A Discovery Institute hack watches Cosmos

I told you that the Discovery Institute really hates Cosmos. On Sunday night, Jay Richards, Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, Ph.D. in philosophy and theology, former instructor in apologetics at Biola, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, watched the show and occasionally curled his lip in disdain on Twitter. It was very amusing, and rather revealing. These guys really are just gussied-up creationists.

I can’t help myself. I have to reply to these nonsensical complaints.

On #Cosmos, Neil Degrasse Tyson is recapitulating Darwin’s non sequitur that artificial selection + time = natural selection.

Oh, right: his Twitter name is “FreemarketJay”. You are allowed to laugh.

Cosmos introduced the concept of selection by first describing how dogs were domesticated by selection for a subset of animals that were less fearful of humans and could scavenge from our garbage; we have since selected for variations that produce the great diversity of dog breeds, much of it done over the last few centuries. The lesson: you can get radical biological change from artificial selection in a very short time.

Then Neil deGrasse Tyson explained how you don’t need humans to provide the selection: the environment can also favor different variants, using the example of bear coat colors.

Where was the non sequitur? It was quite clear that the situations were analogous and obvious, and remarkably hard to argue against. Artificial selection demonstrably works, natural selection requires no novel mechanisms, it all hangs together beautifully.

Anyone think Neil Degrasse Tyson will summarize the known evolutionary limitations of random genetic mutations? Nah. #Cosmos

Oh. That’s his objection, that there are some imaginary evolutionary limitations. Yes? What are they? Richards doesn’t say. Go ahead, explain how you can make Great Danes and Chihuahuas by selection from an ancestral generic, wolf-like dog, but you can’t possibly have pigment mutations produce white bears from brown bears.

He won’t be able to. The actual limitations are nothing but the inability of creationists to comprehend a simple process that makes them uncomfortable.

Cool. Dogs evolve into … dogs, and bears…into bears. #Cosmos

If only the dogs had evolved into frogs, and the bears into broccoli, then at last he’d be able to accept evolution. Sorry, guy, evolution predicts that dogs will only evolve into doglike descendants, and that the ancestor of modern dogs and bears was a primitive mammal (but they’re still only mammals!) and before that, primitive tetrapods (but we’re all still only tetrapods!) and before that, primitive animals (but we’re still only animals!).

That Richards would think that is a reasonable objection is just more evidence that he doesn’t understand even the simplest basics of evolution.

On eye evolution, the #Cosmos editors again failed to do a Google search: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1061 …

Cosmos referred to the calculations by Nilsson and Pilger that the morphological changes to transform a flat light sensitive patch into a spherical eye ball with a lens that could form an image on a retina would require conservatively a few hundred thousand generations. They did this by incrementally modeling the shape of an eye is it transformed, determining that a) 1,829 steps with a magnitude of a 1% change in shape were required, and b) calculating the optical acuity at each step, and showing that each 1% change would increase acuity slightly (no backtracking or loss of optical quality was required in any step). They then used reasonable estimates of heritability and phenotypic variance and weak selection to calculate that a 0.005% change in shape in each generation was possible, meaning that you could easily get the whole transformation in 364,000 generations.

At every step they used minimal, conservative estimates for all parameters. The whole point was to demonstrate that this one process could be easily completed in geologically tiny amount of time.

Richards cites an awful attempt at a rebuttal by David Berlinsky, which consists mostly of sneering and posturing and complaining that it was improper to refer to the calculations as a “simulation” (never mind that a computer simulation of the process was produced; the paper describes the calculations). I have to say — why would anyone complain that the Cosmos writers hadn’t made note of a sloppy and pretentious internal document — it was not published anywhere — that actually didn’t refute the content of the Nilsson and Pilger paper in the slightest? Maybe because Richards has a ridiculously inflated view of the importance of his nest of loons in Seattle.

An eyeball isn’t a visual system. #Cosmos

Nor has it ever been claimed to be. They were talking about one piece of the visual system, and demonstrating that natural processes can produce that structure in a fraction of a million years. The Discovery Institute claims that no significant physiological or morphological change can occur at all, so simply demonstrating that making an eyeball from an eyespot is possible effectively refutes the Intelligent Design creationism position.

