Posted on 04/11/2005 10:25:55 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
"Intelligent design." It's been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness.
But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you'd think it's a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic.
Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early as the fifth century BC, the Greek philosopher and astronomer Anaxagoras concluded, "Mind set in order … all that ever was … and all that is now or ever will be."
After 2400 years, the appearance of design is as powerful as ever. That is especially true of the living world. Advances in biology have revealed that world to be one staggering complexity.
For example, consider the cell. Even the simplest cells bristle with high-tech machinery. On the outside, their surfaces are studded with sensors, gates, pumps and identification markers. Some bacteria even sport rotary outboard motors that they use to navigate their environment.
Inside, cells are jam-packed with power plants, assembly lines, recycling units and more. Miniature monorails whisk materials from one part of the cell to another.
Such sophistication has led even the most hard-bitten atheists to remark on the apparent design in living organisms. The late Nobel laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA's structure and an outspoken critic of religion, has nonetheless remarked, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved."
Clearly, Crick (and others like him) considers the appearance of design to be strictly an illusion, created by naturalistic evolution. Yet it's also clear that this impression is so compelling that an atheistic biologist must warn his colleagues against it.
In contrast, ID theorists contend that living organisms appear designed because they are designed. And unlike the design thinkers whom Darwin deposed, they've developed rigorous new concepts to test their idea.
In the past, detecting design was hampered by vague and subjective criteria, such as discerning an object's purpose. Moreover, design was entangled with natural theology--which seeks, in part, to infer God's character by studying nature rather than revelation. Natural theologians often painted such a rosy view of nature that they became an easy mark for Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Where they saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness.
Since the 1980s, however, developments in several fields have made it possible to rigorously distinguish between things that "just happen" and those that happen "on purpose." This has helped design theory emerge as a distinct enterprise, aimed at detecting intelligence rather than speculating about God's character.
Dubbed "intelligent design" to distinguish it from old-school thinking, this new view is detailed in The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a peer-reviewed work by mathematician and philosopher William Dembski.
In contrast to what is called creation science, which parallels Biblical theology, ID rests on two basic assumptions: namely, that intelligent agents exist and that their effects are empirically detectable.
Its chief tool is specified complexity. That's a mouthful, and the math behind it is forbidding, but the basic idea is simple: An object displays specified complexity when it has lots of parts (is complex) arranged in a recognizable, delimited pattern (is specified).
For example, the article you're now reading has thousands of characters, which could have been arranged in zillions of ways. Yet it fits a recognizable pattern: It's not just a jumble of letters (which is also complex), but a magazine article written in English. Any rational person would conclude that it was designed.
The effectiveness of such thinking is confirmed by massive experience. As Dembski points out, "In every instance where we find specified complexity, and where [its] history is known, it turns out that design actually is present."
Thus, if we could trace the creation of a book, our investigation would lead us to the author. You could say, then, that specified complexity is a signature of design.
To see how this applies to biology, consider the little consider the outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and a long whip-like propeller. It hums along at a cool 17,000 rpm.
Decades of research indicate that its complexity is enormous. It takes about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters.
Moreover, the pattern--a working flagellum--is highly specified. Deviate from that pattern, knock out a single gene, and our bug is dead in the water (or whatever).
Such highly specified complexity, which demands the presence of every part, indicates an intelligent origin. It's also defies any explanation, such as contemporary Darwinism, that relies on the stepwise accumulation of random genetic change.
In fact, if you want to run the numbers, as Dembski does in his book No Free Lunch, it boils down to the following: If every elementary particle in the observed universe (about 1080) were cranking out mutation events at the cosmic speed limit (about 1045 times per second) for a billion times the estimated age of the universe, they still could not produce the genes for a working flagellum.
And that's just one system within multiple layers of systems. Thus the flagellum is integrated into a sensory/guidance system that maneuvers the bacterium toward nutrients and away from noxious chemicals--a system so complex that computer simulation is required to understand it in its entirety. That system is meshed with other systems. And so on.
Of course, what's important here is not what we conclude about the flagellum or the cell, but how we study it. Design theorists don't derive their conclusions from revelation, but by looking for reliable, rigorously defined indicators of design and by ruling out alternative explanations, such as Darwinism.
