thinkevolution.net

On May 28, the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky will officially open. The museum co-opts the frozen-in-time, diorama style of actual factual natural history museums to portray cohabitation of prehistoric humans and “thunder-lizards,” according to an article in today’s New York Times. But that may be the least excruciating distortion of reality this museum showcases. According to the article, the exhibits portray a timeline of events succeeding Adam and Eve’s fall in the garden of Eden, including modern-day catastrophes that have resulted from increasing secularization. The message is pretty clear:

Start accepting evolution or an ancient Earth, and the result is like the giant wrecking ball, labeled “Millions of Years,” that is shown smashing the ground at the foundation of a church, the cracks reaching across the gallery to a model of a home in which videos demonstrate the imminence of moral dissolution. A teenager is shown sitting at a computer; he is, we are told, looking at pornography.

The Times article shows little restraint in discrediting the museum and describing its efforts as a troubling departure from reason. But I can’t resist criticizing one niggling detail: journalist Edward Rothstein writes that, contrary to the biblical creationism story exhibited by the museum, scientists assert “that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection.” Well, yes, many scientists do assert that life’s diversity is the result of natural selection. But that’s a problem in its own right, addressed in my most recent post about Michael Lynch’s recent PNAS paper. Lynch explains that biologists too often attribute phenomena like genome complexity—or taxonomic diversity—to natural selection, and overlook the importance of stochastic processes in evolution. It may seem too fine-grain a point among evolutionists who agree that the larger battle is over whether evolution is accepted at all. But misunderstanding the knowledge that science research provides is dangerous in itself, especially in an intellectual battle for hearts and minds.

Today The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about astronomy professor and intelligent design advocate Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure rejection at Iowa State University. Opening line of the article:

At first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination.

I’m surprised by this position and the word “discrimination” is inflammatory. Legally, of course, discrimination is unlawful. Candidates for tenure can’t be denied based on race or gender, for example, under federal law. Iowa State’s own faculty handbook makes it clear that it doesn’t discriminate based on race, color, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Vietnam Era Veteran. But can someone be denied tenure based on advocacy for intelligent design? Is that discrimination against religion, or discrimination against ideas that fall outside the merits under review?

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Indeed, it looks like the anti-evolutionists at Uncommon Descent have jumped on the regulatory/coding DNA controversy. Well… no not really. Following the publication of an article in New Scientist that describes levels of divergence in non-coding and coding DNA between placental mammals and marsupial mammals (potentially indicating a predominance of cis-regulatory evolution since placentals and marsupials diverged), Uncommon Descent posted a entry that thoroughly misconstrues the whole situation.

A post at denialism blog tidily explains the whole mess. To sum up: the relative importance of mutations in cis-regulatory regions versus coding DNA is still unresolved. But protein-coding DNA is not the only functional DNA in our genome (or marsupials’ genomes, or anyone else’s), so calling non-coding DNA “junk” is just plain outdated. And grossly misreporting research findings while still making “scientific” arguments really doesn’t make it sound like you know what you’re talking about.

It’s just another mumbity jumbity effort from the ID camp to muddle things up. But the question is whether it’s on purpose or not. Hullabaloo suggests here that it’s an example of plain and simple stupidity. In the post itself, Uncommon Descent doesn’t capitalize on the misrepresentation of the data. But denialism blog points out that ID advocates have some sort of stake in the status of “junk DNA,” so maybe it’s a blundering attempt to twist the facts. The whole situation is rather unclear to me. I’m sure it doesn’t make sense.

On April 21, Dr. Ken Miller gave a lecture at the historic Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia. Turns out his talk was part of a lecture series that was established in 1912 by Richard Westbrook, a trustee of the Institute, with the deliberate purpose of encouraging open discourse on scientific subjects, especially evolutionary biology. So Miller’s material talk addressing current social and political issues surrounding evolution was made possible by the social and political issues surrounding evolution back in 1912. Or perhaps more optimistically, by the foresight and dedication of one evolutionist to the scientific education of the public about this important discipline.

Anyway, one of the best things about the talk was Miller’s use of various quotations regarding the interface of science and faith. Miller himself is a practicing Catholic, and has often argued that evolution does not threaten religious commitment. Not surprisingly, some of the most thoughtful ideas about the intersection of science and religion have come from some of the greatest scientific minds. These carefully considered, often gentle statements should be admired for their expansive perspective. So, inspired by Ken Miller’s recent lecture, here is a collection of quotations.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

–Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, First Edition, 1859

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

–Saint Augustine, 5th century

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts… the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

–Theodosius Dobzhansky, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, 1973

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

–Galileo Galilei, Letters to Christina of Tuscany, 17th century

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed… A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

–Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, 1931