They’re just moving the goalposts. They say that making an eyeball is impossible; we show that it is, and not that hard, and they then say we have to show that every single step is possible. You know, we can show the molecular basis for light perception is present in single-celled organisms, that all of the molecular pathways are homologous and linked, and that general developmental processes can produce functional connections between sensory cells and visual perception centers of the brain, and they still claim that it requires their magic deity.

I can’t believe how bad #Cosmos is. They must have given up all hope of persuading anyone but the already persuaded.

No, but I’m sure we’ve all given up any hope of persuading the dogmatic, the ignorant, and the obtuse. Someone first has to be willing to look at the evidence, and if you’re up to that, then yes, I think Cosmos can be an effective tool for letting people understand the basics of evolution.

All bets are off for IDiots.

One more. Richards’ latest tweet:

Another confirmation that the universe had a beginning: Astronomers discover echoes from expansion after Big Bang http://reut.rs/1ivSjez

So confirmation of a specific and empirically founded physical theory is going to be used by these kooks as confirmation of their superficial and stupid explanation of the origins of the universe because it supports one trivial observation? The universe had a beginning. So what? The question is how it started, and no, that ain’t in the Bible.

Are you planning to go out to eat today?

We did. My wife and I went out to Mi Mexico in Alexandria for a celebratory lunch (she has put up with me for 34 years! Yay!). It was very good — they have a vegetarian menu and prices were reasonable.

But just before I left, I was reading this terrible site, Sundays Are the Worst, which has a huge collection of stories from restaurant waitstaff about serving the Sunday-after-church crowd. You know where this is going: appallingly rude Christians stiffing people right and left. And then we went to a restaurant.

I think I over-tipped. I felt like I had to compensate for Jesus’ selfish followers.

I’m not willing to trade one woman for the entire membership of CPAC

That’s what I don’t get about American Atheists courting CPAC. I could see it as an attention-getter, to highlight and criticize the right-wing religiosity of an organization of nutbags, but as outreach? No way. Dana Hunter won’t compromise on some things, and trading one Dana Hunter for even a million freakish conservatives wouldn’t be a fair deal.

Amanda Marcotte is bored by the bad arguments from the prolifers. Why do we want dishonest phonies and irrational kooks in our atheism, anyway?

When your name is prefixed by “reality star”…your ideas are immediately suspect

From the first sentence, I could tell that the opinions of Kristin Cavallari were garbage.

Experts warned against the dangers of following celebrity advice after reality star Kristin Cavallari acknowledged Thursday that she and husband Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler decided not to vaccinate their children.

When directly asked whether she was opposed to vaccines during an appearance on the Fox Business Network program, The Independents, Cavallari said, “we don’t vaccinate.” The reason? “I’ve read too many books about autism and the studies,” she said.

Also, “Chicago Bears quarterback” does not confer any credibility in matters of medicine on Jay Cutler. These are people that should be laughed at.

But then the article cites a doctor:

Homefirst Health Services, meanwhile — if that’s what Cavallari meant — is a Rolling Meadows-based pediatrics practice that embraces home births and shuns vaccines. Dr. Mayer Eisenstein and his practice were the subject of a 2009 Chicago Tribune investigation that shed light on the use of potentially dangerous alternative autism treatments. On the Homefirst website, Eisenstein maintains that “personal religious convictions, not scientific studies, are the main reasons, upon which to base your vaccination decision.”

Is there no accreditation process for medical clinics? How does one that refuses to carry out basic preventive medicine for “religious” reasons, manage to stay in business without the medical establishment — or at least the insurance companies — stomping on them?

The only sensible words in this article…

Alexander said Cavallari’s comments illustrate the problems with celebrity spokespeople, namely that they often have their facts wrong. “Celebrity status does not indicate scientific expertise,” he said.

Missing the point of Giordano Bruno

I’m seeing a lot of silly carping about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos — almost all of it is focused on the story of Bruno told in the first episode. The apologists for religion are upset: how dare a science program point out the poisonous influence of religion? Bruno wasn’t really a scientist anyway, so he shouldn’t count! Peter Hess of the NCSE offers up a good example of apologetics.

