitrary philosophical assumption, not a principle that can be established or justified by scientific observation itself.  Others of us, having long ago seen the pattern in pre-biotic simulation experiments, to say nothing of the clear testimony of thousands of years of human experience, have decided to move on.  We see in the information-rich structure of life a clear indicator of intelligent activity and have begun to investigate living systems accordingly. If, by Professor Falk’s definition, that makes us philosophers rather than scientists, then so be it.  But I suspect that the shoe is now, instead, firmly on the other foot.

File under "Well said" XLV.

 We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato.

Francis Collins,Darwinism's closer?

Francis Collins and the Overselling of Evolution
Casey Luskin

In two recent posts ( here and here ), I discussed the continuing misrepresentations of intelligent design by Francis Collins, whose confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health in the Obama administration was announced   on August 7.

Today I would like to shift the focus to Dr. Collins' misrepresentation of evolutionary biology--or more precisely, to his misrepresentation of the scientific usefulness of evolution to biology. Collins has every right to endorse neo-Darwinian evolution if he wishes, but his view of evolution's value to scientific research is pretty much over-the-top. In a recent interview, he claimed:

Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics.
There is no doubt that modern neo-Darwinian theory has had an important influence on biology, but Collins' grandiose claim says more about the political nature of Darwin-advocacy than it does about evolution itself.
A number of leading scientists feel very differently from Collins. As National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell has written, the hyping of neo-Darwinism's importance to science goes well beyond reality:

I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. ... Darwinian evolution -- whatever its other virtues -- does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.
(Philip Skell, "Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology," The Scientist (August 29, 2005).)

In another essay, Dr. Skell added that he had

queried biologists working in areas where one might have thought the Darwinian paradigm could guide research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I learned that the theory had provided no discernible guidance in choosing the experimental designs but was brought in, after the breakthrough discoveries, as an interesting narrative gloss.
(Philip Skell, Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 27(2):47-49 (October 9, 2008).

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne likewise admitted in Nature that "if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say."
When testifying before the Texas State Board of Education this past March, Dr. Ray Bohlin said the following when asked about the utility of evolution for biological research. He answered:

I'd be willing to say that virtually 90, 95% of all molecular and cell biology, which is where my Ph.D. is in, does not require evolution whatsoever.
Similarly, Don Ewert, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and has been a biology researcher for over 30 years (including 20 years at the Wistar Institute), was asked to "address the notion that very little in biology is testable except for in the light of evolution." Ewert answered:
If you look at scientific textbooks and ask the question, if the theory of evolution were not in that textbook, what material would not make sense? And I would say that very little, if any, would not make sense. In fact, I think that anybody who learned the material apart from Darwin in those textbooks could go on to be successful scientists, veterinarians, and medical doctors. ... I would say that there is very little that you cannot fully understand apart from the theory of evolution.

Clearly evolution is important to some research, but Collins' claim that "[t]rying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics" says more about Collins' hardline devotion to neo-Darwinism than it says about modern evolutionary biology itself. Fortunately, there remain highly credible scientists who do not feel the need to uphold Darwinism as the alpha and omega of biology.

Putting a price on the best things in life?

In a Technocratic Age, Redefining Family Bonds
Wesley J. Smith 

This year, I took my mother into my home for the last five months of her life as she was dying. Was I providing her with "unpaid care"? NO! I was being her son.

Yet, in our technocratic era, it seems that family members caring and providing for each other are increasingly perceived as a monetized activity. Reuters reports:

Millions of U.S. children with special needs receive care from family members that would cost billions of dollars if it was instead provided by home health aides receiving minimum wage, a recent study suggests.

Researchers examined data from a nationally representative sample of about 42,000 parents and guardians of children with special needs surveyed from 2009 to 2010. Overall, they estimate that approximately 5.6 million children with special needs receive about 1.5 billion hours a year of unpaid care from family members.

Really? What about mothers providing "unpaid care" for their babies? Or spouses for each other? Should such care also be measured in terms of the cost of having services provided by professional caregivers?

I don't think so. Measuring family love in dollar terms could corrode the importance, place, and purpose of family in society.

Of course, I am not saying that we shouldn't create public policies that promote intra-family caregiving and which ease the difficult tasks family members carry out for their dependent loved ones. We definitely should.


