Uncommon Dissent-Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing (another book review)

Townhallcom ^ | December 13, 2004 | Chris Banescu

[Gritty]

Destroying the unqualified and unjustified myth that "only religious fanatics oppose Darwinism", Dr. William Dembski's collection of essays presents a powerful and convincing case that exposes the many flaws and problems of Darwinism. Rather than having an agenda, the intellectuals that contributed to Uncommon Dissent exemplify the objective, rational, and scholarly manner in which they have both examined the various evolutionary theories and exposed these theories' many inconsistencies, oversights, and errors. The eloquence and thoroughness with which these essays critically analyze the Darwinian dogmas reveal that fanatical devotions to unproven theories are prevalent mainly in the mainstream secular scientific community - not among the many scholars and scientists who dare question the veracity and universality of various evolutionary models.

One of Dembski's key objections to the assertion that random changes created the vast complexity of life is a fitting summary of the structural problem of evolutionary thought. Dembski notes that "this blind process, when coupled with another blind process, is supposed to produce designs that exceed the capacities of any designers in our experience." This theoretical and chaotic process has been proposed and promoted by Darwinists as fact without the required scientific evidence to back it up. Furthermore, the intolerance shown to dissenting voices that question evolutionary theories reveals a dangerous pattern of repression and censorship within the scientific establishment.

The missing fossil data needed to support evolution is a crucial argument expressed by many of the book's contributors. If Darwin was correct, then scores of transitional animal forms must exist in the geological record. However, as Phillip E. Johnson points out:

The fossil evidence is very difficult to reconcile with the Darwinist scenario. If all living species descended from common ancestors by an accumulation of tiny steps, then there once must have existed a veritable universe of transitional intermediate forms liking the vastly different organisms of today… with their hypothetical common ancestors.

Such evidence simply does not exist. According to Cornelius G. Hunter:

The observed fossil pattern is invariably not compatible with a gradualistic evolutionary process. The fossil record does not reveal a pattern of accumulated small-change.... New species appear fully formed, as though planted there, and they remain unchanged for eons.

In the face of such convincing evidence, one would expect evolutionary scientists to acknowledge some serious flaws in their theories. After all, science should be about searching for the truth. Unfortunately, Johnson notes:

When the fossil record does not provide the evidence that naturalism would like to see, it is the fossil record, and not the naturalistic explanation, that is judged to be inadequate.

Instead of admitting the problems and allowing for criticism, the Darwinist establishment ignores the data and muzzles the dissenters, choosing to discredit the messengers rather than face reality. As Dembski observes:

Darwinism has achieved the status of inviolable science, combining the dogmatism of religion with the entitlement of science.

Michael J. Behe's "irreducibly complex" organisms present yet another stumbling block for Darwinists. He observes that most organisms are "irreducibly complex, meaning they need several parts working together in order to function." According to Behe, this creates "headaches for Darwinian theory because they are resistant to being produced in the gradual, step-by-step manner that Darwin envisioned." For evolution to work, all the complex biochemical systems needed for an organism to live must "evolve" simultaneously and in perfect synchronization so this new creature can eat, remove waste, move, and survive. Since evolutionists maintain this must all happen by chance, only an enormous miracle (or an intelligent designer) can explain these countless chaotic processes instantly coming into existence -- with just the right fine-tuning and harmonization -- to allow even the simplest organisms to stay alive. Darwinism's gradual steps and trial and error explanations simply do not suffice.

Uncommon Dissent promises to not only "detail the weaknesses of Darwinian evolutionary theory," but to also show that "the preponderance of evidence goes against Darwinism." In both respects, the essays meet and exceed these expectations. Given Dembski's own impressive academic credentials and the solid intellectual qualifications of his contributors, this book provides a strong dissenting voice to challenge the many half-truths, obfuscations, and mistakes of mainstream evolutionary thinking.

The central weakness or "fatal flaw" of Darwinism is its inability to explain the existence of both rational thought and the origins of the inherent complexity of life evident in the huge variety of organisms and their immensely intricate DNA code. The very existence of such a "code" implies that a rational force was needed to encode it. Creationists like to call this God, while Darwinists call it chaos.

While Darwin's theory seems to explain how small-scale evolutionary changes or limited natural selection processes could operate within certain species, it fails miserably to describe, as Robert Koons observes, how such functional forms and processes "came to be there in the first place" and, as Edward Sisson notes, it "tells us nothing about when and how the genes we see today first came into existence." The cavernous gap that exists in the scientific evidence purporting to prove how one-celled organisms "evolved" into man remains an immense and significant problem for Darwinists. As James Barham so eloquently notes:

Epic poems and Boeing 747s do not come into existence by themselves, no matter how much time is available - and neither do cells, or even proteins.

