Lies and Propaganda: Tyson’s “Cosmos”

If you don’t think of our scientific establishment as repressive propagandists, you might think again. Casey Luskin asks the question:

• Are scientists today free to express their views when they feel there are problems with authoritative paradigms, like modern evolutionary biology?

Luskin then allows the evolutionists to answer this question:

• "There's a feeling in biology that scientists should keep their dirty laundry hidden, because the religious right are always looking for any argument between evolutionists as support for their creationist theories. There's a strong school of thought that one should never question Darwin in public." (W. Daniel Hillis, in "Introduction: The Emerging Third Culture," in Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, edited by John Brockman (Touchstone, 1995), p. 26.)

• "It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection ... My skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. This is especially true with regard to the origin of life ... I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science. ... In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture... by the defenders of intelligent design. ... [T]he problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair." (Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, p. (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 6-7, 10.)

• "Honest critics of the evolutionary way of thinking who have emphasized problems with biologists' dogma and their undefinable terms are often dismissed as if they were Christian fundamentalist zealots or racial bigots. But the part of this book's thesis that insists such terminology interferes with real science requires an open and thoughtful debate about the reality of the claims made by zoocentric evolutionists." (Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of the Species, (Basic Books, 2003), p. 29).)

• "It is dangerous to raise attention to the fact that there is no satisfying explanation for macroevolution. One easily becomes a target of orthodox evolutionary biology and a false friend of proponents of non-scientific concepts. According to the former we already know all the relevant principles that explain the complexity and diversity of life on earth; for the latter science and research will never be able to provide a conclusive explanation, simply because complex life does not have a natural origin." (Günter Theißen, "The proper place of hopeful monsters in evolutionary biology," Theory in Biosciences, 124: 349-369 (2006).)

• "We've been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn't say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal is to bring Science into disrepute. ... [N]eo-Darwinism is taken as axiomatic; it goes literally unquestioned. A view that looks to contradict it, either directly or by implication is ipso facto rejected, however plausible it may otherwise seem. Entire departments, journals and research centres now work on this principle." (Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), pp. xx, xvi.)

Luskin adds:

• A 2008 article in Nature on the Altenberg 16 conference explained that some others willingly self-censor their own criticisms so as to avoid "handing ammunition" to "creationists."

• Says [Jerry] Coyne: "People shouldn't suppress their differences to placate creationists, but to suggest that neo-Darwinism has reached some kind of crisis point plays into creationists' hands."

• Chinese paleontologist J.Y. Chen [claims]: "In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government. In America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin."

In such a politically correct, hostile, propagandistic, and self-censored climate, it would seem that the average “Joe” needs to be careful about what he absorbs from the scientific elites.

In the Christian Research Journal, Luskin warns about the reboot of Cosmos - Neil Degrasse Tyson’s current series to sell evolution:

• The Cosmos reboot has been sharply criticized – even by evolutionists – for inventing stories and religious persecution of scientists while whitewashing religion’s positive historical influence on science. It promotes “unguided” and “mindless” evolution while omitting scientific evidence that challenges neo-Darwinism or supports intelligent design… It was created by celebrity atheists seeking to advance a materialistic worldview… Public school teachers have already expressed their intent to use Cosmos. (CRI, Vol. 37, number 04, 34-41)

The executive producer admits its propagandistic intentions:

• Seth Macfarlane acknowledges the series’ intent to oppose “a resurgence of creationism and intelligent design… theory”… Macfarlane is concerned about “the rise of schools questioning evolution,” which is “incredibly damaging to the evolution of any society.” (35-36) 

Are these adversarial views a danger to science or just to the religion of naturalism, which requires that only natural explanations are allowable? Instead, many have written that Christianity has largely contributed to the flourishing of science:

• [Ian] Barber answers: “Many historians of science have acknowledged the importance of the Western religious tradition in molding assumptions about nature that were congenial to the scientific enterprise.” Thus Ronald Numbers explains, “The greatest myth in the history of science and religion holds that they have been in a state of constant conflict.” (37)

