Steven Novella takes on the creationists

Steven Novella has a post criticizing a recent video that challenges Darwinian orthodoxy and presents evidence for intelligent agency in nature.

As you may know I'm not a young earth creationist. The evidence is good that the universe is 15 billion or so years old, the earth is 5 billion years old, and life has evolved (changed) over time. I'm open to other evidence, but I have no good reasons to doubt these basic views.

I do assert that the universe is created by God, and that there is obvious evidence for intelligent agency in nature. My understanding of this evidence hews more to a Thomist approach than it does to a specific intelligent design approach. ID is clearly true, but I believe that ID in nature is a subset of teleology in nature, and teleology is irrefutable evidence for God's existence (Aquinas' Fifth Way).

I have no truck with Darwinism. Random variation and natural selection explains nothing. "Things change and survivors survive" is banality and tautology, and not real science. Darwin's idiot "theory" is a philosophical scam that has been successful merely because it was proposed in a culture duped by atheism and panting for a creation myth. Atheists are easy to please (c.f. Dawkins is considered a 'public intellectual') and largely innocent of even rudimentary philosophical rigor.

I'll not address the video specifically (it's a good video worth a look), but Novella's arguments are worth some commentary.

Novella:

Genesis Weak

Published by Steven Novella under Creationism/ID 

I advise you to please turn off your irony meters before reading further or clicking the link to the video I will be discussing today. You may also want to take a couple of deep relaxing breaths to help preserve your neurons from the irrational assault they are about to suffer.

I was recently asked to take a look at Genesis Week with Ian Juby (Wazooloo), a slick YouTube series in which Juby takes us on a mystical journey through the looking glass of creationist nonsense. In his world science and reason are flipped completely upside down. It is, as they say, a “target rich environment” – too rich for any one blog post, so I will pick out a few gems.

The title of this episode is “I’m hooked on a feeling,” referring to new research showing that acceptance of evolution is strongly influenced by a gut “feeling of certainty” that people have about the theory. Juby makes much of this study (without, of course, putting it into any context) concluding that people believe in evolution despite the evidence (what he describes as overwhelming evidence for creation) rather than because of it.

The study itself reviews prior research on this question, summarizing it:

Despite the variety of studies that have been reported, there are no convincingly clear findings about the relationships among knowledge level, beliefs, and acceptance level regarding the theory of evolution. While some studies have provided evidence for a robust relationship between knowledge level and level of acceptance (Paz-y-Miño & Espinosa, 2009; Rutledge & Warden, 1999), others found no evidence of a straightforward relationship (Sinatra et al., 2003), and little evidence that instructional treatments affect acceptance levels (Chinsamy & Plagányi, 2007), even when learning gains have been substantiated (Nehm & Schonfeld, 2007). It has also been suggested that the nature of relationships change when acceptance of evolutionary theory is framed in the context of macroevolution rather than microevolution (Nadelson & Southerland, 2010).

So – it’s complicated. Results of research seem to depend upon how the study was conducted, meaning that confounding variables have not adequately been controlled for so they determine the outcome of individual studies, which therefore have conflicting results.

However, at least so far there does not appear to be a clear relationship between teaching students about evolutionary theory and their acceptance of it. This is actually not surprising and in line with the consensus of psychological research, which shows that people form opinions largely for emotional and ideological reasons, and then cherry pick the facts they need to support those opinions.

The findings of the current study are therefore nothing new, and there is no reason to think that this phenomenon is unique to belief in evolution.

But to put this study into its proper context – this is about affecting the opinions of students by confronting their emotional reactions to evolution. It is not about how scientists form their opinions about evolutionary theory.

Of course it is. Darwinism is a cesspool of ideologically-driven propaganda posing as dispassionate science.

This is a common logical error that creationists make – confusing public opinion with expert scientific opinion. Juby tries to make it seem that this study shows that acceptance of evolution in general (including among scientists and educators) is about feeling rather than evidence.

It is clear that the public approaches questions of origins much more rationally than the little coterie of atheists inhabiting departments of evolutionary biology.

Ordinary people aren't stupid, and evolutionary biologists are a hopelessly ideological clump of sheep stuck in a branch of science not known for perspicuity.

Ordinary people know propaganda when they see it, and their unwillingness to be duped drives atheists nuts.

He then goes on to another common claim of creationists that reflects their astounding intellectual dishonesty.

intellectual dishonesty (noun): the ability to distinguish atheist propaganda from science.

He lists a few biologists who are creationists – as if their opinions are evidence based, and contrasting them with the emotion-based acceptance of evolution. 

