The Austringer

The editors of the Tulsa World think that Lawmakers should adopt stronger wildlife laws. That’s fair enough in light of the tragedy in Ohio where exotic predators like lions, tigers, and bears were released by a suicidal keeper. But the editorial’s structure left much to be desired, in my opinion. They do have a good opening:

It’s understandable, and in most instances maybe even OK, for Oklahomans to own and keep certain kinds of unusual critters on their homesteads, even in the city. There’s nothing wrong with a few chickens or an occasional horse or donkey.

But tigers and bears? Allowing people to own and keep large, sometimes-predatory animals on their premises is just asking for a tragedy to occur.

This next part looks all right on first reading, but there is a problem when it is paired with the ending of the editorial:

But in many parts of the state, a tiger can be kept as a backyard pet without the approval of any agency. And too often, the results are predictably tragic.

“These animals are being bought and sold at the hands of people that have no business owning them. I have seen what happens to them in private hands, and the animal loses,” said Dr. Kay Backues, director of animal health and the senior staff veterinarian at the Tulsa Zoo.

“It’s horrifying,” she said. “It’s tragic. And nationally, there are a good number of people that are killed every year or injured by exotic animals they’ve kept as pets.”

Once we get to the end, things have gone from the specific focus and into the completely general:

Micah Holmes, who’s with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, which licenses native-animal breeders, perfectly summed up what ought to be the Legislature’s marching orders: “First thing we’re going to say is that wildlife belongs in the wild.”

This is a potential problem with a simple solution. Let’s address it before another tragedy occurs.

Do they really want to advocate a simple solution of all wildlife belonging in the wild, that is, that no one can be allowed to have any animal considered wild? They don’t clarify what, exactly, their “simple solution” is supposed to cover. I thought of falconry first. Then in composing my response on their site, I discovered that one of their authorities quoted, Dr. Kay Backues, herself owns exotic wildlife that could be at risk under an exceedingly broad wildlife ban. How far might that go? Many people keep aquaria stocked with exotic wildlife, many species of which are obligate predators. It seems to me that the legislative response to the Ohio tragedy either is going to be more complex than the editors claim, or a lot of people are unexpectedly going to find themselves at the wrong end of a simple law.

Here’s my response in a comment left on their site:

As the saying goes, every complex problem has a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. The editorial starts with a more specific thrust concerning large, predatory exotic animals capable of killing humans, but ends with an incredibly broad statement about all wildlife as the “marching orders” to the state legislature.

Hopefully the “simple solution” eventually advocated is just complex enough to permit falconry to continue to be practiced in Oklahoma. Falconry involves always-predatory and sometimes large animals kept by people for the purpose of hunting. The falconry community acted to conserve endangered raptor species when pollution threatened those populations, which sounds to me like the wildlife won in that case, contrary to the import of the quote in the editorial from Backues. Of course, Backues may have been more circumspect and nuanced in what she said than what the editors chose to pass on to us. In fact, given that Backues herself owns an exotic pet (an umbrella cockatoo, according to Anne Brockman’s article), one would expect that she must have done so. Does Backues agree with Holmes on the exceedingly broad dictum, “wildlife belongs in the wild”? I’m unaware of any successful release into the wild (success meaning that the released animal lives out the remainder of a normal lifespan there) of an umbrella cockatoo, especially one that has spent 25 years in the care of man.

The legislators might want to talk to the folks at the Oklahoma Falconers Association to figure this issue out, at least as far as falconry is concerned. There may be other stakeholders, such as Dr. Backues, who would also be negatively affected by too-broad a “simple solution”. And if the editors want to advocate a simple solution to the problem, maybe a little more care ought to be invested in saying what they think the simple solution is, since “the regulation of exotic wildlife” leaves quite a bit unspecified.

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We’ve known for a long time that Casey Luskin has some very odd ideas about what constitutes a technical publication. Casey’s been good enough to document another deficiency of his in this respect for all to see, but no one is allowed to comment. (I wonder what happened to the Discovery Institute’s grand experiment in interactive commentary, anyway?)

Casey thinks I’m a hypocrite for criticizing Granville Sewell on the topic of self-plagiarism. As evidence, he notes that an essay co-authored by Jeff Shallit and I was published on the web and later in the journal Synthese.

The Case of Wesley Elsberry’s Self-Plagiarism

In 2003, Wesley Elsberry and Jeffrey Shallit co-published a paper, “Information Theory, Evolutionary Computation, and Dembski’s ‘Complex Specified Information,’” on the website TalkReason.org. (I wrote a response to the substance of their 2003 article here.)[*]

In 2011, Elsberry and Shallit co-published a paper in the journal Synthese titled “Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information.’”

If you’ll notice, the titles of those two papers are identical. That’s not all that’s identical in the papers. A comparison performed by a colleague using the plagiarism-detection software SafeAssign shows that these two papers are ~94% matching.

(Note: The analysis used text files I had prepared using the original PDFs of the papers. For processing, I had to strip out some numbers and mathematical equations which did not translate well into the text files. Also, my colleague’s name has been redacted.)

Isn’t it just a bit hypocritical that Elsberry harps upon Sewell’s supposed mortal sin of “self-plagiarism” when Elsberry himself has taken previously published work and then republished it in academic journals?

Yeah, I’ll stipulate that the essay is mostly the same. But…

Casey, Casey, Casey… Republishing essentially the same thing multiple times in the technical literature is a bad thing. Getting something that’s been released on the web but not yet published in the technical literature is perfectly fine, with a caveat: the authors should make sure that the editors are aware of the prior release. This was done for the essay that was published in Synthese. (The editors also knew of a similar essay published in 2004′s “Why Intelligent Design Fails”, which Casey hasn’t mentioned yet.) This situation is not what “self-plagiarism” applies to. Nor is converting material from a dissertation into technical articles considered self-plagiarism, which is another process that I’m still working on. For another case in point, some time ago Reed Cartwright blogged a criticism of a paper. Another researcher saw that and invited Reed to contribute to a response letter in the technical literature. Does Reed’s previous web publication of the line of criticism used in the letter establish “self-plagiarism”? That’s a clear “No”. Scientists treat the technical literature as a separate source of knowledge from popular sources like blogs and portal sites. Repetition of material in lay outlets is essentially of no concern to the scientific endeavor. When it occurs in the technical literature, it is perceived as a pernicious problem.

But Granville Sewell doesn’t have a situation analogous to mine, where I converted a lay release into a publication in the technical literature. The Discovery Institute itself counts his shtick about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics twice already in its list of “peer-reviewed” work on ID. I have no doubt that had AML actually followed through on publication of the essay, the DI would have happily counted it three times over in their list instead of just twice. The DI and its spokes-weasels can’t simultaneously claim that each re-publication counts separately and that self-plagiarism that repeats the same arguments in the technical literature is not happening. Of course, Casey knows how weak his position is, else he wouldn’t have added the following to his screed:

So I personally don’t care if Wesley Elsberry plagiarizes himself, and it doesn’t matter to me one bit if he resubmits material he’s already published to any publication he likes.