But the societal expectation should also be that families are the first line of caregiving, with civil society and government providing assistance services. Arguing that families provide "unpaid care" objectifies and devalues the love and commitment that are the essence of family.

America's electoral college demystified(Hopefully)

How uncivil peace led to civil war.

On the birth of the English language.

On judgment day: The Watchtower Society's commentary.

JUDGMENT DAY:

A specific “day,” or period, when particular groups, nations, or mankind in general are called to account by God. It may be a time when those already judged to be deserving of death are executed, or the judgment may afford opportunity for some to be delivered, even to everlasting life. Jesus Christ and his apostles pointed to a future “Judgment Day” involving not only the living but also those who had died in the past.—Mt 10:15; 11:21-24; 12:41, 42; 2Ti 4:1, 2.

Past Times of Judgment. At various times in the past Jehovah called peoples and nations to account for their actions and executed his judgments by bringing destruction. Such executional judgments were not arbitrary demonstrations of brute force or overwhelming power. In some instances the Hebrew word translated “judgment” (mish·patʹ) is also rendered “justice” and “what is right.” (Ezr 7:10; Ge 18:25) The Bible emphasizes that Jehovah “is a lover of righteousness and justice,” so his executional judgments involve both of those qualities.—Ps 33:5.

Sometimes the executional judgments came as a result of the wicked conduct of people in their daily lives. Sodom and Gomorrah are an example of this. Jehovah inspected the cities and determined that the sin of the inhabitants was very heavy; he decided to bring the cities to ruin. (Ge 18:20, 21; 19:14) Later Jude wrote that those cities underwent “the judicial punishment [Gr., diʹken; “judgment,” Da; “justice,” Yg; “retributive justice,” ED] of everlasting fire.” (Jude 7) So those cities experienced a “day” of judgment.

Jehovah conducted a legal case against ancient Babylon, the longtime enemy of God and his people. Because of being unnecessarily cruel to the Jews, not intending to release them after the 70-year exile, and crediting Marduk with the victory over God’s people, Babylon was in line for an executional judgment. (Jer 51:36; Isa 14:3-6, 17; Da 5:1-4) That came to Babylon in 539 B.C.E. when it was overthrown by the Medes and Persians. Because the judgment to be executed was Jehovah’s, such a period could be referred to as “the day of Jehovah.”—Isa 13:1, 6, 9.

Similarly, Jeremiah prophesied that God would “put himself in judgment” with Edom, among others. (Jer 25:17-31) Hence the nation that had shown hatred for Jehovah and his people experienced destructive judgment in “the day of Jehovah.”—Ob 1, 15, 16.

When Judah and Jerusalem became unfaithful and merited God’s disapproval, he promised to “execute in the midst of [her] judicial decisions.” (Eze 5:8) In 607 B.C.E. “the day of Jehovah’s fury” came with an execution of his destructive judgment. (Eze 7:19) However, another “day,” or time, of judgment on Jerusalem was foretold. Joel prophesied an outpouring of spirit before “the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah.” (Joe 2:28-31) Under inspiration Peter, on the day of Pentecost 33 C.E., explained that they were then experiencing a fulfillment of that prophecy. (Ac 2:16-20) The destructive “day of Jehovah” came in 70 C.E. when the Roman armies executed divine judgment upon the Jews. As Jesus foretold, those were “days for meting out justice.”—Lu 21:22; see DESTRUCTION.

Future Times of Executional Judgment. Aside from Hebrew Scripture prophecies, the Bible definitely mentions a number of future judgment days that are executional. Revelation points to the time when “Babylon the Great” will be completely burned with fire. This judicial punishment is due to her fornication with the nations and her being drunk with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. (Re 17:1-6; 18:8, 20; 19:1, 2) Mentioning another executional judgment, Peter drew upon what occurred in Noah’s day and foretold a “day of judgment and of destruction of the ungodly men.” (2Pe 3:7) Revelation speaks of such a destruction as being executed by “The Word of God,” who will strike the nations with a long sword. (Re 19:11-16; compare Jude 14, 15.) Also, in the first century the Devil already had judgment passed on him, and the demons he leads knew that they would be put into the abyss, as will Satan. (1Ti 3:6; Lu 8:31; Re 20:1-3) Thus it follows that the judgment awaiting them is simply the execution of a judgment that has already been decided upon.—Jude 6; 2Pe 2:4; 1Co 6:3.

