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As in the above case, Johnson simply ignores other arguments in Tower of Babel and reissues his usual brief. He writes that one could "flunk an undergraduate" who failed to get the "obvious points" he makes about the two examples he discusses—points that "bright high school students" should easily understand. However, bright students always do their reading, and they will see that I included these examples because IDCS say misleading things about them. The Grant's finch research is one of several studies showing not only that we can observe the Darwinian mechanisms at work in nature (sexual as well as natural selection) but also that we can measure them and see that they operate as predicted to produce functionally adaptive morphological changes. If there is any "fallacy of extrapolation," it is made by Johnson, who conveniently ignores the relevant causal processes exemplified, and seems to think that two data points are sufficient to infer "cyclical" variation within a fixed type. Creationists believe in some magic, uncrossable boundary that defines biological species, and Johnson fails to address the challenges I made to this view. Don't be fooled by talk of "genetic information" or "adaptive complexity." IDCS provide no definition or measure of these concepts, and no evidence that natural mechanisms cannot produce an "increase" in these, or even that an increase is necessary to evolve new species.
Johnson's discussion of Dawkins's computer simulation is particularly misleading, for I included that case specifically to show how IDCS regularly misrepresent what Dawkins explicitly claimed about his program and the way that it supports evolution. I also provided my own alternative example and de scribed other computer models that evolve using genetic algorithms, neither of which has the feature of a specific target that IDCS claim (falsely) "smuggles intelligence" into the procedure. Genetic algorithms can generate just the sort of novel, functional, and specific complexity that IDCS say is impossible without intentional design. Evolutionary computation is a rapidly developing field that is proving its power theoretically and in practical applications, from airplane wing design to, yes indeed, computer software development. (I made no claims about symphony orchestras.)
The only new item in Johnson's article is his acknowledgement that languages evolve. This is an important admission, for Johnson is usually careful not to say anything about the "details" of his position that could fracture his alliance. Traditional creationists do reject linguistic evolution, and for the same reason they reject biological evolution, because it goes against a plain reading of Genesis, which states that God specially created the different languages in the great confusion at Babel. I discuss this case, because the theory of the evolution of languages matches that of the evolution of biological species in all of its most significant elements: the structure of the theory, the kinds of evidence available, and how the central evolutionary hypothesis of descent with modification is justified. It is easy to see the flaws in the creationists' arguments in this context. Of course, the evolution of languages has some special features because the causal processes involved allow, for instance, Lamarckian as well as Darwinian mechanisms, but linguistic evolution does indeed challenge the IDCS' central claims. No one designed English, or any other natural language. Languages do not need special intentional design to evolve from one into others, and neither do species.
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