Rationally speaking, is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry and science education. For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptic's Doug. Welcome to, rationally speaking, the podcast, where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. I am your host, Masimo People YouTube. And with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Gillard. Julia, what are we going to talk about today?

Well, today we have a special guest joining us by Skype.

Eugenie Scott is the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, the premier organization fighting for sound scientific educational standards in the US.

Before joining the NCSA, she was a physical anthropologist at the University of Kentucky, University of Colorado and California state for her gentle but tireless promotion of evolutionary theory and the scientific method, she has referred to herself as Darwin's golden retriever, which is the name that I love. And she is also apparently one of the few people who has caused me to change his mind about something. Welcome, Eugene.

How do you know a few people? But welcome, Ginny. Thank you. It's great to be here.

So maybe we should explain this this dog thing. You know, this is obviously a reference to Huxley, who was famously known as Darwin's Bulldog. Right. And then more recently, an intelligent design proponent. I forgot his name in the pages of philosophy now referred to Dawkins as Darwin's Rottweiler.

So actually, we've got a whole menagerie here even before that. And I think actually a more appropriate canine reference and I don't remember who it was, but was one of the British journalist referred to Dawkins as as Darwin's Greyhound in referring more to his elegance than depending on your opinion.

You have a dog that is a dog that is appropriate for that.

But really, you know, Dawkins isn't a Rottweiler. I mean, you know that Dawkins is is actually a very polite person. He is. I can think of a number of people that I might describe as Rottweilers, but that gets us into a whole other level.

Let's save that for our special episode on gossiping about the Skeptical.

On the other hand, what what we would like to talk today to you about is, for instance, what has happened to the intelligent design movement since the Dover trial of, what is it, five years ago and now?

Yeah, how time flies. Yes, 2005 was the trial. And actually that we really thank the judge for having such a fast turnaround. And his decision, the decision came down in the same years, which was in December of 2005. So, yeah, it's about getting up there toward five years. Of course, initially after Kitzmiller versus Dover, the Discovery Institute went into a great flurry of of, oh, was an activist judge. And it doesn't count and it's not important.

But now, clearly, clearly, this decision was such a powerfully written decision that it would be very, very difficult for any proponent of intelligent design to try to argue another Dover someplace. We should be teaching intelligent design. Let's go for it, because it's clear that the the same arguments would be raised even if the proponents of intelligent design who did not testify for for the Kitzmiller trial, the intelligent, the Discovery Institute of Faithful, like Damski, Amaia, and those guys, even if they were allowed to test, even if they allowed themselves to testify in a new trial, the prospects are just not very good for success because the judge just nailed them on so many legal issues.

So they've pretty much given up trying to get intelligent design in the schools, but they've retrenched to a parallel strategy that they've been promoting for several years, actually, even for a couple of years before Dover. And that is the well, just teach students evolution, but simultaneously teach them that evolution is lousy science. It's the what we call the evidence against evolution strategy, which, of course, there isn't any evidence against evolution, but that's what they're arguing.

Well, it would be a very short teaching session where exactly I went when I a lot of times when I go to campuses and I lecture on this because so much of the time my audience is composed of of scientists and they'll say, well, you know, how many of your scientists, a bunch of hands go up, OK, would you please, after the lecture, give me the list of evidence against evolution? And they all laugh because, of course, there's no such list.

But if you go to the intelligent design and the creationist proponents and you ask them for the list of evidence against evolution, it begins to look very, very familiar to people like Massimiliano because it's the same old junk that they've been arguing for thirty years. The gaps in the fossil record, natural selection. Do anything important, there are such incredible complexity in nature that natural forces couldn't possibly produce them, evolution couldn't possibly work, yada, yada, yada, no transforms.

Oh yes, the gaps in the fossil record, transitional forms, the usual stuff. So basically what the Discovery Institute has been pushing is these academic freedom acts, which is a type of legislation that we're seeing popping up around the country. And unfortunately, one state, Louisiana, actually passed one of these AFFA Academic Freedom Act types of laws. But it's an extremely clever approach, really, because there's nothing overtly religious to to the surface. If you look at these acts, because they talk about academic freedom for teachers of freedom to learn for students, fairness, freedom of expression, of teaching, all the evidence, critical thinking, they're couched in very user friendly terms.