May or May Not Be Condemnatory. Most of the occurrences of “judgment” (Gr., kriʹsis and kriʹma) in the Christian Greek Scriptures clearly carry the force of condemnatory, or adverse, judgment. In John 5:24, 29 “judgment” is set in contrast with “life” and “everlasting life,” plainly implying a condemnatory judgment that means utter loss of life—death. (2Pe 2:9; 3:7; Joh 3:18, 19) However, not all adverse judgment leads inevitably to destruction. Illustrating this are Paul’s remarks at 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 about celebrating the Lord’s Evening Meal. If a person did not discern properly what he was doing, he could eat or drink “judgment against himself.” Then Paul adds: “When we are judged, we are disciplined by Jehovah, that we may not become condemned with the world.” Thus one might receive adverse judgment but because of repenting not be destroyed forever.

Furthermore, the possibility of a judgment that is not condemnatory is apparent from 2 Corinthians 5:10. About those manifest before the judgment seat it says: “Each one [will] get his award . . . according to the things he has practiced, whether it is good or vile.” The judging mentioned in Revelation 20:13 evidently results in a favorable outcome for many. Of the dead judged, those receiving an adverse judgment are hurled into “the lake of fire.” The rest, though, come through the judgment, being “found written in the book of life.”—Re 20:15.

Judgment Day of Personal Accountability. Pre-Christian Hebrews were acquainted with the idea that God would hold them personally accountable for their conduct. (Ec 11:9; 12:14) The Christian Greek Scriptures explain that there will be a specific future period, or “day,” when mankind, both the living and those who died in the past, will individually be judged.—2Ti 4:1, 2.

Identity of the judges. In the Hebrew Scriptures Jehovah is identified as “the Judge of all the earth.” (Ge 18:25) Similarly, in the Christian Greek Scriptures he is called “the Judge of all.” (Heb 12:23) He has, though, deputized his Son to do judging for him. (Joh 5:22) The Bible speaks of Jesus as “appointed,” “decreed,” and “destined” to do judging. (Ac 10:42; 17:31; 2Ti 4:1) That Jesus is thus authorized by God resolves any seeming contradiction between the text that says that individuals will “stand before the judgment seat of God” and the verse that says they will “be made manifest before the judgment seat of the Christ.”—Ro 14:10; 2Co 5:10.

Jesus also told his apostles that when he would sit down on his throne in the “re-creation,” they would “sit upon twelve thrones” to do judging. (Mt 19:28; Lu 22:28-30) Paul indicated that Christians who had been “called to be holy ones” will judge the world. (1Co 1:2; 6:2) Also, the apostle John saw in vision the time when some received “power of judging.” (Re 20:4) In view of the above texts, this evidently includes the apostles and the other holy ones. Such a conclusion is borne out by the remainder of the verse, which speaks of those who rule with Christ for the Millennium. These then will be royal judges with Jesus.

The fine quality of the judging that will take place on Judgment Day is assured, for Jehovah’s “judgments are true and righteous.” (Re 19:1, 2) The kind of judging that he authorizes is also righteous and true. (Joh 5:30; 8:16; Re 1:1; 2:23) There will be no perverting of justice or hiding of the facts.

Resurrection is involved. When using the expression “Judgment Day,” Jesus brought into the picture a resurrection of the dead. He mentioned that a city might reject the apostles and their message, and said: “It will be more endurable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city.” (Mt 10:15) Although he was evidently using a hyperbole (because Sodom and Gomorrah had undergone everlasting destruction), his statement did point to a future judgment for at least some from such a first-century Jewish city. (Compare Mt 11:21-24; Lu 10:13-15; Jude 7.) Even clearer is Jesus’ statement that “the queen of the south will be raised up in the judgment.” (Mt 12:41, 42; Lu 11:31, 32) The Biblical statements about Jesus’ judging “the living and the dead” can be viewed in the light of the fact that resurrection is involved in Judgment Day.—Ac 10:42; 2Ti 4:1.

A final indication that many being examined on Judgment Day will be resurrected ones is the information in Revelation 20:12, 13. Individuals are seen “standing before the throne.” The dead are mentioned and so is the fact that death and Hades gave up those dead in them. Such ones are judged.

