Intelligent Design

The great physicist Wolfgang Pauli once criticized a scientific paper as so bad that it was “not even wrong.” It was so sloppy and ill conceived, thought Pauli, that to call it merely wrong would be to give it too much credit–it wasn’t even wrong. Today such a condemnation applies well to the theory of evolution which relies on religious convictions to prop up bad science. It seems that every argument for evolution wilts under scrutiny. Here is a classic example.

Continue reading here.

Biological specification always denotes function.1 Biological changes are said to occur when genomic changes become fixed by natural selection. Change can be traced to a prior condition in which a biological function existed because it had selective value i.e. it conferred function which enhanced reproductive fitness. Mutations, which change protein properties, correlate to new functions or enhance already existing ones. There is a symmetry between protein properties and biological function. As one moves along a timeline encompassing a process, one can map different proteins to their respective functions. Natural selection gives rise to the changing events and connects them in the timeline. The match-up between proteins and their functions constitutes a physical specification which is linked to a specified quality. In the case of living things the quality that is specified in advance is… the ability to propagate genes in reproduction.2

Timelines have a starting point. That would involve a biological entity able to replicate itself. Once that condition is present it is assumed that natural selection sufficiently explains subsequent changes. Yet more than an unknown starting point needs to be recognized. A symmetry break between physical properties and function is noted as is the insufficiency of natural selection based theories to bridge a gap between a prebiotic environment and a biological reproducing entity. At one point in time there is no self-replicator and no specification criteria. Then there is both. That is the moment correlating to initial front loading. The difference between IDists and their critics is the belief by the former that intelligence accounts for loading of the replicating information storage unit.

But it may also be that natural selection is credited with more of a role than merited even when biological organisms are present. At least the logic that common ancestry requires natural selection is doubtful according to the PNAS paper: Did Darwin write the Origin backwards? The abstract:

After clarifying how Darwin understood natural selection and common ancestry, I consider how the two concepts are related in his theory. I argue that common ancestry has evidential priority. Arguments about natural selection often make use of the assumption of common ancestry, whereas arguments for common ancestry do not require the assumption that natural selection has been at work. In fact, Darwin held that the key evidence for common ancestry comes from characters whose evolution is not caused by natural selection. This raises the question of why Darwin puts natural selection first and foremost in the Origin.

Reference:

1. Intelligent Design; William A. Dembski; Page 149; InterVarsity Press; 1999.
2. Ibid.

Here’s a neat article on front-loading:

The Front-loading Fiction
Posted by Rob on Wednesday, July 01, 2009 5:49:41 PM

SOURCE: The Procrustean — A Blog of Townhall.com

In responding to an email about “front-loading” as a Deistic solution to the universe that does not require an interventionist (theist) God, I replied that I have some philosophical problems with the phrase “front-loading”. It is a concession to Deism that doesn’t have to be made. Trying to describe a “front-loaded algorithm” highlights the problem with the philosophical solution.

Historically, the argument for front-loading came from Laplacian determinism based on a Newtonian or mechanical universe–if one could control all the initial conditions, then the outcome was predetermined. First quantum mechanics, and then chaos-theory has basically destroyed it, since no amount of precision can control the outcome far in the future. (The exponential nature of the precision required to predetermine the outcome exceeds the information storage of the medium.)

But “front-loading” permitted Deists to say that God designed the Universe, and then stepped back and let “natural” forces operate, thereby removing any “supernatural” interference of the sort that Lucretius fumed about in 50BC. So if Newtonian determinism was now impossible, perhaps there could be some sort of algorithmic determinism (which I’ll call Turing determinism) which could step in and permit a Deist to avoid the supernatural. That is, God doesn’t have to create the oak from the acorn anymore, but the biological program He inserted in the acorn can handle all the intermediate steps. So perhaps, God didn’t have to create humans, but the biological program in the first living cell He created, started the ecosystem that eventually evolved humans.

This remains, of course, the principle argument of theistic evolutionists, and was Howard Van Till’s favored method before he stopped teaching at Calvin College and gave up on theism.

