Science 'versus' God?

[austintorn@aol.com]

(God's Trial continued)

“Ha-ha, but what is your real and proper name?”

‘None. I am what I am.”

“Any aliases, like Lord, Jehovah, Almighty, or such?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, those are just more names that people call me, plus even some bad names.”

“But you do exist as you are?”

“Depends on what the meaning of ‘exists’ is.”

“You know, like ‘to be’, being One that is.”

“Depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

“Is that your lawyer, Bill Clinton, sitting over there?”

“Yes, he can get out of anything.”

“But is he going to talk endlessly in your defense?”

“No, he has been going to on and on anon.”

“Good, now how come we can hear you but we can’t see you?”

“I am invisible, plus, you are schizophrenics.”

“Hey, no name calling, order in the court!”

“I’ll have a cheeseburger, no pickles, no onions.”

“That’s more like it. So you mean we are just hearing voices?”

“Yes—remember the study that showed that 17% percent of priests are schizophrenic, but only 2% of the general population is?”

“Oh, yeah, but You’re not getting off that easily.”

“What did You do before You Created everything?”

“I was being made Myself by Myself.”

“How did You do that?”

“Recursively.”

“Oh, anyway, did you intercourse with a teen-age virgin?

“Hell, no, she was underage. I date 30 billion year old women.”

“Still single?”

“Yes, as Mr. Always Right I just could never find Miss Perfect.”

“So, Jesus was not Your son then.”

“No, he was just a good guy—a human telling stories that everyone expected to hear.”

“But, anyway, you are a ‘He’?”

“So they usually say.”

“Don't You know?”

“Yes, for humans create Me in their image and with their traits, so I am male.”

“You’re not jealous of any of their other imaginary gods?”

“I am above all that lowly human-type emotion stuff. Remember? I am Perfectly Good and totally full of Love.”

“Love is an emotion.”

“That is the only emotion I have, for it is the ultimate one.”

“So, You never do evil.”

“Depends on what ‘evil’ is.”

“Well, as in ‘The Root of Evil’ thread, things like harming others except in self defense, stifling the growth of mind, creating false ways of living, arbitrarily through use of imagination of what ‘could be’?”

“I am not capable of evil. I detest evil. I would hate Myself if I did evil. It is unthinkable. Besides, then I would be in the category of a devil.”

“Is there a Devil?”

“No, I would not tolerate any such thing, for then it would sway humans to sin.”

“You appear to be without fault, but we still have to continue this trial.”

“Did you murder almost everyone on earth with a Great Flood?”

“Heck no, I designed human nature just the way I wanted it to be. What do you think! I’m not a big fat goof. I don’t make mistakes.”

“Some say that you invented the rainbow to proclaim that You made a mistake, but would never do it again?”

“Preposterous. Rainbows are an optical effect.

“Do You do anything wrong?”

“I can’t. I am all Love.”

“Did you give too much love?”

“Yes, I give infinite amounts, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“What was the purpose of having dinosaurs around for 650 million years, then extincting them via asteroids?”

“Just playing around.”

“Where was the Intelligent Design in this?”

“There wasn’t any, for I do not exist. Can I go now?”

“No, we know that trick. Whose side are you on in football games?”

“I don’t take sides.”

“Then where do humans get all these ideas about You.”

“You know humans—they just say things.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Is there a Hell, like maybe in the heart of the sun?”

‘No, there is no Hell. I don’t torture my beloved creatures. Would you torture a kitten?”

“Some would, but, hey, it is You that is on trial here, not us. We only have the human nature that You gave us and it can often go astray.”

“True, plus I am a nice Guy, the nicest ever. I would not fill your cup to the brim with temptations and then not expect you to spill some of it. I’m a giver, not a taker. Pure love is all giving.”

“Thanks. Does our will have to match your will”?

“Heavens no, for that would not be free will, would it?”

“So, there’s not even a purgatory, like somewhere on Venus?”

“Negative.”

“How do humans come up with all these things? They make You out to be be some kind of strict enforcer father figure.”

“That’s it.”

“Is there a Heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Ah-ha, where is it?”

“On Earth. What more could human beings want?”

“Oh, well they want everything and even think they are special and above all else, some even above their own kind.”

“Nope, humans are as organic as anything in nature. Anyone can see that.”

“We have imaginations.”

“Yes, a gift of Mine, but that’s all they are.”

“Did You publish a book?”

“Yes, but no, for ghost writers wrote it.”

“Any movies coming out?”

“No, hard to beat ‘The Dark Knight’”

“No Commandments issued?”

“Love does not command; it frees.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

That’s true. So You are innocent of all charges.”

“How many times do I have to tell you. I am Absolute Good.”

“Ever tell a white lie?”

“No way, Jose. I am Truth.”

“Ever peek at a naked person.”

“Of course, I made people that way. If I didn’t want it that way, they’d be born with clothes on or with fur. Some fools even put fig leaves in Eden’s artwork.”

“I must confess to You that I sometimes think of people naked.”

“No sweat, plus that’s also a way to make public speaking easier. I am naked Myself. It’s OK.”

“Ever stick gum somewhere when no one was looking”

“No, for I was looking.”

“You are a saint!”

“Higher than that. I am Perfect, at least before I got conceited about it.”

“Ah-ha.”

“Just joking.”

“Did You make Cosmic Jokes, like, in sexual human anatomy, putting a toxic waste dump near a recreation area?”

“Yes, I do have a sense of humor.”

“How come You didn’t give humans everything?”

“If I gave them everything, they’ll have no place to put it all.”

“A dictionary has everything.”

“In a way, plus Wikipedia is good, too.”

“How come birth certificates have expiration dates, some even sooner than later?”

“They must, otherwise, evolution wouldn’t work.”

“Did some monkey types descend from the trees?”

“Yes, for your DNA matches theirs 98%.”

“So, evolution is true, not you?”

“I keep telling you and leaving signs all over the earth, you fossil to be.”

“You don’t rule or lord Yourself over anyone?”

“Love serves, love does not rule.”

“We have witnesses to some of your crimes.”

“No one can witness Me, besides, they made all that up.”

“Likely story. Did you chose a tribe and tell Moses to crush some other tribes?”

“Just ancient Jewish legends.”

“How come Moses didn’t ask for directions when he was lost for 40 years.”

“He’s a man; they never ask.”

“Ever let someone just make it through a developing traffic accident?”

“What! And let some other poor sap get hurt or die instead? You don’t know Me very well.”

“So, You don’t write scripts for our human soap opera.”

“No, truth is stranger than fiction.”

“Why are You invisible?”

“I am a figment. Have faith.”

“What’s faith?”

“Belief in the invisible unseen unknown.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

“You can’t get off the hook that easily. We can still try you in abstensia.”

“I’m being very cooperative.”

“Thanks. Now, Mr. God, Sir, did you send a plague of locusts to harm the welfare of humankind?”

“Wouldn’t think of it; harmful options don’t even surface in my mind for consideration.”

“No lightning bolts?

“That was Mother Nature, not me.”

“Well, as you are a self-made Man, then what stuff did You use to make Yourself out of and all that is?”

“I didn’t make all that is; I only made Myself out of the fundament stuff available. Then I accidently made humankind from the same stuff, some stuff that I threw out.”

“So, you are not responsible for Mother Nature’s doing?”

“No, nor did I make the universe, for I am made of it.”

“You are not fundamental and absolute?”

“No, for a system of mind and emotion like Mine or yours requires moving parts. I am perfect, however.”

“That’s still a lofty position.”

“I am just fortunate to be as I am; I never look down on anyone less. My talent is God given; I can’t even really take any credit. I am just further along in evolution that you are. Cats, too, have reached perfection for their form.”

“You evolved beyond the material plane?”

“Yes, I am pure waves and fields and thus not seeable. You all will get there someday, too. I just helped you all along the path, with only your best interests at heart.”

“We will all become Gods.”

“Certainly.”

“You don’t interfere in our world on Earth.”

“No, for then you would miss all the fun. Knowing all is not really that great.”

“There would be no surprises.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you overrule all or part of reality in any way?”

“No, I’m not bossy.”

“Do you underlie all or part of reality in any way?”

“Nope, as I said, I am in this universe and therefore of this universe; I’m just higher up the food chain.”

“So, in our terms, you are a very powerful but loving alien.”

“That I am. And if any hostile Ones approach me, I will defend Myself.”

“Thanks, for that will help us, too.”

“True, but you are all completly free to be and do.”

“How come You allow/give this to us?”

“It’s the greatest gift that Love can give.”

“Thanks, again. You seem a good Guy, but we still have a few more questions. Plus, you know, we can’t
really consider any gifts that You gave to us when we make our ruling. I hope you understand, for we are often approached with bribes.”

“Money talks.”

“For me it just usually says ‘Goodbye’”

“But when it returns you might say, ‘Hey, glad to see you; I’ve missed you; where have you been all my life!’”

“You’re a fun Guy.”

“So, what is all this holy-holy admiration stuff that humans do in and for your Name?”

“I don’t know; it’s really weird, isn’t it?”

“I thought You knew everything.”

“Well, by staying out of the way, I chose not to know.”

“What made the stuff that we and You are made of?”

“I’m not sure; I only know everything from Me onwards; that stuff could have appeared in the universe from somewhere else, or have been here forever, or appeared via some kind of possibility.”

“Well, that’s immaterial, anyway. Back to our probe.”

“Ever do anything wrong at all?”

“I threw some litter into space because there was no where else to put it.”

“What litter?”

“Some excess atoms.”

“Well, no harm done.”

“Do angels exist, having wings and all that?”

“No, not as humans have defined them. Wings are useless in space; there is no air. There are more ETs than Me, however.”

“We thought so.”

“Is there a Bigfoot?”

“Ha, ha. Those are hoaxes put forth by some hicks in the southern US.”

“Isn’t ‘hick’ a bad name?”

“No, I am just describing an actual fact, for which the word ‘hick’ is perfectly descriptive. I have to use words that you know,”

“So, You’ve never been seen, and just about everything said about You by humans is false, so, what’s left?”

“Not much, just Me as not ‘God’.”

“But You created us, helped us along.”

“Well, in a way, but that was quite inadvertant. You would have formed somewhere sometime anyway. Some of my litter formed your solar system; then you evolved. Your population was down to less than a thousand once, and I guess some of my good vibrations rubbed off on you as I passed by on my way to pick up some rare elements on Pluto. I was building a new house that can withstand all eternity. The weather in space is always bad; full of radiation of all sorts.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

“Strange weather all over the earth, too.”

“Mr. ET, is there way to tell the future of the weather?”

“The 2009 Farmer’s Almanac just came out.”

“So, how do we speed up evolution?”

“Takes time, but you could enhance your own chemistry, as I did.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It is; I was a Jeckyl and Hyde for a while.”

“Ah-ha, that’s when You committed crimes against humanity!”

“No, I was far away, plus that was 35 billion years ago.”

“Oh, but do You have an alibi?”

“No, I was all there was then, but I have pictures.”

“Let’s see.”

“I don’t have then with me, but they are very similar to those taken by Hubble.”

“You were there among those trillions of stars and galaxies?”

“Yes, but I was semitransparent by then.”

“It would be like those ‘finding Waldo’ puzzles.”

“You’ll just have to take my Word if you can’t prove otherwise.”

“What is the purpose of life?”

“To live.”

“What is life?”

“You are life.”

“Is life and all really just a bunch of atomic spinning things of various compositions?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing more?”

“There can be no more, for that is all.”

“Why do we keep hoping for more?”

“Greed and little gratitude. You are a sparkling billion year product and quite amazing.”

“We are pretty cool when you think about it.”

“That all it takes to appreciate life.”

“Any other universes?”

“Sure, but many did not amount to anything. However, I am going on vacation to a good one next week.”

“Be sure to send a post card saying ‘Wish you were here’, that is, if there is oxygen there.”

“Will do. Lucky for you here that plants came about and made oxygen. Thus, you began as you”

“Yes, a lucky break; it was a mere waste product from photosynthesis.”

“See, all is as it seems. No need to invent any supernatural Intent to blame or thank for anything.”

“All is as it did?”

“Yes, that’s why it took so long.”

“A true God type Creator could have done it instantly, not even needing 6 days, or getting tired on the 7th.”

“The All is an origin, not a Creator.”

“What should we do?”

“Just be.”

[leskey]

Not, "Let E be?" *grin*

[austintorn@aol.com]

Let everyone be except those who don't let us be.

[austintorn@aol.com]

“OK, good advice. But, if we ever find that there was a Culprit Creator who committed some of the very crimes that His commandments spoke against, like murder, destruction, or hatred, then He is toast.”

“As He should be, for those acts would have been unconscionable, especially for Someone of that stature.”

“Thanks for your testimony. We’ll call it the Third Testament. Your judgment day is at hand. I’m calling a one hour recess.”

…

“All please rise. The court finds you not guilty on all counts, due to lack of evidence plus Your good nature.”

“Evidence for those like Me is not even conceivable.”

“True. Thank you everyone. Please bring in the next case.”

Austin walks in.

“Did you leave the toilet seat up in a household where there were females present?”

“Well, maybe, yes I did, but…”

“100 years of hard labor in Siberia.”

[austintorn@aol.com]

In this week’s eSkeptic, Mark Perakh discusses how Intelligent Design proponents created the myth that bacterial flagella look like man-made machines.

Mark Perakh is a native of Ukraine. He is a professor of physics (emeritus) at California State University Fullerton. Before coming to the USA as a visiting scientist at the IBM Research Center, he worked for over a half a century as a researcher and university professor in four countries. He has to his credit about 300 scientific papers, four books and several patents. He was awarded several prizes for his research, including one from the Royal Society of London. He has also been active in debunking various versions of crank science. His latest book is Unintelligent Design (2004).


Figure 1: An artist’s rendition of a flagellum as it appears on William Dembski’s blog Uncommon Descent. A similar image appears on the dust cover of Dembski’s book No Free Lunch.
Flagella Myths
by Mark Perakh

In 1996 a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University named Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box1, in which he presented his concept of “irreducible complexity” (IC). Behe and his Intelligent Design (ID) colleagues claim that IC is strong evidence of “design” of biological systems, and ever since his book IC has acquired the status of one of the main pillars of the Intelligent Design platform.

The concept of irreducible complexity was in fact known for many years before Behe’s book. The Nobel Prize winning biologist Hermann J. Müller had already discussed it (under the slightly different name of “interlocking complexity”) in 1918.2 Some 10 years before Behe’s book the same idea was explored by A. Graham Cairns-Smith.3 Unlike Behe, however, these pioneers did not claim that the concept in question was a great discovery on a par with those by “Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger, Pasteur, and Darwin” (as Behe asserted in Darwin’s Black Box). Neither did they claim that “irreducible complexity” was a “marker” of a supernatural design. To the contrary, according to Müller, development of interlocking complexity in biological systems is to be expected from Darwinian evolution. Therefore the concept in question, as such, evoked no resistance from mainstream science.

As an example of an allegedly irreducibly complex system Behe suggested a mousetrap. Soon afterwards, in multiple publications by various Intelligent Design advocates, images of a mousetrap were endlessly reproduced. The mousetrap, however, was not accepted by the mainstream scientific community as a genuine example of IC. For example, professor of biology John McDonald suggested4 an animated illustration of how, starting with just a piece of a hook-shaped wire serving as a primitive mice-catching device, a full-fledged mousetrap can be gradually built up via two-part, then three-part, etc. contraptions, improving its mice-catching ability at each step in a Darwinian fashion.

Apparently finally realizing that a mousetrap was not a very successful choice for illustrating Behe’s IC concept, ID advocates switched to another example — a bacterial flagellum, a “device” used by bacteria for motility.5 By 2002, the image of a flagellum had become a ubiquitous accompaniment to ID advocates’ books, papers, lecture slides, etc. According to one of the main advocates of ID, William Dembski, the flagellum had become the “mascot” of ID. The image of the flagellum appeared on the cover of Dembski’s book No Free Lunch6, on creationist blogs, etc. Figure 1 (above article title) shows an image of a flagellum as it appears on Dembski’s blog named Uncommon Descent. Notice the smooth surface of the depicted contraption, its perfect symmetry, its tightly fitting components — features we usually see in man-made machinery. This image is a product of an artist’s imagination of how a flagellum “must” look. Does this image truthfully represent the real flagellum? No.

Figure 2: A schematic model of a flagellum. From Yonekura, K., S. Maki, D. G. Morgan, D. J. DeRosier, F.Vonderviszt, K.Imada, and K. Namba, 2000. “The Bacterial Flagellar Cap as the Rotary Promoter of Flagellin Self-Assembly”, Science 290: 2148–2152.
Flagella are tiny organelles that can’t be seen directly by the unaided human eye. Their dimensions are measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). Modern versions of cryogenic electron microscopy and of X-ray techniques have, though, enabled scientists to form a pretty good understanding of flagellum’s structure and shape. Figure 2 shows a schematic model of a flagellum’s structure.7 This model (one of several published in scientific literature) is a theoretical interpretation of the data obtained via electron microscopy, and mainstream scientists construe it more as an idealized schematic than a true-to-life representation of a flagellum’s actual structure. ID advocates, however, happily treat such images as if they are real replicas of the tiny flagella, usually providing no disclaimers as to the degree of idealization inherent in such images.

Figure 3: A composite electron micrograph of flagella. It has been obtained by a superposition of multiple photographs shot from various angles, of a number of flagella. From Francis, N. R., Sosinsky, G. E., Thomas, D. and DeRosier, D. J., 1994. “Isolation, characterization and structure of bacterial flagellar motors containing the switch complex.” J Mol Biol. 235 (4), 1261–1270.

In 2004, when Dembski debated Professor Niall Shanks (at UCLA) he displayed8 a different image of a flagellum (Figure 3). Unlike Figures 1 and 2, Figure 3 is neither an artist’s rendition, nor a schematic theoretical model; it is a “real” electron-microscopic photographically obtained image. While produced by scientists, such images are often exploited by ID advocates who are fond of pointing out their striking similarity to man-made machines. However, such illustrations are misleading, picturing the flagellum in a geometrically perfect shape, fully symmetric and consisting of geometrically perfectly formed parts. The real flagellum is far from having such a perfect geometric shape. Unlike machines, which may be close replicas of each other (say, all Jeeps of the same year have almost exactly the same shape) the real flagella, first, have shapes with many deviations from a perfect geometric symmetry, and, second, there are no two flagella exactly identical. Individual flagella differ in various respects, just as biological organisms vary from individual to individual.
Likewise, when I debated Behe on February 15, 2008 on a Larry Kane’s TV show on the Comcast network, Behe supported his pro-ID thesis by displaying the same images of a flagellum as shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3. Behe’s argument essentially boiled down to the stale asseveration that can be succinctly summarized as follows: “You see — it looks like a man-made machine! If it looks like a duck, then it must be a duck! All machines we are familiar with have been designed. Therefore the flagellum must be a product of intelligent design!” Oddly, Behe and his ID friends seem not to realize that the “it must be a duck” argument is an obvious non-sequitur: there are numerous examples of objects whose appearance is deceptive. Just think of the mimicry, so common in nature. For example, look up the article on “Mimicry” in Wikipedia where examples are presented of animals looking like “twigs, bark, leaves, or flowers” etc., thus negating the “it must be a duck” conclusion.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Figure 4: The structure of the hook—a part of a flagellum. From Samatey F.A., Matsunami, H., Imada, K., Nagashima, S., Shaikh, T.R., Thomas, D.R., Chen, J.Z., Derosier, D.J., Kitao, A., Namba, K. “Structure of the bacterial flagellar hook and implication for the molecular universal joint mechanism.” Nature. 2004, Oct 28;431(7012):1047. (In the online version the image is animated, illustrating the flagellar hook’s rotation, see this webpage. Reproduced in accordance with the blanket permission granted in the referenced website, stipulating that a reference to the above article as well as to proteinexplorer.org is provided.

In fact the images that Behe, Dembski, and their ID colleagues show are often not pictures of real flagella. Some of them are just products of an artist’s imagination (Figure 1); others are computer-generated images of imaginary machine-like contraptions. The schematics like that in Figure 2, while reflecting many actual features of flagella, are products of a modeling approximation which likewise can’t pretend to reflect adequately the actual structure of a tiny organelle. However, some other pictures of flagella may indeed be “real” photographically obtained images (Figure 3). Are the images in the latter category adequate representations of the flagella structure?

Look again at Figure 3. It is, at a glance, impressive. Indeed we see here a contraption which is symmetric, its structure machine-like, so it is easy to understand the satisfaction of Dembski and Behe at the sight of this contraption so neatly fitting in with their “design” hypothesis. There are, however, two important details that must be noted. The first detail is that the image in Figure 3 is a composite photo. It is the result of a superposition of many photos, of several flagella, made from various angles. This way the image in question is eliminating from view various imperfections which, unlike in man-made machinery, are inherent in every natural flagellum. Moreover, the procedure of superposition of a number of photos eliminates from view the inevitable individual differences between various flagella, which radically distinguish flagella from “designed” machinery.
The second detail is that the resolution of this picture is insufficient to see the flagellum’s intrinsic structure. To appreciate the significance of this, recall, by analogy, the “face on Mars,” or Lowell’s nonexisting Martian “canals.” When the resolution is insufficient, we “see” nonexisting structures, which on closer inspection look dissolve into natural patterns. This is equally true for the images of very small objects perused under insufficient magnification and/or resolution. The images of flagella obtained at higher resolution, and assisted by other modern sophisticated methods of investigation, reveal the actual configuration of flagella, demonstrating that the seeming machine-like appearance of the flagella in Figure 3 is deceptive.

Figure 5: The structure of the flagellar filament. Side views showing the inner side (left) and outer surface (right). The amino acid sequence of each flagellin subunit is color-coded. From Yonekura, K., Maki-Yonekura, S., Namba, K. “Complete atomic model of the bacterial flagellar filament by electron cryomicroscopy.” Nature, 424: 643–650 (2003); See the online version.
It should be noted that scientists often use such terms as “machine” when describing various biological assemblies. This usage, however, unlike in case of ID advocates, is purely metaphorical, reflecting the superficial resemblance of certain biological structures to man-made machinery. Scientists normally do not imply that biological entities are intrinsically similar to man-made machinery. Perhaps such a usage by scientists is not very fortunate given ID advocates’ misuse of the superficial resemblance between the designed man-made objects and natural biological entities. We have to realize, though, that scientists by and large are not aware of ID advocates’ misuse of such terminology, as only a small minority of scientists pay any attention to ID advocates’ actions.

Let us look at a few selected illustrations of my thesis. The detailed images of the flagella structure obtained via cryogenic electron microscopy combined with sophisticated X-rays techniques are exemplified in Figures 4, 5, and 6. These images, showing the actual configuration of the flagellum, have been selected practically at random from numerous similar images available in the scientific literature. Instead of tightly-fit machine-like parts, we see in these pictures convoluted garlands of protein molecules. These structures look similar to typical bacteriophage viruses5, and have nothing in common with any man-made machine. They vividly illustrate that the image shown in Figure 3 is deceptive and owes its machine-like appearance to the insufficient resolution (not to mention the utter artificiality of the artist’s renditions of flagella, whose variations serve as “mascots” of ID).

Figure 6: Partial structure of the flagellar filament�s cross-section. By Keiichi Namba. See this webpage.
ID advocates often point to the allegedly fraudulent “icons of evolution” utilized by “Darwinists” for their nefarious purposes.9 One such “icon” are the illustrations of embryos made by the 19th-century German biologist Ernst Haeckel. In fact, the faults of Haeckel’s embryological illustrations (dated 1874) were revealed not by creationists but rather by the “Darwinists” themselves.10 On the other hand, creationists of various hues, including ID advocates such as Dembski and Behe, incessantly reproduce images of flagella that are often heavily doctored, without any disclaimers as to the great degree of idealization inherent in these images. Indeed, look again at the images of flagella’s actual molecular structure, as shown above in Figures 4, 5, and 6, and it becomes obvious that real natural flagella are far from looking like man-made machines.

An interesting question arises: Why ID advocates and other creationists, who so eagerly and persistently display pictures like those in Figures 1, 2, and 3, never deign to show much more realistic representations of flagella structure such as those shown in Figures 4, 5, and 6? If they are unaware of these better pictures, perhaps they should try to educate themselves regarding the entirety of the available information about flagella? If, though, they are familiar with the images such as those shown in Figures 4, 5, and 6 (which are freely available both in print and on the internet) could it then be that they are less interested in facts and truth and more focused on winning the “cultural war” by any means?

We must conclude that the argument in favor of “design” of biological entities based on their alleged similarity to man-made machinery is not supported by evidence.