Darwinists demand a bigger miracle than any creationist could ever claim, as they assert that "only matter in mindless motion" gave birth to intelligent life and consciousness. Indeed, the faith required to believe that chaos allowed inanimate matter to become alive and to eventually develop into rational beings is far greater than the faith needed to acknowledge that an intelligent Creator designed it all from the beginning. Dembski is quite correct when he concludes, "Getting design without a designer is a good trick indeed."

Chris Banescu is an attorney, entrepreneurial businessman, and university professor. He manages the conservative site OrthodoxNet.com, writes articles, and has given talks and conducted seminars on a variety of business and religious topics.

[narby]

To cling to the hypothesis without supporting evidence

There is considerable evidence for Evolution, both in the fossil record and in DNA studies. In fact, there is virtually no evidence to dispute Evolution.

Yes, Evolution has "holes" in it, but those are being closed every day. In fact, these "holes" are the only evidence in favor of any competing theory.

ID does not have "positive" evidence in it's favor, only "negative" evidence picking nits with evolution.

[johnnyb_61820]

Hitler was a social darwinist. And, contrary to those who think that social darwinism is against regular darwinism, here is what Charles Darwin says:

"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigourous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man"

Evaluating Hitler's policies looks like he was trying to correct that injury.

In fact even the title of his book, Mien Kampf, is darwinist (talking about his struggle, and the struggle of life is the basis of darwinism).

It is true that Hitler used a lot of religious language. But he seemed to use it based on his audience. If you look at those that he learned from, and those that advised him, and the entire top hierarchy you will find that it is mostly darwinists and social darwinists.

If you don't believe me, you should look at Rutger's collection of Nuremberg documents which showed that Hitler's next target after the Jews was Christianity:

The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches (from the Donovan collection of Nuremberg documents presented by Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion)

Hitler believed in evolutionary ideas, his followers were hard-lined evolutionists, and his next target was the Church.

A good quote, which sounds oddly like current liberal positions:

In accordance with this necessity, the Nazi plan was to show first that they were no foes of the Church, that they were indeed interested in "Positive Christianity" ... Then under the pretext that the Churches themselves were interfering in political and state matters, they would deprive the Churches, step by step, of all opportunity to affect German public life. The Nazis believed that the Churches could be starved and strangled spiritually in a relatively short time when they were deprived of all means of communication with the faithful beyond the Church building ... This general plan had been established even before the rise of the Nazis to power. It apparently came out of discussions among an inner circle comprising Hitler himself, Rosenberg, Goring, Goebbels, Hess, Baldur von Schirach, Frick, Rust, Kerrl and Schemm.

[general_re]

Pointing out that you're ignorant is not a personal attack, it's a statement of fact. If I said you were stupid, that would be a personal attack. Along with some good collections on Nietszche and evolution, I can also recommend a good intro text on logic and rhetoric if you're interested in learning how to do this properly as well.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Occam's Razor doesn't give you license to ignore inconvenient facts. ID bias, naturally occuring in evolutionary tools, should also be taken into account.

The strawman of falsifiability rears its ugly head once more. Now, I'm not getting on your case here, but this is more about impurities in scientific experimentation than falsifiability per se. And here, the 800 lb. gorilla of impurities is the ID bias necessarily a part of all experimentation and observation.

Basically, if you can't remove the impurities which are affecting the results, then you have no business stating that the impurities don't affect the result.

Since all tools are ID tools (yes, even passive observation), there is no way to remove the effective bias inherent in using such tools. So, you either have got to get rid of them, or at the very least admit that the results of any experimentation done using ID tools is done as a result of intelligent design.

If we, as humans, cannot obtain evolutionary results without using intelligent design, then we cannot honestly eliminate ID from the evolutionary question. So yes, ID may not be falsifiable, but that merely says that a definitive statement cannot be made about it in a temporal setting one way or another.

So, while ID tools can be used to show the efficacy of evolutionary processes, they cannot be used to disprove or discredit ID. You may make assumptions about whether ID is valid or not, but such assumptions (to use your own words) are not falsifiable.

I do admit it is rather breathtaking being lectured on how to gain credibility by Darwinists (I'm not jumping on you for doing this. This is quite a typical response when Darwinists answer ID arguments.) when, with the possible exception of environmental science, more frauds have been committed in the name of evolutionary science than in any other science. From my viewpoint, this is pretty much the same thing as Bill Clinton chastising me for having no credibility when I tell him he has some moral problems.