But this argument assumes that one can separate algorithms from the machinery that executes them, the information from the storage medium, the supernaturally contingent from the naturally necessary. The Newtonian revolution was to view the universe as a complicated machine where “natural” laws were the function of the machinery, and “supernatural” interference was information not incorporated into the gears. The fact that a watch tells time was “natural”, whereas the setting to Eastern Standard Time was “supernatural” because it was contingent.

ID (Intelligent Design) makes the argument that the gears are just as supernatural as the time zone, because they are designed to function in a certain way. But such an argument doesn’t escape the TE (Theistic Evolutionist) defense that the time zone setting is just as “natural” as the gears, because there were no laws of nature broken. This would all be semantics, if it were not for the corollary, that ID claims to probe the character of the designer by studying the design, whereas TE claims that front-loading is indistinguishable from chance, making the designer inscrutable. (Which keeps his faith transcendentally Kantian, and science a-theistically independent of God.)

But is it true that algorithmic front-loading can be naturalistic, independent of God, Turing-deterministic, and thus incapable of revealing anything about a living God?

I’d like to make the argument that Turing determinism is impossible for several reasons, and therefore front-loading is indistinguishable from the supernatural, from the actions of God intervening in history.

MORE

Synopsis Of The First Chapter Of  Signature In The Cell by Stephen Meyer

ISBN: 9780061894206; ISBN10: 0061894206; Imprint: HarperCollins

In August of 2004, philosopher Stephen Meyer published an article in the Proceedings Of The Biological Society Of Washington.  The article raised media interest and outrage because it was the first to “advance the theory of intelligent design” in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.  The editor Richard Sternberg lost his position as a result of the ensuing debacle.

Just a few months later, renowned British philosopher Antony Flew shocked the world by reversing his life-long atheistic commitment and announcing his support for an idea reminiscent of that proposed by the modern intelligent design movement.  That same month the ACLU declared it would be filing charges against the Dover, Pennsylvania school board for approving the teaching of Intelligent Design in its science classes.

Much of the controversy in all the above cases stems from a misunderstanding over what the intelligent design movement does and does not purport to explain.  As many in the movement have re-iterated throughout the years, intelligent design is not in any way synonymous with biblical creationism.  In the words of Stephen Meyer “intelligent design is an inference from scientific evidence, not a deduction from religious authority” (p. 8).

In his recent book Signature In The Cell, Meyer presents a fresh outlook on one of the most compeling facets of the Intelligent Design case- that of biological information in DNA.  When Watson and Crick published their famous paper in 1958, they not only solved the mystery of the structure of DNA but also unearthed the computer program-like nature of the information that it carried.  While experience tells us that such information has its origins in the activity of conscious beings, evolutionary biologists have dismissed such a connection in biology.  As an alternative, they have as we all know placed their belief in the blind activity of natural selection.

It would seem ironic therefore that these same scientists would then employ design-evoking metaphors such as ‘code’ and ‘language’ to describe DNA.  They of course qualify this by stating that the apparent design of DNA is merely illusionary.  Still as Meyer hammers home, the mystery of the origins of DNA and life itself remains one that modern day biology is finding difficult to unravel.

Meyer provides a lucid and personal account of his own experiences as a scientist and philosopher revealing to the reader the watershed events that led to his move towards the intelligent design alternative.  Foremost in his initial exposé are the meetings he conducted with Charles Thaxton who, in his co-authorship of the book The Mystery Of Life’s Origin, rejuvenated the idea of intelligent causation in biology.

I realize this is slightly off-topic, but it is related to the spirit of Uncommon Descent. It turns out that Ockham’s Razor is nothing more than a modern myth, and this was proven by William Thornburn in a brilliant and devastating paper he published in Mind 27 (1918), pp345-353.

Ockham’s Razor states that “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”, which is often translated as “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”. In other words, do not invent more things to fit the facts than are needed. William of Ockham (c. 1288 - c. 1348) himself was a medieval logician, known as the “Singular and Invincible Doctor” (many medieval logicians had street names like this). He was very famous in his own time. “If the Gods used Logic”, said his editor, Mark of Beneventum, “it would be the Logic of Ockham”.

But Ockham never invented Ockham’s Razor. Thornburn appears to have meticulously gone through a vast amount of material, and found that the phrase “Ockham’s Razor” comes from the writings of Sir William Hamilton in the 19th Century. The phase “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”, can be found no earlier than 1639, in the writings of John Ponce of Cork. More importantly, neither similar phrases, nor anything that really resembles the concept they are expressing, can be found in the writings of Ockham.