And there's nothing in there that that smacks of creationism, unless, of course, you know, the history of this movement in this case and the buzzwords leap out at you.

So nobody nobody would obviously in fact, no scientist or science educator would say, no, I don't want to teach critical thinking or, you know, raise your hands if you're against critical thinking.

The question is, so, for instance, in the Louisiana statute, has it been challenged? And if so, on what grounds? It hasn't.

And it's we actually had a legal advisory committee meeting discussion about this to decide, you know, what about these bills? And the the lawyers that we work with were reluctant to take on the Louisiana Act on its face, figuring that because of the way it's written, it would be very unlikely that the judge would say that you had a case until the law was implemented. Basically, that's the difference, as the lawyers will tell you, between a facial challenge and an applied challenge.

We need an an applied challenge, which means you have to find the teacher who is stepping over the line. You have to find somebody in that classroom who's got standing to sue, who is willing to stick their neck out and sue like the Dover plaintiffs were, which is a tough thing to do. And then you have to, you know, Marshall the the case and challenge it and try to convince a judge. Now, I know people do associate NCOIC with the Kitzmiller trial, and it was a huge effort for us.

And we you know, the legal team was wonderful and we were a big help and all that. But frankly, the last thing we ever want to do is go to court. I mean, this is something that's only a last resort. Our preference is to try to solve these problems behind the scenes. So before they hit the newspaper and before people's positions get hardened and no compromise is possible and all that. So we certainly are not looking in Louisiana or any place else for a lawsuit that said, you know, should some legal challenge to these academic freedom acts come up, it's going to be a lot harder to muster than was the challenge, the facial challenge to the Dover policy, which was, you know, very you know, teachers shall do zazie.

These academic freedom acts tend to be couched in different terms, not saying teachers have to do this, but teachers can do A, B and C, which makes it much, much more subtle.

Now, does any of these studies mentioned explicitly, explicitly on the theory of evolution or Imbil in biology? Well, yes, they all right.

They all right. They all think about evolution. And actually, there's there's a there's a branch of these we have a whole phylogeny of academic freedom.

X You really do believe in evolution? I do.

Oh, that's terrible. We're convinced. But we can trace most of the academic freedom X back to some laws that were proposed in 2004 in Alabama. And then actually the Louisiana is sort of a new branch that was take slightly different approaches. But but some of these academic freedom acts, interestingly enough, Bundall evolution with global warming, with with stem cells and origin of life. So it's sort of the laundry list of things that the religious right is not happy about.

So your question, actually, just since you brought global warming up, we actually talked about this recently on the show. But one of the things that really does puzzle me is the following. I understand why the Christian right has a problem with evolution. I understand why they have a problem with stem cell research. I even understand why they have a problem with. So call origin science and all that. But why do they have a problem with global warming?

I mean, what is the connection there? Well, it's much more subtle. And part of it, of course, is just the the political conservatism that often intersects. When we talk about the religious right, we're talking about religious conservatives intersecting with with political conservatives. And that's that's a potent mix. Part of the objection to global warming is that it's considered anticapitalist and therefore anti-American, antibusiness, et cetera. And so therefore it should be opposed. But there is a some something of a religious opposition to it as well.

And part of that is the idea that God did create the the the planet to be to be perfect and to everything to be fine. And that besides, we know this is, in fact, a perfect planet.

There are no tsunamis, no volcano type eruptions, no.

Well, that is all the fault of Adam and Eve that they have done bad things wouldn't have come into the world. Right.

But could be we actually blame global warming on Adam and Eve. I mean, that would be fine.

I think so, because their position is that well, you might try that as a new strategy. I don't know what their position is that global warming is is is not is a hoax, that that there's no global warming, that this is all just a bunch of made up science by a bunch of anti-American activists and so forth. But there is something of an idea back there kind of undergirding some of the some of the religious opposition to it that God would not let this happen to his creation so that, you know, this is foolish to worry about these doomsday scenarios, because certainly God is going to be protecting his creation and protecting us human beings as his most important creation and so forth.