Unfortunately, the series premiere risks squandering that opportunity through a combination of misleading history and reliance on an antiquated narrative of inevitable conflict between science and religion—and the Catholic Church in particular—that simply is not borne out by the facts. A generation of careful scholarship has given us a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the long, rich, and complex relationship between religion and the sciences. This latest Cosmos reflects none of that historiography, presenting us instead with what is quite literally a cartoon version of the life story of someone who was not a scientist. Missing were the stories of Catholic astronomers such as Copernicus [delayed publication out of fear; only saw his ideas in print on his deathbed; book was prohibited by the Catholic Church in 1616] and Galileo [tried by the Vatican, forced to recant, spent the end of his life under house arrest], Protestants such as Brahe [Brahe was a geocentrist — a geoheliocentrist, actually] and Kepler [Did you know his mother was tried and imprisoned for witchcraft?] and Newton[Also a mystic, Bible-prophecy walloping, fanatical religious person], or Fr. George Lemaître, proposer of the Big Bang.

Whenever I see one of these guys throw out noise like a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the long, rich, and complex relationship between religion and the sciences, I want to ask…what was nuanced and sophisticated about setting a human being on fire? I also think his list of famous scientists overlooks an important trend: between Copernicus and Lemaître, we are seeing the steady triumph of science over religion, that we see the Church forced to reduce the severity of its enforcement of dogma in the face of the overwhelming success of science in accurately describing the world. The Church was dragged kicking and screaming into an era where you don’t get to murder people for disagreeing with your dogma.

It is odd therefore that Cosmos focuses almost exclusively on the marginal case of Giordano Bruno. Of course, I am not defending Bruno’s persecution and death—no decent human being now would ever condone burning a person alive for any reason. Moreover, in 2014 we view legitimate theological dissent very diffferently than did our ancestors.

But the circumstances were quite different 400 years ago. According to the 16th century Italian legal code and the customs of Renaissance politics, Bruno was judged by an ecclesiastical court to be an obdurate heretic for refusing to cease in promulgating his theological ideas. As such he was deserving of capital punishment and was turned over for execution by the civil arm in Rome. In the 21st century we inhabit a very different era, a religiously pluralistic age of largely secular states in which the nature and exercise of authority are vastly different than they were in Post-Reformation Italy.

Is anyone else getting that queasy feeling, like when you read about William Lane Craig justifying the murder of babies by ‘Israeli’ soldiers? Hey, it was OK to set people on fire in 1600! Why are you complaining?

I agree that we live in a very different era in the 21st century. Give the credit to secularism, rationalism, and the Enlightenment, though, because fucking religion fought every progressive change every step of the way, with liberal religion dogging along by discarding parts of the religious nonsense of previous generations.

I don’t think it odd at all that the series brought Giordano Bruno to the fore. This is not at all a show for scientists, but to bring a little bit of the awe and wonder of science to everyone. I think it was a good idea to use a non-scientist as an example of how dogma oppresses and harms everyone. Bruno was an idealist, a mystic, an annoying weirdo, a heretic, and for that, the Catholic Church set him on fire.

Do I need to repeat that? Bruno was tortured to an agonizing death for his beliefs. Full stop. Don’t even try to rationalize that.

Furthermore, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s own words, transcribed by Wesley Elsberry, are crystal clear on the point he was making.

Giordano Bruno lived in a time when there was no such thing as the separation of church and state, or the notion that freedom of speech was a sacred right of every individual. Expressing an idea that didn’t conform to traditional belief could land you in deep trouble. Recklessly, Bruno returned to Italy. Maybe he was homesick, but still he must have known that his homeland was one of the most dangerous places in Europe he could possibly go. The Roman Catholic Church maintained a system of courts known as the Inquisition, and its sole purpose was to investigate and torment anyone who dared voice views that differed from theirs. It wasn’t long before Bruno fell into the clutches of the thought police.

The Church maintained an Inquisition to torture people who didn’t follow Catholic dogma in thought. Let’s not hide that fact. Let’s not pretend it was OK because it was 400 years ago. Let’s not say it was irrelevant because many of their victims, like Bruno, were not scientists. I think it’s a rather important point that the progress of science requires that we not set people who disagree with us on fire.

Wesley makes a very good point at the end.