However, for many evolutionists, ideology should trump the accurate presentation of scientific findings:

• Historian Joseph Martin proposes granting Cosmos “the artistic license to lie” when done “in the service of a greater truth.” He writes, “Perhaps the greater truth here is that we do need to promote greater public trust in science if we are going to tackle some of the frankly quite terrifying challenges ahead and maybe a touch of taradiddle [lies] in that direction isn’t the worst thing.” (37) 

Since when do lies “promote greater public trust in science?” In the long run, they will not; nor will their repressive and censorious culture:

• Epidemiologist W. Daniel Hillis laments “a feeling in biology that scientists should keep their dirty laundry hidden, which creates “a strong school of thought that one should never question Darwin in public.” Two Rutgers cognitive scientists say essentially the same: “We’ve been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn’t say so. Not, anyhow, in public.” (38) 

Nor even in the media, the public schools, and in the university! They present a monolithic front. We are faced with a conspiracy of silence in the face of the militant enforcement of what the elites now call “science.”  This is well-oiled by a slick and aggressive propagandistic machine. Tyson likens macro-evolution deniers to Hitler supporters:

• Cosmos shows crowds cheering for Hitler while Tyson says, “Human intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen. The ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hard-wired tendencies [like religion and ID] sometimes themselves disguised as the light of reason is worrisome.” (40)

Meanwhile, generations have been “sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted” by the notion that humanity arose uncaused out of nothing.

Evolution and the Scientific Consensus

Is there really a scientific consensus in favor of macro-evolution? According to Casey Luskin, research coordinator for the Discovery Institute, such a consensus, if it still exists, is quickly coming apart:

• In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides admitted he has “no idea” how “life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.” More recently, a paper in Complexity acknowledged, “Many different ideas are competing and none is available to provide a sufficiently plausible root to the first living organisms.” (CRJ, Vol 37/#03, 37)

This issue of “consensus” is not a minor one. Evolutionists continually appeal to this alleged consensus to argue that they represent science, while IDers and creationists do not. Therefore, in order to be in step with science, schools must use the textbooks that advance evolution. It also means that there should be no place for ID or even any criticism of evolution in the classroom.

However, this “consensus” is becoming increasingly elusive, even on Darwin’s home-turf:

• In 2008, sixteen leading biologists convened in Altenberg, Austria, to discuss problems with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. When covering this conference, Nature quoted leading scientists saying things like, “evolutionary theory has told us little about” important events like “the origin of wings and the invasion of the land.” That same year, Cornell evolutionary biologist William Provine explained that “every assertion of the “evolutionary synthesis below is false,” including: “natural selection was the primary mechanism at every level of the evolutionary process,” “macroevolution was a simple extension of microevolution,” and “evolution produces a tree of life.” (38)

The “tree-of-life” is a concept inseparable from Darwinism. If higher life-forms had evolved from lower ones, we should expect the fossil record to bear witness to this fact. We should therefore be able to observe how one form gradually morphs into another, creating a virtual tree-of-life, connecting the dots. However, such a tree has eluded its proponents:

• The following year, leading biologist Eugene Koonin wrote that breakdowns in core neo-Darwinian tenets such as the “traditional concept of the tree of life” or that “natural selection is the main driving force of evolution” indicate “the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair.” (38)

• Koonin mentioned growing skepticism over the “tree of life,” and the technical literature contains numerous examples of conflicting evolutionary trees, challenging universal common ancestry. An article in Nature reported that “disparities between molecular and morphological trees” lead to “evolution wars” because “evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology.” Another Nature paper reported that newly discovered genes “are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree,” since they “give a totally different tree from what everyone else wants.” A 2009 article in New Scientist observes that “many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.” (38)

It is noteworthy that the tree should be “discarded” rather than revised. This is because many have despaired of finding a tree – a biological/morphological roadmap - to demonstrate how one species evolved into another. However, it would seem that to despair that such a tree exists is also to despair of neo-Darwinism. The tree is as indispensible to neo-Darwinism as a blueprint is to an engineer.

