Loved to death?

National Science Standards Reflect a Growing Anxiety on the Part of Evolution Advocates

Sarah Chaffee November 2, 2015 3:46 PM

Teach science critically -- except when it comes to evolution. In discussions of how to improve public school education in the U.S., that's the message that advocates of national science standards typically convey. Yet that wasn't always the case.

An article at Ars Technica recounts the development of the most recent set of proposed standards: the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), finalized in 2013. Ironically, teaching students to engage in scientific inquiry, rather than simply expecting them all to absorb the same "facts," was the main impetus.

NGSS began as separate projects of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and National Academies of Sciences (NAS). Their efforts were eventually merged and became the NGSS. John Timmer at Ars Technica writes:

Inspired by the visit of Halley's comet in the 1980s, the AAAS started Project 2061, an attempt to envision where the organization would like to see science literacy in the year the comet would return. Jo Ellen Roseman, Project 2061's Director, told Ars that the goal was to "characterize what the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind would constitute adult science literacy."

Instead of insisting on a "just the facts" approach, the AAAS focused on training young people to think like scientists. After all, the body of knowledge would change over the decades, but the process of scientific inquiry would not.

"While we had no idea what the world would be like, we could guarantee that it would be shaped by science, mathematics, and technology," Roseman said. "And therefore every citizen of the US, every high school graduate had to be literate in those fields."

... Driven by this concept, AAAS gathered scientists and educators to produce a document called Science for All Americans. This publication, while not a set of education standards, laid out the ideas they should contain. Written in prose, it describes basic facts about the Universe that people should know.But over half the document is focused on the nature of science, technology and math, the historic development of these fields, and the "habits of mind" essential for scientific literacy.

The NAS's National Research Council (NRC), meanwhile, produced itsNational Science Education Standards, with a similar emphasis:

"The NRC document took a very strong position about scientific inquiry," Roseman said. "It went beyond what kids should know and be able to do and really articulated what should be going on in classrooms. Students should be engaged in inquiry."

Exactly! At Discovery Institute, we advocate teaching the controversy about evolution. That is for several reasons. Students should learn the full range of evidence on evolution. Teaching the controversy aids in developing critical thinking. And it trains students to think like scientists. Jo Ellen Roseman's comments highlight a further advantage to this pedagogic strategy: that while the content of science may change, the process of scientific inquiry remains vital and valid.

The documents produced by the AAAS and NAS, Science for All Americans and the National Science Education Standards, are persuasive in explaining the importance of critical thinking. Science for All Americansnotes:

In science classrooms, it should be the normal practice for teachers to raise such questions as: How do we know? What is the evidence? What is the argument that interprets the evidence? Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.

Avoid Dogmatism

Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct. By dealing with the credibility of scientific claims, the overturn of accepted scientific beliefs, and what to make out of disagreement among scientists, science teachers can help students to balance the necessity for accepting a great deal of science on faith against the importance of keeping an open mind.

The NAS document, National Science Education Standards, recommends:

Students at all grade levels and in every domain of science should have the opportunity to use scientific inquiry and develop the ability to think and act in ways associated with inquiry, including...thinking critically and logically about relationships between evidence and explanations, constructing and analyzing alternative explanations, and communicating scientific arguments.

Building on this foundation, the set of current national science standards, the NGSS, agrees that critical analysis is important. The NGSS were developed in two phases. First, the National Academy of Sciences laid out the basic scientific information students should learn. Second, states worked together to develop specific grade-level standards. The document produced in the first phase, A Framework for K-12 Science Education, takes a very positive view of critical analysis:

Chief among these features [of science] is a commitment to data and evidence as the foundation for developing claims. The argumentation and analysis that relate evidence and theory are also essential features of science; scientists need to be able to examine, review, and evaluate their own knowledge and ideas and critique those of others. Argumentation and analysis include appraisal of data quality, modeling of theories, development of new testable questions from those models, and modification of theories and models as evidence indicates they are needed.

