Intellectuals Who Doubt Darwin

The American Prowler ^ | 11/24/2004 | Hunter Baker

[nickcarraway]

Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

Edited by William A. Dembski

(ISI Books, 366 pages, $28; $18 paper)

WACO, Texas -- At one time, the debate over Darwin's theory existed as a cartoon in the modern imagination. Thanks to popular portrayals of the Scopes Trial, secularists regularly reviewed the happy image of Clarence Darrow goading William Jennings Bryan into agreeing to be examined as an expert witness on the Bible and then taking him apart on the stand. Because of the legal nature of the proceedings that made evolution such a permanent part of the tapestry of American pop culture, it is fitting that this same section of the tapestry began to unravel due to the sharp tugs of another prominent legal mind, Phillip Johnson.

The publication of his book, Darwin on Trial, now appears to have marked a new milestone in the debate over origins. Prior to Johnson's book, the critics of evolution tended to occupy marginalized sectarian positions and focused largely on contrasting Darwin's ideas with literalist readings of the Genesis account. Johnson's work was different. Here we had a doubter of Darwin willing to come out of the closet, even though his credentials were solid gold establishment in nature. He had attended the finest schools, clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, taught law as a professor at highly ranked Berkeley, and authored widely-used texts on criminal law. Just as Darrow cross-examined the Bible and Bryan's understanding of it, Johnson cross-examined Darwin and got noticed in the process. He spent much of the last decade debating the issue with various Darwinian bulldogs and holding up his end pretty well.

PHILLIP JOHNSON, AND a number of others, raised enough doubts about the dominant theory to cause a number of intellectuals to take a hard look, particularly at the gap between what can be proven and what is simply asserted to be true. Since that time, authors with more technical backgrounds, like mathematician/philosopher William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe, have published books providing even more powerful critiques of the neo-Darwinian synthesis based on intelligent design theory. Behe's work has been particularly disturbing to evolution advocates because he seems to have proven that organic machines at the molecular level are irreducibly complex and therefore could not have been the products of natural selection because there never would have been any intermediate working mechanism to select. Now, the two team up as Dembski edits and Behe contributes to a bracing collection of controversial writings titled Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing.

Dembski displays the intellectual doggedness of the group of contributors when he uses his introductory essay to ruthlessly track down and scrutinize the footnotes offered by those who would refute Behe's case. Reference after reference claiming to have decisively defeated Behe turns out to be inadequate to the task. What passes for refutation is instead a collection of question-begging and "just-so stories." Right away, Dembski sets the tone for the book. Nothing will be uncontested. The pro-evolution community will be made to fight for every inch of intellectual real estate without relying on the aura of prestige or the lack of competent critics to bolster their case.

The best way to read the book is by beginning at the end and perusing the profiles of the contributors. There, the reader will be able to select essays from representatives of a variety of disciplines, including mathematics, philosophy, biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, genetics, law, and medicine. The most enjoyable in terms of sheer brio are the essays by Dembski, Behe, Frank Tipler, Cornelius Hunter, and David Berlinski. Tipler's essay on the process of getting published in a peer-reviewed journal is particularly relevant and rewarding because it deals with one of the biggest strikes against Intelligent Design. ID theorists have had a notoriously difficult time getting their work published in professional journals. Tipler, a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane, crankily and enjoyably explains why.

TOP HONORS, HOWEVER, go to David Berlinski's essay, "The Deniable Darwin," which originally appeared in Commentary. The essay is rhetorically devastating. Berlinski is particularly strong in taking apart Richard Dawkins' celebrated computer simulation of monkeys re-creating a Shakespearean sentence and thereby "proving" the ability of natural selection to generate complex information. The mathematician and logician skillfully points out that Dawkins rigged the game by including the very intelligence in his simulation he disavows as a cause of ordered biological complexity. It's clear that Berlinski hits a sore spot when one reads the letters Commentary received in response to the article. Esteemed Darwinists like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett respond with a mixture of near-hysterical outrage and ridicule. Berlinski's responses are also included. At no point does he seem the slightest bit cowed or overwhelmed by the personalities arrayed against him.

For the reader, the result is simply one of the most rewarding reading experiences available. Berlinski and his critics engage in a tremendous intellectual bloodletting, with Berlinski returning fire magnificently. In a particularly amusing segment, Berlinski, constantly accused of misperception, writes, "For reasons that are obscure to me, both [Mr. Gross] and Daniel Dennett carelessly assume that they are in a position to instruct me on a point of usage in German, my first language." Though his foes repeatedly accuse Berlinski of being a "creationist," the tag has little chance of sticking to a man arguing for little more than agnosticism on the question of origins and who disavows any religious principles aside from the possible exception of hoping to "have a good time all the time." One suspects that the portion of the book occupied by the Berlinski essay and subsequent exchanges will gain wide currency.

