The War on Christmas -- up a notch

Baby Jesus has declared He will no longer merely "stay the course," but will escalate Christian Soldier offensives in the ongoing War on Christmas.

Can Intelligent Design researchers say this?

Michael Eisen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the co-leader of a project studying comparative genomics of fruit flies. After sequencing the genomes of ten species of fruit flies they followed the evolutionary trail of genes and associated regulatory regions, pathways, and cellular processes in these ten plus two additional species of Drosophila.

This work allowed the researchers to construct a phylogenetic tree showing the relatedness of the dozen species. But it allows much more, and that is summed up by a quote from Eisen; their work

allows you to map where [genetic] changes occur along the tree, and that allows you to study the process of evolution, not just the product.

Now, just for comparison, what research in Intelligent Design Creationism can make a similar claim? What cdesign proponentsists have even agreed that it is appropriate to study the process of Intelligent Design Creationism?


A brief summary of this work appears in the 9 November issue of Science; more than 40 papers published in Nature and other journals deal with various aspects of it.

I expect letters

Nova's Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial airs tomorrow (Tuesday, 13 November) on PBS. The show has already received excellent reviews, including one in Nature (in the 8 November issue, subscription required for online version). The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) offers a few quotes from the review here.

I predict that, for some weeks following the show, the two York (Pennsylvania) newspapers will carry another load of letters to the editors. Other than possibly noting what the outcome of the trial was, I strongly suspect that most of the letters will be virtually identical to ones printed before the trial was over.

The buffoons at the Discovery Institute have posted a complaint about the show.It's the same old tired sour grapes whining. I wonder why they did not bother to complain when PBS broadcast the anti-science show, The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe a while back.

UPDATE: I missed it when it appeared, but Mike Argento, York Daily Record columnist, had a related note in his blog. The news of perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Barry Bonds after four years of investigation reminded Argento of actions by certain Dover board members. One (of two) comments referred to the Nova presentation.

Don't miss this--Kitzmiller v. Dover on PBS

Okay, Earth Science Week came and went with little notice. But please notice this episode of Nova on PBS--it's a reenactment of the case that the Discovery Institute was eager to see come to trial...then awfully anxious to see not come to trial...then dismissive of the case as not important.

The show airs 8:00 PM Tuesday, 13 November (check your local listings). If you can't wait, check out the promo on the PBS Web site, where, besides the preview, you can find related information and discussions.

As former Dover Area School Board member and one of the chief Creationists involved in the shenanigans, Bill Buckingham, said, "This is never gonna go away." That's right, Bill; the trial exposed Intelligent Design for what it is--anti-science Creationist claptrap with the primary purpose of bringing proselytizing religion into the classroom.