My point is simply this: it is hypocritical for Elsberry to attack Sewell for “self-plagiarism,” when Elsberry does the same thing. What Sewell (and Elsberry) have done isn’t a crime. Elsberry’s complaint is both baseless, and hypocritical.

Given that IDC advocates are so unproductive, Casey has to defend the line that if they can manage to sneak the same stuff around to multiple venues within the technical literature, there’s nothing wrong with that. Well, there is something wrong with that. Maybe it isn’t high on the lists of academic sin, but it certainly does goes some way to demonstrating intellectual dishonesty to game the technical literature.

[*] Casey, you did not write a response to the substance of our essay. That would have required reading comprehension on your part. What you wrote was an orgy of strawman gouging and delusional codswallop.

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In the Terry Pratchett novel “Witches Abroad”, he sets up an image of “the optimist’s fire”, which he then defines as “two logs and hope”. I bring this up because I’m seeing people who desperately want to be seen as hard-nosed and fiscally responsible proposing the optimist’s economic booster: tax cuts and hope.

Cutting taxes on industry (and regulations, too!), it is said, will finally bring about job creation and get the economic fire burning once again. I am afraid that I’m not seeing the causal link here. Our corporate citizens have plenty of money on hand, various estimates putting those cash reserves in the trillions. It’s not like any tax cuts are contemplated on that scale, so that leads to the vexing question of why jobs aren’t being created now? If they are worried about consumer spending, tax cuts for businesses don’t address that at all.

Well, having said that, I would propose a tax cut for businesses. But I am not proposing an across-the-board tax cut. No, I think that there should be a tax incentive for businesses that create new jobs. If you have a business and are bringing more people into the workforce than you did the year before, your business should get a break on its taxes. If you have a business that is standing pat on jobs or shedding them or outsourcing them, then, sorry, but no tax break for you. Probably this would have to have some metric that ties together both number of jobs and total compensation per job. The right incentive structure will reward companies more for better-paying jobs, and less for low-paying job creation. But that’s a refinement to be considered after getting more people onboard with the big idea.

This puts the right outlook on using the tax code to influence business: it makes clear what behavior is needed to take advantage of the tax incentive, and makes clear that until that behavior is actualized, there is no corporate handout in the offing. It rewards the corporate citizens who are making things better here in the USA, and withholds benefits from those who seek to cut labor corners or send jobs overseas. It means that we aren’t cutting our own economic throats to no better purpose than padding executive bonuses, which seems to be all that we’ve gotten out of corporate tax-cutting in recent memory. It would mean that we are applying a lighter where it is needed rather than hoping that a fire will start on its own somewhere, somehow. And, best of all, even if it doesn’t work and most corporations refuse to create jobs anyway, we haven’t burdened the rest of the taxpaying public unnecessarily.

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Back in 1990, Clayton Williams, Jr. was in the news a lot as he ran for governor in Texas. His campaign famously imploded over insensitive good-ol’-boy comments made to a weekend gathering of media. He was rich, but there didn’t seem to be much else to recommend him. I always thought it odd to go by the “Clayton Williams, Jr. Alumni Center” at the TAMU campus.

But it appears I need to seriously revise my assessment of Williams. The Austin-American Statesman reports that Williams had some extraordinarily good advice for Texas Governor Rick Perry (which Perry obviously and promptly ignored):

Williams, a wealthy Midland oil man, wrote to Perry as the State Board of Education was starting the debate over new science curriculum standards. He warned Perry to stop any effort by the board to include creationism or intelligent design in those standards.
“If Texas enters into a debate on the teaching of fundamental religious beliefs in public schools, it will tarnish our strong academic reputation, set our ability to attract top science and engineering talent to Texas back decades and severely impact our reputation as a national and global leader in energy, space, medicine and other high tech fields,” Williams wrote.
He continued: “Governor, this is a very important issue for Texas. I urge you to quell this issue quietly, firmly and permanently.”

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There’s a “Judge Judy” video clip being circulated where Judge Judy is deciding a case over unpaid rent. A young woman is the plaintiff, and is seeking several months of unpaid rent from a young man who shared an apartment with her. The young man is deeply confused about the concept of government aid for the purpose of rent, and Judge Judy unsuccessfully attempts to educate him about that. He asserts that because he could have paid for a hotel with the money, that he is justified in spending the money for other purposes.

But what struck me was the conclusion to the clip. The young man asks whether the plaintiff paid the rent on the apartment, and Judge Judy tells him that is an excellent question. Judge Judy then determines that the plaintiff only actually paid the rent for one month out of the several months that she is suing the defendant over. Judge Judy abruptly dismisses the case.

I’d appreciate feedback from the legally-oriented folks out there. It seems to me that Judge Judy is only justified in a dismissal like that if she is running (or simulating) a court of equity, not a court of law. So far as I can figure it, a court of law would hold it irrelevant to a claim whether the plaintiff was in violation of a contract with a third party. But in a court of equity, the plaintiff must be filing a case with “clean hands”, and it is that standard which the plaintiff in this case failed to meet.

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Casey Luskin has an unenviable track record. Pretty much anytime Casey gets going, you can count on him to shoot himself in the foot someway, somehow.

Yesterday evening’s blog post by Casey is no exception. So if Casey has done it again, why would I give the title I have? Well, because of the way Casey shoots himself in the foot. You see, Casey so often goes off half-cocked because he doesn’t bother to figure out what the person he is critiquing actually said, and here we have Casey not listening to the primary source again, therefore Casey “doesn’t do it again”.

Casey’s target this time was Dr. Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education. When Casey is up against a strawman he’s constructed, he pulls no punches, thus his post’s title of “Eugenie Scott Misrepresents the Law on Evolution Education”. What does Casey present as evidence of his claim of the title? Let’s let Casey go on a bit:

Uncommon Descent is reporting that National Center for Science Education (NCSE) executive director Eugenie Scott has stated in a talk: “You cannot teach evidence against evolution. There have been some court decisions that have talked about this including Kitzmiller, but there has not been a really clean test of this idea of teaching evidence against evolution.”

Uncommon Descent? Casey trusts them to get anything right? He shouldn’t, because they didn’t. The snippet Casey gives truncates even what UD managed to relate, and UD was missing a pretty critical word in there. Casey doesn’t note that Genie led into to quote by saying that she had an asterisk on this item, “this item” being text on a projected slide on screen. With the critical text restored, we have this instead: “OK, what else can you not do? I have a little asterisk here that you cannot teach evidence against evolution.” Genie goes on to explain the state of the law concerning this point. It has an asterisk because, as Genie ably explains, the law is not yet settled on this particular point. Casey apparently doesn’t know about this, and about the only way that could happen is if he started foaming at the mouth based only on the UD text and failed to actually listen to Genie’s video presentation. Here’s Casey blowing off a piece of his foot:

Isn’t that convenient for Eugenie Scott that she now claims that the courts have insulated evolution from any form of critique in public schools?

First, Casey fails to note the nuanced presentation Genie made concerning the point of law in question. Second, Casey places religious antievolution argumentation within “any form of critique”. A science classroom is not the appropriate venue for “any form of critique”. Only critiques that themselves have passed scientific muster are appropriate there, and that leaves out the old, moldy religious antievolution argumentation.

