Last Word on Expelled

Finals are here, so naturally, it's time to start blogging again.

A while back, Ben Stein released a really bad movie about Intelligent Design called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. After long refusing to review it, we finally get Roger Ebert's thoughts on the movie.

Naturally, Ebert skillfully tears it apart. He does a particularly good job of addressing the "excluded middle" strategy routinely taken by proponents of Intelligent Design:

By his premise no secularists believe in Intelligent Design, and no people with religious beliefs subscribe to Darwin's theory. If there are people with religious beliefs who agree with Darwin (Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Mormons, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, for example) they are mistaken...

This is one of the things the movie does quite well. They cast the debate as a struggle between all religious people and all non-religious people rather than an effort by a few religious people with one extreme belief to foist it upon everyone else.

For example, consider their interview with Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education,* about the organization's efforts to counter the introduction of ID into the public school classroom. They make sure to emphasize the fact that she is an atheist. When she points out that a lot of the organization's support comes from religious people (Catholics, Jews, etc.), they frame it as though these nice religious people are getting hoodwinked out of their money to support some godless cause. Never mind that the each of the last three Popes, all the way back to 1950, have directly stated that there is no conflict between Catholicism and evolution. As Pope John Paul II put it, Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.

This is why I don't get why so many religious people are scared of science: if God really did create the world, why don't religious people view the effort to objectively study and understand the natural world to be the most holy calling to which one may aspire? One intelligent commenter on Ebert's review put it more eloquently than I can:

As a devout Mormon with a PhD in genetics, I am always amazed at the anger that evolution evokes in some people or why they think that learning evolution is so dangerous to faith. Personally I think that religion that cannot handle truth gained from looking at the world around us is denying the most important works of God. The Bible is a short and incomplete book that does not attempt to explain orchids or dinosaurs or many other things.

Well said!

*I still owe the NCSE about $100 to offset the price of admission for two to Expelled, the Creation Museum, and the Creation Museum planetarium. These field trips are getting expensive.

Procreation? What for?

So, I was helping a friend out with some high school science homework at the bar last night when in the midst of the module about asexual and sexual reproduction I encountered a surprisingly deep question. It was:

What is the purpose of reproduction?

I’m sure whoever wrote the question intended it to be pretty straight forward, but having just looked through the module on anatomical evidence supporting the theory of evolution, I couldn’t see past the mistaken premise of the question.

You see, there is no purpose for reproduction.

To see why, take a moment to follow me down the garden path.... Suppose there is a table in front of you with a bunch of objects on it. These objects do lots of things for no particular reason. Think of them as little robots. Some make noise. Some have flashing lights. Some bounce up and down. Some construct sculptures. And some make more objects like themselves.

Next, suppose that the table, though rather large, has a finite area and a very definite edge. Occasionally some of the little objects, particularly the ones that move around a lot, fall off the edge, and from time to time objects get accidentally bumped off by other objects.

In this hypothetical scenario with dumb little robots, what happens over time? Well, if you wait long enough, there is a day in the future when none of the robots you started with will be on the table. In the long run, if there is a finite risk that any particular robot will fall over the edge, then eventually any robot will fall off the edge.

So does this mean that there won’t be any robots left on the table? Not necessarily. Remember that some of those first robots made more robots. Maybe some of those newer robots will still be on the table on the day that the last of the original robots falls off.

Of course, even the little robots that were made by other little robots are subject to the cold math of the Edge, but that doesn’t imply that the table will be empty if you wait even longer. Rather, if any one of these little robots makes more robots, as long as some of those make more robots, and as long as the robots make more robots faster than they fall off the table, you may never run out of robots.

In fact, the table is bound to fill up with robots and overflow onto the floor even faster. These robots still might do all sorts of things (blink, beep, jump, etc.), but one thing is for sure, they are all descendants of robot making robots, and many of them (perhaps most or all) will be robot making robots themselves. In fact, over time, the average ability of the robots to make more robots, and the sophistication of strategies of avoiding the edge will increase exponentially.

So, what does this have to do with the purpose of reproduction? Well, which of these robots had a purpose to its actions? None - these robots are machines. They just do what they do. Is a robot that blinks any better than a robot that bounces? Is one happier? No – they don’t even know what they’re doing.

The only thing that is special about reproduction is that systems of populations tend toward populations that reproduce. This is true regardless of whether the elements of the population are capable of even intending to reproduce. Plants, animals, viruses, genes, memes, business plans all create or inspire copies of themselves without really meaning to.

