The Cool Blue Blog

God and Science

Cassandra over at Villainous Company tips me off to a piece about Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute who is promoting his new book in which says he found God though science.

THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.

Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.

His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith.

What age old debate is that? There is only debate if you decide your faith conflicts with the body of scientific knowledge. And in that case, it's a one sided debate 'cause science isn't arguing.

“One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins, 56.

“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.

But while working with human DNA allowed Dr Collins to “glimpse at the workings of God”, it not require him to abandon science. Of course, this puts him at odds with the Ann Coulter's of the world who disavow evolution. She makes this point clear in her new book "Godless"

Cybercast News Service: Most people consider evolution to be a branch of science, or at least a scientific theory, yet in "Godless," you refer to it as a "cult" and a "fetish." What is your basis for calling it that?

Ann Coulter: There is no evidence that it is true. The fossil record contradicts it, and it is a theory that cannot be disproved. Whatever happens is said to "prove" evolution. This is the very definition of a pseudoscience, like astrology. (Of course, I would say that. I'm just a Capricorn, aren't I?)

Cybercast News Service: Creationism is not considered a science because it can't be observed or empirically tested. You assert in your book that the theory of evolution has the same problems. Why then has the U.S. public school system been willing to accept the theory of evolution, but snubbed creationism?

Ann Coulter: Because evolution is the official state religion. Although it is possible to believe in God and evolution, it is not possible to not believe in God without believing in evolution -- otherwise, atheists have no explanation for why we are here. Thus, it's very important for the liberal clergy to force small school children to believe in a discredited mystery religion from the 19th century -- evolution -- in order to prepare them to believe in the nonexistence of God, one of the main goals of the American public education system.

Of course, the above shows that both questioner and questioned are clueless about science. But Dr Collins is both a scientist and believer and succinctly states his case

“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.

“Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get.”

 

Science can not dispute the existence of God, it can only dispel myths about God. And that it does quite effectively.

Intelligence wins

This just in

The Dover school board on Tuesday rescinded its policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes, two weeks after a federal judge found the concept was religious and not scientific.

There was no discussion by members of the Dover Area School Board before the voice vote Tuesday night.

2006 is looking up already

Intelligent response

Paul Mirecki, a University of Kansas religious studies professor wrote online that

he planned to teach intelligent design as mythology in an upcoming course. He wrote it would be a "nice slap" in the "big fat face" of fundamentalists.

In fact, the class was planned and reported on widely

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

"Creationism is mythology," Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."

It seems, Mr Mirecki's online activities torpedoed the class

The remarks caused an uproar, Mirecki apologized, and the university announced last week the class would be canceled.

But that wasn't enough for the supporters of Intelligent Design, they had to give the professor a beating as well

Lt. Kari Wempe, a spokeswoman for the Douglas County Sheriff's Department, said a deputy was dispatched to Lawrence Memorial Hospital after receiving a call around 7 a.m. regarding a battery.

She said Mirecki reported he was attacked around 6:40 a.m. in rural Douglas County south of Lawrence. Mirecki told the Journal-World he was driving to breakfast when he noticed the men tailgating him in a pickup truck.

"I just pulled over hoping they would pass, and then they pulled up real close behind," he said. "They got out, and I made the mistake of getting out."

He said the men beat him on the head, shoulders and back with their fists, and possibly a metal object.

Wempe said Mirecki drove himself to the hospital.

Intelligent response; someone disagrees with you and you beat him up?

I can understand the Professor's frustration. His decision to put together the class was a response to the boneheads on the Kansas Board of Education who in their infinite wisdom decided "to include more criticism of evolution in science standards for elementary and secondary pupils" which just goes to show that you do not need to be educated to serve on the board of education in Kansas or anywhere else in the US.

It is clear that Mirecki went a little over the top in his online scribblings when he wrote

"The fundies (fundamentalists) want it all taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category mythology."

Mirecki addressed the message to "my fellow damned" and signed off with: "Doing my part to (tick) off the religious right, Evil Dr. P."

The point of a University class is not to "tick off" any group but to inform people. Calling Intelligent Design mythology is informational. But his email framed the effort in confrontational terms. The ensuing response to this caused him to cancel the class and issue an apology.

"I made a mistake in not leading by example, in this student organization e-mail forum, the importance of discussing differing viewpoints in a civil and respectful manner," he said.

True 'nuff.

Hopefully cops will catch his attackers and they'll be able to think about being "civil and respectful" while spending some time in the hoosegow.

The Dinosaur Ark

Today is the first day of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District.

