In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design?

Evolution News and Views ^ | January 19, 2015 | Casey Luskin

[Heartlander]

In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design?

Casey Luskin January 19, 2015 4:36 PM | Permalink

A student emails me to ask how long it will be before the "tide turns from Darwinism to ID." He follows the debate over intelligent design and is aware that the Darwin lobby's rhetoric typically fails to address ID's actual arguments (which are scientific in nature), instead focusing on personal attacks or trying to claim ID is religion. This student feels it is obvious that ID has the upper hand in the argument, but wonders when the majority opinion will also recognize this.

I agree that in the long-term, the position of the anti-ID lobby is simply not sustainable. You can't keep claiming forever that ID is just "religion" or "politics" when the ID camp is producing legitimate science, and even non-ID scientists keep making discoveries that confirm the predictions of ID. Or I suppose you can keep claiming whatever you want, but it will become increasingly difficult to get people to believe you.

What are my reasons for optimism? One of the strongest signs is that in head-to-head debates over ID and Darwinism, the ID proponent generally wins hands down. In that respect, we've had many key intellectual victories in recent years, including:

• Lots of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers being published.
  
• Experimental peer-reviewed research coming out showing the unevolvability of new proteins.
  
• Theoretical peer-reviewed papers taking down alleged computer simulations of evolution, showing that intelligence design is needed to produce new information.
  
• A major ID research conference at Cornell leading to the publication of the volume Biological Information: New Perspectives.
  
• Huge victories for ID in the area of junk DNA, thanks to the ENCODE results.
  
• Data supportive of ID coming out all the time as the epigenetic revolution proceeds.
  
• ID pretty much shut down the competition in debates relating to Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt. The book was appraised by one of the world's top two science journal, Science, (in a tellingly weak review).
  
• Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller's No. 1 argument in the Dover trial has now been shot down as the beta-globin pseudogene was found to be functional.
  
• The Darwin brigade's favorite argument against Michael Behe was refuted as chloroquine-resistance turns out to be a multimutation feature.
  
• Major concessions from leading atheists like philosopher Thomas Nagel that ID arguments have merit and should be taken seriously.
  
• Concessions from influential evolutionists that neo-Darwinism indeed faces serious criticism in biology.
  
• In recent years, many peer-reviewed articles in the mainstream scientific literature have critiqued Darwinism .
  
• And revealingly, the more that victories for ID multiply, the more the Darwin lobby tries to suppress free speech for ID proponents, and in turn is forced to squelch their own criticisms of the orthodox evolutionary paradigm.

I could list many more successes, as well as ways that we could be hoping for more and doing more, but the point is this: ID has had plenty of intellectual "wins" of late, and the future is bright. The problem is that much of the public isn't hearing about these wins for ID.

For the time being, ID critics control the microphone. They generally determine what students hear in the classroom, what the public reads in the media, and what scientists read in the journals. They can often prevent the public, students, and scientists from hearing the facts about ID. This has a major impact on the way many people perceive this debate because they can't make a fair evaluation when they are only hearing one side of the issue, dominated by spin and caricature. This is one of the biggest obstacles facing ID.

That's why a lot of our energy in the ID movement is devoted to "getting the word out," broadcasting the facts and correcting misinformation from our critics. ID blogs like Uncommon Descent and Evolution News & Views do a great job of this (if we do say so ourselves). There are other good sources out there as well.

The Summer Seminar on ID, organized by Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, has now graduated some 250 students, many of whom are going on to get PhDs and seed the next generation of scientists. There's a lot to look forward to.

Don't expect a revolution overnight. We are in this for the long haul, recognizing that it can take time for the truth to slip past the checkpoints that the Darwin lobby sets up to keep the public uninformed. In the end, though, I'm optimistic because the fundamentals of ID -- the science underlying the inference to design in nature -- are sound. The truth will win out, though it may tarry in doing so. Or to put it another way, the tide of ID is already well on its way in. We need to focus on telling people about it.

[ctdonath2]

Most people lack intellectual courage. Therefore, the majority would rather spout approved PC nonsense than stand up and admit doubts about the Darwinist meme.

