Posted on 11/23/2004 9:53:55 PM PST by 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.
Queue the bagpipers?
202, another prime number!
Not now that you've snuck in another one.
And cue them while you're at it...
I pointed that out to him. I got no response.
Hm. What was the idea of gravity, before it became recognized as a law?
And is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics really a law, by your definition?
No. Evolution does not predict these phenomena. Rather, evolutionists extend their theory to rationalize them in an etiology.
I don't quite understand. When you say "That would be because the theory of evolution doesn't apply when life doesn't exist.", are you saying that 1.no life existed before earth, OR 2.that evolution theory only applies to earth? Well, or both. Just trying to understand.
He's saying that evolution explains what happens when life reproduces. Thus, before any life exists, evolution doesn't apply, doesn't exist, doesn't happen.
It's kind of like weather not happening when there's not an atmosphere. Weather is the way that an atmosphere changes over time. Evolution is the way that living things change over time (i.e., across generations).
In slightly more technical terms the process of evolution happens any time the following three things are all present: 1) reproduction, 2) (inheritable) variation, 3) selection. Before life came about, #1 (reproduction) did not exist, and thus the process of evolution did not take place. Only after the first reproducing thing (it probably didn't rise to the level of "life" yet) came into existence, by whatever means, did evolutionary processes occur.
I've always thought that the most elegant resolution of the question was that those on each side of the issue were correct about themselves...in short, that those who believe that they are individually created, beloved children of a benign God hold that belief because they are exactly that. Likewise, those who believe themselves to be the distant relations of chimpanzees are also correct.
Here is an observation for you then: Unlike a scientific law, or practical theory, which we may depend upon for the development of technology (for testing, or for other utilities) the theory of an all encompassing evolutionary schema is not a... fact.
A governing rule in physics.
After reading his posts for several years, I'm of the opinion that your post would have been more fitting if you had left off the last word.
And there, in a nutshell, is the core basis of the creationist "objection" to evolution. I just wish would be more honest about it, instead of claiming to reject it on scientific grounds (especially since I have yet to see a "scientific rejection" that actually holds water when examined -- what the average creationist doesn't know about science or biology boggles the mind).
Well, that's what Hoyle proposed anyway. And thus it's amusing to see how often the creationists quote him as an "authority".
From Creationsafaris:
The only examples these evolutionists always trot out are a few extinct semi-aquatic candidates, like Pakicetus and Rodhocetus. The artist’ reconstruction of Rodhocetus in the article shows a squat long-snouted tan-colored animal with dog-like feet and a wide tail that flips left and right, unlike a whale’s vertically-moving fluke. Great. 15 mutations down, and only 49,985 to go. The caption says, “The early whale Rodhocetus probably paddled like an aquatic mole, using its tail as a rudder, rather than wiggling like an otter.” Notice two things: the word probably, which reminds us one cannot deduce lifestyles from fossils, and the observation that there are aquatic moles with similar lifestyles today. Are the moles evolving into mini-whales? How do we know the extinct animals were not perfectly content to stay what they were for eternity?
The paleontologists got all excited that Rodhocetus might have used its hind feet for swimming. What’s all the excitement about? Whales have no hind feet, nor do they swim with them. The gap between Rodhocetus, Pakicetus or any other candidate transitional form and true whales is huge, yet the article calls Pakicetus the “earliest known whale.” Given the gap to bone ratio, that is no more plausible than calling Icarus the earliest known bird.
In a way, it’s admirable that these paleontologists exhibit the power of positive thinking. Otherwise, playing Darwin detective must be a very depressing job. But the first step toward recovery for EA (Evolutionists Anonymous) is to admit that they have a problem.
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev1103.htm
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Keep sippin' that kool-aid, Vade. The good news is, EA meets every day here at FR, so you aren't alone. :)
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