And so the only the only doomsday scenario is the one that God actually does want for us, the rapture.

And then that's final post rapture is the doomsday. Rapture is the easy part. That's right.

I have an excuse me. I have a question that might might be a little naive, but given that the the facts really are on our side here when it comes to evolution. And as you said there, there really aren't any substantial problems with the evolutionary theory at all. What would be so difficult in in addressing this in a court case? I mean, wouldn't it be kind of a sure thing for us or.

No, you mean the academic freedom? Yeah, because they are very, very careful never to bring religion into it whatsoever. It's purely couched in terms of critical thinking, improving the students. It's a pedagogical argument and proving the students critical thinking abilities or the academic freedom, freedom of speech of the teachers and so forth. All right.

I mean, I didn't mean about challenging the Academic Freedom Act itself, which seems so loosely worded, so generic that we couldn't you know, there's really nothing to grab onto there. But if the teacher ever were to use that, to implement that act, as you said, to to challenge the theory of evolution and how this is.

Yeah. And this is where this is where it will be possible to bring to bring a suit. If you can find that teacher, if you can find a plaintiff, if you can you know, if you can climb out of that 10 foot deep hole right there and actually be able to bring suit, because the the probability is that a teacher today for all of that is is using this law down in Louisiana as an excuse to bring creationist materials into the classroom.

The trouble is finding this person.

So I would like to ask you a question that I've been asked actually today, earlier on a different show.

And what I like to compare notes, I'm not going to tell you my answer, obviously.

And the question is this.

So you've been active in this area for quite some time. You've been at the forefront of the battle against the nonsense and pseudoscience. And and yet we don't really see, at least broadly speaking, much of a of a of a statistically significant shift in how the population, the general population sees these issues. If anything, to some extent, things are getting a little worse over the last few years. Does that ever depress you? How does your attitude how do you keep it?

You've been so cheerful about these kind of things.

Perhaps I have that peace that passes understanding us. No, I don't know. Pathological levels of optimism. I don't know. I just if that's a real idiosyncratic kind of thing. I mean, some of us, some of us are just willing to keep on slugging even even though we know it's it's a there's a lot of those a lot of balls that are going to keep going across the place.

But you guys do keep. To some extent, an eye on the actual date, on the actual statistics, do you think that actually is in fact a situation in terms of pseudosciences deteriorating, improving, staying the same? Or what?

I think for evolution, it is remained very, very constant. And that is because ultimately this is not an issue of science. We can we can shovel all the science we can possibly left on top of the creation and evolution problem. And we're still not going to solve it because the the motivating factors are not predominantly a misunderstanding of evolution or a lack of understanding of science. The science is necessary. The understanding of how science works, the philosophy of science, if you will, is absolutely necessary.

But they are not sufficient. As far as General Pseudo-Science is concerned. I think we are making progress. There's much less enthusiasm for something like astrology than there was, say, 20, 20 years ago.

And I think I think pseudoscience does tend to go in in searches right now. There's a lot of popularity for for you know, there's a lot of cultural popularity for for zombies and vampires. But I don't think people really believe in zombies and vampires. But, you know, you see a lot of zombie stuff and vampire stuff around. You don't see you see a lot of enthusiasm for ghosts. But I don't think the percentage of people who actually believe in ghosts has necessarily gotten up much higher than it was, say, 15 years ago.

I think we're doing better in some respects. But but there's a lot there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And I think I think as far as pseudoscience is concerned, a major contribution there is just encouraging people to think critically and think about how do we know? How do you analyze this claim? Somebody says that he can talk to your your your depart, your departed loved ones. Somebody can talk to your dead mother.

Why would you believe this person? So when there's not enough of that, there's not enough of those questions being asked.

So we're in agreement with the Louisiana statutes. We want critical thinking to be taught in public school. Absolutely.

Absolutely. The there's there's that that's completely the case. The trouble is, why would you restrict critical thinking or why would you focus specifically upon evolution for critical thinking? Yeah, I mean, you can you can think critically about photosynthesis. You don't have to say yes. I mean, the fact that evolution is singled out is is a clear sign that there is a, shall we say, an extra pedagogical reason for these bills to that.

