Posted on 01/28/2005 4:28:41 PM PST by metacognative
Panicked Evolutionists: The Stephen Meyer Controversy
The theory of evolution is a tottering house of ideological cards that is more about cherished mythology than honest intellectual endeavor. Evolutionists treat their cherished theory like a fragile object of veneration and worship--and so it is. Panic is a sure sign of intellectual insecurity, and evolutionists have every reason to be insecure, for their theory is falling apart.
The latest evidence of this panic comes in a controversy that followed a highly specialized article published in an even more specialized scientific journal. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, wrote an article accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article, entitled "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," was published after three independent judges deemed it worthy and ready for publication. The use of such judges is standard operating procedure among "peer-reviewed" academic journals, and is considered the gold standard for academic publication.
The readership for such a journal is incredibly small, and the Biological Society of Washington does not commonly come to the attention of the nation's journalists and the general public. Nevertheless, soon after Dr. Meyer's article appeared, the self-appointed protectors of Darwinism went into full apoplexy. Internet websites and scientific newsletters came alive with outrage and embarrassment, for Dr. Meyer's article suggested that evolution just might not be the best explanation for the development of life forms. The ensuing controversy was greater than might be expected if Dr. Meyer had argued that the world is flat or that hot is cold.
Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, told The Scientist that Dr. Meyer's article came to her attention when members of the Biological Society of Washington contacted her office. "Many members of the society were stunned about the article," she told The Scientist, and she described the article as "recycled material quite common in the intelligent design community." Dr. Scott, a well known and ardent defender of evolutionary theory, called Dr. Meyer's article "substandard science" and argued that the article should never have been published in any scientific journal.
Within days, the Biological Society of Washington, intimidated by the response of the evolutionary defenders, released a statement apologizing for the publication of the article. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the society's governing council claimed that the article "was published without the prior knowledge of the council." The statement went on to declare: "We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings." The society's president, Roy W. McDiarmid, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, blamed the article's publication on the journal's previous editor, Richard Sternberg, who now serves as a fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institute of Health. "My conclusion on this," McDiarmid said, "was that it was a really bad judgment call on the editor's part."
What is it about Dr. Stephen Meyer's paper that has caused such an uproar? Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, argued in his paper that the contemporary form of evolutionary theory now dominant in the academy, known as "Neo-Darwinism," fails to account for the development of higher life forms and the complexity of living organisms. Pointing to what evolutionists identify as the "Cambrian explosion," Meyer argued that "the geologically sudden appearance of many new animal body plans" cannot be accounted for by Darwinian theory, "neo" or otherwise.
Accepting the scientific claim that the Cambrian explosion took place "about 530 million years ago," Meyer went on to explain that the "remarkable jump in the specified complexity or 'complex specified information' [CSI] of the biological world" cannot be explained by evolutionary theory.
The heart of Dr. Meyer's argument is found in this scientifically-loaded passage: "Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion."
In simpler terms, the mechanism of natural selection, central to evolutionary theory, cannot possibly account for the development of so many varied and complex life forms simply by mutations in DNA. Rather, some conscious design--thus requiring a Designer--is necessary to explain the emergence of these life forms.
In the remainder of his paper, Meyer attacks the intellectual inadequacies of evolutionary theory and argues for what is now known as the "design Hypothesis." As he argued, "Conscious and rational agents have, as a part of their powers of purposive intelligence, the capacity to design information-rich parts and to organize those parts into functional information-rich systems and hierarchies." As he went on to assert, "We know of no other causal entity or process that has this capacity." In other words, the development of the multitude of higher life forms found on the planet can be explained only by the guidance of a rational agent--a Designer--whose plan is evident in the design.
Meyer's article was enough to cause hysteria in the evolutionists' camp. Knowing that their theory lacks intellectual credibility, the evolutionists respond by raising the volume, offering the equivalent of scientific shrieks and screams whenever their cherished theory is criticized--much less in one of their own cherished journals. As Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Discovery Institute explained, "Instead of addressing the paper's argument or inviting counterarguments or rebuttal, the society has resorted to affirming what amounts to a doctrinal statement in an effort to stifle scientific debate. They're trying to stop scientific discussion before it even starts."
When the Biological Society of Washington issued its embarrassing apology for publishing the paper, the organization pledged that arguments for Intelligent Design "will not be addressed in future issues of the Proceedings," regardless of whether the paper passes peer review.
From the perspective of panicked evolutionists, the Intelligent Design movement represents a formidable adversary and a constant irritant. The defenders of Intelligent Design are undermining evolutionary theory at multiple levels, and they refuse to go away. The panicked evolutionists respond with name-calling, labeling Intelligent Design proponents as "creationists," thereby hoping to prevent any scientific debate before it starts.