Calling their work religious is just a cheap way to dodge the issues. The public--and our students--deserve better than that.
Mark Hartwig has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in statistics and research design.
It's not working. The biggie is the mind-body problem.
That was Fredrick Neitzche in the 19th century.
Reply:
Neitzche is DEAD---God.
Yep, as long as you can keep your "patients" sick and on the couch, then you have a guaranteed income for life. Freud and other psycho-lalagist found themselves a neat scam.
And most people only believe in God because they want to pretend they are morally superior to others, not because of logical reasons.
Gee a'int wild unsubstantiated claims fun!!!!
But what a bunch of tripe
1) Atheist/Agnostic are ~15% of the population yet make up just 0.2% of the prison population
2) From 1991 to 2001, The Number of the non-religious doubled in number while at the same time the number calling themselves Christians declined by 10% this decline in Christianity is especially seen in young people.
Yet the even though the younger generations are the most unchristian violent crime rate has declined through this period, as well as The pregnancy rate for unmarried women has continuously declined through the 1990s and the abortion rate dropped by about 25 percent for both married and unmarried women through the 1990s , The teen Pregnancy Rate Reached a Record Low, More Teenagers are saying no to sex and Drug use by teenagers continues to decline.
3) Born Again Christians are just as likely to divorce as are Non-Christians
4) Modern day Japan is for all practical purposes an Atheist country yet their society seems to be doing fine. Compare them to very Christian countries like those in Latin America whose societies are in constant chaos and turmoil.
Now if religion had anything to do with being moral, As the country turns more secular wouldn't the trends be going in the opposite direction.
Here is two articles for ya' on how the morailty of young people in our country is improving greatly
Rush Limbaugh on the Next Generation and It's the Morning after in America
You will notice 1 thing missing from both articles, Religion.
Now explain to me, If people are chosing not to believe in God only because "they do not like the idea of moral accountability" how come they end up being just as moral and in many cases more moral than people who do?
And most people only believe in God because they want to pretend they are morally superior to others, not because of logical reasons.
Gee a'int wild unsubstantiated claims fun!!!!
But what a bunch of tripe
1) Atheist/Agnostic are ~15% of the population yet make up just 0.2% of the prison population
2) From 1991 to 2001, The Number of the non-religious doubled in number while at the same time the number calling themselves Christians declined by 10% this decline in Christianity is especially seen in young people.
Yet the even though the younger generations are the most unchristian violent crime rate has declined through this period, as well as The pregnancy rate for unmarried women has continuously declined through the 1990s and the abortion rate dropped by about 25 percent for both married and unmarried women through the 1990s , The teen Pregnancy Rate Reached a Record Low, More Teenagers are saying no to sex and Drug use by teenagers continues to decline.
3) Born Again Christians are just as likely to divorce as are Non-Christians
4) Modern day Japan is for all practical purposes an Atheist country yet their society seems to be doing fine. Compare them to very Christian countries like those in Latin America whose societies are in constant chaos and turmoil.
Now if religion had anything to do with being moral, As the country turns more secular wouldn't the trends be going in the opposite direction.
Here is two articles for ya' on how the morailty of young people in our country is improving greatly
Rush Limbaugh on the Next Generation and It's the Morning after in America
You will notice 1 thing missing from both articles, Religion.
Now explain to me, If people are chosing not to believe in God only because "they do not like the idea of moral accountability" how come they end up being just as moral and in many cases more moral than people who do?
it's true, man you keep them coming back for years, at what? 200-500 dollars for a 50 minute hour? lol
The Theory of Evolution does not make claims about the origin of life, just the origin of species. To ignore it in a science class means that we would be ignoring one of the central tenents of modern biology and no one is going to do that just to make the Discovery Institute happy.
They are almost as good at scamming as the phoney faith healers who take their dog and pony shows around the country.
I disagree. That is not a scientific conclusion, it's a philosophical conclusion. Both science and philosophy seek to explain the world, so just because you seek to explain the world through your observation and deduction does not make that scientific reasoning.
