Why good ideas are oft-born as twins

"We often praise ideas for their originality and criticise other ideas for being insufficiently novel. So, what do we make of the fact that most important breakthroughs in sci-tech history—the telegraph, telescope, and transistor; the laws of calculus and gravity—were 'simultaneously invented' by independent people around the same time? (Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray notoriously filed for a telephone patent on the same day.)
    "Which is to say: Some of the most important ideas in the world weren't 'new' when the inventor we credit came up with them.
    "It's even more uncanny than that. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace didn't just independently come up with the basics of evolution. They both cited the exact same essay—Malthus's infamous 'Principle of Population'—as inspiration for thinking about species evolution as a competitive game where unforgiving environments shape genetic survival. As @DavidEpstein writes in today's essay, adapted from his ... new book Inside the Box, the frequency of idea twins in history suggests that once a problem is framed by a generation of thinkers with sufficient clarity and precision, the answer almost 'wants' to be found."

~ @Derek Thompson summarising David Epstein's essay 'Why Your Best Ideas Aren’t Original'

"All abstract knowledge depends, for its meaning and validity, on other knowledge that sets the context for it. For example, algebra depends on addition, and calculus depends on algebra. The more complex the knowledge, the more extensive the knowledge that must precede it.
    "One major aspect of the fact that knowledge depends on other knowledge—the aspect most relevant to and most violated in education—is that more abstract knowledge depends on less abstract knowledge. This is the principle of the hierarchy of knowledge."

~ Lisa Van Damme from her article 'The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education'

"Valid concepts [once discovered] function as a 'green light' to induction, permitting [further] generalisations from observed particulars, while invalid concepts block or distort the process."

~ summary of the inductive process given in David Harriman's 2011 book The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics & Philosophy

"[I]nherent in this is that concepts are future-looking. A concept is like a policy or a commitment. It’s like forming a file. ... A file, if you have a filing system, does not only organise and condense data that one already has, it does so on the premise of keeping up with this method of organisation. ... 
    "[T]o form a concept [then] is to institute a policy of applying what one knows from the study of each instance to the study of each other instance, to regard the instances as interchangeable, at least within a certain context, within a certain, you know, varying in degree. And this policy applies to information yet to be discovered, as well as to the information one already has ..."

~ Gregory Salmieri from his 2006 essay 'Objectivist Epistemology in Outline'

"It is art that lights the fire for us to push and grow..."

Artist Michael Newberry with a painting from his Eudaemonia series

“So many disciplines add to our evolution—philosophy, psychology, sciences. . .—but none of them are ends in themselves except for art. . . . It is art that lights the fire for us to push and grow, it is art that refuels our spirit when it is exhausted and can’t do more, and it is art that rewards us for a job well done and life well lived.”

~ Artist Michael Newberry, from his stunning new book Evolution Through Art 

The Natural Selection rap

Yes, I have rap reservations, but the crowd-participation chorus is a good one.  Watch this live track from The Rap Guide to Evolution, and head to the man’s website to hear (and legally download) the whole collection. [Hat tip Pharyngula ]

There must be 50 ways to be a creationist?

Here’s 50 reasons you shouldn't believe in evolution.  PZ Myers at Pharyngula (who gets the world’s classiest hate mail) reckons “the list pretty well covers all the real reasons people are creationists.”

If you can laugh at the list, then you’re gonna love Vincent Gray’s round-up of how the idea of evolution changed the world -- it’s coming in the next Free Radical magazine, out soon, and it’s bound to infuriate everyone: even evolutionists!

Sarah who? [updated]

Sarah Palin, that's who. Unless you're my one of my two regular readers from Anchorage, Alaska, I don't know Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin any better than you do -- but that doesn't stop everyone talking about her.

Conventional wisdom is already saying it's easy to understand why Palin was picked since she challenges so many of Obama's own tick-boxes: she's young -- three years younger than Obama; she's a looker -- better to half the population than Obama; she's not a Washington insider -- unlike the buffoon knows as Biden ("change" you can see); with a Governorship of two years she does have political experience -- more, perhaps than Obama, who can only boast three years in the Senate; she's helped clean up corruption in her state -- unlike Obama, whose friends n his state are the sort who need cleaning up; and of course, she's a woman, which it's presumed might help steal votes from disgruntled Hillary supporters who care only that their political leaders have a vagina; and a member of the NRA, which might help confirm votes from NRA members who care only that their political leaders have a gun -- and that they know how to shoot bears with it.

As Thales says, to many this will be "the grand slam in the bottom of the 9th" -- the moment when John McCain wins the Presidency.

* He will get a significant portion of disaffected Hillary voters who are desperate to vote for a woman
* He calms the GOP's base who want a conservative
* He undercuts a major reason that many are voting for Obama - he's black.
* The "change" message now flows to both sides.
* He gives cover for those who feel that they have no choice, morally, but to vote for Obama

"None of which," as Thales points out however, "is a good reason to vote for anyone. So that's modern politics in a nutshell."

As for her policies, which is the reason to vote for someone: she's pro-drilling ... but she's anti-abortion. She delivered Alaskans a significant tax rebate worth several thousand dollars each ... but at the expense of raising taxes on oil companies. She believes anthropogenic global warming in a hoax ... but she wants creationism taught in schools, and opposes birth control even for married couples! A very mixed MILF then. (Or, perhaps, the first VPILF.) An anti-abortion, creationist wacko who begins to make sense when she gets her head out of the Bible.

Fact is, as Myrhaf says, the way her character is already being assasinated by the left suggests they see her as a threat to nationhood under Obama.

The left is trying to do to her what they did to Dan Quayle in 1988. There was a media frenzy when Bush the elder picked him to be his Vice-President. The media and the Democrats defined Quayle unfairly as an airhead. The left has a long history of attacking Republicans as stupid: Reagan, Ford, Eisenhower, and I believe even Wilkie and Coolidge were attacked thus.