Major science journals also hold that inquiry is central to quality science education. Yet when it comes to evolution, the NGSS abruptly switch gears, rejecting inquiry-based learning and opting for dogmatism.

In middle school, we read, "students can analyze data from the fossil record to describe evidence of the history of life on Earth and can construct explanations for similarities in organisms. They have a beginning understanding of the role of variation in natural selection and how this leads to speciation."

In high school, students are to "demonstrate understanding of how multiple lines of evidence contribute to the strength of scientific theories of natural selection and evolution." This seems to be nearly the opposite of what Science for All Americans says:

Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct.

It is inconsistent to oppose the freedom to critically analyze evolutionary thinking, while proclaiming that inquiry is the cornerstone of quality science education. The inconsistency, though, is not all that surprising. It's plainly defensive, a circling of wagons around a theory under increasing pressure from scientific criticisms. The NGSS reflect the anxious mood on the part of evolution defenders in the larger debate about origins.

Students deserve better. If we really want nationwide scientific literacy by the time Halley's comet returns in 2061, we should teach young people to question and analyze across the board, whether the context is biological origins or any other scientific field.

Examining a challenge to Life's no free lunch law

The GUC Bug
Winston Ewert December 4, 2015 10:55 AM

In a series of posts, of which this is the third, I am examining criticisms from Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington geneticist) and Tom English (Oklahoma City computer scientist) in response to two arguments for intelligent design: specified complexity and conservation of information. See here for Parts 1 and 2 in the series.

In my previous post, I reviewed the arguments by William Dembski and Robert Marks in their paper "Life's Conservation Law." I showed that the paper is not based on any simplistic claim that all active information must derive from an intelligent source. However, it does argue that all known computer and mathematical models of Darwinian evolution are teleological. Dembski and Marks argued:

In these models, careful tailoring of fitness functions that assist in locating targets is always present and clearly teleological.

If one could demonstrate such a model that lacked teleology, then their claims would be falsified.

In a post at Panda's Thumb, "Fitness surfaces and searches: Dembski, Ewert, and Marks's search for design," Felsenstein and English spend some time discussing a simple greedy search algorithm, which they name the GUC (Greedy Uphill Climber) Bug. English, in his post "The Law of Conservation of Information is defunct," brings it up again. It is a fairly standard hill-climbing algorithm. It begins with a sequence of DNA one thousand bases long. In each "generation," it evaluates the three thousand DNA sequences that are one nucleotide substitution away from that current sequence. The best sequence is adopted as the new current sequence, and the process repeats itself.

English tested the GUC Bug on a random fitness function. It cannot possibly be argued that a random fitness function was carefully tailored to assist in locating a target. Thus, the success of this bug rests clearly on nonteleological grounds. They describe its performance:

Running the bug until it reached a local peak of the fitness surface, where no immediate neighbor is more fit, [Tom English] found that these peaks were typically higher than 99.98% of all points. So even on one of the worst possible fitness surfaces, a GUC Bug does far better than choosing a DNA sequence at random.

However, we have not claimed that a search algorithm like GUC can't do better than choosing a DNA sequence at random. In fact, Dembski and Marks showed that it could and provided a limit on the active information available through such a scheme. In "Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success," they wrote:

Multiple queries clearly contain more information than a single query. Active information is therefore introduced from repeated queries.

Demonstrating an algorithm using multiple random queries that outperforms a single random query is not at all surprising. It is precisely what Dembski and Marks indicated would happen. The idea that doing better than choosing a DNA sequence at random would prove our case incorrect derives from the mistaken claim that we think all active information must derive from an intelligent source.

However, does this GUC Bug constitute a nonteleological model of Darwinian evolution, which Dembski and Marks claimed (in "Life's Conservation Law") does not exist? No. It is not a model of Darwinian evolution because it cannot do what is required of Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution has to account for finding rare protein folds and complex functional systems. The GUC Bug, operating on a random fitness landscape, does not even come close.

