FR Debate: Intelligent Design vs. Birth Defects, Can They Be Reconciled?

Discovery Health & Multiple Medical Sites ^ | 11/11/05

[Wolfstar]

Each year in the United States, about 150,000 babies are born with birth defects ranging from mild to life threatening. While progress has been made in the detection and treatment of birth defects, they remain the leading cause of death in the first year of life. Birth defects are often the result of genetic and environmental factors, but the causes of well over half of all birth defects are currently unknown.

Following is a partial list of birth defects:

Achondroplasia/Dwarfism	Hemochromatosis
Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency	Huntington's Disease
Anencephaly	Hydrocephalus
Arnold-Chiari Malformation	Klinefelter's Syndrome
Ataxia Telangiectasia	Leukodystrophies
Blood coagulation disorders/Hemophilia	Marfan Syndrome
Brain malformations/genetic brain disorders	Metabolic disorders
Canavan Disease	Muscular Dystrophy
Cancer: Neonatal, newborn, infant and childhood	Neural tube defects/Spina Bifida
Cerebral Palsy	Neurofibromatosis
Cleft lip and palate	Niemann-Pick Disease
Club foot/club hand	Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bone disease)
Congenital heart disease	Phenylketonuria
Conjoined twins	Prader-Willi Syndrome
Cystic Fibrosis	Progeria (advanced aging in children)
Down Syndrome	Sickle Cell Anemia
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome	Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Eye, ear and speech defects	Tay-Sachs Disease
Fragile X Syndrome	Tuberous Sclerosis
Gaucher's Disease	Turner's Syndrome
Genital and urinary tract defects	Wilson's Disease

Some birth/genetic defects, such as near-sightedness, are mild and do not affect the person's ability to lead a normal life. Others are so severe that the person has no chance to even live. Efficiency and economy are part of intelligently designed systems. If the "design" of human systems is so intelligent, why do tragic inefficiencies such as the following occur at all? Warning, the linked photos are graphic medical images, and are very, very sad.

Conjoined twins, i.e., monozygous twinning in which there is fusion of the twins. The popular term is "Siamese" twins. This happens when identical twin embryos become fused together during the very early stages of development. Conjoined twins occur in an estimated one in 200,000 births, with approximately half being stillborn. Here are links to three photos of severely conjoined twins:

Photo 1: one head, two bodies

Photo 2: essentially one torso between two babies

Photo 3: profound fusion

Neural tube defects are are one of the more common congenital anomalies. Such defects result from improper embryonic neural tube closure. The most minimal defect is called spina bifida, with failure of the vertebral body to completely form, but the defect is not open. Open neural tube defects with lack of a skin covering, can include a meningocele, in which meninges protrude through the defect. Here is a link to a severe neural tube defect.

Photo 4

Defects of the head/brain: In the linked photo a large encephalocele that merges with the scalp above is protruding from the back of the head. The encephalocele extends down to partially cover a rachischisis on the back. This baby also has a retroflexed head from iniencephaly.

Photo 5

The form of neural tube defect in the next linked photo is known as exencephaly. The cranial vault is not completely present, but a brain is present because it was not completely exposed to amniotic fluid. Such an event is very rare. It may be part of craniofacial clefts associated with the limb-body wall complex, which results from early amnion disruption.

Photo 6

Congenital and pediatric neoplasms: One type that can occur is a teratoma. The next linked photo shows a large nasopharyngeal teratoma that is protruding from the oral cavity.

Photo 7

Tumors: In the next linked photo there is a large mass involving the left upper arm and left chest of the baby. This congenital neoplasm turned out to be a lymphangioma. This baby and the one in Photo 9 were essentially riddled with cancer before birth and shortly afterwards.

Photo 8

Next is a gross neuroblastoma arising in the right adrenal gland. It is the most common pediatric malignancy in infancy, and 75% of cases are diagnosed in children less than 4 years old. These tumors most often present as an abdominal or mediastinal mass.

Photo 9

[Tribune7]

So the rest of the faculty should not gang up on the professor with the abhorrent view & try to boot him out? . . .No, of course not. Where have you ever seen anyone do that?

Here

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post and challenge!

On what basis can you [atheism] judge him to be wrong?

Truly, there is no absolute morality except by revelation from God.

The atheist view of morality (utilitarianism) is “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”.

And that’s where it starts getting sticky. Happiness is qualia, a very personal thing. The sadist is happy when the other guy suffers, the altruist is happy when the other guy does not suffer.

