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
I said: "Not here. I prefer to fight each battle only once. Those who have been paying attention know exactly what I am talking about."
You said:
>>It means you can't support your allegation.<<
My response:
Blah, blah, blah. It means whatever you want it to mean, apparently. ;^>
IMHO, one "gets past go" by being able to separate that which is a theological issue from that which is a science issue and argue it accordingly.
If one wishes to argue theological issues, then Scriptures, lexicons and ancient manuscripts are the most authoritative sources to make a point.
If one wishes to argue science, then published articles in respected journals are the most authoritative sources to make a point.
Just my two cents...
I really don't understand AG's argument. Do you?
There are many others which showed up in a Google, but this ought to get the discussion back on track.
That means nothing. One can be mistaken or one can be lying. Recently, a guy that signed up in 1999 took my post to task and said it was false and if I had read the previous threads I would know what I was talking about.
Another poster came to my aid and showed that in the previous threads, he had participated in ONE with two meaningless posts while I had posted 136 times on ALL threads.
Bottom line - I take noones word if I believe it to be biased based on his agenda. If he is going to post it, he better be able to back it up or go home.
I think you have mistaken me for someone else.
We've tried. That was a great motivation for my compiling the List-O-Links. It was also why we included in the "Agreement of the Willing" a provision that "agressive amnesia" was abusive.
But the problem continues, for some or all of these reasons:
1. New freepers showing up, unaware that we've all been there before.So it gets heated, sometimes, as the old-timers grow short of patience. Whatcha gonna do?
2. Some regular freepers maliciously persist in posting the same debunked arguments.
3. Some (new or old) who insist that their interpretation of scripture trumps physical evidence.
I believe Darwinite has atomic number 111 in the periodic table.
Very nice post. You pretty much nailed my perspective on this thing too. The threads I enjoy the most are the ones where I disagree with other freepers. That confines most of my comments to threads on animal rights, music downloading and evolution.
But in all three, you just sort of tire of seeing the same arguments over and over and over. For a while I actually started saving my responses as word documents, then every so often I would cut and paste them into a response to someone (prefacing it with a sentence saying I had done as much).
What is really "new" to the debate lately is that the same thing really does seem to be happening to the evolution side of this as happened to Dan Rather. It is a new and exciting twist, and another reason to praise the internet as a way to really disseminate information. I think it is also why Bush won the election. Lies just do not have the legs they used to.
In other words, for me the story here is that the debate (fight) has spilled from the confines of the dark and controlled auditorium out into the broad dailight of the street. Many of the combatants are rather embarrassed by the now obvious puppet strings dangling from their bodies.
I love when this happens, even when I am the one the light of day is cast upon in a not so positive light - albeit it can be more acutely painful then, in the short term.
But that is exactly WHY we will never get past go.
If one wishes to argue theological issues, then Scriptures, lexicons and ancient manuscripts are the most authoritative sources to make a point.
Theological issues may use all resources for argument. God is faith and I do not attempt to argue one way or the other.
Back atcha, ma'am. You're one of the calming forces at FR that keep me from completely going off my rocker.
Ichneumon is notoriously of the same discipline wrt research. However, either of us are just as likely to bury a thread with sources - so we broach such posts cautiously.
But not all Freepers or Lurkers keep such exhaustive archives and asking everyone to post a source may be burdensome. If sources become a "horn of contention" in future discussion, I'll be glad to help if I can.
I can understand how Rob Roy feels. One often gets a dreaded sense of deja vu on the evolution threads -- kind of a "been there, done that already" feeling....
Indeed, as you say, one does not want "to fight the same battles over and again."
No it won't. That was about errors in textbooks. No one denies that there are errors but they are fixed when known. What he proclaime was in reference to evolution only and implied that the science of evolution was nonsense being taught as science.
The reason we get into the same arguments over and over is that the creationists keep posting the same claims over and over again. And when challenged, they claim they don't want to get into the same argument. Well D@mn. If you want to make the same baseless claims over and over, you better darn well expect the same ol' arguments.
No doubt about it, you know what you don't know.
Now here's one to wrap your mind around: You don't know what you don't know. (nor do I) 8^>
Is the "list of links" - or a url to them - always posted when you ping people to science threads? If not, it might be helpful to post a "newcomer's welcome" on your usual ping...
On the list of three causes for revisiting, I only have a recommendation for the third:
However, a big however, it is quite useful to make all such arguments on a theological/philosophy thread. Metaphysical naturalism v. various doctrines of Christianity, etc.
Only thing, only one side considerst them debunked. The other side considers them valid so it will never end.
So it gets heated, sometimes, as the old-timers grow short of patience. Whatcha gonna do?
Even short-timers grow short of patience. I mean how many times on this thread have I heard that "God created the sun on day 4 thus evolution is impossible.
The best one is the "entropy" argument where they post false science and give all these links. Totally bogus but it keeps reappearing.
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