And all this talk about her being "one heartbeat" away from the presidency, covertly raising the spectre of McCain's age and fragility -- while ignoring that his mother is still alive and well and living in Peoria* -- and Palin's supposed inexperience -- but "inexperience" compared to what? Obama's lack thereof? Barack Obama has never governed or run a business. He has no major legislative accomplishments. He is a socialist community organizer with zero understanding of economics -- whose Obamanics look very much like an Americanised version of Hugo Chavez's -- whose career has was kick-started by the corrupt Chicago political establishment because of his "glamour" and his ability to make gown women cry.

However, how is Palin significantly better? As George Reisman points out, Obama and Palin are both ignorant of economics, and her career has been elevated primarily because she's a babe with the zeal to make abortionists cry.

When it comes to "the question of experience," Myrhaf responds with another question that's worth considering:

Taking experience alone as a qualification, then the most qualified man to be President is Jimmy Carter... Would you want Jimmy Carter to be President?

Ideology is of supreme importance. Experience is a minor factor compared to what a man believes. Barack Obama is ideologically a lot like Jimmy Carter. Neither has a good understanding of America's enemies in this dangerous world. Obama, you could say, is Carter without the experience.

Which of the two inexperienced candidates, Obama or Palin, would you rather have answering that 3am telephone call announcing China's invasion of Taiwan? A lifelong member of the NRA or a man who holds collectivism as his ideal? A woman who once worked as a commercial fisherman or a man who once worked as a community organizer (a job that is by its nature altruist-collectivist-statist)?

Ideas get little discussion in American politics, and that is a shame.... But however bad she might be, I have a hard time believing she could deal with the invasion of Taiwan worse than Obama or even the supremely experienced Jimmy Carter.

* I confess, I have no idea where Mrs McCain lives. Peoria sounds good.

NZers more rational on religion than Americans - poll

The results of a poll on religion, evolution and morality strongly suggests New Zealanders are more rational than Americans on the first two topics -- although there's still plenty of work to do -- but from the questions asked on "morality" it's clear that reason has yet to flush religion from the important field of ethics.

On religion:

• 56% of New Zealanders believe God exists, compared to a whopping 86% of Americans who insist they have an imaginary friend.
• On the other hand, 22% of New Zealanders are sure God doesn't exist, whereas only 6% of Americans admit to having thought this through properly.
• Only 26% of New Zealanders believe the devil exists (answers insisting she resides on the Ninth Floor of a certain building in Wellington were ruled out of contention), compared to 70% of Americans who see him everywhere.
• The majority of New Zealanders do not believe in either Heaven or Hell (just 48% and 30% respectively), whereas the overwhelming majority of Americans do still believe in these fictions, 81% and 69%.

On evolution:

• Three-quarters of New Zealanders believe evolution is either "definitely true" or "probably true" (respectively 26% and 49%), whereas barely fifty-percent of Americans agree (respectively18% and 35%).
• On the other hand, 26% of NZers polled are creationist nuts who insist "God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it," as are a frightening 50% of Americans!
  

With questions on abortion, homosexuality, extra-marital sex, and "out-of-wedlock births" dominating the "morality" section, it's clear that the field is still poisoned by centuries of religious praise of abstinence and renunciation, (rather than a more rational recognition that the task of morality is to discover and teach the principles that lead to life, achievement, happiness, success, and joy).

• "New Zealanders were significantly more tolerant than Americans about having a baby outside of marriage, sex between an unmarried man and woman, abortion, divorce and homosexual relations."
• "Americans were much keener on the death penalty, with 66 per cent saying it was morally acceptable compared to 42 per cent of New Zealanders."
• "Respondents from the two nationalities were most closely aligned on questions around the use of human stem cells for medical research which was seen as acceptable by 65 per cent of Kiwis and 64 per cent of Americans; cloning humans (9 per cent, 11 per cent), polygamy (10 per cent, 8 per cent) and married men or women having an affair (9 per cent, 6 per cent). Most Americans thought gambling was acceptable, but less than half of Kiwi respondents agreed."

UPDATE: Oops. Forgot to leave you the link.

Sunday readings: Faith is the destroyer of knowledge

Four readings this morning musing on the relationship between religion and knowledge .

First Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) in his medieval best-seller 'Spiritual Exercises' [hat tip Thrutch]:

To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always to be ready to believe that what seems to us white is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it.

And Tertullian, another prominent theologian back in the early days when people were making up the Gospels, who wote of religion and the resurrection myth that

it is believable because it is so foolish. . . it is certain because it is impossible.

You just can't make this stuff up. In the same tradition is this line from a pre-modern destroyer of knowledge, German nutcase Immanuel Kant, who declared that

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

As Christopher Hitchens has been heard to say, religion poisons everything. Observed Ayn Rand:

The alleged shortcut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit, destroying the mind.

Worth thinking about.

UPDATE 1: If you want to see how a prominent contemporary theologians arguing that white is black, have a browse through some of the pseudo-scientific sounding drivel spouted by the so-called 'Intelligent Design' school, or the word games of Alvin Plantinga -- an 'analysis' here for example of the "Free Will Defence" that puts the 'sophist' back into sophisticated.

UPDATE 2: Commenter Matt F. has provided many word games in the comments section here in an attempt to defend what I would characterise as the indefensible. There are more word games at his blog fromMatt, who seems to take Mr Plantinga as one of his models. Matt is himself a contemporary theologian, albeit not yet well known or prominent, but this is what he does professionally. It might be cruel to Matt to attribute to him views which aren't his, but that means however that if he takes his Loyola seriously, his job is "to believe that what seems to us white is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it."

One has that sense when debating him.

Now Matt has repeatedly accused many of us here of erecting strawmen with which to attack religion -- which is an interesting wriggle considering I was quoting some of the church's own founders and defenders -- so I was interested to see the account he has over at his own blog about the exchanges here, since what he's erected over there is a whole field of stunted little strawmen.

Given that Matt is, as I said, a professional theologian, I'm frankly disappointed that what I would call his basic standards of debate are so low, and his thickets of misdirection so tangled.

