Homo economicus’ Weblog

As if you needed a reason to read PZ Myers, thought you might like a taste of his biting insight into creationist delusion on junk DNA. Reposted below:

Osama bin Laden disproves Darwin!
Category: Creationism • Genetics
Posted on: May 4, 2011 7:32 AM, by PZ Myers

h, yeah…didn’t you know it was a crack team of Darwinist commandos who took out bin Laden, all to protect our secrets? David Klinghoffer doesn’t go quite that far, but he does demonstrate just how insane the gang at the Discovery Institute have gotten. After all, he does claim that Obama delayed the raid on Osama in order to promote creationism.

“President Obama is said to have known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden since September but chose to wait until May to authorize action against him. Why the delay? Could it perhaps have been to provide a super-timely news hook for the rollout of Jonathan Wells’ new book, The Myth of Junk DNA? If so, an additional note of congratulation is owed to Mr. Obama.

Because your parents give you some of their DNA, they also give your siblings some of the same genetic code — which is why sibling DNA tests work. They sometimes concentrate on areas of the genome called “junk DNA” which serves no biological function but still gets passed along to offspring. By testing for repeat strands of DNA code in these areas, it’s possible to work out if two individuals are related as siblings.”

Uh, what? Wells is quite possibly the worst and most dishonest “scholars” employed by the Discovery Institute; I’ve been thinking of picking up a copy of his book simply because it will be hilariously bad. He won’t have shown the utility of junk DNA, but I’m pretty sure he will have do a silly dance while trying to justify his claims…rather like Klinghoffer here.

The reason junk DNA is useful for identification purposes is that it varies so much — it is subject to random change at a higher rate than coding DNA, because it is not subject to functional constraints. It’s been called a genetic fingerprint, and that’s a useful comparison. Think about your fingerprints: you can make a general argument that a pattern of ridges creates a texture useful for gripping, but it’s not important that there be a particular whorl or loop at a specific place. Junk DNA also lacks any specific function, but the analogy only breaks down because it also doesn’t seem to have much of a general function, given that some species like Fugu have lost significant quantities of it. The one purpose I find plausible is that, since cell growth is regulated by the ratio of cytoplasm to nuclear volume, adding junk can lead to an overall increase in cell size.

Somehow, the creationist incomprehension of the basic science is used to argue that evolution didn’t happen.

If Darwin is right, there ought to be huge swaths of ancestral garbage cluttering the genome, serving no purpose other than to identify otherwise unidentified forensic remains. So if those huge swaths turn out after all to be vitally important to the functioning organism, what does that say about Darwin’s theory? Ah, that’s exactly the question addressed in Jonathan Wells’ book.

Hang on. Darwin had no molecular biology and no genetics, knew nothing about DNA, and didn’t even know that chromosomes carried genetic information … he postulated the existence of migratory particles called gemmules that were the units of heredity (he was completely wrong, by the way). His claim to fame is discovering and documenting a mechanism that shapes adaptive heritability, and if anything, he thought selection ought to hone the heritable factors, whatever they were, to a high degree of optimality.

And now the creationists want to argue that junk DNA is a Darwinian prediction? They’ve totally lost the plot.

Explain this to me. Darwin, in their confused minds, claims that there ought to be lots of junk having no purpose other than to identify dead bodies. Junk DNA is used to identify a specific dead body, bin Laden’s. Therefore, Darwin is wrong. Even if I grant them their premise (which I won’t, because it is stupid), this doesn’t work.

Let’s see how many Darwin lobbyists have the guts and honesty to acknowledge that another icon has fallen. They have not, on the whole, left themselves a lot of room for deniability on this.

Gibbering lunatics like Klinghoffer and Wells are actually rather easy to deny.

To make life easier all the blogs on Michael Reiss have been put together in a category to see them all click

PZ Myers writes the well known blog Pharyngula

here (where this one will be on top). There you will find all the letters written by Richard Dawkins and Sir Richard Roberts, and my comments on both the articles that Reiss wrote that started his downfall and analysis of his resignation.