[stremba]

There is a procedural assumption of no design in science. This is because, as you have agreed, there is no physical evidence for design. There never will be any physical evidence for design. There is no way that you can look at a naturally occurring system and provide some OBJECTIVE test that will tell you whether that system is designed or not. (I say objective, as opposed to arguments such as "I can't see how it could have come about without design. Common sense doesn't count in science) Since we can't test for design, design is not a part of science. This is not the same thing as saying that science says that there is definitely no design involved in the development of life. (I grant you that many individual scientists do say this, but this is no more a part of the theory of evolution than inquisitions are a part of Christian doctrine.) Science, in terms simply of the theories that it proposes, pretty much totally ignores the possibility of design, mainly because it has to. This is a limitation of science. I therefore have no problem with teaching the possibility of design. Just don't teach it in science classes, because it isn't science.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

It's typical of some to make giant and unwarranted leaps from the available data. For you to assume that all science assumes the lack of a designer is a great leap of faith indeed.

In fact, most science doesn't really care one way or another. It used to be that two areas of areas of science (Darwinism and Astronomy) made the claim that there was no intelligent designer of the universe an underpinning to their science. Now, there is only one.

Other than the Darwinists, I don't know one scientific discipline which requires that the orthodoxy is no ID. In point of fact, they generally don't care one way or another.

If Darwinists spent less of their energy religiously defending the orthodoxy and more time honestly examining the facts, they might get more accomplished.

[Dimensio]

I suppose it's only benefit,

Read my tagline.

is to give certain folks a sophisticated way of explaining away the obvious.

If it were that obvious, it would have been theory more than 150 years ago. It's taken a few recent advances.

It cannot make predictions except of what will be found in the static record (just as can creationism as I've demonstrated).

Yes, but it can make predictions before the fact, rather than retro-fitting predictions into existing discoveries, or making blanket "predictions" that really can't fail.

Creationism, OTOH, is bold enough to proclaim dogs will be dogs till the end of time. Let's see if that prediction comes true, shall we?

Okay, that's a prediction. What mechanism does "Creationism" propose that prevents speciation of that nature? That is, what fundamental aspect of creationism requires that speciation be impossible lest all of Creationism be proven false?

[Dimensio]

Hitler was a social darwinist. And, contrary to those who think that social darwinism is against regular darwinism, here is what Charles Darwin says:

The difference is that "social darwinism" is a proactive approach, based upon the faulty notion that a scientific theory prescribes action. Darwin was simply speaking of what he saw as the natural consequences of "savage" versus "civilized".

Darwin was speaking of what happens based upon given conditions, but he wasn't suggesting any particular plan of action (and, in fact, in his writings he also speculated on some 'solutions' to prevent the weak from propigating, but said that they were not viable because they were immoral).

[Dimensio]

Most defenders of evolution resort to personal attacks much sooner.

I notice that, also. They're typically the first to call the opposition "liars" (usually when the opposition repeats a known falsehood) or denounces their "ignorance" of the subject (usually because the target has made a statement demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding of the matter at hand).

[Condorman]

I thought most ALL scientific advances today are caused by some Intelligent Designer putting chemicals together in a new way - not by randomly mixing stuff just to see what happens....

What if you are wrong? (PDF)

Excerpt:

The evolutionary methodology provides such a global high-dimensional optimum seeking algorithm, without the necessity of starting the optimization with an already near-optimal solution in the parameter space.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

But then, how do you remove the impurities? If you can't, then you need to make the admission that such impurities are affecting the experiment.

It is very disengenous to state as fact, claims that are not supported by the available evidence.

It is also very dishonest to dismiss, out of hand, and denigrate and ridicule those who study evolution using a procedural assumption of design.

Especially since the inherent ID bias naturally occuring makes it a better assumption than not.

[longhornmo]

Is anyone on either side of the argument "unbiased"? This book assumes Darwinian evolution is refutable and conducts research and reports results based on that assumption. Darwinians assume Darwinian evolution is true and conduct research and report results based on that assumption. They also tend to leave out anything that contradicts their conclusions. Thousands of careers and incomes hinge on Darwinian evolution being true. Don't tell me those people don't have an agenda when they write their books and defend their conclusions. If you start with a biased assumption you'll end with a biased conclusion.

Any idea worthy of serious consideration, should be able to stand up to poking and prodding by the unconvinced.

