DEMOCRATIC

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.


REPUBLICAN

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?


SOCIALIST

You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.


COMMUNIST

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.


CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.


DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to
support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was
a gift from your government.


BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one,
milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.


AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are
surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the
analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.


JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary
cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.


GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give
excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.



ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.


RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really
have.


TALIBAN CORPORATION

You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the
hospital.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to
find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.


IRAQI CORPORATION

You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.


BELGIAN CORPORATION

You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.


FLORIDA CORPORATION

You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best
accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you
think is the best-looking cow.


CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

>http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/147/22.0.html
>Were the Darwinists Wrong?
>National Geographic stacks the deck.
>Thomas Woodward is author of Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent
>Design

I indicate just my main reservations on this article.

> I - a speaker and writer on the
>debate between Darwinism and intelligent design theory

The main debate, in the total scholarly picture, is between
Darwinism and theistic evolution. IDT is very recent, coyly narrow, and
not a great contribution - largely OK as far as it goes, but ignoring
most of what has been previously contributed. To make out that IDT is the
main intellectual response to (neo)Darwinism is ludicrously biased. Prof
Nield discusses it in the attached article.

>If we imagine the "clash of two theories" - the older notion of "separate
>creations" by a supremely wise designer, versus Darwin's "common ancestry"
>of all life, driven by natural selection - it appears here that the younger
>system has utterly crushed the older.

This appearance is very deceptive. It has been pointed out all
along that natural selection can only *narrow* the variance; it has little
potential for creativity. In materialistic neoDarwinist theory, then, the
creativity must come from mutation. Since this process is regularly
labelled as random, the coherence within & between organisms is not
logically explained by neoDarwinism.

> throughout the article,
>small-scale or modest "variations" in animals are treated blithely as
>evidence for the origin of new organs or body structures - what biologists
>call "macroevolution."
>Most significantly, there is no hint that intelligent, well-informed
>dissent exists anywhere in the university world.

I agree with that complaint. But what does this IDTer point to as
opponents 'in the university world' of materialism?

>most tellingly: Why not reveal the widespread questioning of the
>creative power of natural selection - a foundational problem now widely
>admitted even among evolutionary researchers?

This question can be almost as cogently thrown at the IDTers, who
black out most of the scholarly depth as if their own novel minor ideas are
the most important.

>In a nutshell: How can an article of this importance completely ignore the
>scholarly labors of a mushrooming network of scientists at leading
>universities who have held important university-based symposia, and
>published over fifty books in the last decade?

More to the point: why does Woodward ignore the mainstream scholars
of real standing - Wm Temple, Sir Alister Hardy, John Morton, Neil Broom,
etc?

He wishes to imply that IDT is the main answer to materialist
neoDarwinists. This is not an accurate picture. IDT operates as a front
for Creationism®, aligned with that fanatical sect in evading the evidence
that evolution has occurred. IDT is inherently weak in that it relies on
'God of the gaps' reasoning: nobody has yet imagined how the bacterial
flagellum could have evolved by neoDarwinian gradualism, so a designer(s)
must be inferred. It's OK as far as it goes, but insists on staying stuck
there as if Dawkins has to admit this point before the discussion can move
on.

> PBS stations across the US
>have aired the pro-ID documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

This highly polished expensive propaganda for the narrow tendency
'IDT' is generally good but fails to mention that what is at issue is how,
not whether, evolution has occurred.

>Paul identified the downward spiral in Romans chapter one as one where men
>deified dumb nature, imbuing it with powers and spiritual significance that
>can never be justified.

well put

> The Christian, aware of this pitfall, and armed
>with the best arguments and evidence on both sides of the issue, can
>systematically compare and evaluate evolutionary theory and intelligent
>design theory.

This is cheeky, and seriously misleading. It appears to
counterpose IDT against 'evolutionary theory'. But the latter includes
both the greatest intellectual con trick - neoDarwinism, propounded
particularly crudely by Natl Geog - and the theistic evolution theory
which is actually the mainstream scholarship in this field, blacked out by
the obdurate narrowness of IDT.

> For the philosophical naturalist

This is an inferior term. Far more widely understood is the
synonym 'materalist'. The term 'naturalist' has another meaning, so why go
for this ambiguity? I fear it's a mark of one who is not fully trying to
clarify ideas.

>, "nature is all there is."

What more there is, Dembski & Behe scarcely begin to discuss.

Prof Nield's other attached article shows that J Wells, the most
obvious link between those two most visible IDTers and "creationism", is
not on the level.

R

Is Intelligent Design Theory the Way Forward?

Donald Nield

(Except for editorial changes, this document is as published in Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, Volume 9, Issue 2, May 2001, 8-13.)

Introduction

There is increasing recognition that the position of the "creation scientists" in their battle against "materialistic evolutionists" is untenable1,2. In recent years an alternative approach called "intelligent design theory" has been proposed, and this is the topic of the present article.

The modern Intelligent Design (ID) movement was to a large extent sparked off by the publication in 1985 of the book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by the Australian medical geneticist Michael Denton, who now works at the University of Otago. Today the leading lights are Phillip Johnson (lawyer), Michael Behe (biochemist) and William Dembski (mathematician). Robert Pennock3 lists a couple of dozen other people who are also associated with the movement, and it is noteworthy that virtually all are U.S. Americans (Hugh Ross, a Canadian, is an exception). Several of those named have contributed to a proceedings of a Mere Christianity conference4. Philosophers are represented in the movement by William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Paul Nelson and Stephen C. Meyer. A person of particular interest is Jonathan Wells, of the Unification Church, who has publicly stated that he has dedicated his life to destroying Darwinism, and to that end has collected two PhD's, one in Theology from Yale and the other in Biology from U.C. Berkeley.

Together with Nelson and Meyer, Wells now works at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, which was founded in 1996. According to its web site (www.crsc.org) the CRSC "strives to replace materialism and its destructive cultural legacies with a positive alternative. The Center seeks to develop a robust science for the twenty-first century, illuminated by an empirically fruitful Theory of Intelligent Design … [namely] a scientific research program that seeks to detect intelligent causes in natural systems, as well as apply the explanatory power of intelligent design to empirical problems in scientific research". A CRSC document "The Wedge Strategy" started circulating on the internet in 1998. This describes a 3-phase strategy to implement ID over the next 5 then 20 years. Its goals are to "defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." The document focuses on overthrowing evolution, not from within the scientific establishments, but through convincing the public that ID theory is the morally acceptable one. Jay Richards , Director of Program Development for CRSC, has admitted that much of the content of the document can be found in Johnson's book Defeating Darwinism By Opening Minds (1995). Johnson has updated his arguments in a new book, The Wedge of Truth (2000). In May 2000 the Discovery Institute sponsored a policy briefing for Members of Congress on Capitol Hill, Washington. The speakers (Behe, Meyer, Nancy Pearcey, Dembski, Johnson) presented their version of the scientific debate between Darwinian evolutionary theory and intelligent design theory, and also addressed the social moral and political consequences of Darwinism.

Thus it is not surprising that the ID movement is seen by many people as the new face of Creationism, and that it has aroused opposition. This has been exemplified by the removal in October 2000 of Dembski from his job as Director of the Michael Polanyi Institute at Baylor University (in Waco, Texas) as a result of opposition from members of the Biology faculty. The Institute had been formed the previous year on the initiative of the President of the University, which is a Southern Baptist institution. (I understand from an Internet forum comment that the Southern Baptist Church has endorsed ID.)

In this article I do not have space to deal in detail with Johnson's writings, but I note the assessment of Forster and Marston2 (p. 112) that "Johnson is a Christian lawyer with no expertise in either science or metaphysics, whose confusion of the two has been widely influential". (The reader interested in this matter is referred to the critiques in References 2 and 3.) Instead, I will concentrate on a discussion of the published work of Behe and Dembski.

Intelligent Design: Irreducible Complexity

The concept of Intelligent Design may be considered to be the intellectual offspring of William Paley, the English theologian and moral philosopher, who in 1802 published Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Here Paley argued from analogy, suggesting that if one happened to find a watch (rather than a stone) it was obvious that there must somewhere be a watchmaker. From this he went on to claim that the order and design of the natural world necessarily presupposed a grand design and thus a Designer.

The modern successor to Paley is Michael Behe (pronounced "BEEhee"). In his book Darwin's Black Box 5 he defined an irreducibly complex (IC) system as one composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (He used a mousetrap as an illustration.) Behe asserted that such systems cannot evolve directly by a series of small modifications each of which is a slight improvement to some initial system. He briefly mentions that indirect circuitous development is possible, but he asserts that this is tremendously unlikely. Also, it would be tremendously unlikely for any complex system to arise naturally in one fell swoop by mutation. His book gives several details of several complex biological systems. He claims that these systems are IC, and that the scientific community has no Darwinian explanation of them. He concludes that these aspects of life did not evolve, and therefore by default these are the result of Intelligent Design. Behe was careful to say nothing about a Designer. It was only later that it became public knowledge that he is a Roman Catholic.

