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.

I did not say that natural selection was obliged to remove things that no longer had function in fact I would expect the opposite...

As for brain capacity again I’m simply making a statement that it is commonly stated that we have excess brain capacity that we don’t use that is not compatible with the theory of natural selection so one of the other should to be incorrect to some degree.

I do not dispute natural selection, any animal breeder to basically demonstrated when you cull an animal...you select some, remove other to reproduce a trait

That the natural environment might cull out or favor a particular animal trait is completely rational...

But it is also true that natural selection its not the only species creation mechanism nor can any species be proven to be natural vs intelligently created...

we currently create new species through genetic manipulation and modification there’s no scientific tests to determine if a particular species was created versus naturally evolved.... so if you can’t prove one of the other going forward you sure as heck can’t prove it going back and have to be honest enough to state as such

and the natural selection process itself cannot function unless something is already reproducing for natural selection to favor a trait in the first place...therefore by simple logic tells you that at least the first life form could not naturally evolve....

again I’m not arguing for intelligent design I’m simply pointing out that you have to take natural selection in context it is not the panacea of all creation nor can it be proven as such ...

So to be intellectually honest you have to have mind open to additional mechanisms else you’re being intellectually dishonest and being just as dogmatic irrational as some accuse religious fundamentalist of being

Tell that to these stupid ‘creationists’:

Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous. Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history and society and Freud's attribution of human behavior to influences over which we have little control, Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism…
-Douglas Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology (1998, 3rd Ed., Sinauer Associates), p. 5

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In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

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Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.
1) No gods worth having exist.
2) No life after death exists.
3) No ultimate foundation for ethics exists.
4) No ultimate meaning in life exists.
5) Human free will is nonexistent.
- William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)

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If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.
- Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, and Selection in Regard to Sex

You said, “...ultimately comes from mindlessness,” didn’t you?

I said evolution is wrong. I know there is no abiogenesis, that life only comes from life and that minds only come from minds.

I think the issue is one you have not mentioned. I think you have accepted a premise for which there is no conclusive evidence; namely; that there is some kind of “beginning.” Perhaps there was, but there is no evidence for any such beginning. I know cosmologist believe in a pseudo-beginning called the, “big bang,” but that is only a hypothesis with many questions. It makes one terrible assumption: that we know all there is know about the universe and will never learn anything new that contradicts our current view.

I don’t know why you believe in beginnings, if you do. I do not accept that premise. The only evidence I have is the evidence of the universe as it is, which includes the life on this planet, in all of which, species only come from similar species, and life only comes from life. I have no evidence that this is not a principle that may well apply to the whole universe.

Where did everything come from? I’m not convinced that everything wasn’t always much as it is, but even if there were some kind of origin, I have no idea what it could have been, and either does anyone else.

If you believe in origins of some kind based on anything other than evidence—faith for example—and that satisfies you, good for you. I have no interest in changing your mind. I just wanted to explain why your assumption that, just because I do not believe as you do, it means I believe mind can come from anything without mind is specious. I know that mind cannot come from anything without mind.

“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.”

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The above is quite well stated and astute.

Well done.

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“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 above, well, not so much. It seems an abrupt shift in to philosophical polemic.

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