Consistent with the idea of unguided natural selection, evolutionists had predicted that they would find leftover, now useless, genes leftover from our evolutionary ancestors. They called these genes “junk DNA.” Francis Collins had even claimed that “45 percent of the human genome” consists of “genetic flotsam and jetsam” – leftover junk! The presence of such an extensive collection of junk, would, of course, rule in favor of evolution. However, more recently, the findings have ruled against evolution:

• A major 2012 Nature paper by the ENCORE consortium reported “biochemical functions for 80% of the genome.” Lead ENCORE scientists predicted that with further research, “80 percent will go to 100” since “almost every nucleotide is associated with a function.” (39)

This prediction does not accord with the messiness of evolution and its leftover loose ends that evolutionists would expect to find, but rather with the design of Intelligence!

Is there a consensus regarding evolution among the scientific community? Hardly! Nevertheless, the vast majority still expect to find a natural explanation for the origins of life and speciation. However, in light of the above, such an expectation is the product of faith and not science. Interestingly, it is this faith that now predominates throughout our scientific institutions.

The Secret of the Evolution Establishment

Why does evolution remain the unchallenged theory within the university community? Could threat, intimidation, and even outright persecution against any who break ranks with the Darwin-Establishment explain it?

I know that I wouldn’t do this research, so I couldn’t help but publish this list of the “numerous well-documented examples of scientists who have faced persecution and discrimination for disagreeing with Darwinian evolution in just the last few years” assembled by Casey Luskin:

•  In 2005, Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer objected to a private screening of the pro-ID film The Privileged Planet because it drew a "philosophical conclusion." The Smithsonian made no complaints when Sagan's original Cosmos in 1980 argued that "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be."