That is a very subtle way to put it, an extra reason.

We have a common thread going now on on the rationally speaking blog in response to the teaser that Masimo posted for this episode.

And so I wanted to get your your take on on the issue in this thread. The discussion has been revolving, as so many of our common threads have seemed to recently, on whether science has anything to say about supernatural claims.

There's been some controversy over the NCAA's decision to support modifying the statement of about the theory of evolution to this was several years ago.

Yeah, this is like ninety four or something.

That's actually it was a while ago when we met that that was in 98, I think. Yeah, that's right. Right, so that's right.

But the general controversy over what scientists think is evolution and how they should describe it and how compatible they should make it sound with religious belief is still ongoing.

Well, first of all, don't fall into the trap of saying scientists say this and religious people say that. Right. Because, I mean but it's really easy for us to fall into that way of speaking, forgetting that there's a substantial proportion of scientists who are also religious people and who are theists. The distinction is not between between science and religion so much as it is between science as an explanation of the natural world and supernatural explanations of the natural world.

Right. OK, when it comes to that, we win. You know, it's not just that we've got the fossils like like what's the space? Black says. But we have the techniques. We have reliable ways. Science is really the best way of explaining the natural world if you're trying to deal with something that's not part of the natural world. Well, you know, how do you deal with that? Science happens to be. A wave of.

Attempting to explain the natural world that that uses is fairly specific kinds of ideas, and I'm not going to get into a demarcation issue because I find that just crushingly boring. And, you know, philosophers of science can dance around the heads of pins for days on this sort of thing.

Hey, be careful there, everybody. That's OK. You're bilingual. You know, science and philosophy is you're bilingual is. But what's I think I think everybody would agree that science deals with empirical. In other words, material matter and energy kinds of of information. OK, that's great. Everybody agrees with that. Science also comes up with its explanations by testing them. It's not just you walks into the room and say, you know, I think this works that way.

And everybody says, yeah, wow, you're right. You have to demonstrate that your explanation actually works by testing it against the natural world, the empirical evidence. And how do you test stuff? Well, you test your explanations by holding constant some variables and varying others. And if you can't hold constant variables, it's really hard to make a good test. There's a lot of different ways of testing. You can have sort of this direct experimentation, which is kind of what you to grade.

And there are statistical ways that you can control variables. And there's indirect testing of very I mean, there's all kinds of research designs, but basically they have to do with you got to hold certain cards. This is why I don't think that science can tell us anything about omnipotent supernatural forces, because if there is a God, if there is this omnipotent supernatural force, how the dickens are you going to hold them constant in order to test any sort of claims about them?

This is why we tell the creationists that when they bring God into explaining the natural world, they're not playing the game of science and the shoe fits on the other foot as well. This is why nonbelievers can't say that we can prove through science that there's no God. The fact of the matter is, any explanation that you have for a natural phenomenon that you bring out into or this omnipotent supernatural power, whatever it can have any possible results, you have no way of holding constant this this omnipotent power.

So you can't say that you're really making any kind of a reasonable test. So, you know, part of it gets down to definitions. If you define science the way I define science, then then science can't say, yes, there's a God or no, there's not a God. You just have to leave that to philosophy and theology. So to me, the real fight is between philosophy and particularly secular philosophies and religion, not between science and religion.

Yes, one of the commenters on the on the thread was raising this issue as as Julia said. And, you know, it was his point was this guy is a biologist and he's a regular frequenter. And I think his nickname is Mittman for people that want to look him up on the blog. And his point was, well, but, you know, science can test whatever, whatever has any empirical consequence whatsoever. If it turns out that you saw, you know, that the only explanation for lightning, for instance, was, in fact zoos, once you eliminated all other explanations, then it would be rational and scientific to accept it.

And my response to that was, but where do you ever get to actually having exhausted all the public relations?