The point “Cosmos” was making was more basic. At the level of telling people about science, we don’t need a lot of historical nuance about the Inquisition: what they did was so far out of bounds of the way discourse needs to be handled that simply noting the historical divergence is sufficient. “Cosmos” did that, plainly told people they were doing that, and, sadly enough, a lot of people of otherwise lofty intellect managed not to take the point.

I will also disagree with Hess. There is a conflict between science and religion. Somehow, these people think that the historical evidence of people leaving behind their antiquated religious ideas and gradually adapting to a more secular view of the world is evidence that religion and science are compatible.

You know, I’d heard this vague euphemism that the church “immobilized his tongue” to prevent Bruno from speaking heresy on the way to the stake, but I didn’t know how. The answer was provided in the comments:

[on the way to the stake, Feb 19, 1600] As the parade moved on, Bruno became animated and excited. He reacted to the mocking crowds, responding to their yells with quotes from his books and the sayings of the ancients. His comforters, the Brotherhood of St. John, tried to quiet the exchange, to protect Bruno from yet further pain and indignity, but he ignored them. And so after a few minutes the procession was halted by the Servants of Justice. A jailer was brought forward and another two held Bruno’s head rigid. A long metal spike was thrust through Bruno’s left cheek, pinning his tongue and emerging through the right cheek. Then another spike was rammed vertically through his lips. Together, the spikes formed a cross. Great sprays of blood erupted onto his gown and splashed the faces of the brotherhood close by. Bruno spoke no more. … as the fire began to grip, the Brothers of Pity of St. John the Beheaded tried one last time to save the man’s soul. Risking the flames, one of them leaned into the fire with a crucifix, but Bruno merely turned his head away. Seconds later, the fire caught his robe and seared his body, and above the hissing and crackling of the flames could be heard the man’s muffled agony.

Yeah, that’s what the apologists want to dismiss as irrelevant.

Don’t tell people how to feel about abortion

Stephanie Zvan quotes Massimo Pigliucci:

To decide to get an abortion is always (or, at least, should always be) a very difficult and emotional step, precisely because it has significant ethical consequences.

Why? Philosopher, examine your assumptions.

There is no particular reason abortion should be difficult; it’s certainly less fraught than pregnancy. I could see saying that getting pregnant ought to be a difficult and emotional step — lots of commitment and responsibility involved — and that if you’ve made that decision, ending a wanted pregnancy is rightly a very difficult step. But one you don’t want? That is going to be an obstacle to living your life well? That ought to be an easy decision, except, of course, for the weight of tradition and guilt artificially imposed on us.

So don’t try to dictate how women ought to feel about abortion. The hysterics lining the walkways in front of family planning clinics, waving their bloody signs, are not representative. The patients can be casual and unconcerned as is possible for a simple outpatient procedure. Or they can be distraught and hesitant. Those are their feelings.

And what, exactly, are the significant ethical consequences? I missed that one, too.

By a conservative estimate, 40% of conceptions end in spontaneous abortions. Should we feel concerned? Is this something to ponder as a crime against humanity? What kind of moral compromise must a woman commit in order to be rid of an undesirable pregnancy? Should we be discouraging women from getting abortions, or telling them to be ashamed for their ethical lapse?

Man, that one sentence sure contains a lot of presumption that needs to be unpacked. Maybe we need a philosopher to puzzle it all out.

Hovind replies

Well, this isn’t going to happen. He rejects my insistence on equal profit sharing — you know, there would be TWO of us in this debate — blows right past my demand that the topic be strongly and narrowly focused, and babbles away with his usual demented hamster routine…which is a foreshadowing of what any debate with him would be like. Not interested. I wasn’t that interested to begin with, but I might have been willing if I thought I could get him to focus.

He does say he’s found a creationist to throw away money on Ray Comfort DVDs for the entire student body at Morris, so that’s a win. Coasters for everyone!

3-13-14 Response to self proclaimed atheist PZ Myers.

On 3-9-14 I sent out a blog (posted on 2peter3.com) titled “Open Letter to self proclaimed “atheist” PZ Myers of U of Minnesota- Morris. My blog had 18 numbered paragraphs.