It is instructive, however, because it indicates how difficult a discussion is when one participant hears only what he wants to hear, just how disappointingly low are a professional theologian's standards of evidence, and how of necessity they need to be in order to believe the "foolish" and the "impossible."

Here's just a few of Matt's strawmen in the most recent posts on his blog which, since the substantive responses should be obvious enough, I'll mostly just point out rather than answer (yes, some grammar has been corrected to make the comments as understandable as I can make them):

• Says Matt: "In recent correspondence with non-believers I have repeatedly met with the following argument. This is usually touted as a kind of self-evident mantra. [1] There is no proof that God exists [2] It's irrational to believe something unless you have proof. Therefore: [3] Belief in the existence of God is irrational."
  
  Now he may or may not have been referring to exchanges here at Not PC, but if he is then proposition 2 is misstated. What I've said here is that a proposition without proof is flatly arbitrary, and the arbitrary is out. Arbitrary statements don't even get to be called irrational; they don't even get to the table. Matt then goes on to base a whole post on this misstatement.
  


• Matt begins another post: "Not PC has a blog on "How Faith destroys Knowledge". The basic line of argument appears to be as follows: three famous thinkers appear to hold that faith and reason are at odds and that faith is the preferable stance."
  
  First, as all assiduous listeners of Monty Python are aware, "an argument is a connected series of propositions intended to establish a conclusion." What I posted above was not an argument. It was one post with four quotes, one point and an invitation to think about it; some thoughts for a Sunday on how faith undercuts reason. It was not an argument, however I'm happy for Matt to keep providing evidence for it as a proposition, since it seems to me that his methodology provides abundant evidence for the point.
  Second, the "thinkers" quoted (whose "fame" if at all is irrelevant, and whose thinking is at the very least highly suspect) wrote in a time when clarity was valued. They did not "appear to hold" those views. In fact they did hold them. Specifically they held the view that faith is antagonistic to knowledge and reason, a divorce which those thinkers approved.
  Third, Matt seems to ascribes to me in his tangled way the idea that faith is the preferable stance. As any reader of this blog will know, that is the opposite of the case.
  


• Matt again: "PC also makes some fairly dubious clams. He cites Tertullian as a Fidest and states that the Gospels were written around in the third century AD."
  
  No, irrelevant as it might seem, in fact I make no such claims. I do not "cite" Tertullian as "a Fideist." I simply quoted what he said. And what I call him is "another prominent theologian back in the early days when people were making up the Gospels."
  You'll notice too that I do not "state" that the Gospels were written "around the third century AD." Tertullian's dates were 155-230 (ie., the second to third centuries). The earliest surviving copies of the Gospels were dated from the fourth century, and were probably written somewhere in the second or third (arguments about for the age of their composition still rage). However, quite apart from being irrelevant to any current argument here, from the distance of the twenty-first century what I said is more than accurate enough. And it wasn't "stated" as a "claim."
  


• He carries on in this manner, ascribing to me all sorts of things I haven't said and positions I haven't taken, eg,"First, [PC] provides some counter examples to anti-evidentialism..." and "Second, he offers some criticisms of the Kalam Cosmological Argument...". In other words, he faults me for insufficiently countering in the comments section two very specific theological sallies, when my response was simply to two fairly general and poorly argued points.
  
  
• There is more of this, as you'd expect, but what he's working up to is this, right at the conclusion of his substantive post: "I suspect however that PC has not read Christian thinkers he has read Ayn Rand and various libertarian caricatures of Christian thinkers. On the basis of these caricatures he denigrates Christians as irrational and politically dangerous."
  
  Now Matt is entitled to suspect what he likes, and he may think what he likes about who and what I've read, but it's frankly surprising to see such firm conclusions drawn on the basis of one post containing only four quotes, one point and an invitation to think about it. And this from a professional theologian.
  
  And this is the reason I've taken the time with these trivialities here, since the rigour with which we demand evidence for our views is the measure of our commitment to the reality of those views.
  
  One would be sorely tempted to point out that Matt's apparent disdain for standards of evidence is hardly surprising, since christians are used to making up their minds based on scanty or non-existent evidence -- which was the partial point of my the original post, if you'll recall, and also of many comments -- and fortunately for us Matt himself provides us with an tip that is like a signpost for those of us curious about christian epistemological standards. Says Matt: "you can rationally believe certain things, in certain situations, without evidence."
  
  You really couldn't make that up.

UPDATE 3: Matt has another go. Make of it what you will.

UPDATE 4: Links fixed. Matt's professional description amended.

"It's a lie!"

Q: Why is it wrong to lie?
A: Because in lying either to yourself or to others, you're trying to fake reality -- and reality will always be avenged. Says Ayn Rand on this point:

The essence of a con-man's [or a politician's] lie -- of any such lie, no matter what the details -- is the attempt to gain a value by faking certain facts of reality.

Now can't you grasp the logical consequences of that kind of policy ? Since all facts of reality are interrelated, faking one of them leads the person to fake others; ultimately, he is committed to an all-out war against reality as such. But this is the kind of war no one can win. If life in reality is a man's purpose, how can he expect to achieve it while struggling at the same time to escape and defeat reality?

The con-man's lies are wrong on principle. To state the principle positively: honesty is a long-range requirement of human self-preservation and is, therefore, a moral obligation.

Note that by this reasoning the harm you do in lying is not just to others, as conventionally thought, but also to yourself and to your own grasp of existence. The "obligation" of honesty arises because human survival -- our own individual survival and flourishing -- requires an unswerving reality focus that we undercut by our own dishonesty, however small, and by our own evasions, however trivial.

So if even small lies commit you to an all-out war against reality, what then (Gus van Horn wondered yesterday) about this effort: "a propaganda effort that makes Michael Moore seem like a piker" -- a god damned "Creationist Museum" complete with a special-effects theater "with vibrating seats meant to evoke the flood, and a planetarium paying tribute to God's glory while exploring the nature of galaxies." " [New York Times story here.]

