ID theorist Mike Behe tries to keep Darwinist Jerry Coyne focused

Mike Behe

Society must, after all, continue the fight against ADD (attention deficit Darwinism):

Try as one might to keep Darwinists focused on the data, some can't help reverting to their favorite trope: questioning Darwinism simply must be based on religion. Unfortunately Professor Coyne succumbs to this. Introducing his blog post he writes:

What role does the appearance of new genes, versus simple changes in old ones, play in evolution? There are two reasons why this question has recently become important.... The first involves a scientific controversy.... The second controversy is religious. Some advocates of intelligent design (ID)--most notably Michael Behe in a recent paper--have implied not only that evolved new genes or new genetic "elements" (e.g., regulatory sequences) aren't important in evolution, but that they play almost no role at all, especially compared to mutations that simply inactivate genes or make small changes, like single nucleotide substitutions, in existing genes. This is based on the religiously-motivated "theory" of ID, which maintains that new genetic information cannot arise by natural selection, but must installed [sic] in our genome by a magic poof from Jebus. [sic]

Jerry Coyne

Anyone who reads the paper, however, knows my conclusions were based on the reviewed experiments of many labs over decades. Even Coyne knows this. In the very next sentence he writes, inconsistently, "I've criticized Behe's conclusions, which are based on laboratory studies of bacteria and viruses that virtually eliminated the possibility of seeing new genes arise, but I don't want to reiterate my arguments here." Yet if my conclusions are based on "laboratory studies," then they ain't "religious," even if Coyne disagrees with them.
Professor Coyne is so upset, he imagines things that aren't in the paper. (They are "implied," you see.)

For more, go here.

Jerry Coyne, certainly a man who speaks his mind ...

Recently, I've been writing about Jerry Coyne's comments on Mike Behe's most recent paper. Coyne is billed by his U as "internationally famous defender of evolution against proponents of intelligent design." Good man on fruit flies, too.

It occurred to me to pull up my Coyne files, re other things he has said. A most interesting picture emerges - in a world where hordes bravely speak the group's latest mind, the prof (Department of Ecology and Evolution) gives the impression of speaking his own. I won't hazard whether that earns him greater trust because I don't know whether Darwin's folk trust people who think for themselves, but here goes:

Coyne on the useful idiots of theistic evolution:

- Theistic evolution is compromise. ("Coyne is particularly annoyed by the folks at the Darwin-defending but religion-appeasing National Center for Science Education, for "compromising the very science they aspire to defend." - quoted in Klinghoffer )

Theistic evolution claims are wearing thin. ("Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence — the existence of religious scientists — is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith." - quoted in Iannone)

He also enjoys taking the fun out of Fundamentalism, when not engaging in it himself.

(My best guess is that he pays closer attention to the ID guys, as they offer a serious challenge.)

What Jerry Coyne has said about evolutionary biology:

Almost no findings are replicated: ("Almost no findings are replicated, there’s a premium on publishing positive results, and, unlike some other areas, findings in evolutionary biology don't necessarily build on each other: workers usually don’t have to repeat other people's work as a basis for their own.")

Also here : (In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. ... The latest deadweight dragging us closer to phrenology is "evolutionary psychology," or the science formerly known as sociobiology, which studies the evolutionary roots of human behavior. There is nothing inherently wrong with this enterprise, and it has proposed some intriguing theories, particularly about the evolution of language. The problem is that evolutionary psychology suffers from the scientific equivalent of megalomania. Most of its adherents are convinced that virtually every human action or feeling, including depression, homosexuality, religion, and consciousness, was put directly into our brains by natural selection.)

- Randy "Flock of Dodos" Olson thinks Coyne more persuasive about evolutionary biology than Richard Dawkins

Oh, and Coyne on Ann Coulter:

From the Stop the Coult! files: ("The remarkable thing about all this is that Jerry Coyne thinks he needs to take on Ann Coulter. There was a time when a guy like Jerry Coyne would not know who Ann Coulter is, and possibly would not know what a pundette is, unless he had married his cook and she insisted on subscribing to some vile rag that ... " - O'Leary ) Just shows you how things change ...

Coyne vs. Behe :

But, Jerry, what about all those dogs?

Could Darwinists be running low on insults?

Mike Behe replies to detractor Jerry Coyne ...

Another nugget from the quote mine: In evolutionary biology, "almost no findings are replicated"

Jerry Coyne is always fun. He has the distinction of being a Darwinist who is perfectly honest about the war between Darwinism and any belief in the uniqueness of humans - many examples here, and such relief from any contact with Christian Darwinists.

Recently, he commented on an article in The New Yorker by Jonah Lehrer, “The truth wears off: is there something wrong with the scientific method?”.

