Templeton nonsense

So in a recent (ish) post on Richard Dawkins website led me to find some of the exams and such offered by Templeton. I have to concur with everyone over there that some of the requirements for both undergrad and masters students make the ID trolls comments make much more sense. Mainly because the requirement - for 20% of the grade - is to post at least 10 comments on 'hostile' website. Holy monkey people. 20% of your final to make comments? I no longer wonder at some of the idiotic comments that can be found on the more popular blogs regarding ID/Creationism. Seriously this blew my mind. I wish I had requirements as easy as these.

Win for evolution

So imagine my surprise when I ran into this on the discovery institute. "Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District: Evolution May Be Taught Even if it Conflicts With Religious Beliefs" Apparently the discotute is just getting to reporting on this case, which was in the nineth court of appeals. This case decided that a teacher can be ordered to teach evolution, even if the theory conflicts with his or her religious beliefs. So what does that mean? It makes it so that even if the teacher is a young earth creationist they still have to teach the science in biology. woo hoo for that case I just find it entertaining that it took sixteen years for them to finally talk about it...

Discovery Institute produces a guideline for budding creationists in high school

The discovery institute's CSC section recently released a report about "preparing students to intelligently question Darwin this fall." Casey Luskin prepares three guides for ID students when they are taking biology.
Luskin's first point”

Tip #1: Never opt out of learning evolution"

Sounds good on the surface but then it's explained;

“Despite the one-sided nature of evolution-education, I found that the more evolutionary biology I took, the more I became convinced that the theory was based upon unproven assumptions, contradictory methodologies, and supported weakly by the data. So my first tip is to never be afraid to study evolution. But when studying evolution, always think critically and stay proactively informed about a diversity of viewpoints.”

Unproven assumption, contradictory methodologies and weak data say what? I’ll start with the so-called weak data in tip number 1. Talk Origin's discussion that evolution is a fact has some excellent points about this that I want to bring up. First - there are examples of evolution that are apparent; e.g. modern populations are evolving and the evidence of Homo sapiens and chimpanzees common ancestor. There is so much evidence in support of primate evolution that it is basically a fact. The next point offered is that while in some cases, like about all organisms having a common ancestor, pieces are still being worked out there is no opposing evidence. Because this isn't entirely worked out it is not yet a "fact" and there are reasonable alternatives. Finally the epistemological argument against evolution as fact - nothing in science can be "proven" including evolution. Well, true but in the case of evolution and other theories we are so certain to be 99% certain it is true and really there is always going to be doubt because science is open to being wrong and we will never ever be 100% sure.

Next point "Tip #2: Think for yourself, think critically, and question assumptions."

“Though my professors rarely (if ever) would acknowledge it, I quickly discovered in college that nearly all evolutionary claims are based upon assumptions. Modern evolutionary theory is assumed to be true, and then the data is interpreted based upon Darwinian assumptions.”

I don't think I need to redo my point again even though Luskin feels the need to do so.

“Biological similarity between two species implies inheritance from a common ancestor (i.e. vertical common descent) except for when it doesn’t (and then they appeal to processes like "convergent evolution" or "horizontal gene transfer").”

Common decent concerns genetic origins and says that all life is genetically related. Not necessarily that it is vertical. This seems be a common misconception, evolution is not vertical, it is simultaneous. Next

“Neo-Darwinism predicts transitional forms may be found, but when they’re not found, that just shows that the transitions took place too rapidly and in populations too small to (statistically speaking) become fossilized.”

WHAT? No transitional forms? Hasn't this been beat into the ground? I am just referring you all to Dr. Novella over at neurologica blog and his bit about Archaeopteryx.

“Evolutionary genetics predicts the genome will be full of useless junk DNA, except for when we discover function for such “junk” DNA. Then evolution predicts that cells would never retain useless junk DNA in the first place.”

Yes, we are continuing to find out what DNA does and how it works but evolutionary genetics doesn't move the goalpost. Genetics will, and does only answer the questions we have about how species are related. As scientists learn more, more of the links are revealed. Check out this for a better argument, talk origins is a wonderful place to find the refutations of all these points.

The last bit in this tip is to think independently. It would be nice if people like Luskin practiced this given he isn't open minded about science, specifically evolution.

The final "Tip #3: Proactively study credible scientific viewpoints that dissent from Darwinism. "

What credible viewpoints? Surely Luskin doesn't mean "intelligent design"? Apparently:

“To gain a balanced understanding of the scientific evidence, students may need to take the time to pro-actively research the pro-ID scientific arguments that many faculty may be opposing, misrepresenting, or perhaps even outright censoring. Yes, take courses advocating evolution. But also read material from credible Darwin skeptics to learn about other viewpoints. Only then can one truly make up his mind in an informed fashion.”

What pro-ID scientific arguments? I am not going to dignify this with an argument. It isn't worth it.

We need to be aware of the ID/creationist brainwashing because this is what we are going to be counteracting later when these kids grow up, so watch out. Just when we think the old generation of ID “scientists” will go away, their protégé grow up.

ID Proponets attacking Evolution again

Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute has attacked Evolution once more in his article "Deepening Darwin's Dilemma." This pile of nonsense brings up the ID believers same old arguments against Evolution and once more, get it all wrong.

To start off with is the mistake that finding more transition fossils instead of adding to our picture of the 'tree of life' actually make the problem worse. Seriously Wells? How many fossils do we need to add to convince you that new ones don't raise more questions? Examples like the transition from Dinosaur to bird question, despite Archeopteryx, is a fallacious argument. The evidence is there and ID proponents can't just claim that the transition fossils don't fill in the gaps especially when you have prime examples like Archeopteryx. Moving on Wells continues the ID argument about the Precambrian fossils and how the fossils are soft bodied. Well, many fossils were soft bodied before and after the Cambrian Explosion and beyond that many of the Cambrian fossils had hard parts. I think this is a good time to point out that the "explosion" in the Cambrian period happened over five to ten (ish) million years. That my friends is far from an explosion on anything but, well, an evolutionary time scale.

Last but not least is my personal favorite nonsense of the whole article. Wells claims that the lack of Precambrian fossils makes the "Darwin's dilemma" more confusing. While yes there are few Precambrian fossils the extreme age coupled with a lack of hard bodies (as Wells had mentioned himself earlier in the article) leads naturally to few fossils. Hard bits fossilize easier than soft parts. Evidence thus far shows that there was not a predilection for hard parts prior to the Cambrian period.

All in all Well's closing statement regarding lack of evidence that the Cambrian phyla are from a common ancestor is simply refuted. There are many more branching points before the Cambrian period to consider before you can dismiss the range of life found in the Cambrian period of having not evolved to get there. This time period was not the origin of complex life which Scientists have evidence for 5 million years before the Cambrian period. Also there are trace-like fossils from more than 1200 million years ago (as opposed to the Cambrian period's 540 million years) and evidence of microbial life over 3000 million years ago. Obviously from that there was a lot of evolution going on prior to the Cambrian period and any attempt to directly link the Cambrian phyla to a common ancestor is ludicrous.

This article is just another example of the ridiculous claims that the Discovery Institute is spewing out and it is a horrible effort to get Intelligent Design (eg creationism) inserted into peoples minds.

**Most of the information on the fossil record was found here**