Casey Luskin: Information Theory Expert

Well, it looks like the Discovery Institute was so unnerved by my pointing out the misunderstandings and misrepresentations in Stephen Meyer's book, Signature in the Cell, that they devoted two whole chapters to attacking me in their new book. The always-repulsive David Klinghoffer called me a "pygmy" and made fun of the name of my university (page 6). Paul Nelson called my critique a "fluffy confection" and alleged I was guilty of "sophistry". Casey Luskin said I indulged in "gratuitous invective".

The DI's responses to my arguments about Signature are about at the level of what you'd expect from them. I already replied to Paul Nelson months ago here, but of course they didn't see fit to reference that.

In their new book, they trot out lawyer Casey Luskin as their new expert on information theory. Luskin's main points are

(1) Shannon and Kolmogorov complexity are not "useful metrics of functional biological information" and
(2) eminent scientists have adopted Dembski and Meyer's notion of "functional information".

Here's my response:

(1) No measure of information is perfect. Both Shannon and Kolmogorov have proved useful in biological contexts; to claim, as Luskin does that they are "outmoded tools" is ridiculous. An exercise for Luskin, or anyone else: do a search of the scientific literature for "Shannon information" in biology, and count how many hits you get. Now do the same thing for "functional information". See the difference?

Indeed, it is the apparent incompressibility of the genome that suggests, through Kolmogorov complexity, that random mutations played a very significant role in its creation.

(2) Luskin cites a 1973 book by Orgel, where Orgel used the term "specified complexity", as evidence that creationist information is used by real scientists. However, Orgel did not give a rigorous definition of the term, and no one has since then. The term was only used in a popular book, and Orgel never published a definition in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Dembski later claimed that Orgel's term was the same as his, and Luskin now repeats this falsehood. A lie can travel around the world, while the truth is just lacing up its sneakers.

Luskin points out that very recently, Szostak has introduced a notion of "functional information". However, Szostak's "functional information" is not a general-purpose measure of information. It certainly does not obey the axioms of information as studied by information theorists, and it does not obey Dembski's "law of conservation of information". Furthermore, it is only defined relative to a set of functions that one specifies. Change the functions, and you might get a completely different measure. So it is clear that Szostak's measure is not the same as Dembski's.

Might Szostak's idea prove useful one day? Perhaps, although the jury is still out. It has yet to receive many citations in the scientific literature; one of the papers cited by Luskin is by creationist Kirk Durston. The last time I looked, Durston's paper had essentially no impact at all, to judge by citation counts.

In any event, my claim was "Information scientists do not speak about ‘specified information’ or ‘functional information.’” Luskin offers Szostak as a counterexample. But Szostak is not an information scientist; he's a biologist. No discussion of "functional information" has yet appeared in the peer-reviewed information theory literature, which was my point. Luskin's trotting out of Szostak's paper does not refute that.

Phony Calls for "Civility"

You know a call for "more civility" is completely phony when the person who issues it only cites examples from one side of the debate.

That's the case with this recent opinion piece by Casey Luskin, spokesman for the Discovery Institute.

Luskin lists three examples of incivility, and all of them are from the pro-science, anti-creationist side. He fails to cite a single example of incivility from a creationist, even though there are many examples to choose from. As Wesley Elsberry has documented, Luskin's friends routinely compare evolutionary biologists to Nazis, communists, the Taliban, and Satan. Luskin himself has labeled materialists an "ominous force" that will "consume" people. William Dembski proudly sponsored an animation that used fart noises to make fun of Judge Jones, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case.

No one is going to be fooled by this dishonest posturing.