Posted on 07/27/2006 3:00:03 PM PDT by BrandtMichaels
What are Darwinists so afraid of?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jonathan Witt © 2006
As a doctoral student at the University of Kansas in the '90s, I found that my professors came in all stripes, and that lazy ideas didn't get off easy. If some professor wanted to preach the virtues of communism after it had failed miserably in the Soviet Union, he was free to do so, but students were also free to hear from other professors who critically analyzed that position.
Conversely, students who believed capitalism and democracy were the great engines of human progress had to grapple with the best arguments against that view, meaning that in the end, they were better able to defend their beliefs.
Such a free marketplace of ideas is crucial to a solid education, and it's what the current Kansas science standards promote. These standards, like those adopted in other states and supported by a three-to-one margin among U.S. voters, don't call for teaching intelligent design. They call for schools to equip students to critically analyze modern evolutionary theory by teaching the evidence both for and against it.
The standards are good for students and good for science.
Some want to protect Darwinism from the competitive marketplace by overturning the critical-analysis standards. My hope is that these efforts will merely lead students to ask, What's the evidence they don't want us to see?
Under the new standards, they'll get an answer. For starters, many high-school biology textbooks have presented Haeckel's 19th century embryo drawings, the four-winged fruit fly, peppered moths hidden on tree trunks and the evolving beak of the Galapagos finch as knockdown evidence for Darwinian evolution. What they don't tell students is that these icons of evolution have been discredited, not by Christian fundamentalists but by mainstream evolutionists.
We now know that 1) Haeckel faked his embryo drawings; 2) Anatomically mutant fruit flies are always dysfunctional; 3) Peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks (the photographs were staged); and 4) the finch beaks returned to normal after the rains returned – no net evolution occurred. Like many species, the average size fluctuates within a given range.
This is microevolution, the age-old observation of change within species. Macroevolution refers to the evolution of fundamentally new body plans and anatomical parts. Biology textbooks use instances of microevolution such as the Galapagos finches to paper over the fact that biologists have never observed, or even described in theoretical terms, a detailed, continually functional pathway to fundamentally new forms like mammals, wings and bats. This is significant because modern Darwinism claims that all life evolved from a common ancestor by a series of tiny, useful genetic mutations.
Textbooks also trumpet a few "missing links" discovered between groups. What they don't mention is that Darwin's theory requires untold millions of missing links, evolving one tiny step at a time. Yes, the fossil record is incomplete, but even mainstream evolutionists have asked, why is it selectively incomplete in just those places where the need for evidence is most crucial?
Opponents of the new science standards don't want Kansas high-school students grappling with that question. They argue that such problems aren't worth bothering with because Darwinism is supported by "overwhelming evidence." But if the evidence is overwhelming, why shield the theory from informed critical analysis? Why the campaign to mischaracterize the current standards and replace them with a plan to spoon-feed students Darwinian pabulum strained of uncooperative evidence?
The truly confident Darwinist should be eager to tell students, "Hey, notice these crucial unsolved problems in modern evolutionary theory. Maybe one day you'll be one of the scientists who discovers a solution."
Confidence is as confidence does.
"When I want your opinion I will give it to you."
Well then, tell me tortoise: What is the answer??? You haven't answered my question yet.
I know that the physico-chemical laws specify these interactions. But my question was: What is the source or origin of these laws? Is that question of no interest to you?
And once he has made an observation, he has further constrained the domain or system to the limits of his subjective encoding/decoding (syntax, language, consciousness and so on)....
Which brings me full circle to the original point which seems to be flying overhead like geese in this sidebar: the issue is not what a thing such as life (or an elephant) looks like but what it “is”.
Exactly my point, Alamo-Girl. I don't know why so many seem to find it so difficult to grasp. Thank you ever so much for writing, and for your kind encouragements!
Wouldn't it be better to say, "Everyone doesn't care about the "Irregardless Syndrome."
I've often thought it would be instructive to compare the percentage of biology teachers convicted of child molestation with the percentage of clergy so convicted.
If evolution corrupts, those most knowledgeable should be most corrupted.
True enough. But he's describing the quantization of the molecules of DNA.
"Although there are many fields of biology that are essentially descriptive, with the application of information theory, theoretical biology can now take its place with theoretical physics without apology. Thus biology has become a quantitative and computational science as George Gamow (1904–68) suggested. By employing information theory, comparisons between the genetics of organisms can now be made quantitatively with the same accuracy that is typical of astronomy, physics, and chemistry."-- Hubert P. Yockey Information theory, evolution, and the origin of life
...
"The genetic information system is essentially a digital data recording and processing system. The fundamental axiom in genetics and molecular biology, which justifies the application of Shannon’s information and coding theory, is the sequence hypothesis and the digital rather than the analog or blending character (Jenkin, 1867) of inheritance as Darwin (1809–82) and his contemporaries believed (Fisher, 1930)."
Clearly he thinks there's more to biological evolution than natural selection and survival of the fittest.
No he does not. He is arguing that the origin of life could not be determined by study of genetic code.
"I show in this book that only because the genetic message is segregated, linear, and digital can it be transmitted from the origin of life to all present organisms and will be transmitted to all future life. This establishes Darwin’s theory of evolution as firmly as any in science. The same genetic code, the same DNA, the same amino acids, and the genetic message unite all organisms, independent of morphology."-- Ibid.
"The missing ingredient needed for the origin of living matter is the genome, not Intelligent Design.-- Hubert Yockey reply to FTE amicus brief
...
"Modern science shows that the genome is the answer to all objections based on gaps at any level. There is no need for a theory of "Intelligent Design" to explain any gaps. Darwin’s theory of evolution is among the most well-established theories in science.