Just what the fuck kind of war against reality does something like this represent? To say nothing of the implications of the post below this one ...

Al Bore: Creationist

A sad day for a Canadian warmist, who went along to pay homage to Al Bore and his slideshow only to find out that Warmist Bore is also Creationist Bore. Turns out The Goracle is as prone to Religio-Enviro-Babble as every other faith-based nutter. At the Neurotransmission blog the poor chap describes his moment of disillusion:

At first, I thought I was going to be in for a live repeat of the movie, but he did have some new slides, or at least slides that were not shown in the film... The real interesting part (for me anyways), was a few of his comments about a topic that I've been researching a lot lately - the battle between science and religion... he comes across as a man who is ready to accept science as the proper methodology (versus evangelical faith in biblical literalism). ... During his live slideshow today, however, he showed his true colors. One of his slides was a quote from Genesis, which he used to show that humans are the stewards of biodiversity...

The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to the "rise of humans."

Cool beans. So he believes that Homo sapiens evolved from other hominid ancestors, right? Nope. In the very same breath, he then continued to explain that according to his religious beliefs, this "rise of humans" was God's creation of mankind - apparently 200,000 years ago. His graph then changed to include the caption "Adam & Eve" above this starting point.

I started laughing, and I had to consciously blink my eyes and double-check the screen to make sure I was seeing it properly. Let me get this straight...the guy's entire presentation exists in order to present people with the scientific data showing that human-caused climate change is a fact. He does his very best to include references in all of the slides, showing to any thinking person that this data is not made up, that it comes from the forefront of our scientific research (there was many slides containing data from Science journal, and a few from Nature).

At the same time, he tarnishes his beautifully crafted presentation by not only stating his belief in creationism - but by placing the words "Adam and Eve" right on the slide (which is actually a scientific graph) as a caption explaining the beginnings of mankind.

Something doesn't add up here. On one hand, he is using science to predict the disastrous outcome of our current actions and rally support for taking proactive measures to make sure bad things don't happen, but on the other hand, he is clinging to stone-age beliefs that another very important area of science has proven wrong (that we humans evolved from other forms of life, and that every organism on Earth has a common ancestor)...

I should also note that at this point in the lecture (I'll call it the schism) he stated that there is no conflict between science and religion. He appeared as though he wanted to say more about this, and even mentioned the Scopes trial, but then decided to continue on with the slideshow instead.

Whaaaaa???? You tell me that anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact (to the degree that science can use that word), mankind came from God's creation of Adam and Eve 200,000 years ago, there is no conflict between science and religion, refer to the Scopes trial, and then shrug it off and move on with the show?

The schism pretty much ruined the rest of the show for me. His message about climate change and our need to take action was great, inspiring even. However, I am now somewhat confused about the sort of man that is Al Gore. If you're going to be intellectually honest about issues like climate change, than why not carry through to the next logical step and apply this kind of honest thinking to everything?

That's a a question some Gore fans here might like to answer.

Creationist error

'P-Zed' Myers at Pharyngula (whom Richard Dawkins calls "America's pre-eminent scientific blogger") posts what he says is "a straightforward example of creationist error":

It’s a classic example of the genre, and well illustrates the problem we have. The poor fellow has been grossly misinformed, but is utterly convinced that he has the truth.

I have to say, it will look somewhat familiar to readers of this blog. You'll enjoy P-Zed's scientific 'smack' down.

Oh, and P-Zed is delighted to know that Richard Dawkins read out part of his (P-Zed's) own arguments in an Oxford debate on evolution, creationism and the existence of God. Says P-Zed:

You can listen to it online—I think I'm going to have to have Dawkins read all of my posts aloud, since he makes them sound so much better.

I'm just as delighted, since both Dawkins and PZ Myers appear in the latest Free Radical (subscribe here), and a copy of the magazine should be in both of their hands by now.

RELATED: Science, Religion, Philosophy, Free Radical

Guest Post: "...Shall I pile up the quotes from evolutionists having serious doubt about that fossil evidence?"

In a recent debate here at Not PC, I made this comment to a debater:

...you're beginning to look like a Creationist refusing to countenance the fossil evidence for evolution." Ah," they say as the fossil evidence keeps piling up, "but you haven't yet got enough evidence to shake my faith...

To this point, Berend de Boer replied: "Fossil evidence, yeah right. Shall I pile up the quotes from evolutionists having serious doubt about that fossil evidence?" I now post that "pile-up" and hereby claim my beer (and you can check Berend's argument), but not before re-posting another of Berend's comments for some context. James asked:

...while you are at it [Berend], please explain those pesky Dinosaur skeletons that keep being dug up all over the show....when in the last "6,000 years " did God sneak those in without us knowing...?

Berend's reply forms an instructive introduction to this post here today:

As to dinosaurs, I'm not sure what you mean. What's the sneaking? I've always wondered why people in the Middle Ages had pictures of creatures we now clearly identify as dinosaurs.

Obviously if we find a human foot print and a dinosaur foot print together, there has been contamination, because that can't be true.

And isn't it a bit annoying that dinosaur bones smell so strongly after those millions of years of decay? That stretchy tissue has been found in their bones, leading the main researcher to claim she found blood cells. Why, [if they have] been dead for tens of millions of years?

Settle back now, dear reader. Like you, I look forward to hearing about those "people in the Middle Ages [who] had pictures of creatures we now clearly identify as dinosaurs..." [You might also care to consider the arguments put forward in some previous posts here at Not PC:
The eyes have it: dismissing Creationism again
The passion of science
Closing of 'Intelligent Design' trial
Unintelligent design, Part 3
Unintelligent design, Part 2
Unintelligent design, Part 1 ]

* * *

BEREND: In a comment Peter Cresswell put forward the claim that Creationists just discard the fossil evidence for evolution. I claimed to be able to cite evolutionists also wondering what the fossils are actually evidence of. Peter offered to put any quotes I could find on his blog. Given that this has turned into a rather long article [make that "extraordinarily long" - Ed.] I suppose I have to compensate him for the space, so I'll buy you a beer Peter. One day. And without further ado here is the article.