Mind you in hindsight we should have seen Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society and Reiss being in this situation over creationism. Not just because an ordained clergyman given the role of protecting science education in the classroom would be called into doubt, but the anagram of Professor Michael Reiss:

‘ism clash poor Rees fires

PZ Myers made this comment on Reiss:

Dawkins and I are both often slandered as being relatively uninterested in promoting good science education, preferring to fight the culture war against religion (a claim that ignores the fact that we may feel strongly that the only way to achieve a lasting investment in understanding science is by reducing the pernicious influence of religion) — we are told that we think atheism more important than science. Let us ask, though, if these brave paladins of Jesus-compatible science would be willing to set aside their religion to better endorse science…and I think we all know what the answer would be.

That feeling made Reiss’ position untenable because “unfortunately his words got all tangled in the appearance of an unwarranted accommodation to creationism.”

Once again perception of reality rather than the actual empirical observation triumphs in the murky world of society politics – rational minds are not immune to gossip or personality clashes even if they are Nobel Laureates. While the next candidate may well have no conflict between advocating science and holy orders, the issue over which Reiss was brought down was one close to my heart. That in a science classroom science teachers have the right to teach the science that challenges a students declaration of religious belief about the natural world.

Hopefully that challenge will still be taken up, as the Royal Society advocates, and in case you are new to the blog I go into more detail in my blog here on Reiss resigns. Though that can be found as the third blog in the category section of Michael Reiss.

Ever wondered how to sum up evolution as being a valid scientific theory? PZ Myers suggests:

Yes, I believe evolution is true.
I consider it the best explanation of the origin and diversity of life on earth,
and it is backed by an immense body of evidence. Strictly speaking,
it is not a matter of belief, but a recognition of the knowledge
of qualified experts and a familiarity with the research
that has been done in the field; I would also
add that science does not deal in absolute
truth, but strives for approximations,
and is always willing to discard old
ideas if better explanations
with better evidence
come along.
Do you have evidence for an alternative theory?

From North Texas Sceptics

There are some guest bloggers covering on PZ’s Blog http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ and one of them mentions this poem which I thought I would share with you:

I think that I shall never see
A theory dumber than ID:
It says that God can make a tree,
A beaver or a honeybee-
That God can simply get a whim
To make the small E. coli swim.
He waves His hand through Heaven’s air
And lo! Flagella everywhere!
But sometimes even God falls down
And makes a poor, pathetic clown:
Yes, poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make Behe.

PZ Myers writes the blog Pharyngula

In many ways it seems that trying to have a reasoned and rational discussion, or at least putting things in perspective, can really take the biscuit. Or in this case the taking of a communion wafer, that was held but not swallowed, from a service has been considered a “hate crime” and resulted in the University Central Florida student receiving death threats that he returned the said wafer from captivity – but there are calls for his expulsion.

Even the University is saying Webster Cook the for mentioned student is not in trouble -but this depends on formal complaints by Cook and Catholic students not amounting to anything. In his own words he says it was not a prank but:

“When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show [a visiting non catholic friend],” Cook said. “I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they’d leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth.” [Full story here]

Now if he had committed a black mass, committed fornication on the alter, jerked off in the font [EDIT: you get the idea but no ideas about me please] then a sanction would seem more than merited. Instead it seems that he has already got more than his just desserts, in a rather unsavoury fashion. Apparently it is a mortal sin not to consume Christ’s flesh. Queen Elizabeth, in a play on words, during the reign of Queen Mary dodged the question of whether it really turned into Christ’s body by saying:

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

The story would perhaps be a non starter accept that, as you would expect, PZ Myers has blogged about the

The evidence against student or professor is wafer thin

incident here. Which has led to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League calling for action to be taken against PZ by the University of Minnesota that employs him as an associate professor and even the State legislator here. There is a counter move to support PZ being led by Richard Dawkins (more on that at the bottom).

The freedom of speech to lampoon people’s overreaction to what Cook did seems under threat by people who seem to think that religious sensitivities allow them to ruin the professional lives of other people. It is clear from PZ’s blog he was criticising the hyperbole overdrive that people were saying about the wafer and Cook, and he is entitled to say that it is just crackers.

