hysterical Darwinites panic

crosswalk ^ | 2004 | creationist

[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.

_______________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr

[bvw]

Pressburger arithmetic is a new one to me. And I hadn't known that eucildean geometry is catagorical -- a usage of "catagorical" that also new to me.

I remember blowing through proofs in a few seconds in Geometry class, so perhaps it might be so. Yet I can still hang my hat on what "useful" means, and thereby not eat it.

Arithmetic without X and / is not too useful. And pythagoreus was stumped by irrational numbers -- a suggestion that euclidean geometry -- in that clasical grade school "proof" context -- stops being useful at some point.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

js1138: The reason I don't get excited about information theories is that I don't see the need for them in evolution.

Me: Yours is a statement of faith (anthropic principle applied to evolution).

RWP: It looks to me like Occam's razor.

You can use either Occam's razor or anthropic principle.

The bottom line is that to a person whose worldview of reality ("all that there is") is that which occurs in nature - the arguments are equally asserted to rationalize the metaphysically naturalist (or atheist) worldview. For instance, that God is an unnecessary hypothesis - or that physical laws and constants had to be the way they were for physicists to identify them - or that someday a physical explanation will be given for everything.

As long as it is recognized as a belief system, a religion, that is fine. But it carries no more or less weight as a scientific argument than any faith based appeal by a believer.

Again, I assert my challenges:

Believers are not challenged to respond since they already, by definition, believe.

The challenge: I can personally accept that yours (an atheist's) is not a religious belief if you can provide plausible scientific or mathematical evidences for all of the following:

1. Prove that there was no beginning - i.e. prove a "steady state universe" which would disprove all modern (since 1960’s) cosmologies, big bang, ekpyrotic, multi-verse, multi-world, cyclic and imaginary time. In the 60’s the measure of cosmic microwave background radiation showed that the universe is expanding, hence space/time had a beginning (big bang). All of the cosmologies since which appeal to prior physical cause - whether prior universes or branes - likewise appeal to prior geometry and thus also have a beginning. IOW, past space/time is finite, there was a beginning, an uncaused cause, i.e. God!

2. Prove a natural source for information in the universe and then translate it to information in biological life. This does not mean the DNA, but the communications that occur in living creatures - reduction of uncertainty of a molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. [Shannon] It is an action, not a message – i.e. a life force Possible but unexplored causes include harmonics, a universal vacuum field, geometry which gives rise to strings – all of which have a Scriptural root, i.e. God speaking it all into being, Creator outside space/time.

3. Prove a natural source for the will to live, the want to live or struggle to survive that characterizes life. IOW, self-replication is not enough. In an embryo, if the cells simply self-replicated the result would be a tumor. In life, the cells are organized into functional molecular machines which communicate together striving as one organism to live. Why does the organism have a will to live? Why should the component machinery (cardiovascular, neural, etc.) cooperate to that end?

4. Explain how the incredibly delicate physical constants, physical laws and asymmetry between matter and anti-matter came to be so perfectly balanced. A slight change one way or the other and there would be no life, or no universe at all. Appeals to the plentitude argument (anything that can happen, has) will only work in an infinite past, i.e. to make that argument one would have to first answer challenge #1.

5. Explain why out of all the possible spatial and temporal dimensions our vision and mind are tuned to a particular selection of four coordinates – why not three or five, etc.

6. Explain how biological semiosis arose through natural means. Semiosis refers to the language or symbols of communication in biological life - the encoding and decoding. This has two sides, the language itself (DNA, RNA) and the understanding of it. Where’d it come from?

7. Explain how functional complexity arose through natural means – why and how molecular machines organized around functions to the benefit of the greater organism. Of particular interest would be the functions which would not work if a key part were missing – i.e. cardiovascular without the lungs, nervous system without the brain, etc.

8. Explain how eyes developed concurrently across phyla – i.e. vertebrates and invertebrates – and why there have been virtually no new body plans since the Cambrian Explosion. Immutable regulatory control genes is all I can think of. But why would they in particular be immutable?

9. Explain the emergence of qualia through nature – likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil, etc. – consciousness and the mind.

Please note that appeals to the anthropic principle are statements of belief, e.g. that the physical laws must be the way they are for there to be physicists to observe them. IOW, shrugging does not constitute a scientific or mathematically plausible explanation.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Note that in Pressburger arithmetic, you can multiply by any arbitrary integer, just not all integers.

Catagorical means that the axioms uniquely define the system up to isomorphisms.

Proofs of theorems are useful in keeping one from wasting time trying to compute the impossible. They also guide one into what might be interesting. (I've made a living by converting theorems into programs.)

[js1138]

I'm not qualified to tackle your list, but I would like to know what is wrong with the methodology of sciemce as currently practiced.

I would like to know what ongoing research should be cancelled, and by what replaced.

Your posts strongly suggest that something is wrong with the practice of science.

[metacognative]

Mr. "Zoos for church-goers" is watching his fearful RWP. Are camps better than zoos,for your darwinite inquisition?

[metacognative]

Thanks, 1900 blogs later...touchy issue for the old time darwin 'science' faithful.

[RightWhale]

Life is not a stochastic process. It is an organic process. Neverthless there must be a net flow of energy through the life system so it follows the law of entropy as a system. In fact, steam engines do the same; so do rain clouds and stars. Life is a willful thing once it achieves a certain level of organization, and this should prove that all the attributes are potentially present in the constituents of life. The attributa potentia are present in atoms, in protons, in electrons, in the carriers of electromagnetic force--photons, and in carriers of other forces such as gravity. It's all there, has been there all along and will be there long after our sun cools to a cold, dark lump and we are frozen to near absolute zero.

