The Ultimate Dilution Anti-Oxidants Bernard Howard: 1920-2008
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Eve’s Bite gets bitten Homeopathy: the ultimate dilution Anti-oxidants Bernard Howard: 1920-2008 number 88 - winter 2008 content editorial Eve bites off too much 3 The pitfalls of homeopathy 6 IDers have designs on Creationist video ‘commended’ 9 NZ schools Newsfront 10 HILE the recent national curriculum review confirmed evolu- Anti-oxidants: the key to Wtion’s place as the central organising theory of modern biol- nutritional success? 12 ogy, creationists continue to try and chip away at the edges. Most Hokum Locum 16 recently, Focus on the Family, an American-based Christian group, has distributed 400 resource kits to secondary schools throughout The passing of a Skeptic 18 New Zealand, containing copies of Guillermo Gonzalez’s Intelligent Design (ID) DVD, The Privileged Planet, and an accompanying booklet. The covering letter requests they be made available to sci- ence teachers and school libraries. Creationists claim Gonzalez has been victimised for his beliefs after being denied tenure at Iowa State University, due to his poor record in publication and in attracting funding and graduate stu- dents. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute (an ID lobby group), and The Privileged Planet is very much the thin edge of the institute’s Wedge strategy (www.antievolution.org/features/wedge. ISSN - 1172-062X pdf), strongly implying the existence of a designer, but never actu- ally mentioning him/it. Contributions Contributions are welcome and The Dominion Post picked up on the issue (28 June) and it aired should be sent to: on National Radio’s Nine to Noon programme on 1 July. Both items featured Focus on the Family’s New Zealand executive director Tim David Riddell Sisarich and Waikato University biology lecturer Alison Campbell 122 Woodlands Rd RD1 Hamilton (who will be speaking at the Skeptics’ Conference in September Email: [email protected] – see insert). Deadline for next issue: Creationists in this country number in the hundreds of thousands, September 10 2008 and they are well organised. The comments appended to the article Letters for the Forum may be edited on the Dominion Post and Stuff websites (the articles are identical; as space requires - up to 250 words the comments are different) show that even though they’re a small is preferred. Please indicate the minority, they are very vocal. The influence of Creation Ministries publication and date of all clippings International is apparent, with several commenters parroting material for the Newsfront. from their recent newsletters. Material supplied by email or IBM- compatible disk is appreciated. Tim Sisarich said in the Dominion Post that science takes a theory and tries to establish it as the truth, and that was all this initiative Permission is given to other non- was trying to do. This is dead wrong. Science takes theories and profit skeptical organisations to reprint material from this publication tries to disprove them. Those that survive this rigorous process provided the author and NZ Skeptic continue to be accepted on a provisional basis, always recognising are acknowledged. that fresh information may lead to them being modified or aban- doned. Creationism was once scientific orthodoxy. It has lost that Opinions expressed in the New Zealand Skeptic are those of the status because it could not survive in the face of the overwhelming individual authors and do not evidence amassed against it, and because better explanations of the necessarily represent the views of data have been developed. Although, as Dr Campbell pointed out, NZ Skeptics (Inc.) or its officers. the material Focus on the Family has provided may have value in a Subscription details are available comparative religion or philosophy course, there is from www.skeptics.org.nz or PO Box no place for it in a science class. 29-492, Christchurch. number 88 - winter 2008 main feature Eve bites off too much Warwick Don Ian Wishart is one of New Zealand’s more prominent creationists. In a recent book he takes on evolutionary biology, a task for which he seems ill-equipped. N HIS latest book, Eve’s Bite The theory of natural selection example, it can lead to testable I(2007), Investigate magazine (defined as “survival of the fit- hypotheses (predictions) relating managing editor Ian Wishart test”), claim anti-evolutionists, is to particular traits. As one evo- has a chapter titled The Beagle a tautology because it is merely lutionist, Jason Rosenhouse, has Boys (sub-titled Darwinism’s saying those who are fittest are observed, “there is nothing tauto- last stand). In it he again attacks the ones that survive. However, logical about saying…that moths the well established edifice of this is not how most biologists possessing dark coloration will organic evolution. He heads the now view the term ‘fittest’. In be less visible than light colored chapter with a quote from Ann brief, the fittest organisms