Thornburn’s paper has never been challenged, but the myth remains. If myths can persist in philosophy, why not in science? If unchallenged scholarship can simply be ignored, should it surprise us that science supporting ID is also ignored? How many other scholarly and scientific myths are there out there?

Why microbes are smarter than you thought is a New Scientist article containing subtopics of interest. There are also multiple links within the article.

[[Discovery Press Release:]]

In Darwin Anniversary Year, New Zogby Poll Reveals Majority Support for Intelligent Design — Doubts about Darwin Continue to Mount

Seattle – Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design. When asked if life developed “through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection,” a standard definition of Darwinism, only 33 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement. But 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.”

“In the Year of Darwin, these figures must represent a terrible disappointment to Darwinian advocates,” commented Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D., director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, which commissioned the poll. “Darwin’s greatest accomplishment was supposed to be the refutation of intelligent design, yet more than a century later the public has grown increasingly disenchanted with Darwin’s claims.”

Dr. Meyer is the author of a new book from HarperOne, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. He suggested the polling data may reflect a growing awareness of recent scientific developments, documented in his book. As word seeps out from the scientific community, confidence in Darwinism has begun to perceptibly erode:

“It’s only in the past decade that the information age has finally come to biology. We now know that biology at its root is digital code. Having advanced to this level of digital technology ourselves, in computer science, we can at last begin to appreciate what is going on inside the cell: the nested coding, digital processing, distributive retrieval and storage systems, the whole operating system in the genome. The cell is doing the same thing a computer’s operating system does, but with far, far greater efficiency.”

Dr. Meyer said it was no coincidence that the public remained fixed in its skepticism of standard evolutionary theories as scientists learned more about the enigma of DNA and its origins: “Undirected evolutionary processes cannot explain what science is revealing. Intelligent design can. Americans are catching onto this.”

Zogby International conducted the omnibus telephone survey of 1,053 likely voters earlier this year, which marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth as well as the anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. The margin of error for the poll is +/- 3.1 percentage points.

The suppression of Alan Carlin’s report arguing against anthropogenic global warming serves as a warning to anyone who would facilely contend that science is self-correcting. Science by itself is not self-correcting. It only becomes self-correcting when scientists and outsiders refuse to let dogmatists who pretend to scientific objectivity monopolize the discussion. Science is not about consensus. It is about informed dissent. Indeed, progress in science is only possible through informed consent. Those who suppressed Carlin’s report should read John Stuart Mill, who stressed the need for all sides in a debate to be fairly represented. This applies to the debate over design and Darwinism as well.

SOURCE: GO HERE

It’s nice to see people like Pat Buchanan feeling more at ease about going after Darwin. In citing Eugene Windchy’s THE END OF DARWINISM, Buchanan writes:

Darwin … lied in “The Origin of Species” about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

SOURCE: worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102589

A new method for computing evolutionary trees may revolutionize evolutionary biology. That’s good because evolutionary biology needs some revolutionizing. So far its fundamental predictions have consistently turned out to be false. Indeed, at evolutionary biology’s very core, the idea of an evolutionary tree is problematic given the data, and even some evolutionists are suggesting the “tree thinking” may not be useful. But the new research isn’t likely to help on that score. What the research does enable is the creation of erroneous results at a much faster pace.

Continue reading here.

Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around? The fault, dear Darwin, lies not in our ancestors, but in ourselves, a Newsweek article by Sharon Begley, shows us what happens when evolutionary psychology clashes with powerful social values. The former comes out the worse for it.

 Before I announce the winner, I should note that Harper One San Francisco has announced that 5 hardback copies of both Steve Meyer’s Signature of the Cell, ( 2009) and Beauregard and O’Leary’s The Spiritual Brain (2007 ) are available free to contest winners. Like, win and add them to your library for free.

Okay, now to Question 5:

Winner VJ Torley writes, What is the down side for serious Darwinists to just cutting the “evolutionary psychology” psychodrama loose, and focusing on what real science can say about evolution?