It seems our preconceptions can prevent us from seeing things. One can see something and not see it. It's a very human thing it seems, even scientists cannot escape it.

Our perception appears to be so strong that it can even determine what we smell. A stark reminder of this is the recent event of Dr Mary Schweitzer's discovery of stretchy tissue in dinosaur bone. It was so sensational, so upsetting, Discover magazine titled the story: "Schweitzer's Dangerous Discovery" (Discover 27(4):37--41, 77, April 2006). After her find Schweitzer suddenly smelt something, something she had never smelled before, because it could not exist. 65-million-year-old bones don't smell. But she now clearly did smell a distinctly cadaverous odour. When she mentioned this to long-time paleontologist Jack Horner, he said: "Yeah, all Hell Creek bones smell."

It goes further. Our perceptions can even determine the facts that we allow to be accepted. The previously mentioned Discover magazine says: "When this shy paleontologist found soft, fresh-looking tissue inside a T. Rex femur, she erased a line between past and present. Then all
hell broke loose." Dr. Schweitzer had a hard time getting her work published:

I had one reviewer tell me that he didn't care what the data said, he knew that what I was finding wasn't possible," says Schweitzer. "I wrote back and said, 'Well, what data would
convince you?' And he said, 'None.'

And that leads us to fossils and our interpretations of these. Clearly there are fossils. But what do we see when we see fossils? Fossils don't come with an interpretation, that's something we humans attach to them. The evidence does not speak for itself, and facts should always trump theory. So what do we see when we look at fossils? Peter Cresswell claims that when we look at the fossil record, we see evolution. That is not exactly a clearly defined statement, so I
interpret that in the usual school text-book sense of seeing Neo-Darwinist evolution. We see primitive creatures gradually evolving into more advanced creatures. In particular we see an overwhelming amount of intermediate forms, creatures no longer around.

Before continuing I must first define evolution. The meaning of evolution has become a synonym for things that are definitely not evolution. When the word evolution is used, both micro-evolution and macro-evolution are included. Micro-evolution is natural selection, i.e. Darwin's Finches, but also breeding dogs and horses. It is a rearrangement of existing genetic material. No one is arguing that this is real and is happening.

But macro-evolution is different: it is the appearance of new genetic material, new functionality that didn't exist before. For example if a mouse evolved into a bat, he would not only need wings, but also the brain to use these wings: bats are not taught to fly, they know it. Macro-evolution is single cell to elephant, ape to man, goo to you.

The distinction between natural selection and evolution isn't something creationists have invented. The biologist L Harrison Matthews wrote in the preface of the 1971 edition of the Evolution of Species that the peppered moth example showed natural selection, but
not "evolution in action."

Does fossil evidence show evolution in action? What do we see? How do paleontologists interpret fossils? In this article I will quote various paleontologists and tell you what they think the evidence is saying.

Let's start with Darwin himself, writing in the Origin of Species:

Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.

Yes, why not? Darwin was worried. It was clearly not the fossil evidence that swayed him, because he writes that there wasn't such a thing at that time. And he finds it the most serious objection that can be argued against his theory. Sure a hundred years later, things
have improved?

But exactly one hundred years after the first edition of the Origin of Species, in 1959, G.G. Simpson summarised the fossil record in an article prepared for the Darwin Centenary Symposium in Chicago of the same year:

Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large.

Also in that year Norman Newell, past curator of historical geology at the American Museum of Natural History wrote in The Nature of the Fossil Record (Proc. of the American Phil. Soc, 103 (2)):

...experience shows that the gaps which separate the highest categories may never be bridged in the fossil record. Many of the discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasised with increased collecting.

Yes, the fossil evidence is overwhelming isn't it? Except if you ask a paleontologist. Twenty five years after that, in 1977, the most famous paleontologist of recent times, Stephen J. Gould, wrote (Evolution's Erratic Pace, Natural History, vol 86. (May 1977) p.14):

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology...to preserve our favoured account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.

Oops. Nothing changed that in the time up to 2002. In his last book, the Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen J. Gould wrote:

... since we have no direct data for key transitions that occurred so long ago and left no fossil evidence ... such entirely speculative scenarios must be understood within their acknowledged
limits -- that i as hypothetical stories, "cartoons" in Buss's words, invented to illuminate a potential mode and not as claims about any historical accuracy.

Stephen J. Gould also quotes George Gaylord Simpson:

... the greatest and most biologically astute paleontologist of the 20th century ... acknowledged the literal appearance of stasis and geologically abrupt origin as the outstanding general fact of the fossil record and as a pattern which would "pose on of the most important theoretical problems in the whole history of life."

Except in the fossil text books at public schools where there is no evidence of a problem at all. But sure, we could go to a museum and see a missing link, couldn't we? After all the evidence is
overwhelming. [NB., The reader should note that this did not stop Gould providing expert testimony against the equal-time creationism law in McLean v. Arkansas.]

In Darwin's Enigma Luther Sunderland interviewed five leading fossil experts from the world's major fossil museums. None of the five museum officials could offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that would document the transformation of one
basically different type to another.

Dr Colin Patterson, a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History and author of the book Evolution said (quoted in Darwin's Enigma, Luther Sunderland, 1988):

Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived."? I will lay it on the line-
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record.

Dr Colin Patterson, author of the book Evolution, and a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History received a letter from a reader. The reader asked why he did not put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. On April 10, 1979, he replied to the author in a most candid letter as follows:

... I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?

Ideology has triumphed over the data. Dr David Pilbeam of the Boston Natural History Museum acknowledged this in "In Rearranging Our Family Tree", Human Nature magazine, June 1978. In that article he reported that discoveries since 1976 had shaken his view of human origins and
forced a change in ideas of man's early ancestors. Dr Pilbeam's previous views were wrong about tool use replacing canine teeth, evidence for which was totally lacking. He did not believe any longer that he was likely to hit upon the true or correct story of the origin of man. He repeated a number of times that our theories have clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data. Too often they have reflected only what we expected of them.

