Luskin's Breathtaking "Scientific Discoveries"

Casey Luskin has been writing a series of posts on the DI blog that alleges to contain "International Scientific Discoveries Since Kitzmiller Which Support ID." You can see Part 3 here, and you're gonna love it. In the entire series, there is not a single research article that actually supports ID; all Luskin does is cite scientific papers that show disputes over some particular hypothesis within the evolutionary model as proof that evolution must be wrong and hence ID must be right. This is standard issue creationist behavior. But part three takes vacuousness to an entirely new level.

There are three "scientific discoveries" mentioned that, ostensibly, "support ID." The first is the find of Tiktaalik roseae, which of course not only does not support ID but which provides yet another successful prediction for evolutionary biology. Luskin does not pretend that it supports ID, but he does make the following idiotic argument:

In 2006, Darwinists were so eager to promote evolution to the public that they called a fish with fins a "missing link." Strikingly, it was only after promoting this fossil that they admitted that there exists "a large morphological gap between" the fins of fish and the true feet of early tetrapods like Acanthostega.

It's arguments like this that strip off the silly disguise from ID and reveal that it really is nothing more than creationist anti-evolutionism. If ID really is consistent with common descent, as they keep claiming, then why on earth would they need to make a big deal out of this fossil? ID should be absolutely fine with transitional fossils and they certainly shouldn't make an issue out of gaps in the fossil record; those arguments are useful only if you are arguing against common descent. They provide no support whatsoever to any other argument.

If ID is a scientific theory, such arguments make no sense; if ID is just a PR campaign predicated on the false dichotomy that if they can knock down evolution it will automatically mean ID is true, then it makes perfect sense. And since the find of Tiktaalik cannot possibly be spun as "supporting ID", one can only conclude that the only possible reason Luskin mentions it is in service to that PR campaign - do anything you can to make people doubt evolution because that, they think, means ID must be true. Good PR campaign, but highly irrational and unscientific. Just more evidence that ID is all about PR and not at all about science.

The rest of the post doesn't fare much better. He mentions and tries to knock down a research article about coopting of pre-existing genetic function that debunks irreducible complexity, but that certainly doesn't transform that article into a "scientific discovery that supports ID." And lastly, he rehashes - again - the same old DI lie about Axe's 2000 paper, which not only does not support ID but actually supports evolution. It's certainly telling that in 3 essays, comprising maybe 5000 words that allege to present "scientific discoveries that support ID", they have to rehash a 6 year old study that supports evolution not once but twice and can't come up with a single research project that actually does support ID. Meanwhile, if you took all of the published scientific papers that have helped fill out our understanding of evolutionary theory in just the last year, you would likely need at least a large room in a library to pile all of the papers up.

Say it with me again: ID is not a scientific theory, it's a PR campaign. PR campaigns produce nothing but press releases; scientific theories produce actual research.

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