Evolution and the origin of life are separate questions. My publications on information theory show that the origin of life is unknowable through scientific methods. All that can be taught in the science classroom about the origin of life is why it is unknowable and why past theories, such as chance and self-organization, had to be discarded. There are many things in science and mathematics that are true, but unknowable."
Whether Yockey is correct remains to be seen.
There is a clear distinction between problems we have not solved and problems we cannot solve.
Why not? Is there some reason you think we shouldn't "go look?"
You wrote: "If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: mathematics does not allow a part of a system (like humans) to be objective about a system (like our universe)."
Mathematics does not allow it, nor it seems to me does any other knowledge discipline predicated on logic. Total objectivity would be possible only if the observer could take up a vantage point outside the system -- just as you say. And we are in agreement that this a human observer never can do.
And yet you seem to sneer at "anthropocentrism" -- as if it were somehow optional.
Which is why I think Alamo-Girl is entirely correct to say that the only truly objective observer is God -- whether or not Laplace had need of "that hypothesis."
Is there any way for humans to contemplate the universe other than as if it were "in isolation?" How otherwise to formulate a concept of it? Any observer must intend an object of consciousness in order to "think about it." To intend the universe as an object of consciousness necessarily involves "isolating it."
I do not see the reason for your postulate, "and God is completely external to our universe." Do you mean to say that the only way we can get a good understanding (or any understanding at all) of the universe is to evict God from it -- which seemingly is Laplace's method?
Don't you see that IF God exists and IF He is as the Judeo-Christian tradition says the author and sustainer of the universe, then any attempt to "evict Him" would lead to a false, distorted picture of the real universe? Would you be willing to say for a certainty that He does not exist?
I much enjoyed what George Gilder had to say about God and the "hierarchical universe" in the July 17th edition of National Review:
Throughout the history of human thought, it has been convenient and inspirational to designate the summit of the hierarchy as God. While it is not necessary for science to use this term, it is important for scientists to grasp the hierarchical reality it signifies. Transcending its materialist trap, science must look up from the ever dimmer reaches of its Darwinian pit and cast its imagination toward the word and its sources: idea and meaning, mind and mystery, the will and the way. It must eschew reductionism – except as a methodological tool – and adopt an aspirational imagination. Though this new aim may seem blinding at first, it is ultimately redemptive because it is the only way that science can ever hope to solve the grand challenges before it, such as gravity, entanglement, quantum computing, time, space, mass, and mind. Accepting hierarchy, the explorer embarks on an adventure that leads to an ever deeper understanding of life and consciousness, cosmos and creation.And so some of us continue to "go look," despite the fact that we know we are limited as parts and participants of the universe, and thus as observers as well.
Thanks for that fascinating bit of mathematical lore, Virginia-American! it's interesting that Napoleon fancied himself a mathematician....
MAN is the source or origin of these "laws" - the laws are abstracts or descriptions of observations of common and consistent characteristics.
the commonality and consistency of those characteristics are results of the way matter and energy exist in our universe.
if matter and energy existed in some other manner, and intelligent life came to pass, there would be individuals pointing to the "laws" their people had devised as evidence of intelligent design.
this is like unto claiming the sun was created specifically to produce light in the yellow spectrum because that is what Man sees best. I hope you can see that this is getting the sequence ass-backward.
i am king prout's heaving stomach
*boot to the head*
I see... What is dark energy/matter?...
You know 95% or so percent of the supposed/alleged universe?..
An enquiring mind wants to know...
whatever "dark matter" is, it isn't matter.
whatever "dark energy" is, it isn't energy.
currently, iirc, both are theoretical constructs.
I accept that both are possible, but would be much more comfortable if samples of each could be bottled and subjected to direct analysis.
Well, wouldn't that be nice! :^)
yes, it would. I don't much like accepting as factual something which "must exist" solely because one variant of arcane math says it must.
However, this worked for both neutrons and neutrinos. Both were hypothesized (to make the math work out) and both were unobserved for some time.
yes. and I'd have accepted their theoretical existence provisionally with as much grumbling and discomfort had I lived back then :)
Or as George Gilder put it, "Climbing the epistemic hierarchy, all pursuers of truth necessarily reach a point where they cannot prove their most crucial assumptions."
Thanks for posting the quotes from Yockey's excellent book, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life. I applaud his overarching aim of placing biology on as sound a mathematical footing as physics.
He wrote (as you quote): "The missing ingredient needed for the origin of living matter is the genome, not Intelligent Design." He also says that the origin of the genome is unknowable in principle. And yet all of evolution proceeds from this unknown origin. Darwinian evolution commences after this origin; life is simply taken for granted. And so there's nothing in Darwinist evolution that deals with what life is; it only deals with how life behaves.
So it seems to me Yockey does not entirely close the door on the possibility of an intelligent design of the genome -- since its origin is shrouded from our view. It also seems to me that information itself implies intelligence of some sort, at both the inception and receiving ends of the Shannon model.
Thanks for your great essay/post, dread78645!
I am wondering why you think Mr. Gilder, who is not a scientist, has some standing to tell scientists how to do science. There is no argument in the above, simply a hankering for hierarchy and an uncorroborated denigration of "Darwinism", "materialism" and "reductionism". Perhaps if Mr. Gilder had invented a new semiconductor, or built a computer, or worked out a theorem of quantum computing, the scientists who have done those things might be more inclined to follow his road map. As it is, it does seem to be somewhat akin to poor old HayekRocks giving Lance Armstrong lessons on riding a bicycle.
Goodness, we are mostly amateurs here. While the amateur does not owe the professional unlimited deference, he does owe him the assumption that the professional knows how to do his job.
IMHO, a skeptical mind is a very good thing to have, King. Still "arcane math" often enough seems to "image" reality eerily well....
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