In any case, Dr. Scott is misrepresenting the law.

Oh, really? Why didn’t you listen to Genie’s video presentation, Casey? If you had, you would have had the opportunity to not misrepresent Genie.

The Kitzmiller v. Dover lawsuit dealt with the teaching of intelligent design, not teaching scientific evidence against evolution. And even if it had, Judge Jones would have been overruled by a much higher court–the U.S. Supreme Court–which has already ruled that it is legal to teach scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories like evolution. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard, a case that directly dealt with the topic of origins-education in public schools:

We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. . . . [T]eaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.”

(Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 593-594 (1987).)

Eugenie can say whatever she wants but she cannot overrule the U.S. Supreme Court refuting her claims.

Genie claimed that the Kitzmiller decision discussed “evidence against evolution”, not that it provided the final word in law prohibiting presenting “evidence against evolution”. Remember the asterisk Genie mentioned? Oh, of course not, since Casey apparently didn’t bother to listen before making up stuff. Can we find Judge Jones doing what Genie said he did? Of course we can:

ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. (5:41 (Pennock)). This argument is not brought to this Court anew, and in fact, the same argument, termed “contrived dualism” in McLean, was employed by creationists in the 1980′s to support “creation science.” The court in McLean noted the “fallacious pedagogy of the two model approach” and that “[i]n efforts to establish ‘evidence’ in support of creation science, the defendants relied upon the same false premise as the two model approach . . . all evidence which criticized evolutionary theory was proof in support of creation science.” McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1267, 1269. We do not find this false dichotomy any more availing to justify ID today than it was to justify creation science two decades ago.

ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments against evolution, as illustrated by Professor Behe’s argument that “irreducibly complex” systems cannot be produced through Darwinian, or any natural, mechanisms. (5:38-41 (Pennock); 1:39, 2:15, 2:35-37, 3:96 (Miller); 16:72-73 (Padian); 10:148 (Forrest)). However, we believe that arguments against evolution are not arguments for design. Expert testimony revealed that just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow. (2:36-37 (Miller)). As Dr. Padian aptly noted, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” (17:45 (Padian)). To that end, expert testimony from Drs. Miller and Padian provided multiple examples where Pandas asserted that no natural explanations exist, and in some cases that none could exist, and yet natural explanations have been identified in the intervening years. It also bears mentioning that as Dr. Miller stated, just because scientists cannot explain every evolutionary detail does not undermine its validity as a scientific theory as no theory in science is fully understood. (3:102 (Miller)).

Casey’s strawman is taking a pounding, but he still hasn’t demonstrated Genie misrepresenting anything. Casey, though, is plainly misrepresenting Genie’s talk.

More Casey:

Actually, I’ve heard secondhand that Eugenie doesn’t privately believe it’s really illegal to critique evolution. I’m not going to name names, but I’ve spoken with legal scholars who have collaborated with Darwin lobbyists. They’ve told me that what Eugenie Scott fears more than anything is an army of teachers who WILL teach the scientific controversy over evolution because she knows that under current law, it’s legal to do that. There’s a reason why, as Eugenie puts it, “there has not been a really clean test of this idea of teaching evidence against evolution.” That’s because the NCSE and its allies in the Darwin lobby are afraid to file a lawsuit against a policy that requires or permits scientific critique of evolution because they know they will probably lose that case in court.

After all, if the Darwin lobby feels a policy is unconstitutional, they waste little time in filing lawsuits; it took less than two months for attorneys working with the ACLU to help parents file a lawsuit after the Dover Area School Board passed a policy requiring the teaching of ID.

Uh, no, Casey. In the video handily linked in the post at UD, you could have listened to Genie discussing the difference between a “permissive” act and one that is a demand that something wrong be done. For permissive acts, Genie explains that one cannot simply challenge the law on its own, one must instead wait for someone to use the permissive act to implement a curriculum that infringes rights under the Constitution, find out about the infringement, then find someone within the student body who has standing to challenge it and the willingness to challenge it, and all that is much harder than challenging a law that is wrong on its face. Start around 54:50 into the video to hear it. Of course, Casey should have heard it already, but he either didn’t bother … again … or he is lying about what Genie actually said.

But there have been multiple policies requiring or permitting scientific critique of evolution which have remained on the books for years without any lawsuit. For example:

Texas: Students must “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations . . . including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking,” and also “analyze and evaluate” core evolutionary claims, including “common ancestry,” “natural selection,” “mutation,” “sudden appearance,” the origin of the “complexity of the cell,” and the formation of “long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life.”

Minnesota: “The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including . . . [the] theory of evolution . . . .”

New Mexico: Students will “critically analyze the data and observations supporting the conclusion that the species living on Earth today are related by descent from the ancestral one-celled organisms.”

Pennsylvania: “Critically evaluate the status of existing theories (e.g., germ theory of disease, wave theory of light, classification of subatomic particles, theory of evolution, epidemiology of AIDS).”

Missouri: “Identify and analyze current theories that are being questioned, and compare them to new theories that have emerged to challenge older ones (e.g., Theory of Evolution . . . ).”

Alabama: “[E]volution by natural selection is a controversial theory . . . . Instructional material associated with controversy should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

South Carolina: “Summarize ways that scientists use data from a variety of sources to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.”

Louisiana: Louisiana public schools shall “create and foster an environment…that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Mississippi: “No local school board, school superintendent or school principal shall prohibit a public school classroom teacher from discussing and answering questions from individual students on the origin of life.”

Kansas: “Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution, the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory.”

Ohio: “Describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory. (The intent of this benchmark does not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design.)”

Each of these policies are still in effect, except for the last two (Kansas’s policy was repealed in 2007 after conservatives lost a majority on the State Board of Education, and Ohio’s policy was repealed in 2006 after its State Board of Education underwent a similar change). The point is this: each of these policies are (or were) on the books for years without any legal challenge from the Darwin lobby. If Eugenie Scott is correct that it’s illegal to teach scientific critiques of Darwinian evolution, why is that?

Genie never said a word about it being illegal to “teach scientific critiques of Darwinian evolution”. What she was discussing was the tendency for religious antievolutionists to present their anti-scientific stuff and try to act as if they have something worth bringing up in a science class. Just because religious antievolutionists call something “evidence against evolution” doesn’t magically change it into something scientific. Scientific critiques have proven to be beyond the capacity of the religious antievolutionists. At best, they present a cargo cult version of critique, adorned with a poor appearance that is, nonetheless, at the limit of what their (mis)understanding of the subject can deliver.

Darwin lobbyists would love to ban scientific critique of evolution in public schools, so why haven’t they filed a lawsuit? It’s simple: They aren’t confident they would win because they know that current law does NOT make it illegal to teach scientific critiques of evolution in public schools.

Sorry, wrong again. Once a bad curriculum turns up and someone with standing to challenge it makes themselves known, then we’ll see how fast off the mark the legal challenge gets going. Casey is trying to equate legal challenges to facially-wrong laws and policies with challenging a law or policy without a facial defect, and that is clearly a misrepresentation of the law. Kinda ironic how Casey ends up doing the bad thing that he claims others do.