The down side to cutting “evolutionary psychology” loose is that Darwinism would then no longer be a comprehensive theory of all features of organisms, in the same way that atomic theory is a comprehensive theory of all substances and all states of matter in chemistry. A Darwinism which placed psychology outside its explanatory ambit might still be able to account for the entire gamut of organisms’ biological characteristics, but it would no longer be a satisfactory theory of their behavior.

This should not be a problem to science as such. However, contemporary science is profoundly reductionistic in its outlook. In the current intellectual milieu, irreducible higher-level properties (such as mental states) are likely to be just as annoying to scientists as surds were to the Greeks, who threw into the sea the man who first proved that the square root of two was irrational.

There is one way in which today’s scientists might be persuaded to cut “evolutionary psychology” loose, and that would be if psychology itself came to be regarded as a pseudo-science. A few philosophers and scientists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, deny the existence of mental states altogether and regard talk of mental states as a “folk theory,” which will eventually be superseded by a theory that explains human behavior in terms of brain states. If these views ever gained scientific acceptance, then evolutionary psychology would vanish as a discipline.

What is the down side for serious Darwinists to just cutting the “evolutionary psychology” psychodrama loose, and focusing on what real science can say about evolution?

The down side to cutting “evolutionary psychology” loose is that Darwinism would then no longer be a comprehensive theory of all features of organisms, in the same way that atomic theory is a comprehensive theory of all substances and all states of matter in chemistry. A Darwinism which placed psychology outside its explanatory ambit might still be able to account for the entire gamut of organisms’ biological characteristics, but it would no longer be a satisfactory theory of their behavior.

This should not be a problem to science as such. However, contemporary science is profoundly reductionistic in its outlook. In the current intellectual milieu, irreducible higher-level properties (such as mental states) are likely to be just as annoying to scientists as surds were to the Greeks, who threw into the sea the man who first proved that the square root of two was irrational.

There is one way in which today’s scientists might be persuaded to cut “evolutionary psychology” loose, and that would be if psychology itself came to be regarded as a pseudo-science. A few philosophers and scientists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, deny the existence of mental states altogether and regard talk of mental states as a “folk theory,” which will eventually be superseded by a theory that explains human behavior in terms of brain states. If these views ever gained scientific acceptance, then evolutionary psychology would vanish as a discipline.

VJ Torley needs to be in touch with oleary@sympatico.ca to provide a current postal address, to collect his prize, a year’s free subscription to Salvo (decidedly not yer granny’s explanation of why younger Christians are getting tired of all this materialist rubbish, but a more plausible one) plus free, fun back issues.

Here is how this contest got started: At Robert Murphy’s “Free Advice” blog, a post called - advisedly - Just-So Darwinism:

“Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children - even the males, though to a lesser degree - lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.”

OK, you got that? Remember, the whole point of this story is to explain why older men with thinning hair are implausibly attractive to young women (despite the myths that Rogaine and others would have you believe, and despite all those male models with full heads of hair). So to do that, the story starts out with why evolution made women lose their (body) hair, which then caused their male offspring to lose their (body and scalp?) hair, even though the original motivation (sexual selection a la the peacock) never caused female baldness to become prevalent.

Hat tip: Darwinian Tales (by “Vox Day”), who kindly wrote to say, “Knowing of your intense interest in the “big bazooms” theory [of evolution], I think you’ll enjoy this.”

Yes,Vox said that. I collect stupid theories (like the sexy baldy and the “big bazooms”) theory of evolution, the way some people collect ceramic busts of Elvis Presley, not because they admire them but because they are intrigued by the fact that anyone, anywhere would actually admire them.

Terence Kealey is vice-chancellor of Buckingham University

A friend alerted me to this piece by Lawrence Krauss from the Wall Street Journal.

Krauss writes:

“J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionary biologist and a founder of population genetics, understood that science is by necessity an atheistic discipline. As Haldane so aptly described it, one cannot proceed with the process of scientific discovery if one assumes a “god, angel, or devil” will interfere with one’s experiments. God is, of necessity, irrelevant in science.

Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world, many, indeed probably most, scientists understandably react as Haldane did. Namely, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism.”

No surprise here. But he concludes with
“Finally, it is worth pointing out that these issues are not purely academic. The current crisis in Iran has laid bare the striking inconsistency between a world built on reason and a world built on religious dogma.”