Time for Judgment Day. In John 12:48 Christ linked the judging of persons with “the last day.” Revelation 11:17, 18 locates a judging of the dead as occurring after God takes his great power and begins ruling in a special way as king. Additional light on the matter comes from the sequence of events recorded in Revelation chapters 19 and 20. There one reads of a war in which the “King of kings” kills “the kings of the earth and their armies.” (Earlier in Revelation [16:14] this is called “the war of the great day of God the Almighty.”) Next Satan is bound for a thousand years. During that thousand years royal judges serve with Christ. In the same context, resurrection and the judging of the dead are mentioned. This, then, is an indication of the time when Judgment Day comes. And it is not impossible from a Scriptural standpoint for a thousand-year period to be viewed as a “day,” for such an equation is stated in the Bible.—2Pe 3:8; Ps 90:4.

Basis for judgment. In describing what will take place on earth during the time of judgment, Revelation 20:12 says that the resurrected dead will then be “judged out of those things written in the scrolls according to their deeds.” Those resurrected will not be judged on the basis of the works done in their former life, because the rule at Romans 6:7 says: “He who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”


However, Jesus said that unwillingness to take note of his powerful works and repent or unresponsiveness to God’s message would make it hard for some to endure Judgment Day.—Mt 10:14, 15; 11:21-24.

What's so great about the great wall of China?

On the birth of the world's largest country.

History judges Richard Nixon.

Nothing to fear but fear itself?:Pros and cons.

Fear itself VIII

Fear itself VII

Speaking of fake news:

Evolutionists Defend Scaremongering on Fake News "Petition"
David Klinghoffer

In recent days, a series of posts by Darwin's atheists (Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers, Dan Arel) brandished a "petition" to ban teaching evolution in the U.S. The petition, which read like a parody to me, was addressed to VP-elect Pence. They presented this as evidence of what we can anticipate from the "Christian Right" under a Trump-Pence Administration.

"And so it begins," intoned Emeritus Professor Coyne of the University of Chicago ominously. "This is the kind of activism we can expect for the next four years," wrote Mr. Arel over at Patheos. "Mike Pence will eat it up," Dr. Myers told his readers, adding that he received a link to the petition accompanied by an email concluding "Merry Christmas to y'all," from "Joe Hannon, Republicans Abroad (Make America Great Again)."

Everything about this was dubious, including the fact that "Hannon" sent his petition, ostensibly in search of anti-evolution signatures, to a group of atheists and Darwinists. If a legion of "activists" were likely to take up and run with such a (stupid) idea, why not direct your petition to them? The question doesn't seem to have occurred to Coyne or the others. The fact that the signatures it in fact garnered were almost all joke names contributed to the impression that there was no extrapolation here to what we can expect under Trump.

I called out the Darwin activists who were promoting this "news," including Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project. Well, they're back and defending themselves and each other.

P.Z. Myers now agrees with me that "Joe Hannon" is a fake name -- used, he informs us, by an often-banned Internet troll from Manchester, England, who haunts blog comments sections under a variety of pseudonyms. Myers cites University of Toronto's Larry Moran, saying that "Hannon" is "a holocaust denier. He used to run a business 'selling components -- just nuts and bolts -- to the Iranian nuclear and missile industries' but it was shut down because of sanctions. Now he rants against British conspiracies." Oh. So he's not with "Republicans Abroad," after all? Why didn't Professor Myers say so to begin with? Perhaps because that would have deflated the post he wanted to write.

P.Z. chides me. "Uh, it's a real petition. You can sign it and everything." Another Darwinist, Matt Young at Panda's Thumb, concurs.

The petition is not phony, at least not in the sense that Mr. Klinghoffer means it. I have received 3 e-mail messages directly from Joseph Hannon. The first of these was sent to approximately 30 other people, and all I can tell you is that I must travel in very good company.
Professor Coyne chimes in on this. He thinks I'm "hoist with [my] own petard": "Matt Young and his commenters adduce evidence that Joe Hannon is not a hoaxer, but what one commenter called a 'delusional fanatic.'" Ah, so Coyne and his friends were promoting, as significant and worrisome, a product not of deception but of mere delusion. Got it.