What’s most distressing here isn’t just that Eugenie Scott is misrepresenting the law. It’s that in her perfect world, she would apparently prefer that teaching scientific critique of evolution be illegal. What kind of society would we live in if Eugenie Scott and the Darwin lobby had their way, and it was illegal to ask hard questions about scientific theories? Not a good one.

Evolutionary science has a long and distinguished record of asking hard questions about scientific theories. There’s plenty of theories that have been discarded. Casey could read Peter Bowler’s “Evolution: The History of an Idea” to get that background. Or he can continue with not doing it (“it” being due diligence) again… and again.

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Two vehicles in a Bartram Hall (Zoology department building) parking area at the University of Florida were vandalized, apparently because they displayed “Darwin fish” on them. Besides messing up the Darwin fish, the vandal(s) put nails into tires.

Hat tip to Prof. Betty Smocovitis, whose hand appears in the linked video.

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There’s an essay by Randal Rauser at “Christian Post” offering what’s termed a rebuttal to a criticism of an earlier essay. Rauser seems to be a run-of-the-mill “intelligent design” creationism (IDC) cheerleader.

Rauser defends Dembski’s ideas early on.

Joseph H. Axell posted a long rebuttal in the comment section of my article “Unintelligent arguments against intelligent design: A Primer”. There are a number of claims I’d like to challenge in the response. For instance Axell writes: “Dembski’s ‘explanatory filter’ for detecting design has been shown to be inadequate (false positives being but one problem)….” That’s like saying that an umbrella is inadequate because it is ineffectual in a windy rainstorm. Dembski’s explanatory filter, like an umbrella, can still be a useful tool even if it is not perfect. Is Newtonian physics tossed out as illegitimate because it doesn’t work at the quantum level?

Joseph Axell is right. Rauser, not so much. Newtonian physics is useful somewhere, which distinguishes it from Dembski’s “design inference” that has never had a fully-worked out example applied to any non-trivial problem. So much of Rauser’s original essay is based upon the conflation of ordinary and rarefied design inferences that it seems that he must not have read The advantages of theft over toil yet. The deficiencies of Dembski’s CSI are detailed in this essay. In the appendix, we introduced the concept of Specified Anti-Information and demonstrated that it formed an upper bound on Dembski’s CSI and disproved Dembski’s proposed “law of conservation of information”. A concerned reader wondered why we would bother repairing “specification”, and I replied:

The existence of a minimal program/input pair that results in a certain output indicates that there exists an effective method for production of the output. Since effective methods are something that are in common between intelligent agents and instances of natural computation, one cannot distinguish which of the two sorts of causation might have resulted in the output, but one can reject chance causation for the output. We haven’t so much repaired specification as we have pointed out a better alternative to it.

This leads me to a claim about Dembski’s design inference: Everything which is supposedly explained by a design inference is better and more simply explained by Specified Anti-Information.

SAI identifies an effective method for the production of the output of interest. The result of a design inference is less specific, being simply the negation of currently known (and considered) regularity and chance. The further arguments Dembski gives to go from a design inference to intelligent agency are flawed. On both practical and theoretical grounds, SAI is a superior methodology to that of the design inference.

Back to Rauser:

Second, Axell writes: “So you concede that ID proponents have so far failed to achieve even the preliminary goal of establishing that a causal intelligence has been engaged in creating features of the natural world.”

First of all, whether they have or haven’t suceeded in establishing any particular instance of intelligent design is completely irrelevant to the claim that such a project is, in principle, viable. That’s the point! (And philosopher of science / atheist Bradley Monton makes it much better than I ever could.)

I need to reiterate that ordinary design is not the same as rarefied design, and here we have Rauser explicitly trying to ignore that point.

Now for the relation to the title. Here’s Rauser moving in for the rhetorical kill, at least apparently in his mind:

Finally I turn to the main point. Is it true that a person is obliged to provide “a detailed account of the nature of that intelligent cause and of the time, manner and place in which it has engaged with the natural world” if that intelligent cause is one with which we are not “familiar”?

Axell just invented that stipulation but provided no reasoning for it. He just asserts it. But not only is there no reason to accept it. There is also a good reason not to accept it. Consider the following illustration:

Axell’s friend tells him: “Joseph, I fear that there is some kind of intelligence in my house that doesn’t want me here.”

Axell, being a scientifically enlightened denizen of the twenty-first century is skeptical. “What evidence do you have?” he asks.

Axell’s friend then pulls out a ouija board and sets it on the coffee table. Immediately the planchette begins moving across the board and it spells “Get out of here.” Axell can clearly see that nobody is touching the planchette and immediately he picks it up, inspects it closely. There are no magnets: it is only a piece of wood. There are no wires. There is no draft. He puts it back down. Immediately the planchette begins to move again as it spells out “I said get out of here.”

Highlighting added.

Good reason? Excuse me, but all I see here is a pathetic fantasy, one in which Rauser ludicrously inserts his critic. There is no reason, and further, no reasoning, going on in Rauser’s response. It is, rather literally, the demon-haunted world being given as a basis for the legitimacy of IDC. We all knew that already, Randal.

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Over at the “Uncommon Descent” blog, poster “niwrad” decided to dispute claims of high sequence similarity between human and chimpanzee genomes. “niwrad” posted a statistical test of human/chimp genome comparisons in September, 2010, and a follow-up post this week comparing two human genomes using the metric from the earlier post. These were brought to my attention by “CeilingCat” on the AtBC forum. What the pair of posts demonstrates is another instance of “intelligent design” creationism advocates engaging in mathematical hijinks. The “niwrad” performance has more to do with the style of illusionists than it does actual mathematical and statistical practice. What one has to do with these kinds of things is look for the sleight of hand. Because “niwrad” now has a pair of articles based on the same “trick”, it becomes easier to point out exactly where the prestidigitation happened and why it is reasonable to infer that “niwrad” knows full well that it is a trick.

Let’s review some highlights from “niwrad”‘s initial post:

Supporters of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution have a strong ideological motivation for minimizing the differences between humans and chimps, as they claim that these two species evolved from a common ancestor, as a result of random mutations filtered by natural selection. Now, I don’t personally believe that humans and chimps share a common ancestry, for a host of reasons that would take me too long to explain in this post. Nor do I attach much significance to the magnitude of the genetic differences between these two species, per se, because in my opinion, the fundamental differences between these creatures lie elsewhere. [...]

[...] The comparison I performed was completely different from those usually performed by geneticists, because was purely statistical in nature. In a sense, it could be described as an application of the well-known Monte Carlo method. [...]

[...] While there is only one possible method of comparing identity between strings of characters (the above pairwise comparison), there are many methods of comparing similarity. In other words, there are many measures of similarity, depending on the rules of pattern matching that we choose. [...]