A day or two later (I don’t have that data) he responded on his blog but I don’t have his web address either. It may be freethoughts.com/pharyngula but I’m not sure. Sorry about that. He at least referred to my paragraph numbers so below is my answer to his “A few comments from me”:

I’ll use my original paragraph numbers for ease of reference. Sorry I can’t cut and paste and insert here to make it easier to follow.

First- I was totally unaware that quote marks ” ” would scare you or anyone! I’ve never heard them called “scare quotes” in my 61 years! Is this new? I always use them for emphasis or irony. It is NOT “Rational” to believe in evolution.

1&3- I think a simple search of the web or a survey of your students would show that you do indeed push your views on others. Why do you post comments at all? I cannot “subscribe” to any blogs here but I’ll have someone do it for me. Thanks for the info.

4. PZ, you don’t “pay attention” to LOTS of details! Like the IMPOSSIBILITY of your religion being true. Dogs produce dogs. Always, no exceptions. You have a gift for not seeing the “details” that prove every aspect of the evolutionism religion wrong. I suspect this is because you like the idea of freedom from God and His Word and His authority over your life.

Notice you did NOT say, “I’m sorry I published false information about you Kent.”

5&6. I have not started any of the legal fights. They brought all this to me and I’m just defending myself as anyone should. You are “not concerned with the details” of real science that demonstrate the evolution religion to be stupid either.

7. You are either lying (again) or unable to understand simple English here. I have NEVER been convicted of fraud. There was no fraud in my case. You (and the folks at “Rational” Wiki) seem to like that word for some reason but it does not apply. Words have meanings PZ. You (and the rationalwiki folks) seem to play fast and loose with words. Like the word “science” for example. You freely include a lot of religion in with your science. I think “fraud” may apply to a person who claims to teach “biology” yet routinely mixes his religious beliefs in class about all life forms having a common ancestor or humans being related to bananas and humans being a fish (as you stated in the “Evolution vs. God” DVD). Maybe “charlatan” is a better word for these false teachers. Maybe the courts will explain to the folks at “Rational” Wiki that words have meanings and it is not good to falsely accuse someone of the crime of fraud (unless you have proof).

The government was wrong in my case as is shown in many of the filings posted on 2peter3.com. The reason we even have appellate courts and a Supreme Court is precisely because the lower courts can get it wrong. Being convicted by one person does not prove guilt. 6 million Jews were convicted and executed in Germany in WW II. Does that prove they were guilty of some crime? Watch the news. Often cases are overturned on new evidence. Sometimes many years after the conviction. Simple history 101 will show many examples. I know you are rejoicing that the lower court ruled against me just as Jesus’s enemies rejoiced when he was convicted and sentenced. Well, it’s NOT over. If I DO get the case overturned and it is admitted by a higher court that the lower court erred and I did NOT commit a crime will you also admit it or will you then think the higher court erred?

I have learned a LOT of things from all this! Read my previous blogs over the last 7 years to glean some if you like.

“Lake of remorse?” Should I be sorry I took my own money out of my own bank to pay my own bills? Read the Complaint of Misconduct against the AUSA in my case filed in the Denver court and tell me which of the 3 charges I should be remorseful for please.

8. One of your own fellow travelers corrected you on this one. “Evidences” is fine. BTW- I notice you used “scare quotes” here. Twice! It worked! I’m scared! :)

9&10. Be specific. You give a nebulous accusation about Ray Comfort lying and quote mining yet give no specifics. Anyone can watch the DVD and see you make a fool of yourself. No need for quote mining. You are your own worst enemy. A wise man once said, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” BTW-someone beat me to the 1900 students. They will all be getting the DVD soon and see the truth for themselves. This might be a good time for a long sabbatical for you. :) You may not want to show your face around the university for a while once they all see that one.

BTW- Send me the specific spots where Ray lied or quote mined please.

