APPENDIX II EXAMPLES OF SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (NAS) 1 Thru 6 The National Academy of Sciences currently presents its position that we humans are the product of chance reptile descent in a book entitled Science, Evolution, and Creationism (The National Academies Press, 2008). Published in response to continuing challenges to Darwinism, the book targets “school board members, science teachers and other education leaders, policy makers, legal scholars, and others in the community who are committed to providing students with quality science education” (pp. xi - xii). The content appears over the signature of Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Harvey V. Fineberg, President, Institute of Medicine; and Francisco J. Ayala, the book committee chair. The seventeen members of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences and the twenty-two members of the Council of the Institute of Medicine “approved this document.” The book committee consisted of fourteen individuals in addition to Ayala. Cicerone, Fineberg, and Ayala thanked twenty-six additional persons by name “for their review of this report.” I direct the following open letter directly to Cicerone in that he is the one ultimately responsible for the content of the book. Dear Mr. Cicerone, In that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was created by an act of Congress in 1863 to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art,” I, and the rest of the citizens of the United States, have a right to expect that you, as president of that organization, will present your findings logically, straightforwardly, and competently. Indeed, we trust you to do so. As the leading advocate for the teaching of Darwinian evolution in our public school science classrooms, you have violated that trust, and egregiously so. Your promotion of Darwinian evolution is fraught with illogic, deception, and incompetence. To demonstrate your illogic, deception, and incompetence, I cite thirty specific examples of scientific incompetence below, referring almost entirely to the book published over your signature entitled, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, directed to school boards, science teachers, and the general public. I also cite a book written by your book committee chair, Francisco J. Ayala, and reference the recorded remarks of Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of your fifteen book committee members. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 1 You assert nine times in your book that Darwinian evolution (molecules-to-man evolution) is a “fact” (pp. xii, xiii, 1, 11, 12, 39, 49, 51, and 52). Yet a careful reading of your book shows that you admit that you have no “plausible hypothesis” for the origin of life: “Constructing a plausible hypothesis for life’s origins will require that many questions be answered” (p. 22). Competent scientists do not assert that their theory is a fact while at the same time admitting that they lack a plausible hypothesis for the very foundation of it. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 2 You further acknowledge that you have no evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes or for what you call speciation (the alleged evolution of one specific species into another): “Of course, there remain many interesting questions about evolution, such as the evolutionary origin of sex or different mechanisms of speciation” (p. 52). These “mechanisms” that allegedly lead to one specific species allegedly evolving into another species through an addition of essential genetic information, remain unknown—“questions about evolution” without answers. No mechanism in nature has been discovered that can develop the genetic data of a certain species and cause it to become another species. Out of the two million or so species on this planet, you cannot pick a single one (a pine tree, anchovy, garden spider, whale, potato, snail, human, eagle, firefly, bumblebee, etc.) and identify, with empirical evidence, the species from which it allegedly evolved. Neither can you produce any empirical evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes. Absent this crucial evidence for your “theory,” you yet proclaim to our school children that their lives are the product of chance human reptile descent: “[M]ammals evolved from different lineages of ancient reptiles” (p. 8). Competent scientists do not insist that their theory is a “fact” while lacking the empirical evidence for two essential elements of it; neither do they pretend that “mechanisms for speciation” exist when no such alleged mechanisms can be found in the natural world. For intentionally misleading our children into believing that they are descended from reptiles by chance, you should be deeply ashamed. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 3 You hide your lack of empirical evidence for molecules-to-man evolution behind “natural selection,” a distracting and indefinable figure of speech masquerading as a scientific term.   You, and others going back to the time of Darwin, have been unable to identify an operative, literal scientific principle that accounts for the alleged evolution of a single living cell into all the varieties of life we see around us today. Unable to discover a literal scientific principle, you rely for your speculations upon a mere figure of speech: natural selection. Natural selection meets the definition of a personification in that it gives human characteristics to something that is not human: nature. Unlike humans, nature has no faculty for making choices. You write that “nature ‘selects’ traits that enhance the ability of organisms to survive and reproduce” (p. 5), when, in fact, as your quotes around the word ‘selects’ so aptly indicate, nature has no ability to “select” anything at all.   You have made natural “selection” into your do-all and be-all of evolutionary speculation. Yet, natural “selection” actually “selects” nothing. The figure of speech, natural selection, cannot develop the genetic data of a species; therefore, it cannot be used to account for the emergence of new species.  In your book, you define natural selection in three contradictory ways: as “the driving force behind evolution” (p. 23), as a “process” (p. 50), and as an outcome or “reproductive success” (p. 5). The “driving force” is unquantifiable; the “process” is indefinable; and the “reproductive success” turns out to be anything and everything we see in nature itself.  In his own book entitled Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, your book committee chair, Francisco J. Ayala, writes about natural selection in some detail. He offers this most revealing insight: “However, it is not possible to formulate a satisfactory definition of natural selection” (p. 52, Ayala’s emphasis). A phrase that cannot be satisfactorily defined cannot be satisfactorily understood. Thus, by the admission of your own book committee chair, natural selection is not in any sense a scientific explanation, but rather a deceptive figure of speech, an outright personification of nature that disguises your lack of empirical evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes and for the alleged evolution of one specific species into another.  