For far too long, the apologists for Darwin have relied on a strategy of portraying challengers as simple-minded religious zealots. The publication of Uncommon Dissent and many more books like it, will severely undermine the success of such portrayals. During the past decade, it has become far too obvious that there are such things as intellectuals who doubt Darwin and that their ranks are growing. The dull repetition of polemical charges in place of open inquiry, debate, and exchange may continue, but with fewer and fewer honest souls ready to listen.

Hunter Baker is a Ph.D. student at Baylor University and contributes to the Reform Club.

[shibumi]

I can recall Carl Sagan on his show "Cosmos" standing behind a fishtank full of mud that he referred to as the "chemical soup of the primeval ocean" and suggesting that a lightning strike or meteorite impact caused a chain reaction that resulted in the first unicellular organic compounds.

I can also recall deciding not to watch Sagan any more after that.

[JeffAtlanta]

What cracks me up is that "evolutionists" have resorted to redefining "species" to make their case. Thus, any adaptation WITHIN a species, becomes an evoluition to a new species.

Evolution by definition makes the concept of species very fuzzy. Evolutionists don't "resort to redefining" species because they don't regard species to be homogeneous, fixed, permanent things - instead, members of a species are all different, and over time species change.

Its not clear how evolutionists could be blamed for the poorly written and ridiculously enforced endangered species act.

[VadeRetro]

As a matter of fact I have read it, and more. I would gladly state the mechanism of evolution for you, if I believed such a mechanism existed.

Exactly my point. Religious horror prevents you from being able to correctly state what Darwin or any other evolutionist even says. Whether or not you have actually read anything other than from creationist pamphlets, you can only parrot the creationist pamphlet distortions.

The rest of your post has nothing to do with science at all. You should leave the education of people who want to study science alone.

[katdawg]

Praise the Lord. :)

[Dimensio]

Check out the preables(sp?) mouse in Colorado.

Let's see...researchers who were debating whether or not two populations of mice were distinct subspecies conclude that they are not, contrary to an earlier conclusion because they have more up-to-date methods available.

How is that redefinition of species again? Looks to me like they investigated an issue and came to a conclusion that a previous classification was inadequate. They didn't redefine species, they determined that a previous test of speciation was not adequate.

No time to do the rest of your homework for you.

In other words, you are willing to make unsupported assertions, then cowardly duck out when called to defend them. Sadly, this level of dishonesty is all too common amongst creationists around here.

[StJacques]

"Physicist Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the odds of producing just the basic enzymes of life by chance are 1 in 1 with 40,000 zeros after it. I know -- it's only ONE opinion...

FWIW: Between 1984 and 1994 about 400 papers concerning molecular evolution were published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences. NOT ONE "proposed [any] detailed routes by which complex biochemical structures might have developed" -- NOR have any been offered in any other biological journal. (perhaps you or someone else can track JUST ONE down which has been done in the last ten years?)

It's at this basic level of life that Darwinism must be defended, but evolutionist "scholars" avoid the subject because they know it CAN'T BE DONE."

Well F16Fighter, I must say you have really missed the boat on this one. Not only is there no avoidance of the subject and quite a bit of recent scholarship, but in fact an entire discipline within biology known as Exobiology, which originated with an experiment of Dr. Stanley L. Miller in 1953 that demonstrated that amino acids, the basic building blocks of organic chemistry, could be synthesized from non-organic compounds, has continued to grow. Today Exobiologists are continuing to develop and test various hypotheses to explain the origins of life and, as true scientists, they are pursuing several different paths. NASA has even become involved including Exobiologists among its NASA Specialized Center for Research and Training (NSCORT) staff. You can view a wealth of information on their research, including personnel, participating institutions, and current projects at their Origins of Life, Exobiology, and Astrobiology Links Page. They have five distinct programs of their own linked from that page as well as a separate link to a British program, that links further to other international study. Following from the NASA links page you will find universities such as Harvard, the University of Texas, the University of California at San Diego, the Rennslaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York at Albany, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Salk Institute, and more are involved in current study. There is quite a bit of current scholarship on the origins of life. Have they solved the problem and produced a full equation that explains the origins of life? No. Have several different scenarios been developed that are currently being tested in scientific research to provide the answers? Oh yes, quite a bit in fact. I don't know where you got your information but I strongly suggest that you question your source.