Michael Zimmerman is also upset with me, writing once again at the Huffington Post:

Interestingly, in a Catch 22 sort of way, one piece of "evidence" presented for this false flag conspiracy is the fact that I didn't ignore the petition entirely. And, by responding, I'm accused of initiating my own publicity stunt by "propagandizing for [my] organization."
I don't believe in conspiracies, and there's no need for one to explain what happened here.

Those who want to try to plumb the psychology of the masquerading "Joe Hannon" are welcome to do so on their own time. If Moran and Myers are right about this person's genuine identity, then they've confirmed that this was fake news, pushed by Darwinists for their own reasons. Whether a random Brit would sincerely shut down evolution instruction in the U.S. if he could is of no importance. It is not in the least noteworthy. To pretend otherwise was silly at best, dishonest at worst.

The person behind "Hannon," whatever his legal name might be, is real. The petition was not computer-generated. The rest of this -- the scaremongering about Republicans and American Christians, the bootstrapping from a handful of joke names on an online petition to an advertisement for your pro-evolution group on the Huffington Post -- is phony.


Update: As I was about to hit the Publish button on this post, I received an email from "Joseph Hannon." I don't correspond with pseudonyms, but for what it may be worth, this "Hannon," if it's the real one, now says the petition was "only semi-serious," a "tongue-in-cheek wind-up," "parodic." OK, enough of this.

An African legend.

History judges Andrew Jackson.

An F in foreign policy for the Obama whitehouse?:Pros and cons.

Gerrymandering will mean the end of the republic?:Pros and cons.

One upping God?

Think You Can Design a Better Fruit Fly?

Evolution News & Views March 8, 2016 3:40 AM

What happens when you tinker with the design specs of a live flyer? Four European scientists with specialties in biology and aerodynamics got together and ran some clever experiments with fruit flies to find out. The biologists found ways to change the shape of the flies' wings, and the flight engineers measured what happened in performance tests. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, yield some lessons about the capabilities of mutation and natural selection to make modifications on the fly, so to speak.

Aircraft designers have the luxury of changing just one thing at a time and measuring the impact on flight performance. Living things, however, are bundles of requirements that must be optimized together as they develop from the embryo. The authors recognize this difference:

Wing shape is governed by the expression of a number of genes, the modulation of which leads to phenotypic variation. The results of changing the balance of expression bears little relation to the independent parameters engineers vary when designing aircraft wings, yet these are the gene expression-driven shape warps upon which natural selection acts. [Emphasis added.]

How far could natural selection vary a gene for wing shape without introducing unacceptable costs on other parts of the system? To find out, the scientists used RNA interference (RNAi) to alter expression patterns in a gene called narrow for only the wing tissues, without affecting other body parts. They bred four lineages with altered wing shapes that were progressively narrower than the wild type. Then they put them through a series of flight tests, including escape from a predator, a dragonfly.

All of the morphs could fly -- some with even better performance on tight turns. That "improvement" (from a human perspective) came at a cost (from the fly perspective).

Our aerodynamic model shows that all of the wing morphs we have tested show a decrease in aerodynamic efficiency in comparison with the control. Thus, measurable differences in flight performance are likely to be the result of a balance between the aerodynamic and mechanical modifications due to the shape change and its energetic cost. In the two milder morphs, we suggest that the energetic cost is not high enough to negate the performance benefits whereas, in the most extreme morph, an intersection is crossed beyond which the necessary power is more challenging to achieve. Akey factor contributing to this shift from improved to inferior performance is likely to be the disruption we have introduced into the system by altering the wing planform without changing the complex musculoskeletal apparatus that drives it. In an engineering sense, the induced changes in wing shape force the flight motor to operate off-design.

Using intelligent design, aircraft engineers can correct for the cost of one alteration with a subsequent alteration. Lengthening a wing, for instance, might increase lift, but will require more engine power to compensate for the extra weight. Ann Gauger talked about this in a recent ID the Future podcast in response to charges that some designs in the human body are sub-optimal.

The next thing I would say is that good design doesn't necessarily mean optimal design for all things because design often means multiple constraints... you can't be perfectly designed for one feature because it often goes against what you need for a second feature. The example I give is from airplane technology. Airplanes have to have a lot of design features that match a lot of different constraints. They have to be light so they can fly but they have to be strong so that they can withstand the kinds of stresses they undergo. They have to be able to keep people warm and keep it from being too loud, but that all adds weight. They have to keep the atmosphere breathable, but that also adds weight. All of those things have conflicting needs....