Exactly. Yeah. No, that that sounds to me like your your commentators not using very, very good logic at all that a proper answer at that point is we don't know yet. That's right. Exactly. And scientists are very good at saying that. Unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well in the general public, which wants answers now. But we're always saying we don't know yet. Well, yes.

I mean, what part of the the idea here is that? You know, I asked, in fact, in that in that thread, well, when was the last time you saw a scientific paper that in the discussion section had something like, well, we don't have a good idea why we observe what we observe. So, God, there's a possibility. You never hear that.

You never read the read that. In fact, if if a scientist were ever to write a paper like that, it would be immediately trashed by the editors and for very good reasons.

Well, what I think Mittman was arguing and and if I'm correct, then I agree with this, is that the proper distinction is not really between the natural and the supernatural. It's not like slapping a supernatural on a claim makes it suddenly outside the bounds of science, but that the distinction is between things that you can test and and reasonably falsify based on our understanding of how the world works and things that you can.

So you could you could essentially make the same excuses for materials or natural claims that you could for the supernatural claims. You could always come up with some explanation like, well, you know, homeopathy doesn't work. When you study it or you know it, it yes, but that only means that there are two levels of inaccessibility to science. I mean, science cannot deal with the supernatural. That's one level. And the reason for that is precisely, as Ginny said, that the supernatural essentially means anything goes.

You have no you know, no reliability, no repeatability, because it's it can be it can be do whatever the hell he wants for whatever reason.

You cannot constrain it cannot be constrained.

But it also has there is also second level lower level of epistemic limits to science, which is the one that is addressing, which is there are some questions that are perfectly within the realm of studying natural processes for which aware where we simply don't have access to enough evidence. And so we're not going to find an answer. But that's simply an indication that we don't know yet.

We don't know exactly well at all.

And yet, because that at least leaves the public with the idea that it's not a mystery.

So I don't know yet. That's right.

Yeah, that's a good word. Well, if so so this discussion of logical optimism again. Yes.

This discussion has been has been going on and on intermittently for a while. But I'm going to leave it here just because I have so much respect for you for for successfully bringing Masimo around to your point of view on the subject a few years ago.

And I'm excited to see what pic you've brought to the table for the rationally speaking picks and is one that some of your listeners might be kind of surprised at. But remember that that the the pick is not necessarily something that you really like. It's something that you think people ought to look at.

Well, what I was wondering in a second after the break. OK, great. Welcome back. Every episode, Julie and I pick a couple of our favorite books, movies, websites or whatever tickles our fancy, but when we have a guest, the honor of the pick of the episode goes to the guest. So, Jeannie, what was your pick this time?

Well, as long as you and your listeners understand that a pick doesn't necessarily have to be something that you agree with or like, I think that your listeners should really check out the website of the Institute for Creation Research. This is I see are that this is the most respected of the creation science organizations that's been around since the mid 1960s. And it is really considered the grandfather of the movement, shall we say. Of course. Alas, the movement to split off.

And there's many, many other sites. There's even a larger organization called Answers in Genesis. But the ICR is really the the grandfather of the movement, so to speak. It's the product of the great Henry Morris, who pretty much invented creation science back in the 1960s. Check out the website because you'll find that even for scientists, it's got a lot of infuriating information on it or misinformation is from our standpoint, you have to admire the fact that this is a very complete Web site.

It's written in a very accessible fashion. It's easy to navigate and they have lots and lots of stuff there that accomplish their goals, which, of course, is what a website is supposed to do. Their goals, of course, are to denigrate evolution and promote creation science. And of course, it's a conservative Christian organization. So the ultimate goal is to try to bring people to their religious views. But it's a very well done site and check out Akagi and get a little bit of an idea what the what the opposition has in mind, if you don't mind.

I was just looking at it. And there is one of the one of the links from the main page at this point is a article called Baby Morality Defies Evolution.

Yeah. And it's great because it's a classic creationist logic. And I use logic in sort of a broad and very non-specific term. So he says it is fascinating how quickly human babies learn about the world around them, but how soon can they distinguish good from bad? Some Yale psychologists wanting to find out and their research results fly in the face of Freud and other evolutionary humanists. That's an interesting phrase right there.