People understand this, I suppose, but they also make the mistake of assigning purpose to the activity. I do it too. (I used the word “strategies” with some timidity three paragraphs ago.) Along the way, people also think of reproduction as success, even though it isn’t. It isn't failure either. Reproduction just is. It is the activity that, by definition, still is later. If a robot, descendant from a long line of reproducing robots was made so it didn’t reproduce, but did handstands instead, would it have somehow failed? No, because it had no more or less intent to make more robots (or do handstands for that matter) than its parent had to make more robots. They all just do what they do.

You might say, “People are different. We are not robots. We intend to do things. We do things for purposes.” I won’t disagree that we are different, but you must agree that the system is the same. The reason most folks think it is important to have kids is because we are all the product of that impulse, and most folks were built with that impulse. But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t mean someone is any better or worse for doing something different (or doing the same, for that matter). They’re just doing what they do.

So, what’s the purpose of reproduction? Beats me. I don't know any better than a robot.

So This Is What Philosophers Do...

Mary Midgley writes a great article strattling the devide in the ongoing debate over Intelligent Design and Evolution entitled: A Plague On Both Their Houses. Here's an excerpt:

Any apparent clashes between [religion and science] must... arise either from faulty religion or faulty science, or both....

It should surely be obvious that there is nothing scientific about atheism. God’s existence is not a question for the tests of physical science; it belongs to metaphysics. What is wrong with fundamentalism is not its theism – theists do not need to take this line – but its sheer irrelevance. Fundamentalism is a perverse attempt to use a particular, bronze-age Hebrew vision of God to resolve factual questions in science and history. Opponents who answer fundamentalism on its own terms by arguing against this mixed project as a package-deal merely perpetuate its characteristic confusion between the realms of fact and meaning.

She nails it. Big tip of the hat to Uncommon Descent, a shameless disingenuous ID rag. :)

Topics in Public Faith

Such a pithy title deserves a dissertation, but alas, one is not forthcoming today. Or, if it does, then Project 5, which is due tomorrow, will be in rough shape.

Anyway, looking at my entries, I've noticed that I've been a bit hard on the old-tyme religion as of late, and I feel like it is high time I announced some premises/positions for future exploration in detail... later. My co-collaborators are welcome to jump in wherever they feel compelled to agree or disagree.

1. Inquiries that begin with the conclusion are doomed. Examples: Undertaking a scientific study of the world after first concluding that whatever you will find must conform to a literal interpretation of some holy text (not just looking at you Christians).

2. Neither evolution nor the big bang theory make any claims regarding the existence of supernatural deities or the creation of the universe. Those questions are beyond the scope of science. You can be a scientist who believes these things and devoutly follow any number of mainstream religions.

3. This is not a Christian nation. It is a nation of laws in which people are free to hold the beliefs that they choose without fear of coercion or harassment. Religious people set it up this way because they were sick of being coerced and harassed.

4. Faith is GREAT, for individuals. If you wish to take a position based on faith, it is your right. However, the moment you attempt to make decisions about other people's rights and property, you had better have evidence to convince them that what you propose is right. Example: Because of his religious beliefs, the owner of Chik'fil'a (sp?) closes all of his restaurants on Sundays. Good for him! They belong to him, he can do what he wants with them. However, if he were to lobby the government to force all restaurants to close on Sundays, he had better be able to make an objective case for the policy change that even folks who don't share his faith could find reasonable. "God says so," ceases to cut it.

5. Though people may have souls, the nation certainly does not. Using the state to advance a religious agenda at home or abroad saves no one. You can't get all of America into heaven by having the government force righteousness upon everyone, and the ones doing the forcing probably won't make it either. Instead, people need to focus on themselves and their families to make sure they are righteous in the eyes of their God.

6. The government is a tool we use to get along with one another, and secularism is a great approach for deciding just how it should work. We're a nation of a lot of people who believe a lot of different things. Holding debates on public policy within the domain of material facts which all parties can ascertain and share with others is the best way to come to conclusions that satisfy the most people's needs. When policy debate bears the burden of religious dogma, compromise, the original goal, becomes heresy enforced by damnation, and consequently, unpalatable to all sides concerned. What gets done?

7. Secular doesn't mean Hollywood. Secular doesn't mean relativism, either. Just because you hear these things lumped together in straw-man arguments (as I heard in this Sunday's homily), it doesn't mean they are all the same thing. It is possible to come to conclusions about right and wrong without relying on any particular group's religious views (see Philosophy in general). The alternative isn't resorting to hedonism.

That's good for now. I could go further, but I have a J.D. to get.