In Evolution by Mark Ridley, published in 2004, we learn why there has never been a Nobel Prize awarded for evolutionary theory. He states:

We need to keep in mind the status of the evolutionary biologist's argument here. The series of stages may in some cases not be particularly plausible, or well supported by evidence, but the argument is put forward solely to refute the suggestion that we cannot imagine how the character could have evolved. (p. 263)

He continues and concludes his argument in the following paragraph:

It is fair to conclude that there are no known adaptations that definitely could not have evolved by natural selection. Or (if the double negative is confusing), we can conclude that all known adaptations are in principle explicable by natural selection. (p. 263)

Fossil evidence for evolution? Why do people who claim that not have [all] paleontologists on their side? The stratigraphic record demonstrates only stasis. When this record is viewed through the lenses of information theory, it demonstrates trivial morphologic changes, no transitional forms of any type, and the outworking of natural selection.

But who needs data and facts? Richard Dawkins admits there are no missing links, but he doesn't need them:

But those fossil animals that have no fossil ancestors must have had ancestors of some kind. They can't have sprung from nothing. Therefore there must have been ancestors that didn't
fossilize, absence of fossils does not mean absence of animals. (p. 209);

Sad isn't it? There are no missing links, but that doesn't mean a thing, because our theories say it did happen. Again, where is the overwhelming evidence? Let's conclude with a biologist, S. Stanley (Macroevolution (1979)):

The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic (gradual) evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.

One hundred years after Darwin wrote that the absence of intermediate forms was one of the strongest objections against his theory, Michael Denton wrote in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis:

Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of the globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin. The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record.It is still, as it was in Darwin's day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record.

I rest my case.

Berend de Boer, Auckland, 2006.

TAGS: Science Religion Philosophy

Morality without God?

Can one have morality without God?

"No," say religionists, who rely on the edict of their imaginary friend to give them rules for living -- rules which must followed as absolutes, without question, most of which start with "Don't ..."

"No," say many subjectivists, skeptics and moral relativists. It is foolish, they say, to seek moral law within the universe, or to favour one set of rules over another. If God is dead then anything goes, and all lifestyles equally valid. Go with the flow; do what feels good; act as if everyone were to act as you do ... various forms of whim worship are suggested as alternatives to morality, but few are anything more than either whim worship or the imposition of more or less arbitrary rules.

I think it should be clear enough that there are serious problems with the approaches taken by both the religionists, and by their subjectivist opponents. Can you then have morality without God?

Yes, you can. Aristotle stands as a healthy contrast to both religionists and subjectivists in being the first, most consistent (and most overlooked) advocate of a rational, earthly morality -- his was a "teleological" approach to ethics. We act to achieve certain ends, he said, and those ends must be the furtherance of our lives. All actions are (or should be) done "for the sake of" achieving some goal, with all goals linked together with the end of sustain and enhancing our lives. "The good life," said Aristotle, is something for which to strive.

Ayn Rand, in summing up Aristotle's approach in order to develop her own, explained the contrast between this view and that of religious morality as follows: "The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live." That was and is the promise of what Rand called the Objectivist Ethics, at the heart of which is her observation that morality is not optional. "Ethics," she said, "is an objective, metaphysical necessity of man's survival..."

This is all by way of introduction to let you know that the Ayn Rand Institute has just made available a free online video lecture by Onkar Ghate on the subject of Religion and Morality. [Free registration is required.] From the lecture summary:

From the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in the classroom to federal prohibition on the funding of stem cell research to the Terri Schiavo case, religion is playing an increasing role in America's public life. The advocates of religion claim that only religion can restore values to America—by combating moral skepticism and relativism with an absolute view of right and wrong, applicable to everyone. If God is dead, it is often thought today, then everything would be permitted. But does morality rest on religion? Can it rest on religion? Are moral absolutes possible with religion? Without religion? What approach to morality can actually bring values to American culture? These are the questions this talk addresses.

LINKS: Religion and Morality - Ayn Rand Institute [Free registration is required. Once registered go to the Registered User Page and scroll down to 'Religion and Morality]
New streaming videos from the Ayn Rand Institute - Principle in Practice

RELATED: Ethics, Religion, Objectivism, Philosophy

Global warming and consensus science - the wreckage of the consensus

There was a time when scientists looked for facts, drew conclusions based on logic and the evidence before them, and were happy to challenge superstition and prevailing myths by resting on their science. Scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein sought to explain and integrate the broadest range of observable facts by means of reason and the use of the scientific method

Sadly, those days are over. For some time now, according to philosophers of science, scientists have beeen working in a 'scientific paradigm' in which the 'paradigm' is said to be more important than the science. This is, if you like, subjective science, in which the more people who agree with an idea -- the more consensus that builds around a notion -- then the more scientifically successful that notion is considered to be. This is in contrast to the idea that the more facts explained by an hypothesis, and the more comprehensive the testing of that hypothesis, the more successful it is.

Consensus is now king, as Terence Corcoran explains in Canada's National Post:

Throughout the 20th century, science was overwhelmed by the sociology of science and "sociological explanations of knowledge." At the extreme, we end up with the idea that there are no facts and nothing is verifiable. "Customs and conventions are seen as the creations of human agents, actively negotiated and actively sustained, under the collective control of those who initially negotiate them.... Scientific knowledge is seen as customarily accepted belief."

Ed Younkins explains how this post-modern science fits into post-modern discourse:

Postmodernism encompasses the idea that people tell stories in order to explain the world. None of these stories is reality but are simply representations of reality based on incomplete and often inaccurate information. There are a variety of socially constructed realities, belief systems, and stories that attempt to explain the world. People construct stories that seem to fit the information at their disposal. This is analogous to Thomas Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts in science. When experiments yield evidence that does not fit the reigning paradigm, then eventually a new paradigm that better explains the evidence at hand is adopted.