Ditto for much of the ID crowd: lacking intellectual courage, they spout approved ID nonsense than stand up and admit doubts about the Creationist meme.

And I say that as a tacit ID adherent. I'm inclined toward what is ultimately ID, but irritated at those who espouse "mainstream" ID memes which plainly contradict what actually exists. Faith is in the unseen, not the rejection of the seen.

[jda]

I meant in the eyes of science.

Hmmm, whose eyes, those who are true, objective scientists and are able to see the fallacy of many evolutionary theories, or those who hold to the religion of evolution in spite of the fact that many of those theories have been debunked???

[Heartlander]

Who Believes What? Clearing up Confusion over Intelligent Design and Young-Earth Creationism

[tophat9000]

Question.. There is popular common belief that man uses only 10 to 15 % of the brain..

But from an natural selection evolutionary viewpoint you would not evolve something that is not used.

One or the other should not be true

[ctdonath2]

False dichotomy.
What of those objective scientists who see the validity of many evolutionary theories?
What of those ID followers who hold to the religion of their own perfect understanding of all things in spite of being debunked by plain reality?
Much of the ID crowd is just as blindly dogmatic about their views as the evolution crowd.

[ctdonath2]

Sometimes something unused is a natural consequence of implementing something useful. However a large intestine comes to be, the appendix may very well be an unavoidable result.

Sometimes something we think unused actually has an active purpose we just don’t understand yet. Turns out the appendix does have a purpose after all, we just didn’t grasp why until recently.

And sometimes something may evolve by chance, not beneficial but not detrimental either, having no reason to be de-selected out of existence.

Too much of ID argumentation amounts to “I don’t see why/how X exists, therefore it’s wrong/nonexistent”. Too much insistence on having perfect knowledge on both sides, too little humility that 2.5 pounds of wet brain cells just a few decades old is not well suited to understanding billions of light-years of content.

[philoginist]

It is quite plain that no evolutionary hypothesis is correct, or, as those who espouse ‘intelligent design’ have adequately proved, even possible.

However, proving someone else’s hypothesis is incorrect is not proof that your hypothesis is correct. At the present time, there is no scientific hypothesis that correctly describes origins. I am convinced no rational case can be made for why it must be known how everything got here. It’s here and is what it is and that is what science must study.

As for, “intelligent design,” considering the life on this planet, I can think of no greater insult than to blame someone for designing it. The death, disease, governments, and war it is presently dominated by is hardly intelligent.

[The_Reader_David]

You do realize that tu quoque is among the classical fallacies. I say that as one who also would categorize myself as a tacit ID adherent, who also finds the argumentation of "mainstream" ID advocates thin and unconvincing. I would rather see the position I suspect we share defended with sound argumentation rather than fallacies.

The main problem with ID as generally proposed is that to be a scientific theory it needs to begin with a scientific general theory of intelligence, which is never posited by the advocates whose main argumentation seems to be based on a priori probability estimates which appear to make the account given by neo-Darwinism wildly improbable. As a firm Popperian, I regard any reliance on a priori probability estimates as unscientific, since by their very nature they are neither falsifiable nor verifiable. (I also think most positions taken in polemical advocacy of neo-Darwinism, along with a great deal evolutionary biology proposed as serious science -- the sort of things Steven Jay Gould dismisses as "just so stories" -- fail to reformulate the random-mutation and natural-selection paradigm in a falsifiable form, and thus Popper's original critique of Darwinism as non-scientific, rather than his "recantation", still applies to them.)

Somewhat amusingly, if one takes as a general theory of intelligence the notion of "intelligent agent" proposed in turn-of-the-21st-century work on AI by among others Marcus Hutter, one can reasonably conclude that neo-Darwinism, far from being contrary to intelligent design, actually implies intelligent design, since the biosphere in the neo-Darwinian account can reasonably be argued to have the properties of an intelligent agent in the sense of Hutter.

[Heartlander]

stupid

/ˈstu•pɪd/ adj

› lacking thought or intelligence:

Consider this, to remove any ‘creator’ from our very existence including the beginning of our universe is to remove any ‘thought or intelligence’ from the equation. By definition, you are ultimately left with an existence from stupidity.