Intelligent Design Proponents Have Cajones

A quick follow-up to my post on the NOVA Judgment Day special on Evolution and Intelligent Design...

According to New Scientist, the Discovery Institute, an Intelligent Design think tank and publisher of the book Of Pandas and People which was a prominent feature of the Dover trial, has alleged that the teaching materials that accompany the NOVA special "encourage unconstitutional teaching practices."

At issue are teaching materials that state:

Q: Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?
A: Yes. The common view that evolution is inherently anit-religious is simply false?

This is an interesting issue. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten this far in Constitutional Law yet, but I'll take a stab.

We need to ask whether these statements either promote or criticize a particular religious view. This depends on how you read the statements. Are these statements about evolution or about religion? Here is an example of two ways someone could paraphrase the statements in question.

1. "Evolution does not make any claim about the validity of religion." (about evolution)
2. "Religions that are inconsistent with evolution are false." (about religion)

If you think the Q&A boils down to statement 1, then you would think it is constitutional. If you think statement 2 is a fair assessment of the Q&A, then you should think that these statements are unconstitutional.

Obviously, I'm in the statement 1 camp. Evolution doesn't rule out God, and I think that is the point that these statements are trying to get across. However, I can see how the statement 2 folks have an argument. If you believed in a religion that didn't support evolution, you might conclude that the Q&A was speaking directly to your religion rather than religion in general.

Even if statement 1 was intended by the authors, the effect of promoting or suppressing a particular religious position is probably enough to make it unconstitutional. Though, I have to believe there is some sort of reasonableness standard that applies here.

But how do you decide whether this is a reasonable conclusion for someone to make? Imagine if the Q&A had been about "eating pork" or "engaging in premarital sex." There are some religions which strongly abhor these practices. Is it a religious statement to say, "The common view that (eating pork/engaging in premarital sex) is anti-religious is simply false"?

In thinking about this, I keep drifting back to the validity of the statements. The Q&A is unquestionably true. It could be false only if no one believed in both evolution and some religion. Since there are probably more than a hundred million Americans who hold both views, the statement certainly isn't false.

A religious statement, on the other hand, would be much harder to validate. I don't think we could say definitively whether statement 2 is true or false. However, statement 1 is verifiable like the Q&A. But does any of this matter?

At any rate, in raising this issue, the Discovery Institute has made it clear that they think there are religious implications to evolution. For an organization that worked so hard to sanitize ID so that they could pass it off as science rather than religion, this is a gutsy position.

cdesign proponentsist

The title of this post is a transitional form - it is the missing link between creationism and intelligent design.

This week the PBS program NOVA aired an excellent account of the controversy resulting from the Dover, PA school board's efforts to insert Intelligent Design into the school's science curriculum. Two years ago this week the controversy culminated in a Federal District Court case brought by some Dover parents to enjoin the introduction of Intelligent Design along-side evolution. (Thanks to BABlog for letting me know it would be on the air, and I encourage everyone to watch the program either on the tube or at the PBS website.)

Intelligent Design (ID) is the belief that certain features of life as we observe them today are so complex that they could not come about through natural processes like evolution. Rather, this 'irreducible complexity' is a clear sign that these features and the creatures who possess them were designed and created whole cloth by some 'intelligent agent'. Savvy proponents of ID are careful not to equate 'intelligent agent' with a particular religious deity, but True Christians(tm) tend to view ID as an acceptable belief system because of the perceived compatibility with a literal interpretation of Genesis. True Scientists(tm), such as the science teachers in Dover, view it as a philosophical proposition that neither makes any testable predictions nor guides further inquiry. Consequently, it doesn't belong in the science classroom. If anywhere, it belongs in a Philosophy or Theology class. I first encountered it in Philo 101 where it was referred to as the Teleological Argument - not a theory, an argument.

Back to Dover: The parents' claim was that the School Board violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The requirements of this amendment trickle down to the states and all of their subdivisions, including public school boards. To show a violation of the establishment clause, the parents needed to show that the actions of School Board were either motivated by a desire to promote a religious view or had the effect of promoting a religious view.

Their case took the form of two separate inquiries which the show cleverly presents in parallel. The first inquiry delved into the meaning of science and the theory of evolution to demonstrate to the court how ID fundamentally fails to stand up as a genuine scientific alternative to evolution. The second inquiry was an exploration of the motivations behind proponents of ID and those on the Dover School Board who wished to bring it into the science classroom. One inquiry was scientific and the other was legal, but both used similar methods to arrive at knowledge that could be presented convincingly to the court.

