Intelligent Design, Part 1

While going to dilbert.com for my daily dose of Dilbert, I saw that Dilbert Creator Scott Adams has a blog. Since Adams obiously understands Engineering/Systems-Design organizations, I thought I'd take a look.

And I found this.

Most amusing comment among those I read:

Both Darwinism and Intelligent Design are preposterous. Obvously you can't get somthing from nothing, life can't come from non-life. And if the world had been designed intelligently, we wouldn't all need to spend our time reading cartoonist's blogs to keep our day interesting.
The only possible soloution here is Unintelligent Design. We were created as some kind of half-assed science fair project that probably got a D-minus.
After the fair was over, the janitor just tossed us away into the unfashionable part of the galaxy, to spin around until we eventually decompose with all of the other crap floating around. Hot, loose, alien women, on the other hand, that would be an example of intelligent design.

ML/NJ

bump for later.

I guess really it all boils down to faith. You have to have "faith" to believe in a Darwinism explanation of how we got here with the extreme complexity of the life forms and coincidental enviroment and amount of DNA variances. As far as if God created the earth (as stated in genesis) you only have to believe in one simple thing - the omnipotence of God. If He has the ability to create the universe and all life in it, just how difficult would it be for Him to make the universe appear "older" for whatever reason.

"First of all, you’d be hard pressed to find a useful debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design"

“First of all", it’s called evolution, not “Darwinism”. That’s like calling ID “Creationism”.

Second, there’s no point in debating a 100% faith based ideology. A faith can not be disproved. ID's only hope of evidentiary support its to disprove every alternative, and it has had no success in disproving the scientific theory of evolution nor the evidence supporting it.

Both are fine to teach in public school. But ID belongs in social studies, not along side evolution in science.

“First of all", it’s called evolution, not “Darwinism”. That’s like calling ID “Creationism”.

I think you are wrong. The thing that people nowadays call evolution is Darwinism or neo-Darwinism. All share natural selection as the driving force which produced the variety of life forms we observe today.

ML/NJ

A faith can not be disproved.

This is a silly notion.

I believe that G-d gave the Torah to Moses, and Moses gave the Torah to the nation of Israel. This is an article of faith that Jews repeat every time (well almost) the Torah is read publicly.

Is it really true that this cannot be disproved?

Couldn't evidence turn up somewhere in a sort of anti-Josephus tome that depicts the entire history of the near-east in a completely different fashion; and then some more evidence that shows that the Torah was created sometime around the time of Jesus; or maybe by Jesus himself; and then maybe more evidence that forces most reasonable people to conclude that Moses is a fiction? I don't expect any of this to happen. Maybe that's faith. But there is some reason mixed in with it all.

ML/NJ

It's a mild pejorative in a scientific context, just like calling ID "Creationism". Creationism shares at least the same similarities with ID that you say Darwinism shares with evolution. If a respectful word is used for one, it should be used for both.

"A faith can not be disproved. This is a silly notion. "

A primitive faith or even elements of a sophisticated one have contradictory evidence, but AFAIK, no major faith is ever “disproved”. Debating faith may be educational, but resolves nothing.

It's a mild pejorative in a scientific context, just like calling ID "Creationism".

Actually Darwinism is a subset of Evolution. De Veries and Bateson are evolutionists but not Darwinists. As I understand the conventional wisdom, their ideas are rejected while Darwin's are embraced - or at least revered.

As for ID vs Creationism, I wasn't commenting on that. But Creationism is obviously a subset of ID. Suggesting that ID is restricted to Genesis is just wrong.

ML/NJ

De Veries and Bateson are as irrelevant to evolution as animism is to ID. Labeling evolutionary science “Darwinism” is an attempt to discredit it through its first 19th century proponent. Calling ID a superset of Creationism is just an attempt to mask its Christian origins, motivation and backing.

If there was a a case for ID, its proponents wouldn’t have to sink to misrepresentations.

De Veries and Bateson are as irrelevant to evolution as animism is to ID. Labeling evolutionary science “Darwinism” is an attempt to discredit it through its first 19th century proponent.