A weakness of Behe's thesis is that the determination that a given system is IC depends on the present state of knowledge. Hence his argument is analogous to a "God of the gaps" explanation. Numerous biochemists have disputed Behe's claim that his various complex systems are in fact irreducible. For example, I refer to Don Lindsay6, who noted that IC systems had already been discussed by H.J. Muller7 in 1939, and that Muller had argued that evolution would routinely cause such systems. Lindsay notes that Behe assumes that evolution always progresses by addition, whereas it is well known that it often occurs by subtraction. Further, Shanks and Joplin8 give several examples of biochemical systems that continue to function when apparently crucial elements are missing. That article says, "It is a hallmark characteristic of evolved biochemical systems that there are typically multiple causal routes to a given functional end, and when one route fails, another can take over." (I should mention that Behe has responded to the Shanks/Joplin article, and his response has been further criticized in further internet forum discussion. The argument involves whether or not elements of the systems discussed by Shanks and Joplin are sufficiently well matched.) In particular, Behe spent his Chapter 4 arguing that the blood clotting cascade could not be reduced, but Lindsay says that there are lab mice from which several parts of the clotting cascade have been removed, and they seem quite normal. Lindsay also gives internet links to evidence that the immune system is not IC, and says that there is now experimental evidence for the correctness of a detailed theory on how this system could have started.

Thus Behe's thesis is very vulnerable to attack from an empirical quarter. A person who is committed to the belief that ID has occurred can brush aside such criticisms as that gene duplication provides the complexity, that evolution can create systems from genes that are already around for other purposes, that some steps of evolution are no longer seen but were there before a system looked irreducibly complex, or that some seemingly complex systems initially worked at a simpler level which eventually evolved to a complex level. However, when those criticisms are brushed aside the overall credibility of the basic thesis is reduced.

Behe's thesis is also vulnerable to criticism on philosophical grounds. Behe makes a point of saying nothing about how or at what time an IC system is designed, but it is very unsatisfactory to stop an enquiry at this point. It is pertinent to ask such questions as: Was there more than one design process? If not, was the design executed solely at the origin of life? If there was more than one design process, how were the various processes coordinated? To what extent was the design carried out by natural processes? Can a non-Darwinian natural process account for the design itself? According to Behe, IC must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Korthof10 has pointed out that this means that Design Theory is a hybrid theory – at least some organisms are products of both design and evolution by natural processes. To the extent that ID is independent of natural processes, ID is a sterile hypothesis, because it discourages research into possible natural mechanisms that could have produced design-like features.

Dembski11 in his most recent book has commented on the objection that "Design substitutes extraordinary explanations where ordinary explanations will do and thereby commits a god-of-the-gaps fallacy." At the end of a lengthy attempt at rebuttal, he gets around to asking the important question, "How long are we to continue a search [for an explanation in terms of natural causes] before we have a right to give up the search and declare not only that continuing the search is vain but also that the very object of the search is nonexistent?" He acknowledges that there is no precise line of demarcation. To my mind this is a reason why the search should never be terminated.

The Design Inference

The recent books by Dembski11,12 have been reviewed by Alan Padgett13 (a professor of theology and philosophy of science at Azusa Pacific University), who notes that the members of the ID movement are not content with a good argument from design against philosophical naturalism, but they wish to insert "design" into the paradigms and explanatory traditions of the natural sciences. Most advocates of design accept biological evolution, as long as that is not the whole story, and Padgett notes that this is a great step forward in the religion-science debate among conservative protestants.

Padgett also remarks that, in contrast to Swinburne14, whose version of the argument is that the whole of the universe is designed, Dembski and friends focus on the design of particular items within the universe. By concentrating on the scientific and philosophic challenges to Darwinism, the ID theorists largely ignore the argument from design to the existence of God.

In his technical monograph The Design Inference, Dembski12 seeks to eliminate chance (as an explanation) through small probability, by means of an "explanatory filter" whose purpose is to use probability estimates to "eliminate chance entirely." Dembski thereby attempts to give a rigorous analysis of the common informal logical reasoning concerned with causal explanations of why something happens. The filter involves a succession of decision modes: if the event has high probability it is deemed to be due to natural law, if it has intermediate probability then it is ascribed to chance, while if it has low probability together with "specified complexity" (something that involves prescribed patterns) then it is ascribed to design.

Padgett comments that Dembski has made a real advance in probability and information theory with his attempt to give a rigorous definition of design in terms of "complex specified information" (in relation to patterns in the data), but he criticizes the explanatory filter. Dembski reduces all kinds of regularity to natural laws, but some regularities are not based upon the laws of nature. After reducing all highly probable events to natural laws, Dembski then reduces all natural laws (necessity) to algorithms and mathematical functions; but not all laws of nature are mathematical, nor can they all be given numeric values. Padgett says that Dembski is on firmer ground when stating that the laws of nature, if we know them all, will make a particular event probable if that event is indeed caused by such laws. But we do not know all the regularities of the natural world. At best we can only talk about what is highly probable given our current knowledge. The filter demands that, in order to eliminate chance, we are aware of all the "chance hypotheses" for any given event, but this demand seems out of reach. Thus this filter does not in practice always eliminate chance as Dembski wants it to. Moreover, Dembski insists that natural causes cannot generate complex specified information, but Padgett notes that in the future it may be possible for us to understand how complex specified information can be generated by self-organizing physical systems.

Padgett admires the ID group for putting forward a bold, empirical hypothesis, namely that the origin of life comes from some intelligent designer, but he questions the claims of this movement to "insert" design back into science. He notes that ID is already part of such sciences as economics, archaeology and anthropology. However, when ID people say "science" they usually mean natural science, so in fact they wish to add ID to the paradigms and explanatory schemes of the natural sciences. But natural science focuses upon the natural world, both for its object of study and its explanatory scheme. Padgett says that natural sciences explain things on natural terms. The natural sciences leave the study of intelligent agency to the social sciences, such as psychology. The natural sciences can identify an event which, given our current knowledge, they cannot now explain. Perhaps, then, the event was designed. That is as far as natural science can go, and perhaps that is all the ID movement needs  to get scientists to look and see if certain facts about the world, especially facts about the origins of living systems, exhibit signs of design rather that natural causation. Padgett sees no reason in principle why astronomers or biologists should be unwilling to do so  apart, of course, from a prior commitment to naturalism as a world view.

I agree with Padgett's concluding remarks. He does not believe that the ID folks will win the day. He accepts the notion that life will some day be explained through natural causes, while insisting that God is the origin of all natural things, natural causes, and natural laws. In this way design and evolution are not opposites. Rather, evolution is based upon natural regularities, which are in turn created by God. Evolution is based upon design.

Dembski's design inference argument has also been criticized on philosophic grounds. After presenting some technical arguments (to which Dembski has responded at his home page, www.baylor.edu/~William_Dembski), Fitelson et al.15 make some general comments. They say that Darwinian theory makes probabilistic, not deductive, predictions, and there is no reason to think that the only alternative to Darwinian theory is intelligent design. Further, to test evolutionary theory against the hypothesis of ID, you must know what both hypotheses predict about observables. If defenders of the design hypothesis want to make their theory to be scientific, they need to do the scientific work of formulating and testing the predictions that creationism makes, and they must face this responsibility.

Applications of Design Theory

Dembski's earlier book The Design Inference briefly treats the creation/evolution controversy as case study. Dembski notes that creationists accept the premise that if life is due to chance then it has small probability, whereas evolutionists such as Dawkins reject this premise. In his more recent book Intelligent Design ( a book which essentially consists of a series of essays) Dembski is much less circumspect. In Chapter 7 he mentions the compartmentalization, complementarity and conflict models for the relationship between Science and Theology, and then offers a fourth option that he calls the mutual support model. (The support that he has in mind is epistemic support, something characterized by explanatory power rather than rational compulsion, and in this sense the big bang model of Science and the doctrine of creation of Theology support each other.) This is his motivation for the subtitle of his book, The Bridge Between Science and Theology.

However, in Chapter 4, titled "Naturalism and its cure" (a revised version of a chapter in the book referred to in Endnote 4), Dembski argues in a way that seems to me to be based on a conflict model. He starts by saying that throughout Scripture the fundamental divide separating humans is between those who can discern God's action in the world ( the "spiritual" ) and those who are blind to it (the "natural"). Dembski calls the view that nature is self-contained "naturalism" and then says that naturalism leads irresistibly to idolatry. He then says that within Western culture, naturalism has become the default position for all serious inquiry, and that its most virulent form is known as scientific naturalism. He then argues that the cure for the disease of naturalism is Intelligent Design: intelligent causes should be admitted to full scientific status. He sees ID as a two-pronged approach to eradicating naturalism. On the one hand, ID presents a scientific and philosophic critique of naturalism. Here the scientific critique identifies the empirical inadequacies of naturalistic evolutionary theories (both cosmic and biological), whereas the philosophical critique demonstrates how naturalism is a metaphysical ideology with no empirical backing. The other prong of ID is a positive scientific research programme.