Inquiry 1: Evolution v. Intelligent Design

The problem with ID is that it is merely a critique of evolution. Proponents of ID point to gaps in the evolutionary understanding of life, declare that these gaps can never be explained by science, then conclude by saying that the only other alternative is that this 'intelligent agent' did it.

A difficulty for these ID proponents is that these "gaps" that can never be explained are routinely explained by new discoveries. For example, ID proponents and creationist often say, if one type of animal descends from another type, why don't we have "transitional forms," fossils of creatures somewhere between the two known animals? If you get your science from Kirk Cameron (Mike Seaver from Growing Pains) you will believe that "Science has never found a genuine transitional form..."

Somehow he overlooks Archaeopteryx, pictured above, which is considered the first known bird. It was feathered, but it had teeth and is likely a relative of the velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. The program walks the viewer through several of these, including Tiktaalik which was discovered during the Dover trial.

Tiktaalik is a transitional species between fish and amphibians (one of the first 4 legged land creatures). Based on the fossil record, scientists knew that the first land creatures lived about 370 million years ago. So, they decided to look for rocks of that age to search for transitional fossils of the first land critters. They found some exposed rocks of that age in Northern Canada, and after three years of looking (Topeka!) they found fossils of Tiktaalik. This critter has scales like a fish, a flat head with eyes on top like an amphibian, and appendages that have fin-like webbing and the beginnings of shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints.

In short, we have a theory (evolution) that gives rise to a testable prediction (fish gave rise to amphibians ~370 mya) and a test (guys went out to rocks that old and they find evidence that the theory was correct). This happens all the time!

Suppose you are a proponent of ID. What used to be a "gap" that could never be explained by science gets explained by science. What do you do? You should just pack up and call it a day, but instead you either ignore it or pick another gap and claim that gap #2 can never be explained by science.

Inquiry 2: Intelligent Design = Creationism

Beginning with the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925, evolution and creationism had been hot topics in the courts until the Supreme Court found that Creation Science "embodies [the] particular religious tenant" that we were created by a divine creator. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987). Consequently, the promotion of "Creation Science" was thereafter prohibited in public school classrooms.

However, the Dover School Board wasn't attempting to teach "Creation Science." They wanted to present Intelligent Design to their students as an alternative to evolution. To do so, they proposed a companion book called Of Pandas and People. According to the School Board this was neither a Creation text nor even a religious text. Instead, they argued that this is a legitimate scientific viewpoint that happens to resonate with them because of its compatibility with their own independent religious views.

Now, this is where lawyers become Archaeologists. Pandas came out in 1989 after several years of development. The Parents subpoenaed all the old drafts of the book from the publisher. This amounted to about 7000 pages. However, they had a theory to guide their search. They compared the pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas with the post-Edwards drafts. This is what they found:

Pre-Edwards: "Creation means that various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent Creator with their distinctive features already intact - fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.

Posts-Edwards: "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact..." [emphasis added]

Two words, same definition. They even found instances in the drafts where the authors were careless in their efforts to cleanse the text. For example, in one case they inserted 'design proponents' without taking out all of 'creationist' leaving "cdesign proponentsist."

In short, we have a theory (ID is merely creationism repackaged) that gives rise to a testable prediction (creationists relabeled their theory after the Supreme Court ruling) and a test (diligent lawyers look at texts from that period and find that they were right). Now that is how you win a court case!

And they did. Judge John E. Jones, III, ruled that "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school classroom," the school was ordered to pay the parents' legal fees, the city voted out the entire school board, and Pat Robertson told them not to turn to God if a disaster strikes Dover. All is right with the world!

Anyway, this post is no spoiler. You should still watch the program. It does a great job of chronicling the turmoil and division in the town during the controversy, with many interviews with people from both sides. It was an amazing event that was not without costs.

If you would like to learn more, I recommend that you read this excerpt from the trial transcript. It is the testimony and cross examination of Kevin Padian, a paleontologist from U.C. Berkeley and expert witness for the parents. He does an amazing job of laying out the depth and breadth of evolutionary theory and contrasting it with ID.

The program mentions how the reporters who sat through the trial wondered why they didn't learn this stuff in school. The reason: evolution has been so controversial, even after 1987, that text book publishers have chosen to gloss over it so their sales won't be threatened. In the words of the Judge: "In an era when we're trying to cure cancer, where we're trying to prevent pandemics, where we're trying to keep Science and Math education on the cutting edge in the United States, to introduce and teach bad science to 9th grade students makes very little sense to me. Garbage in, garbage out. It doesn't benefit any of us."