Freud, which, of course, has been out of fashion in psychology for a long time. And it certainly has been an evolution.

But the interesting thing is that then they go on what to me would seem to be a pretty good source of type of evidence in favor of what actually an evolutionary explanation, because they're puzzled by the fact that the babies can make model. They seem to be making moral moral distinctions very early on, you know, before they have actually a possibility of learning that culturally. And so they say, where does it come from? What does that ability of making very early decision come from?

Well, if it were an instinctual decision that resulted from evolution that that we had in common with other social primates, that wouldn't be much of a surprise for why that that we have that that sense. It's a really fascinating article.

Oh, it is there. And yes, the commentary on science news articles is always quite, quite fascinating, just the spin that they will give it to to make it their point of view is is always interesting, to say the least. On the other hand, you can go to NBC's website, which is in C. S E Dutko, for the other point of view, which I would say, gee, I've got a question about this.

This is this website is unabashedly, explicitly Christian, whereas I had the sense that the movement has has tried to distance themselves from the explicitly Christian arguments and instead, as you said earlier, has just focused on on trying to debunk evolution and hoping that other people will, well, fill in the blanks themselves.

So does this Web site no longer really represent the mainstream of the intelligent design movement?

Well, this is creation science, not intelligent design. And Intelligent Design has tried to distance itself from the more specific sectarian position that ICRA takes for answers in Genesis, which are just completely upfront about their the Christian foundation and the goals. In fact, there's an interesting a little bit of sniping that went on back in the early 2000s between the ICR and the Discovery Institute, where the ICR just sort of got tired of the Discovery Institute approach and concluded that that the although the intelligent design movement was was.

It was a very valuable one, just were they were insufficiently biblical for for the ICRA, they really didn't agree with their approach at all.

I love that phrase insufficient. Yes, I like that, too. But the the you also have to distinguish between the public face in the private space. If you look at the at the intelligent design supporters, communications to the faithful, shall we say, they are they are more explicitly religious than to something like the school boards or the state legislatures. One thing that I should probably mention quickly, us we started out this conversation. You asked me what is the intelligent design movement doing nowadays?

One thing that specifically the Discovery Institute has been involved in is producing a new small book called Explore Evolution, which they might as well call explode evolution. And this is a successor to the of Pandas and People book that featured in the Kitzmiller case. The purpose of this book is to be used in courses that they would like to have taught where you present evolution from standard textbook and then you assign them explore evolution to give them the other point of view why evolution is really weak science.

Why homology, for example, is a is not a is not a coherent idea and doesn't really support evolution then like that. And it's been very interesting to watch the the Texas Science Standards dispute of 2008 2009. Everybody's more familiar with this year's Texas standards dispute over social science. There is one every year crazy things. Yeah, well, there's a new discipline every year. And we thought we thought the science standards were fun last year, but they weren't nearly as much fun as history was this year.

But basically the science standards that are now in place in Texas do require show. They're worded so that they're not quite as blatant. I mean, we were very successful in that regard. We and our allies in Texas in keeping the absolutely worst of the standards proposals from being passed. But there's still a lot of bad stuff in the science standards that a teacher who wanted to could very nicely bring in, explore evolution to the classroom and claim that she was following the standards.

So that's one of the things that we're trying to monitor now, that whether or not Texas will will approve the Explorer evolution as a supplement in Texas in the next couple of years, which, of course, would greatly improve the coffers of the Discovery Institute, I'm sure.

Well, do you know where we're running out of time for this episode? But it's such a pleasure to have you on the show reporting back from the front lines of the battle against nonsense. And and it's great to have a golden retriever like you out there representing reason and science.

Thanks so much. Good. With a lot of fun being on your show, and I'm very pleased you asked me. Thank you.

This concludes another episode of Rationally Speaking. Join us next time for more explorations on the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

The rationally speaking podcast is presented by New York City skeptics for program notes, links, and to get involved in an online conversation about this and other episodes, please visit rationally speaking podcast Dog. This podcast is produced by Benny Pollack and recorded in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York. Our theme, Truth by Todd Rundgren, is used by permission. Thank you for listening.