Dembski wants to dump methodological naturalism. He says we need to realize that methodological naturalism is the functional equivalent of full-blown naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism asserts that nature is self-sufficient. Methodological naturalism asks us for the sake of science to pretend that nature is self-sufficient. But once science is taken as the only universally valid form of knowledge within a culture, it follows that methodological and metaphysical naturalism become functionally equivalent.

According to Dembski, ID is incompatible with "theistic evolution". He says that theistic evolution takes the Darwinian picture of the biological world and baptizes it, identifying this picture with the way God created life. When boiled down to its scientific content, however, theistic evolution is no different from atheistic evolution, treating only undirected natural processes in the origin and development of life. ID and theistic evolution differ fundamentally about whether the design of the universe is accessible to our native intellect. Design theorists say yes; theistic evolutionists say no.

Dembski says that for the Darwinian establishment, the "theistic" in "theistic evolution" is superfluous, and by Occam's razor should be dispensed with. The ID theorists' objection is to the presence of the word "evolution", because they regard the neo-Darwinian synthesis as problematic. The ID theorists' critique of Darwinism begins with Darwinism's failure as an empirically adequate scientific theory, not with its supposed incompatibility with some system of religious belief. Here Darwinism is being regarded as the totalizing claim that the mutation-selection mechanism accounts for all the diversity of life. Dembski holds that the evidence does not support this claim. What evidence there is supports limited variation within fixed boundaries (microevolution). Macroevolution – the unlimited plasticity of organisms to diversify across all boundaries – even if true, cannot legitimately be attributed to the mutation-selection system. To do so is to extrapolate beyond its evidential base. Dembski says that the following problems have proven utterly intractable not only for the mutation-selection mechanism but also for any other undirected natural process proposed to date: the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, the origin of multicellular life, the origin of sexuality, the scarcity of transitional forms in the fossil record, the biological big bang that occurred in the Cambrian era, the development of complex organ systems and the development of irreducible complex molecular machines. In making these claims that such problems are utterly intractable, Dembski and his fellow ID theorists leave themselves open to empirical refutation.

Dembski then goes on along a path previously trodden by creationists. He asks such questions as: Why does Darwinism, despite being so inadequately supported as a scientific theory, continue to garner the full support of the academic establishment? Why must science explain solely by recourse to undirected natural processes? He says we are dealing with competing worldviews and incompatible metaphysical systems. In the creation-evolution controversy we are dealing with a naturalistic metaphysic that shapes and controls what theories of biological origins that are permitted on the playing field in advance of discussion or weighing of evidence. This metaphysic is so pervasive and powerful that it not only rules alternative views out of court, but it cannot even permit itself to be criticized. It is this metaphysic that constitutes the main target of the design theorists' critique of Darwinism. As I have already mentioned, Dembski has a simple answer: dump methodological naturalism. This leaves him on a collision course with most scientists.

It seems to me that ID theory is based on a philosophy of naïve realism. I believe that a more adequate approach to science and theology is one based on critical realism. When one realizes that science is merely providing a model of the real world, rather than making statements about the real world itself, it is obvious that Dembski's filter loses its coercive force, because the input to the filter is only provisional, and that means the output of the filter must too be only provisional.

For further pertinent discussion of the work of Dembski (and also of that of Moreland) the reader is again referred to Forster and Marston2, Chapter 10.

Dembski16 has recently posted a 15000 word essay on the Internet in which he responds to several of his critics, including the theistic evolutionist Howard Van Till who in recent years has pressed the ID theorists to clarify their definition of design so that their views can be properly critiqued. In this essay Dembski makes some revealing personal statements and raises a number of interesting matters which space limitations prevent me from discussing here. I regret that Dembski has declined to comment on pertinent points raised by Wesley Elsberry17 (whom Dembski refers to as an Internet stalker).


An Assessment

In my view the bridge between science and theology that Dembski11 and others are trying to construct is being built in the wrong place (because its foundations are subject to erosion as empirical advances in the sciences are made) and is being built for the wrong reason, one which is peculiar to the USA, a country where religion may not be taught in public schools for legal and constitutional reasons. The more idealistic members of the ID group may honestly believe that ID theory is independent of theology and can be regarded as legitimate science and that the "wedge" is distinct from ID theory. Further, they claim that ID theory leads to useful scientific hypotheses that are amenable to empirical testing (though as far as I am aware the only specific examples they have put forward are merely predictions that certain systems have minimum level of complexity). However, there is little doubt that the more prominent members of the ID movement, those associated with the Discovery Institute, are motivated primarily by a different agenda. They insist that ID theory is independent of theology so that ID theory may be permitted to be taught in public schools. Thus Pennock3 and others have adequate cause for referring to the ID movement as Intelligent-Design Creationism. In fact, Dembski's bridge is more like an assault ramp (wedge-shaped), and is discontinuous at the science end because Dembski has chosen to do away with methodological naturalism rather than just metaphysical naturalism.


A Better Way Forward

Thanks to the efforts of Polkinghorne18 and others, a contemporary revival of natural theology is taking place. Polkinghorne notes that this is one revised in relation to its predecessors in two important respects. First, it is more modest in its claim. It does not assert that God's existence can be demonstrated in a logically compelling way but that theism makes more sense of the world, and of human experience, than does atheism. Second, its appeal is not to particular occurrences or particular entities, in contrast to the way in which Paley discussed the optical system of the eye or Behe discusses particular complex systems. For the new natural theologians, the occurrences of such phenomena are part of the history of the physical world that is science's legitimate role to seek to explain as fully as it can. Instead, the new natural theology looks to the laws of nature that science has to take as assumed, and it asks whether there is more to be understood about these laws than their mere assertion. It is in no way a rival to science within science's proper domain. Rather, it serves as a complement to science, going beyond the latter's self-limited realm of enquiry. There is no recourse to a "God of the Gaps" but to the God whose steadfast will is held to be expressed in the laws of nature that science discovers but does not explain.

An approach along these lines, for which "theistic evolution" is a suitable umbrella label, is in my opinion a better way forward. The argument for design is now based on the whole universe rather than particular systems. The remarkable coincidences in the magnitudes of physical constants that make our universe livable in were highlighted by Barrow and Tipler19 (and related arguments have been presented by Broom20). The no less remarkable list of chemical and biochemical properties of matter that have enabled the origin and evolutionary development of life has been presented by Denton21 , who is at pains to emphasize that his argument is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumptions of modern science – that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. It is clear that Denton has moved on some distance since the publication of his previous book (mentioned near the beginning of this article)! It is time for the creationists to move forward too.

Endnotes

1. Donald Nield, "Creation and science without 'Creation Science' ", Stimulus 8, No.4 (November 2000), 15-19

2. Roger Forster and Paul Marston, Reason, Science and Faith (Monarch Books/ Angus Hudson, London, 1999)

3. Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999)

4. William A. Dembski (ed.), Mere Creation : Science, Faith & Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 199

5. Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Touchstone, New York, 1996)

6. D. C. Lindsay, Review of Darwin's Black Box found on 29-09-00 at www.cs.colorado.edu/~Lindsay/creation/behe.html

7. H. J. Muller, Reversibility in evolution considered from the standpoint of genetics, Biological Reviews 14 (1939), 261-280

8. N. Shanks and K. H. Joplin, "Redundant complexity: a critical analysis of intelligent design in biochemistry,'"Philosophy of Science 66 (1999), 268-298

9. M. J. Behe, "Self-organization and irreducible complex systems: A reply to Shanks and Joplin," Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), 155-162

10. Gert Korthof, "Does irreducible complexity refute neo-Darwinism? Darwin's Black Box, a review," 6 August 2000, online at home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/korthof8.htm

11. William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1999)

12 .William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 199

13. Alan G. Padgett, "Creation by design: Is the intelligent-design movement asking natural scientists to work outside their proper focus?" Christianity Today: Books & Culture: Science pages July/Aug. 2000, online at www.christianitytoday.com.

14. Richard Swinburne, Is there a God? (Oxford University Press, 1996)

15. B Fitelson, C. Stephens and E. Sober, "How not to detect design  Critical notice: William A. Dembski: The Design Inference", Philosophy of Science 66 (1999), 472-488

16. William Dembski, "Intelligent Design coming clean", Metaviews 098, dated 2000.11.17, posted at www.meta-list.org

17. Wesley Elsberry maintains an archive of documents related to Dembski, including reviews of his work and his activities at Baylor University, at inia.cls.org/~welsberr/ae/wad.html

18. J. Polkinghorne, Science and Theology: An Introduction (SPCK, London, and Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 199

19. J. D. Barrow and F. J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press, 199

20. Neil Broom, How Blind is the Watchmaker? Theism or Atheism: Should Science Decide (Aldershot: Ashgate,1998; revised edition: InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2001)

21. M. J. Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (The Free Press, New York. 199


Donald Nield holds the degrees of MSc (NZ), MA (Cambridge), PhD (Auckland) and BD (Otago), and since 1962 has taught at the University of Auckland, where currently he is an Associate Professor of Engineering Science. He is an Elder at Balmoral Presbyterian Church.

