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
Y2K again.
I can't understand why some people have a narrow definition of mater. If it interacts with matter, it is matter. We may not know what it is or know how to talk about it yet, but if we can detect the interaction we can study its properties.
If we can't detect the interaction then we have nothing to study and not a whole lot to talk about.
Don't be so logical.....
The "C" types are not supposed to have that portion of DNA......
m=E/c2
or
E=mc2
Yeah.........
woodathunk
My feeling is that force fields have gotten good enough to get the overall protein behavior about right. You're obviously going to have to do some scaling - just as you don't try to solve the electronic wavefunction to do a protein, you solve it for a fragment and then fit it with a force field - so we'll fit proteins on a larger scale to some sort of potential in order to get at their interactions. People are starting to do this; they're fitting entire domains as single elements and modelling how they move relative to each other.
A lot of it is a question of whether you have confidence the fine-grained interactions will average out over a coarser grained model. So far, so good.
Could be, RightWhale.
Do you draw any distinction between a "parallel universe" and putative/hypothetical extra space or time dimensions (i.e., "above" or "beyond" the 3+1D of our little space-time bailiwick)?
Very well put, RobRoy! :^) Thanks!
That's mass. What is matter?
We still haven't come to a preliminary agreement on what 'matter' is. The way{s} we are using the term is most definitely neither cosmological nor philosophical.
Hi spunkets! I missed this earlier. Hope it's not too late to reply!
It may well be that the bird's sense of the acceleration is what triggers the ensuing flight. But we were asking whether the bird was in fact a purely material system (in contradistinction to a living system); and as such, wholly subject to the physical laws. It seems to me that, if it were, then we would be able exactly to plot its path, once it is on the wing.
How would you propose to do this?
I figure matter-energy is the ultimate complementarity (e.g., Lorenz transformable quanties) in the physical universe. That is neither a strictly cosmological, nor a philosophical observation. I gather it's simply the meaning of E = mc2....
Although I also recognize that not all particles have mass.... Can you suggest a cosmological reason for this? Seriously, I'm just wondering whether you have a view on this.
Thanks for writing, RW!
It's very, very complicated. We haven't yet spotted the carrier particle for mass--the Higgs boson. Not all matter is mass, in fact, any manifestation of anything would not be matter but would be material. Not all particles have mass, but momentum is a different thing. Photons have no mass, but carry momentum. Momentum is not inertia. Matter is what all that is made of. That is to include everything, electrons, gravity fields, string fields, fermions, bosons, whatever. Yes, a thought is material, something made of matter. You know matter, matrix, and mother are all the same word in different dialects.
Can we predict the path of a tornado? Can we eve predict when and where the tornado will form? Can we do this 24 hours in advance? If we can't does this mean a tornado is not physical?
In what conceptual sense is the emergent property of matter that we call life different from other emergent propteries, such as the properties of water as opposed to those of its constituent elements?
To quote Descartes,"I think, therefore I am."
Or to quote DUmmies, "I don't think, therefore I voted for Kerry." :-)
self awareness, for one thing, seems relatively non-trivial. As well as confusion, mistakes, humor, morality, or
(to quote Doonesbury)
Horniness.
Full Disclosure: It was part of a strip with B.D. arguing philosophy with other football players in the huddle. Early 70's vintage.
"Horniness is NOT an emotion, dummy.!"
"Hold it, let's take a vote!"
Hmmm… Name any intrinsic attribute that applies to life that does not apply to water or basic elements.
Yes. But who's the father?
I got to thinking about massive and massless particles on my drive home tonight. Particles that have mass generally are subject to Lorenz transformation. Particle or wave, each of the complementarities (Bohr's term) is a temporal aspect or representation of their fundamental, essential unity.
Now the massless particles are another kind of beastie altogether. They seem to enjoy (dubious word) similarly complementary relations. But they do not "transform" into one another; they annihilate one other. Quarks never show up without their "complementarity," antiquarks. And the only reason quark-antiquark show up in the first place, apparently, is to mutually destroy one other.
Now this is probably going to sound fanciful, but on the basis of the above and other data, I am looking at a fundamentally "dualistic universe" at the deepest levels of reality. Not necessarily in the sense of Cartesian dualism -- whatever that is; certainly the interpretation of that has "evolved" over time. And probably not in ways of which Descartes would have approved.
But i digress. What I was getting at is the photon, another famous massless particle as you point out. If there is a fundamental, dualistic structure of reality, where is, what is, the photon's complementarity?
And down deep in my bones somewhere, I find that an extraordinarily important question. The sense i have of the situation is that photons somehow stitch together the entire fabric of universal reality, and in particular evolutionary biology. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be."
I'm sure that must sound like some kind of fairy tale. And i do apologize to my scientist friends; but a philosopher -- RightWhale -- is raising philosophical issues. And i wanted to reply to him as a philosopher.
Thank you so much for writing, RightWhale.
I'm getting worried about you, BB.
It's there. In symmetry theory. The particle hasn't been seen, but it will be very massive if the theory is right. Every particle that carries a field {boson} has a fermion as complement. That goes for the graviton also, although I don't remember if either the graviton or its complement has been seen for sure. I don't think so, but soon, soon.
Since there are so many kinds of particles, a spectrum of them, some physicists are looking for what causes the spectrum rather than just looking for more particles-- that would be a more fundamental research.
In what conceptual sense are we required to accept as our initial premise that “life” is an “emergent property of matter?” Aren’t you arbitrarily narrowing the scope of possible analytical outcomes by so doing, with possible prejudice to any truthful description of reality?
It seems to me obvious that “life” found a way to “emerge” (or evolve) from “matter.” All I allege is that “matter” did not “write the program” stipulating this result.
So I’ll continue to argue that life cannot be understood as an emergent property of matter. In addition to the necessary physical basis (which obeys the universal laws of physics), life requires something more just in order to be alive. Science seems to be testing these waters (assuming they can be tested at all) mainly through physics, information theory, and mathematics these days. They may be on to something.
As you note, water is more than the sum of its constituent parts. You could take any of those parts in isolation, or in any combination, and “interview them.” But they would fail to explain the nature of the whole of which they are the parts and participants.
You asked: “Can we predict the path of a tornado? Can we even predict when and where the tornado will form? Can we do this 24 hours in advance? If we can't does this mean a tornado is not physical?”
I think you are trying to compare apples and oranges here. I will concede that the tornado is a self-organizing system. But is that necessarily the same thing as an emergent system? There is an emergent system that I know of, called the human race, that not only has the power to organize itself (in some fashion) at the individual, family, and societal levels; but it organizes (or disorganizes, depending on your point of view) the surrounding physical/ecological environment, as well.
Tornados don’t “organize” anything. The point about tornados is they ineluctably “deconstruct” most everything in their path.
Thank you so much for writing, js1138.
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