The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Free

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This article is part of a series of critiques of Jonathan Wells' The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design that will be appearing at the Panda's Thumb over the course of the next week or so. Previously, I'd dissected the summary of chapter 3. This is a longer criticism of the whole of the chapter, which is purportedly a critique of evo-devo. Jonathan Wells is a titular developmental biologist, so you'd expect he'd at least get something right in his chapter on development and evolution in The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design and Intelligent Designbut no: he instead uses his nominal knowledge of a complex field to muddle up the issues and misuse the data to generate a spurious impression of a science that is unaware of basic issues. He ping-pongs back and forth in a remarkably incoherent fashion, but that incoherence is central to his argument: he wants to leave the reader so baffled about the facts of embryology that they'll throw up their hands and decide development is all wrong. Do not be misled. The state of Jonathan Wells' brain is in no way the state of the modern fields of molecular genetics, developmental biology, and evo-devo. Here's my shorter version of Wells' chapter 3, titled "Why you didn't 'evolve' in your mother's womb. The strongest evidence for Darwin's theory was embryology, but Karl Ernst von Baer, who laid out the laws of development, did not think they supported evolution, and Ernst Haeckel twisted and distorted von Baer's laws and faked his data to support Darwinism. He was wrong, and the earliest stages The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design vertebrate embryos do not resemble one another at all, so Darwinism was built on a false foundation, and they're The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design using Haeckel's faked data in our textbooks. Oh, and mutant fruit flies are still just flies. That's right, it's a rather boring rewrite of a premise of his book, Icons of Evolutionwhich I hammered on over three years ago. He hasn't learned a thing since, and he's making exactly the same arguments. I'll take a different tack this time and expose the sleight of hand he's pulling. Here's the centerpiece of his ploy. It's a basic concept in evo-devo, proposed in the early s by Duboule and Raff as a summary of years worth of observations, called the developmental hourglass. What it illustrates is that we have great diversity in the earliest stages of development, in the blastula and gastrula and neurula, but that they all converge on a more similar form, the pharyngula, at what's called the phylotypic stage…and then they diverge once again to achieve the diversity of adult forms. This is a great opportunity for a creationist. You see, when you dig into the developmental biology literature, you will find some papers taking about the similarities of embryos at the neck of the hourglass, and you will also find other papers talking in some detail about the great differences before and after that stage. You will also find marvelous possibilities for confusion in the vague and malleable term "early"—to me, for instance, anything before the pharyngula stage is early, and everything after is late and relatively uninteresting. To put that in perspective, though, humans reach that stage at the 4th or 5th week of pregnancy—so I'm basically declaring month two and later of the human pregnancy to be late development. We do tend to throw around the terms early and late as relative measures of the timing of events, but we also name specific stages and processes…the fine details of which Wells leaves out, to make everything that much more confusing. This is the heart of Wells' strategy: pick comments by developmental biologists referring to different stages, which say very different things about the similarity of embryos, and conflate them. It's easy to make it sound like scientists are willfully lying about the state of our knowledge when you can pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word "gastrula," and pretend it The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design to the pharyngula stage. Here's how Wells quotes William Ballard a well known elder developmental biologist, who has done a lot of work on fish and is therefore familiar to me :. It is "only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence," by "bending the facts of nature," that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates "are more alike than their adults. Always be suspicious when you see partial phrases quoted and strung together by a creationist. Little alarm bells should be going off like mad in your head. This is from a paper in which Ballard is advocating greater appreciation of the morphogenetic diversity of the gastrula stage—that is, a very early event, one that is at the base of that hourglass, where developmental biologists have been saying for years that there is a great deal of phylogenetic diversity. Here's what Ballard actually said:. Before the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that "gastrulas" of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults. See what I mean? He has lifted a quote from a famous scientist that applies to the gastrula stage, stripped out the specific referents, and made it sound as if it applies to the pharyngula stage. It's a simple game, one he repeats over and over in this chapter. One might argue that maybe Ballard also thought these semantic tricks applied to the pharyngula stage, and so Wells was representing his general views accurately. Alas, this cannot