Posted on 04/26/2004 9:42:08 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
BreakPoint listeners have heard me speak many times over the years about the intelligent design movement. Intelligent design is the argument by scientists that the world shows clear signs that it was designed and is not simply the result of random evolution.
This is one of the biggest cultural shifts in recent history, especially now with school boards across the country debating this very question and affirming the need to teach both sides of this controversy.
How did this come about? It’s been developing for years, and a new book recounts the intelligent design movement’s history.
Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design, written by rhetorical historian Thomas Woodward, tells the stories of four founders of the intelligent design movement—Michael Denton, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William Dembski—and how they used brilliant rhetorical strategy to break down Darwinism.
Woodward notes that his reason for writing the history is that it nurtures “the health of science itself and . . . the civic health of American society.” What’s at stake, you see, is no less than “supreme cultural authority,” says Woodward. At the heart of the origin debates is “our notions . . . of what it means to be human.”
The motivation for these four founders of the design movement to instigate this “reformation within science” is a passion for intellectual truth-telling. “Design sees itself,” writes Woodward, “as . . . doing its best to restore epistemic integrity.”
Woodward begins with biochemist Michael Denton. Denton set the tone, purpose, and value of the fight against Darwinism in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Next he examines legal scholar Phillip Johnson, this year’s Wilberforce Award recipient. Phil Johnson began reading Darwin and realized two things: the immense cultural implications if the Darwinian worldview was proved false and, as a result of his legal training, just how easy it was to prove it false. Johnson put Darwinon trial and forced Darwinians in the academy onto the defensive.
Woodward then turns to biologist Michael Behe, author of the “anti-Darwinist bomb,” Darwin’s Black Box. When Behe read Denton’s book, he experienced “the greatest intellectual shock of his life.” For years, Behe believed in Darwin’s empirical proof because he had been taught it throughout his education. Behe’s “conversion,” so to speak, caused him to rethink biochemical systems, and he coined the term irreducible complexity to describe systems that would cease to work if any part was missing.
Finally Woodward comes to mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski has discovered that telling the truth is never wrong, but sometimes it is costly, and that Christian institutions themselves are not immune from Darwinian stranglehold on truth. Even fellow colleagues at Baylor University have worked to “shut down” Dembski’s dissent.
Woodward makes it clear that telling the truth never hurts the Christian cause. Intelligent Design’s purpose isn’t to stop good scientific practices. Instead the goal is to open the stifling Darwinian atmosphere to new possibilities.
Doubts about Darwin is an exciting history lesson. While there are “no truces in view,” says Woodward, these fighters are working toward intellectual freedom. And their stories can inspire you as you face your school board, colleagues, or biology professors.
Science is about what happened when, and how. "Cultural authority" is an orthogonal consideration.
That would look more appropriate in a blue font, wouldn't it?
Exactly. And that is the reason why many thinkers I've read credit the followers of Darwin and such 19th centurty thinkers as Freud and Marx for bringing humanity the gulag, the concentration camp, the killing fields and other such wonders of the 20th century. Two of those three geniuses have been totally discredited, the third one will eventually end up on the trash heap as well.
And what creationist website did you learn that bit of misinformation from?
Here's a very small sampling of some of the vast amount of science and evidence underlying evolution:
Start here: 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent.Please read at least a few hundred pages from a representative sampling of the above links, before you attempt to make any more pronouncements about the evidence for evolution. You wouldn't want to appear ignorant, would you?Follow a number of the more promising links from those pages, as well.
Then move on to: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ.
Then: Horse Evolution.
Then you may be ready for the *excellent* and detailed 43-page overview of: What does the mouse genome draft tell us about evolution?
Then in whatever order you think best for your own education:
Introduction to Evolutionary BiologyThat's just a *small* taste. And note that these are just essays *about* the evidence, not the vastly larger, more detailed mountains of *primary* literature (i.e. papers of scientific studies, experiments, vast catalogs of fossil specimens, gigabytes of DNA sequences, etc. etc. etc.)Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
Observed Instances of Speciation
Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics
Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution
The Age of the Earth: How do we know it?
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences
Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution
Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
Alec's Evolution Pages with scientific evidence for evolution
Eomaia scansoria: discovery of oldest known placental mammal
Discovery of a Transitional in Romer's Gap
The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"
THE THERAPSID--MAMMAL TRANSITIONAL SERIES
AMBULOCETUS AS A FOSSIL TRANSITIONAL
CETACEAN EVOLUTION (WHALES, DOLPHINS, PORPOISES): EVIDENCE OF COMMON ANCESTRY OF CETACEANS AND CERTAIN SPECIES OF LAND MAMMALS (Excellent article -- written by a former young-earth creationist!)