• A congressional subcommittee staff investigation found that biologist Richard Sternberg experienced retaliation by his co-workers and superiors at the Smithsonian, including transfer to a hostile supervisor, removal of his name placard from his door, deprivation of workspace, subjection to work requirements not imposed on others, restriction of specimen access, and loss of his keys, because he allowed a pro-ID article to be published in a biology journal. The Congressional staff investigation concluded that the "Smithsonian's top officials permit[ed] the demotion and harassment of [a] scientist skeptical of Darwinian evolution" and "officials explicitly acknowledged in emails their intent to pressure Sternberg to resign because of his role in the publication of the [pro-ID] Meyer paper and his views on evolution."
• In 2009 the state-funded California Science Center (CSC) museum cancelled the contract of a pro-ID group, American Freedom Alliance (AFA), to show a pro-ID film. The lawsuit was settled in August 2011, with the CSC agreeing to pay AFA $110,000 to avoid a public trial. However, documents disclosed during the course of litigation showed that employees of the CSC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, joined with other LA-area academics to suppress the expression of ID, most egregiously by pressing CSC decision-makers to hastily cancel AFA's event.
• In 2005, over 120 faculty members at Iowa State University (ISU) signed a petition denouncing ID and calling on "all faculty members to ... reject efforts to portray Intelligent Design as science." These efforts were significant not just because they opposed academic freedom by demanding conformity among faculty to reject ID, but because they focused on creating a hostile environment for pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, who was denied tenure at ISU in 2006 due to his support for ID. Both public and private statements exposed through public records requests revealed that members of ISU's department in physics and astronomy voted against Gonzalez's tenure due to his support for ID.
• In 1993, San Francisco State University biology professor Dean Kenyon was forced to stop teaching introductory biology because he was informing students that scientists had doubts about materialist theories of the origin of life.
• In a similar case five years later, Minnesota high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing skepticism about Darwin's theory. LeVake, who holds a master's degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district's curriculum, but said he wanted to "accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory."
• Rogert DeHart, a public high school biology teacher in Washington State, was denied the right to have his students read articles from mainstream science publications that made scientific criticisms of certain pieces of evidence typically offered to support Darwinian theory. One of the forbidden articles was written by noted evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Although DeHart complied with this ban, he was later removed from teaching biology.
• In Mississippi, chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was asked by Mississippi University for Women to resign as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics after she gave a lecture to honors students called "Critical Thinking on Evolution." She remarked, "Students at my college got the message very clearly[;] do not ask any questions about Darwinism."
• In 1999, ID theorist William Dembski founded the Polanyi Center at Baylor University to allow scientists and scholars to conduct scientific research into intelligent design. The Center was later shut down largely due to intolerance of ID among Baylor faculty.
• In 2005, the president of the University of Idaho instituted a campus-wide classroom speech-code, where "evolution" was "the only curriculum that is appropriate" for science classes. This was done in retaliation towards a professor at the university, Scott Minnich, who at the time was testifying in favor of intelligent design as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.
• Also in 2005, Cornell's former interim president Hunter Rawlings devoted a State of the University Address "to denounce 'intelligent design,' arguing that it has no place in science classrooms and calling on faculty members in a range of disciplines" to similarly attack ID.
• In 2005, top biology professors at Ohio State University derailed a doctoral student's thesis defense by writing a letter claiming "there are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution" and therefore the student's teaching about problems with neo-Darwinism was "unethical" and "deliberate miseducation."
• In 2005, pro-ID adjunct biology professor Caroline Crocker lost her job at George Mason University after teaching students about both the evidence for and against evolution in the classroom, and mentioning ID as a possible alternative to Darwinism. While her former employer maintains that it simply chose not to renew her contract, she was specifically told she would be "disciplined" for teaching students about the scientific controversy over evolution.
• In 2007, Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had established an Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor University to study the ability of Darwinian processes to generate new information using computer simulations and evolutionary algorithms. However, after Dr. Marks was interviewed by ID the Future in 2007, he subsequently received a letter from his dean warning that the website was "associated" with "ID," and he was forced to take the lab's site down and move the lab itself off campus.
• In 2006, a professor of biochemistry and leading biochemistry textbook author at the University of Toronto, Laurence A. Moran, stated that a major public research university "should never have admitted" students who support ID, and should "just flunk the lot of them and make room for smart students."
• In 2011, a biology professor at the University of Waikato stated that "If, for example, a student were to use examples such as the bacterial flagellum to advance an ID view then they should expect to be marked down"
• Likewise, that same year Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, stated that "adherence to ID (which, after all, claims to be a nonreligious theory) should be absolute grounds for not hiring a science professor."
• In January 2011, the University of Kentucky (UK) paid over $100,000 to settle astronomer Martin Gaskell's lawsuit claiming that he was wrongfully denied employment for doubting Darwinism. UK faculty admitted that Gaskell was the most qualified applicant for the position, but they hired a much less qualified candidate out of concerns about statements Gaskell had made that were critical of Darwinian evolution.
• In June 2011, the journal Applied Mathematics Letters paid $10,000 and publicly apologized to avoid litigation after it wrongfully withdrew mathematician Granville Sewell's paper critiquing neo-Darwinism.
• In 2009, David Coppedge was demoted and punished for sharing pro-ID videos with co-workers at Jet Propulsion Lab. Later, his employment was terminated.
• In 2012, Springer-Verlag illegally breached a contract to publish the proceedings of an ID-friendly research conference at Cornell University after a pressure campaign was mounted by pro-Darwin activists to have the book scuttled.
• In 2013, Ball State University (BSU) President Jo Ann Gora issued a speech code declaring that "intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses" at BSU, after atheist activists from the Freedom from Religion Foundation charged that a "Boundaries of Science" course taught by a well-liked physics professor (Eric Hedin) was violating the Constitution by favorably discussing intelligent design.
• Also in 2013, atheist activists forced Amarillo College to cancel an intelligent design course after they threatened disruption if it went forward.

Evolution: The Walking Dead?

If macro-evolution is a fact, this should be illustrated by the fossil record and how its patterns of common descent are paralleled by accompanying genetic similarities. In other words, common structures should have common genes if common descent is a reality. We should be able to detect a genetic and morphological pattern of lineal descent, not a hodge-podge of common traits (homologies) or structures found in unrelated species.