Among scientists, however, >99% accept evolutionary theory

Notice that atheists never define "evolution" in a way in which their assertions can be tested. All scientists accept that organisms have changed over time. Most scientists don't accept Darwin's assertion that RM + NS can account for all of it. Only a subset of all scientists (although a near unanimity of evolutionary biologists) accept the atheist framework on which Darwin's theory hangs.

The meaning of "evolution" constantly changes, in accordance with rhetorical needs.

– a relevant fact that Juby failed to mention. This is also in line with other research, showing that only at the highest levels of science education do facts trump emotion in forming our beliefs about controversial or emotional topics.

Yea. Only students at the pinnacle of their scientific training are really rational. What b.s.

Among the experts there is a strong consensus – the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that all life on earth is related through an evolutionary process.

Living thing change. No one doubts that.

Does the fossil and molecular record support universal common ancestry? The evidence is mixed.

Juby, however, rattles off a couple of creationist exceptions as if they are the rule.

It is the exceptions in science that lead to genuine new insight.

It is hard to imagine that Juby is not aware of these facts. We are left to conclude that he is either living in a creationist bubble or is flagrantly dishonest in dealing with the question of scientific acceptance of evolution...

... whatever atheists mean by "evolution" at a given moment.

Eventually Juby gets around to listing some of the alleged overwhelming evidence for creation, including irreducible complexity and lack of a mechanism for increasing genetic information. He lists a bunch of old long-discredited creationist canards, and that is his “overwhelming evidence.”

Irreducible complexity and the enormous difficulty in explaining complex biological systems using known rates of heritable change are profound problems for atheism. Teleology explains such observations naturally, but teleology presupposes intelligent agency.

Teleology has been under a code of Omerta in natural science for several centuries for just that reason.

Creationists proposed the notion of irreducible complexity over a decade ago, and really it was just a reformulation of arguments they have been putting forward for a century and a half – since Darwin proposed his version of evolutionary theory.

IC is an old idea, asserted recently by Mike Behe based on modern biochemical evidence. It is obviously true, and a very important observation that is devastating to Darwin's theory.

It has been debated and discussed among scientists, and found to be a fatally flawed idea.

fatally flawed idea (noun); any idea inconsistent with atheism.

It’s flat out wrong – disproved by numerous counter examples.

Just-so stories aren't examples. There is vanishing little actual scientific evidence that complex biological systems can evolve step-by-step through IC roadblocks.

I first wrote about it myself in 1999, and the arguments haven’t changed.

The arguments haven't changed because they are valid, and there's no reason to change them.

The alleged lack of a mechanism for generating new genetic information is nonsense – not a serious scientific or even philosophical argument.

I challenge Dr. Novella to write one paragraph of his blog post using randomly generated variations of letters "selected" by an algorithm that lacks the endpoint of a syntactically correct and semantically coherent paragraph.

Generating Dr. Novella himself without intelligent agency is an even more difficult matter, as you might imagine.

Generating Dr. Novella's ideas without intelligent agency has already been done.

(I first debunked this one in 2002.) The combination of random mutations and selective pressures, combined with gene duplication and other genetic mechanisms, are fully capable of increasing overall genetic information and creating new information.

Scrambling information without forethought creates no "new" information. Tearing up newspapers into tiny bits and flinging the bits in the air does not generate new newspapers.

Creationists like Juby have no counterarguments to the scientific consensus clearly demonstrating that irreducible complexity and creationist abuses of information theory are false. They simply trot out the same discarded claims over and over again with arrogance and casual dismissiveness of the scientific consensus – a consensus slowly built on a mountain of evidence.

IC remains fatal to atheism and to Darwinism.

I’m not bothered by the fact the people like Juby can promote their nonsense on an open forum like YouTube.

Why would Novella even think to question Juby's right to free speech?

He is unlikely to change anyone’s opinion.

He doesn't have to. Creationists are the majority, Steven.

He also provides yet another opportunity to point out the terrible logic and questionable honesty of the creationists. They do make it easy in that they have nothing new to say.

We tell the obvious truth, which is not new.

Science changes and new ideas and new evidence are brought to bare.

... brought to bear. Maybe Novella is writing his post using random letters...

Creationism is stuck in its prescientific conclusion, and continue to rely upon long discredited arguments – even when dressed up in a slick YouTube video.

Creationism terrifies atheists, because atheism can't explain design in nature. Atheists have known since the mid-19th century that their only hope to prevail is if they can silence debate.

That's getting harder to do.