be. The paragraph before his mangled quote says this, rather plainly:. All then arrive at the pharyngula The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design supply. After the standardized pharyngula stage, the maturing of the structures of organs and tissues takes place on diverging line, each line characteristic of the class and further diverging into lines characteristic of the orders, families, and so on. It's a classic quote mine. Wells has edited the quote to suit his ends, and has also utterly ignored the sense of the paper, which directly contradicts his claims, to produce a grand lie and tie it to the reputation of a distinguished senior scientist. I could stop here. With that one example, Wells is exposed as a disreputable scoundrel, a sloppy ideologue whose 'scholarship' is untrustworthy and willfully distorted. You simply The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design believe one word he says. I will go on a little further, though, and try to explain some of the ideas he has treated so shabbily. There is a fair amount of debate in the evo-devo community about the reality of the developmental hourglass, but Wells doesn't seem to touch on the actual arguments at all—merely these strawman complaints and garbled chronologies that he uses to cast false doubt on the evolutionary process. One serious question is about how wide the waist of the hourglass actually is: an overzealous Haeckelian interpretation would be that it is very narrow indeed, but serious embryology none of which seems to be done by Intelligent Design proponents demonstrates that there is a significant amount of variation within the phylotypic period. Michael Richardson relaunched a critical reevaluation on the basis of morphology, and there have been a number of attempts to analyze the molecular basis of the model several papers are cited at the end of this article; some find no detectable evidence of a consistent molecular pattern, others do. If it does pan out as a universal and coherent property of developing embryos that they should have a conserved stage, the next question is "why? I actually rather like Raff's explanation: that it is a matter of scope. The diagram to the right below outlines this idea. Development is a process of increasing complexity the grey line. The assembly of an integrated body plan requires, at some time, a pattern of global interaction—there has to be information generated at some point to specify where the head will be relative to the tail, etc. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design instance, somites, one of the body elements characteristic of the phylotypic stage, form under the influence of a somitic clock, rhythmic waves of molecular activity that sweep the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design of the trunk and tail. One idea is that these 'whole body' specification events are conserved and are difficult to uncouple from one another, so all the features for which they are responsible tend to appear together in a coordinated fashion…and that coordination is what we call the phylotypic period. Other processes are more modular and more local, not needing that level of global interaction, and are more free to diverge. The dark line in the graph indicates a peak time of long range interactive processes and again, the real argument is about how broad that peak might be, and how much are the different fundamental processes, such as myotome and branchial arch formation, unlinkedand how subsequent developmental events become more independent. That there are active, open questions in this particular area of developmental biology, though, does not suggest the field of evo-devo is wrong. It means that biologists are working on interesting problems, and a survey of the field would show that evolution is the productive framework of choice. Intelligent Design creationists like Wells are reduced to irrelevant carping from the sidelines…and even their criticisms are all wrong. Another feature of Wells' book, and creationists in general, is the obsession with Charles Darwin. I like the guy, I think he was brilliant, and it was his insights that launched modern evolutionary biology. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design come on—he's been dead for years. He didn't have all the tools we do now: no genetics, no molecular biology. Science has moved on well beyond Darwin's day, but not for the creationists, who still think they can whimper and whine about errors in a book almost years old and thereby dent work that nowadays depends in large part on molecular and genetic and population genetics…fields that didn't even exist for Charles! Darwin did argue that embryology was an important piece of the evidence for evolution, a fact that is still true and probably even more so than in his time. What Wells does, though, is again mislead his readers about Darwin's views. He claims that:. It was this evolutionary distortion of von Baer's work that Darwin considered the strongest evidence for his theory. In the 's, German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel pronounced "heckle" made some drawings to illustrate this distorted view, and Darwin relied on the drawings in later editions The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design The Origin of Species and in The Descent of Man There's that Wells sleight of hand again. Haeckel's ideas about recapitulation this idea of embryos passing through the adult forms of 'lower' organisms, which even Haeckel did not hold as simple-mindedly as Wells pretends would be very difficult to find in the Origin of Specieswhich was published in …note the date of Haeckel's work. Pore through the Originand