[spunkets]

You're right. I shouldn't have said dS isn't important, but that entropy decreases in biological systems are always accompanied by entropy increases in the surroundings, the deltaH term in the Gibbs free energy.

DeltaG = -T(S_surr+S_sys)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

I would like to know what ongoing research should be cancelled, and by what replaced.

Personally, I'm more interested in what should be added to the current research.

Your posts strongly suggest that something is wrong with the practice of science.

I do have some complaints about the practice of science (and math):

1. The current method of funding puts the scientist in the position of having to do the work of accountants - preparing proposals for grants, reporting back and so on. If they wanted to be accountants, they would have studied that. There needs to be a more efficient method of administering the funds so the scientists can spend the maximum time doing science.

2. Scientists are forced into a gauntlet of peer review to publish. Einstein and Darwin neither were required to do this and several Nobel prize winners were originally rejected. (Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?) IMHO, the publications which are rejected for content need an outlet to encourage the innovative thinkers.

3. Scientists who promote their own political, social or ideological agenda should be labeled accordingly (a disclaimer) so that consumers, grant makers, alumni, etc. will know the difference. This is generally done for all scientists in the Intelligent Design and YEC ranks - but Pinker, Lewontin and Singer also come to mind.

4. There needs to be more generalists in science. Everything has become so specialized that the bark on the trees are screaming to us and yet nobody seems to be able to capture the entire forest since the early 1900’s – the Godels, Einsteins, Heisenbergs, etc.

5. Science either needs to quit making theological pronouncements altogether – or step into it with both feet, giving equal consideration to both the atheist view and the intelligent design view.

[metacognative]

No reply to the Dennett quote?
Maybe you didn't know how fanatical your side is...

[Alamo-Girl]

If your post at 1907 had preceded mine at 1902, I would have pinged you:

Life is a willful thing once it achieves a certain level of organization, and this should prove that all the attributes are potentially present in the constituents of life. The attributa potentia are present in atoms, in protons, in electrons, in the carriers of electromagnetic force--photons, and in carriers of other forces such as gravity.

That is a statement of faith: "someday a physical explanation will be given for everything."

[js1138]

I can't entirely disagree with you, but no one has to run a gauntlet to publish. You have to run the gauntlet if you want to publish in a gauntlet approved publication.

There will always be occasional revolutionary ideas skipped over (temporarily), but by and large science is incremental rather than revolutionary. Good data must be explained by any theory, and any new theory must explain all the data, plus suggesting new and fruitful lines of research.

Einstein was not dealt an easy hand. The Nazis tried to destroy him. "One Hundred Scientists Against Einstein" was the name of an official pamphlet. Such things can slow progress but not stop it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

I can't entirely disagree with you, but no one has to run a gauntlet to publish. You have to run the gauntlet if you want to publish in a gauntlet approved publication.

Indeed, but that puts the scientist in yet another ballpark of finding a publisher, financial backer, etc. - all the while he is not "doing" science.

Seems to me that some of the savings from streamlining the administration of grants could be used by the Feds to collect and publish articles which were previously rejected for content.

[RightWhale]

The physicist who has to be an accountant is probably past his productive prime and is managing grad students already. Science should be done the way it is done and always used to be done.

Newton destroyed the careers of many along the way to preeminence. Robert Hooke {the discoverer of the law of gravity} never recovered from the personal attack. Newton also hung over 100 men for counterfeiting. Amazing that Newton could get so much done while attending to such details.

Competition brings out the best and the worst. May the last one standing be the best. Best scientist or best something else.

Sometimes you get Copernicus who lives in his ivory tower for 30 years, sometimes you get Tycho Brahe who jumps right in with both left feet. Sometimes you get Schopenhauer who combines the ivory tower with the two left feet. Point is, there are all kinds and always have been, but most of the big contributors are essentially done by age 30 and then they become humdrum establishment fit to manage the accounts.

[RightWhale]

It can be abductively proved. Maybe somebody should take the trouble to do so as a graduate thesis.

[RightWhale]

appeals to the anthropic principle are statements of belief

Most everybody gets the anthropic principle backwards, and of course it doesn't actually do anything useful backwards.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your replies!

Point is, there are all kinds and always have been, but most of the big contributors are essentially done by age 30 and then they become humdrum establishment fit to manage the accounts.

I suspect the older scientists on the forum might have an opinion as to whether or not they were done by age 30.

It can be abductively proved. Maybe somebody should take the trouble to do so as a graduate thesis.

A declarative statement (such as above) which relies on an unknown future is a statement of faith per se.

Most everybody gets the anthropic principle backwards, and of course it doesn't actually do anything useful backwards.

How would you rephrase it? Sources?!

Here's mine: Wikipedia: Anthropic Principle

[Right Wing Professor]

Are camps better than zoos,for your darwinite inquisition?

How about nuthouses? I've heard Haldol is good for acute paranoia. Whether it cures people of compulsive lying I don't know.

[RightWhale]

Might as well post it

---

Weak anthropic principle (WAP): "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so."

Strong anthropic principle (SAP): "The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history."

Final anthropic principle (FAP): "Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out."

---

It came up here on FR a few years ago. We, or life, would naturally occur in places where we, or life, is possible. We would not naturally be where our existence is not possible.

they take on values restricted . That is backwards. They don't take on values. They are values.

As to the proof: It is not faith if the proof is possible, even if the philosophy prof marks up the paper so it bleeds.

[RightWhale]

Haldol is good for acute paranoia

So is General Semantics.