Any final result for a complete statistical similarity test (especially if it is a unique number) is meaningful only if: 1) the distance function is mathematically defined; 2) the rules for pattern matching and the formulas for calculating the result are explained in detail; 3) it is clearly stated which parts of the input strings are being examined; 4) in the event that computer programs were used to perform the comparison, the source codes and algorithms are provided. My explanations below have the goal to meet the three first constraints. To satisfy the fourth condition, the source file of the Perl script used for the test is freely downloadable here.

[...]

For each pair of homologous chromosomes A and B, a PRNG (pseudo-random number generator) generates 10,000 uniformly distributed pseudo-random numbers which specify the offset, or starting point, of 10,000 30-base patterns that are contained in source chromosome A. The 30BPM test involves searching for all 10,000 of these DNA sub-strings of chromosome A in our target chromosome B. Now let F be the number of patterns located (at least once) in chromosome B. The 30BPM similarity is simply defined as F/100 (minimum value = 0%, maximum value = 100%). The absolute difference between 10,000 and F (minimum 0, maximum 10,000) is the 30BPM distance. [...] It can easily be seen that the 30BPM distance will be zero (30BPM similarity = 100%) if the two strings are identical. In an additional test which I performed on two random 100 million-base DNA strings, the 30-BPM distance was 10,000 (i.e. no patterns on A were located in B). [...]

The results obtained are statistically valid. The same test was previously run on a sampling of 1,000 random 30-base patterns and the percentages obtained were almost identical with those obtained in the final test, with 10,000 random 30-base patterns. When human and chimp genomes are compared, the X chromosome is the one showing the highest degree of 30BPM similarity (72.37%), while the Y chromosome shows the lowest degree of 30BPM similarity (30.29%). On average the overall 30BPM similarity, when all chromosomes are taken into consideration, is approximately 62%. Here we have the classic case of the glass which some people perceive as being half-full, while others perceive it as being half-empty. When compared to two random strings which are 0% similar, 62% is a very large value, so nobody would deny that human and chimp genomes are quite similar! On the other end, 62% is a very low value when compared to the more than 95% similarity percentages which are published by bioinformatics evolutionary researchers. Now, I realize that it may seem somewhat arbitrary to choose 30-base-long patterns, as I did in my test, and indeed it is arbitrary to some degree. However, if the two genomes were really 95% similar or more, as is commonly claimed, also a 30BPM statistical test should produce 95% results, and it does not.

Emphasis added to “niwrad”‘s central claim.

The claim is, of course, poppycock. Anyone with the slightest pretension to an understanding of probability or statistics would recognize that the proposed “30BPM” metric is non-linear and not directly comparable to straight-up sequence similarity numbers. What’s truly ironic is that if “niwrad” were slightly more astute, he might have realized that his “30BPM” metric actually confirms the high sequence similarity results that he claims to have rebutted.

And that brings us to “niwrad”‘s second post, the one that aims to apply his “30BPM” metric to intra-specific genome comparisons, this time done as human-to-human comparison.

One reader suggested applying an identical test in order to compare two human genomes. That sounded like a very good idea to me, so I downloaded another human genome dataset from NCBI and performed a test.

[...]

Finally, the average number of pattern matches per chromosome, shown at the bottom of the table, was very different in the two cases: 9616 for human vs. human comparisons, but only 6173 for chimp vs. human comparisons. The average number of patterns without a match for human vs. human comparisons was (10000 – 9616) = 384, or in percentage terms, 384/10000 = 3.84%. The average number of patterns without a match in human vs. chimp comparisons was (10000 – 6173) = 3827, or in percentage terms, 3827/10000 = 38.27%, which is almost ten times greater.

So the bottom-line question is: if, as many evolutionists say, chimpanzee and human genomes are 99% identical, how “identical” are two human genomes?

“niwrad”‘s final question is interesting for the very salient reason that he did not provide an answer for it, even though his whole trick depends on the conceit that he has developed a better metric for quantifying sequence similarity than that used by actual geneticists. There is a reason why “niwrad” failed to answer, though, and that is that trying to claim that there is only 96.16% sequence similarity between two human genomes is manifestly risible. We know that the “trick” involved here is to confuse genetic sequence similarity with the “30BPM” metric, and that when faced with an obviously nonsensical outcome, “niwrad” punted rather than make explicit the full ridiculousness of his claim.

Above, I mentioned that “niwrad”‘s metric actually confirms high sequence similarity values. Here’s how that happens. First, one needs to realize that one doesn’t need “Monte Carlo” techniques to evaluate “niwrad”‘s “30BPM” metric: we can develop its properties with the usual probabilistic equations. The parameters of interest to us are the rate of change (C), the length of the analysis sequence (K), and the probability of a match (p). If we assume a uniform distribution of changes, then our model is simply the probability p that we do not observe a change within our analysis window K at a particular rate of change C. And that is simply expressed as

Besides being simple, it is obviously also nonlinear. Notice that “niwrad” made quite a fuss about how his metric did what everyone expects for the endpoints of the distribution, where complete sequence identity happened and where complete randomness obtained. Notice that “niwrad” did not go anywhere near calibrating his metric against an expectation concerning a sequence with a known amount of similarity. There’s a reason for that, specifically, that one can’t blather about greater-than-expected dissimilarity if one actual calibrates the technique for known amounts of sequence similarity.

For example, what is the expected “30BPM” result when sequence similarity is actually 99%? We just solve the equation above to yield:

Similarly, when sequence similarity is 99.9%, the “30BPM” expected result is:

So, what about “niwrad”‘s “30BPM” numbers that he obtained empirically? We can convert those back into sequence similarity numbers, which are not the same thing as “30BPM” numbers at all. The equation is simply a rearrangement of the one above:

“niwrad”‘s average “30BPM” value for the human-chimp comparison was 0.6173, giving a sequence similarity estimate of 0.984.

“niwrad”‘s average “30BPM” value for the human-human comparison was 0.9616, giving a sequence similarity estimate of 0.9987.

I should note that “niwrad”‘s “30BPM” metric becomes bloody useless at a point far short of completely random sequences. What point is that? I’m glad that you asked. Given a sample of 10,000 analysis windows, the threshold of usability would be when you have a 50% chance of seeing one match out of those 10,000 samples. That sets p at 0.00005 and gives C as 0.28116. That is, any sequence similarity of less than 0.719 will look exactly the same in “30BPM” terms and be ranked as having 0% similarity.

The “30BPM” metric deployment by “niwrad” does exactly what it was designed to do: exaggerate dissimilarity. It’s a magic trick intended to make an inconvenient fact disappear. It is a fundamentally dishonest exercise.

Update: Fixed the discrepancy between the symbols I defined and what I used in the equations. References to R should have been C, and now are.

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The main petition regarding the Synthese disclaimer published in the January, 2011 issue was signed by 470 academics. It asked for a retraction of the disclaimer and additional information about the circumstances that led the Editors-in-Chief (EiC) to include it.

The EiC have now provided a response to the main petition. I received no direct notice of this response; I ran across a post about it on the “New Apps” blog. Prof. Matthen, author of that blog post, noted:

As far as I can tell, this is a website with one item only. This is clearly a tactic to make the response as obscure and invisible as it can be.

