Darwin Strikes Back

Dealing another in a quick series of body blows to the Intelligent Design movement, U.S. District Judge John Jones earlier today found that presenting ID to Pennsylvania public school students is unconstitutional. Faboo.

The only apparent difference between the argument made by Paley and the argument for ID, as expressed by defense expert witnesses Behe and Minnich, is that ID’s “official position” does not acknowledge that the designer is God. However, as Dr. Haught testified, anyone familiar with Western religious thought would immediately make the association that the tactically unnamed designer is God, as the description of the designer in Of Pandas and People (hereinafter “Pandas”) is a “master intellect,” strongly suggesting a supernatural deity as opposed to any intelligent actor known to exist in the natural world. (P-11 at 85). Moreover, it is notable that both Professors Behe and Minnich admitted their personal view is that the designer is God and Professor Minnich testified that he understands many leading advocates of ID to believe the designer to be God. (21:90 (Behe); 38:36-38 (Minnich)).

Although proponents of the IDM occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendants’ expert witnesses. (20:102-03 (Behe)). In fact, an explicit concession that the intelligent designer works outside the laws of nature and science and a direct reference to religion is Pandas’ rhetorical statement, “what kind of intelligent agent was it [the designer]” and answer: “On its own science cannot answer this question. It must leave it to religion and philosophy.” (P-11 at 7; 9:13-14 (Haught)).

A significant aspect of the IDM is that despite Defendants’ protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. Dr. Barbara Forrest, one of Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, is the author of the book Creationism’s Trojan Horse. She has thoroughly and exhaustively chronicled the history of ID in her book and other writings for her testimony in this case. Her testimony, and the exhibits which were admitted with it, provide a wealth of statements by ID leaders that reveal ID’s religious, philosophical, and cultural content.

This quote is from pages 25 and 26, which are representative of the whole 139 page ruling. The thrust of this finding is that ID is a religiously-motivated movement, working for religious ends in the public school classroom. Judge Jones, however, provides a mountain of factual, logical and case law evidence to support his ruling. For example:

After a searching review of the record and applicable case law, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

The third point really boils the IDeologues' blood, apparently because they are unfamiliar with the many and varied refutations of all contentions raised by ID on every level. (For an extensive, though far from comprehensive list, see http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html)

Religious types are, of course, rolling out the "judicial activism" mantra on this one. This argument - not unlike ID - fails the test of logic, because the "judicial activism" label could be applied no matter what side he ruled for. In this case, because he is preventing action from being taken, he is a judicial activist. On the other hand, if he had allowed ID to be exposed to public school students, that would be judicial activism in the same sense that Roe v Wade allowed women to seek abortions. Therefore, no matter what ruling he made, he was doomed to be branded with the "judicial activist" monkier.

Do youself a favor and read the entire thing - it's actually fun! Oh... One more, just to celebrate:

The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.

Russell quote for our times

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

With the confluence of Intelligent Design casuistry and gay marraige bigotry, there is no more important notion to remember right now than what Bertrand Russell said in his Outline of Intellectual Rubbish. He continues:

The power of governments over men's beliefs has been very great ever since the rise of large States. The great majority of Romans became Christian after the Roman emperors had been converted. In the parts of the Roman Empire that were conquered by the Arabs, most people abandoned Christianity for Islam. The division of Western Europe into Protestant and Catholic regions was determined by the attitude of governments in the sixteenth century.

Regardless of one's revelatory pretenses, their religion is at base the result of socially conditioned superstition. Ignorance of this fact, and the violent intransigence which that ignorance tends to foster is the greatest danger to the modern world - the greatest threat to the survival of a liberal society and a prosperous future.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. -- Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 5

A health care plan that might just work

Mitt Romney's proposing a new health care plan which requires those able to afford health care to purchase some limited form of it, not unlike compulsory auto insurance. It will also make a point of bringing those who are not covered and eligible for Medicaid into that system. Most boldly, however (and the point which gives me the most pause) is that the state of Massachusetts will subsidize the health care of the working poor, by allocating the $1 billion that it had been spending on emergency care for those who had no coverage (including those who could afford it) to subsidizing the working poor.

I've decided that I like this plan, about as much as I like required auto insurance. It's not savory, and it doesn't really reduce government expenses, but it is necessary to defray costs that the state is currently funding. What I like most about the idea is that

• The government is not providing health care to all people, and
• It is being done at the state level, not at the expensive (and historically mismanaged) federal level.

Go-go Gadget Federalism!

How to Eat PCP

The evolution of an irreducibly complex system:
(from http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html#how2eatpcp)

How to Eat Pentachlorophenol

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is a highly toxic chemical, not known to occur naturally, that has been used as a wood preservative since the 1930's. It is now recognized as a dangerous pollutant that we need to dispose of. But how?

Evolution to the rescue! A few soil bacteria have already worked out a way to break it down and even eat it. And conveniently for us, they do it in an irreducibly complex way. The best known of these bacteria is called Sphingomonas chlorophenolica (also called Sphingobium chlorophenolicum).

The PCP molecule is a six carbon ring with five chlorine atoms and one hydroxyl (OH) group attached. The chlorines and the ring structure are both problems for bacteria. S. chlorophenolica uses three enzymes in succession to break it down, as follows: the first one replaces one chlorine with OH. The resulting compound is toxic, but not quite as bad as PCP itself. The second enzyme is able to act on this compound to replace two chlorines, one after the other, with hydrogen atoms. The resulting compound, while still bad, is much easier to deal with, and the third enzyme is able to break the ring open. At this point, what is left of PCP is well on its way to being food for the bacterium.

All three enzymes are required, so we have IC. How could this IC system have evolved? First of all, bacteria of this type could already metabolize some milder chlorophenols which occur naturally in small amounts. In fact the first and third enzymes were used for this. As a result the cell is triggered to produce them in the presence of chlorophenols. The second enzyme (called PcpC) is the most interesting one; the cell produces it in sufficient quantity to be effective all the time instead of just when it is needed in its normal metabolic role. Thanks to this unusual situation PcpC is available when it is needed to help eat PCP.

The inefficient regulation of PcpC is evidently the key to the whole process. So far as biologists can tell, a recent mutation that changed the deployment of this enzyme is what made PCP degradation possible for this bacterium. It also happens that both PcpC and the first enzyme in the process are now slightly optimized for dealing with PCP; they handle it better than the corresponding enzymes in strains of S. chlorophenolica that use PcpC only in its normal role, but not nearly as well as would be expected for an old, well adapted system. These factors, combined with the fact that PCP is not known to occur naturally, make a strong circumstantial case that this system has evolved very recently.

The chemistry and probable evolution of this system are explained in much greater detail in Shelly Copley's article "Evolution of a metabolic pathway for degradation of a toxic xenobiotic: the patchwork approach" in Trends in Biochemical Sciences. (see Copley SD. (2000). Evolution of a metabolic pathway for degradation of a toxic xenobiotic: the patchwork approach. Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 25(6):261-265.)

What fun!