This assumption is so fundamental to the theory of evolution that Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl predicted that there would be no difficulty in demonstrating that common structures and their assumed common ancestry – as reflected in the Darwinian tree of life – should coincide with the tree of life generated from molecular (genetic) studies:

• If the two phylogenic trees [one constructed based on common morphology and the other on common genetics] are mostly in agreement in respect to the topology of branching, the best available single proof of the reality of macro-evolution would be furnished. (Evolutionary Divergence and Convergence of Proteins, 1965, 101)

While the undertaking was reasonable, the results were damning. Biochemist, W. Ford Doolittle confessed:

• Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the “true tree,” not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a “tree.”

• It is as if we have failed at the task that Darwin set for us: delineating the unique structure of the tree of life.

Doolittle’s conclusions agree with those of many other biochemists. Michael Syvanen had examined 2000 genes across different phyla in an attempt to establish a lineal consistent pattern or tree. However, he found that different genes told “contradictory evolutionary stories”:

• We just annihilated the tree of life. It’s not a tree any more; it’s a different topology entirely.

Casey Luskin summarizes these dismal findings:

• Biological similarity is constantly being found in places where it wasn’t predicted by common descent, leading to conflicts between phylogenetic trees. (Salvo, Issue 27, 50. All of these quotations have been taken from Luskin’s article.)

If this is true, this undermines the evolutionist’s claims of common descent based on either common morphology or common molecules. But how extensive is this problem? Luskin cites a 2012 paper that claims that it is truly extensive:

• Phylogenetic conflict is common and frequently the norm rather than the exception.

Luskin cites another paper from the journal of Biological Theory (2006):

• Overall similarity reflects degree of relatedness…Review of the history of molecular systematics and its claims in the context of molecular biology reveals that there is no basis for the “molecular assumption.”
  
  

“No basis?” However, Darwinism requires a tree – molecular and morphological - that can illustrate some kind – any kind - of lineal descent! No tree, no evidence of common  descent! But the tree seems to be non-existent. Then, perhaps also macro-evolution?

Is the theory of evolution a dead man who is still walking, meanwhile threatening and banishing opposition, in a vain attempt to circumvent its inevitable demise?

What the Fossils Say about Darwin

If common descent has taken place, it should most directly be demonstrated in the fossil record, as one paleontology textbook asserts:

• Fossils are the only direct record of the history of life.

However, the fossil record refuses to conform to evolutionary orthodoxy. Darwin even admitted his uneasiness about this evidence. However, he expected that future finds would eventually fill in the gaps by unearthing transitional forms, but these hopes have never been realized. Instead, the gaps have been further highlighted, as the finds have consistently lined up on only one side of the gap. One evolutionist acknowledged:

• Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear “fully formed”…The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to understanding the origin and early diversification of the animal phyla. (Barnes, et al., The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis, 3^rd Edition, 9-10)

Darwin had thought that the absence of predecessors – ancestral forms – was due to their not being fossilized because, being softer, they couldn’t be fossilized as easily. However, since Darwin, many tiny soft-bodied fossils have been unearthed below the “fully formed” phyla. Stephen C. Meyer explains the devastating implications of these finds for the theory of evolution:

• If paleontologists can find tiny fossilized cells in these far older and rarer formations, shouldn’t they also be able to find some ancestral forms of the Cambrian animals in younger and more abundant sedimentary rocks. (Darwin’s Doubts)

The late Stephen Jay Gould refers to this absence as “the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution.” Casey Luskin points out that this same absence of predecessors is also found among flowering plants…:

• As one paper states, “Angiosperms appear rather suddenly in the fossil record…with no obvious ancestors”…Many mammals orders appear in a similarly explosive way. Paleontologist Niles Eldredge explains that “there are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups – between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals.” A prominent ornithology textbook observes the “explosive evolution” of major living bird groups.

Luskin summarizes the findings:

• A straightforward reading of the fossil record consistently shows a pattern of abrupt explosions of new types of organisms. (Salvo, Fall 2013, 51)