To give some more detail on the apparent desire for obscurity, let me note that the web page as provided has only one piece of content, an image that shows the text of a response letter. Posting an image means that the text of the response is not made easily accessible and it is not indexed by search engines as text. (Interestingly, the page was generated out of Microsoft Word and includes metadata identifying Prof. Hendricks as the author of the piece signed by all three EiC.)

As for the text not being out there recorded for search engines and posterity, that is easy enough to fix. Here it is. I’ve transcribed it from the image at the link above. Any misspellings are likely mine.

In response to the petition sent to Synthese:

We have considered the demands contained in this petition very seriously. We have implemented a moratorium on new special issues and we have begun planning appropriate changes to the editorial procedures of Synthese.

The petition asks for full disclosure of all legal threats. There have not been any communications received from Christian philosophers that constituted legal threats. There was a single email from a member of the public expressing the view that the entire special issue was ‘scurrilous and libelous’. We did not consider this email to be a legal threat. It is important to note that this email was received after our initial contacts with Professor Beckwith.

As far as meaningful legal action is concerned, we have received messages that we take seriously as legal threats but these have not come from Christian philosophers. Our ability to provide detailed responses in the blogs is constrained by these challenges.

Professor Beckwith requested an opportunity to respond to Professor Forrest’s paper. We agreed that this was a fair course of action. As regards the inclusion of our editorial statement and the email correspondence with Professor Forrest, it is true that there was considerable discussion between the editors of all aspects of the special issue. We took these matters very seriously and as is often the case with serious deliberation there were some oscillations prior to our reaching a conclusion. Eventually the editors arrived at a shared position, in consultation with the publisher, based on what we judged to be the offending language in two papers.

With respect to the claim that the guest editors were given assurances that no editorial statement would appear, it is true that the guest editors were privy to internal discussions between the editors-in-chief at earlier stages. We were unable to properly communicate later stages of our decision-making process to the guest editors.

We are ultimately responsible for what appears in the journal and we decided to publish the special issue without amendment to any of its papers. We wish to emphasize that our editorial statement should in no way be interpreted as an endorsement of ‘intelligent design’.

At this point, we have a duty to help create procedures to prevent situations of the sort we saw here from recurring. Thus, in consultation with the publisher, we have begun planning a transition to improved editorial procedures and improved oversight which will be in place in 2012. We will work closely with our board or area editors and our advisory board to make this happen.

Johan van Benthem

Vincent Hendricks

John Symons

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Yes, this is yet another bit related to the Synthese flap. One of the issues still outstanding is whether the list of things the Editors-in-Chief have as misconduct includes notifying third-party complainers that the disclaimer was going into the print edition long before the print edition was available. They certainly failed to inform either the guest editors or the authors that any such thing was happening; those people (I’m one of them) had to wait for print copies to appear on their doorstep to find out.

One piece of hard data is that Francis Beckwith, one of the third-party complainers, submitted his “response” to Barbara Forrest on February 7th, 2011, and the response includes in it explicit reference to the disclaimer in the print edition of Synthese 178:2. This sets the latest date at which Francis Beckwith could have been apprised of the disclaimer’s print status. I didn’t hear about it until Glenn Branch emailed me on March 9th, 2011, to say that a disclaimer had been printed. But I’d like to know exactly how much lead time Beckwith had. The Synthese Editors-in-Chief haven’t been very forthcoming when asked questions about this affair, so that leaves Beckwith to be asked about the situation.

So I asked. This is my email to Beckwith’s published Baylor University email address, sent on April 25th, 2011:

I first received notice of the disclaimer in the Synthese special issue printed edition on 2011/03/09. Would you please tell me the date when the Editors-in-Chief informed you that the disclaimer would be printed in the special issue? I know that this had to be prior to 2011/02/07 given the date of submission of your response that refers to the disclaimer, but I would like to be more precise about this matter.

Thanks,
Wesley

That seems pretty straightforward. It isn’t like it is even going against Beckwith’s interests to be forthcoming about answering it. Now, why would I expect an answer, given the context that I’m a known critic of “intelligent design” creationism and its current — and past — advocates? We got on OK at the 2006 Greer-Heard Forum event, for one. Well, and maybe because Beckwith himself has implied as much. Consider his posts over a previous interaction with Barbara Forrest:

[...] Here’s the problem folks: Barbara Forrest is not concerned about truth or justice. For if she were, she would have, at some point in her “unmasking of me,” contacted me to verify or check certain facts. She also would have given a complete account of certain events that when presented in that way do not “prove” anything odd. [...]

[...] Forrest correctly notes that I am no longer a DI fellow. Does she tell you why? No. How come? She never asked me. Why didn’t she ask me? You’ll have to ask her that. But I suspect that if she can’t find by using Google, she doesn’t bother checking.

[...] But did she ask me for the letter? [...]

[...] But she would have known that if….and here’s the clincher…she had asked me. [...]

[...] But Barb would have known this, if…and here’s the clincher… she had just asked.

It sure makes it sound like Francis Beckwith is a open and forthright kind of guy, even when corresponding with trenchant critics.

Which makes it rather puzzling why I don’t have an answer in hand yet, not even one of the “mind your own business” sort.

Maybe Beckwith is snowed under in emails and the first one simply got lost in the shuffle. So I sent a second one on May 4th, 2011:

On 4/25/2011 4:02 AM, Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
> I first received notice of the disclaimer in the Synthese special issue printed edition on 2011/03/09. Would you please tell me the date when the Editors-in-Chief informed you that the disclaimer would be printed in the special issue? I know that this had to be prior to 2011/02/07 given the date of submission of your response that refers to the disclaimer, but I would like to be more precise about this matter.
>
> Thanks,
> Wesley

In the comments at

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/05/stove_award_competition_heats.html

you note multiple times that Barbara Forrest could have asked you to clarify particular points, with the implication being that she would have received an answer to her question, had she but posed it.

Let me remind you that the question I asked above is still pending an answer. I would appreciate a response.

Thanks,
Wesley

I thought about other possible excuses, like being on vacation. If so, Beckwith has kept up with his blogging while not checking his email, which doesn’t seem exceedingly likely.

Given the continued lack of response, I am having to re-assess the likelihood that Francis Beckwith doesn’t get asked questions by critics because such questions simply go unanswered.

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Professor Paul Giem, M.D., of Loma Linda University has a batch of video lectures online. One of them has him discussing the Synthese special issue on “Evolution and its rivals”, with special attention given to Prof. Barbara Forrest’s paper and Prof. Francis Beckwith’s response. Giem really, really doesn’t like Forrest’s article. At 28:49 into the video, Giem delivers a truly stunning bit of incivility:

This lady [referring to Prof. Forrest] needs some Haldol or something. She’s paranoid.

One of the possible defenses against a defamation of character claim concerns the credibility of the defamer. You can’t win a defamation case if the defaming party is not considered credible when stating the defamatory speech. The fact that Giem is an M.D. would work against him in any case concerning the figurative prescription of psychoactive pharmaceuticals. Giem would be held to a higher, not lower, standard in any such instance.