The GUC Bug finds a sequence better than 99.98% of all other sequences, which may sound impressive. But consider, as do English and Felsenstein, this algorithm running for fifty generations. That corresponds to 150,000 different sequences. If we simply took 150,000 random genotypes, we'd expect to find one better than about 99.999% of all the other genotypes. The GUC Bug does worse than random queries, due to getting stuck in a local optimum rather quickly. I hardly need to rehearse the insufficiency of even large numbers of random queries to solve biological problems. This model will have an even harder time solving problems.

However, Felsenstein and English note that a more realistic model of evolution wouldn't have a random fitness landscape. Felsenstein, in particular, argues that "the ordinary laws of physics, with their weakness of long-range interactions, lead to fitness surfaces much smoother than white-noise fitness surfaces." I agree that weak long-range interactions should produce a fitness landscape somewhat smoother than random chance and this fitness landscape would thus be a source of some active information.

We disagree in that I do not think that is going to be a sufficient source of active information to account for biology. I do not have a proof of this. But neither does Felsenstein have a demonstration that it will produce sufficient active information. What I do have is the observation of existing models of evolution. The smoothness present in those models does not derive from some notion of weak long-range physics, but rather from telelogy as explored in my various papers on them.

The GUC Bug falls within the expectations of active information. It extracts active information through repeated queries. Running on a random fitness landscape, it fails to be a model of evolution, because it performs even worse than random search would have. If run on a smooth landscape, it may be a model of Darwinian evolution. However, in order for it to be a non-teleological model of evolution, that fitness landscape would have to be derived in a non-teleological fashion. It remains to be demonstrated that it is possible to construct such a fitness landscape. Thus far, models of evolution have consistently devised the fitness landscape in a teleological fashion.

The Watchtower Society's commentary on Ecclesiastes

ECCLESIASTES:

The Hebrew name Qo·heʹleth (meaning “Congregator; Assembler; Convener; Convoker”) fittingly describes the role of the king in the theocratic government that Israel enjoyed. (Ec 1:1, 12) It was the responsibility of the ruler to hold the dedicated people of God together in faithfulness to their true King and God. (1Ki 8:1-5, 41-43, 66) For that reason, whether a king was good or bad for the nation was determined by whether he led the nation in the worship of Jehovah or not. (2Ki 16:1-4; 18:1-6) The congregator, who was Solomon, had already done much congregating of Israel and their companions, the temporary residents, to the temple. In this book he sought to congregate God’s people away from the vain and fruitless works of this world to the works worthy of the God to whom they as a nation were dedicated. The name used in our English Bibles is taken from the translation of Qo·heʹleth in the Greek Septuagint, namely, Ek·kle·si·a·stesʹ (Ecclesiastes), meaning “a member of an ecclesia (congregation; assembly).”

Writer. There was only one “son of David,” namely, Solomon, who was “king over Israel in Jerusalem” (Ec 1:1, 12), for kings after Solomon did not reign over all Israel. Solomon was the king so well known for his surpassing wisdom. (Ec 1:16; 1Ki 4:29-34) He was a builder. (Ec 2:4-6; 1Ki 6:1; 7:1-8) He was a composer of proverbs. (Ec 12:9; 1Ki 4:32) Solomon was renowned for his wealth. (Ec 2:4-9; 1Ki 9:17-19; 10:4-10, 14-29) Since the book mentions the building program of Solomon, it must have been written after that time but before he “began to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah.” (1Ki 11:6) The book was therefore written before 1000 B.C.E., in Jerusalem. That Solomon would be one of the best qualified men to write the book is supported by the fact that he was not only the richest but probably one of the best informed kings of his day; his sailors and tradesmen as well as visiting dignitaries would bring news and knowledge of people of other lands.—1Ki 9:26-28; 10:23-25, 28, 29.