Basically, Lehrer says, an initial demonstration in science tends to weaken or disappear when attempts are made to replicate it:

On September 18, 2007, a few dozen neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and drug-company executives gathered in a hotel conference room in Brussels to hear some startling news. It had to do with a class of drugs known as atypical or second-generation antipsychotics, which came on the market in the early nineties. The therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily falling. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineties. Before the effectiveness of a drug can be confirmed, it must be tested again and again. The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts are losing their truth.

Read more here [some more there, but you must pay for the rest].

Coyne writes in "The 'decline effect': can we demonstrate anything in science?"

I tend to agree with Lehrer about studies in my own field of evolutionary biology. Almost no findings are replicated, there’s a premium on publishing positive results, and, unlike some other areas, findings in evolutionary biology don't necessarily build on each other: workers usually don’t have to repeat other people's work as a basis for their own. (I'm speaking here mostly of experimental work, not things like studies of transitional fossils.) Ditto for ecology. Yet that doesn't mean that everything is arbitrary. I’m pretty sure, for instance, that the reason why male interspecific hybrids in Drosophila are sterile while females aren't ("Haldane's rule") reflects genes whose effects on hybrid sterility are recessive. That’s been demonstrated by several workers. And I'm even more sure that humans are more closely related to chimps than to orangutans. Nevertheless, when a single new finding appears, I often find myself wondering if it would stand up if somebody repeated the study, or did it in another species.

Good thing to wonder about. Time more people wondered about that. Breath of fresh air.

Personally, I am most wary of any finding that is breathlessly touted as proving what our moral and intellectual superiors (in their own view) totally believe already, so why anyone even did the study isn't clear. Couldn't they just save a bundle by making the whole thing up? Given that we all must swallow it anyway, or so we are told.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Darwinism and popular culture: Taking the fun out of fundamentalism - no hope for the one who does not accept ...

Here is - on display - an example of the fundamentalist streak in Darwin fans ( already clearly demonstrated in the Michael Reiss affair).

American Darwin fan Jerry Coyne, promoting Richard Dawkins's book, The Blind Watchmaker issues a fatwa in Nature:

If a presidential candidate doesn't accept evolution after reading this book, there is no hope.

I see. And what if an American fundamentalist leader had said:

If a presidential candidate doesn't accept Jesus as his personal savior after reading the New Testament, there is no hope.

Or perchance we hear from another quarter,

“If a presidential candidate doesn't accept Islam after reading the Koran, there is no hope.

Well then, I guess there is no hope for the free society because at any given time a huge number of people - in the hundreds of millions - express varying degrees of belief and disbelief in these and a great many other explanations of our origin and destiny.

You wouldn’t think a free society would be as popular as it is in that case … so many people trying to get in, and not many trying to get out ...

As a matter of fact, in the late 1980s, American constitutional lawyer Phillip E. Johnson did read Dawkins's Watchmaker. But he also read Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. So he knew why Dawkins's (and Coyne's) large claims do not add up.

I guess there is no hope for him either then. Here is what I wrote about that in By Design or by Chance?:

Johnson did not begin to think seriously about design issues until 1987–1988, while on sabbatical in England. There he read Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker (1986) and Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985).43 Denton argued, contra Dawkins, that Darwinism was simply not answering the questions that many scientists were asking about evolution. Unlike most writers on Darwinism, Denton did not soft-pedal the problems with Darwinism. He said:

"While most evolutionary biologists who have written recently about evolution concede that the problems are serious, nearly all take an ultimately conservative stand, believing that they can be explained away by making only minor adjustments to the Darwinian framework. In this book I have adopted the radical approach. By presenting a systematic critique of the current Darwinian model, ranging from paleontology to molecular biology, I have tried to show why I believe that the problems are too severe and too intractable to offer any hope of resolution in terms of the orthodox Darwinian framework, and that consequently the conservative view is no longer tenable."

... Johnson decided that Denton was either “very, very wrong, or very, very important.” But he did not make up his mind right away.

He did later though, after talking to a number of other straight-goods people. He became, of course, the "godfather" of the intelligent design community in the United States, with the publication of his own Darwin on Trial, loudly deplored by Darwin grantsmen and box wallahs ever since, around the world.

Note: Coyne also notes his own forthcoming work, Why Evolution Is True (Viking 2009).

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Darwinism can't be defended by mere silliness? Whodathunkit?

Years ago, when people would ask me how anyone could take seriously the pseudo-insights from evolutionary psychology, I would say that Darwinism today is where astrology was in the high middle ages: Truth, falsehood and nonsense all defend it equally. Its practitioners need only emit agreeable nonsense, and everyone who wants to get on in the world immediately acquiesces. (Unless he has a power base that suspects it is bunk.)