But note that at no time does the post-modern consensus scientist take a view on facts as such. The paradigm does not seek to explain reality, he seeks only to fit with or to build a consensus. Consensus is the new reality.

As Corcoran explains, the highest profile example of this particular view of science is seen in the sciecnce of global warming, where 'consensus' is seen to outweigh scientific findings that don't fit the prevailing model. Rather than seek to integrate and explain new and troublesome facts, the 'consensus scientist' chooses instead to ignore them as irrelevant, and to paint them as outside the consensus. After all if they don't fit the 'consensus,' how could they be relevant?

In short, under the new authoritarian science based on consensus, science doesn't matter much any more. If one scientist's 1,000-year chart showing rising global temperatures is based on bad data, it doesn't matter because we still otherwise have a consensus. If a polar bear expert says polar bears appear to be thriving, thus disproving a popular climate theory, the expert and his numbers are dismissed as being outside the consensus. If studies show solar fluctuations rather than carbon emissions may be causing climate change, these are damned as relics of the old scientific method. If ice caps are not all melting, with some even getting larger, the evidence is ridiculed and condemned. We have a consensus, and this contradictory science is just noise from the skeptical fringe.

And as we all know, the skeptical fringe are all lunatics in the pay of the oil companies anyway. Read on here.

LINKS: Climate Consensus and the end of science - Terence Corcoran, National Post
Consensus science - Wikipedia
Paradigm shift - Wikipedia
The plague of post-modernism - Ed Younkins, Le Quebecois Libre

TAGS: Science, Philosophy, Global_Warming

Another dangerous idea infecting classrooms

Scientist Travis Norsen has a warning about "a dangerous enemy [that] has infiltrated our science classrooms and is infecting our students’ minds."

The enemy is a profoundly unscientific theory masquerading as legitimate science. Its presence in the science classroom blurs the distinction between real science and arbitrary dogma and “makes students stupid” by leaving them less able to distinguish reasonable ideas from unreasonable ones – a skill that is surely one of the main goals of teaching science in the first place. You probably suspect the enemy I'm talking about is Intelligent Design . . .

The enemy I'm worried about is something else – something just as unscientific as Intelligent Design, but more dangerous because it is not widely recognized as such: the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. . . This may seem like a rather technical issue that physicists should straighten out for themselves, an issue that those outside of physics shouldn't or needn't worry about. But the wider academic community – and, indeed, society at large – has a legitimate interest and stake in this issue, just as it has a legitimate interest and stake in the debate over Intelligent Design. Like Intelligent Design, Copenhagen quantum mechanics “makes students stupid.” Like ID, it probably has no place in college science classrooms.

Strong words. Go here and see if he can back them up.

LINKS: Unintelligent design, Part 1 - Not PC (Peter Cresswell)
Intelligent design in the physics classroom? - Travis Norsen, Journal of the American Physical Society, July 2006
Travis Norsen's Objective Science site
Cartoons by Nick Kim

TAGS: Science, Education

The eyes have it: dismissing Creationism again

The so called 'irreducible complexity' of existence is one of the primary arguments that Creationists make for their imaginary friend being the architect of all that exists. "If it's complex, then God done it," is their claim. Michael Behe puts the arguments, such as it is, on behalf of the supernaturalists:

Irreducibly complex systems appear very unlikely to be produced by numerous, successive, slight modifications of prior systems, [says Behe] because any precursor that was missing a crucial part could not function. Natural selection can only choose among systems that are already working, so the existence in nature of irreducibly complex biological systems poses a powerful challenge to Darwinian theory.

It poses neither challenge nor problem to Darwin's Law of Evolution, as Darwin himself pointed out when evolution was only a theory. Said he:

If numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

Indeed. Perceptive readers will notice that I discussed this in Part 2 of last year's three-parter on the shibboleth of Intelligent Design. For those who did notice, then as a reward you might like to see the point demonstrated in a short four-minute video presented by Swedish scientist Dan-Eric Nilsson, demonstrates one possible straightforward evolutionary path. [ Hat tip, again, to S. Hicks, Esq.]

LINKS: Unintelligent design, Part 1 - Not PC
Unintelligent design, Part 2 - Not PC
Unintelligent design, Part 3 - Not PC
The human eye is NOT irreducibly complex - YouTube

TAGS: Education Science Religion Politics-US Objectivism Philosophy

Wishart "a creep"

Helen Clark has called Ian Wishart a "scandal monger" and a "creep." She once called John Campbell, deservedly in my view, a "little creep," so presumably Wishart is less vertically challenged. "Miss Clark went on to say that if you want to meet the Wishart test of public life you had better be one of the vestal virgins."

Is Wishart a scandal monger? No doubt of that. A fundamentalist nutbar? For sure. Conspiracy peddler. Big tick. Creationist and anti-evolutionist? Sure is. Intellectual dwarf? Clearly. A creep? Well, I wouldn't drink with him.

Hard working and energetic for sure, and in New Zealand's lack-lustre (read near non-existent) world of investigative journalism he stands out for both uncovering evidence and, in what I've read, assuming it -- his brain and his magazine remain the toxic dumping ground for everything dreamed up by anyone who ever wore a layer of tin-foil inside their hats. Like many other journalists he is never one to give the whole story when a partial one will sound better, he is Winston Peters with a magazine; Nicky Hager with subscriptions; Dan Brown without the sales; John Grisham with cliches. (This last is irony by the way.) Of Wishart, NBR's Nevil Gibson once said, ""Not one to use a telling phrase where a cliche will do; Mr Wishart's purple prose detracts from an otherwise fascinating account ... a conspiratorial tale of greed and excess ... created in the milieu of the X Files ... "

To call his work yellow journalism would be too kind. The overwhelming majority of what I've read of Wishart's work and of what appears in his magazine takes a breathless join-the-dots approach to a story, but with too few dots to make a full picture -- suggesting what isn't known, and taking denials by protagonists as evidence that they're hiding something. The sad thing is that this muck sells. You lot buy it.