---

This article was published in the New Zealand Science Teacher, no. 97, 2001, pp. 42-44
A response to "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth"by
Jonathan Wells

Donald A. Nield
Department of Engineering Science,University of Auckland, P.B 92019, Auckland

All teachers of biology at the secondary level should read the book "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong", by Jonathan Wells, Regnery Publishing Inc., Washington DC, 2000,if only to be able to give an informed answer to the "Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution" posted at www.iconsofevolution.com.

The reader should be aware that Jonathan Wells has publicly stated (see the document at www.tparents.org) that he has dedicated his life to destroying Darwinism. This is not mentioned in his book, the promotional description of which reads:

'In this shocking book,Berkeley-educated doctor of biology Jonathan Wells lets you in on scientific discoveries you won't learn about from college and high school textbooks – and reveals a dirty little secret known only to some of his fellow biologists.

The best known "icons of evolution" – from pictures of apes evolving into humans, to comparisons of fish and human embryos to moths on tree trunks – are false or misleading. For decades, biology students have been taught things about evolution thatare simply untrue.

These icons of evolution appear in the most recent textbooks, although the scientific literature is full of evidence that they are false. Apparently, dogmatic promoters of Darwinian evolution fear that without these icons public faith in their claims will disappear, so they knowingly misinform our children and suppress scientific evidence.'

With one exception, the ten questions mentioned at the beginning of this article correspond to ten chapters of the book, and I discuss these in detail below. In his final chapter, Wells claims that dogmatic promoters of Darwinian evolution are not merely distorting the truth but they use their position of dominance in the biological sciences in the English-speaking world to censor dissenting viewpoints. He suggests that scientists who deliberately distort the evidence should be disqualified from receiving public funds.

The book has two appendices. The first reports on an evaluation of ten recent biology textbooks published in the U.S.A. They are all given a failing grade by Wells. The second appendix lists ten warning labels which Wells suggests that owners of textbooks can insert in their books.

There is little doubt that a number of textbook writers have been sloppy,and this is a matter of concern, but I do not accept that any of the authors have been deliberately fraudulent. Further, though the individual scientific facts may have been accurately presented by Wells, he has been selective in what he has reported and he has put his own particular spin on those facts.

I now list the ten questions, interleaved with my tentative brief answers(the reader is invited to improve them), which are composed in the light of both what Wells has written and what is actually written in the introductory biology text (one of those evaluated by Wells) in current use at the University of Auckland, namely Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece and Lawrence G. Mitchell, Biology: Concepts and Connections Menlo Park: Cummings, 5th edn1999). I shall abbreviate this reference by CRM.

The questions and my answers are:

Q1. Why do textbooks claim that the Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth –- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
A1. CRM (p.494) says: "The atmosphere in the Miller-Urey model was made up of … the gases that researchers in the 1950s believed prevailed in the ancient world. This atmosphere was probably more strongly reducing than the actual atmosphere of the early Earth … Traces of O2 may even have been present. Many laboratories have repeated the Miller-Urey experiment using a variety of recipes for the atmosphere, including amixture having a very low concentration of O2. A biotic synthesis of organic compounds occurred in these modified models,though yields were generally less than in the original experiment. Laboratory analogs of primeval Earth have produced all 20 amino acids commonly found in organisms … The Miller-Urey experiments still stimulate debate and research." The authors do not claim that the problem of the origin of life on Earth,or even of its building blocks, has been solved. Nevertheless, it is clear that substantial progress has been made.

Q2. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion", in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor –- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
A2. CRM (pp. 595-596) does discuss the Cambrian "explosion",which may have been spread over as much as 40 million years. Theso-called explosion can be interpreted quite well using the idea of punctuated equilibrium, something that Wells avoids mentioning. On the appropriate time scale, the tree of life concept (with gradual changes as a result of natural selection) is not refuted.

Q3. Why do textbooks define homology as similar to common ancestry,then claim that it is evidence for their common ancestry –- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?
A3. CRM (p.424) says "Similarity in characteristics resulting from common ancestry is known as homology … Comparative anatomy is consistent with other evidence in testifying that evolution is a remodeling process in which ancestral structures thatfunctioned in one capacity become modified as they take on new functions." Wells does not mention that in individual cases it is usually clear whether similarities in structure are examples of homology or of analogy, and this means that the apparent circularity in the argument can be broken.

Q4. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos asevidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known forover a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
A4. CRM has a single figure illustrating comparative embryology. This is a photograph of a 4-week-old human embryo which clearly shows gill pouches and a postanal tail, two of the trademarks of all vertebrate embryos. The caption says that comparative embryology helps biologists identify anatomical homology that is less apparent in adults because the structures are extensively modified in different ways during later development of the organisms. The text (p. 424) reads: "Inspired by the Darwinian principle of descent with modification, many embryologists in the late nineteenth century proposed the extreme view that'ontogeny' recapitulates 'phylogeny'. This notion holds that the development of an individual organism, ontogeny, is a replay of the evolutionary history of the evolutionary history of the species, phylogeny. The theory of recapitulation is an overstatement." Here the authors clearly point out that in the past some scientists havebeen led astray by their theoretical assumptions.

Q5. Why do textbooks portray this fossil [Archaeopteryx] as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds –- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?
A5. CRM (p.649) says: "Archaeopteryx is not considered the ancestor of modern birds, and paleontologists place it on a side branch ofthe avian lineage. Nonetheless, Archaeopteryx probably was derived from ancestral forms that also gave rise to modernbirds." Wells fails to make the distinction between 'transitional' and 'ancestral', and he wrongly assumes that more primitive organisms cannot survive after the evolution of more evolved descendants.

Q6. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection –- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?
A6. The topic of peppered moths is not mentioned by CRM. Wells refers to Jerry Coyne, but in a letter to a newspaper editor Coyne says that Wells has misrepresented him. Michael Majerus, the authority on the subject, notes that Coyne dealt with only a small part of the scientific evidence when he reviewed Majerus's book in Nature . Evolution by natural selection remains the best explanation of melanismin moths.

Q7. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finchesduring a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection –- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended,and no net evolution occurred?
A7. CRM uses the experimental results of Peter & Rosemary Grant just as an illustration of how inheritable characteristics of finches track changes in climate. Clearly, cyclical changes in climate produce cyclical changes in characteristics, as Wells points out. However, what Wells does not mention is that long-term changes in climate can lead to long-term changes in characteristics, and this, coupled with isolation of breeding stocks, could lead to species differentiation. In connection with similar illustrations, CRM (p. 422) mentions that researchers have published more than 100 other accounts of natural selection in the wild.

Q8. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution –- even though the extra wings have no muscles and those disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
A8. The topic of four-winged fruit flies is not mentioned by CRM. This item illustrates a process that contributes to evolution, and is not evidence for evolution per se.

Q9. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident –- when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?
A9. At the beginning of its discussion of human evolution, CRM says:"Another misconception envisions human evolution as a ladder with a series of steps leading directly from the ancestral anthropoid to Homosapiens. This is often illustrated as a parade of fossil hominids (members of the human family) becoming progressively more modern as they march across thepage. If human evolution is a parade, then it is a disorderly one, with many splinter groups having traveled down dead ends… " Wells has not presented an accurate account of what is now known about human evolution.

Q10. Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact –- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
A10. The question itself is based on a misrepresentation. The claims of Darwin's theory of evolution are not based on amisrepresentation of the facts. The reader is invited to read the whole of the relevant chapters in CRM so as to see something of the solid pillars behind the icons.

Various reviews and discussions of the book are posted at www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/icons_evolution.html.

The writer is grateful to Dr. Robert Mann for his comments on a draft of this article.

The Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, that van Gogh family) was killed
November 2, 2004, by a 26-year-old extremist Muslim of Dutch-Moroccan
descent. The current theory is that he was taken down for his critical
look at the treatment of Muslim women. It's not a documentary, but a
metaphorical look at the harsh realities of their lives. (In English with
Dutch subtitles.)

The film's screenwriter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, grew up an upper-class Muslim in
Somalia. In '92 she escaped to the Netherlands, mastered the language and
attended university to study political science. Now a politician, she has
received death threats for numerous stances she's taken and activities
she's undertaken. But as a self-proclaimed ex-Muslim, she has taken it
upon herself to make the plight of oppressed Muslim women known to the
West--and, she hopes, to decrease their suffering.

Just to keep things interesting, recall the summary of Prof Laura Nader's
female grad student: the pubd statements of Muslim women to ca.1985 stated
1 despite any appearances, Muslim households are managed by the women
2 regarding dress, under what other regime can a woman walk across town in
broad daylight to an assignation?

TINSEL TOWN DISPATCH

Look Who Isn't Talking
A filmmaker is murdered, and Hollywood loudmouths say nothing.

BY BRIDGET JOHNSON
Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Since Nov. 2, I've had an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach. As an
ardent Bush backer, my queasiness has nothing to do with the glorious
election results, but is prompted by a murder that occurred the same day in
Amsterdam.