Authenticity. Qo·heʹleth, or Ecclesiastes, is accepted as canonical by both the Jewish and the Christian churches. It is in agreement with other portions of the Bible that treat the same subjects. For example, it agrees with Genesis on man’s being made up of a body composed of the dust of the ground and having the spirit or life-force from God and the breath that sustains it. (Ec 3:20, 21; 12:7; Ge 2:7; 7:22; Isa 42:5) It affirms the Bible teaching that man was created upright but willfully chose to disobey God. (Ec 7:29; Ge 1:31; 3:17; De 32:4, 5) It acknowledges God as the Creator. (Ec 12:1; Ge 1:1) It concurs with the rest of the Bible as to the state of the dead. (Ec 9:5, 10; Ge 3:19; Ps 6:5; 115:17; Joh 11:11-14; Ro 6:23) It strongly advocates the worship and the fear of God. It uses the expression ha·ʼElo·himʹ, “the true God,” 32 times. The equivalent for the name Jehovah is found in the Syriac Peshitta and Jewish Targum of the book at Ecclesiastes 2:24. While some claim that the book contradicts itself, this is only because they do not see that the book many times sets forth the common view as opposed to the view that reflects divine wisdom. (Compare Ec 1:18; 7:11, 12.) So one must read with a view to getting the sense and must keep in mind the theme of the book.

[Box on page 675]

HIGHLIGHTS OF ECCLESIASTES

A vivid description of works that are vain and those that are worth while

Written by Solomon in the latter part of his kingship, after he had engaged in the numerous pursuits that he describes

A life devoted to vain pursuits is empty

To a natural man all is vanity; one generation is replaced by another, and even natural cycles are repetitious and wearisome (1:1-11)

Increased human wisdom can result in increased pain; what is crooked in this system cannot be made straight (1:12-18)

Devoting oneself to pleasure-seeking through materialism is like striving after the wind (2:1-11, 26)

Wisdom is better than folly, but both the wise and the stupid ones die and are forgotten (2:12-16)

Working hard all one’s life only to leave everything to a man who may not appreciate it—this is calamitous (2:17-23)

Events in earthly life often occur in cycles, many of which are beyond human control (3:1-9)

In the present system, all (both man and beast) eventually die (3:18-22)

Many acts of oppression take place, with no hope from a human standpoint (4:1-3)

Hard work and proficiency because of rivalry or simply to accumulate wealth is vanity, and the lazy person is stupid (4:4-8)

The life of a ruler can also be vain (4:13-16)

Accumulating riches will not bring contentment, but it may rob the owner of his sleep; and when he dies he will leave them all behind (5:9-17)

Though a person has many possessions, circumstances—perhaps illness or an unfulfilled longing—may prevent him from finding contentment (6:1-12)

In the present system, the same eventuality awaits both righteous and wicked—all die; so, some give free rein to badness (9:2, 3)

Wisdom is not always appreciated when it comes from a needy man (9:13-18)

Indulging in foolishness gives one a bad reputation; when such incompetent ones are in positions of authority, it is hazardous for them and hard on others (10:1-19)

Youth and the prime of life are vanity; the duration of youthful vigor is so uncertain (11:10)

If a person has not been guided in life by constant remembrance of the Creator, everything is vanity! (12:8)

Things that are worth while and that give meaning to one’s life

Enjoy the fruits of your work, recognizing these as a gift from God (2:24, 25; 5:18-20)

The works of God are all pretty; before mankind he has set the prospect of life to time indefinite (3:10-13)

The general pattern of human life that exists according to God’s permission or purpose cannot be changed by man; so wait on God to act as Judge in his appointed time (3:14-17; 5:8)

A person who works with a partner is better off than a loner (4:9-12)

Proper fear of God should move us to listen carefully to what he requires of us and to fulfill any vow we make to him (5:1-7)

Appreciate the importance of a good name and the brevity of our present life in which to acquire it, the benefit of patience, the superior value of wisdom, and the need to submit humbly to what God permits (7:1-15)