Back in 2004, the Dover school board held a series of meetings in which they discussed putting creationism into the science classes. Former board member Bill Buckingham was reported to have said, “Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?” Later, Buckingham vehemently denied making that statement in discussion of the science curricula. The school board first approved the acceptance of nearly sixty copies of the “intelligent design” textbook, Of Pandas and People (OPAP), for the school library. They then also adopted an “intelligent design policy”, that was to inform the students in ninth-grade science classes about “intelligent design” and the availability of OPAP in the library. Following this, several parents sued the DASD over the “intelligent design policy”. After several months of discovery, depositions, and other legal paperwork, the suit is now ready for trial.

The defense attorney would like people to believe this is a case about freedom of thought and liberalism.

"This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda," argued Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Dover's modest curriculum change embodies the essence of liberal education." The center, which lobbies for what it sees as the religious freedom of Christians, is defending the school district.

While the challenger puts his case this way

"They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its scientific validity," said Eric Rothschild, an attorney representing eight families who are challenging the decision of the Dover Area School District.

Well that pretty much sums things up. Do we want science taught in Science class or should we just make stuff up and teach people that? Of course the problem is that the supporters of "Intelligent Design" are attempting to get around the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by presenting this religious proposition as science, not religion.

Alternative science, that is, as if there were such a thing.

But to do so, the would have to show that Intelligent Design really is an alternative theory within the scientific community. But there are some obstacles to this.

Brown University professor Kenneth Miller, the first witness called by the plaintiffs, said pieces of the theory of evolution are subject to debate, such as where gender comes from, but told the court: "There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory."

On the other hand, he said, "Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community."

Um, yep, that's one of the obstacles. Of course, supporters of ID will attempt to subvert this testimony by calling up "Scientists" who will claim ID is for real. Now if I were running things for the challengers I would call to the stand Rusty Carter.

Who's Rusty Carter?

Rusty Carter owns a company called Biblically Correct which hosts tours of natural history museums for kids. But as the tour guide, he puts his own spin on what it is they are seeing. Rusty doesn't deny the existence of Dinosaurs, he just fits them into his interpretation of the Bible's historical context.

God made dinosaurs on the sixth day of Creation, the same day he made people, according to Rusty Carter's interpretation of the Bible.

"The word 'dinosaur' was not invented back then, but in Job 38, there's two large creatures, behemoth and leviathan..."

And, of course, they made it onto Noah's Ark because

all the animals did. He suspects Noah brought baby dinosaurs

Right. But how did the Dinosaurs die?

the creatures succumbed to overhunting or climate change.

Rusty and his colleagues are just trying to add a little "liberalism" to their science curriculum

"There's a lot of people asking questions about science," Carter said.

Tour leaders say they're trying to point out flaws in the "so-called science" of evolution, which contradicts their own understanding of Creation

As if putting dinosaurs on the Ark and having them killed off by overhunting isn't a flaw.

"Intelligent" Design indeed.

One of the things that a scientific theory must be able to do is allow scientists to predict results. So, for instance,

When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins.

But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.

If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.

"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project.

Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.

Intelligent Design has not, and can not predict anything. More importantly, you can not disprove the theory which is another fundamental aspect of science.

Without being able to do these two things, predict and disprove, at a minimum, it isn't science.

But clearly, the School Board in Dover, and Rusty Carter, missed that day in science class.

 

The Blind Watchmaker

Where d'you get those peepers

       

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Dawkins, Richard, Where d'you get those peepers?., Vol. 8, New Statesman & Society, 06-16-1995, pp 29.

       

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Creationism has enduring appeal, and the reason is not far to seek. It is not, at least for most of the people I encounter, because of a commitment to the literal truth of Genesis or some other tribal origin story. Rather, it is that people discover for themselves the beauty and complexity of the living world and conclude that it "obviously" must have been designed. Those creationists who recognise that Darwinian evolution provides at least some sort of alternative to their scriptural theory often resort to a slightly more sophisticated objection. They deny the possibility of evolutionary intermediates. "X must have been designed by a Creator," people say, "because half an X would not work at all. All the parts of X must have been put together simultaneously; they could not have evolved gradually."

Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant. A more ponderous show of weight seems to lie behind the inevitable supplementary: "Speaking as a physicist, I cannot believe that there has been enough time for an organ as complicated as the eye to have evolved from nothing. Do you really think there has been enough time?" Both questions stem from the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time.

It now appears that the shattering enormity of geological time is a steam hammer to crack a peanut. A recent study by a pair of Swedish scientists, Dan Nilson and Susanne Pelger, suggests that a ludicrously small fraction of that time would have been plenty. When one says "the" eye, by the way, one implicitly means the vertebrate eye, but serviceable image-forming eyes have evolved between 40 and 60 times, independently from scratch, in many different invertebrate groups. Among these 40-plus independent evolutions, at least nine distinct design principles have been discovered, including pinhole eyes, two kinds of camera-lens eyes, curved-reflector ("satellite dish") eyes, and several kinds of compound eyes. Nilsson and Pelger have concentrated on camera eyes with lenses, such as are well developed in vertebrates and octopuses.