Category Evolution

ID at Cornell

Allen MacNeill, at
Cornell,
will be teaching a course this summer entitled
Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?.

Telic Thoughts has picked up on it, and MacNeill has chimed in in the comments. Go read them.

Judging by the course description and reading list (which includes books by Behe and Dembski), and MacNeill’s comments, it appears that this may be the fair “teach both sides” course that creationists have been demanding for some time. I also suspect that the outcome may not be one that they like, but I guess we’ll see.

Free Market Economics and Natural Selection

I’ve long thought that there are parallels between evolution by
natural selection and free market economics. In the first case,
mutations and recombination provide a variety of traits in a
population, and natural selection ruthlessly culls those less able to
survive and reproduce. In the second case, individuals come up with
lots and lots of ideas, are free to implement them, and the market
rewards those with successful ideas, and ruthlessly punishes the
unsuccessful ones.

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“We pay the teachers’ salary…”

One argument that crops up from time to time in anti-evolutionist circles is, “Teachers should teach Intelligent Design if that’s what the community wants. We pay the teachers’ salary, after all.”

I’ve finally put my finger on what was bugging me about this. It’s exactly the same as saying, “My doctor should tell me those chest pains are just gas, not cancer. I pay his salary, after all.”

Music and Evo Devo

If you wanted to evolve a musical composition — or better yet, if you wanted to evolve a piece of software that could write music on demand — how would you do it?

I came up with the following approach after reading Sean Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful.

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PZ Makes the Big Time

The front-page article in the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages is about PZ Myers. It answers the burning question that I’ve been wondering about for ages: what does “PZ” stand for?

Oh, and it also says what a pharyngula is.

Behe Disproves Irreducible Complexity

Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has an article ponting out how Behe’s one and only published research article on ID shows that IC isn’t all that improbable at all.

I read that testimony, but somehow never connected the dots as Ed did.

A Handy Reference Chart

I just ran across a weblog article that complains about the media confusing creationists and intelligent design advocates, so I thought I’d present a handy-dandy chart to clear up any confusion:
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Behe Part 3: The Big Flop

Under cross-examination, Michael Behe continued denying that Pandas means what it so clearly says, e.g.:

Q And that s the text that says, “Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency.” Correct?
A Yes.
Q It talks about the life beginning abruptly, not just appearing abruptly, correct?
A Well, that s certainly the word it used, but we can ask, how do we know it began abruptly? The only way that we know it began abruptly is through the fossil record.
Q But beginning is different than appearances in the fossil record, correct, Professor Behe?
A I don t take it to mean that way, no.

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Behe Part 2: Pomo vs. Buzzsaw

Michael Behe’s cross-examination started well. He answered the first four questions with as much confidence and aplomb as when he was answering the planned and rehearsed questions at the direct examination. For the record, those questions were:

  1. How are you?
  2. Professor Behe, do you have a copy of your deposition and expert report up there with you?
  3. And I saw that you had a copy of Pandas, but do you have a copy of Darwin’s Black Box with you?
  4. Professor Behe, there are many many peer-reviewed articles regarding the Big Bang theory, correct?

After that, it was all downhill.

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Behe: the Bore Before the Storm

Call me a wonk if you like, but I actually slogged through the Dover trial transcripts for Michael Behe’s testimony. I do hope you appreciate, gentle readers, the sacrifices I make for you.

The nutshell version: Is Intelligent Design science that should be taught in school? It depends on what your definition of “is” is.

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