you won't find reference to Haeckel's theory later editions cite him onceand you certainly won't find any reliance on his drawings. Darwin refers to embryology as the "strongest single class of facts" in favor of a change of forms in a letter to Asa Grayand even there we don't see the kind of adherence to recapitulation that Wells proposes. It is curious how each one, I suppose, weighs arguments in a different balance: embryology is to me by far the strongest single class of facts in favour of change of forms, and not one, I think, of my reviewers has alluded to this. Variation not coming on at a very early age, and being inherited at not a very early corresponding period, explains, as it seems to me, the grandest of all facts in natural history, or rather in zoology, viz. He's talking about the timing of the onset of accumulation of variation, not that there is some constraint to follow adult forms. The description above actually fits very well with von Baer's ideas of development proceeding from the general to the specific, not the "evolutionary distortion" which is not part of evolutionary theory, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Wells describes. We can see why characters derived from the embryo should be of equal importance with those derived from the adult, for a natural classification of course includes all ages. But it is by no means obvious, on the ordinary view, why the structure of the embryo should be more important for this purpose than that of the adult, which alone plays its full part in the economy of nature. Yet it has been strongly urged by those great naturalists, Milne Edwards and Agassiz, that embryological characters are the most important of all; and this doctrine has very generally been admitted as true. Nevertheless, their importance has sometimes been exaggerated, owing to the adaptive The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design of larvae not having been excluded; in order to show this, Fritz Muller arranged by the aid of such characters alone the great class of crustaceans, and the arrangement did not prove a natural one. But there can be no doubt that embryonic, excluding larval characters, are of the highest value for classification, not only with animals but with plants. Thus the main divisions of flowering plants are founded on differences in the embryo,- on the number and position of the cotyledons, and on the mode of development of the plumule and radicle. We shall immediately see why these characters possess so high a value in classification, namely, from the natural system being genealogical in its arrangement. Notice: no claim that embryos recapitulate adult forms, an acknowledgment that the importance can be exaggerated and that there are confounding characters, and the citation of well-known authors Agassiz, by the way, was an opponent of evolutionary theory that embryology is important for analysis in systematics. This doesn't resemble Wells caricature in the slightest. Professor Haeckel in his Generelle Morphologie and in other works, has recently brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings. In drawing up the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological characters, but receives aid from homologous and rudimentary organs, as well as from the successive periods at which the various forms of life are believed to have first appeared in our geological formations. He has thus boldly made a great beginning, and shows us how classification will in the future be treated. Again, no mention of recapitulation of adult forms, and in fact, the emphasis is on using multiple lines of evidence to build a phylogeny: embryological characters, homologous and vestigial organs, and paleontology. That sounds reasonable to me. Does Wells disagree? Wells' treatment of the historical relationship of Darwin and Haeckel is as shoddily done as his discussion of the phylotypic stage. He relies entirely on mangled chronologies and the dishonest attribution of ideas to the targets of his slanders. At the end of the chapter, Wells throws away several pages in a common creationist complaint, that mutant flies are still flies, not shrimp or horses. In particular, he focuses on work by McGinnis and colleagues, who have been working The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design the details of how Hox genes affect morphology; in one well-known work a few years ago, they demonstrated that a fly gene, Ubx, had evolved limb-suppressing properties that are not present in the crustacean version of Ubx. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design - Jonathan Wells - Google книги

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Seventy-five years later, in Kitzmiller v. Why did the ACLU turn from defending the free-speech rights of Darwinists to silencing their opponents? Wells begins by explaining the basic tenets of Darwinism, and the evidence both for and against it. Wells then turns to the theory of intelligent design IDthe idea that The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design features of the natural world, such as the internal machinery of cells, are too "irreducibly complex" to have resulted from unguided natural processes alone. As Wells explains, religion does play a role in the debate over Darwin—though not in the way evolutionists claim. Wells shows how Darwin reasoned that evolution is true because divine creation "must" be false—a theological assumption oddly out of place in a scientific debate. Darwin is an emperor who has no clothes— but it takes a brave man to say so. Jonathan Wells, a microbiologist with two Ph. Most textbooks on evolution are written by Darwinists with an ideological ax to grind. Brave dissidents—qualified scientists—who try to teach or write about intelligent design are silenced and sent to the academic gulag. But fear not: Jonathan Wells is a liberator. He unmasks the truth about Darwinism— why it is wrong and what the real evidence is. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Politically Incorrect Guides. Other Editions 1. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jun 04, Rasheed rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: everyone. Shelves: non-fictionscienceevolutiondarwinismpaleontologybiologyintelligent-design. Explains the important issues of the controversy surrounding Darwinism and ID in a very clear, understandable and often humorous and witty style. I can understand now why the author is vilified The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Darwinists so much. Lots of extremely hilarious but true stories about them inside! The issues are discussed in the light of the physical sciences, such as biology, paleontology, astronomy and biochemistry, as well as from the political, social, historical and religious angles. An exceptionally fun read Explains the important issues of the controversy surrounding Darwinism and ID in a very clear, understandable and often humorous and witty style. An exceptionally fun read, but for those seeking more detailed arguments, I'd recommend the author's The The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Sytemswritten with William Dembski. Jan 14, John rated it did not like it Shelves: creationist-intellectual-pornpseudoscientific-crap. In Judge Jones' landmark, historic decision, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" is the latest, rather valiant, but intellectually dishonest, effort by Discovery Institute Fellow Jonathan Wells to defend the merits of an idea - Intelligent Design - which was demonstrated conclusively, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be a religious doctrine pretending to be science at the Kitzmiller vs. Jones' verdict was praised soon thereafter by other Republicans and conservatives, including such distinguished journalists as Charles Krauthammer and George Will. If you were a cancer patient requiring urgent medical care, then you would seek help from someone familiar with the latest medical techniques in fighting cancer: a doctor or nurse. Contrary to Wells' arguments, Intelligent Design is not scientific since it relies on faith, not reason, as its raison d'etre; moreover, unlike a genuine scientific theory like Darwin's Theory of Evolution via Natural Selection, Intelligent Design does not offer testable hypotheses for determining the theory's validity and creating fruitful avenues for further scientific research. Wells is appealing to a potential reader's sense of fair play, claiming that Intelligent Design has been shut out of the "free market" of scientific ideas In genuine science, a "free market" does hold sway, but it depends on the relative success of hypotheses which have passed rigorous scientific testing. There are other, more important - and intellectually sound - books available on the so-called "creation vs. Philosopher Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel" is a splendid historical overview and philosophical deconstruction of creationism, including the best written rebuke of "Intelligent Design" which I've come across. Philip Kitcher, another philosopher, published "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism" back in the early s, but his arguments are still quite valid today. My friend Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" has an eloquent critique of Intelligent Design, focusing on Michael Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity which claims to bestow The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design on Intelligent Design. All of these books are more desirable than Wells' latest diatribe against evolutionary biology. Otherwise, if you insist on purchasing Wells' book, then perhaps you might choose to acquire instead a splendid text devoted to Klingon cosmology Neither Klingon cosmology nor "Intelligent Design" can be regarded as scientific, since both depend on faith, not reason, to validate their principles. View all 6 comments. Sep 10, Mark Cooper rated it really liked it Shelves: mark It also provides some jaw dropping examples of the childish and vicious behavior of Darwinist adherents. Scientists--at least I was always taught this--are to pursue truth and dogma be darned. The behavior of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design of the Darwinists does a nice job of paralleling the very behavior the Medieval Church is purported to have done. They u [Audio:] The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design summary of the ID ideas and challenges to evolution, though it doesn't go into great depth on any particular subject doesn't claim to do so, either. They use their power provided at tax-payer expense to crush challenges to prevailing dogma and destroy the personal lives of those with the temerity to ask questions--outrageous! As Wells states, Darwinism is fading thank you God! Jul 13, Bonnie rated it it was amazing Shelves: already-read. Fascinating discussion of evolution and intelligent design, made understandable for the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design person. Apr 21, John rated it it was amazing Shelves: favoritesscience. Despite the goofy cover art and obnoxious blurb from Ann Coulter, this is an excellent, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design though admittedly biasedand engaging look at the origins debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Author Jonathan Wells