Intelligent Design is not tantamount to the biblical doctrine of creation. Theologically, Intelligent Design falls far short of requiring any affirmation of the doctrine of creation as revealed in the Bible. Nevertheless, it is a useful and important intellectual tool, and a scientific movement with great promise. The real significance of Intelligent Design theory and its related movement is the success with which it undermines the materialistic and naturalistic worldview central to the theory of evolution.
For the Christian believer, the Bible presents the compelling and authoritative case for God's creation of the cosmos. Specifically, the Bible provides us with the ultimate truth concerning human origins and the special creation of human beings as the creatures made in God's own image. Thus, though we believe in more than Intelligent Design, we certainly do not believe in less. We should celebrate the confusion and consternation now so evident among the evolutionists. Dr. Stephen Meyer's article--and the controversy it has spawned--has caught evolutionary scientists with their intellectual pants down.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr
I've never had a problem with any part of science -- if you add n+1 enough times you get n+1. Whatta concept! But it's so hard to explain replicating clays to a three year old. A good place to start for many cultures is to teach children verses from Sacred text. Maybe something about the red mud of the Shatt el-Arab. I feel I'm in a good place knowing my place in the cosmos but I worry about the Newdows making such a stink over 4 small words in the pledge of allegiance. I really think he's doing more harm than good, especially to the three year olds he claims to be defending... Can't we just let it go?
It is somewhat more abstract than the reality that we live our lives in. After all, I do recall the reality of being at a freep in Philly and standing next to you when you were yelling at the Secret Service on the roofs at LaSalle. We all scooted a bit to the left or right when you were doing that.
But I look at the geological column as a reality in its own right. You're from Pennsylvania - you have seen the folding as you drive through the road cuts. Those formations were eroded from other formations, and then thrust up and eroded into the ridges that we see today.
The Biblical notion of a flood simply doesn't explain that, IMO.
The Bible is just a *book*. What one needs to understand is that a "theory" within the scientific community undergoes rigorous testing. Theories are so very easy to disprove, one only needs verifiable and testable procedures showing that the theory is false. And then, poof, it's gone. Believe it or not, scientists don't care to waste their time working with theories that will yield useless results. If Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection were frail it would have been disproven a long time ago, like Lamarckian's theory of evolution. But it simply has not been disproven, and no, the 2nd Law of Thermo hasn't disproven it. :)
If my car is making a knocking sound, I could have a theory as to what that sound is. The car mechanic would formulate his own theories and subject the car to testing, if reality does not comport with a certain theory (of which there may be many) then the theory is discarded. This is where the similarity with a scientific theory ends though.
A scientific theory serves as a model for discovering additional properties about our environment. A theory should help guide our way to increased understanding of the world around us - and this has been the case with natural selection. It has not only answered past questions but has served as a pointed to further knowledge - just one trite example is the field of genetic algorithms which are used on Wall Street to model the movements of markets, among other things.
There's also the Germ Theory of Disease, the Atomic Theory of Matter. These, too, are "just theories" - but we, as a people, have learned so much from their application. Lives are made better because we use these theories to discover and master those things around us which we used to be victim to. Darwin's theory of natural selection should be no threat to Christianity - it has served as the foundation for practically all of modern biology and has aided mankind in gaining an understanding of his environment.
Not really. Rights accrue to individuals regardless of contracts. If they are simply "duties imposed on another actor", then the actor with the bigger gun does the imposing and that is quite moral according to your statement.
- when those duties are observed then rights are *conferred*.
This is silly. To confer means to give something from a position of authority. An authority that gives can taketh away.
Rights are not created without someone else first observing their duty.
You have the timeline mixed up. Rights come first from God. Duty enters the equation because it is your duty not to violate anothers rights. Doing your duty doesn't get you extra rights, it just gets you in the moral line.
God has no duty to me and cannot confer rights to me - only my fellow human being can do that.
This one is right out of the Communist Manifesto. You can not know what God has or doesn't have for starters. Secondly, if your fellow human can confer rights he can take them away, all quite morally according to your philosophy.
My rights to live, liberty, and happiness are not because God is observing his duty, but because my fellow man is. When my fellow man stops observing that duty then I most certainly lose the rights conferred from that duty.
Your rights to life, liberty and property are dependent on nobody conferring them on you. They may be taken away by immoral acts but that is not the same thing.
My rights are protected by the state through their use of police power.
Governments are instituted to protect rights alright but my rights and those of my family are primarily protected by me.
God does not ensure that my rights are upheld, not in this lifetime - and that's the one I'm personally interested in.
God is not a puppet master, He gave you free will and the ability ensure your own rights are upheld. Be grateful for those wonderful gifts.
I have a wife in this life - and I want her rights and my rights to be respected in this life. And this is accomplished by the state through the creation of laws and penalties.
You put way too much faith in the state amigo. Way too much.