Mathematician Jason Rosenhouse, who hatres the ID folk, nonetheless thinks, as I do, that evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne signally failed to grapple with any real issues when he tried to trash Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution.

Coyne's little challenges here are a mixture of good points and bad points, but they are all jumbled together and the whole thing is presented with such malice that he even managed to turn me off, and I already think Behe is a snake. If he could piss ME off just think of the effect he is having on anyone who does not already despise ID.

Earth to Rosenhouse: Most of the world doesn't despise ID. People who doze gravel at a steep angle to pay your salary do not usually despise ID.

I seem to recall University of Toronto evolutionary biologist Larry Moran saying something similar.

(I shouldn’t need to say this here, but you have to meet a cogent argument with a cogent argument, and you can’t meet a cogent argument with dancing with the biologists. Well, you can, but ... )

Rosenhouse and Moran both think Darwinism can be fireproofed. Good job I don’t underwrite the policy.

Thinkquote of the day: Darwinist Jerry Coyne on whether Darwinian evolution has any use

Jerry A. Coyne, of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, criticizing an author named David P. Mindell in the eminent science journal Nature, for announcing that everything including sliced bread is one of the benefits of believing Darwin, which means believing that the entire history of life after its origin can be explained by natural selection acting on random genetic mutations:

To some extent these excesses are not Mindell's fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn't evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like.' ( "Selling Darwin" Nature, Vol 442, 31 August 2006 - but you must pay.)

So then why are careers endangered or wrecked over carefully considered refusals to believe in Darwinism (which Coyne, like most Darwinists, merely describes as "evolution")?

Well, readers of this blog will know my own view, that Darwinism is the creation story of secularist atheism. Demands for assent to Darwinism (or, in some tellings, universal Darwinism) are demands for assent to the rule of the public square by that particular body of thought.

Dr. Coyne ends by ridiculing creationists and intelligent design supporters for doubting that Darwinism is the origin of new species, even though there is so little evidence that he is forced to use the analogy that one language can change slowly into another. But, of course, languages are intelligently designed by the groups that use them (working, of course, from a logical base that is innate).

I might be a bit light blogging for a couple of days because I have to go give a talk at the Toronto ID conference on why there is an intelligent design controversy and why it isn't going away - and why trying to force people to say they agree with Darwin or punish them when they don't - will not make it go away. Thanks to Dr. Coyne for helping me understand.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being granted tenure at Baylor after a long struggle - even after helping in a small way to destroy the Baylor Bears' ancient glory - in the opinion of a hyper sportswriter.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

The Vatican and the Astronomer: Why George Coyne had to go

From what I can determine from recent pronouncements, the Vatican is not backing off the process of evicting Darwinism ("evolutionism") from its list of approved belief systems. Here's Cardinal Schoenborn proposing an evolution debate:

Cardinal Schönborn, who sparked a worldwide debate in 2005 with an article in the New York Times on the subject, called for clarification of the difference between the "theory of evolution" and "evolutionism," the latter understood as an ideology, based on scientific theory.

By way of example, the cardinal mentioned Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who saw in the publication of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species," "the scientific foundation for their Marxist materialist theory. This is evolutionism, not theory of evolution."

The archbishop of Vienna warned against the application of this evolutionist ideology in fields such as economic neo-liberalism, or bioethical issues, where there is the risk of creating new eugenic theories.

[ ... ]

Cardinal Schönborn explained that the phrase meant that "the theory, as scientific theory, has been expanded with new scientific data, but of course that phrase cannot be interpreted as an 'Amen' of the Catholic Church to ideological evolutionism."

It should be obvious to any reasonable person that Schoenborn knows exactly what the issues around Darwinism ("evolutionism") are and he is not backing down.

Early last week ,the news broke that, as of August 19, Fr. George Coyne, 73, director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, had been replaced by Argentinian Jesuit Fr. José Gabriel Funes as the new director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory.

Coyne, who had been director since 1978, had become well known to the news media in recent months because of his opposition to Cardinal Schoenborn who, with the apparent blessing of the Pope, has been attempting to put some distance between the Catholic church and Darwinism since July 2005.

Maybe too well known.

The background to the issue is that John Paul II had said that evolution was "more than a hypothesis" but immediately went on to disclaim any materialist interpretation of it, which certainly includes Darwinism. However, the pop sci media jumped on the first part of his statement like dogs on a rabbit, resulting in any number of essentially mistaken or misleading claims that the Catholic church "supports evolution." These claims are, of course, used by those who would foist Darwinism on an unbelieving public.