explains why Intelligent Design, despite hysterical opposition from critics, is in fact a reasonable, non-religious, and, yes, scientifically viable theory. He also illustrates how people too often let their politics and personal philosophies get in the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design when dealing wi Despite the goofy cover art and obnoxious blurb from Ann Coulter, this is an excellent, honest though admittedly biasedand engaging look at the origins debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design. He also illustrates how people too often let their politics and personal philosophies get in the way when dealing with questions as to how life originated, and he shows the lengths some people are willing to go to in order to silence those who dare to question the validity of some of Darwin's more fantastic claims. This is another version of it. I suppose that it is comforting to some that there are so many author willing to rehash the same old bogus arguments but I just find it sad. Evidence for biological evolution is now so overwhelming that denial will soon be impossible without some seriously strong kool-aid. View all 10 comments. Aug 27, Kris rated it liked it Shelves: religion-christianityaudiobookspolitics. Unfortunately, this book is so biased I can't give it more than three stars. While I agree with many of the things Wells says, and I think his main points are worth hearing, the sarcasm and snark inherent in his writing serve as a detriment to his arguments, instead of a help. He airs grievances and names names. His personal vendetta came through on every page, which prevents me from taking him seriously. Not only did the tone feel too slanted, but the content itself felt He never really takes it head on, but instead picks only a few pieces to mention. I want an overview of the main influences Darwinism has on all scientific fields, and what the inherent flaws are in those fields as a result of the Darwinistic paradigm. And thoughts about what effects an ID or Creationism paradigm might, or does, look like in current research. Interpretations on both sides, weighed equally. View all 5 comments. Mar 21, Jimmy added it. Though Intelligent Design is not my cup of tea when it comes to apologetics argument for the Christian faith nevertheless I read this book in order to stay abreast with contemporary non-Presuppositionalist's apologetics. The beginning of the book defined the term evolution, Darwinism, Creationism and intelligent design which is helpful so that readers can be more precise in their own use of the term. This section made me realize that I need to ask those I'm interacting with to define what they m Though Intelligent Design is not my cup of tea when it comes to apologetics argument for the Christian faith nevertheless I read this book in order to stay abreast with contemporary non-Presuppositionalist's apologetics. This section made me realize that I need to ask those I'm interacting with to define what they mean when they use those terms instead of assuming I know what they mean or giving them a free pass for any potential misunderstanding or error. The book noted rightly that evolution as a definition is too broad if it only refer to change, since everyone believes in some kind of change or another over time. Most people mean Darwinism when they talk about evolution and Darwinism is defined as the descent of organism with biological modification into other species. From time to time I hear atheists complain that Christians invented the term "Darwinism" as a prejorative for evolution but this is simply not true: The book traces the term "Darwinism" being first used by Darwinists themselves. Similarly, the term micro and macro evolution was also not a Creationist invention since the term was first used by Darwinists. Half of the book was focused on the problems of Darwinism while the second half focused on intelligent design. Those familiar with the problems of evolution and it's evidences The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design see them rehearsed in this book. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

The Politically Incorrect Guide is a book series by Regnery Publishing presenting conservative viewpoints that are politically incorrect on various topics. Each book is written by a different author and generally presents a conservative or libertarian [ citation needed ] viewpoint on the subject at hand. One feature of The Politically Incorrect Guide series is the ability for readers to vote through Regnery's associate Human Events on topics they would like to see covered in future books. The top three selected topics in a readers' poll [1] were: the United States Constitutionthe Bibleand capitalism. Books in the series for all three topics have since been published. The Panda's Thumba blog which supports mainstream science and the consensus on evolution, reviewed The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design providing analysis on nine of the 17 chapters and called it "not only politically incorrect but incorrect in most other ways as well: scientifically, logically, historically, legally, academically, and morally. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. August 19, Panda's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Archived from the original on September 27, Retrieved Hidden The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Articles needing additional references from June All articles needing additional references All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from April Articles with unsourced statements from January Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Shqip Edit links.