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh's short film "Submission," about the
treatment of women in Islam, written by female Dutch parliamentarian and
former Muslim Aayan Hirsi Ali, had aired in August on Dutch TV. Van Gogh
was riding his bike near his home when a Muslim terrorist shot him, slashed
his throat, and pinned to his body a note threatening Ms. Ali. This
appears to be an organized effort, not the act of a lone nut; Dutch
authorities are holding 13 suspects in the case.

After the slaying, I watched "Submission" (available online at
ifilm.com) [i] and my mind is
still boggled that 11 minutes decrying violence against women incites such
violence. There've been many films over the years that have taken potshots
at Catholics, but I don't remember any of us slaughtering filmmakers over
the offense. You didn't see the National Rifle Association order a hit on
Michael Moore over "Bowling for Columbine."

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative
community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la
Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we've heard nary a
peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long
walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film
version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed Palestinian
terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or
Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood
Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would
pay to see a film on the topic.

In a recent conversation with a struggling liberal screenwriter, I brought
up the Clancy film as an example of Hollywood shying away from what really
affects filmgoers--namely, the al Qaeda threat vs. the neo-Nazi threat. He
vehemently defended the script switch. "It's an easy target," he said of
Arab terrorism, repeating this like a parrot, then adding, "It's a cheap
shot." How many American moviegoers would think that scripting Arab
terrorists as the enemy in a fiction film is a "cheap shot"? In fact, it's
realism; it's what touches lives world-wide. It's this disconnect with
filmgoers that has left the Hollywood box office bleeding by the side of
the road.

President Bush wasn't the only one to receive a mandate on Election Day.
Voters showed that they don't give a hoot about celebrity endorsements. The
dollar democracy of the box office has shown for years that those same
Americans are tired of the old shtick. Hollywood hasn't paid attention to
its chronic illness, and now even once-powerhouse Miramax, under the
tutelage of uber-liberal Harvey Weinstein, has been handing out pink slips.
Purse strings are pulling even tighter across town as studios can't
continue to stomach the same flops.

But there is an exciting undercurrent flowing through Hollywood, buoyed not
only by the election but the campaign that highlighted divisions so oft
pointed to by the left. It's something the general public can't see yet,
but will when the talents of the conservative filmmaking movement in
Hollywood--writers, producers, directors and actors--begin to make it past
the distribution hurdle and to the cineplex.

We saw a sneak peek during the campaign: a funny commercial for the Club
for Growth, denoting Kerry's flip-flops with a groom who keeps changing his
mind at the altar and a bomb-squad specialist who can't pick which wire to
cut. The producer was David Zucker, a self-described "Sept. 12
Republican," who made such classics as "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun."
Meanwhile, loudmouthed liberal celebrities were crucified in the Trey
Parker/Matt Stone comedy "Team America: World Police."

A liberal friend asked me what conservative filmmaking was, envisioning
staid, G-rated pictures. The movement is better described as rebellion
from the Hollywood status quo, the dream of being able to make a feature
film whose political content won't be altered to make the Republicans evil,
in which politically incorrect yet pertinent material won't end up on the
cutting-room floor. It's about having faith in filmgoers that they'll
eagerly support pictures to which they can relate. It's about creating
content for movie houses in the red states as well as the blue.

A month before the election, the Liberty Film Festival in West Hollywood
generated a palpable excitement among conservatives in the industry and
those lining up to catch a glimpse of the flicks. The diverse and hip
crowd joined producers Stephen K. Bannon ("In the Face of Evil"), Lionel
Chetwynd ("Celsius 41.11"), Doug Urbanski ("The Contender"), Mr. Zucker and
others.

One film, by Brain-Terminal.com's Evan Maloney, "Brainwashing 101,"
highlighted attempts to stifle free speech on college campuses. After the
film, an immigrant in the audience who identified himself as Boris angrily
proclaimed, "This is just like Soviet Union!"

Another film, "Relentless," exposed Yasser Arafat's doublespeak in favor of
the destruction of Israel and chillingly showed children on a Palestinian
TV show expressing their desire to be suicide bombers, urged on by the
host--who blew herself up in Jerusalem a week before the screening.

Movie after movie showed filmmakers on the edge, taking risks, telling
truths that needed to be told. But Mr. van Gogh paid the ultimate price to
make his film, and the ensuing silence of a community purportedly so
interested in free speech is maddening. Agree with the man or not, what
warranted his violent death?

Giving Hollywood the benefit of the doubt, I did one more search to find
industry response to the van Gogh murder. I found the blog of novelist and
screenwriter Roger L. Simon, who confirmed that I wasn't the only one who'd
been wondering: "It's stunning how silent the American artistic community,
Hollywood in particular, has been about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo
Van Gogh in Amsterdam," he wrote. "Do they even know what happened to one
of their own? Have they even heard of him? Do they care someone was
killed for making a film which protested violent abuse against women? Are
they even interested?"

Earlier this year, I was shopping a script that included Arab terrorist
characters in addition to good Arab characters. Companies were interested,
but after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, a wave of scripts were returned to
me the next week. Confused, I narrowed the potential culprit down to a
small Geneva Conventions joke by one brash character, and I changed it
before sending it out again. The response was noticeably warmer, but I
still encountered some trepidation over the War on Terror theme.

When I began meeting and networking with other conservative filmmakers, I
put the lines back in the script. I'm not changing it again. Nor will I
compromise my story. It would look pretty silly for European neo-Nazis to
be traipsing around the Pakistani border, anyway.

Ms. Johnson is a journalist and screenwriter in Southern California.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005935

[i] Synopsis

http://www.ifilm.com/?sctn=sub_shortfilms&pg=submission_emails. Click
here to read the emails we've received regarding this film.

To send in your own comments on this controversial film, write to us at
feedback@ifilm.com.

From: "Maxim Institute"
Subject: Maxim Institute - real issues - No. 138

No. 138, 25 NOVEMBER 2004

Civil Union Bill rushed and dishonest

Two weeks ago we suggested that the government would attempt to rush the
Civil Union Bill through Parliament before Christmas. Despite denials from
government MPs that it was a rush and that the select committee had not
been asked to report back early, it has been confirmed that the Second
Reading will be held next Thursday, 2 December. The select committee
report will be released next Monday and is likely to make some significant
changes which further emphasise that this Bill effectively creates same-sex
marriage in New Zealand.

Amongst recommendations expected by the majority of Labour MPs and a Green
MP is a clause that describe civil unions as being 'lifelong and
exclusive', a term not even used in the Marriage Act. However, there isn't
likely to be any penalty for breaking this. This is an attempt to add a
social understanding of marriage into civil union law. The bill will also
retain a highly controversial clause that allows a heterosexual couple to
transfer a civil union to marriage and vice versa. This shows that a civil
union and marriage are in fact interchangeable, although same-sex couples
will not be eligible. It is almost certain this will be contested in the
High Court on the grounds it is discriminatory. It is also possible that
in response to a few submissions a new provision will be added that allows
same-sex marriages and civil unions registered overseas to be recognised in
New Zealand.

If the Civil Union Bill passes the second vote next week, it appears the
government will use urgency to push it through its final stages a week
later. This will make it the fastest same-sex marriage law in the world -
less than six months from start to finish. As a conscience vote, it is
simply too contentious and important to be rushed. To help prevent this
law being passed by Christmas, please call your MP and ask them to vote
against it. Maxim's website has been updated with new information and
analysis on the Bills, along with simple steps to take action - just visit:
http://www.maxim.org.nz/civilunions

Discuss this article in our
on-line discussion forum

THE AMERICAN CENTURY IS OVER

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Antiwar.com
November 6, 2004

On Nov. 2, Americans blew their only chance to redeem themselves in the
eyes of the world.

The entire world is stunned by the Bush administration's abandonment of a
half century of U.S. diplomacy in favor of misguided, unilateralist,
"preemptive" naked aggression on totally false pretenses against Iraq.
America's allies are amazed at the ignorance manifested by the Bush
administration. They are resentful of Bush's "in-your-eye" attitude toward
friends who warned Bush against leading America into a quagmire and giving
Osama bin Laden the war he wanted.

The world was waiting hopefully for the sensible American people to rectify
the ill-advised actions of a rogue neoconservative administration. Instead,
Americans placed the stamp of approval on the least justifiable military
action since Hitler invaded Poland.

In the eyes of the world, Bush's reelection is proof that Ariel Sharon's
neoconservative allies in the Bush administration speak for America after
all.

The world's sympathy for America that followed the September 11 attacks has
been squandered. If the U.S. suffers terrorist attacks in the future, the
world will say that America invited the attacks and got what it asked for.

Europeans and Asians will never be able to comprehend that Bush was
reelected because Americans were voting against homosexual marriage and
abortion.

The world is simply unable to believe that Americans, so enamored of family
values, would vote to send their sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers to
unprovoked war unless Americans valued empire and control over oil as more
important than their family members.

The crude propagandistic Republican campaign against John Kerry is shocking
to Europeans. The childishness of American conservatives scares them.