Avoid going to extremes but be guided by fear of God; do not get overly concerned about what other people say; shun the snare of a prostitute (7:16-29)

Be law abiding; even though men dominate others to their injury and human justice is lax, do not let it spoil your enjoyment of life; remember, it will turn out well with those who fear the true God; do not expect to fathom all the reasons for what God does and permits to occur (8:1-17; 10:20)

The righteous ones and the wise ones are in the hand of the true God—they will not lose their reward; but in death a person knows nothing and can do nothing, so use your life now in a manner that God will approve; enjoy it in wholesome ways while you have it (9:1, 4-12)

Seize appropriate opportunities to be generous, to accomplish good; do not let uncertainties of life stifle your activity (11:1-8)

Young man, enjoy your youth, but do not forget that you are accountable to God for your actions; remember your Grand Creator while you are young, before the weakness and decrepitude of old age come, before life ends (11:9; 12:1-7)

The most beneficial writings are those that reflect the wisdom of the “one shepherd,” Jehovah God (12:9-12)

Fear the true God and keep his commandments; he sees everything that we do, and he will bring our works into judgment (12:13, 14)

Darwinism continues to lose on every sale.

An Inordinate Fondness for Confounding Darwinians

Evolution News & Views August 31, 2012 12:43 PM

Write FAIL by another Darwinian prediction: there's no relationship between the length of a branch on Darwin's "tree of life" and how many leaves it has. Evolutionists find this result of a massive study surprising and disconcerting.

The question is this: Shouldn't groups of organisms that have been evolving the longest have the most species? If neo-Darwinism could make any law-like predictions, this should be it: the inexorable pressure to evolve or perish should lead to the most species in the oldest groups:

the most fundamental expectation in macroevolutionary studies is simply that species richness in extant clades should be correlated with clade age: all things being equal, older clades will have had more time for diversity to accumulate than younger clades.

So say Rabosky, Slater and Alfaro, who have just published the most exhaustive study to date of species richness as a function of time. They examined species counts for 1,397 clades, representing 1.2 million species "for taxa as diverse as ferns, fungi, and flies" (emphasis added throughout). Here's what they expected, as reported in their paper in PLoS Biology:

The most general explanatory variable of all is clade age: clades vary in age, and this age variation should lead to differences in clade diversity, particularly if all clades have identical net rates of species diversification through time. If clade diversity is generally increasing through time, there is a strong theoretical expectation that species richness should be associated with their age (Figure S1). Even if individual clades are characterized by a "balanced" random walk in diversity, such that speciation and extinction rates are exactly equal, we may still observe a positive relationship between age and richness through time if clade diversity is conditioned on survival to the present day (Figure S1). Stochastic models of clade diversification through time consistently suggest that species richness and clade age should be correlated. These expectations differ from patterns observed for extinct clades, presumably because living clades have survived to the present to be observed. The expectation that age and diversity should be correlated does not minimize the importance of evolutionary "key innovations" and other factors as determinants of clade richness. In fact, to the extent that such factors influence net diversification rates, their effects should further accentuate differences in richness attributable to age variation alone.

Well, guess what. They aren't correlated. "Clade Age and Species Richness Are Decoupled Across the Eukaryotic Tree of Life," says he paper's title. "At the largest phylogenetic scales, contemporary patterns of species richness are inconsistent with unbounded diversity increase through time," the researchers found. "These results imply that a fundamentally different interpretative paradigm may be needed in the study of phylogenetic diversity patterns in many groups of organisms." Much to their consternation, they couldn't wiggle out of this result (readers can check the open-access paper for how many ways they tried).