In the case of the fruit fly, the interconnectedness of constraints is even more evident. The entire fly must develop from a zygote containing all the instructions for building the final product. That final product must not only be capable of powered flight, it has to get to the point of reproduction, or else any fitness gains will be lost. The authors realize this. As human engineers, we cannot presume to know what is most important to the fruit fly:

Insect flight performance is a direct consequence of the interaction of the wings with the air and is determined by acombination of kinematics and morphology. Routine behaviour can be dominant over escape responses as the predictor of survival in dragonfly-fruit fly interactions, with sharp turns highlighted as vital for evading capture. Selective pressures on fruit fly morphology may have been expected, therefore, to promote adaptations that enable a high degree of manoeuvrability. Our findings show that fruit flies do not develop wings that are best suited for agile flight even when driven by their existing flight motor. Moreover, flight performance envelopes could be widened by affecting the function of a single gene. That flies are suboptimal in this regard is not particularly surprising but symptomatic of at least one antagonistic developmental, physical or behavioural selection pressure: for example, sexual selection mediated by the effect of wing planform on auditory or visual cues.

The more agile flyer, in other words, might not be able to get a date with a female who thinks he buzzes too loud or looks weird. He would have to find a female who has mutated into a kind that likes those things about him. More seriously, the agile flyer might need more powerful flight muscles to handle the stresses of a tighter turning radius. If there is "at least one antagonistic developmental, physical or behavioural selection pressure" constraining maneuverability, there are more likely several -- perhaps many. Is it reasonable to expect blind mutations to occur simultaneously such that all the constraints are satisfied in a coordinated fashion in one individual?

Animal morphologies reflect the cumulative effect of non-adaptive variation and time-integrated selective pressuresincluding -- but not limited to -- those optimizing form for function. Insect wings are under selective pressures driving towards local multi-objective optima, embodying a design compromise between features that are aerodynamically relevant (contributing to flight performance) and features that may contribute to fitness but are independent of aerobatic capability.

It's not surprising that genetic manipulation can improve one trait at the expense of others:

We did not encounter a physical limit along the principal component axis that we were able to influence; all our genotypes were able to fly, albeit with reduced performance maxima at the extremes of our morphological manipulations.

This is exactly what breeders do with artificial selection. Our prize cattle are optimized for humans' desires, but would likely not do well in the wild. By practicing "influence" and "manipulation" of existing champion flyers, the scientists did not provide insight into the "evolution of performance specialities in animals" as they had hoped. Rather, they showed the power of the engineering mind to optimize multiple competing constraints in a coordinated fashion.

In her podcast, Dr. Gauger recounted the epic flight of the Rutan Voyager, the first airplane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. To achieve that feat, designer Burt Rutan had to optimize lift and discard every unnecessary weight. It's interesting that Rutgers scientists just identified a world-traveling insect of that caliber: a small dragonfly they determined is the "world's longest-distance flyer." Gene comparisons show the same species is found as far Texas, Korea, South America, and Canada. Pantala dragonflies can fly across oceans from continent to continent, some of them flying nonstop over 4,400 miles, besting the Monarch butterflies shown in Metamorphosis.

Pantala leaves many of its fellow dragonflies even farther behind. The mysteries of evolution are such that whilePantala and its cousin the Green Darner (Anax junius) havedeveloped into world travelers, Ware says that by contrast, other members of the family "don't ever leave the pond on which they're born -- traveling barely 36 feet away their entire lives."

Could this be an example of "non-adaptive influences" that "may exhibit some features that are unrelated to fitness" the researchers spoke of? It doesn't appear necessary for any dragonfly to acquire international flight ranking when their pond-dwelling cousins are doing just fine. If world-traveling dragonflies are a mystery to evolution, then evolution is not doing a good explanatory job.

By contrast, we know the power of minds to create flying machines that range from puddle jumpers to global circumnavigators. And that's what we find in biological flyers (birds and insects), each species exhibiting not only perfect balance between multi-objective optima but the ability to faithfully transmit its design instructions across generations. That's positive evidence for designing intelligence.