Intellectuals Who Doubt Darwin

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.

Ok, no offense taken on my part. I see miscommunication evident too, but if I were to explain the dynamics of that miscommunication from my own viewpointI might start a whole new argument, so I will leave that alone. Allow me to state that my professional background includes extensive training in epistemology, systems theory, quantitative theory -- which begins as a final part of advanced Logic, and mathematics. I'll skip the details except to say that the method of reasoning is something I consider very important because it has been drilled into my head.

One final comment to you Alamo-Girl that may help to keep the peace. I understand that you have a deeply-motivated sense of religious feeling. I read the "Standing in Awe" thread. Please know that this is something I would never deride. I too am a deeply religious person. I view my religious justification as a faith supported by, though not entirely arising from, my recognition that morality and ethics do not exist because of some cumulative experience that they work or because of some relative distinction of the pleasure and pain they cause or because they represent some ancient system defined in such a way that they are persisted to this present day. I am absolutely convinced, and in this I make a purely metaphysical argument, that morality and ethics are substantial in nature because they flow from a divine being. I know this intuitively and, though I cannot argue it from a scientific perspective, I believe it much more than anything I conclude from what I see in the natural world.

Thank you so much for your reply and for sharing your background and especially, your testimony!

You might enjoy the discussion on betty boop's essay: On Plato, the Early Church, and Modern Science: An Eclectic Meditation.

betty boop is the most eloquent philosopher known to me and has an overarching understanding of "all that there is" which you might also find appealing. At least two of the strongest mathematicians on the forum (Doctor Stochastic and tortoise) are posting on that thread. Some of the other great Freeper-philosphers are also posting there (beckett, cornelis, marron, etc.).

Perhaps you have already engaged these great minds, but if not, you might enjoy having a look-see. I'm confident they are better equipped to explore some of your favorite subjects than I will ever be.

I'm pinging all of the Freepers I've mentioned because it is impolite to compliment posters behind their backs.

"There are things that have been proven conclusively about geologic time, unless you deny that there are any scientific means for testing the age of rocks, such as radiometric dating, a technique many creationists have assaulted as flawed. The criticisms of radiometric dating -- and I've read them -- do not fly by any standard that meets the test of true science. There are such things as "parent" and "daughter" elements within igneous rocks that exhibit constant rates of radioactive decay of isotopes. .... a key part of that knowledge is radioactive decay of isotopes. Radiometric dating under controlled conditions does work and there is not an accredited university offering a degree in Physics anywhere in this country that will deny that. "
***Okay, then how do you reconcile the information below? All of the radiometric dating techniques assume that the speed of light is a constant, which is demonstrably untrue.

Has Speed Of Light Slowed Down?

SYDNEY, Australia, Aug. 7, 2002

(Photo: AP)

"When one of the cornerstones of physics collapses, it's not obvious what you hang onto and what you discard."
Paul Davies, theoretical physicist

Albert Einstein (Photo: AP)

(REUTERS) A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity.

The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.

If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe.

"That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort of stuff," Davies told Reuters.

"But of course it doesn't mean we just throw the books in the bin, because it's in the nature of scientific revolution that the old theories become incorporated in the new ones."

Davies, and astrophysicists Tamara Davis and Charles Lineweaver from the University of New South Wales published the proposal in the Aug. 8 edition of scientific journal Nature.

The suggestion that the speed of light can change is based on data collected by UNSW astronomer John Webb, who posed a conundrum when he found that light from a distant quasar, a star-like object, had absorbed the wrong type of photons from interstellar clouds on its 12 billion year journey to earth.

Davies said fundamentally Webb's observations meant that the structure of atoms emitting quasar light was slightly but ever so significantly different to the structure of atoms in humans.

The discrepancy could only be explained if either the electron charge, or the speed of light, had changed.

"But two of the cherished laws of the universe are the law that electron charge shall not change and that the speed of light shall not change, so whichever way you look at it we're in trouble," Davies said.

To establish which of the two constants might not be that constant after all, Davies' team resorted to the study of black holes, mysterious astronomical bodies that suck in stars and other galactic features.

They also applied another dogma of physics, the second law of of thermodynamics, which Davies summarises as "you can't get something for nothing."

After considering that a change in the electron charge over time would violate the sacrosanct second law of thermodynamics, they concluded that the only option was to challenge the constancy of the speed of light.

More study of quasar light is needed in order to validate Webb's observations, and to back up the proposal that light speed may vary, a theory Davies stresses represents only the first chink in the armour of the theory of relativity.

In the meantime, the implications are as unclear as the unexplored depths of the universe themselves.