And while I am certainly no expert in the field, my quick glance of the material seems to suggest that Dr. James P. Ferris of Rennslaer Polytechnic Institute may be leading the field after proving that "clay minerals will catalyze the formation of the RNA aqueous solution." And the thrust of current scholarship that builds on his work alone, note: you will also find quite a bit of his own recent scholarship at the preceding link, seems to focus on "the prebiotic synthesis of RNA catalysts."

Now, on to Sir Fred Hoyle. I have seen how web sites such as christiananswers.net uses Hoyle's opinions as those presented by a "scientific expert" which they hold to counter those of others whose viewpoints contrast with their own. Hoyle was a true scholar, but he was also in a very small minority who held to the "steady state theory" of the origins of the universe and may best be remembered as the individual who coined the phrase "Big Bang" when he mocked the theory that now bears the name he gave it. You can hold Hoyle's work out as a legitimate scientific opinion and it can be argued that it is valid, but his was clearly a minority viewpoint within the scientific community during his own day and at present. And I will also point out that many Creationist web sites who use Hoyle to try to discount the theories about the Big Bang and the origins of life on earth ignore him when it comes time to discuss subjects like Geologic Time and the age of the earth.

[F16Fighter]

"Not only is there no avoidance of the subject and quite a bit of recent scholarship, but in fact an entire discipline within biology known as Exobiology, which originated with an experiment of Dr. Stanley L. Miller in 1953 that demonstrated that amino acids, the basic building blocks of organic chemistry, could be synthesized from non-organic compounds, has continued to grow."

I do understand Miller's experiment caused a buzz and encouraged the scientific community back then, but haven't such "discoveries" only led to today's subsequent appreciation of the immense complexities in explaining the the origin of life?

Since Stanley's suuposed "breakthrough," and despite all the ongoing NASA studies, university studies, and various institutes since, any and all theories and hypotheses haven't come close to moving much further than synthesizing that original batch of amino acids (Dr. Ferris' experiment notwithstanding).

" You can hold Hoyle's work out as a legitimate scientific opinion and it can be argued that it is valid, but his was clearly a minority viewpoint within the scientific community during his own day and at present. And I will also point out that many Creationist web sites who use Hoyle to try to discount the theories about the Big Bang and the origins of life on earth ignore him when it comes time to discuss subjects like Geologic Time and the age of the earth."

True -- Hoyle may be all over the place, AND Creationists may "borrow" his expertise when the argument serves them, however like many other scientists lately, Hoyle is said to have been disturbed or confused by his peers' willingness to adhere either to unproven or impossible scientific dogma, acknowledges why this might be the case: "Most scientists still cling to Darwinism because of its grip on the educational system...You either have to believe the concepts or...be branded a heretic."

[StJacques]

On the scientific explanations for the origins of life on earth, it is true that the complexities are immense, which is what I take from the variety of scholarship upon it.

Now back to Hoyle. I submit that Hoyle's real conflict with "Dawinian orthodoxy" is with it material explanation for the origin of life on earth. You might want to examine a web page containing an interview with Fred Hoyle in . I quote in the following excerpt, though I have underlined a specific portion of the text I consider relevant to a discussion of Hoyle's attitudes to the Theory of Evolution:

". . .It is interesting that Hoyle is willing to go along with neo-Darwinism in its rejection of the miracle of creation, yet he complains that the model requires miracles of its own:

… as for instance the miracle of the formation of galaxies after the big bang and the miracle of the origin of life in a feeble brew of organic soup, which the credulous believe to have happened in the early history of the Earth (p. 237).

So what does Hoyle propose to put in the place of the less and less plausible neo-Darwinian orthodoxy? Briefly, skipping over many interesting details of his argument, he suggests that cosmic dust actually consists of the remains of countless bacteria which now populate, and have populated for a long time, the whole universe. He figures that life first originated elsewhere and was transported to Earth, perhaps in the dust of some wide-ranging comet. But the "life-seeds" (his term) brought to Earth, by whatever means, were not accidents in the neo-Darwinian sense, they were sent by some prior, or perhaps subsequent intelligence which is guiding, pushing and/or pulling, us into the future. The reason for this ambivalence is that in Hoyle's system time runs both forward and backward. He can't think of any mathematical reason why time couldn't run both ways, so, he assumes it does.

Somehow the life-seeds got safely to Earth, having been sent out in all directions by a previous and/or subsequent intelligence. He says, somewhat enigmatically, "we are the intelligence that preceded us" (p. 239). Afterward, neo-Darwinian evolution took over, but with a peculiar twist. Hoyle believes that the billions and billions of mutations necessary to the impossibly rapid ascent of protozoans to man were brought about by viral infections which modified the DNA of parent organisms. These viruses, he claims, were guided by some "cosmic intelligence," which eventually thus gave rise to the great variety of organisms that we see on Earth today. Further, in some yet-to-be imagined way, intelligent beings, perhaps much smarter than we are, but not as smart as the infinite Judeo-Christian God (whom Hoyle discards) planned the whole scenario.

Having demolished any hope for neo-Darwinism, Hoyle alludes to his own theory unflatteringly:

Although the thought may seem rather fanciful, the surface of Mars looks very much like a failed attempt at seeding life from space, a failed "experiment" of a kind which eventually succeeded in the case of the Earth (P. 105). He says that "genes ... arrived on the Earth from the outside" (p. 109), but he acknowledges that this idea merely postpones consideration of the life-problem:

An explanation of the amazing complexity of life must still eventually be given, even in a cosmic theory (p. 109)."

Now I'm going to venture a guess that you don't agree with Hoyle's take on things as described above. Neither do I, though I disagree for different reasons than you I am guessing.

And by the way, I actually have problems with the "primordial soup" hypothesis for the origins of life on earth myself. I tried to find something by the famous astronomer Shoemaker who suggested "cosmic fertilization by meteors or meteorites" but I couldn't locate it.

[shibumi]

I believe it is you who are making unwarranted assumptions. First, you have no idea what my religious beliefs are. (Do not infer anything from the fact that I graduated from a Catholic university, so did a lot of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists.) Second, I have never read a pamphlet on this topic from any source. Third, the purpose of my last discourse was to answer the inferred question you asked, which I perceived to be "If not Darwin's theory, then what?".

The fact that you wish to label anything that does not suit your purpose as unscientific only suggests that you need to acquire the vision to make the great leap forward beyond a beleaguered and indefensible theory.

As for your tag line, I believe in Apokatastasis.

Hope you're having a wonderful holiday weekend!!!

[VadeRetro]

I believe it is you who are making unwarranted assumptions. First, you have no idea what my religious beliefs are.

The shill in the crowd protests when exposed. Most of you have no idea how you stand out.

[shibumi]

You have just departed from the arena of reasonable discussion. Please remember one thing - there is no spoon.

[G Larry]

No, in other words I'm not going pull up data sufficient for a 900 page text book, that would remain insufficient, in your eyes.

[Dimensio]

No, in other words I'm not going pull up data sufficient for a 900 page text book, that would remain insufficient, in your eyes.

Of course you're not going to pull up data sufficient for a 900 page textbook. You don't actually have any such data, at least none that isn't founded in lies and distortions.

[G Larry]

It is evolution that is founded in lies and distortions.

There are several texts that do not rely on any religious reference, yet document the scientific holes in the theory.

I'm through with this banter.

[Dimensio]

It is evolution that is founded in lies and distortions.

You keep saying that, yet you don't offer an example of a lie or distortion. It's like you're full of hot air.

There are several texts that do not rely on any religious reference, yet document the scientific holes in the theory.

None of which you care to cite.

I'm through with this banter.

What, didn't expect people to actually ask you to document your bogus claims, so you're running off like a coward?

[G Larry]

'If all of the current species are supposed to have evolved, why isn't there overwhelming fossil evidence of species in mid-transition. That is, where clear characteristics of the "from" and "to" species exist?

[Dimensio]

'If all of the current species are supposed to have evolved, why isn't there overwhelming fossil evidence of species in mid-transition. That is, where clear characteristics of the "from" and "to" species exist?

There are transitional fossils. The fact that you ask this question indicates that you've not done any actual research at all.

[PatrickHenry]

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ. Yes, transitional fossils exist.
Fossil whale with legs. Land animal to whale transitional fossil.
Feathered Dinosaurs.
Archaeopteryx. Reptile-to-bird transitional fossil.
Human Ancestors.

[G Larry]

I've done the research as noted in the post that follows yours, and the examples are lame.
Hundreds of lame examples are no substitue for a true mid-transition fossil.
Adaptation within a species is NOT the same as a transition from one species to another.

[PatrickHenry]

Hundreds of lame examples are no substitue for a true mid-transition fossil.

First you said there were no transitionals. So I showed you some. Now, rather than having your confidence shaken, because you wrongly thought there were none, now you want a "true" transitional. Not a "lame" transitional ... a "true" transitional. Ah, yes. The game's afoot!

Adaptation within a species is NOT the same as a transition from one species to another.

Can you give an example of what you have in mind? Half-bird, half-horse? That kind of thing?