The three biologists certainly are aware of complicating factors that might rule out a neat, clean graph. They know that "Some groups, like beetles and flowering plants, contain nearly incomprehensible species diversity, but the overwhelming majority of groups contain far fewer species." Only one species of tuatara, for example, remains after 200 million years on the planet. Sometimes extinction rate exceeds speciation rate; sometimes the ecological niche puts constraints on the ability to diversify. Or, species counts might be artifacts of our taxonomic system or the habits of collectors. Still, even when correcting for these factors, Rabosky et al. expected some remnant of a law-like trend between clade age and species diversity. Not only was no correlation found at the large scale, it was not found at finer scales either. When they authors examined beetles in more detail, for instance, age and diversity showed an even lower correlation than for the bigger picture.

This failure of expectations left them scrambling. It's important to understand the causes for this decoupling, they point out, because most phylogenetic models rely on the implicit assumption that clades should diversify over time at some kind of predictable evolutionary rate. "If age and richness truly are decoupled, then species richness in clades should not be modeled as the outcome of a simple time-constant diversification process, as is done in the overwhelming majority of evolutionary and biogeographic studies." Note that point: the "overwhelming majority of ... evolutionary studies" is based on an assumption that is demonstrably wrong!

Commentary by Harmon

When faced with contrary data this strong, evolutionists have to be immensely creative in coming up with ways to dodge the implications. Luke J. Harmon, for instance, commenting on this paper in the same issue of PLoS Biology, tries humor. He tinkers with an irrelevant joke by J. B. S. Haldane who, noting the 400,000-some-odd species of Coleoptera, quipped that "God has an inordinate fondness for beetles." Harmon titled his paper, therefore, "An Inordinate Fondness for Eukaryotic Diversity."

The point of his commentary is that this is not really a problem; sure, the study showed that it is "difficult or impossible to predict how many species will be found in a particular clade knowing how long a clade has been diversifying from a common ancestor" -- but one thing evolutionists can take heart about, he assures us: we're slowly becoming ever wiser and more knowledgeable about Darwin's world:

This pattern suggests complex dynamics of speciation and extinction in the history of eukaryotes. Rabosky et al.'s paper represents the latest development in our efforts to understand the Earth's biodiversity at the broadest scales.

Where is the understanding exactly? Evolutionists predicted a trend, and found none. Does labeling the situation "complex " help? Does a drunken sailor's staggering suddenly make sense simply by speaking of it as reflecting a "complex dynamic"?

Harmon praises Rabosky et al. for "the most ambitious study to date" saying, "This provides a remarkably complete view of what we currently know about the species diversity of clades across a huge section of the tree of life." He imagines an escape hatch in the future, saying that their "analysis is not the final chapter" because "the tree of life is still under construction, and the total number of species in some clades is best viewed as an educated guess." Maybe somebody else will find a pattern some day. With more genomes, or with improved species counts, who knows?

"Still, the results in Rabosky et al. are intriguing and will certainly inspire further study, which I expect will be focused on testing more sophisticated mathematical models, beyond the constant-rate birth-death models prevalent today, that might be able to explain patterns in the data." Yes, falsifying evidence is indeed "intriguing." After that, Harmon wanders off into a distracting diversion about another evolutionist's quip, this one by Huxley, who joked about "Santa Rosalia as the patroness of evolutionary studies." Pay no attention; there's no falsification here. Look at this nice shrine!

News Coverage

How did the science news media spin this result? Michael Alfaro, senior author of the paper, works at UCLA, where a press release written by Stuart Wolpert gave the official interpretation for public consumption (for instance, on PhysOrg). "Why evolution has produced 'winners' -- including mammals and many species of birds and fish -- and 'losers' is a major question in evolutionary biology," we're told.

Scientists have often posited that because some animal and plant lineages are much older than others, they have had more time to produce new species (the dearth of crocodiles notwithstanding). This idea -- that time is an important predictor of species number -- underlies many theoretical models used by biologists. However, it fails to explain species numbers across all multi-cellular life on the planet, a team of life scientists reports Aug. 28 in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science.

"We found no evidence of that," said Michael Alfaro, a UCLA associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the new study. "When we look across the tree of life, the age of the group tells us almost nothing about how many species we would expect to find. In most groups, it tells us nothing."