"When one of the cornerstones of physics collapses, it's not obvious what you hang onto and what you discard," Davies said.

"If what we're seeing is the beginnings of a paradigm shift in physics like what happened 100 years ago with the theory of relativity and quantum theory, it is very hard to know what sort of reasoning to bring to bear."

It could be that the possible change in light speed will only matter in the study of the large scale structure of the universe, its origins and evolution.

For example, varying light speed could explain why two distant and causally unconnected parts of the universe can be so similar even if, according to conventional thought, there has not been enough time for light or other forces to pass between them.

It may only matter when scientists are studying effects over billions of years or billions of light years.

Or there may be startling implications that could change not only the way cosmologists view the universe but also its potential for human exploitation.

"For example there's a cherished law that says nothing can go faster than light and that follows from the theory of relativity," Davies said. The accepted speed of light is 300,000 km (186,300 miles) per second.

"Maybe it's possible to get around that restriction, in which case it would enthrall Star Trek fans because at the moment even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. It's a bit of a bore really and if the speed of light limit could go, then who knows? All bets are off," Davies said.

There is a debate now ranging among physicists over the constancy of the speed of light. But if you want to introduce this as a challenge to the dating of the earth in billions of years, you are woefully mistaken, because the origin of the observable phenomena that raises the issue is emitted light from a distant part of the universe so far removed from us that it is believed we may be viewing light that is on the nature of 11 to 12 billion years old.

Here is a brief examination of the speed of light controversy as it stood before NASA tested its validity:

Speed of Light Controversy in Brief

This is what the story says about what the origins of the phenomena are:

". . . Studying how light was absorbed by metallic atoms in gas clouds some 12 billion light-years away, researchers found that the fine structure constant, as it is called, may be changing subtly as the universe grows older. The universe is thought to be roughly 13 billion years old, so the light observed in the new study was emitted when the universe was roughly a billion years old. . . ."

And the following is what the article says about the possible impact of the adjustment:

". . . The apparent change in the fine structure constant, also called alpha, was very small, amounting to 1 part in 100,000. . . ."

That would mean extremely small adjustments to radiometric dating techniques, IF the theoretical proposition that the speed of light is NOT constant is proven, more on that in a second. But the way the above change would work is this; for every billion years of geologic time the speed of light would slow about 1,000 miles per hour. That would mean at 4 billion years ago its speed would be about 190,000 miles per second, rather than 186,000, which would be the range of calculation for dating what could potentially be the oldest rocks on earth. This will not move the radiometricaly-derived dates any more than 2 to 4 thousand years at that range, which would be the biggest change one could potentially expect from all of this if the new constant is applied to the dating of the oldest rocks found on earth.

I'm not troubled by this at all.

And by the way, there is an explanation that Paul Davies (who is quoted in the article you posted) and his partner John Barrow are offering to explain why there may be a change in this constant, which is that "the speed of light may have slowed down over billions of years, since the expansion rate of the universe seems to be accelerating." I would like to know if you are comfortable with their explanation.

Now; on the possibility that this theory that the speed of light is not constant, let me say that the best evidence I can find says that they are mistaken. NASA has concluded that the speed of light is NOT slowing. This is what NASA has concluded:

". . . The speed of light, one of the constants scientists rely on to study the universe, appears to have held its ground under some tight NASA scrutiny despite other theories that it may slow as it moves through space.

By comparing gamma ray observations of two nearby galaxies, a NASA researcher found evidence that the speed of light is still traveling as fast as it ever has. The finding reinforces the relevance of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which depends on a constant speed of light as the maximum speed attainable by any object."

I tend to agree with NASA's findings here, but I won't be bothered if it turns out they are wrong. And I am certain that disproving NASA's conclusions, something I doubt will happen, will not have any significant effect on the dating of Geologic Time.

I am aware that many creationist web sites are making all sorts of fantastic claims about this scientific debate, but I would encourage you to pay attention to the science involved here, and I would urge that you be careful in selecting assessments of the impact of this hypothesis as factual and meaningful. A change of "one part in every 100,000" within a constant used in calculating radiometric-based dates is going to be extremely small indeed.

You're quite right about "a debate now ranging among physicists over the constancy of the speed of light." I would actually say the debate is raging. It still remains to be seen whether the correction factor will be a couple of thousand years added to the billions of years already postulated or a complete re-structuring of the radiometric process.