I picked De Veries (1906) and Bateson (1922) because they are mentioned by Coyne and Orr in their introduction to Speciation. Is there something that troubles you about Darwin? Or his idea of natural selection? (It was his idea, wasn't it?)

ML/NJ

"Is there something that troubles you about Darwin? Or his idea of natural selection? (It was his idea, wasn't it?)"

Darwin is to evolution as the Write brothers were to flight. Darwin was the first to discover and integrate principles to create a reasonable evolutionary model.

If I had a problem with opponents of flight trying to rename aeronautics “Writeism” so that they could imply that it was just as subjectively faith based as their alternative, it wouldn’t be because Write “troubles” me.

Those kind of tactics are evidence that ID belongs in social studies, not science.

Darwin is to evolution as the Write brothers were to flight.

It's the W-r-i-g-h-t brothers, and BTW they didn't invent aeronautics. They were the first to achieve powered flight. But no one is ashamed to be associated with them. For quite some time "Curtis Wright" was one of the largest corporations in America.

You didn't answer my question about natural selection. Do you think it has anything, or everthing, to do with the variety of species we observe, or does it not?

ML/NJ

"But no one is ashamed to be associated with them."

That’s another thing Wright and Darwin have in common.

Did you ask if I thought evolution was responsible for species diversity? I think it’s the most reasonable explanation to date. I’ve yet to see an ID claim of evolution’s inability to breach species that approached the improbability of the creation of a God to manage it. I don’t have a biology background which enables me to easily follow the debate’s details, but from what I can see from those ho do, all attempts by ID proponents to develop their first piece of evidence by painting part of evolution as impossible have been reasonably refuted.

Did you ask if I thought evolution was responsible for species diversity? I think it’s the most reasonable explanation to date.

No, I didn't. I asked if you thought natural selection was reponsible for species diverity. But thanks for playing.

ML/NJ

"No, I didn't. I asked if you thought natural selection was reponsible for species diverity. But thanks for playing."

Oh, I ee now. You’re referring to aking if I was “troubled” by Darwin or his ideas. I luv playing like that.

Regards

For the science room, no free speech
By Bill Murchison

Dec 28, 2005

Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years -- not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade -- haven't driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity.

Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones' anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools' Darwinian monopoly.

Jones' contempt for the "breathtaking inanity" of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism's "gaps/problems" is unlikely to intimidate the millions who find evolution only partly persuasive -- at best.

Millions? Scores of millions might be more like it. A 2004 Gallup Poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in evolution unaided by God. A Kansas newspaper poll last summer found 55 percent support for exposing public-school students to critiques of Darwinism.

This accounts for the widespread desire that children be able to factor in some alternatives to the notion that "natural selection" has brought us, humanly speaking, where we are. Well, maybe it has. But what if it hasn't? The science classroom can't take cognizance of such a possibility? Under the Jones ruling, it can't. Jones discerns a plot to establish a religious view of the question, though the religion he worries about exists only in the possibility that God, per Genesis 1, might intrude celestially into the discussion. (Intelligent-designers, for the record, say the power of a Creator God is just one of various possible counter-explanations.)

Not that Darwinism, as Jones acknowledges, is perfect. Still, "the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent scientific propositions."

Ah. We see now: Federal judges are the final word on good science. Who gave them the power to exclude even whispers of divinity from the classroom? Supposedly, the First Amendment to the Constitution: the odd part here being the assumption that the "free speech" amendment shuts down discussion of alternatives to an establishment-approved concept of Truth.

With energy and undisguised contempt for the critics of Darwinism, Jones thrusts out the back door of his courthouse the very possibility that any sustained critique of Darwinism should be admitted to public classrooms.

However, the writ of almighty federal judges runs only so far, as witness their ongoing failure to convince Americans that the Constitution requires almost unobstructed access to abortion. Pro-life voters and activists, who number in the millions, clearly aren't buying it. We're to suppose efforts to smother intelligent design will bear larger, lusher fruit?

The meeting place of faith and reason is proverbially darkish and unstable -- a place to which the discussants bring sometimes violently different assumptions about truth and where to find it. Yet, the recent remarks of the philosopher-theologian Michael Novak make great sense: "I don't understand why in the public schools we cannot have a day or two of discussion about the relative roles of science and religion." A discussion isn't a sermon or an altar call, is it?