Ring Species and Clinal Variation: Nature's Way of Making New Species
Transitional Human Fossils: Six Million Years of Human Ancestry
The Evolution of Improved Fitness By Random Mutation Plus Selection
Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey
The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence
Evolution: Converging Lines of Evidence
Evolution Library: Evidence for Evolution
And here's a small sampling of my own modest posts on the subject:
Happy reading. Let me know when you've finished all those, and I'll provide much more.Explanation of why shared endogenous retroviruses are extremely strong evidence for common descent
Specific comparison of a gene as found in humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans
Discussion of the evolution of the Krebs metabolic cycle
Support for the assertion that biologists overwhelmingly accept evolution
Information on the biochemical evolution of the blood-clotting mechanism
Evolution of the woodpecker's tongue, and the mammalian eye
A detailed list of 50+ transitional fossils marking the evolutionary path between fish and elephants
Rebuttal to misstatements about SJ Gould, and fossils answering several creationist challenges
Punctuated equilibrim is not a departure from Darwin's original theory
Two papers on assembly of proteins by means of non-protein means
Response to Behe's "Irreducible Complexity", and the Contingency argument
Musings on creationist probability calculations, and references to abiogenesis papers
Exposition on the Dodo (and its evolutionary history)
Overview of a paper on the evolution of army ants
On the Cambrian fauna and the rise of phyla
A ton of links to papers on genetic algorithms
Cladograms of dino-to-bird evolution
Details of Dawkins' "methinks it is like a weasel" evolutionary program
The original fish-to-elephant post, plus dino-to-bird details
Mutation is not evolution.
Not by itself, no. Who said it was?
Evolution cannot account for this designed universe.
Please provide your scientific evidence for your presumption that the universe is designed. Be sure to define "designed" while you're at it -- be specific and precise.
And you are aware that evolution accounts for the diversity of life, and not the universe as a whole, right? Um, right?
The intricacies of DNA only prove the point that chaos is NOT a creative process.
I must have missed this "proof". Perhaps you could provide a link to it for us.
Darwin was just plain wrong.
About what, specifically, and what is your evidence for claiming he was wrong about it?
Right, because there were never barbarous dictators, anarchy, genocide, conquest, oppression, or inhumanity before Darwin, right? Right? Hmm, maybe your thesis needs a bit more work.
Two of those three geniuses have been totally discredited, the third one will eventually end up on the trash heap as well.
Yes, yes, the demise of evolution is being predicted "any day now" -- just like it has for the past 164 years...
For some perspective, check out this web page on The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism . Creationists have been continuously predicting that evolution was about to come crashing down any day now since 1840... That page contains quotes predicting the crash of evolution from 1840, 1850, 1878, 1895, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1912, 1922, 1929, 1935, 1940, 1961, 1963, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002. But surely, they're finally right *this* time, eh?
What color armbands would you suggest they mandatorily wear to mark them, so that they could be more easily identified and dealth with appropriately?
50 years ago Marx and Freud were considered "scientists". Today, the people who conduct telephone surveys and polls are considered scientists (ever heard of 'scientific polling organizations'?), and I'm certain that the believers in the 'science of polling' can provide us with as many links and dates here as proof that their 'science' is true as you have provided. It'll mean as much, for sure!
...except for a general explanation of the inter-relationships of all living species, their genomes, their components, etc.
It amuses me when people make a incredibly wrong sweeping statement like the above, apparently without a care as to whether it's true or not.
Where is Darwin's "proof"?
Pick up any biology text. New experiences are good.
And again, DNA proves that chance could never have created life on earth, and that's pure science.
It's pure something, all right. How exactly does DNA 'prove' anything?
The underlying philosophy of evolution gives us the idea that life is meaningless, abortion is okay and that there is no majesty or nobility to the human condition.
Evolution is a scientific theory and makes no more moral statements than gravitation does. After all, does Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation say it's OK to push Grandma downstairs?
Just one "right wing prof" to another, Prof.
What's your field, prof?
*snicker*.
Where is Darwin's "proof"?
See my prior post, or get out and visit one of those "library" things you must have heard of.
Right. It ain't there. Never has been.
Not in *your* head, anyway. But that can be cured.
And again, DNA proves that chance could never have created life on earth, and that's pure science.
Then it's interesting that "pure scientists" aren't aware of your amazing discovery. Perhaps you could write it up for us in this thread, and be sure to provide the appropriate evidence and citations to the primary literature.
This should be... fascinating.
By whom?
Please provide, say, three examples of "mindless tautologies founded on lies etc." from the evolutionist camp, and document your assertion that they "bear no resemblance to reality".
Of course, Stalin and the Soviet system did reject Darwin and executed Darwin's followers. Stalin was following the anti-Darwinist philosophy.
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