Am I not allowed, in a fully rational way, to seek to understand and define the principles upon which I reach my conclusions. Am I not allowed then to hypothetically apply those principles to other things and create experiments to validate or disprove those principles. And if my experiments lead me to draw some theoretical conclusions about the wider world, why is that not scientific? After all, that is pretty much what scientists do every day.
No, ID is not scientific because it is not capable of being disproven (among other things). Let me give an example that is not directly related to ID, but perhaps will shed some light on this discussion. A person came to college when I was student to argue for creationism. He went the whole 9 yards: the Universe is 6000 years old, etc. So I asked him: If the Earth is 6000 years old, why are there stars more than 6000 lightyears away? Now we can prove that using only two simple rules: the inverse square law of luminescence and trigonometry. This guy's answer was that the universe was created with the light already in place and traveling on it's way. In other words, God created the universe so as to make it appear older than 6000 years, but it really wasn't. Or to put it another way, here was a theory which could not be disproven because any proof against could be argued away on the basis of the creator making it appear just so.
ID cannot be disproven in the same way, because you can always argue that the creator is more subtle and clever than we previously thought. A scientist looks a mystery or complication with the Theory of Evolution and says, "Hmmm that's weird. Why would that be? Let me try to reason this out." He or she will study chemistry, biology, fossil records, celluar automatons, etc. etc. trying to find linkage, commanalties, etc. A mystery is an opportunity for learning something new, so scientific reasoning doesn't shy away from mysteries, it embraces them.
ID is entirely different. It shuts off further speculation. For example, you see something that you think is irreducibly complex and so you say, "aha that's proof that of ID. I'm done." A scientist will say, let me think harder about that, perhaps it's not irreducibly complex, perhaps it's just too complex for me to figure out today. And then tomorrow he or she turns the key and gets the answer. That's science.
So believe in it all you want, but don't try to claim it belongs in a science class - because it doesn't.
Makes sense come to think of it. Didn't feel like breaking the entire sentence apart at the time, but you got a good hold on it.
I think I can assume you also agree with me in that principle.
you forgot
5) 0% of people in a foxhole are atheists!
Soundbites over substance & more wild unsubstantiated claims.
How liberal like
But too bad it's a lie.
1) See http://www.maaf.info/expaif.html
2) The troops in the Military are less religious than the population as whole
Quote
"The old adage that there are “no atheists in foxholes” does not appear to apply as much as it used to. It turns out that the active duty troops in the American armed forces are somewhat less religious than the population as a whole.
Americans over all are 78 percent Christian, 1.3 percent Jewish, .5 percent Moslem, .4 percent Hindu, 13 percent unknown or none and the rest various other sects and faiths. But the troops are 55 percent Christian, .3 percent Moslem, .27 percent Jewish, .04 percent Hindu, .24 percent Buddhist and 34 percent unknown or no preference"...
I promise you, each one in a combat zone says "dear God..."
Regardless of if they check "Christian" or "Hindu" or "Atheist" in some poll.
And as was pointed out by another freeper on that thread, "unknown/no preference" means "either Catholic or Protestant," but their is no preference.
34% of them are non-denominational.
I don't believe you, Please provide a link that actually backs up your assertion.
Regardless of if they check "Christian" or "Hindu" or "Atheist" in some poll.
It's not a poll in that sense, They are going by what recruits put on their dog tags.
But Hindus pray to your God in combat??? Now that's funny!
Got a link for that one!!! LOL!
I don't know about combat, but with something very close like the tsunami they most certainly didn't
34% of them are non-denominational.
You are funny, I guess my "wild assertion" about wishing you are morally superior was true
But
1) Not true at all (Notice that Freeper didn't have links to back up his assertion either). The Military won't put Atheist on dogtags, They put down "No Preference" or if the troops want Atheist on their dogtags they have to go out and buy their own in which they would be listed as "unknown". See http://www.maaf.info/expaif.html testimonies on this.
2) The link goes to a Military Newsletter, Why would the Military write an article about there being more Atheist in the military if there are none???.
This is an example why ID will go nowhere. You just make stuff up and just repeat over and over again no matter how many times it's been debunked or how silly you look. The truth always wins out in the end.
Thanks for the ping!
Interesting. We are making truth every day. Wouldn't truth be what wins in the end? When would what wins not be truth? That's how you can spot truth.
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