Among some of his gems, if you remember, were the claims that George W Bush was secretly planning to abolish income tax (I wish!); that soy milk causes homosexuality; that condoms don't work and the 'safe-sex' campaign promoting their use is intended only to spread AIDS and increase the power of the "gay lobby"; that Bill Clinton was a cocaine smuggler "in an operation that was turning over billions of dollars a year"; that "ruins" have been found on the moon, "artifacts" on Mars and "lost cities" in Antarctic lakes (and the US Government has presumably been covering up ever since); that the Kyoto Treaty was all the work of "the boys from Enron"; that abortion causes breast cancer; that NZ defence researchers are "helping perfect" US missile systems, nuclear submarines "and even space warfare craft"; that China is about to launch a surprise biological attack on the US...

As proof for most of the stories I've read there is little more than conjecture, imagination, supposition, denials (as proof of veracity) and a demand that you, the reader, prove they're not true. This may be one occasion where I have to agree with the Prime Minister, as I did on her assessment of John Campbell and his 'analysis by ambush. ' Feel free to post below more examples of Wishart's cliche-ridden conspiracy claims over the years.

UPDATE: I'll post more of Investigate's amusing claims over the years as people send them in. These include: African famines caused by "a biotech industry plan to control world food supply"; exposés of "Al Qa'ida's pacific hideaway"; constitutional crises aplenty, including "an income tax revolt by ordinary taxpayers" already under way "with the potential to bring down the current system of government," and a claim that "New Zealand's future as a democracy is in the balance this summer" due to the "uncovering" of a "missing link" Treaty of Waitangi (there's a missing link here allright, but not where Wishart thinks); that the death penalty for treason was dropped so a cabal of political conspirators could "deliberately steal sovereignty from the public"; that people were living in Auckland more than 30,000 years ago...

More to come, I'm sure.

LINKS: PM calls Investigate editor "a creep" - Newstalk ZB
Investigate the editorship - Simon Pound
When partly true is untrue - Not PC

Tags: Nonsense

Judge gives 'Intelligent Design' the heave-ho

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that "intelligent design" is not a science, and therefore cannot be a mandated part of the state's high school curriculum...

Thank goodness. Reports the BBC:

Judge John Jones ruled the school board had violated the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools. The 11 parents who brought the case argued that teaching intelligent design (ID) was effectively teaching creationism, which is banned.

They complained the theory - which argues life must have been helped to develop by an unseen power - is tantamount to religious education. The separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution.

"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion," said Judge John Jones... ID was not science, he said, and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Good news. Now to get the state out of education altogether. :-)

Linked News: Intelligent Design Teaching Ban - BBC
Court rejects 'intelligent design' in science class

Related Articles: Unintelligent Design Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Closing of 'Intelligent Design' trial

Depoliticise Creationism!

All the political arguments about Intelligent Design, and about how much teachers are paid and what their hours should be -- on all these issues Tibor Machan makes short and perfect sense: all of these arguments can be instantly de-politicised by the separation of school and state. As he says,

Whenever a controversy arises in government funded and administered educational(?) institutions, no one in the mainstream media mentions the real source of the problem. Whether it is making the study of sex, environment, or, currently, intelligent design mandatory, the real issue is systematically avoided. This is whether there ought to be government education in a free society at all...

It is because governments run schools that these matters become so politicized and dealt with by legislatures and courts."

It's no wonder the two biggest complaints every election year are about health and education: it's no coincidence both are run by government. If government ran the only legal shoe factories then we'd all be complaining about the shoes -- if we could get hold of any.

Commenting on Tibor's piece, Robert Winefield correctly observes the nub of the issue: "Both sides of [the Intelligent Design] argument believe it is moral to pay for their educational vision with taxes partly taken from their opponents. All that has happened in the intervening years between the Scopes Monkey trial and the upcoming trial in Kansas is that the shoe has been moved to the other foot." True enough.

Linked Article: Why Teaching Intelligent Design is Such a Problem

The passion of science

Perhaps the only good thing about the Intelligent Design shibboleth is that it has brought scientists out to eulogise about their passions. One such is Xavier at About Town, who has penned a truly wonderful paean to evolution which deserves to be read in its entirety. I'll quote from his conclusion:

There are literally millions, billions of species that exist or have existed, and every one, every single one, is connected, at some point, to every other. This is the beauty of evolution, of life. Intelligent design and creationism can never explain or express that inherent connection of the living world. They could never explain the relationships between the parasitic wasps and hippopotamus, or between the cow and the bacteria that live in its gut, helping it to digest its food. The saddest fact is they don't want to. Intelligent design and creationism doesn't have the power to make sense of the world, to express the subtleties or the fundamentals, or to find our place in it, now or in the past. They rob us of the exquisite vision that 4 billion years of constant change, of a Great Unfolding, has ready for us to find. They literally don't allow us to see the branches for the leaves.

Charles Darwin said it best, I think, in The Origin of Species:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Wonderfully put. Almost makes up for the little scam the About Towners have been running.

Closing of 'Intelligent Design' trial

The plaintiff's closing statement from the Intelligent Design trial -- otherwise known as Kitzmiller et al vs. Dover Area School District -- is online in PDF form. The trial lawyer accurately characterises the case as one about the necessary separation of church and state; he begins his conclusion by reminding the court that the US colony "was founded on religious liberty... In his Declaration of Rights, William Penn noted:

All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can , in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shalll ever be given by law to any religious establishment or modes of worship.

Hear, hear. "In defiance of these principles, which have served this state and this country so well" continued the statement, "this board imposed their religious views on the students in Dover High School." And so they did.

You might like to see my own view of the 'ID debate' itself, Unintelligent Design. You might also like to reflect that if there were a legal separation of state and school just as there is a separation of church and state, then there would be no need for this trial to have ever happened.
[Hat tip About Town]