Posted on 02/07/2005 8:16:39 AM PST by metacognative
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Design for Living By MICHAEL J. BEHE
Published: February 7, 2005
ethlehem, Pa. — IN the wake of the recent lawsuits over the teaching of Darwinian evolution, there has been a rush to debate the merits of the rival theory of intelligent design. As one of the scientists who have proposed design as an explanation for biological systems, I have found widespread confusion about what intelligent design is and what it is not. Advertisement
First, what it isn't: the theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments. For example, a critic recently caricatured intelligent design as the belief that if evolution occurred at all it could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator. That's misleading. Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.
Rather, the contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.
Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed. Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. The 18th-century clergyman William Paley likened living things to a watch, arguing that the workings of both point to intelligent design. Modern Darwinists disagree with Paley that the perceived design is real, but they do agree that life overwhelms us with the appearance of design.
For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved. (Imagine a scientist repeating through clenched teeth: "It wasn't really designed. Not really.")
The resemblance of parts of life to engineered mechanisms like a watch is enormously stronger than what Reverend Paley imagined. In the past 50 years modern science has shown that the cell, the very foundation of life, is run by machines made of molecules. There are little molecular trucks in the cell to ferry supplies, little outboard motors to push a cell through liquid.
In 1998 an issue of the journal Cell was devoted to molecular machines, with articles like "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines" and "Mechanical Devices of the Spliceosome: Motors, Clocks, Springs and Things." Referring to his student days in the 1960's, Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote that "the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered." In fact, Dr. Alberts remarked, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory with an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. He emphasized that the term machine was not some fuzzy analogy; it was meant literally.
The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people part company. Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.
Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.
The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life. To evaluate this claim, it's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.
The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.
Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.
Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, is the author of "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
I don't plan to bother the list for this thread, unless you want me to.
no bother. It's a good article.
I came across an article at the dentist office the other day on a program called Avida that allows scientists to simulate evolution in a digital format.
http://dllab.caltech.edu/avida/
The funny thing about this... there is so much hoopla about how this program allows one to evaluate evolution etc... but SOMEONE created the original program.
Now, if bits in a computer memory and spontaneously evolved into a program that reproduced and evolved.. now THAT would be evidence of evolution.
IMO the problem is that we can look at any structure of any organism and not be able to definitively state, for all time, that it evolved or that it was designed.
However, the theory of evolution is at least based on extrapolation from known natural processes, whereas design almost be definition cannot be. That alone will rule out design as a subject for scientific evaluation.
Now if the next generation of kittens born at our house is found to have, all at once, opposable thumbs and the knowledge of how to use a can opener, I'll move over to the intelligent design side in a heartbeat.
These people drive me nuts. Is it science, then?
"However, the theory of evolution is at least based on extrapolation from known natural processes, whereas design almost be definition cannot be. That alone will rule out design as a subject for scientific evaluation."
A very good point, indeed. We can see the evidence for evolution as a mechanism for the development of species. We cannot see the design process.
ID is not science; it is philosophy.
Behe's been shot down by folks more knowledgeable than we. The creos will still worship at the man's feet, though. Don't ping the list; let the Luddites have their fun.
Bring me a proton on a platter, I'd like to take a look at it.
ID is a disguised attempt at credibility inorder to fleece more money from the unwise.
Right. But in case any innocent lurker wants to have a clue about this Behe business:
Irreducible Complexity Demystified. Major debunking of ID.
The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity," Kenneth R. Miller. Critique of Behe.
I am not saying that Inteligent Design is untrue, only that it cannot be Science, and should not be the study of Science Programs, any more than Chinese is properly studied in the English Department.
So9
Correct, so why not save both creation and evolution for theology class?
"If the Designer is directly responsible for flagella then he is implicated as a cause of human diseases. Diarrhea is no joke; it is a leading cause of infant death in some parts of the world. To make matters worse, one can hardly give the Designer credit for flagella without also crediting him with TTSS's in general. This puts the Designer solidly behind Bubonic plague and many other diseases. Happily, science makes such beliefs unnecessary.
"The argument for [intelligent design] consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature."
[snip]
"Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology."
[snip]
"The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence."
[snip]
"The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life."
If this is what ID amounts to, one wonders what its proponents do to occupy their time. Surely there's more to it than this? (Don't answer that.)
Well, at least Lehigh University, Behe's employer, can point out that Tamra Mendelson also works there, so they've got that going for them, anyway.
Rest assured, along will come the evolatriasts and blast Behe when nothing he says in this article should even be controversial to them. He's trying to start dialogue and they require food fights. What does that tell us?
Even arch-evolutionist Michael Ruse conceded that darwinism is also a philosophy/religion [although without a deity].
And only those people, but that's just a coincidence. (Yeah, right!)
This last sentence makes a leap that is not justified. I look at this a bit like archaeology.... i.e. the scientific evaluation regarding any potential "design" is done through the evidence available. Nothing in the concept of design prohibits outright any further scientific evaluation.
The author's analogy to Mount Rushmore is adequate here, i.e. you can look at the chisel marks, the debris field, and the broken tools to determine that this thing was designed and crafted, that it did not simply spring forth as the result of an earthquake and that it was not caused by some strange coincidence of erosion...
Scientific evaluation certainly IS possible in looking for evidence of design in nature. We simply need to be honest about what we're looking at, make sure we're truly looking at the evidence, and try our best not to make assumptions which blind us to what's there to see.
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