Civility for religious antievolutionists is a one-way street: they can dish out incivility, but they aren’t going to put up with taking any.

I’ve added this instance to the Invidious Comparisons thread, noting that it isn’t an invidious comparison per se.

Update: It’s been noted that I left out a bit of context. Loma Linda U. is a Seventh-Day Adventist institution, and the SDA is committed to a literal Fall of Adam. Giem expresses his young-earth creationist views online here.

Update 2: Following Tom English’s comment, I’ve added the next words from the video where Giem refers to Forrest as paranoid.

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I had a co-authored paper published in the philosophy journal, Synthese. It appeared online back in 2009 and then in print in the January issue this year. But something else appeared in the January issue with my paper. It was a disclaimer from the chief editors saying that unspecified papers published in that special issue failed to meet the journal’s usual standards for civility in discourse.

This was news to me. It turns out that there was discussion between the special issue editors, James Fetzer and Glenn Branch, and the Editors-in-Chief of Synthese concerning one of the papers, the one by Barbara Forrest that took up the case of Francis Beckwith and his support of “intelligent design” creationism. After the online publication of the articles, the IDC community apparently lobbied the Editors-in-Chief for revisions in Forrest’s paper and giving Beckwith the opportunity to respond in the journal. Two of the Editors-in-Chief asked Forrest to make revisions, or they would add a disclaimer to the special issue. With a batch of correspondence between the various editorial parties, the special issue editors came away with the idea that things had been resolved: Beckwith would get his chance to respond in print, but there would be no after-the-fact revisions and no disclaimer. It wasn’t until the print issue arrived that they discovered that that was not the case, as the threatened disclaimer was discovered as a pretty ghastly reality. Worse, the disclaimer was vague about its disapproval, making it appear to the casual reader that there could be many, if not all, of the articles that caused the high editorial reaction.

Brian Leiter has called for a professional boycott of Synthese until and unless the Editors-in-Chief retract the disclaimer and issue an apology over the matter. Organization of the boycott is being handled by John Wilkins.

For myself, I think boycotting Synthese doesn’t make much sense, as I don’t publish often enough in the philosophical literature for them to notice my absence. Others with more production in philosophy will have more influence via a boycott. If I had been apprised of the disclaimer ahead of time, I would have opted to retract the paper rather than publish it as implicitly tainted by the Editors-in-Chief actions. I would hope that professionalism re-asserts itself in the editorial leadership at Synthese and we see a quick and decisive correction of the deplorable actions so far taken by them.

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The “Florida Senate Majority Office” has a page on Facebook. They ran a poll asking, “Do you think government employees should contribute to their retirement funds, similar to the private sector?”, which is how I became aware of them. The way that’s worded, I’m sure they were expecting a runaway “Yes” response, but the “No”s are currently ahead. It’s possible people are becoming aware that that is just code for “cut total compensation to public employees”, not pension reform. The state started paying all retirement in the mid-70s because it is cheaper that way: the state doesn’t have to hand over an employee contribution that doesn’t exist if the employee doesn’t stay until “vesting” in the program. That’s right, the current system of complete state pay-in for retirement is not meant as a special benefit for public employees, but rather as a way to be cheap with a whole swath of them. Employee pay-in will make the vesting waiting period less effective as a means of saving the state money. The savings currently considered actually are in the across-the-board reduction in total compensation. The whole thing could be done better, from a “save the money” point of view, by simply reducing all public employee salaries by a certain percentage. That would automatically reduce the state pay-in for retirement, too. But I think that the political calculation is that “pension reform” is an easier label to sell than an absolutely obvious pay cut, even if they amount to the same thing, reducing total compensation.

Anyway, the Facebook page looks to be a good way to keep up with what the Florida GOP is doing. Among other items, Senator Altman is sponsoring a Senate Joint Resolution aimed at removing strong language from the state constitution that forbids direct or indirect funding of religious entities with state funds. It is SJR 1218, and it removes the previous prohibition on funding religious entities while asserting positively that an individual may use state funds by giving them to religious entities. The opportunities for slapstick appear to be about to increase.

In the “that’s scary” column would be the news about SCR 4, a resolution for Florida to advance a balanced budget amendment to the US constitution. What’s scary about that? The way they propose doing it, that’s what. They want to hold a national constitutional convention in order to add a balanced budget amendment. A constitutional convention could certainly add such an amendment, but it need not stop with that. The convention could rewrite any or all of the constitution at their discretion, and looking at what’s been going down in our state and national legislatures doesn’t look like any sort of discretion to me. A balanced budget provision is at least popular and arguable, but some of the other stuff our legislators have been spending their time on is not. Which makes me think that calling a constitutional convention isn’t actually for the purpose of adding a balanced budget amendment (they could just propose and advocate that in the normal, single-issue amendment process), but for doing whatever else it is that isn’t put on the table for us to see beforehand. Very scary indeed.

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Discovery Institute big-wig John G. West took time out of his day to excoriate Lauri Lebo for a recent article. Her putative sin? Not crediting the DI with coming up with innovative obfuscation prior to the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.

Lauri also rewrites history by suggesting that the focus on the critical analysis of Darwin’s theory (rather than the teaching of intelligent design) is somehow a post-Dover development:

As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.”

Discovery Institute articulated the same critical analysis approach two years earlier in Ohio, and it did the same in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and other states… all before the Dover lawsuit.

Swing and a miss, John. Lauri’s statement wasn’t about the ontology of DI word-smithing, but rather about the content of proposed legislation. Whether the DI had already cottoned on to the fact that “intelligent design” was past its sell-by date as early as 2002 doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t tenable to introduce legislation pushing “intelligent design” explicitly post-Dover. Do try to keep up.

Oh, and the folks in Ohio did figure out that “intelligent design” arguments were the content of “critical analysis” and deep-sixed the sham back in 2006. Call it what you want, John, but if it is always the same shoddy ensemble of arguments, it doesn’t make it good enough to teach students.

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As predicted by Joe Meert, Florida’s legislature is once again considering antievolution legislation. This particular attempt is done as a change to a law rather than as a standalone effort.

And the strategy in this one is to label it “critical analysis”, like Ohio did in 2002.

1 A bill to be entitled
2 An act relating to required instruction in the public
3 schools; amending s. 1003.42, F.S.; requiring that the
4 instructional staff of a public school teach a
5 thorough presentation and critical analysis of the
6 scientific theory of evolution and certain
7 governmental, legal, and civic-related principles;
8 revising the curriculum of the character-development
9 program required for students in kindergarten through
10 grade 12 and requiring school districts to annually
11 inform certain personnel of that curriculum; amending
12 s. 1006.148, F.S.; conforming a cross-reference;
13 providing an effective date.
14
15 Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
16
17 Section 1.?Subsection (2) of section 1003.42, Florida
18 Statutes, is amended to read:
19 1003.42?Required instruction.—
20 (2)?Members of the instructional staff of the public
21 schools, subject to the rules of the State Board of Education
22 and the district school board, shall teach efficiently and
23 faithfully, using the books and materials required to that meet
24 the highest standards for professionalism and historic accuracy,
25 following the prescribed courses of study, and employing
26 approved methods of instruction, the following:
27 (a)?A thorough presentation and critical analysis of the
28 scientific theory of evolution.

