He said it: Wait, shut up, believe, pay, wait, shut up, believe, pay, four easy steps ...

Phillip [Johnson] is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record - it's always good to point this out. It's difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient!

- William Provine, evolutionary biologist, Cornell University*

- * quoted in Michael Powell, “Doubting Rationalist: 'Intelligent Design' Proponent Phillip Johnson, and How He Came to Be”, Washington Post (Sunday, May 15, 2005). For context, go here.

Oh, and did we mention that your kids are legally required to learn in school how to wait, shut up, believe, and pay too? Sure, because we may as well all be one big happy family in the Four Easy Steps plan. Maybe some of our children will be chosen for the noble task of suppressing doubt.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

He said it: Wait, shut up, believe, pay, wait, shut up, believe, pay, four easy steps ...

Phillip [Johnson] is absolutely right that the evidence for the big transformations in evolution are not there in the fossil record - it's always good to point this out. It's difficult to explore a billion-year-old fossil record. Be patient!

- William Provine, evolutionary biologist, Cornell University*

- * quoted in Michael Powell, “Doubting Rationalist: 'Intelligent Design' Proponent Phillip Johnson, and How He Came to Be”, Washington Post (Sunday, May 15, 2005). For context, go here.

Oh, and did we mention that your kids are legally required to learn in school how to wait, shut up, believe, and pay too? Sure, because we may as well all be one big happy family in the Four Easy Steps plan. Maybe some of our children will be chosen for the noble task of suppressing doubt.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Darwinism and popular culture: "Brain glitches, not evidence, cause people to think there is design in life!"

Here's a classic in advocacy posing as research: "Humans may be primed to believe in creation"
(Ewen Callaway, New Scientist, 02 March 2009):

Religion might not be the only reason people buy into creationism and intelligent design, psychological experiments suggest.
No matter what their religious beliefs, college-educated adults frequently agree with purpose-seeking yet false explanations of natural phenomena - finches diversified in order to survive, for instance.

"The very fact of belief in purpose itself might lead you to favour intelligent design," says Deborah Kelemen, a psychologist at Boston University, who led the study

And her point is what, exactly? That belief in purpose is irrational? Why so?

It is a shame that such studies are funded, but I would imagine that funding will increase, not decrease, as materialism takes a nose dive, and its tenured profs need to rescue it.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

The real reason why Darwinism is overwhelmingly confirmed - a tale for our times

Recently, I posted an interview with Expelled producer Mark Mathis at The Design of Life blog, in which we discussed the claim that the film misrepresented the Darwinists:

DESIGN OF LIFE: You interviewed 150 scientists for your film. I wonder if that's a record. I gather an effort has been made to discredit the film on the grounds that the anti-ID folk were misrepresented, basically that you tricked them into taking part.

MATHIS: It's not surprising. When you're used to a situation where everything that is talked about in books and films fits your dogmatic view - and that's what they've had - and then a film comes along that applies some actual skepticism, naturally they're unhappy.
They had the list of questions we were going to be examining. A controversy takes at least two sides. But they've become very used to only one side.
Apparently they didn't understand that we were really going to do just what we said we were going to do.

Well, I just had a similar experience to Mark's. Get this:

I had been asked to contribute to a book that represented both sides, that is, both Darwinists and ID sympathizers. I picked an author to respond to. A bit of preliminary work demonstrated that this Darwinist simply did not understand the evidence-based problems with his position (which he probably regards as "overwhelmingly confirmed").

Well, easy work for me, then: Explain what he left out. I was just trying to schedule time to write up my comments when I got mail from the project ...

HE wanted the book to be titled "Science vs. intelligent design". Yes! That's right. Him.

And isn't THAT convenient! Whatever evidence doesn't suit his tidy theory is not science, so it doesn't matter what I bring up.

No one has ever accused me of being a silent woman, so I allowed the project bosses to know what I thought of that in no uncertain terms. And - surprise, surprise - I am no longer on the project. But I bet he is.

I have only two things to say about the whole episode:

1. These people are just kidding themselves if they think that what they are doing is science.

2. If you see a book out there in a year or so called "Science vs. intelligent design", it might be this one. On the other hand, search Amazon before you decide. There might be SIX books called "Science vs. intelligent design", all competing with each other to front nonsense about evolution to an increasingly wary public.

Well, one good thing is that, unlike an election, book marketing is a situation in which they CAN all just lose.

Note: The interview with Mathis starts here.

Intelligent design and evidence: First, what counts as evidence?

Recently, an ID-friendly scientist assured me that intelligent design would easily be accepted if only the ID guys would come up with evidence. To my mind, that shows the difficulty people have in understanding what is at stake: the very question of what may count as evidence. Here is how I replied:

Bench science, like book editing, is independent of content under normal circumstances.

But as Thomas Kuhn points out in Structure of Scientific Revolutions*, paradigms determine what COUNTS as evidence.

Mark what follows:

If materialism is assumed to be true and Darwinism is the creation story of materialism, then Darwinism is the best available explanation for the history of life.

So Darwinism is treated as true.

I am NOT saying that that follows logically. Materialism could be true but its orthodox creation story could be untrue at the same time. Some other materialist story could better account for the evidence, for example.

However, most people do not think that way. (I am describing a course of mental events here, not a logical argument.)

Because Darwinism is treated as true, questioning it is irrational or malign.

If you are a scientist, it is no defence to say that you have uncovered evidence against Darwinism. That makes you a heretic.

Don't try claiming that you do science better without Darwinism. If you don't believe it, you shouldn't be doing science at all, right?

The purpose of science is to uncover the evidence for materialism, and you may as well deny Genesis in a God-fearing chapel as deny Darwinism at the Smithsonian.

You could outperform all your colleagues in research and accomplish nothing except get yourself denied tenure. It happens, as Jerry Bergman can testify.

What if a theory that clashes with Darwinism better explains changes over time (and even makes verified predictions)?

Well, here's where the importance of a materialist paradigm comes in: Any explanation that conforms to Darwinism will be preferred to any explanation that does not conform to it - irrespective of a difference in explanatory power that favours the latter.

In the research for the neuroscience book, I found that really inane and unsatisfactory explanations for various mental states were preferred if they supported the materialist paradigm, over against better explanations that didn't particularly support it. Sometimes it was ludicrous. But always it was deadly serious.

You will find Kuhn's Structure a very useful book to read, for understanding how paradigms determine what can even be considered as evidence.

Thus, in my humble opinion, evidence that supports an ID perspective will be primarily useful to the ID scientists themselves in understanding their own view of the world.

It will be useless for making any general point against the materialist paradigm. ID-friendly evidence will merely be shelved as a problem to be solved or reinterpreted along materialist lines, no matter how flimsy.

So yes, by all means, find evidence, but mainly to educate yourself and sketch out your own theory. The more evidence you find, the more unwelcome you will be elsewhere.

Mike Behe was compared to Osama bin Laden, and that wasn't because he was thought to be a crank. One doesn't compare a crank to Osama bin Laden.