The utter lack of scientific substance inherent in the term “natural selection” is easily grasped when, in sentences including it from your book, we substitute the term “indefinable figure of speech”: Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were the first to identify an indefinable figure of speech as the driving force behind evolution, or what Darwin termed “descent with modification ” (pp. 22-23). The process by which organisms with advantageous variations have greater reproductive success than other organisms within a population is known as “an indefinable figure of speech” (p. 50). The concept of an indefinable figure of speech has been applied in many fields outside biology (p. 9). In that “natural selection” is “a personification of nature,” we may also logically substitute that phrase as well: A personification of nature also can reduce the prevalence of traits that diminish organisms’ abilities to survive and reproduce (p. 5). However, a personification of nature also can have radically different evolutionary effects over different timescales (p. 6). Over multiple generations, some populations of organisms subjected to a personification of nature may change in ways that make them better able to survive and reproduce in a given environment (p. 50). Competent scientists do not forego their search for literal scientific principles in nature in favor of embracing and embellishing an indefinable and scientifically meaningless figure of speech. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 4 You ignore the proverbial “elephant in the room”: the question of the origin and purpose of the enormous amount of language-based specified and complex encoded information within the DNA of each living cell that functions as intelligently expressed operating instructions. Codes always originate from an intelligent source. There is no known process, no known law of nature, and no known sequence of events that can lead to information coming into being by itself. That is why, in your book, you do not attempt to explain the origin and operation of the symbols, grammar, instructions and meaning that are part of the complex information codes within each living cell. You mention the genetic code or encoding only once, referring to “the gene that encodes the hormone leptin” (p. 31). You offer no explanation for the origin of the encoding, because an encoding system always involves a non-material intellectual process, prima facie proof of design, and thus of a Designer. You touch on the subject one other time, writing that “Genes . . . orchestrate the development of a single-celled egg into a multicellular organism” (p. 4), but you fail to point out to your readers that orchestration requires a composer or conductor with intelligence and purpose. Competent scientists do not avoid examination and discussion of phenomena that contradict their worldview. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 5 Absent a “plausible hypothesis” for the origin of life, absent empirical evidence for the alleged evolutionary origin of the sexes, for the alleged evolution of one specific species into another, and absent any explanation for the origin of the complex encoded instructions within each living cell:   You and your hierarchy insist upon an arbitrary atheistic framework within which open-minded, truth-seeking, inductive science is impossible. You further attempt to foist that atheistic framework upon our school children and the general public. In November of 2006, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and one of the fifteen committee members responsible for producing your book, spoke at an atheists’ conference in San Diego entitled “Beyond Belief: Reason, Religion & Survival.” The following excerpt is from Session Two on November 5th. At 40:45 of his presentation, Tyson remarked to fellow atheist, Lawrence Krause: I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the National Academy [of Sciences] rejects God, I want to know why 15% don’t. That’s really what we’ve got to address here. Otherwise, the public is secondary to this . . . If you can’t convert our colleagues, why do you have any hope that you’re going to convert the public? A few moments later, atheist panelist Michael Shermer suggested that the true figure of NAS scientists who reject God is 93%. Tyson’s words reveal that it is his intention to convince “the public” to “reject God,” and to “convert” them to atheism. The members of the public most vulnerable to his determined effort in this regard are our public school children. He speaks with confidence about accomplishing his mission, as if he has you and the full weight of the NAS hierarchy behind him, because he does. In another part of his speech (13:00) on this same subject, Tyson had vehemently demanded to know, “How come this number [the small percentage who hold some kind of belief in God] isn’t zero?” Tyson is quite correct to raise this question. He wants to know why all the members of NAS aren’t atheists because logically, they should be. Atheism and molecules-to-man evolution are inextricably bound together. Both reject the possible existence of a Creator/Designer, and are grounded in atheist/materialist philosophy. Tyson’s remarks demonstrate that atheist ideology is the very foundation of your “science.” Competent scientists seek the truth in nature. They do not make it their primary goal to convert the public and our school children to atheism. SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 6 Absent a “plausible hypothesis” for the origin of life, absent empirical evidence for the alleged evolutionary origin of the sexes, for the alleged evolution of one specific species into another, and absent any explanation for the origin of the complex encoded instructions within each living cell:   You define your own molecules-to-man world-view as a religious belief. You write: “Many religious beliefs do not rely on evidence gathered from the natural world. On the contrary, an important component of religious belief is faith, which implies acceptance of a truth regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth” (p. 50). You acknowledge that in regard to the origin of life, you lack a “plausible hypothesis,” something that ought to be the very foundation of your theory. Furthermore, you are unable to produce any empirical evidence for the alleged evolutionary origin of the sexes, and you cannot pick a single living species and identify the species from which it allegedly evolved. In addition, you are unable to formulate a literal scientific principle that explains how molecules-to-man evolution allegedly operates, relying instead upon an indefinable figure of speech, natural “selection.” Finally, you have no explanation whatever for the encoded instructions operating within each living cell. Yet, again and again in your book, you adamantly insist that molecules-to-man evolution is a “fact,” “regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against it.” Absent empirical evidence for this belief of yours that Neo-Darwinism is “a truth,” one must conclude, in accord with your own words, that your belief is founded upon a form of religious belief or faith.  Competent scientists rely upon empirical evidence for their conclusions, not religious faith. In “Scientific Incompetence Example Number 5,” above, your book committee member, Neil deGrasse Tyson, reveals that religious belief system to be atheism. NAS Incompetence Examples 7-12