Perhaps the most important contribution an honest assessment of the incompatibility between science and religious doctrine can provide is to make it starkly clear that in human affairs — as well as in the rest of the physical world — reason is the better guide.”

Reason is a better guide than what? Religion? Which religion? All religions? What empircal data does Krauss have to back up this, supposedly, scientific claim. For that matter, what precisely does it mean for reason to be a “better guide”? Better how? This is just another example of a scientist making unsubstantiated philosophical statements in the name of science. It would be interesting to hear how Krauss would explain what went wrong with “reason” with such well known atheists like Stalin or Hitler. How was “reason” a better guide with those guys? Perhaps Krauss could begin by telling us what he means by “reason” in the first place.

It always amazes me how those who claim the high road of science and scientific reasoning so easily abandon the basic rules of logic and reason when it doesn’t seem to suit their argument. He could start by telling us how he knows scientifically that the properties of the cosmos are such that no deity (assuming a deity exists), could take any action whatsoever that would have empirical consequences in what we call Nature, even in principle. If Krauss has no scientific answer to that question (and he doesn’t), then how does he know that the properties of our cosmos are such that miracles can not take place, even in principle? Just because science tells us how babies are formed and born does not mean that in one instance, at least, something quite extraordinary took place. Just because Krauss and his fellow atheists don’t accept such things as true or even possbile doesn’t mean they aren’t. And appealing to science is of little help to his case, since neither he nor anyone else has come up with a detailed, testable, (and potenitally falsifiable) scientific model that eliminates the possibility of miracles from ever occuring in Nature.

Nothing exposes the failure of a dogma more than the propaganda it hides behind. Pathetic ideas cannot stand the light of day. They run from open inquiry and call everyone a liar. Evolution is pathetic–not because it is a religiously motivated idea with little scientific support, but because of its deceitful cover up. It makes religious proclamations and then points the finger at others. It is scientifically absurd yet it claims to be a fact. And when probed, watch out.

Continue reading here.

For those of us concerned about child abuse there is this: There’ll be no tent for God at Camp Dawkins. Oh how utterly ironic that the architect of the religious label = child abuse meme is starting a camp of his own. Of course the true believers who send their little ones to this camp are hopeful on the indoctrination issue:

Crispian Jago, an IT consultant, is hoping the experience will enrich his two children.

“I’m very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds,” he said this weekend. “I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think.”

But there is also this:

While afternoons at the camp will involve familiar activities such as canoeing and swimming, the youngsters’ mornings will be spent debunking supernatural phenomena such as the formation of crop circles and telepathy. Even Uri Geller’s apparent ability to bend spoons with his mind will come under scrutiny.

Debunking supernatural phenomenon heh. Most assuredly this will be done by teahing children how to think rather than what to think.

And there is this objective appraisal:

“We are not trying to bash religion, but it encourages people to believe in a lot of things for which there is no evidence.”

No evidence. Beware when people cite an absolute value like zero as an evidentiary descriptor. Even when I disagree I tend to be more generous with my opponents but then again I'm more objective too. But what is the evidence that sustains the position that there is no God?

Oh well, there is this too:

While afternoons at the camp will involve familiar activities such as canoeing and swimming…

So let's hope for the best. For the sake of preventing child abuse of course.

Mike Gene has written an intriguing post, at his blog, on front loading with ribosomes. From the post:

This assembly maps involves 15 universal small subunit ribosomal proteins, and of these 15, ten have a moonlighting role (we shall explore several of these functions at a future date). What’s striking is that all proteins involved in binding to the 3’ domain of the rRNA are not only universal proteins, but also have moonlighting functions.

In other words 2/3 of the proteins have moonlighting roles. Quite a large percentage. Darwinian evolution predicts that some ancient proteins will be coopted for future uses, but 2/3 of them? What is even more intriguing about Mike's post is his prediction:

Those universal ribosomal proteins that don’t seem to have a moonlighting role are s17, s5, s8, s11, and s15.

Thus, the front-loading hypothesis further predicts these too will eventually be discovered to have moonlighting functions.

Anyone care to predict that he's wrong?