[stremba]

So what you are saying is that there must be intelligent design because all of our tests are intelligently designed? That does not follow. Must we conclude that there must be humans on other planets because all of the tests to determine if there is life on other planets are conducted by humans? How can you eliminate this human impurity from the test? My contention is that the evidence supports the notion that all the variety of life is derived from the changing of allele frequencies in the gene pool of organisms over time. This statement does not state that there is no design to the process. Nor does it state that there is. The question of design must be left to philosophers and theologians and kept outside the realm of science. If I am wrong, then please provide me with an observation that would cause you to conclude that there is no design. That is the test of an idea to determine if it is scientific. Evolution passes this test. To falsify evolution, any number of observations would suffice. For example, finding a reliably dated 1 billion year old human fossil, finding an organism which used something other than polynucleotides for its genetic material, finding an organism that doesn't use polypeptides as its basic enzymatic and structural material, or even showing an example of a rabbit giving birth to a donkey all would show that the current evolutionary theory is false. Note that even were evolution shown to be false, creationism (or ID) would NOT be the replacement for it. Another SCIENTIFIC theory would come along to replace evolution, and probably these same arguments would continue to occur.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Amusing that at least one Creationist has risked his entire religion on whether one group of dogs cannot backbreed with their ancestors.

[frgoff]

---
I notice that, also. They're typically the first to call the opposition "liars"...
---

Your personal attack was much more sophisticated than the original. You mixed two fallacies: Ad Homeneim and Straw Man into a single, pointed barb. Pat yourself on the back.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I'm not necessarily saying that ID has to be because all of our tests are intelligently designed. What I am saying is that we cannot separate ID from our tests, therefore to deny that inherent bias is bad science.

Using Occam's Razor, of which you are so justly proud, the simplest solution would be to admit the ID bias of the evolutionary data. As such, the evidence is more in favor if ID than against it.

Even though you state that the evidence neither confirms nor denies the existance of ID, you also indicate that ID must be kept out of the realm of science. Therefore, you are implying that ID is false, even though you state otherwise. It is not good science when one's premise is based on assumptions which exclude inconvenient data.

You wish me to provide you with an observation to conclude that there is no design. That is more your position than mine. I'm stating simple facts. You cannot remove design from experimentation. Therefore, concluding that there is no design based on such experimentation is a false conclusion.

Evolution passes your test only insomuch as we know that there is some good hard evidence for micro evolution and some soft evidence and a lot of supposition for macro evolution. The mechanisms behind it are currently pretty much unknown. But to say that Evolution is falsifiable is not quite correct. Many aspects have been indeed so proven. However, the theory as a whole has not, and probably cannot, due to the aeons that are needed to do the necessary experimentation. Indeed, I've met few other scientific areas of purview wherein that which is proven falsifiable today is proven falsified tomorrow.

On another note, I've had the privilege to read a lot of articles attacking the premises advanced by Dembski and Behe. Everyone I've thus far seen has unconsciously undermined their own arguments by using extremely poor analogies. As an example, "The Blind Watchmaker" (Dawkins?) uses a blind watchmaker as an anology to blind mechanisms in place to create the Universe. However, it is extremely poor, because the Watchmaker is still an intelligent designer, be he blind or not.

To believe that ID has no influence is like saying that the complete works of Shakespeare wrote themselves.

[GreenFreeper]

Is anyone on either side of the argument "unbiased"?

Well it's impossible for anyone to be completely unbiased. I do believe, however, that you don't have to let your biases affect your work. An honest scientist realizes their biases and either puts them upfront or defends them. This wrting seems to mask the biases in its blatant self-proclaimed unbiased approach. If that makes any sense, lol!

[ThinkPlease]

If Darwinists spent less of their energy religiously defending the orthodoxy and more time honestly examining the facts, they might get more accomplished.

Most 'Darwinists' (who ever they are) don't give a rats ass. Less than 1% of all biologists participate in these inane arguments.

I think if there ever was serious threat to science teaching from creationists, then you would see lobbyists from biotech running to the government in defense of the biotech industry, or you would see a mass exodus in biotech minds and money from the US. Either way, I wonder what how long that particular social experiment would last, don't you? I also wonder if the current alliances in the Republican party could withstand the conflict?

[PatrickHenry]

The difference is that "social darwinism" is a proactive approach, based upon the faulty notion that a scientific theory prescribes action.

I suppose "social Newtonism" would require its followers to throw people out of windows, in obedience to the law of gravity.

[Dimensio]

Hey, I like being smarmy. Would you like me to point to examples of creationists making false claims and demonstrating ignorance of science, or do you feel better making claims that we're just tossing out baseless insults by pretending (through ignoring evidence) that our accusations of ignorance and dishonesty have no basis in reality?