Outing the

MORONOCRACY

ENDING THE RULE OF THE BLIND, THE STUPID, AND

THE DISGRACEFUL IN AMERICAN SOCIETY

Absent actual evidence for their alleged chance reptile descent, the NAS uses in its booklet, among other empty techniques of seduction, repetitive false affirmations:

“The overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the basis for modern biology.”

“There is no controversy in the scientific community about whether evolution has occurred.”

“Biologists also are confident in their understanding of how evolution occurs.”

“The overwhelming majority of scientists no longer question whether evolution has occurred and continues to occur.”

“Scientists’ confidence about the occurrence of evolution is based on an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence.”

“Evolution is accepted within the scientific community.”

“Evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence and widely accepted by the scientific community.”

“Because of the immense body of evidence, scientists treat the occurrence of evolution as one of the most securely established of scientific facts.”

Scientists are confident that the basic components of evolution will continue to be supported by new evidence, as they have been for the past 150 years.”

Etc.

Science to the NAS is nothing more than a popularity contest among atheists.

APPENDIX II

EXAMPLES OF SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (NAS) 1 Thru 6

The National Academy of Sciences currently presents its position that we humans are the product of chance reptile descent in a book entitled Science, Evolution, and Creationism (The National Academies Press, 2008). Published in response to continuing challenges to Darwinism, the book targets “school board members, science teachers and other education leaders, policy makers, legal scholars, and others in the community who are committed to providing students with quality science education” (pp. xi - xii). The content appears over the signature of Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences; Harvey V. Fineberg, President, Institute of Medicine; and Francisco J. Ayala, the book committee chair. The seventeen members of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences and the twenty-two members of the Council of the Institute of Medicine “approved this document.” The book committee consisted of fourteen individuals in addition to Ayala. Cicerone, Fineberg, and Ayala thanked twenty-six additional persons by name “for their review of this report.”

I direct the following open letter directly to Cicerone in that he is the one ultimately responsible for the content of the book.

Dear Mr. Cicerone,

In that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was created by an act of Congress in 1863 to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art,” I, and the rest of the citizens of the United States, have a right to expect that you, as president of that organization, will present your findings logically, straightforwardly, and competently. Indeed, we trust you to do so. As the leading advocate for the teaching of Darwinian evolution in our public school science classrooms, you have violated that trust, and egregiously so. Your promotion of Darwinian evolution is fraught with illogic, deception, and incompetence.