Another idea, that some groups are innately better or worse at producing species, similarly fails to explain differences in species number among all of the major living lineages of plants and animals, the life scientists found.

So far, this is a forthright statement of the findings. Wolpert gives significant space to Alfaro's favorite rescue strategy, that of "adaptive zone carrying capacity" -- the notion that speciation will proceed up to the point where an adaptive zone is filled to its carrying capacity, then will stop. "Most of the groups that we studied have hit their limits," Alfaro said. "Ecological limits can explain the data we see." This is, of course, not an explanation but a post-hoc rationalization.

So despite the despairing tone of the paper, Alfaro finds a little light in the darkness: "The ultimate goal in our field is to have a reconstruction of the entire evolutionary history of all species on the planet," he says. "Here we provide a piece of the puzzle. Our study sheds light on the causal factors of biodiversity across the tree of life."

But in the paper, the three authors jointly considered and rejected adaptive zone carrying capacity as a suitable explanation for the data. The idea of adaptive zones is not new; George Gaylord Simpson coined the phrase in 1953. Adaptive zone carrying capacity was one of several "diversity-dependent processes" the authors investigated that might result in the decoupling of time and diversity they found. The explanation would be that "ecological opportunity influences the tempo and mode of species diversification through time."

A fallacy in this explanation, though, is its assumption that carrying capacity is static: "We may not understand the ecological mechanisms underlying 'carrying capacity dynamics, but we must still wrestle with substantial neontological and paleontological evidence for their existence." The dynamics exist, they mean. Organisms have uncanny abilities to break out of the box and enter new niches, or to rebound after mass extinctions; the explanation, therefore, fails when considered in the long term. It certainly does not explain why one species of tuatara survives in the same adaptive zone as hundreds of species of beetles.

The authors would not have left time-richness decoupling as an unsolved problem if any number of explanations they considered were of any help: "we are not presently aware of any non-biological mechanism that can account for this lack of relationship," they conclude. Maybe in the future someone will find a law-like pattern; for now, it's a failed prediction of Darwin's tree of life that may require a "fundamentally different interpretive paradigm," as yet unknown.

Intelligent design theory holds no fixed view on common descent per se, with some in the ID camp being personally skeptical of the idea and other more accepting. Either way, from an ID perspective, there seems no reason to expect species richness to correlate with time. The data fit well with ID predictions, therefore, but represent a strong disconfirmation of neo-Darwinian predictions. Once again, nature seems to have an inordinate fondness for confounding Darwinians

Less is more.

Primitive?

Stenophlebia amphitrite, a Stunningly Gorgeous Dragonfly from the Upper Jurassic
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Our colleague Günter Bechly, paleontologist and Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, sends along two photographs he took. Take a moment and absorb the beauty of this fossil dragonfly:Dr. Bechly explains what we’re looking at:

It is a large dragonfly of the species Stenophlebia amphitrite from the Upper Jurassic (150 mya) lithographic limestone of Solnhofen in Bavaria, which is the same locality where Archaeopteryx was found. The dragonfly has a wing span of 17 cm (and belongs with other species of the family Stenophlebiidae to an extinct suborder Stenophlebioptera that was established by me. All known species are from the Mesozoic (Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous).
When you see something like that, a creature that is so transparently a work of art, how in the world do you jump to evolutionary explanations dependent exclusively on blind churning?

Dr. Bechly tells his story, as a proponent of the theory of intelligent design, in a clip from  Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines. Find it here.

Design derangement syndrome?

Houston Chronicle, We’ve Got a Problem: Meet Fake News Reporter Andrea Zelinski
John G. West

If you need one more reason why the public’s trust in the news media continues to collapse, consider the recent fake news stories filed by the Houston Chronicle and its agenda-driven reporter Andrea Zelinski. The stories focused on the adoption of revised science standards by the Texas State Board of Education.

