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
Speaking of the Anthropic Principle, here is an interesting article:
http://reason.com/9907/fe.ks.is.shtml
You might check the following web sites:
evolutionists for life
evolutionists for traditional values
evolutionists for Bush
evolutionists against atheism
the darwinist patriot society
materialists for traditional marriage
survival of the fittest medical association
the priesthood of junk science
stalinist benevolent society
friends of the founders
There are roughly a googol of information bits in the universe. Something carries the information. Something made out of matter. What do you see matter made of?
Not sure I agree with you--due to constraints on CPU power, and due to not knowing what level of detail you want to model.
Getting accurate values for the force constants and potential energy surface for each individual bond in an entire protein is going to be quite a chore--even for the protein in isolation, let alone allowing for perturbations in the structure due to changes in the local environment (e.g. close approach of lone pairs on a water molecule within the cell, ion transport, etc.)
Cheers!
For one thing, although the Standard Model indicates that ordinary, visual matter ought to be the Higgs field/boson - it has yet to be observed. CERN is still working on it. There are also differences of opinion on how it manifests, e.g. whether it adheres. If the Higgs is not observed, then it will be back to the drawing board for the Standard Model.
Either way, ordinary matter is only 5% of the total matter in the universe. Recent observations show that 25% is dark matter and 70% is dark energy.
Einstein’s dream was to transmute the base wood of matter to the pure marble of geometry. The study of dark energy may take us there. In general relativity, positive gravity is an indentation of space/time. Current theories on negative gravity as dark energy may lead to the reverse, an outdent of space/time - which would cause an acceleration of the universe, which is observed.
Or to put that last paragraph a different way, all matter is geometry at the root. Space/time is created as the universe expands. Fields occupy all points in space/time.
In Shannon theory (the father of information theory) - information is not physical and it is not a message either. Information is the reduction of uncertainty (entropy) in the receiver - it is an action not a "thing". It can be measured in bits – not binary bits, but Shannon bits.
You aver that something carries the information, something made out of matter. But this is not in evidence at all. Harmonics or wave functions might be a channel for information – a vacuum field - the vibration of strings – the geometry which gives rise to strings – or perhaps interdimensional fluctuations or activity of virtual particles coming into/out of space/time.
Perhaps future investigations will help shed some light on your thoughts.
Naturally, I see things differently. But there is no reason you and I have to be in agreement on such things.
LOLOL!!!! That's a great analogy! I gather the theologians never did "isolate" those dancing angels. And it's hard to see how man is going to be able to "isolate" the "other" universes in our "multiverse."
I just can't shake the feeling that, were it not for the fact that there are scientific investigators out there motivated from the get-go by an aversion to God, such cosmologies as Silber discusses in this article would never see the light of day. They demand that the universe have nothing whatsoever to do with God, or any immaterial thing for that matter, and reject out of hand any suggestion to the contrary. I don't think we can say of such people that they are "open-minded." Perhaps their theories are just a waste of time; but then again, perhaps not.
Thanks for the link, RobRoy. Indeed, this is a most interesting article!
I firmly believe in other dimensions. The Bible talks about it all the time. It even gives one a name.
Heaven.
I firmly believe in other dimensions, too, RobRoy!
And so I gather you see a direct analogy between extra dimensions and multiverses?
Google 'CHARMM' (sic) or 'amber force field'. You don't need to do ab initio on each fragment; for example, a single force constant for a CH bond, with maybe a couple of small corrrections, will do nicely. People are doing dynamics simulations on big proteins in water.
In case you missed it, in September I called for, and observed, a 3 month moratorium on crevo posts on FR, so we could focus on the task of re-electing the president, and avoid getting into disuptes with fellow-conservatives. And AFAIK most evos here did the same.
I will leave YECs alone when they stop trying to force their ridiculous and anti-scientific ideas on public schools.
Uh huh. 8^>
Also, as I read some parts of the old testament, I notice what appears to be authors from an ancient, primitive culture trying to describe places, things and events that could surpass the creativity of even modern science fiction. The descriptions really seem to have no meaning to the contemporaries of the writers.
For example, Ezekiel 1, the whole chapter.
The Bible is, indeed, a very exciting book - on many planes.
Certainly there seem to be other candidates for information propagation/communication in the universe besides "something made out of matter." I wonder why some people insist that all there is, be reducible to "matter." I really don't understand this insistence. For would it be incorrect to say that "all matter is" is energy in a "condensed" form? And that there are forms of energy that seem to have independence from materialization at some fundamental level, for instance thoughts, or more precisely, ideas?
Just doing a little wool-gathering here, Alamo-Girl! Thank you so much for your excellent post.
I know about CHARMM and Amber, RWP. I used to do molecular dynamics simulations once upon a time on supercomputers,
before they were replaced by massively parallel off-the-shelf components; which might not be so bad for these kinds of apps :-)
My point was that the force fields are going to be "approximate"--and depending on how sensitive the particular interaction is, it may put a damper on your whole simulation, or render certain features completely inaccurate. You can do qualitatively accurate classical modeling of solvent caging, sure. But what is an acceptable error in modeling one protein, might add up to real problems when modeling hundreds of different proteins all together within the confines of one cell. And that addressing such problems by getting the force fields "right", and then trying to
build in accurate 3-D potentials for all configurations of the various species, will probably be a non-trivial undertaking.
Cheers!
We have a problem. What is matter? Until we realize what we mean by the term, we cannot make any progress in the dialectic.
Indeed, RobRoy. And yes, Ezekiel clearly deals with an experience in a time dimension that is extra to the 3+1 of "normal" space-time experience.
As Francis Schaeffer was fond of saying, "God tells us truly, but not exhaustively." What the Holy Scriptures give us is God's Truth -- but not exhaustively. More like fascinating hints and clues that we can try to "match up" with His other "Book," the Book of Creation, i.e., the Book of the Natural World.
I have yet to find an example of either of these books contradicting the other. They seem to "go together."
So certainly, I agree with your conclusion, RobRoy: "The Bible is, indeed, a very exciting book - on many planes."
Thank you so much for writing!
Let's all work on what what 'matter' means. Some appear to be using a narrow definition.
"What the Holy Scriptures give us is God's Truth -- but not exhaustively."
I look at it this way. It is like a driving instructor explaining how to drive a car. He talks about starting the engine, the tach, the speedometer, the brake and gas. He may even explain how and when to change the oil, add gas and check the water, tire pressure, etc. But he won't usually go into ring tolerances and gear clearances.
It doesn't mean he doesn't know, but it does mean not everything has to be covered in order to drive and maintain your car. The information is very effective at serving the purpose for which it is imparted.
The Large Hadron Collider may allow laboratory work on detecting some properties of a parallel universe. We may have been looking at the parallel universe all along without knowing; it could be a millimeter away.
2000?
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