Schizophrenia : if they disbelieve science, what’s the problem with Einstein being an atheist?

At her blog on the design of life and other matters, Denyse O’Leary seems to be bored by the fact that Einstein could have been an atheist :

Albert Einstein’s letter coming up at auction: Does it show that he was an atheist? (I think that’s just a publicity ploy.)

This is a reference to the text of Albert Einstein :

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

The bold part share a striking ressemblance with some parts of the preface of Hegel Phänomenologie des Geistes, by the way.

What is the problem? Well, about 120% of the time of pro-ID people is dedicated to proving that science (I don’t mean just evolution, I mean physics, environmentalism, global warming science, neurosciences, psychiatry, among other) is plain bullshit.

If it is, why be puzzled by the fact that one of the most emblematic figure of science was an atheist? 

Because ID want to be considered as a science, and they need to proove that their middle-age beliefs are perfectly compatible with science. So, the fact that great — emblematic — scientists are/were atheists is seen as a defeat of their way of thinking. 

You’re right, that’s schizophrenia…

No common point between 9/11 and design inference?

Down at Overwhelming evidence, Denyse O’Leary — yes, again… — wrote a somewhat ‘interesting’ post (in the clinical sens of ‘interesting’, of course) about design inference. I would have liked to react faster to this post, but I was stuck to my desk by those stupid evolving platyhelmynthes of mine. Screw you, evolving thingies.

According to her claims, 9/11 is an exemple of design inference. When you saw the first airplane hit the tower, you probably thought that it was an accident. Just when the second airplane hit the second tower, you ceased considering this option, and realized it was terrorism. That, people, is design inference explained by Denyse O’leary.

For a short moment, I said to myself “Maybe she’s right, and this is a design inference”. It actually is. But it is not — in any way — transposable to natural evolution. 

Why? It’s all about statistics – or maybe probabilities. According to Denyse O’Leary, and many other ‘design inference’ enthusiats, species can not emerge by chance. Juste like two airplanes just can’t hit two adjacent towers by chance, and it was later proved that they didn’t : the crashes were designed. 

The flaw in the logic here is that airplane crashes in 9/11 where not independent. It was only two manifestations of a single decision. Even if two planes hit two towers, it is nothing but a single event. In evolution, events are more likely to be independent. Since two populations are unable to exchange genes — i.e. to maintain gene flow — they stop to be dependent (unless being involved in an ecological interaction, but this is a particular case). 

I think there is a deeper flaw in Denyses’ logic. We now know for sure that there was a designer behind 9/11. We were able to connect the pattern (plane hitting tower) with the process (someone taking the decision to attack New-York). In this case, we know both the conclusions, and the premices. 

But it is dangerous to apply the same logic to evolution : of course, if we consider that our premice is ‘there is a designer’, every single attempt to infer design will lead us to the conclusion that ‘there is a designer’. Any serious evolutionnist will start by investigating the premices (even if in certain cases, it is usefull to investigate patterns in order to determine processes, which is close to indudtivism).

That is the main problem with “intelligent” design : they try to conclude to the existence of a designer, knowikng that the existence of this designer is their only hypothesis. Where the heck is intelligence in this?

Also, see this tremendously good post of Riley Firth, at The War on Bullshit.

Shared traits between intelligent design and pseudo science

A few monthes ago, Ed Darrell at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub posted a short essay — that you might want to read — discussing the signs of bogus history, itself inspired by a chronicle of Robert L. Park. A lot of those traits are shared by intelligent design.

Why using the word traits, and not the word signs? I strongly believe that all non-Darwinists theories could be seen as new versions of creationism, and I will discuss this issue in another post. Therefore, if we want to understand intelligent design and other theories, we need to consider that they are all part of an ecosystem — except that we are not looking at species sharing genetic material, but frameworks to understand (or disprove, for that matters) evolution, sharing concepts. The overall “appearance” of a theory is its phenotype, and the aspects of this theory are its traits.

Can we apply the traits proposed by Ed Darrell to intelligent design? For sure! Just note that I completely modified the last one, which was too much “history-biased” for this particular situation… And now let’s go…

The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations — This point is quite obvious for intelligent design theorists. They are yet to be published in a scientific journal, that is, not a journal founded by and for themselves. Since it is not going to happen, they target the civil society for their communication, by writing books or editing blogs. 

The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work — Again, intelligent design theorists spend most of their time complaining about the “censorship” (this issue needs to be discussed in detail, as ID are themselves prone to censor discordant voices) by the “established” neo-Darwinian community. And the Expelled : no intelligence allowed movie is a perfect illustration of this fact.

The sources that verify the new interpretation of evolution are obscure — if they exist at all! Intelligent design is characterized by the total absence of experimental work (whereas experimental evolution had been achieved a lot of times). Most of the time, intelligent design theorists refers to books (mostly their own books), or to out of context quotes — by Nobel prizes, evolutionists, or even Darwin himself.