are moths to predatory birds when Coulter’s Godless: The Church the ones possessing heritable resting on dark-colored trees.” of Liberalism, which is worth- features that enable them to leave If the theory of natural selection while reproducing here in full the most offspring in a particu- is a mere tautology, supplemen- because it clearly reflects the key lar environment, physical and tary testable hypotheses such as elements of Wishart’s (false) as- biological. In other words, there this one would be non-existent. sessment of the scientific status are criteria of fitness that are Most importantly, regardless of of evolution: independent of survival. how evolution has occurred, the evidence for it is Liberal’s creation myth is Charles Dar- overwhelming. win’s theory of evolu- Evidence for the tion, which is about ArthurWeasley process, derived one notch above Sci- Creationists often claim transitional fossils don’t exist. Yet an from laboratory entology in scientific increasing number of such forms continue to be found. The rigor. It’s a make-be- observations and transition from fish to amphibians, via forms such as Tiktaalik experiments, ema- lieve story, based on a (above) is particularly well documented. theory that is a tautol- nates from several ogy, with no proof in fields of research, the scientist’s laboratory or the Much of the confusion per- such as comparative anatomy fossil record – and that’s after petrated by anti-evolutionists (from an examination of fossil 150 years of very determined emanates from a too-simplis- and extant organisms), embry- looking. We wouldn’t still be tic notion of natural selection. ology, molecular biology and talking about it but for the fact “Survival of the fittest” is best genetics. that liberals think evolution dis- regarded as a shorthand for a proves God. complex process. (Incidentally, it As for the fossil record, it is a treasure trove of evidence Are Ann Coulter and Ian is Herbert Spencer’s phrase, not that evolution has occurred. Not Wishart right? Is evolution a Darwin’s, although Darwin did only does it reveal morphologi- myth based on a tautology (the eventually incorporate it into lat- cal and other details of numer- theory of natural selection)? er editions of the Origin.) In fact, ous creatures from the past, it Does evolution lack proof in the the theory of natural selection is also shows an overall pattern of laboratory or in the fossil record? far from being tautologous. For similarity pointing to the reality Does it disprove God? page creationism of descent with modification. In apparently discredited scientific occurred in evolutionary history. addition, numerous transitional theory. When we do see the introduction forms have been discovered (see of evolutionary novelty, it usually below). But first, a point of clarifica- shows up with a bang, and often tion. It is necessary to distin- with no firm evidence that the Naturalism guish between Darwin’s theory organisms did not evolve else- of descent with modification, where! Yet that’s how the fossil Does evolution disprove God? establishing the reality of the record has struck many a forlorn It is important to realise, in the process, and his theory of natu- paleontologist looking to learn current context, that biologists ral selection. The distinction something about evolution. in doing science are practising is important because, almost On the face of it, pretty damn- methodological naturalism, so invariably, scientists are quoted that supernatural explanations, ing comment surely? To un- by anti-evolutionists questioning derstand what really concerns because they are empirically aspects of theories relating to the non-testable, can have no role Eldridge we need to consider mechanism(s) of evolution. But the above passage in context. It to play in science; they are sci- it suits Wishart (and others) to entifically worthless. Therefore appears in a chapter devoted to the accusation by anti-evolu- a discussion of the Eldridge/ tionists that evolutionists are Wishart has adopted Gould concept of punctu- deliberately atheistic (that a familiar strategy used ated equilibria which, as in promoting evolution they Eldridge himself describes by anti-evolutionists in it, “is a melding, in essence, are intentionally promoting general – quoting eminent atheism) is unwarranted. In of the pattern of stasis [as fact, not all evolutionists are scientists purporting to be revealed in the fossil record] atheists. demonstrating that evolution with the recognition that most itself is in crisis. evolutionary change seems It comes as no surprise, bound up with the origin of given her take on evolution, new species – the process that Coulter, a lawyer and of speciation.” By ‘stasis’ is a conservative columnist, has convey the impression that evo- meant the tendency for species drawn on what she calls “the lution itself is in serious doubt not to change very much, often generous tutoring” of intelligent in scientific circles (hence his over millions of years.