Equally to the point, what does secular intolerance achieve in terms of revitalizing public schools, rendering them intellectually catalytic? As many religious folk see it, witch-hunts for Christian influences are an engrained part of present public-school curricula. Is this where they want the kids? Might private schools -- not necessarily religious ones -- offer a better alternative? Might home schooling?

Alienating bright, energized, intellectually alert customers is normally accounted bad business, but that's the direction in which Darwinian dogmatists point. Thanks to them and other such foes of free speech in the science classroom -- federal judges included -- we seem likely to hear less and less about survival of the fittest and more and more about survival of the least curious, the least motivated, the most gullible.

Find this story at: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/billmurchison/2005/12/28/180478.html

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Phillip Johnson Archives

Darwinists Squirm Under Spotlight
Interview with Phillip E. Johnson

This article is reprinted from an interview with Citizen Magazine, January 1992.

Phillip Johnson has been a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 20 years. As an academic lawyer, one of Johnson's specialties is "analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments." A few years ago he began to suspect that Darwinism, far from being an objective fact, was little more than a philosophical position dressed up as science--and poor science at that. Wanting to see whether his initial impression was correct, Johnson decided to take a closer look at the arguments, evidence and assumptions underlying contemporary Darwinism. The result of his investigation is Darwin on Trial, a controversial new book that challenges not only Darwinism but the philosophical mindset that sustains it.

When did you first become aware that Darwinism was in trouble as a scientific theory?

I had been vaguely aware that there were problems, but I'd never had any intention of taking up the subject seriously or in detail until the 1987-88 academic year, when I was a visiting professor in London. Every day on the way to my office I happened to go by a large bookstore devoted to science. I picked up one book after another and became increasingly fascinated with the obvious difficulties in the Darwinist case--difficulties that were being evaded by tricky rhetoric and emphatic repetition. I then began delving into the professional literature, especially in scientific journals such as Nature and Science. At every step, what I found was a failure of the evidence to be in accord with the theory.

What was it that initially made you suspect that Darwinism was more philosophy than hard science?

It was the way my scientific colleagues responded when I asked the hard questions. Instead of taking the intellectual questions seriously and responding to them, they would answer with all sorts of evasions and vague language, making it impossible to discuss the real objections to Darwinism. This is the way people talk when they're trying very hard not to understand something.

Another tip-off was the sharp contrast I noticed between the extremely dogmatic tone that Darwinists use when addressing the general public and the occasional frank acknowledgments, in scientific circles, of serious problems with the theory. For example, I would read Stephen Jay Gould telling the scientific world that Darwinism was effectively dead as a theory. And then in the popular literature, I would read Gould and other scientific writers saying that Darwinism was fundamentally healthy, and that scientists had the remaining problems well under control. There was a contradiction here, and it looked as though there was an effort to keep the outside world from becoming aware of the serious intellectual difficulties.

What are some of the intellectual difficulties? Can you give an example?

The most important is the fossil problem, because this is a direct record of the history of life on earth. If Darwinism were true, you would expect the fossil evidence to contain many examples of Darwinian evolution. You would expect to see fossils that really couldn't be understood except as transitions between one kind of organism and another. You would also expect to see some of the common ancestors that gave birth to different groups like fish and reptiles. You wouldn't expect to find them in every case, of course. It's perfectly reasonable to say that a great deal of the fossil evidence has been lost. But you would continually be finding examples of things that fit well with the theory.

In reality, the fossil record is something that Darwinists have had to explain away, because what it shows is the sudden appearance of organisms that exhibit no trace of step-by-step development from earlier forms. And it shows that once these organisms exist, they remain fundamentally unchanged, despite the passage of millions of years-and despite climatic and environmental changes that should have produced enormous Darwinian evolution if the theory were true. In short, if evolution is the gradual, step-by-step transformation of one kind of thing into another, the outstanding feature of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution.

But isn't it possible, as many Darwinists say, that the fossil evidence is just too scanty to show evidence of Darwinian evolution?