…that if we would maintain the value of our highest beliefs and emotions, we must find for them a congruous origin. Beauty must be more than accident. The source of morality must be moral. The source of knowledge must be rational.
- Sir Arthur Balfour

[jda]

Much of the ID crowd is just as blindly dogmatic about their views as the evolution crowd.

You seem to be somewhat objective and willing to talk rationally, so I'll give you some of my thoughts.

I agree that "some" of the ID crowd is dogmatic about their views, but, in my opinion, most of the evolution crowd is dogmatic about their views - to the point of personal attacks when they run out of facts.

I wholeheartedly believe in Creation by a Creator. Even though I don't pretend to know all of the answers, when I look at all of the evidence objectively, including the fact that most evolutionists are so adamant because they don't believe in an Intelligent Designer, I come to only one conclusion, with no hesitation, without apology, objectively, and with no hidden agenda.

One of the major issues I have with evolutionists is that they keep changing the definition of evolution. Originally, evolution meant, as defined in the Oxford Dictionary, 1) the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth. 2)the gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form.

But, today, evolutionists have had to adjust their definition to include "adaption". Life does adapt - that's irrefutable, but, to me, that's part of the Design. No life form has ever been proven to "adapt" from one species to another.

Some of the evidences I see:

- the obvious "special" creation of the Earth, as evidenced by our totally unique solar and lunar eclipses and the unequaled combination of factors that are required to support life on Earth.
- radiohalos
- spiral galaxies
- irreducible complexity of such things as eyes, the human knee, blood clotting, flagellates, etc.

One of my favorite quotes:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. - Charles Darwin

[philoginist]

“Consider this, to remove any ‘creator’ from our very existence including the beginning of our universe is to remove any ‘thought or intelligence’ from the equation. By definition, you are ultimately left with an existence from stupidity.”

My observation of makind convinces me you are probably correct. I cannot imagine any being willing to take the blame for the mess.

[Heartlander]

Interesting, so you believe your mind ultimately comes from mindlessness?

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Depends on your point of view. In the eyes of Creationists the tide has already turned towards intelligent design. In the eyes of science it has not and never will.

That's a statement of faith-- thus revealing the shallowness of the evolution defenders.

[philoginist]

“Interesting, so you believe your mind ultimately comes from mindlessness?”

Of course not. Both my mother and father had minds. I have my mind by biological inheritance, just as you and all other human beings do. Why did you assume you knew what I believe?

[tophat9000]

Im not arguing ID over evolution via natural selection..I’m arguing inside the theory of evolution via natural selection..

natural selection cannot favor or if you will select something that is not functional or or used...

you bring up things like colon or appendix which are things that had function in the past so at one point could be naturally selected in the past but now are obsolete ...

that’s fundamentally different than something that has never been used the only way we could have excess capacity of the brain is that at some point in the past it was necessary and used to be selected to be included in our genetic makeup

at least per the logic of natural selection.

[Heartlander]

...ultimately comes from mindlessness

[bray]

Ah, the Fundamentalist evolutionists come to this like bees to honey. They will be calling you names rather than trying to explain the holes in the theory you can drive a dinosaur through.

Right out of the liberal/Global Warming playbook.

Pray America is waking

[bray]

I believe he is talking about the Darwinists who have yet to find one transitional animal after 150 years of looking.

[ctdonath2]

Natural selection does not obligate eliminating something with no discernible benefit if there is likewise no discernible harm. If it arises as a fluke, and there’s no harm in it being there, it doesn’t get actively selected out.

As for “excess brain capacity”, the “only 10% used” meme has long been shown/traced as a popular misrepresentation of a more obtuse fact. Dunno about you, but I’m using most of mine.

[ctdonath2]

We have found a LOT of previously unseen species in the last 150 years. No satisfactory evidence that they’re “transitional”, but neither is there evidence they aren’t. I’ve not heard anyone suggest my pet theory that at least some of them are really new species as contrasted with merely undiscovered throughout human history.