America's French friends, seeking to save America from making the same
mistakes that France made in the past, advised Bush not to rush into an
Iraqi invasion. American conservatives instantly and blindly perceived
French words of wisdom as proof that France was in the "against us" camp.
Conservatives announced a boycott of French fries. Everything French was
denigrated for no other reason than the French tried to warn us.

Conservatives quickly produced a "revisionist" book, Our Oldest Enemy: A
History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France, "proving" that
France has always been America's worst enemy.

America's European allies cannot differentiate the immaturity of American
conservatives from the ignorance of the National Socialists.

As hearts harden and minds close against America, Americans will have to go
it alone.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has proved to be a disaster --- exactly as the
French and everyone with a mere modicum of sense said in advance. Eight of
ten U.S. divisions are tied down by a few thousand insurgents.

U.S. troops do not control towns, cities, roads, or even the fortified
Green Zone.

The American impulse is to smash cities, thus killing women and children
and destroying the homes and livelihoods of noncombatants, while the
insurgents regroup elsewhere. The top American generals, who were
ridiculed by the Secretary of Defense and his deluded neoconservative
deputy for forthrightly stating that occupation of Iraq would require a
larger army than was available, stand vindicated.

The price of the Bush administration's delusion is 10,000 dead and maimed
American troops --- more than three times the casualties caused by the
September 11 terrorist attacks. Bush's declared policy of "continuing to
the end" will swell this number and bring back the draft.

The world is amazed that Americans do not care that they have been
deceived, lied to, and incompetently led and that Americans have chosen to
continue along this path.

Bush's reelection has ended forever respect for America. New and
unflattering sobriquets for Americans are emerging. The American century
is over.

Paul Craig Roberts was Ronald Reagan's former Asstistant Secretary of the
Treasury, who is also a former Cato Distinguished Fellow and former Wall
Street Journal editor

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/147/22.0.html
Were the Darwinists Wrong?
National Geographic stacks the deck.
By Thomas Woodward | posted 11/23/2004

"Have you seen the cover of the latest National Geographic issue?"
In recent weeks, this question came to me in countless phone messages and
e-mails, not to mention a dozen personal encounters. A campus worker in
Berlin sent an urgent e-mail after spotting the German edition. My friends
and academic colleagues are curious what I - a speaker and writer on the
debate between Darwinism and intelligent design theory - thought about the
magazine's provocative cover story, which boldly asks, "Was Darwin Wrong?"
Readers were jolted around the world that such a question should leap from
the cover of National Geographic. Hopes surged for a few seconds among
skeptics of evolution, until they turned to David Quammen's article, which
answers with a loud, triumphal "No!" Quammen's piece unfolds as a
glittering showcase for Darwinism, a reassuring mini-museum in print. Ten
pages of text - more in the genre of high school cheerleading than sober
analysis - are embedded in a lush gallery of 22 pages of glossy pictures,
including an amazing array of nine separate "sidebar" mini-articles.
If we imagine the "clash of two theories" - the older notion of "separate
creations" by a supremely wise designer, versus Darwin's "common ancestry"
of all life, driven by natural selection - it appears here that the younger
system has utterly crushed the older. Sketched in terms of a basketball
tourney, Quammen paints a complete rout - a 118-0 shutout.

One triumphal paragraph, which serves as an opening sketch of Quammen's
thrust, refers to Darwinian macroevolution as "deeply persuasive - a theory
you can take to the bank. The essential points are slightly more
complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can't
be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting
evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and
easily available in museums Š and a mountainous accumulation of
peer-reviewed scientific studies."The reader, leafing through dazzling
color illustrations, tracing a series of arguments, evidences, and
historical summaries, is led gently, but steadily, to one "overwhelming"
conclusion: Only pitiful ignorance (or worse, religious bias and fear)
could keep a normal-thinking adult from embracing Darwinian evolution as
FACT.

My emphasis on the word "fact" is designed to convey the sense of brimming
confidence which is the article's emotional subtext. The editor's purpose
was, quite literally, to overwhelm the reader. In fact, the first page
tells us of evolution's "overwhelming evidence" - twice, in headline and
text.

Several scholars have noted in recent weeks that throughout the article,
small-scale or modest "variations" in animals are treated blithely as
evidence for the origin of new organs or body structures-what biologists
call "macroevolution." Huge unsolved problems that plague the current
gene-centered macroevolutionary theory - revealed in such cutting-edge
texts as MIT Press's

Origination of Organismal Form - are not mentioned.

Ignoring the opposition

Most significantly, there is no hint that intelligent, well-informed
dissent exists anywhere in the university world. As I read Quammen's
article, I kept looking in vain for his response to the telling critiques
of the Intelligent Design Movement. This is puzzling, in light of the
conundrum that is confronted in the article: Why so many Americans still
doubt Darwinism?

In terms of specific evidences (and "evidence" is a key word for Quammen),
major questions are unaddressed: Why not discuss the Cambrian Explosion?
Or the mystery of how complex molecular wonders such as the blood clotting
system or the flagellum could have possibly formed, step-by-Darwinian-step?
Why not confront, at least briefly, the riddle of how the vast quantities
of genetic information, sufficient to run even the simplest living system,
arose? And most tellingly: Why not reveal the widespread questioning of the
creative power of natural selection - a foundational problem now widely
admitted even among evolutionary researchers?

In a nutshell: How can an article of this importance completely ignore the
scholarly labors of a mushrooming network of scientists at leading
universities who have held important university-based symposia, and
published over fifty books in the last decade?

It appears that we can draw a significant conclusion about defensive
tactics. This "silent treatment" is how defenders of a creaking paradigm
will act when it comes to the task of persuading the undereducated.
Quammen's pedagogical strategy - a "dumbing-down" of the question of
origins-simply sidesteps a half-dozen key flashpoints. Effectively, the ID
Movement doesn't exist.

Quammen cannot be ignorant of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, or of his
published responses to his critics. He probably is aware of Jonathan
Wells' cogent criticism of the "classic proofs" of Darwinism in Icons of
Evolution. Besides, the design-detection system, published William Dembski
in The Design Inference and other books, is now common knowledge among most
evolutionary spokespersons, especially now that PBS stations across the US
have aired the pro-ID documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Biologists may try to nurture the illusion that ID is fading, but
publishing trends point the other way. Stephen Meyer published in August a
pro-ID article in a refereed scientific journal (Proceedings of the
Biological Society of Washington), followed by a research article on
proteins in another key journal by Behe and University of Pittsburgh
physicist David Snoke. ID is not fading; it is advancing into crucial new
territory: refereed technical journals.

Alas, National Geographic knows that it can never overwhelm the reader if
such unsolved problems and blistering dissent are squarely faced. The late
Stephen Jay Gould adopted the same approach in his tome, The Structure of
Evolutionary Theory, published shortly before his death in 2002. In the
course of 1433 pages, he did not mention a single ID scholar or argument,
even though he was familiar with ID, having attacked Phillip Johnson in
print as early as 1992. It's the easiest strategy in facing scientific
dissent: Act as if the dissenters do not exist.

Drawing a lesson

There is an important lesson to be drawn from Quammen's concluding
recollection of his visit with Philip Gingerich, a University of Michigan
paleontologist. Gingerich is described as a "reverent empiricist" who
"grew up in a conservative church in the Midwest and was not taught
anything about evolution."

"The subject was clearly skirted," said Gingerich, yet that background
helps him "understand the people who are skeptical about [evolution]." Now
he finds the experience of discovery a spiritual one. The factual answers
to his questions are in the "rocks of the ages." Gingerich's church
experience of "skirting the subject" of evolution is a tragic misstep of
church leadership that need not, and should not, be duplicated today.
An explosion of resources in this area have made it much easier for any
follower of Christ to evaluate the issues of Darwinism and Design from all
sides, and not from National Geographic's perspective that simply assumes
that nature - all on its own - has the ability to craft the diversity and
complexity of life on its own.

Paul identified the downward spiral in Romans chapter one as one where men
deified dumb nature, imbuing it with powers and spiritual significance that
can never be justified. The Christian, aware of this pitfall, and armed
with the best arguments and evidence on both sides of the issue, can
systematically compare and evaluate evolutionary theory and intelligent
design theory. For the philosophical naturalist, "nature is all there is."
Thus, the question of origins leads quickly to a guaranteed result: Darwin
wins, in a lopsided shutout.

Thomas Woodward is author of Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent
Design (Baker), a 2004 Christianity Today Book Award winner.

Community Services

Violence against Women is a Violation of Women's Human Rights
from a Hamilton freebie booklet "Informer" 2001

Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence is one of the most pervasive violations of a woman's human rights in the world. It occurs in all cultures, ethnic and socio-economic groups and is violence based on gender. Most countries and governments choose to view domestic violence as a relationship problem and therefore their remedies have focused on 'fixing' the individual or the couple.

By not addressing domestic violence as a social and gender specific problem women and their children continue to be vulnerable to ongoing abuses, both by their partners but also by the State and community who are not adequately prepared to provide protection and support for them.

Domestic violence is about someone exerting physical, sexual, psychological and / or spiritual power over another or others. It involves fear, intimidation and emotional deprivation and is displayed as a pattern of abusive behaviour. It occurs irrespective of age, social status or ethnic group and affects a significant number of people in the community. Women and their children are the targets of domestic violence; their partners are the main offenders.