11-14. My offer stands as is. I have been more than generous in the terms. You are welcome to sell copies of the DVD but I am not going to hire someone to keep track of the ones I sell just so you can get a %. I didn’t ask for a % of the ones you sell or your “profits.” If you are so smart and feel so confident you will win the debate then why can’t you rest assured that people world wide will run to you to buy a copy? If you indeed decide to sell it I will add your web site as a source where people can get it. There are MANY who claim to be “atheists” and “agnostics” who would LOVE to see you (or anyone) beat me in a debate on creation vs. evolutionism. Watch ANY of the 20 debate dvds on you tube to see how they did. :)

As stated in my 3-11 post—I’ll pay my expenses to come to your turf, pay to video it, pay you as stated and give you a master copy to sell copies from for the rest of your life. I will not sell them for you. If this “counter offer” was the loophole you added so you could worm out of doing the debate at all and save face then go ahead and back out. “Rational” (hope I didn’t scare you with the quotes-didn’t mean to. I just do it for emphasis as most people do) folks will understand the real reason why you refused.

15. Once we clearly define the slippery term “evolution” into its 6 natural divisions as I have done scores of times (see DVD #4 for example) it is obvious to anyone with one eye and half a brain that the first 5 divisions/ levels/ meanings of the word as taught in your university are 100% religious! You have to BELIEVE they can happen by FAITH in the face of zero/zip/nada scientific evidence or you have to BELIEVE that they happened “long ago and far away” where no one can observe them. NO ON has ever seen matter create itself from nothing. Before you can have ANY “evolution” you must have something to evolve. It’s common sense 101. The text books at the university where you teach do indeed proclaim the big bang and matter coming from nothing. I’ll copy them when I come and show you and the students. If it is SCIENCE that matter can come from nothing-let’s do it again in a lab. I want to see it this time.

The next 4 meanings of evolution: chemical, stellar, organic and macro are just as religious and have NEVER been OBSERVED. Variations within the same kind of plant or animal happen all the time like your stickle back fish example. As Ray pointed out-they are still fish!

I know there is no chance that you will admit it or even understand it but any “evolution” above the level of minor changes within kinds only takes place in the fertile imagination of those who faithfully believe it does. Even the little boy could see- The king hath no clothes! You need to sue the “tailors” who sold you that dumb religious evolution suit you so proudly wear in public. Aren’t you embarrassed to believe you came from a rock? BTW-congrats on having an asteroid named after you. Is that an ancestor too?

What “evidence” do you teach in your class that would show scientifically that humans are related to bananas as you said on the DVD? If it can be shown there are some sections of the complex DNA code of humans and bananas that seem to be similar that would not prove a common ancestor. A freshman law student could see through that! It is just as much evidence for a common DESIGNER! Do you mention THAT to your students? The lug nuts from a Vet will fit on other Chevy products. Does that prove they both evolved from a skate board?

16. Read your answer #17 and see who is acting like they are 12 years old. BTW- in the military officers can be disciplined for “language unbecoming an officer.” Doesn’t your university have any standards of conduct or language for the teachers who represent the school? You need a committee to oversee stuff like this and discipline those who use 4th grade insults. Maybe a bar of soap?

Words have meanings as Rational Wiki may soon find out. As one ol’ country boy said, “Huntin ain’t no fun when the rabbit has a gun.” Maybe they thought they should kick a man when he was down in prison and unable to defend himself?

17. I don’t know if anyone will ever “win you over” but exposing your lies may help prevent you from ruining the students who sit in your class. I’ve debated 100 self proclaimed evolutionists and can’t claim to have won any of them over. I do it to expose lies, present truth and help students NOT be brainwashed or taking in by the slick sales pitch guys like you have. We have gotten thousands of testimony letters from students who saw the debates and saw the truth.

18. Your income is at least partially based on a tax funded institution-U of M. I feel certain you could not make a living in the real world without any government help, grants etc. That’s part of the reason why you suggested what you did in #11-14. I produce a product people want and I don’t get funding from the government to do it. The evolution you teach, even if it were true, is 100% useless in the corporate world. Nobody will pay for it. It has no commercial value. A doctor needs to know real science to do surgery not the junk science presented in evolution classes.

Again (sigh) I have never been convicted of being a “con artist” but I’m sure it makes you feel better to act 12 (see #16) and call names rather than deal with real science and the issues.

Contact Marianne to schedule a debate with the terms I already offered if you are brave enough. :)

Kent Hovind

I didn’t come from no monkey, updated

I was looking over the Discovery Institute’s Evolution News and Views site, prior to forgetting about it. I mentioned that I am forced to revamp my email handling and was going to be blocking a lot of noise from my work address, and as I was reviewing what domains I needed to allow through, I noticed that boy-howdy, I get a lot of crappy spam from the Discovery Institute (all of which is now getting blocked). So I actually bothered to go through one of their links and see what they’re babbling about now.