To demonstrate your illogic, deception, and incompetence, I cite thirty specific examples of scientific incompetence below, referring almost entirely to the book published over your signature entitled, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, directed to school boards, science teachers, and the general public. I also cite a book written by your book committee chair, Francisco J. Ayala, and reference the recorded remarks of Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of your fifteen book committee members.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 1

You assert nine times in your book that Darwinian evolution (molecules-to-man evolution) is a “fact” (pp. xii, xiii, 1, 11, 12, 39, 49, 51, and 52). Yet a careful reading of your book shows that you admit that you have no “plausible hypothesis” for the origin of life: “Constructing a plausible hypothesis for life’s origins will require that many questions be answered” (p. 22).

Competent scientists do not assert that their theory is a fact while at the same time admitting that they lack a plausible hypothesis for the very foundation of it.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 2

You further acknowledge that you have no evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes or for what you call speciation (the alleged evolution of one specific species into another): “Of course, there remain many interesting questions about evolution, such as the evolutionary origin of sex or different mechanisms of speciation” (p. 52). These “mechanisms” that allegedly lead to one specific species allegedly evolving into another species through an addition of essential genetic information, remain unknown—“questions about evolution” without answers. No mechanism in nature has been discovered that can develop the genetic data of a certain species and cause it to become another species. Out of the two million or so species on this planet, you cannot pick a single one (a pine tree, anchovy, garden spider, whale, potato, snail, human, eagle, firefly, bumblebee, etc.) and identify, with empirical evidence, the species from which it allegedly evolved. Neither can you produce any empirical evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes.

Absent this crucial evidence for your “theory,” you yet proclaim to our school children that their lives are the product of chance human reptile descent: “[M]ammals evolved from different lineages of ancient reptiles” (p. 8).

Competent scientists do not insist that their theory is a “fact” while lacking the empirical evidence for two essential elements of it; neither do they pretend that “mechanisms for speciation” exist when no such alleged mechanisms can be found in the natural world. For intentionally misleading our children into believing that they are descended from reptiles by chance, you should be deeply ashamed.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 3

You hide your lack of empirical evidence for molecules-to-man evolution behind “natural selection,” a distracting and indefinable figure of speech masquerading as a scientific term.
You, and others going back to the time of Darwin, have been unable to identify an operative, literal scientific principle that accounts for the alleged evolution of a single living cell into all the varieties of life we see around us today. Unable to discover a literal scientific principle, you rely for your speculations upon a mere figure of speech: natural selection. Natural selection meets the definition of a personification in that it gives human characteristics to something that is not human: nature. Unlike humans, nature has no faculty for making choices. You write that “nature ‘selects’ traits that enhance the ability of organisms to survive and reproduce” (p. 5), when, in fact, as your quotes around the word ‘selects’ so aptly indicate, nature has no ability to “select” anything at all.
You have made natural “selection” into your do-all and be-all of evolutionary speculation. Yet, natural “selection” actually “selects” nothing. The figure of speech, natural selection, cannot develop the genetic data of a species; therefore, it cannot be used to account for the emergence of new species.
In your book, you define natural selection in three contradictory ways: as “the driving force behind evolution” (p. 23), as a “process” (p. 50), and as an outcome or “reproductive success” (p. 5). The “driving force” is unquantifiable; the “process” is indefinable; and the “reproductive success” turns out to be anything and everything we see in nature itself.
In his own book entitled Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, your book committee chair, Francisco J. Ayala, writes about natural selection in some detail. He offers this most revealing insight: “However, it is not possible to formulate a satisfactory definition of natural selection” (p. 52, Ayala’s emphasis). A phrase that cannot be satisfactorily defined cannot be satisfactorily understood. Thus, by the admission of your own book committee chair, natural selection is not in any sense a scientific explanation, but rather a deceptive figure of speech, an outright personification of nature that disguises your lack of empirical evidence for the alleged evolution of the sexes and for the alleged evolution of one specific species into another.
The utter lack of scientific substance inherent in the term “natural selection” is easily grasped when, in sentences including it from your book, we substitute the term “indefinable figure of speech”:

Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were the first to identify an indefinable figure of speech as the driving force behind evolution, or what Darwin termed “descent with modification ” (pp. 22-23).

The process by which organisms with advantageous variations have greater reproductive success than other organisms within a population is known as “an indefinable figure of speech” (p. 50).

The concept of an indefinable figure of speech has been applied in many fields outside biology (p. 9).

In that “natural selection” is “a personification of nature,” we may also logically substitute that phrase as well:

A personification of nature also can reduce the prevalence of traits that diminish organisms’ abilities to survive and reproduce (p. 5).

However, a personification of nature also can have radically different evolutionary effects over different timescales (p. 6).

Over multiple generations, some populations of organisms subjected to a personification of nature may change in ways that make them better able to survive and reproduce in a given environment (p. 50).