The question is whether or not Darwinism is a scientific theory that can be tested with scientific evidence. If you assume that the theory is true, you can deal with conflicting evidence by saying that the evidence has disappeared. But then the question arises, how do you know it's true if it isn't recorded in the fossils? Where is the proof? It's not in genetics. And it's not in the molecular evidence, which shows similarities between organisms but doesn't tell you how those similarities came about. So the proof isn't anywhere, and it's illegitimate to approach the fossil record with the conclusive assumption that the theory is true so that you can read into the fossil record whatever you need to support the theory.

If Darwinism has been so thoroughly disconfirmed, why do so many scientists say it's a fact?

There are several factors that explain this. One is that Darwinism is fundamentally a religious position, not a scientific position. The project of Darwinism is to explain the world and all its life forms in a way that excludes any role for a creator. And that project is sacred to the scientific naturalist-to the person who denies that God can in any way influence natural events.

It's also an unfortunate fact in the history of science that scientists will stick to a theory which is untrue until they get an acceptable alternative theory-which to a Darwinist means a strictly naturalistic theory. So for them, the question is not whether Darwinism is true. The question is whether there is a better theory that's philosophically acceptable. Any suggestion that Darwinism is false, and that we should admit our ignorance about the origin of complex life-forms, is simply unacceptable. In their eyes, Darwinism is the best naturalistic theory, and therefore effectively true. The argument that it's false can't even be heard.

Surely there are some skeptics in the scientific world. What of them?

Well, there are several, and we can see what happened to them. You have paleontologist Colin Patterson, who's quoted in my first chapter. He made a very bold statement, received a lot of vicious criticism, and then pulled back. This is a typical pattern.

Another pattern is that of Stephen Jay Gould, who said that Darwinism is effectively dead as a general theory-and then realized that he had given a powerful weapon to the creationists, whose existence cannot be tolerated. So now Gould says that he's really a good Darwinist, and that all he really meant was that Darwinism could be improved by developing a larger theory that included Darwinism. What we have here is politics, not science. Darwinism is politically correct for the scientific community, because it enables them to fight off any rivals for cultural authority.

Darwinists often accuse creationists of intolerance. But you're suggesting that the Darwinists are intolerant?

If you want to know what Darwinist science is really like, read what the Darwinists say about the creationists, because those things-regardless of whether they're true about the creationists-are true about the Darwinists. I've found that people often say things about their enemies that are true of themselves. And I think Darwinist science has many of the defects that the Darwinists are so indignant about when they describe the creationists.

Across the country, there has been a growing trend toward teaching evolution as a fact-especially in California, your own state. What does this say about science education in America?

This is an attempt to establish a religious position as orthodox throughout the educational establishment, and thus throughout the society. It's gone very far. The position is what I call "scientific naturalism." The scientific organizations, for example, tell us that if we wish to maintain our country's economic status and cope with environmental problems, we must give everyone a scientific outlook. But the "scientific outlook" they have in mind is one which, by definition, excludes God from any role in the world, from the Big Bang to the present. So this is fundamentally a religious position-a fundamentalist position, if you like--and it's being taught in the schools as a fact when it isn't even a good theory.

Why should Christians be concerned about a scientific theory? Why does it matter?

Well, not only Christians should care about it. Everyone should. It is religion in the name of science, and that means that it is misleading people about both religion and science.

Copyright © 1997 Phillip E. Johnson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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Here’s where it gets interesting. The Intelligent Design people allege that some experts within each narrow field are NOT convinced that the evidence within their specialty is a slam-dunk support of Darwin. Each branch of science, they say, has pro-Darwinists who acknowledge that while they assume the other branches of science have more solid evidence for Darwinism, their own branch is lacking in that high level of certainty. In other words, the scientists are in a weird peer pressure, herd mentality loop where they think that the other guy must have the “good stuff.”

Exactly. For such a supposedly intelligent bunch, the cattle/lemming clone mindset runs rampant, just as much as it does in any other religion. (IMO, this lack of independent thinking is the defining hallmark of mindless religion, as opposed to true Christianity.)

Probably why they are so quick to skewer us lowly un-anointed regular folks, the non-scientists, who think they are full of crap on this issue.

Why is the burden of proof solely on ID? Why the double standard?