General impression: the Discovery Institute is really obsessed with Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. They’re flailing about angrily about how it’s just bad and awful and a serious threat. Good work, Neil deGrasse Tyson, you’re obviously doing something right!

The other thing that has them worked up, though, surprised me a little bit: they’re kind of peeved that scientists keep pointing to this evidence that humans and chimpanzees are close relatives, and they throw around a lot of sciencey words trying to cast doubt on the idea that we’re related. They don’t come out and openly deny it, exactly — but it’s still the stupid old yokel’s denial that they didn’t come from no monkey, stated a little more ornately to make it sound less stupid. They failed; it still sounds stupid. But have no fear, they’ve put their Top Man and Chief Scienceologist, Casey Luskin, on the job.

Oh, wait. That makes it even stupider.

It should be pointed out first that ID does not have an “official” position on common descent. Guided common descent would be compatible with intelligent design. However, many ID theorists do question the evidence offered for universal shared ancestry.

Scratch an ID theorist, and what do you find? Just another dumb evolution denier. Common descent, and in particular the close relationship between humans and other apes, is not in question at all, but the Discovery Institute can’t even muster an official position on it. Other basic science questions the Discovery Institute will not say a word about: the age of the earth, whether the human race was reduced to an 8 person bottleneck by a big flood 4,000 years ago, Jesus: magic man or genetic engineer?, and just how ignorant is Casey Luskin, anyway?

The way Luskin questions the shared ancestry of humans and chimpanzees is to simply dump, with virtually no explanation, lists of legitimate scientific papers that show various common genetic properties. Codon frequency can affect transcription rates, so synonymous changes in nucleotides of a sequence may have phenotypic effects; yes, this is true. Position effects can also affect phenotype; this is also true — translocations, movement of a chunk of DNA from one location to a different one, can modify gene expression. Pseudogenes aren’t always free from selectional constraints, and sometimes also modulate the expression of other genes — yeppers. These are also all basic facts that we’ve known for decades, that have been worked out by scientists, not creationists, and that have absolutely no relevance to the question of whether chimpanzees and humans are closely related. They say that there are many complicated ways in which variation can arise in a lineage, that it’s difficult to reduce the degree of difference between two species to a single number, but everyone who does any bioinformatics at all already knows that.

For instance, here are two sequences. How different are they from one another? Can you give me a simple number that summarizes the variation?

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J

1-2-3-4-A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-5-6-7-8-9-10-I-J

Biologists are already intimately familiar with the difficulty of describing the variation in sequence between species. If it were just a matter of a string of DNA accumulating point mutations, it would be relatively easy, and we could simply measure how many positions had acquired a novel nucleotide, but mutations can be all kinds of other things, like translocations or inversions or deletions or duplications. So Casey Luskin high-handedly informing us that measuring variation is more difficult than just enumerating a linear series of nucleotide changes is absolutely nothing new, and telling us that pairwise comparisons are complex, therefore we should doubt the relationship between two primates, is utterly bogus and logically fallacious.

The question should be, “if we compare the differences between chimpanzee and human genomes, messy and complicated as they are, are they less different from one another than, say, the human and gorilla genomes? Or the human and mouse genomes? Or the human and fly genomes?” Just comparing any two species can only tell you that they have differences and similarities; you need to do multiple comparisons between different species and an outgroup to get a feel for the relative magnitude of differences.

Luskin’s only approach, carried to an excruciating degree, is to simply say there sure are a lot of differences between humans and chimpanzees (six million years of divergence will do that), therefore it is reasonable to question their relatedness. Yeah, and my brother is a few inches taller than I am and has red hair, therefore we can’t possibly be related.

Casey Luskin isn’t the only IDiot on staff at IDiot Central. They also have Ann Gauger. She does exactly the same thing, citing a Science article that discusses the difficulties of quantifying the differences between genomes. It also points out that the subtle differences can be immensely significant, which Gauger makes much of.