You are probably living in a violent/abusive relationship if the person you live with does any of these on a regular basis (it does not have to happen often but rather, there's a pattern of this behaviour occurring):

• Threatens to beat or hurt you
• Does beat you or hurt you
• Coerces you into doing things you don't want to do
• Controls the finances
• Treats you like a servant
• Makes all the big decisions
• Lays down rules for your behaviour, dress, way you think
• Makes you feel bad, crazy, guilty. Puts you down, calls you names.
• Isolates you or makes enemies with your family / friends
• Breaks or throws things around the house, damages your personal items.
• Uses the kids against you, threatens to take or hurt the children to get you to comply.

You May
• Never know what is going to set him off. Find yourself always trying to guess his needs / wants.
• Over compensate for his bad behaviour.
• Get headaches or backaches. Have trouble sleeping. Have no energy.
• Think you are going mad. Feel guilty or ashamed. Do yourself harm.
• Feel fuzzy in the head, depressed, anxious and tense. Feel trapped most of the time.

What can you do?

Find someone you trust to talk to about it. Try an
advocate at Refuge 07 847 1190 or 07 855 1569.
Develop a safety plan for you and your children.
Plan ahead to get safely out of the house when
needed.

Believe in yourself and your ability to make changes
for yourself and/or your children.

Consider whether or not you want to stay in the
relationship.

SAFETY PLANNING:
A safety plan should be easy to remember and quick to implement.
• Get to know the neighbours, tell them if they hear anything to ring the Police.
• Plan ahead about what you will do if violence starts again or things become intolerable. Think about escape routes and safe houses in the neighbourhood you can go to.
• Have an emergency escape kit ready (clothes, medication, birth certificate/s. Passports, Bankcards, set of house & car keys, important documents, mobile phone, money etc).
• If physical abuse is about to occur, RUN - follow your safety plan. If you are not able to escape protect your head and abdomen, curl up into a ball and put your hands over your head.
• Teach your children how to keep themselves safe. Teach them who to ring when in need of assistance.
• Remove potential weapons or instruments that are harmful from the house setting.
• If you are being hit, yell loud and continuously.
LEAVE IN A HURRY
• Ring your local Women's Refuge 24 hour crisis line 07 834 3452. Transport can be arranged.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=584366

Trouble in Thailand

19 November 2004

A huge upsurge in sectarian violence, including beheadings and bombings, is
bringing chaos to southern provinces, where Muslims outnumber Buddhists.
The royal family has issued a call to arms, but the police and army have
little idea who they are fighting.
Jan McGirk reports


Speaking falteringly into the camera with tears in her eyes, Thailand's
Queen Sirikit told the story of how a young girl had tried in vain to
replace her father's severed head on the stump of his neck while his corpse
was laid out in their front room. Close to breaking down, the revered
72-year-old, who is a reluctant actor on the crowded stage of Thai
politics, vowed to overcome her poor eyesight and become directly involved
in the increasingly bloody battle against the phantom enemy that has
ravaged the southern provinces of Thailand, claiming 540 lives this year.

Speaking on national television she promised "that even at the age of 72, I
will learn how to shoot guns without using my glasses". She then called on
the government to instruct women and children in the use of firearms to
protect themselves against the "brutal bullying".

The monarch's rare emotional outburst was echoed by the King who warned the
country "might fall into ruin" unless the cycle of sectarian violence in
the Muslim-majority south can be brought under control.

Since January, more than 630 attacks with homemade bombs, of arson or of
vandalism have been made in the deep south, a 20-fold increase over recent
years. Notes left next to three beheaded Buddhists are not the only grisly
warnings that resentment towards central government is mounting; one
government railway worker was tied to tracks last month and left to be
dismembered by an express train.

These are just the latest victims in a spate of attacks this year on
officials, teachers, Buddhist monks and increasingly, ordinary Thai
Buddhist residents in the country's three southernmost provinces -
Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala. Some 1.7 million of the 2 million people
living here are Muslim, making it the only region with a majority Muslim
population in mainly Buddhist Thailand.

No one in Bangkok seems to know at whom they should be shooting. The
government has variously blamed the violence on gun-runners, drug
smugglers, bandits, crooked politicians and Islamic separatists.

A senior army commander, Sirichai Thanyasari, was talking tough but had no
more answers than anyone else on who the phantom enemy is. "I admit I
don't know who the enemy is but I will try my best to get him," he said.

More than 500 guns, rocket-propelled grenades and tons of dynamite and
fertiliser used for mobile phone-triggered bombs have been pilfered from
military facilities and private companies in the past 11 months.

Violence erupted in January when militants raided army barracks for weapons
and shot dead a half dozen soldiers, then it surged again after 107 Muslim
men were killed by government forces last spring as they allegedly
assaulted security posts with machetes. That day culminated in the siege
of the Krue Se mosque, where more than 30 young men had tried to take
sanctuary, only to be attacked with rockets. Buddhist temples in the area
have since been transformed into fortresses with sandbags and sentries
armed with Sten guns.

The response of Thailand's billionaire Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra,
has been by turns brutal and bizarre and is blamed by many for edging the
situation into another Kashmir crisis. After condoning the military's
excessive force in a crackdown against Muslim protestors that left 85 dead
last month, Mr Thaksin was told by the usually reticent King Bhumibol
Adulyadej to show restraint.

Now, after dozens of retaliatory killings against southern Buddhists, the
Prime Minister has implored all 63 million Thais to get busy folding up
origami doves in a show of sympathy for the families of more than 500
people who have been murdered since January. In an eccentric shock-and-awe
tactic, he has ordered fighter jets to bombard the restive Malay-speaking
region on 5 December with millions of these paper pigeons to mark King
Bhumibol's birthday.

Many academics and Muslim leaders dismissed Mr Thaksin's ambitious
"fowl-folding" project as a useless gesture. Long-suffering Muslim
residents, who live in the country's most impoverished region, will be left
to sweep up this peace litter. They say that a more meaningful gesture
would be to lift martial law in the three provinces.

One distinguished Islamic cleric suggested that most Muslims would much
prefer prayers - even proffered by Buddhists. Since late April, armed
escorts have had to shadow barefoot monks on their rounds for alms, after
several were gunned down by passing motorcyclists.

Nimu Makajae, an Islamic leader from Yala, warned that Mr Thaksin's plan of
bombing the south with paper birds might goad some militants to commit more
violence and suggested that this overwhelming peace offering ought to be
presented formally to community elders. But the wacky national craft
project is going ahead, largely because of the influence of Queen Sirikit,
who recently returned shaken from a two-month stay in the south.

The prospect of a gun-toting queen has galvanised the nation into a frenzy
of origami-folding. Mr Thaksin, who is adamant in his refusal to apologise
for his mishandling of the Tak Bai riot on 25 October, told a meeting of
civic leaders that the queen's sentiments should be heeded.

"We will not have our Queen use a gun to defend the country, but she has
shown she is ready to defend the country. All Thais can't sit idly by," he
said.

Mr Thaksin warned: "Those who want to divide our country must be punished
strictly by law. This is not too harsh. I will take care of them." Human
rights activists consider this an allusion to tactics used to quell the Tak
Bai riot, which erupted outside a police station in a border town last
month.

After failing to disperse when warning shots were fired, some 1,300
prisoners were packed five-deep into transport lorries. They were placed
face-down, like logs, and 78 men were crushed to death during the five-hour
ride to an army interrogation centre in Pattani. Rumours circulate that as
many as 40 protestors still cannot be accounted for and are presumed dead.

Government officials deny that there are further victims, and insist that
the stories are linked to 20 unidentified bodies hurriedly buried in mass
graves after no one came forward to claim them. Authorities have trawled
the Tak Bai river for further victims, and claim to have found grenades.

A government spokesman, Jakropob Penkair, said the trouble began because
the military and police forces were "so nervous ... so fearful ... so
tense''. He said so many Muslim protestors were arrested because the 100
hardline militants whom the soldiers sought managed to disperse into the
rioting mob. So everyone there was hauled in for questioning.

"A few low-ranking soldiers were in charge of putting them into the trucks.
They were so fearful that the people in the trucks would rise up to attack
them. We, as human beings, couldn't stand that fear," Mr Jakropob said.
"They foolishly asked the suspects to turn their stomachs to the floor and
piled one on top of another.''

Political opponents doubt the truth of this version. Many believe
eyewitnesses who say that security forces aimed directly into the crowd.
Six were killed instantly.

Thailand's Muslim neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, have expressed
concern. Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, proposed
autonomy for the south. "This is like the Palestinian issue," he said. "If
settled early, there will be no problems. But the situation will get
difficult if it is left to the command of the local army." Anwar Ibrahim,
the Malaysian opposition leader, said. "Thaksin's initial reaction seems to
be pathetic - to completely ignore the problems, and to be so arrogant," he
said.