No Smiting is the title of a New York Times book review by Paul Bloom. The review is notable for a number of reasons. It is a focal point around which we are able to contrast differing views of the world begining with the perspective of Robert Wright, author of the book The Evolution of God. Because the review is rich in material, around which discussions can be centered, I'll break this into two distinct blog entries. This one will focus on the page you can link to and a follow-up, coming shortly thereafter, will focus on the following review page, Kindly confine any comments on this blog entry to the first page of the review. I'll start with an analysis of the first paragraph:

God has mellowed. The God that most Americans worship occasionally gets upset about abortion and gay marriage, but he is a softy compared with the Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. That was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. But at least Yahweh had strong moral views, occasionally enlightened ones, about how the Israelites should behave. His hunter-gatherer ancestors, by contrast, were doofus gods. Morally clueless, they were often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate.

Bearing in mind that philosophies, ideologies, religions and beliefs are accompanied by narratives able to outline basic positions unique to them, let's look at contrasting narratives. One is explicitly portrayed even if it is also misleading in its portrayal. The second is implicit and derived from narratives used to critique the Judeo-Christian God. That narrative is in evidence in the preceding quote. The God of the ancient Hebrews we are told "was a warrior God, savagely tribal, deeply insecure about his status and willing to commit mass murder to show off his powers. This incidently is part of a common narrative used to debunk Judeo-Christian concepts and conversely promote, albeit not overtly, contrasting ones. Critics know that an effective guerrilla war entails keeping you own agenda under the radar screen. Arrows do not hit invisible targets.

The theme of the warrior narrative is change. Your God changed with time. He was once a savage mass murderer who became Jesus, the mortal philosopher. The evidence is there in the Old Testament. God commanded Joshua to lead the Isrealites into the promised land and slay the inhabitants of it. Of course we do not really believe God existed but the purpose of our narrative is to debunk so if you uneducated Christian readers will keep an open mind you'll see that mass murder is immoral. I would use the descriptor instrinsically immoral except that it would make me look like an absolutist in an age when moral relativism is a litmus test for sophistication.

God then evolved to become Jesus; he who taught that we turn the other cheek. A mass murderer turning the other cheek. Can't you see the absurdity of your biblical narrative? What really evolved, of course, was your fantasy and I'm bright enough to elucidate it in cleverly mocking tones.

What is misleading about the anti-Christian narrative? The review contains ample evidence of a secondary commonly used debunking tactic- enumerations of ancient religious beliefs and behaviors repugnant to the 21st century mind. You know. Doofus gods who "often yelled at by their people and tended toward quirky obsessions. One thunder god would get mad if people combed their hair during a storm or watched dogs mate." Ha ha ha. Things got a little better with the Isrealites. We went from doofus to mass murderer. From oaf to creep. But what really stands out to those familar with facts as well as narratives is a glaring ommission. Critics delight in depicting the absurd views of the ancients but where oh where was the depiction of a practice important to the inhabitants of the promised land- child sacrifice? I mean if you are going to debunk religion start with that right? Wrong. If that is mentioned it is not front and center. Front and center is the God who would wipe out cultures that practice child sacrifice. Hidden in the background is the practice itself for it mitigates the assumption of innocent victim and substitutes a notion of justice in its place. Mocking treads lightly on substance as substance and snickering are not compatible bedfellows. Mockery of a morally capricious God is enhanced if we do not focus on the dreaded practices of tribes indigenous to the promised land. Child sacrifice and its utility to debunking religion has at least temporarily taken a back seat. No sense in validating death sentences for it.

Quoting Bloom:

Wright also denies the specialness of any faith. In his view, there is continuous positive change over time — religious history has a moral direction — but no movement of moral revelation associated with the emergence of Moses, Jesus or Mohammed.

Denying "specialness" is part of attempts to eviscerate. The primary weapon wielded in secular attacks on Christianity is the contention that it is not real. God is not real and any moral values linked to God are suspect at best or worthy of outright dismissal. It's not subtle:

The bad news is that your God was born imperfect. The good news is that he doesn’t really exist.

Clever one liners that avoid substance. Wright is not in a position to adjudicate the God/no God debate. But he's able to expose his prejuduces. It's Archie Bunker hiding behind ivy leaves.