Here are some large-scale differences that get overlooked in the drive to assert our similarity. Our physiology differs from that of chimps. We do not get the same diseases, our brain development is different, even our reproductive processes are different. Our musculoskeletal systems are different, permitting us to run, to throw, to hold our heads erect. We have many more muscles in our hands and tongues that permit refined tool making and speech.

Golly, yes. We’re different from chimpanzees. We do things they don’t, and they do things we don’t. My brother has red hair, and mine is brown. None of this is controversial, or in any way challenges the idea of relatedness or degree of relatedness. To do that, you have to compare multiple lineages and quantify all these variations — we go beyond simple nucleotide counts, for instance, to ask how many duplications? How many regulatory changes? How many deletions? And when we measure those, doing more than just asking how many bases are different between two different genes, we also get measures of relatedness. And they line up!

Gauger notably fails to refer to the figure in the article she cites.

Throughout evolution, the gain (+) in the number of copies of some genes and the loss (–) of others have contributed to human- chimp differences.

Throughout evolution, the gain (+) in the number of copies of some genes and the loss (–) of others have contributed to human- chimp differences.

Why, Ann, why? Because it actually demolishes your whole argument by demonstrating degrees of similarity between different species using a different index, the number of gene duplications and deletions? If you want to question chimp/human propinquity, you don’t get to simply ignore the data we use to justify that.

But of course, Gauger wants to argue that the unique attributes of humans are somehow especially special and deserve special consideration — that they completely set us apart from other animals.

Going beyond the physical, we have language and culture. We are capable of sonnets and symphonies. We engage in scientific study and paint portraits. No chimp or dolphin or elephant does these things. Humans are a quantum leap beyond even the highest of animals. Some evolutionary biologists acknowledge this, though they differ in their explanations for how it happened.

You know, I would agree that we carry out certain things to a greater degree than other animals — we do have more elaborate language, more intricate technologies, much more complex art. But other animals exhibit curiosity, playfulness, exploration, communication, and we can look at a chimpanzee, for instance, and see attributes that we’ve amplified and expanded. The roots of our humanity are patent in other species, and we are not qualitatively unique. Furthermore, other species have abilities we don’t. Can you sing under water and have your music transmitted over hundreds of miles of ocean? Can you wash your car with your nose? Aren’t you a little bit embarrassed by the puniness of your teeth?

But Gauger is oblivious to the astounding beauty of other organisms — it’s all about us.

In truth, though, we are a unique, valuable, and surprising species with the power to influence our own futures by the choices we make. If we imagine ourselves to be nothing more than animals, then we will descend to the level of animalism. It is by exercising our intellects, and our capacity for generosity, foresight, and innovation, all faculties that animals lack, that we can face the challenges of modern life.

Generosity? Has Ann Gauger never had a dog?

As for innovation, yeah, I agree. Humans do have some novelties. Here’s a paper about the de novo origin of human protein-coding genes, that compared those chimpanzee and human genomes looking for just the unique genes in the human lineage (this is only one measure of difference, of course; they are not looking at location or sequence comparisons, just what genes are brand spankin’ new and not shared at all with chimps). They found a few.

Many new genes, generated by diverse mechanisms including gene duplication, chimeric origin, retrotransposition, and de novo origin, are specifically expressed or function in the testes. Henrik Kaessmann hypothesized that the testis is a catalyst and crucible for the birth of new genes in animals. First, the testes is the most rapidly evolving organ due in part to its roles in sperm competition, sexual conflict, and reproductive isolation. Second, Henrik Kaessmann speculated that the chromatin state in spermatocytes and spermatids should facilitate the initial transcription of newly arisen genes. The reason for this is that there is widespread demethylation of CpG enriched promoter sequences and the presence of modified histones in spermatocytes and spermatids, causing an elevation of the levels of components of the transcriptional machinery, permitting promiscuous transcription of nonfunctional sequences, including de novo originated genes.

Behold my ball sack, noble repository of all that is precious and special and extraordinary and exceptional in mankind. How come the creationists never have time to praise the mighty testicle, and are always going on and on about sonnets and symphonies and such?

I am quite comfortable with my status as an animal. I have a lot of respect for other organisms, and I can also recognize traits that are particularly human. Why this puts creationists on edge is a mystery: I just blame it on their ignorance.