Competent scientists do not forego their search for literal scientific principles in nature in favor of embracing and embellishing an indefinable and scientifically meaningless figure of speech.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 4

You ignore the proverbial “elephant in the room”: the question of the origin and purpose of the enormous amount of language-based specified and complex encoded information within the DNA of each living cell that functions as intelligently expressed operating instructions.

Codes always originate from an intelligent source. There is no known process, no known law of nature, and no known sequence of events that can lead to information coming into being by itself. That is why, in your book, you do not attempt to explain the origin and operation of the symbols, grammar, instructions and meaning that are part of the complex information codes within each living cell.

You mention the genetic code or encoding only once, referring to “the gene that encodes the hormone leptin” (p. 31). You offer no explanation for the origin of the encoding, because an encoding system always involves a non-material intellectual process, prima facie proof of design, and thus of a Designer. You touch on the subject one other time, writing that “Genes . . . orchestrate the development of a single-celled egg into a multicellular organism” (p. 4), but you fail to point out to your readers that orchestration requires a composer or conductor with intelligence and purpose.

Competent scientists do not avoid examination and discussion of phenomena that contradict their worldview.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 5

Absent a “plausible hypothesis” for the origin of life, absent empirical evidence for the alleged evolutionary origin of the sexes, for the alleged evolution of one specific species into another, and absent any explanation for the origin of the complex encoded instructions within each living cell:

You and your hierarchy insist upon an arbitrary atheistic framework within which open-minded, truth-seeking, inductive science is impossible. You further attempt to foist that atheistic framework upon our school children and the general public.

In November of 2006, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and one of the fifteen committee members responsible for producing your book, spoke at an atheists’ conference in San Diego entitled “Beyond Belief: Reason, Religion & Survival.” The following excerpt is from Session Two on November 5th. At 40:45 of his presentation, Tyson remarked to fellow atheist, Lawrence Krause:

I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the National Academy [of Sciences] rejects God, I want to know why 15% don’t. That’s really what we’ve got to address here. Otherwise, the public is secondary to this . . . If you can’t convert our colleagues, why do you have any hope that you’re going to convert the public?

A few moments later, atheist panelist Michael Shermer suggested that the true figure of NAS scientists who reject God is 93%.

Tyson’s words reveal that it is his intention to convince “the public” to “reject God,” and to “convert” them to atheism. The members of the public most vulnerable to his determined effort in this regard are our public school children. He speaks with confidence about accomplishing his mission, as if he has you and the full weight of the NAS hierarchy behind him, because he does.

In another part of his speech (13:00) on this same subject, Tyson had vehemently demanded to know, “How come this number [the small percentage who hold some kind of belief in God] isn’t zero?” Tyson is quite correct to raise this question. He wants to know why all the members of NAS aren’t atheists because logically, they should be. Atheism and molecules-to-man evolution are inextricably bound together. Both reject the possible existence of a Creator/Designer, and are grounded in atheist/materialist philosophy. Tyson’s remarks demonstrate that atheist ideology is the very foundation of your “science.”

Competent scientists seek the truth in nature. They do not make it their primary goal to convert the public and our school children to atheism.

SCIENTIFIC INCOMPETENCE EXAMPLE NUMBER 6

You define your own molecules-to-man world-view as a religious belief. You write: “Many religious beliefs do not rely on evidence gathered from the natural world. On the contrary, an important component of religious belief is faith, which implies acceptance of a truth regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth” (p. 50). You acknowledge that in regard to the origin of life, you lack a “plausible hypothesis,” something that ought to be the very foundation of your theory. Furthermore, you are unable to produce any empirical evidence for the alleged evolutionary origin of the sexes, and you cannot pick a single living species and identify the species from which it allegedly evolved. In addition, you are unable to formulate a literal scientific principle that explains how molecules-to-man evolution allegedly operates, relying instead upon an indefinable figure of speech, natural “selection.” Finally, you have no explanation whatever for the encoded instructions operating within each living cell. Yet, again and again in your book, you adamantly insist that molecules-to-man evolution is a “fact,” “regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against it.” Absent empirical evidence for this belief of yours that Neo-Darwinism is “a truth,” one must conclude, in accord with your own words, that your belief is founded upon a form of religious belief or faith.
Competent scientists rely upon empirical evidence for their conclusions, not religious faith. In “Scientific Incompetence Example Number 5,” above, your book committee member, Neil deGrasse Tyson, reveals that religious belief system to be atheism.

NAS Incompetence Examples 7-12