Zelinski’s articles portrayed the science standards battle as a struggle to introduce creationism or intelligent design into Texas’s science curriculum. Her stories carried titles like “State ed board reins in science standards hinting at creationism” and “SBOE gives final OK to curb creationism language in science standards.”   Another story began by claiming that the science standards dispute was “rekindling a long-running debate about how much to emphasize creationism in public schools.”

In reality, this year’s debate over science standards in Texas was not about either creationism or intelligent design. It centered on whether the standards should encourage students to evaluate the evidence for various evolutionary claims, many of which are disputed by a growing number of scientists.

For example, should students “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for what natural selection can actually do? Should they “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for universal common ancestry? And should they evaluate existing explanations about the origin of DNA or cellular complexity?

Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific explanations is a key part of the scientific process, and it doesn’t require getting into alternative theories such as intelligent design.

Of course, Discovery Institute supports discussion of intelligent design in the public square and the scientific community. But we don’t advocate that discussion in K-12 public schools.

As I clearly told Zelinski in a phone interview, Discovery Institute is not trying to push intelligent design into public schools, and the Texas science standards don’t deal with intelligent design in any case. For K-12 public education, all we recommend is allowing students to critically evaluate the evidence for the main prongs of modern evolutionary theory.

However, Zelinski did her best to obfuscate our actual position about intelligent design in public education, and she let her personal opposition to our views show through in her slanted writing. Here is what she wrote (emphasis added):

Students should be learning more about evolution, not less, said John West, vice president at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that seeks to discredit evolutionary biology while pushing the non-scientific theory of “intelligent design.” The group, which has an office in Dallas, is urging Texans to tell school board members to keep the words “evaluate” in the standards.

“Our concern is there is an effort to dumb down the standards,” West said. “To dumb down and to cut out what students would actually learn about and we think more science is better, and we think critical thinking and critical analysis is good too, especially when it comes to the origin of to the origin of the first life, where there are a lot of competing views.”
Notice the loaded language Zelinski used to describe Discovery Institute. According to her, we are trying to “discredit” evolutionary biology while “pushing” the “non-scientific theory” of “intelligent design.”

This is not a neutral journalistic description of our work. It is blatant editorializing.

One can easily see this by re-writing her sentence using more neutral language. What if she had described Discovery Institute as “a Seattle-based group focused on critiquing parts of evolutionary biology and advancing the idea that life is intelligently designed”? The impression conveyed to readers would have been vastly different.

Lest one think Zelinski didn’t know what she was doing, compare her slanted description of Discovery Institute with her innocuous description of the far-left Texas Freedom Network (TFN) as “an activist group focused on religious freedom and individual liberties.”

What if Zelinski had instead described TFN as “an activist group that seeks to discredit the ‘religious right’ while pushing a partisan left-wing agenda”? TFN would have been justifiably upset by such a description appearing in a supposedly impartial news story.

As it was, TFN needn’t have worried, because Zelinski was clearly on their side to begin with.

But Zelinski’s slanted description of Discovery Institute isn’t the biggest problem with her report. Far more serious is the critical piece of information she conveniently left out from her interview with me.

Zelinski nowhere acknowledged that Discovery Institute actually opposes inserting intelligent design in K-12 public schools, and so for us, the science standards debate was not about intelligent design.

By failing to disclose this important fact, Zelinski’s statement that we are “pushing” intelligent design clearly misled readers by making it seem we were trying to insert intelligent design into schools through the Texas science standards.

That’s fake news.

Newspapers are in a free-fall throughout the United States as they deal with competition from new forms of media. You’d think that in such an environment they would be trying to improve their coverage and address reader concerns about agenda-driven and biased reporting. Apparently the journalists at the Houston Chronicle have decided not to bother. Some day they may wish they had.

The Watchtower Society's Commentary on "Judgment day"

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·pat′) 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., di′ken; “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., kri′sis and kri′ma) 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.