Mind you – if the student had asked for a non blessed wafer to show his friend then we may all have been spared. Although we could argue over whether it would be the same wafer pre and post Eurachist – one that Elizabeth had to tread carefully for her life depended on it. Hopefully we shall not return to negative consequences for those that would criticise what people do and say in the name of their beliefs.

richarddawkins.net is supporting PZ Myers and asking for people to write to President Robert H. Bruininks to counter the hate mail that people have sent urging the President to sack PZ. Please consider supporting PZ during this witch hunt.

It seems people will invent things about the showing that PZ Myers was requested to leave but Dawkins gained entry.

I was asked if I wanted my name put down on the web site by a friend but it did not strike me as something I wanted to watch. Catching up with those from RDFRS that did go, I think that PZ and myself had the better part of the deal. They did not gate crash the event. It was not by invitation only but a free showing you could put yourself and some friends down for.

However this story on the Expelled web site suggests it but then has this to say at the end:

Ben Stein’s “Expelled” is one of the more evenhanded, clever, and well-produced documentaries currently on the market. While the Evolution/Intelligent Design debate can spark much emotion, anyone walking away from this film will be convinced that the merits of Intelligent Design should be on the same level playing field as Evolutionary Theory. This film is about the freedom of speech, the freedom of ideas and ability to express those ideas…not about whether God created the heavens and the earth.

Many scenes are centered around the Berlin Wall, and Ben Stein being Jewish actually visits many death camps and death showers. In fact, Nazi Germany is the thread that ties everything in the movie together. Evolution leads to atheism leads to eugenics leads to Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

I may as well say that voting a foreign Austrian into power will cause this all to happen.

California sleep well tonight …..

Speaking of California, Josh Timonen of RDFRS had a rather different take on the documentary:

Expelled seems to mark a shift in the Creationists’ tactics. Everything they’ve tried to do so far has failed, so now they’re trying to claim it’s a conspiracy. ‘Big Science is trying to keep God out of the classroom, and you’d better do something about it fast or we’re going to have another Holocaust!’ Of course, god-did-it is not science, but I don’t think this matters to the film’s target audience. Expelled is simply a rallying call to religious Americans. It will probably be shown in church basements, and will further insulate those who fear the seed of doubt. The film’s message is so appalling (teaching evolution = the Holocaust) and is presented so crudely that any sane person will see it for the propaganda it is. There was virtually no real scientific content, and I felt stupider for having sat through it.

Of course everyone seems to have forgotton the Flying Spaggehtii Monster in all this, but I am sure the presence of his Noodly Appendage will be felt soon.

In case you have not heard the story this may well make you laugh your socks off

I first heard that Expelled was going to be shown at the Mall of America on Thursday night when Healthy Addict (known, to her amusement, in RDFRS circles as Banana Girl for her Richard Dawkins signed fruit that she posed with at the AAI Conference that actually belonged to a guy that played Jesus). The thought of going to see a film that would portray ID as being another different scientifically plausible theory struck me as being as much fun as having a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to explain that just because they were wrong to say impending Armageddon they do not lack credibility on telling you these things. Even if free this would not appeal.

So other RDFRS crowd went while I stayed at the hotel to meet up with the other volunteers. Among those going to the film at the Mall of America was PZ Myers. Who was recognised at the showing and told that he was not allowed to view the film. Then later told that he was not allowed to be in the Mall.

What makes this ironic is that his family was allowed in and so was Richard Dawkins.

Only Hu

Met up with PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins and the others in the bar, we had another story to tell. We had gone out to lunch at Brenda’s – an organic, serving vegan desserts kind of place. Going to we passed  a ’90s Gay bar that had a Happy Hour but presumably was at least merry the rest of the night.

While discussing life the universe and everything a man at another table asked us all if we were at school then if our parents were paying the bill. This rather bizarre take on us (we are mostly in our late twenties, accept for me always trying to be different at 30) seemed as a way to talk to us as he revealed that he was at a spiritual conference.

My curiosity was heightened because the lady next to me on the plane was also going to a spiritual conference, and thankfully she told me this and that it was about hearing the voice of God while we landed rather than when we took off (nine hours would have been longer). He produced a card that explained everything:

the slow burning love of god by saying Hu (pronounced Hue) with a feeling of love expelled as you hold the sound. Repeat for twenty minutes and feel the one with the divine.

Glad to be here instead. Rushed blog as need to have shower and set up RDFRS stall. Catch you later!