Islamic leaders have called for calm, but the grief is turning to anger. A
government fact-finding mission has not soothed the situation much, as
Buddhist residents feel their plight is not being addressed by
international human rights advocates.

"The situation will become worse," one Pattani woman predicted to radio
reporters last week. Fearing reprisals from local officials, she asked not
to be named, but her assessment was scathing. "The government has used
violence to solve the problem, and it hasn't worked," she said. "Police
and soldiers don't understand the culture here. The authorities should use
local people, but they don't."

These appeals for a calmer approach have fallen on deaf ears, while
Buddhist soldiers and police have been queuing for sacred tattoos that they
believe will make them invulnerable to bullet wounds. After Ah-duenan
Singha, a Thai soldier, claimed to have emerged miraculously unharmed from
gun battles in Narathiwat this summer, the guru monk Phra Chaiya has been
overwhelmed with requests for similar protection. Once he etches a tattoo,
the monk blesses the design by chanting a mantra, and then administers a
swift kick to the recipient with his right leg.

Imam Winai Simun, of the Central Islamic Council of Thailand, says there is
more to the armed struggle than a battle for autonomy. "It is the
assumption of the state to always focus on separatism. But violent
incidents have been partly caused by influential figures with underground
business interests.

"This war among rival gangs and influential figures involves many people
and a huge financial interest. This is caused by the illegal arms trade,
the illegal oil trade, smuggling and other underground trades,'' he said.

Half of the region's 400 state schools have been barricaded due to security
fears. Islamic schools are under scrutiny, after rumours that radical
teachers may be preaching Jihadi doctrine learned in Pakistan's religious
schools. The changing pattern of violence since a low-level separatist
insurgency in the 1980s is causing alarm. Attacks have been considerably
better organised, and have targeted ordinary citizens.

Few officials in the Bangkok administration are talking about addressing
the underlying economic problems in the region where more than 70 per cent
of companies are owned by the Buddhist minority, while Muslim labourers
must often cross into Malaysia for casual work.

While, on the surface, the flocks of folded doves set to fall on the south
show Mr Thaksin heeding calls for a gentler approach, the Prime Minister
remains determined to ignore outside criticism of his handling of the
spiral of violence. A United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings,
Philip Alston, asked the government to allow him to investigate the
incident. But he received a curt refusal: "It is not the right time to
come," Mr Thaksen told him.

Modifying GM Food Perception
Simon Barber on Europe's reluctance to accept genetically modified foods.
By Erika Jonietz
Technology Review
December 2004
Simon Barber

Position: Director of the Plant Biotechnology Unit at EuropaBio®, the
European biotech industry association

Issue: Approval of genetically modified foods in Europe. Europeans have
been far more nervous about
the safety of GM foods than North Americans, essentially halting the
approval of new varieties since
1998. Are skittish regulators and consumers finally warming up to the
technology?
Personal Point of Impact: Helped develop Canada's regulatory system for GM
plants and worked at
the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development on biotechnology
and regulatory
harmonization. Currently leads EuropaBio®'s efforts to inform regulators
and policymakers about
agricultural biotechnology and present industry views on policy issues.

Technology Review: After almost six years in which no genetically modified
food or crop had been
approved for sale in Europe, a few varieties of corn finally made it
through the regulatory process this
year. Where do things stand now?
Simon Barber: There is a complete regulatory framework in place for
assessment and approval of
genetically modified plants that are going to be grown or imported for food
or food ingredients or animal
feed.

< Ve haf total kontrol.

We have seen two approvals through that process for imports for food and
animal-feed use of
maize, for instance. So that system seems to be beginning to work.

< - or perhaps not quite

Getting approvals to grow new GM crops here, that's a different matter.
That doesn't seem to be moving yet.

bravado sentence?

TR: Why not? Isn't there a process to approve new GM crops for cultivation?
Barber: The framework is there. What is under discussion, though, is the
concept of coexistence: once a
crop has approval, how can I, as a farmer, choose to grow one of these
varieties while minimizing any
pollen and gene movement into my neighbor's crops? At the moment, I don't
think we anticipate having
new EU legislation on coexistence; we see the European Commission having
its guidelines and then the
member states making their own legislation around those guidelines. Some
member states are
developing their rules in a way that might well prohibit their farmers from
ever choosing genetically
modified seed, but others are being more pragmatic. The fact that the
coexistence rules are in
development doesn't give a very strong incentive for people to go for
authorization to cultivate just at the
moment.

even minimally-informed politicians of credible 'co-existence' has left the
burden of proof just where it belongs: on the shoulders of the
gene-jockeys, rather than those who wish to keep organic agriculture
expanding.

TR: Why have European consumers been so wary about GM foods?
Barber: There are groups that have made a huge amount of noise about it.
They raise the question of
the precautionary principle and say that we're not absolutely certain of
safety-which actually we can say
about everything. If we're honest, no science will say that anything is
100 percent safe.

safe". What - as this PR man must know - is being demanded is
competent testing.

But there have been food scares here, such as mad cow, which means that
our citizens are concerned about the safety of their food supply. There
isn't an awful lot of what I would call very balanced debate;

efforts, under cover when possible.
Balanced debate, let alone *very* balanced debate, the GM-fad couldn't survive.

the debate tends to be very antagonistic, so you would have people very
much "for" talking to people very much "against."
If people don't have things explained to them well, there's room there for
them to have concerns, and
they're legitimate concerns.

this creep's worst lies. The truth is, the more you know about GM the more
aware you become of its dangers, lack of benefits, scientific junkiness,
and dishonesty.

TR: Has the European biotech industry done its share to explain the technology?
Barber: They have recently made more efforts in that direction, but at the
outset perhaps not as much as
they ought. But it's not just the job of the industry. If you look at the
industry, it's very small compared to the others that it supports. Plant
variety developers and people who produce seed - that's our industry -
support the farmers, which is a larger industry; the farmers then support
food processors, and the value gets bigger and bigger. At the top, one
U.K. supermarket chain probably has the same annual turnover as the whole
international seed trade. So in some ways, we are a limited resource to be
able to teach everybody in the world about modern biology and its uses.
It's something that I think everybody has to be involved in. It's easy for
people, once this had become an issue, to say, well, industry didn't do a
good job, but before anything can be imported into Europe and used as
animal feed or as an ingredient as
food for us humans, it had to go through a safety approval process. The
governments of the EU and the
EU itself have institutions that did all this. Well, how were they
explaining to their citizens what was going on? It's something that has to
be shared across the board.
TR: But biotech companies would seem to have the most to gain from consumer
acceptance of GM
foods, so shouldn't they bear most of the educational responsibility?
Barber: They should bear some responsibility, and in more recent years,
they have put effort into this.
There is something called Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe, which is a
program that some of the
companies have put money into to try to provide materials for outreach into
the food chain and to
citizens, and in some schools. It's not all-encompassing, but we are
making real efforts to do that.
TR: Some agricultural biotech companies, such as Syngenta, have reduced or
halted research in Europe
due to consumer resistance and regulatory inactivity. How does the
industry perceive current regulations?
Barber: I don't think that the regulatory machine in the EU is running
consistently yet. If you're using this
technology to develop a product and you want to have it on the market in 10
years, if the machine isn't
running consistently, you never know whether you'll get your product to
market. So perhaps one would
move one's research somewhere else, where there's a history of consistent
application of the regulation.
TR: Will some of these companies eventually return?
Barber: Until the question of how the regulatory system is going to run -
is it going to run at an even
speed, or is it going to be run in a discriminatory way in some countries?
- is sorted out, people will
probably think very carefully about that. For instance, it's very
difficult to do field trials here now. In the interest of transparency,


researchers make the locations of field trials known


, and many of them are destroyed every year by people with a conviction
against anybody using the technology. So that is part of the judgment a
company that is interested in using these technologies has to make about
where it does its basic research. Europe is one of the centers of origin
of this technology, in Belgium at Ghent University, 25 years ago. And I
think it's a sad thing that not just industry but also the public
institutions have been much reduced in their plant science activity because
of the way things have gone here.
Universities are finding people don't want to get involved in plant science
because they don't see a future
for it.


But we still have a commitment from companies here to continue. Bayer
CropScience®, which is a
German company, recently opened a new facility for plant science research
in Belgium, for instance.

the Belgians.

The industry does want to see this move forward, and they really do think
that plant science in Europe is
important.

Conner, Cohen, etc?

TR: Will GM foods and crops ever enjoy the acceptance level in Europe that
they have in the United
States?
Barber: I would like to think so.

thinking so, but I would like to.

It may be a good many years away. But if you look to see how the
technology is being used to date, it's provided benefits to farmers. I
think it's a very, very sad thing that a lot of people in the West living
in urban areas don't perceive a benefit to a farmer as a benefit to
themselves, because they are benefits to us.

farmers' can so long continue.

But this is also an opportunity to diversify the way we use plants to meet
some other needs in a more environmentally sustainable way.


these roads. It's a tool. We say "GM," and we think of one or two crops.
But it's a tool that we can use to do a multitude of useful things.

This vague slogan is essentially a lie. Very few useful things
have been done by GM.

R