It implies we take a vote and determine “happy” from instance to instance - but who gets to vote?

The Palestinians would be happiest if the Jews were annihilated altogether – and there are more of them than there are Jews but so far the annihilation of Jews would not make most people in the world happy. Islamicists would be happiest if non-Islamicists were annihilated or enslaved – but fortunately we outnumber them.

But minorities must be protected under utilitarianism.

At the moment, in the U.S., pedophilia makes a lot of people unhappy – but who’s to say we won’t become like some “enlightened” atheistic European country and weigh the happiness to the men and boys who do so willingly along with other minorities (such as slaves, homosexuals, etc.) whose happiness must be protected as a minority class?

Already on the Supreme Court, Ginsberg would like to lower the age of consensual age. That is the “enlightened” view. But, at the moment, ten year olds having sex does not make most people happy. But they don’t have the power of the court either; as we saw in Roe v. Wade, the court can ignore God's "absolute morality" as recognizied by the majority in the interest of protecting a minority "right".

It gets even more sticky when we bump it up to Singer’s view – because he gives no preference to human happiness over much of animal happiness. Certainly, it makes many of us happy to eat the beef – but what about the cows?

Likewise, the tiger can be quite happy to eat the villager – and the tiger is a minority, a protected class at that.

And, of course, in this reasoning – the happiness of the mother is sufficient cause to abort the unborn. And after birth, the happiness of the parents is also reason enough to kill the child until/unless the majority of people are unhappy over the killing. Singer believes the parents ought to have a trial period – a few months or a year. Jeepers.

At the moment, infanticide causes a great deal of unhappiness to most people. But who’s to say we won’t become “enlightened” like European countries which have already determined the happiness of the family is sufficient cause to euthanize the unwanted whose care makes them unhappy.

In an atheistic world, Singer's reasoning would be hard to defeat - that man is just another animal and should have equitable rights whether as predator or prey, whether to cull the herd, abandon the runts, when to breed, etc.

[Right Wing Professor]

I don't think so. According to the article, a peer review committee in fact upheld the Polanyi center's existence. Dembski then decided to do a little sack dance, and was fired as Director by the President of the University, apparently for not playing nice with others.

I'm not sure what Dembski's status at Baylor was. He seems not to have been on a regular faculty line, the title 'associate research professor' is usually not tenure track. In any case, he remained at Baylor until the term of his contract expired, last year.

[Tribune7]

Dembski was fired in Oct. A number of Baylor faculty had written the president in April asking "for the closing of the center based on its controversial work" according to the article.

Has any group (individual?) at Princeton asked for the firing of Singer?

Dembski then decided to do a little sack dance,

Why is this a greater offense than advocating infanticide?

apparently for not playing nice with others.

As opposed to the people who were trying to get him fired in April?

[Right Wing Professor]

Dembski was fired in Oct. A number of Baylor faculty had written the president in April asking "for the closing of the center based on its controversial work" according to the article.

Asking that a center be closed is not equivalent to asking for someone to be fired.

Has any group (individual?) at Princeton asked for the firing of Singer?

I have no idea.

Why is this a greater offense than advocating infanticide?

In academia, there is an important distinction between removing someone from an administrative position and firing them. If the Dean decided our Department chair was a crappy administrator, he could sack him as chair. He would then just revert to being a full professor of chemistry. Loss of the administrative position would not affect his tenure or his academic freedom as a faculty member - just as removing Dembski as director left him in place as an Associate Research Professor. And in fact he did his ID thang freely from 2001 to 2004, when his contract ran out.

In my humble opinion, he was a damn fool to take any kind of directorship unless he was on a tenure track line or actually tenured.

[YHAOS]

"If intelligent design is to be taught in schools as an alternative scientific theory, I want to understand its underpinnings"

Ahh . . . I wasn't aware there was an ID course to be taught. Is this a one-semester course? One term? What grade? Tenth? Eleventh? Or is it taught basic and advanced? Like in the fourth grade and then again in the ninth? What are the certification standards for teaching ID? How has certification come to arise right out of a standing start, so to speak? Have all the states already developed standards for the teaching of this course? Have the regional accreditation associations developed evaluation standards?

[Wolfstar]

Ahh . . . I wasn't aware there was an ID course to be taught. Is this a one-semester course? One term? What grade? Tenth? Eleventh? Or is it taught basic and advanced?