Evidence is anecdotal — And frankly, it doesn’t exists. See the previous point. Intelligent design is not a theory. It’s merely a concept.

The author says a belief is credible because it has endured for some time, or because many people believe it to be true — … or the “knowledge of the masses”. With a logic of this kind, we would still be living in caverns, throwing stones at animals because “everything believe it to be the only possibility”. The fact that a lot of people believe in Genesis 1 doesn’t mean it is true. At all.

The author has worked in isolation — If there is one fact that always strike me in intelligent design, it’s definitely the lack of interaction between this theory and other fields. Biologists worked with chemicists and mathematicians for ages. Physicians and mathematicians works hand in hand. Sociologists and economists. And so on. But intelligent design proponents? Well, except other pro-ID people, nobody wants to team with them…

The author is only re-analyzing facts, without any clues about the mechanisms involved — Most of intelligent design pros have some ready-made “exemples” that their belief is true. Most of the time, they just try to interpretate those facts with — only — the first theory of Darwin. It would be like understanding organic chemistry with 4 elements, air, wind, earth and fire. And in the other few cases, you could be assured that their interpretation is irrelevant to the mechanisms involved in evolution in general, or this particular process. ID is about believing, science is about learning and understanding…

Now what?

Of course, one could raise the point that we can define a pseudo-science in a much more formal way. Anyway, theories of Popper and Kuhn, for exemple, even if they provide an exciting framework to analyse intelligent design —  not the intelligent design controversy, but the theory of ID — are more… well, more formal, and maybe less suited to a “blog” environment. Looking at some preminents features of a corpus of beliefs is probably more informative than a thorough analysis of those beliefs.

Just like I said in the introduction, the next post — one of the upcoming posts, anyway — will be dedicated to show in what all non-Darwinian theories are the common descent of creationism, even if some proponents of those theories are trying to disprove it.

Barack Obama : there’s a difference between science and faith

A few days ago, Barack Obama expressed his views on intelligent design, and on the place of the so-called controversy in education.

I’m a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.

Well, if I was american, I guess those few lines would have confirmed me in my intention to support him. I am not sure wether the teaching of intelligent design will be a big issue in the upcoming elections — I mean, there are other problems to solve : Iraq, health system, Britney Spears — but taking strong positions like this one is impressive, because it could potentially make some pro-Obama pro-ID voters change their position.

But more interesting is the point he raised against right-wing politicians, according to whom religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. Just what I said in the previous paragraph : those subjects are not fundamentaly importants — which doesn’t mean they don’t have to be debated — in an election. Polarizing the debate over religious topics is a way to attract religious voters; arguments in an election should talk to people reason, not faith.

I guess the strategy of right-wing candidates is to make people vote for them because they are “good chrisitans”, disregarding their actual competence to manage a country, and bring change to people, to guarantee that hey will protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…

Denyse O’Leary, of course, reacted (negatively) on this intervention. In the same time, McCain was followed by his friends of the discovery institute…

Why bogus design?

Maybe the very existence of this blog is the constat that somehow, science failed at explaining the mechanisms of evolution to a broad audience. Intelligent design proponents are trying to make us think that a designer, an intelligence is hidden behind evolution, and that we must operate a synthesis between science and religion.

My point, with this blog, is to shed some light on their so-called arguments and theories.

Who am I, would you ask?

As said in the sidebar, I am a young synthetic evolution theory enthusiast, studying evolution, working in a lab of evolutionnists, where most of my work is dedicated to understand how species appear — and to actually watch it happen.

Maybe it’s time to introduce you the synthetic evolution theory, or modern evolutionary synthesis.
The main aim of this theory is to integrate parts of other hypothesis into a broad synthesis. It had a huge number of “fathers”, among whom Haldane, Mayr, Fisher, Huxley, and Dobzhansky (the very one who said Nothing in biology makes sense but in the light of Evoluion).

One could summarize this theory in five key points :

• Everything could be explained in a way consistent with both knowledges on genetic mechanisms and actual field observation
• Evolution is gradual, and “gaps” between taxa originate in extinctions, migrations, geographic separation, not saltation
• Selection is a driver of evolution, be it natural or sexual, and what is selected is a given phenotype in a given environment
• Ecology must be considered, as genetic diversity in the wild is important — modern synthesis relies heavily on population genetic concepts
• Gradualism is compatible with modifications in the rate of change, allowing a transition from micro to macro-evolution — historical contingency must be considered

Now what?

This is the theory of evolution I believe in — and believe must not be taken in the religious way. Now, I will just play my role of watchdog, and try to expose creationnist, intelligent design, and other scienligious (a neologism for science + religion) crap the best I can.

Stay tuned