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
Have you read his philosophy? His whole basis is that evolution does not fully explain the world therefore, since we can't explain it, God did it.
That is NOT science.
…I don't know about the evolution from apes part.
He doesn't have a theory. He has a hypothesis that says God did it. That cannot be proven or disproven.
Want the ping list used for this?
What, exactly is meant by "man was made in God's image"?
I fathom that all the time - and frankly, a universe with a God is only more confusing to ponder than a universe without a God. The origins of the universe are unknown to me (for now :) but I simply can't replace one infinite with another infinite - that does me no good.
I think there is something beautiful about a nature that could produce collections of atoms that could ponder their own origin. I think it almost defiles that beauty to simply cast it all aside and replace it with something we've anthropomorphized into an answer. There is something mysterious about nature that we do not yet understand, and who knows, we may never understand it. But we do no favor to ourselves by ignoring the true wonder of nature in favor of another enigma - one that has NO hope of ever being truly understood.
Please point me to where he said this. I find it hard to believe that a PhD would confuse species propagation theory with planetary origin theory.
Wow! It's nice for this lay reader of books on paleontology to find herself in the company of someone with a doctorate in molecular genetics, who thinks as I have thought for some time: that evolution IS intelligent design. Evolution doesn't challenge the existence of God. It challenges the assumptions of men who presume to tell the rest of us how God does and does not work His miracles.
Yeah,right, but then..Where do my inalienable rights come from??
A random sequence of proteins in our DNA -- the "inalienable sequence".
Subatomic philosphers: Rest mass is all about "pondering one's origin".
Z. Stichin is more credible than the dinko darwinites.
I was afraid you were gonna say that.
In 1923, while still a graduate student at the University of Paris, Louis de Broglie published a brief note in the journal Comptes rendus containing an idea that was to revolutionize our understanding of the physical world at the most fundamental level.
Didn't have a Ph.D but got the Nobel Prize
This isn't going to be a popular answer, because many view the *words* of the founding fathers as almost on par with scripture, but....
We don't have truly inalienable rights in the descriptive sense - they only exist in the normative sense. What are rights? They're duties imposed on another actor - when those duties are observed then rights are *conferred*. Rights are not created without someone else first observing their duty. God has no duty to me and cannot confer rights to me - only my fellow human being can do that. 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. My rights are protected by the state through their use of police power. God does not ensure that my rights are upheld, not in this lifetime - and that's the one I'm personally interested in. 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.
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.
I dunno. The creos have been positing the death of evolution since 1825. Forward the Luddite Brigade!
Hey, well. Hey everyone. Festers here!
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