Here is a Q & A regarding speed of light re-thinking versus
radiometric dating:

http://www.ldolphin.org/cdkconseq.html

Implications of a Non-Constant Velocity of Light
collected by Lambert Dolphin

Ongoing Discussion: Barry Setterfield's web site now features a Discussion section where the following issues, and many more, are currently being posted and discussed. You may email Barry at barry@setterfield.org. (March 9, 2003)

Question: Has anyone done the calculations, based on your theory of changing speed of light, to see if the radiometric dating of fossils and rocks goes from the current value of billions of years down to thousands of years? Is it available on the Internet? Can you please give me a summary? Thank you.

Response: Thank you for your request for information. Yes, the calculations have been done to convert radiometric and other atomic dates to actual orbital years. This is done on the basis outlined in our Report of 1987 and the new paper just undergoing peer review. Basically, when light-speed is 10 times its current value, all atomic clocks ticked 10 times faster. As a consequence they registered an age of 10 atomic years when only one orbital year had passed. For all practical purposes there is no change in the rate of the orbital clocks with changing light speed. The earth still took a year to go around the sun.

Now the redshift of light from distant galaxies carries a signature in it that tells us what the value of c was at the time of emission. The redshift data then give us c values right back to the earliest days of the cosmos. Knowing the distances of these astronomical objects to a good approximation, then allows us to determine the behaviour of light speed with time. It is then a simple matter to correct the atomic clock to read actual orbital time. Light speed was exceedingly fast in the early days of the cosmos, but dropped dramatically. At a distance of 20 billion light years, for example, the value of c was about 87 million times its current value. At that point in time the atomic clocks were ticking off 87 million years in just one ordinary year. When the process is integrated over the redshift/cDK curve the following approximate figures apply.

1 million years before present (BP) atomically is actually 2826 BC with c about 70,000 times c now.

63 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3005 BC with c about 615,000 times c now.

230 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3301 BC with c about 1.1 million times c now.

600 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3536 BC with c about 2.6 million times c now.

2.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4136 BC with c about 10.8 million times c now.

4.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4505 BC with c about 19.6 million times c now.

15 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5650 BC with c about 65.3 million times c now.

20 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5800 BC with c about 87 million times c now.

I'm not a physicist, so this is as far as I'm going into this debate. I'll have to wade through hundreds of pages of material before I can make get my arms around it intellectually, and by that time this debate will have moved on. Thank you for addressing this topic, at least from your perspective.

I will say that I find this whole topic fascinating. It suggests a wide open universe of physics topics that are ready to be explored, it must be an exciting time. The phrase comes to my mind, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", which would be something one could direct at physicists who do not want to see the current understanding of physics undermined. And BTW, it does not appear to me that Setterfield acts in a manner of the typical head-in-the-sand creationist who is "woefully mistaken." This is real science being discussed.

Dolphin was the Stanford reviewer who first allowed Setterfield's work to be published, after which Stanford retracted its authorization, including the denial of access to its research facilities to Setterfield. I regard the Dolphin and Setterfield sites as not presenting the debate at the level in which true physicists are dealing with it. To track that debate you must follow the way Davies and Barrow, who are the two physicists who found merit in Setterfield's observations, have dealt with it. Setterfield and Dolphin are failing to present two key aspects relating to the data -- and yes I reviewed those pages before responding to you in my previous posts. The first is just what is the variance that is implied from the preliminary findings. The second is how that variance impacts uses of the c constant. Notice what you just posted:

". . . when light-speed is 10 times its current value, all atomic clocks ticked 10 times faster. As a consequence they registered an age of 10 atomic years when only one orbital year had passed. . . ."

Excuse me? TEN times faster? That is an interesting hypothetical but if it is presented in any way as a representation of the impact of the findings relating to a variation in the speed of light it is an outright lie. The real impact is as presented by Davies and Barrow who, even though their opinions are not supported by the majority of the scientific community, remain respected physicists within it. Their estimation of the variance was as I posted in the first link I displayed in my response to your initial inquiry. It's as follows, I'll quote it again:

". . . The apparent change in the fine structure constant, also called alpha, was very small, amounting to 1 part in 100,000. . . ."

If you or anyone else wants to challenge the impact of this new theory about the inconstancy of the speed of light you must present some evidence, not a hypothetical discussion of something that is not supported in the data revealed by the observations, that challenges the above figures that Davies and Barrow, who support the theory that the speed of light is not constant through time, use as the basis for their argument. If you will read carefully, the actual words presented in the "10 times faster" quote do not argue that the change in the constancy of the speed of light will move radiometric dating in the direction indicated by the results posted. And I regard that kind of deception as typical of "creationist science," which really acts as a support group for those adhering to its tenets, rather than presenting any valid scientific evidence to support their claims.

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