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.

""true science" and picking unproven tenants that you refuse to question are incompatible. No, I am not arguing that the tectonic plates don't exist or any of that. I am only pointing out that refusing to question something that has not been proven conclusively is bad science. There problems with the commonly used models of geologic age. To refuse to acknowledge them is just as bad science as picking an age for the earth and bending all conclusions to match it."

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. Many creationists criticize this method arguing that the constant presence of daughter elements cannot be proven, but those criticisms frequently deal with either metamorphic or sedimentary rocks, for which the constancy of composition cannot be accounted, which are then transposed to igneous rocks, whose constancy can be proven. Other criticisms creationists have advanced for the dating of rocks are even less scientific, in which they have asserted that radiometric dating itself is flawed, even if a rock's structure and history is known. This is pure denial, because science does have an understanding of nuclear physics and 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. And I reject out of hand any charge that these universities are controlled by "evolutionists" who slant scientific inquiry to reinforce their beliefs. Atomic bombs work for a reason, which is that the basic principles of nuclear physics are understood.

The importance of dating rocks comes into play when you test the Theory of Plate Tectonics, the basic tenets of which were proven in the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958 when two important missing pieces of the puzzle were put in place. The first was the formation of new crust in the mid-Atlantic ridge. Scientists were actually able to prove that two points on either side of the ridge were farther apart at the end of the geophysical year than they were at the beginning because magma extruding up through the rift had formed new crust and pushed them in opposite directions. This wasn't assumed it was observed and measured from start to finish. And the second piece of the puzzle was the extensive radiometric dating of rocks gathered at points equidistant from the observed mid-Atlantic ridge, meaning at equal points of distance east and west, whose ages matched. Again, this was observed not assumed. With the formation of new crust and plate movement proven, the missing piece of the theory needed to match the destruction of crust through plate subduction and vulcanism was in place. The only things that remain that make "plate tectonics" a theory are the explanations of its origins, some believe that a catastrophic event may have caused an initial breaking of the crust, others believe it was always present; and differences over what is taking place underneath the plates that explain their movement. The movement of plates is an established scientific fact as are the ages of igneous rocks dated to establish a known history of some portions of that movement. And the ages of those rocks date to millions of years.

I have been amazed to visit sites such as "AnswersinGenesis" and others who attack the Theory of Plate Tectonics, "Uniformitarianism" (which is the assumption that those processes now acting upon the earth also acted in the past), radiometric dating, and more. I have even taken their articles and performed web searches to see the response of scientists to some of these charges and I find that they are ludicrous. And it is important to point these things out, because one of the underlying assumptions many creationists -- not all -- make before they attack the Theory of Evolution is that there is "scientific proof" that the earth is not millions of years old and that this proof is rejected because the scientific community is "controlled by the evolutionists" who refuse to permit any challenge to their current theories. This is pure unadulterated hogwash.

Now to get back to the Theory of Intelligent Design, which is the subject of this thread. From what I see of it so far, there is no rejection of science involved in its formulation, in so far as I can see. If that is true, then I am prepared to examine it with an open mind. Especially since I am a religious person who believes "in one God, the father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." But before I can accept even the possibility that the Theory of Intelligent Design can be treated as a legitimate alternative to the Theory of Evolution I am going to have to see that it approaches scientific inquiry in a scientific manner. Most "Creationist Science" approaches scientific inquiry as an exercise in Metaphysics and is not scientific at all.

Translations vary. The original Bible does not. And FWIW, I don't think any of the translations vary significantly on the creation issue.

There is no such thing as the "original bible". The bible was constructed from various writings and canonized by the church. Each book of the bible has many ancient versions and the church picked the ones that either were the earliest or the ones that seemed to be the most compatible with other writings.

There may be some translation differences, but the main differences come from the selection of original text. For example, large portions of the Gospel of Mark are missing in some versions of the bible. Some very important verses like Mark 11:26 "But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses." are completely missing.

I don't want to hijack the thread into a bible debate, but it is important to note that not everyone's bible is the same.

Translations vary. The original Bible does not. And FWIW, I don't think any of the translations vary significantly on the creation issue.

I don't want to hijack the thread into a bible debate, but it is important to note that not everyone's bible is the same.

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