In the sense in which the Catholic Church supports evolution, Michael Behe, the much reviled ID biochemist, also supports evolution. (Behe is a practicing Catholic, by the way.) That is, Behe and Schoenborn accept that evolution happens. But so? That doesn't prove that Darwin was right about the power of natural selection or that the neo-Darwinists are right about anything at all. And those who revile Behe's views would be unwise to hope for much better from the Vatican.

Apparently, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (called by some here the "National Center for Selling Evolution") has attempted to spin Fr. Coyne's departure as a normal retirement. He told Dick Fischer at the ASA discussion group that a media account that suggested otherwise was tendentious:

... after all, Coyne is 73 years old, and his retirement could have been predicted in any case. And there's no reason to think that Coyne's successor's view differs from Coyne's ... "

Nice try, Glenn. But ... obviously, retiring Fr. Coyne just as the Vatican is seriously deliberating Darwinism and its effects is a message about acceptable avenues of dissent.

From what I can tell, B-16 is good at avoiding visible cow plops. So, however Coyne's successor may agree with his views, he will probably see that the Vatican observatory refrains from further direct conflict with Rome in a matter that does not even involve astronomy.

My own assessment (which appeared in part as a comment to an earlier story posted at Uncommon Descent):

The Catholic Church is many things, but one of them is - a large organization. Coyne was doing something that you just can’t do in a large organization - creating a public uproar around top management’s decisions.

Whether it’s GM or the RC church, you can’t run around implying to the press that the CEO is a yo-yo or the Pope is a dope. (I don’t, of course, mean that Coyne used those words, but … I think that if his opposition had been confined to lobbying scientists trusted by the Vatican, he would still have his accustomed telescope.

The Church is not North Korea. There are acceptable avenues of dissent. But the American media are not one of them.

Coyne's private theology is certainly a problem, but after all, he was not in the parish ministry. At his age, if he wasn't making a big deal of it, chances are others wouldn't either.

The problem is, he was making a big deal of it. At at time when the Vatican wants to and should want to blow clear of Darwinism, his actions implied that accommodation was possible. And he was b eng treated by science organizations as an authority.

Even that wouldn't have mattered much except that he started getting more media attention than the Pope and was treated as an authority by science orgnaizations.

Also, he was putting his institution on the public mental map in the worst way possible, short of a sex scandal. Most people did not know that the Vatican even had an observatory in Arizona.

Some might wonder why: "With all the suffering and social injustice in the world, how dare they take the donations of the faithful and use them for .... "

(Now, for my own part, I feel the same about the Vatican observatory as I do about its fabulous art collections: They are part of a culture and they serve a broader purpose. We always have the poor with us, and can help them whenever the opportunity arises. But I'd be naive to think that everyone sees the matter in this light ... )

So an institution like the Vatican observatory is best off to be respected by the editors of astronomy journals, and avoid involvement in an array of public controversies. Fr. Coyne seemed unwilling or perhaps unable to do that. It will be interesting to see how his successor fares.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudeby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne: Stop that Coult!

Apparently, pundette Ann Coulter has continued to say unnice things about Darwinists and Darwinism (gasp! Say it ain't so!):

Interviewer Charlotte Allen: Many arguments in favor of Darwinian evolution strike me as actually being arguments against the existence of God--that is, why would a creator create tapeworms, disease viruses, and other bad things? Why do you think such things exist in a world of intelligent design?

The Coult: Your question is incomprehensible. I assume you are trying to ask me: "Why would God create tapeworms?"

My answer is: God also created mosquitoes, which I hate. But purple martins love mosquitoes and would probably all starve without them. It's kind of a "big picture" thing. Of course that doesn't explain why He created Michael Moore. For that, I have no explanation. My guess is that disease, pestilence, and Michael Moore are all perversions of the good that God created, a result of sin entering the world through Adam and Eve.

The whole interview is hilarious. Interviewer Charlotte Allen, who belongs to the tut-tut school of religious journalism, is way out of her depth. She doesn't understand that the Coult is actually not afraid of the people she herself is afraid of and can live without their good opinion.

And just when you thought the fun might end, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has found it necessary to take a swipe at the Coult (and a whole bunch of other people too):

First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants" of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W. Bush.

Well, of course. To believe Darwinism, you must learn from a Darwinist, preferably an ascended master. Otherwise, you don't stand a chance.

The remarkable thing about all this is that Jerry Coyne thinks he needs to take on Ann Coulter. There was a time when a guy like Jerry Coyne would not know who Ann Coulter is, and possibly would not know what a pundette is, unless he had married his cook and she insisted on subscribing to some vile rag that ...

Personally, I do not know how the Coult manages to look nearly naked when she is actually, technically at least, wearing clothes. But that is not a suitable subject for a family blog.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.