Michael Egnor

P.Z. Myers recently put up another post supporting censorship of criticism of Darwinism in public education. Democratically elected school board officials in Florida and Texas are moving closer to policies that would include teaching students that some aspects of Darwin’s theory can be questioned scientifically. In other words, they’re proposing that Darwinism can be taught just like any other scientific theory. Florida State School Board Member Linda Taylor put it this way:

I would support teaching evolution, but with all its warts. I think that some of the facts have been questioned by evolutionists themselves. I would want them taught as theories. That’s important. They could be challenged by others and the kids could then be taught critical thinking and they can make their own choices.

Myers calls Ms. Taylor’s opinion “stupid”. He asks:

Mac Johnson is a columnist at Human Events who writes columns with which I often agree. Last month he posted a column with which I, and many commentators on his blog, disagree. His column, Intelligent Design and Other Dumb Ideas, attacks a theory not held by any advocate of Intelligent Design. Perhaps I can help clear up his misunderstanding.

Intelligent Design in biology is a straightforward idea — one that Mr. Johnson, who is a medical researcher and is well acquainted with the methods of science, should have no trouble getting right. Understanding what advocates of intelligent design are saying is a necessary prelude to a thoughtful critique, which Mr. Johnson has not yet offered.

Juno Walker at Letters from Vrai has responded to my post Dr. Pigliucci and Fundamentalism in Science Education. Dr Massimo Pigliucci published an essay in The McGill Journal of Education in which he made the absurd claim that effective science education would dissuade students from a belief in Heaven. I pointed out in my post that Heaven wasn’t exactly a proper subject for the scientific method and that the assertion that science education was even applicable to a belief in Heaven was fundamentalism — a kind of atheist fundamentalism. The conflation of methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism — science and atheism — is no more acceptable pedagogy than the conflation of science and creationism. Atheism and creationism are philosophical inferences, and, irrespective of the truth of either faith, neither is consistent with the scientific method. The scientific method — methodological naturalism — is the data-driven study of nature. It’s based on natural, not supernatural, claims. The irony is that the McGill Journal of Education published Dr. Pigliucci’s atheist broadsheet for fundamentalism in science education, but would never publish a creationist broadsheet for fundamentalism in science education.

Walker cites Darwinist philosopher Barbara Forrest to defend the assertion that atheism is a scientifically justifiable inference. Dr. Forrest:

Dr. Massimo Pigliucci is a colleague of mine here at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He’s a professor of evolutionary biology and philosophy. I don’t know him personally, but by all reports he is a fine scientist and teacher. He’s written an essay in the McGill Journal of Education about improving science education in light of the controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design. It’s a fascinating essay. Dr. Pigliucci writes well, and he reveals much about Darwinists’ approach to the scientific and educational conflict between intelligent design and Darwinism.

His abstract sums it up:

I’m grateful to Dr. Alan Packer, Senior Editor of Nature Genetics, for his thoughtful comments on my recent post Spit-Brain Research, in which I addressed claims made by Perry et al. about their paper “Diet and the Evolution of Human Amylase Gene Copy Number Variation.” Dr. Packer makes some good points with which I agree, and some points with which I disagree.

Dr. Alan Packer, Senior Editor of Nature Genetics, contacted me recently and asked to publicly comment on my recent post on Evolution News and Views entitled Spit-Brain Research. My post was critical of a press release about an article published in Nature Genetics . I am grateful for his observations. My reply follows in my next post.

Michael Egnor has been kind enough to allow me to contribute a comment on his recent post ‘Spit-Brain Research’. The post discussed work by George Perry, Nathaniel Dominy and colleagues, published in a paper entitled “Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number”. As one of the editors at Nature Genetics, where the paper was published, I was pleased to see the paper receive so much attention. I was concerned, however, by what in my view was the highly misleading nature of Dr. Egnor’s post. I would like to make three general points, so that readers of this site will have a fuller picture of what was in the paper, and what was not:

Dr. Jeffrey Shallit has answered my question about the analogy between S.E.T.I. research and the inference to intelligent design in biology. His reply was thoughtful, made some good points, and was free of personal insults.
My question was:

“If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?”

Starting off, Dr. Shallit demurs:

Evolutionary ‘theory’ is immune to satire. Satire depends on exaggeration, and evolutionary theory is such far-fetched science– substituting preposterous generalizations, non-sequiturs and jargon for meaningful scientific inference– that it can’t be satirized. It can only be described, which is funny enough.

Much of recent evolutionary self-satire involves the origin of the human brain. How did an organ of such staggering complexity and biological novelty arise? For evolutionary biologists, no speculation (except design) is too outlandish. Evidence: a paper in Nature Genetics offers a new theory to account for the human brain: spit.

On a very important question that goes to the heart of the debate about Darwinism and intelligent design, Dr. Jeffrey Shallit is exercising his right to remain silent. Dr. Shallit had recently used the example of S.E.T.I. research on a blog post in which he ridiculed author and editor Tom Bethell for defending intelligent design. Mr. Bethell pointed out that it’s perfectly appropriate for scientists use the inference to design under certain circumstances, and he believes that biology is one of them. Dr.Shallit ridiculed him, calling him a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ”simply stupid’ and categorizing his views as “Idiocy”. I was taken back by Dr. Shallit’s incivility and lack of professionalism- he’s a professor responsible for teaching students appropriate standards of discourse, for goodness sake- and I responded to his post.

I replied that the analogy between the inference to design in S.E.T.I. research and the inference to design in biology was to some extent valid, and asked Dr. Shallit a question:

If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ [in a signal from space] would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?

It’s a simple enough question, and it gets to the heart of the debate over intelligent design. If the receipt of a coded signal from space – for example a blueprint to build a complex device- would be immediately recognized as designed, why do Darwinists insist that the inference to design in biology isn’t at least a reasonable inference, open to the same kind of scientific investigation to which we would subject a coded ‘blueprint’ signal picked up by a radio telescope?

I have twice asked Dr. Shallit, a leading professor of computer science who studies and teaches information theory, to answer this simple question, which after all, hinges on information theory. These are Dr. Shallit’s replies:

Darwinist Dr. Jeffery Shallit posted an odd response to my comments on his ridicule of Tom Bethell. Mr. Bethell had reiterated the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and he pointed out that the inference to design was valid for some kinds of scientific research. Dr. Shallit, in his post entitled “Bethell the Baffoon”, offered little meaningful refutation of Mr. Bethell’s observations. Instead, Dr. Shallit called Mr. Bethell, explicitly or by clear implication, a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ”simply stupid”. He categorized Mr. Bethell’s views as “Idiocy”.

Keep in mind that Dr. Shallit is a full professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, editor in chief of Journal of Integer Sequences, author of scores of research papers, several textbooks and fifteen book reviews. He graduated cum laude from Princeton. He is professionally, though not rhetorically, distinguished.

Dr. Shallit takes issue with my observation that he called Mr. Bethell a liar: