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Should ID researchers be “marked down” for defending intelligent design?

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Here’s an interesting post from Evolution News about a teacher in New Zealand who grades her students down if they try to discuss intelligent design in class.

Excerpt:

Biology lecturer Alison Campbell at the University of Waikato in Hillcrest, New Zealand, exemplifies a mindset that is tragically common in academia. She openly boasts that if a student were to use standard ID arguments such as the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum, that student would be “marked down”:

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; that particular creationist trophe has been well & truly discredited.

And in fact in reading over that post by Alison Campbell and the comments, it’s not clear that she has read anything by an ID theorist. She quotes from a an anti-ID philosopher and a anti-ID judge to argue against intelligent design. She doesn’t interact with any intelligent design books, by quoting pro-ID  arguments and citing page numbers. She doesn’t mention a single research paper written by an ID theorist. It’s just something that an English teacher could have written. She has to keep everything very vague in that post. “There is lots of evidence against ID, so let me quote a philosopher”. “There is lots of evidence against ID, so let me quote a judge”. Neither of those authorities has any training in biology. Does Alison Campbell? Let’s see.

Here are some of her recent publications:

Campbell, A. 2009 You let them talk in lectures? Student discussion as formative assessment . In: Meyer, Luanna H., Davidson, Susan, Anderson, Helen, Fletcher, Richard, Johnston, Patricia M., Rees, Malcolm(eds) Tertiary assessment & higher education studnet outcomes: policy, practice & research. Wellington : Ako Aotearoa pp91-96.

Campbell, A., Künnemeyer, R. and Prinsep, M. R. 2008. Staff perceptions of higher education science and engineering learning communities. Research in Science & Technological Education, Vol 26, No 3, pp279-294.

Campbell A. 2008. The creep of creationism – is it relevant to teaching earth sciences? Geological Society of New Zealand (Inc) 146, pp 23-26.

Campbell, A. 2007. Is intelligent design a scientific alternative to the theory of evolution? New Zealand Science Teacher 116 pp11-12.

Campbell, Alison. (2005). Intelligent Design? Radio New Zealand ‘Our Changing World’ interview 6th October.

Otrel-Cass, Kathrin, Earl, Kerry, Campbell, Alison, Cooke, Penelope. (2005). Evolution for Teaching Website evaluation report. NZ Science Teacher, Number 109, pp 27-29.

Buntting, Cathy, Coll, Richard Kevin and Campbell, Alison. 2005. Student views of concept mapping use in introductory tertiary biology classes. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. ISSN: 1573-1774 (Online).

Zepke Nick, Leach Linda, Prebble Tom, Campbell Alison, Coltman David, Dewart Bonnie, Gibson Maree, Henderson Judy, Leadbeater Jenny, Purnell Sue, Rowan Linda, Solomon Nika and Wilson Stewart. 2005. Improving tertiary student outcomes in the first year of study. Teaching & Learning Research Initiative.

Campbell, Alison. (2004). Book review: The flight of the huia. New Zealand Journal of Zoology, Vol.31, pp 379-380.

Campbell A, Cooke P, Earl K and Otrell-Cass K. (2004). A New Zealand “Evolution for Teaching” Online Resource. Teaching EARTH SCIENCES Vol 29, Number 3/4, pp 31-32.

Campbell, A.M., P. Cooke, K. Cass & K. Earl (2004) “Evolution for Teaching”.

I don’t see a single publication in experimental science in there. She doesn’t do research. She has no research publications. But if a genuine experimental biologist came into her classroom, that person would be marked down for disagreeing with her religion – the religion of materialism. The assumption of naturalism. Both of which are easily demonstrated as false simply by looking at the experimental evidence supporting the Big Bang theory, e.g. – redshift, cosmic microwave background radiation, light element abudnances, etc. But some people don’t let the science inform their worldview. They just write about teaching and then mark down actual experimental biologists who question their faith commitments to materialism and naturalism.

Here are some papers from Biologic Institute researchers:

D’Andrea-Winslow L, Novitski AK (2008) Active bleb formation is abated in Lytechinus variegatus red spherule coelomocytes after disruption of acto-myosin contractility. Integrative Zoology 3: 106-113. doi:10.1111/j.1749-4877.2008.00086.x

Axe DD, Dixon BW, Lu P (2008) Stylus: A system for evolutionary experimentation based on a protein/proteome model with non-arbitrary functional constraints. PLoS ONE 3: e2246. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002246

Sternberg RV (2008) DNA codes and information: Formal structures and relational causes. Acta Biotheoretica doi:10.1007/s10441-008-9049-6. PMID: 18465197

Gonzalez G (2008) Parent stars of extrasolar planets – IX. Lithium abundances. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Online Early Articles doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13067.x

Duren RW, Marks II RJ, Reynolds PD, Trumbo ML (2007) Real-time neural network inversion on the SRC-6e reconfigurable computer. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 18: 889-901. PMID: 17526353

Gonzalez G, Laws C (2007) Parent stars of extrasolar planets VIII. Chemical abundances for 18 elements in 31 stars. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 378: 1141-1152. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11867.x

Gravagne IA, Marks II RJ (2007) Emergent behaviors of protector, refugee and aggressor swarms. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics 37: 471- 476. PMID: 17416173

Weinschenk JJ, Combs WE, Marks II RJ (2007) On the avoidance of rule explosion in fuzzy inference engines. International Journal of Information Technology and Intelligent Computing 1, #4.

Gonzalez G (2006) Condensation temperatures trends among stars with planets. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 367: L37-L41. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2005.00136.x

Gonzalez G (2006) The sun’s interior metallicity constrained by neutrinos. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters 370 : L90–L93.
doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2006.00197.x

Gonzalez G (2006) The chemical compositions of stars with planets: A review.
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 118: 1494-1505 (invited review paper). doi:10.1086/509792

Gonzalez G (2005) Habitable zones in the universe. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 35: 555-606. doi:10.1007/s11084-005-5010-8

Keller D, Brozik JA (2005) Framework model for DNA polymerases. Biochemistry 44: 6877-6888. PMID: 15865433

Shapiro JA, von Sternberg R (2005) Why repetitive DNA is essential to genome function. Biological Reviews 80: 227-250. Review. PMID: 15921050

von Sternberg R, Shapiro JA (2005) How repeated retroelements format genome function. Cytogenetic and Genome Research 110: 108-116. PMID: 16093662

Axe DD (2004) Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds. Journal of Molecular Biology 341: 1295-1315. PMID: 15321723

Lu H, Macosko J, Habel-Rodriguez D, Keller RW, Brozik JA, Keller D (2004) Closing of the fingers domain generates motor forces in the HIV reverse transcriptase. Journal of Biological Chemistry 279: 54529-54532. PMID: 15385563

Keller D, Swigon D, Bustamante C (2003) Relating single-molecule measurements to thermodynamics. Biophysical Journal 84: 733-738. PMID: 12547757

von Sternberg R, Cumberlidge N (2003) Autapomorphies of the endophragmal system in trichodactylid freshwater crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Eubrachyura). Journal of Morphology 256: 23-28. PMID: 12616572

Bustamante C, Keller D, Oster G (2001) The physics of molecular motors. Accounts of Chemical Research 34: 412-420. PMID: 11412078

D’Andrea-Winslow L, Strohmeier G, Rossi B, and Hofman P (2001) Identification of a Na/K/2Cl cotransporter (NKCC) in sea urchin coelomocytes: microfilament dependent surface expression mediated by hypotonic shock and cAMP. Journal of Experimental Biology 204: 147-156. PMID: 11104718

Gonzalez G, Brownlee D, Ward P (2001) The Galactic Habitable Zone: Galactic chemical evolution. Icarus 152: 185-200. doi:10.1006/icar.2001.6617

Axe DD (2000) Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors. Journal of Molecular Biology 301: 585-595. PMID: 10966772

von Sternberg R (2000) Genomes and form. The case for teleomorphic recursivity.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 901: 224-236. PMID: 10818573

Wuite GJ, Smith SB, Young M, Keller D, Bustamante C (2000) Single-molecule studies of the effect of template tension on T7 DNA polymerase activity. Nature 404: 103-106. PMID: 10716452

Axe DD, Foster NW, Fersht AR (1998) A search for single substitutions that eliminate enzymatic function in a bacterial ribonuclease. Biochemistry 37: 7157-7166. PMID: 9585527

Axe DD, Foster NW, Fersht AR (1996) Active barnase variants with completely random hydrophobic cores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 93: 5590-5594. PMID: 8643620

Gauger AK, Goldstein LS (1993) The Drosophila kinesin light chain. Primary structure and interaction with kinesin heavy chain. Journal of Biological Chemistry 268: 13657-13666. PMID: 8514798

Notice any differences between Alison’s papers and these papers? That’s right! These papers are science. Alison’s papers are not science. They are secular-left education policy. But all of these real scientists from Biologic would be “marked down” in her classroom – because philosophers and judges say that they must be marked down. Why assess the complicated science when you can just impose your religion by force on dissenters? It worked for the Catholic Church against Galileo. Maybe Alison doesn’t understand experimental science? Maybe ID papers are just too complicated for her to understand?

Since Alison mentions the bacterial flagellum by name, I thought that it might be useful for us to see a popular-level article on the bacterial flagellum written by an anonymous graduate student of biology. He has to be anonymous because of religious people like Alison who will mark him down for doing actual science that contradicts her faith. (I know who he is)

Excerpt:

As I mentioned in my previous essay, the synthesis of the bacterial flagellum is orchestrated by genes which are organised into a tightly ordered cascade in which expression of one gene at a given level requires the prior transcription of another gene at a higher level.

In Salmonella, the flagellar system has three classes of promoters — Class I, Class II, and Class III. This sequential transcription is coupled to the process of flagellar assembly. Class I contains only two genes in one operon, namely FlhD and FlhC. Class II consists of 35 genes across eight operons. These genes include those involved in the biosynthesis of the hook-basal-body and other components of the flagellum and export apparatus, as well as the regulatory genes FliA and FlgM. Those genes which are involved in the synthesis of the filament are controlled by virtue of the Class III promoters.

The Class I promoter is required to drive the expression of the enteric master regulator, FldH4C2. The Class II promoters are subsequently turned on by this master regulator in association with the sigma factor, σ70. The Class II promoters are responsible for the gene expression of the hook-basal-body subunits and its regulators, including σ28 (encoded by a gene called FliA) and its anti-sigma factor, FlgM. The sigma factor σ28 is, in turn, required in order to activate the class III promoters. Before the construction of the Hook-Basal-Body has been completed, one obviously does not want the flagellin monomers to be prematurely expressed. Thus, in order to inhibit the σ28, its anti-sigma factor FlgM keeps it away from the RNA polymerase holoenzyme complex. When, finally, the Hook Basal Body has been completed, the anti-sigma factor FlgM is secreted, remarkably, through the flagellar substructures which are produced by the expression of the Class II hook-basal-body genes. The Class III promoters are then finally turned on by the sigma factor σ28, and the flagellum is completed. These Class III promoters are responsible for the expression of flagellin monomers, the chemotaxis system and the motorforce generators. In all, more than 50 genes are necessary for flagellar self-assembly to take place.

The flagellar apparatus can basically be divided into two key components: the secretion system and the axial structure. As discussed in my previous piece, the key components of the axial structure are FlgG for the rod, FlgE for the hook, and FliC for the filament. Each of those has its own respective cap protein, by virtue of which it assembles. The cap protein for FlgG is FlgJ; for FlgE, it is FlgD; and for FliC, it is FliD.

The cap protein FliD remains at the tip of the filament in the finished product. Some other components of the axial structure — FlgB, FlgC and FlgF — connect the rod and MS ring complex. The hook and filament are connected by FlgK and FlgL.

The structural foundation of the flagellar apparatus is the MS ring complex. When the C ring and C rod attach to the cytoplasmic surface of the M ring, the complex begins to secrete flagellar proteins.

One particularly remarkable feature of the flagellar assembly is the construction of the rod structure (which is built through the peptidoglycan layer with the assistance of cap protein FlgJ). The outer membrane represents a road block such that it cannot continue to grow. Incredibly, the outer ring complex actually cuts a hole in the membrane to allow the hook to continue to grow beneath the FlgD scaffold until it reaches a specified critical length, upon which the substrates which are being secreted switch from the rod-hook mode to flagellin mode. FlgD is then replaced by hook associated proteins (or HAPs) and the filament continues to grow. This, of course, only works correctly in the presence of the cap protein FliD; otherwise the flagellin monomers are lost.

Alison thinks that that is creationism. Notice how often the Bible was cited? That’s right. It wasn’t. This guy is not even a young-earther, and he leans towards common descent, too. (UPDATE: He just post a pack of research against common descent last week and now he is leaning away from it)

Don’t read that Alison – it’s nasty science, and it would offend your beliefs! Just stick to writing the stuff you’re good at. And for Darwin’s sake, don’t try to debate the science with anyone who disagrees with you. Don’t read any books that disagree with you. And don’t read any research papers and cite them in your writings. Just mark the ID scientists down – that’s the safest way to silence them. Ram your religion down their throats. Who cares about evidence? Not you. Otherwise you would be reading theirs, and writing some of your own.

UPDATE: Lenny has a good post about biases at Come Reason.

Polemics

Walter Bradley explains three scientific arguments for God’s existence

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Dr. Walter L. Bradley
Dr. Walter L. Bradley

Dr. Walter L. Bradley (C.V. here) is the Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor.

Here’s a bio from his faculty page at Baylor University:

Walter Bradley (B.S., Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin) is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor. He comes to Baylor from Texas A&M University where he helped develop a nationally recognized program in polymeric composite materials. At Texas A&M, he served as director of the Polymer Technology Center for 10 years and as Department Head of Mechanical Engineering, a department of 67 professors that was ranked as high as 12th nationally during his tenure. Bradley has authored over 150 refereed research publications including book chapters, articles in archival journals such as the Journal of Material Science, Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites, Mechanics of Time-Dependent Materials, Journal of Composites Technology and Research, Composite Science and Technology, Journal of Metals, Polymer Engineering and Science, and Journal of Materials Science, and refereed conference proceedings.

Dr. Bradley has secured over $5.0 million in research funding from NSF grants (15 yrs.), AFOSR (10 years), NASA grants (10 years), and DOE (3 years). He has also received research grants or contracts from many Fortune 500 companies, including Alcoa, Dow Chemical, DuPont, 3M, Shell, Exxon, Boeing, and Phillips.

He co-authored The Mystery of Life Origin: Reassessing Current Theories and has written 10 book chapters dealing with various faith science issues, a topic on which he speaks widely.

He has received 5 research awards at Texas A&M University and 1 national research award. He has also received two teaching awards. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Society for Materials and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the largest organization of Christians in Science and Technology in the world. He is President elect of the ASA and will serve his term in 2008.

You can read more about his recent research on how to use coconuts to make car parts in this article from Science Daily.

Below, I analyze a lecture I chose from the hundreds of public lectures he has given all over the world on the integration of Christian faith with other public, testable areas of knowledge. In this lecture, entitled “Is There Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer?“, Dr. Bradley explains how the progress of science has made the idea of a Creator and Designer of the universe more acceptable than ever before. (It’s a little different from the one I posted earlier in the week, and now I have summarized it so people can discuss it without having to watch the lecture).

Evidence #1: The design of the universe

1. The correspondence of natural phenomena to mathematical law

  • All observations of physical phenomena in the universe, such as throwing a ball up in the air, are described by a few simple, elegant mathematical equations.

2. The fine-tuning of physical constants and rations between constants in order to provide a life-permitting universe

  • Life has certain minimal requirements; long-term stable source of energy, a large number of different chemical elements, an element that can serve as a hub for joining together other elements into compounds, etc.
  • In order to meet these minimal requirements, the physical constants, (such as the gravitational constant), and the ratios between physical constants, need to be withing a narrow range of values in order to support the minimal requirements for life of any kind.
  • Slight changes to any of the physical constants, or to the rations between the constants, will result in a universe inhospitable to life.
  • The range of possible ranges over 70 orders of magnitude.
  • Although each individual selection of constants and ratios is as unlikely as any other selection, the vast majority of these possibilities do not support the minimal requirements of life of any kind. (In the same way as any hand of 5 cards that is dealt is as likely as any other, but you are overwhelmingly likely NOT to get a royal flush. In our case, a royal flush is a life-permitting universe).

Examples of finely-tuned constants and ratios: (there are more examples in the lecture)

a) The strong force: (the force that binds nucleons (= protons and neutrons) together in nucleus, by means of meson exchange)

  • if the strong force constant were 2% stronger, there would be no stable hydrogen, no long-lived stars, no hydrogen containing compounds. This is because the single proton in hydrogen would want to stick to something else so badly that there would be no hydrogen left!
  • if the strong force constant were 5% weaker, there would be no stable stars, few (if any) elements besides hydrogen. This is because you would be able to build up the nuclei of the heavier elements, which contain more than 1 proton.
  • So, whether you adjust the strong force up or down, you lose stars than can serve as long-term sources of stable energy, or you lose chemical diversity, which is necessary to make beings that can perform the minimal requirements of living beings. (see below)

b) The conversion of beryllium to carbon, and carbon to oxygen

  • Life requires carbon in order to serve as the hub for complex molecules, but it also requires oxygen in order to create water.
  • Carbon is like the hub wheel in a tinker toy set: you can bind other elements together to more complicated molecules (e.g. – “carbon-based life), but the bonds are not so tight that they can’t be broken down again later to make something else.
  • The carbon resonance level is determined by two constants: the strong force and electromagnetic force.
  • If you mess with these forces even slightly, you either lose the carbon or the oxygen.

3. Fine-tuning to allow a habitable planet

  • A number of factors must be fine-tuned in order to have a planet that supports life
  • Initial estimates predicted abundant life in the universe, but revised estimates now predict that life is almost certainly unique in the galaxy, and probably unique in the universe.
  • Even though there are lots of stars in the universe, the odds are against any of them supporting complex life.
  • Here are just a few of the minimal requirements for habitability: must be a single star solar system, in order to support stable planetary orbits, the planet must be the right distance from the sun in order to have liquid water at the surface, the planet must sufficient mass in order to retain an atmosphere, etc.

The best current atheist response to this is to speculate that there may be an infinite number of unobservable and untestable universes. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

Evidence #2: The origin of the universe

1. The progress of science has shown that the entire physical universe came into being out of nothing (= “the big bang”). It also shows that the cause of this creation event is non-physical and non-temporal. The cause is supernatural.

  • Atheism prefers an eternal universe, to get around the problem of a Creator having to create the universe.
  • Discovery #1: Observations of galaxies moving away from one another confirms that the universe expanded from a single point.
  • Discovery #2: Measurements of the cosmic background radiation confirms that the universe exploding into being.
  • Discovery #3: Predictions of elemental abundances prove that the universe is not eternal.
  • Discovery #4:The atheism-friendly steady-state model and oscillating model were both falsified by the evidence.
  • And there were other discoveries as well, mentioned in the lecture.

The best atheistic response to this is to speculate that there is an unobservable and untestable hyper-universe outside our own. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

Evidence #3: The origin of life

1. The progress of science has shown that the simplest living organism contains huge amounts of biological information, similar to the Java code I write all day at work. This is a problem for atheists, because the sequence of instructions in a living system has to come together all at once, it cannot have evolved by mutation and selection – because there was no replication in place prior to the formation of that first living system!

  • Living systems must support certain minimum life functions: processing energy, storing information, and replicating.
  • There needs to be a certain amount of complexity in the living system that can perform these minimum functions.
  • But on atheism, the living system needs to be simple enough to form by accident in a pre-biotic soup, and in a reasonable amount of time.
  • The minimal functionality in a living system is a achieved by DNA, RNA and enzymes. DNA and RNA are composed of sequences of proteins, which are in turn composed of sequences of amino acids.

Consider the problems of building a chain of 100 amino acids

  • The amino acids must be left-handed only, but left and right kinds are equally abundant in nature. How do you sort out the right-handed ones?
  • The amino acids must be bound together using peptide bonds. How do you prevent other types of bonds?
  • Each link of the amino acid chain needs to be carefully chosen such that the completed chain with fold up into a protein. How do you choose the correct amino acid for each link from the pool of 20 different kinds found in living systems?
  • In every case, a human or other intelligence could solve these problems by doing what intelligent agents do best: making choices.
  • But who is there to make the choices on atheism?

The best current atheistic response to this is to speculate that unobservable and untestable aliens seeded the earth with life. (I.e. – the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it)

The problem of the origin of life is not a problem of chemistry, it is a problem of engineering. Every part of car functionality can be understood and described using the laws of physics and chemistry. But an intelligence is still needed in order to assemble the components into a system that has the minimal requirements for a functioning vehicle.

Conclusion

In all three areas, scientists expected that the data would be consistent with atheism. First, scientists expected that life could exist even if the physical constants and ratios were altered. The progress of science said NO. Second, scientists expected that the universe would be eternal. The progress of science said NO. Third, scientists expected that the origin of life would be simple. The progress of science said NO. Why do some people resist the progress of science and cling to the religious dogma of materialism?

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Polemics

How the science teachers lobby misrepresents intelligent design

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From Evolution News.

Excerpt:

Science Teachers Association (NSTA), which stands alongside the rest of the Darwin lobby in holding that neo-Darwinian evolution should be taught in a one-sided, pro-evolution-only fashion.

[…]But the Darwin lobby is smart. While it is trying to ban and censor the views of its opponents, the Darwin lobby has a particular narrative which tries to paint its opponents as the censors and the extremists. The narrative goes something like this (my paraphrase): ‘Dark forces of intelligent design and creationism are seeking to ban evolution from public schools and then force their religious beliefs into the science classroom. We must stand against censorship and religious agendas, so we must fight their agenda at any cost. Stand with us, the guardians of freedom of thought and the First Amendment.’

[…]The article goes on to cover recent debates in Texas over teaching evolution. The reality, of course, is that NO leading Darwin-critics in Texas sought try to censor evolution. Evolution is still a required part of the curriculum in Texas, and the new TEKS that continue to teach evolution were eagerly adopted by the Texas State Board of Education members who were skeptics of neo-Darwinian evolution.

McKee’s strategy is thus one of the oldest in the books: deflect away from the fact that she herself advocates an extreme position by painting her opponents as extremists.

The reality is that leading groups that doubt neo-Darwinian evolution (like Discovery Institute) strongly oppose any attempts to ban evolution or remove it from the curriculum in schools. We also oppose teaching creationism in the science classroom because it’s a religious viewpoint. As for ID, we feel it’s science and constitutional to teach, but we want the debate over ID to be a scientific one and not a political one, so we oppose attempts to push ID into public schools. Instead, we think that public schools should simply teach the scientific evidence both for and against neo-Darwinian evolution.

So where does that leave us? Leading Darwin-critics aren’t seeking to introduce creationism or ID into public schools, and they would vehemently oppose attempts to ban evolution. Rather, they seek to increase coverage of evolution by teaching both the evidence for and against neo-Darwinism.

The Darwin lobby wants only the pro-Darwin-only viewpoint taught. They want to censor any science that challenges neo-Darwinian evolution.

The whole article is good to read, and especially this picture that summarizes their view and my view.

It’s important to understand that conservative pro-ID people like me are not trying to get rid of evolution. We want it taught as the best available theory that naturalists can invent after their faith commitment that the universe is eternal and matter is all that there is. And then we want the scientific evidence against evolution taught. That’s it. Period. Teach the controversy. Don’t distort the evidence to fit the pre-supposition of naturalism. Teach the evidence that the universe had a beginning, and that life exhibits characteristics of information. If nature is hostile to naturalism, then so much the worse for naturalists. Leave religion (naturalism) out of the classroom, and go where the evidence leads.