Albion

He'd done things like releasing a mixture of wild and lab-reared moths, which behave differently from a group of all-wild ones, and he'd released them during the day instead of at night, when they normally do their flying, and stuff like that. Experiments were done later that avoided some of these problems and were shown to give results that supported Kettlewell's work. If you look at the reviews of Judith Hooper's "Of Moths and Men" in Science (by Bruce Grant) and in Nature (by Jerry Coyne), they go into some more detail about the later work in the field.

Albion

I think previous posts between your question and this one have answered that.

Not really. School textbooks don't give the last detail on every bit of research; it wouldn't be possible. Nor do the authors have time to keep up to date with every field covered in their books. It would be nice if they did, but the area covered by high-school textbooks is too wide. While working on getting books ready for publication, I've had to correct textbook authors on some things, even though I basically get my information from the popular science literature and the news. It isn't exactly earth-shattering information that textbooks tend to contain errors and out-of-date pictures (especially considering the way copyright holders make you jump through hoops to get permission to reprint figures - it's easier to just go with the ones you already have). Enough of the researchers in the field of industrial melanism have supported Kettlewell's work that it's by no means inappropriate for his work to feature in textbooks. What WOULD be nice is for staged photos to be identified as such.


No, I don't think we should. Not when IDists have used this opportunity to claim that the peppered-moth stuff should be pulled out of textbooks because it doesn't support evolution. If Jonathan Wells wanted to say that outdated experiments should be updated or that staged photos should be clearly labelled as such, that'd be one thing. But to label this research an icon of evolution, nitpick details of the methodology while somehow omitting any mention of more recent supporting work, and claim that research into industrial melanism in peppered moths shouldn't be used by textbook publishers, or anybody else, as support for evolution by natural selection is simply dishonest.

RufusAtticus

It also needs to be pointed out that the main importance of Ketterwell's work was to demonstrate that polution did not increase the mutation rate. That being a "black" moth was an intrinsic freature and not an extrinsic feature.

Albion

From the chapter entitled "Signs of Intelligence" by William Dembski, in the book of the same title, edited by William Dembski, p. 192, "The world is a mirror represeneting the divine life. The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory."

And Phillip Johnson isn't exactly shy about what ID is about in his opinion. His books are getting more overtly Christian as time goes by. "The Wedge of Truth" has the subtitle "Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism." There's only one alternative to naturalism that I'm aware of, and that's supernatural intervention. In fact, on p. 16 of his book, he says, "I want to explain the basic thinking behind the Wedge strategy to the public - especially the Christian public. In particular, it is time to set out more fully how the Wedge program fits into the specific Christian gospel (as distinguished from a generic theism), and how and where questions of biblical authority enteer the picture."

And don't even get me started about Jonathan Wells. He doesn't even pretend to be subtle about the objective of his involvement in the ID movement.

It's certainly true that an intelligent-design movement doesn't HAVE to be directed toward theism, whether general theism or a specific theology. However, the intelligent-design movement as embodied by the likes of the Discovery Institute fellows is a Christian movement that's trying to introduce the supernatural, in the form of the Christian god, into science. You might not call that creationism, and on your own boards you might be able to enforce that, but around here people who are trying to introduce the Christian god into the scientific method are known as creationists, whatever their cover story looks like.

Just out of interest, do you happen to know what proportion of the DI fellows aren't Christians?

Guts

Pangloss writes:

Why not?

Guts

Nic writes:

Thats really irrelevant. What is at stake is that the experiment shown in the textbooks is not really accurate. The moths are glued to the tree trunks, and Kettlewell released them during a non-natural time never during their natural time.


Nic writes:

Which ones?

Nic writes:

During the day time. They landed on tree trunks, not their normal resting place, and were easy prey for the birds.


Nic writs:

Here is what is so relevant about that, the main natural predator for these moths are not birds, but bats. Kettlewell might as well have taken these moths, captured a bird with his hand, and friggen forced fed it down it's throat, thats how relevant the peppered moth experiment is.

Guts

Albion writes:

Many IDers do think that the designer is supernatural, however, as I said, ID does not entail supernatural causation. This is stated explicitely in an ARN faq:




Albion wrote:

Well I'm not a Christian (but then again, I have no idea what I am ) . There are plenty of muslims, pantheists, Jews, etc in the ID movement. ID seems to have a large collection of religious as well as agnostic supporters.

Guts

Theyeti,

I don't really regard the response that they "didn't have enough time" to be sufficient. They had enough time to cover an entire interview with something that was completely irrelevant to what intelligent design proponents were doing there. They never mention that the DI was there specifically to correct some misinformation in the textbooks concerning evolution. My question is, why?

Theyeti writes:

Thats your opinion and it is a debatable issue. My question however, is why didn't CNN mention that they were there to correct errors in textbooks concerning evolution?

------

Not that anyone cares , but the only topic that interests me in this thread now is the peppered moth issue. Otherwise, this may be my last post. Like I said, these kind of debates kind of bore me now, I'd like to get into some of the juicier topics.

Lizard

Guts,

No one, but no one, as far as the world knows, has done anything that would be considered scientific research to test any, repeat ANY, ID hypothesis. I know Paul Nelson would say revealing such research would endanger careers, but of course, that's hogwash.

In fact, the first step toward making ID qualify as science would be to put forward a testable hypothesis. Then the next step would be to actually test it via the scientific method. Next, evaluate the results of the test. Next, write it up in the form of a paper explaining what you did: what your hypothesis was, exactly how you designed the study, how you conducted it, and what the results were. If it is a competent study and it is written up in competent form, then perhaps you will get it published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Not even dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists or other legitimate scientists always get their papers published, for one reason or another. A friend of mine had his research paper sent back for further lab tests and text revisions at least three times that I know of before he submitted it for publication.

There's also a strategy to selecting the publications to submit to. In my friend's case, he selected two that were (a) focused on subjects related to his research; and (b) relatively prestigious, but not so snooty as to reject his paper without careful consideration.

But of course, all this is academic (so to speak), because IDers will not even take the first step and put forth a testable hypothesis because by definition, ID is not testable via scientific means.

If Behe wanted to, he could submit "ID research papers" at any time to his own peers in molecular biology. Any member of a scientific association may present papers at its meetings without prior review. Has he done so? The astounding answer is, "No!" He certainly can't claim that "Darwinist bias" is responsible for preventing him from presenting ID papers to his own colleagues. So then why do you suppose he hasn't taken advantage of a free opportunity like that?

Could it be because there is nothing to say about ID that hasn't already been said, and there is not now and never will be a legitimate scientific research program having anything to do with ID? That's where I place my bet.

Guts

Lizard writes:

There are in fact, plenty of ID hypothesis that are testable. For example, the relevant one to the other thread. An ID hypothesis concerning the function of enolase. Now you can go into a lab and work on this. Then write up a paper, showing how an ID perspective lead you to this conclusion, then go and publish the paper. Unfortunately , what you need is a lab and funding in order to go about this. The latter is the problem.