Of course, what Ohio got was a lesson plan whose specifics were falsehoods about evolutionary science and recycled religious antievolution arguments, including those associated with “intelligent design”, which the “critical analysis” advocates (falsely) swore up and down would not be presented to Ohio’s students.

No, people opposed to bills like Florida’s SB1854 are not against “academic freedom” or even actual “critical analysis”; they are opposed to using the power of government to force teachers to tell lies to students, which is all that the ensemble of long-rebutted religious antievolution argumentation is. While the bill doesn’t explicitly mandate that crap like what was delivered in Ohio will have to be used in Florida classrooms, the track record is clear that we can expect only that.

Floridians should tell their representatives that there’s too little time and definitely too little money in our education system to spend any of either telling kids narrow sectarian religious antievolution lies. The folks pushing hardest for this are not generically for religion; they are for an exclusionary view that aims to undercut not just atheism and agnosticism, but also any Christian denomination that accepts “theistic evolution” or “evolutionary creationism”. Besides the unconstitutional implementation that we can see coming from light-years away, there is also the small issue that the way that “critical analysis” gets done by the religious antievolution crowd is that students get told, explicitly or implicitly, that both scientists and the scientific method are untrustworthy. Science doesn’t get legal protection from bad science or anti-science, so if you sit back and relax over this, don’t be surprised when Florida’s school-kids turn out not to either have the motivation to take up careers in science or the training.

Tune into the Florida Citizen’s for Science (FLCfS) blog, which will be covering developments and giving advice on how to take action on this. FLCfS was an effective part of the push for Florida to adopt sound science standards in 2008, and will be involved now in defending the standards and what they represent. Please consider joining or donating to show your support.

Update: The religious antievolution effort is not the only legislative offering going to 11 on the Wacky-Meter. There’s also a bill to make it a felony to photograph a farm without written permission. Apparently intended to discomfit animal rights activists, it’s an example of a problem that someone is proposing a highly unreasonable — and facially unconstitutional — solution for.

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Lauri Lebo has a good essay up about flaws in a piece published in the Washington Post. It’s worth checking out.

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An op-ed by Wilfred M. McClay in the Wall Street Journal predictably favors a $37+ million dollar tax break offered by the state of Kentucky to developers of Answers in Genesis’ new idea, an amusement park built around a Noah’s Ark theme.

More seriously, civil libertarians’ are concerned that the park would involve an unconstitutional advancement of religion. But over the past two decades federal law has moved toward nondiscrimination against religious organizations. This began with the “charitable choice” provisions in Bill Clinton’s welfare-reform package, which sought to allow religious groups to receive government-funded social services. The trend continued with the Bush administration’s promotion of faith-based initiatives, which the Obama administration has extended in barely modified form. The constitutional argument therefore seems tired, supporting a form of discrimination that the government is abandoning in other quarters.

Should the promotion of tourism be subject to this kind of discrimination? The legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has stated that he objects to the park receiving state funds because it “is about bringing the Bible to life.” But why is that different, legally speaking, from Disneyland bringing Pirates of the Caribbean to life? At what point did the planners of Ark Encounter go too far in their concerns for religious authenticity?

The point at which some of the jobs being “created” in this deal aren’t available generally to the citizens of Kentucky. AiG requires its employees to sign a statement of faith. The company that actually is building the park says that those applying for jobs but without “Biblical knowledge” can work there, in some jobs, you know, that involve spatulas or spades:

“There will be positions that will require Bible knowledge because…we have certain things in there that are requiring biblical knowledge,” he explains. “That doesn’t mean, though, if you don’t have that you can’t work over in the restaurant or some other part of the facility.”

– Ark Encounter consultant Cary Summers.

Does anyone believe that scoring high on “Biblical knowledge” is going to be sufficient for those jobs outside the restaurant or “other parts” of the facility?

Yeah, now tell me about how Disney hiring sorted people by their “Biblical knowledge”, Wilfred… or don’t. Am I buying Wilfred’s analogy? I don’t think so.

Now, about that first quoted paragraph… I’m not seeing diminishing “discrimination” by the government in its relation to religious organizations. What I am seeing is a pattern of increasing privileges granted to religious organizations, funded by all citizens via the government. Nor are those instances in any way analogous to what is at issue now. Charitable choice concerned a religious entity’s ability to compete for federal funds in pursuit of providing public services. (Note the provision that no discrimination can be made concerning who the religious entity serves.) “Faith-based” initiatives similarly concern public good being delivered by a religious entity. Now set “Ark Encounter” next to those and play Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the other” game.

All in all, Wilfred, I’m afraid that your op-ed doesn’t rise above propaganda with excessive rotational momentum — that’s right, spin. You failed to address a major issue concerning employment practices. You mischaracterized the past and pulled a bait-and-switch on your readers. Is that really the best that you can do?

Perhaps so. But it is also possible that there is no way for Ark Encounter to bring the Bible to life without demeaning or cheapening the very things it is intending to exalt. In that sense, the theme park may challenge not the proper separation of church and state as much as the proper separation of faith and commerce. Still, America’s robust commitment to religious liberty means allowing the widest possible latitude to such undertakings—and allowing criticism of them to flourish as well. Let the deluge begin.

Giving the widest possible latitude to an endeavor is a nice phrasing. Accepting that necessary infrastructure projects won’t get funded or services being cut or state employees failing to get even cost-of-living raises because $37 million dollars has been sucked out of the state’s revenue goes a bit beyond “latitude”, though, doesn’t it? If Ark Encounter wants to buy 800 acres of land, get the zoning, build whatever the regulations say that they can get away with, and pay for it out of their own pocket, I’m not arguing with that. If they want to take public money to do it, though, they owe it to the public to not discriminate in their hiring practices or in how they operate the completed facility. There are legitimate questions there, especially given the statements of the Ark Encounter consultant on proposed employment procedures. Even if Wilfred acts as if that issue doesn’t exist.

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I heard a report on NPR of the Senate Banking Committee looking into the massive foreclosure fraud perpetrated by the banking community. They had a clip of a Bank of America spokesperson saying that their procedures for identifying properties to be foreclosed were correct, the implication being that however flawed the process might have been that followed, the foreclosures themselves were justified.

Attention, senators: Don’t take her word for it. Deploy auditors *now* and find out whether she was right or not. If not, have her charged with perjury and locked away for the maximum sentence. Taking testimony in these hearings is useless if the facts are not checked.

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I was looking for a quote from Thomas Huxley, and having found it, found out that part of the context has become a favorite among “intelligent design” creationism advocates. What I was looking for I’ve italicized, and what the IDC advocates like to use I’ve put in bold.

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate—the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth wherever it leads.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

‘On the Reception of the Origin of Species’. In F. Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter (1888), Vol. 2, 204.

It is pretty ironic that the folks continuing the tradition of spewing “angry nonsense” nonetheless enthusiastically use phrasing from later in the same quote.

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