If/when someone fails to observe their duty and infringes upon my rights then the state intervenes and imposes a penalty on the transgressor (and hopefully the threat of this penalty will prevent one from transgressing in the first place). But without a state to protect my rights, it does me no good for those rights to be called "inalienable" - because I can most certainly be alienated from those rights as soon as the contract with my fellow human beings breaks down. God doesn't enter into this equation, there is no contract bebcause there are not two parties involved who can represent themselves plainly.
You don't know the meaning of inalienable. Your rights can be violated but you can't transfer them through American Express. They are yours. The right to Abulafias life is his and his alone.
I think you need to go back to the drawing board.
The hoax is circling the drain. Nothing scientific rests on the hoax, which is a good thing b/c it's laughable nonsense, built on jibberjabber jargn: Blahblahblah "DNA" blahblahblah...
Sounds familiar. Oh yeah, Galileo. Seems as though human nature is human nature regardless of who is in control.
De Broglie's doctoral thesis Recherches sur la théorie des quanta (Researches on the quantum theory) of 1924...
Hint: Don't attack the other side as being jibberjabber with your own form of jibberjabber.
RE: "NOTE: This is a 'truth of science' debate. Leave God out of it, and keep minds open!"
Ay, but that's the rub isn't it? Every time an Evolution vs. Creationism thread is posted, it inevitably devolves into a gruesome shouting match with both sides trying to prove the existence of something which has (in either opinion) been around so long that there is no indisputable historical record of it's existence. Belief in either God or Science (through the theory of evolution) as the foundation of life on Earth and the reason for being of the universe is therefore founded entirely upon our faith-- faith backed up only by souces of information that are in constant dispute by the other faction (the writings of the Bible; the various scientific tests used to "prove" that something is older than any human being).
Therfore, trying to "prove" the origins of life on Earth on an Internet thread (or indeed at all) is a practice that is truly akin to beating one's head against a brick wall. Heck, the only reason I even posted on this masochistic thread is to point out how silly it is (which actually makes me sillier than any of you, I guess).
BTW: Just for the record, I am a Christian, and a believer in God as the creator of the Heavens and the Earth (all of existence) and the originator and constant architect of life on Earth. I believe in Heaven and Hell. Others on this thread choose to place their faith in science, seemingly knowing (believing) that science can provide the answers to the great questions in life: the origins of life on earth, where mankind came from, and where (if anywhere) man and animals go after they die. It doesn't bother me to have a difference of opinion here, as long as it is respected between both parties that there is no such thing as undisputed physical proof of life's origins, and that the defenitive knowledge of how old the Earth really is and how it began, etc. are beyond the reaches of our meager understandings except as matter of our faiths.
WONDERFUL. THANKS.
I agree with that. But what encourages your fellow human beings to confer rights that are part and parcel of living your life with basic human dignity, even when it is against their self interest? THAT is the question. It comes from overarching moral beliefs. Where do those come from? They come from a priori beliefs. A priori beliefs that are commonly viewed as essential to a civil society, and the will to adhere to them, tend for most to have come from, and the will to adhere to them by, those who are humble before what they consider their "God."
I am a self described near atheist, not so common in America, but common in Europe. I have this feeling that we of my ilk are just freeloading in large part off the sensibilities of those with faith. One can get there otherwise, but it is a far more difficult path.
In short, the still resilient religious faith abroad in the fruited plain is a primary source of America's resiliency and strength. I am glad it still exists. It's waning would be a risky scheme over time. That is my secular practical take of the matter.
And there you have it.
PS: John, I just work through a different intellectual labyrinth to get to the "truth." :)
Like to have seen a lizard deciding to grow feathers from scales.. Not many things as detailed and intricate as a feather.. Must've been a big job.. designing and creating feathers.. Even over zillions of years feathers might of not come to fruitition.. Must've happened over billions of trys, producing ONE feather.. Smart dudes them lizards..
That depends on your definition of parallel line. Both denials are equally valid.
Be specific.
You seem to have mistaken me for one who has taken up a position in favor of intelligent design. Actually, all I have done is proposed that the author of the article under discussion be refuted on the basis of his article, rather than the weight of his credentials. If he's really the fool he's made out to be, the peer review process should deal with him quite handily; that's what it's for, after all.
I have also made the observation that it's difficult to design an experiment to investigate the origin of speciation...a contention that I stand by, despite your blithe dismissal. All I meant by it is to point out that the field, being as theoretical as it is, leaves room for a great many academic pi$$ing contests.
I see no need to add another one to the roster, academic or not, so I'll just bow out now, thanks.
ROFL!
Yeah. Sure. Whatever. You keep thinking that if you want to.
Perhaps you have never heard of non-Euclidean geometry ...
Only if you believe the men that got together and voted on what to include and exclude from the Bible ...
If the religious fanatics want to put God into science, then, they should return the favor and put God to the scientific test. Nevermind. They have tried and they always failed.
It's been explained many times over. Just go visit one of the evolution sites and spend a little less time on the creationists' sites.
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