Don't ask me. I'm not a proponent of the ID theory. However, a couple of high-profile stories have hit the news this month about ID in Pennsylvania and Kansas. Hence my curiosity.

[hosepipe]

#362.. devastating logic, with withering grace, loveing tact.. awesome testimony.. {crickets}

[YHAOS]

"Don't ask me. I'm not a proponent of the ID theory. However, a couple of high-profile stories have hit the news this month about ID in Pennsylvania and Kansas."

Don't ask you? You raised the issue. You report the existence of a couple of high-profile stories on the subject. Did you merely glance at the headlines, and not actually read the story? You implied that the teaching of an ID course appeared to be in the offing (or are you simply inferring that to be the case? If so, don't you think you ought to be better informed before raising the issue?}. Is the teaching of an ID course in either Penn. or Ks. a prospect, or not? If not, then just what is the issue?

[blue-duncan]

"People, as social animals, evolved a moral compass of sorts. It's not a very sophisticated one, but it does endow us with an innate sense of fairness, equips us to be reciprocally altruistic, and dissuades us from, for example, random violence, particularly against kin.

In order to live in more complex societies, we've by application of reason come up with more sophisticated compasses. They are more moral than those of Eichmann and Pol Pot (and Martin Luther, just so we include theistic genocidal lunatics as well) in that they don't call for the slaughter of millions of innocents"

Sorry to come into this so late and don't mean to prolong the discussion, but RWP's comments are interesting. He uses phrases like "evolved a moral compass" and "innate sense of fairness" as if these were biological categories when these just refer to conscience, a moral category that is not passed along in the genes or chemicals. In fact conscience is one of the "witnesses" that there is a unifying law giver that is to be sought and obeyed for the good of all. Otherwise, as has been pointed out in previous posts, each develops his/her own sense of the common good and when it, by chance, agrees with others, there is harmony and peace. When it does not, then there is looting or rioting, anarchy; "every one doing what is right in his own eyes"..

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your encouragements!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your insights!

In fact conscience is one of the "witnesses" that there is a unifying law giver that is to be sought and obeyed for the good of all. Otherwise, as has been pointed out in previous posts, each develops his/her own sense of the common good and when it, by chance, agrees with others, there is harmony and peace. When it does not, then there is looting or rioting, anarchy; "every one doing what is right in his own eyes"..

Indeed, conscience is seen as a witness!

Another special thing about humans as compared to animals is the way we honor the dead. Various cultures, all around the world, for millennia have taken care to be respectful with the corpse whether by burial, fire, etc. And following that, there is a common effort to remember the ones who went before.

[Right Wing Professor]

He uses phrases like "evolved a moral compass" and "innate sense of fairness" as if these were biological categories when these just refer to conscience, a moral category that is not passed along in the genes or chemicals

The statement that is is not present in the genes is belied by evidence, and seems to be merely an unsubstantiated assertion.

[blue-duncan]

"The statement that is is not present in the genes is belied by evidence, and seems to be merely an unsubstantiated assertion."

If conscience is genetic then how can we hold someone responsible for actions if he/she does not have the "evolved moral compass" and "innate sense of fairness" genes? In other words, how can you have a
"moral objection to pedophilia or infanticide" when the actor does not have the genetic makeup to conform his/her actions to what other genetically equipped individuals consider acceptable behavior. As a scientist, rather than make a "moral" judgment, would it not be more logical to make the scientific observation that it was just the actions of a genetically deficient individual? Moral judgment implies the actor being equipped to make "moral" decisions.

[P-Marlowe]

If conscience is genetic then how can we hold someone responsible for actions if he/she does not have the "evolved moral compass" and "innate sense of fairness" genes?

You have hit the nail on the head, Kimosabe. If morality is genetic and genes are merely the end result of a purposeless evolution from rocks to rock stars, then no one is morally responsible for their own actions.

Why should we punish people who murder when their moral sense is simply the biproduct of random evolutionary processes. We don't punish rocks that slide down hillsides and take out busloads of children. Under what basis then do we then punish the man who deliberatley runs a busload of children off a cliff? His sense of morality is nothing more than chemical reactions driven by a purposeless mechanism of random change through time.

If man has not been endowed by his creator with the ability to know absolute right from wrong and to act freely in accordance with that ability, then punishment for viscious crimes is as viscious as the crimes themselves.*

It is no wonder that since the advent of evolutionary philosphy the tendency in Criminal Justice has been to steer away from "punishment" and to steer towards "rehabiliation."

*Naturally, we have now steered this discussion over into the Soteriological realm. :-)

[Right Wing Professor]

If conscience is genetic then how can we hold someone responsible for actions if he/she does not have the "evolved moral compass" and "innate sense of fairness" genes?

We could have a civil conversation if you'd lose the scare quotes and engage the issue seriously.

There are people who don't have a conscience. They are called sociopaths. Many of them are criminals; some, however, manage to lead worthwhile lives in civil society, presumably by making up for an innate set of conscience with a set of rational rules. You do believe in sociopaths?

Dennett's view of how we deal with responsibility is called the 'Intentional Stance'; that is, reagardless of causes and effects, we adopt the stance that people must be treated as intentional agents, responsible for their actions. That's certainly the way we perceive ourselves, and it seems like a good general way of dealing with issues of responsibility.

Regardless of what one thinks about the genetic origins of behavior, some people clearly have a harder time staying out of trouble than others. Life is unfair. Nonetheless, we all have to obey the rules. Our legal system does include the concept of diminished responsibility; and the extremely stupid, people congenitally unable to control anger, drunks, and so on might fall under that umbrella. It does not mean one shouldn't hold them responsible; but it means one might not treat their actions as culpable as those of a fully responsible human being.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent essay-posts!

You two have zeroed in on the consequence of a sense of morality as an emergent property of evolution.

In such a view, one behavior choice cannot be "better" than another because it is all relative to the observer. There is no absolute standard against which a choice can be measured. It is not rational (a ratio).

IMHO, that is why the atheist philosophy of utilitarianism exists. But it too is not a ratio but a vote with protection for minorities. (re my post at 362)

IMHO, the Supreme Court - in constructing a wall between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and in interpreting the Freedom "of" Religion as Freedom "from" Religion wrt the Establishment clause - has handed down precedent upon precedent based on the utilitarian philosophy.

This puts our country in great peril, IMHO - because there are real consequences: ultimately, there is no effective legal argument against the Singers of this world under utilitarianism.

This is why so many of us see the staffing of the Supreme Court as a spiritual issue not a political issue and why we pray for the court.

[Right Wing Professor]

If morality is genetic and genes are merely the end result of a purposeless evolution from rocks to rock stars, then no one is morally responsible for their own actions.

Why? Because you say so?

Why should we punish people who murder when their moral sense is simply the biproduct of random evolutionary processes. We don't punish rocks that slide down hillsides and take out busloads of children. Under what basis then do we then punish the man who deliberatley runs a busload of children off a cliff? His sense of morality is nothing more than chemical reactions driven by a purposeless mechanism of random change through time.

You are hard-wired to divide the world into the inanimate and the intentional. You have constructed a post-hoc rationalization of the categories, in terms of your particular religion; but long before you went to Sunday school, you were distinguishing between people and things. And of course, people all over the world, regardless of religion or lack of same, make the distinction. Now you attribute this distinction to your religious outlook; but of course it's nothing to do with religion. If tomorrow you decided you were an atheist, you wouldn't start treating people as rocks.

[blue-duncan]

"We could have a civil conversation if you'd lose the scare quotes and engage the issue seriously."

I thought I was discussing this topic seriously. I don't know what scare quotes are, I was just highlighting your phrases in order to comment on them. tha is also why I alerted you to the comment.

Now, it looks like we have moved away from deterministic genes to a social construct in order to regulate behavior.

"Dennett's view of how we deal with responsibility is called the 'Intentional Stance'; that is, reagardless of causes and effects, we adopt the stance that people must be treated as intentional agents, responsible for their actions."

If you find it appropriate to regulate behavior by an artificial theory, why are you so opposed to an idea of a supreme law giver who has spoken?

[Right Wing Professor]

I don't know what scare quotes are

Scare quotes

If you find it appropriate to regulate behavior by an artificial theory, why are you so opposed to an idea of a supreme law giver who has spoken?

I'm not proposing we use an artificial theory to regulate behavior. I'm saying people innately distinguish between persons, who have intentionality, and things, which don't. Social systems based on that stance have been successful, albeit with some weaknesses. There is no reason therefore to discard it. Why does a decision to regard people as responsible, intentional beings, something we tend to do anyway, require assumption of an old nobodaddy aloft?