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
There's another aspect to this fallacy, or maybe it's a closely-related fallacy, and I'm working on what to call it. It's similar to a newly-named fallacy we were discussing a week or so ago -- quantizing the continuum. Tortoise named it. But the fallacy I'm now thinking of is almost the opposite -- wrongly assigning the characteristics of the entire continuum to an individual quantum. In this case, the supposed "odds" against some action happening.
I mentioned this (without trying to name it) a couple of days ago in a now-dormant thread, when someone trotted out, for the zillionth time, the business of "figuring the odds" against evolution. I said this:
The biggest problem with these computations that take all the mutations that ever happened and then whomp up some kind of factorial result by stringing together all the generations is simply that ... each generation is mathematically on its own!Whatever accumulated mutations you may have hanging around in your gonads, that's the initial state as far as your offspring are concerned. Either a mutation will happen or it won't, and all the generations before you, going right back to the proverbial pond scum, are irrelevant in "computing the odds."
Source: post 81.
How about: "incorporation of the continuum"?
I'm math impaired, but it sounds like a variation the coin toss fallacy. You've had five heads in a row. What are the odds of tossing heads again? I think the central misunderstanding is the assumption that we had to get here from there. We are here, but it wasn't foreseen. I think the inventors of ID know this and are consciously and deliberately perpetrating a fraud. What are the odds?
Do you want me to post the stuff in between the verses as well?
I sure can, if that'll help your understanding any.
The line I like best, from JURASSIC PARK, was when they were in the tree and the girl (IIRC) asks, "Can I pet him?"
And the fellow replies, "Sure; he's a vegetarian."
HMmmm...
You say this after your homepage is concerned with what appears to be numerology?
HMmmm... indeed.
You sure can. Would it help you? I doubt it would help your understanding. You've already shown your hand lil' pumpkin. You've got nothing. Not even a pair.
They are just random occurances of "537" competing for survival. Which will survive?
It's often an error to assume that malice is necessary when stupidity is sufficient.
I'm also wondering if I misread the intent of your post. I assumed that you were a evo mockimg creo's. You may be more in the middle. Jumped too quick to a conclusion, perhaps.
Yes, it's close to the The Gambler's Fallacy. That involves assuming that the results of an ongoing streak will have some influence on the next coin toss. It's very close. But hey ... let me have my moment in the cyber sun.
The biggest problem with these computations that take all the mutations that ever happened and then whomp up some kind of factorial result by stringing together all the generations is simply that ... each generation is mathematically on its own!
If I am reading you correctly, you're talking about Climbing Mount Improbable, to use Dawkins' colorful (or would it be colourful??) expression.
I've referred to it in the past as the "second-floor frog fallacy" The creationists' argument is the equivalent of saying that frogs could never get to the second floor of a building, as it is twelve feet above the first floor. They say, "no frog can jump twelve feet into the air, so there can be no frogs on the second floor." This ignores, of course, the staircase...
That's a good one, and it's in the same general area of fallacies, but not quite the same as "incorporating the continuum." Here's another example of -- ahem! -- my fallacy: you cut the cards, and then start dealing them out, one at a time. The resulting array has the awesome probability of one in 52 factorial, which is, more or less, one in 8.06581752 × 1067. However, as to any one card's chances, the odds are nowhere near as great.
Plants take their nutrients (mostly) from the soil. No need to move. As for propagation of the species, you can hardly beat a million "seeds" thrown into the wind for travel! Heck, the plants even get the "birds and the bees" to help with the sex thing!
Why is there sex? Very energy ineffecient, and there's others ways of mixing DNA type stuff.
The sex drive is unknown to you?
And on the other side of that coin: Why are some living things still sexless. Why haven't sexual forms in that niche predominated?
That's evolution. Everything finds its place! Duh ...
I really love it when "people" post these type of questions as herald them as major obstacles to evolution. What it really means is they slept through their high school biology classes.
Why cant you and the other assorted evolution supporting folk just admit that you have no more concrete proof of evolution than the ID people do for their beliefs?
You wont because you don't have the honesty to admit that theory is not fact and a belief in such amounts to nothing more than a faith in something you choose to believe in.
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