Posted on 08/03/2005 5:58:11 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The New Republic recently published a survey of conservative journalists on the question of “Intelligent Design” (ID), the controversial critique of Darwinian evolution which argues that living creatures did not arise by an unaided, purely material process of evolution through random genetic variation but rather through the design of an intelligence transcending the material universe. To my surprise, it turned out that almost all those surveyed, including several NR editors and contributors, were doubters not of Darwinism but of Intelligent Design.
I realize with some trepidation that I am treading on the views of many of my old NR friends and colleagues, notably John Derbyshire who has written eloquently on the subject, but herewith a dissent on behalf of doubting Darwin.
A majority of biologists reject ID. But a minority of scientists, who are no fools, suggests that it is Darwinism that fails to explain the complexity of organisms. I don’t intend to wade into the details of the debate, but rather to ask how a layman like me, or Derbyshire, can hope to venture a responsible opinion. The question is not merely theoretical. The teaching of Darwinian evolution in public schools is being challenged before local and state school boards across the country.
Some say that, for non-experts, the smartest thing would be to accede to the viewpoint of the majority of scientists. But wait. The point I want to draw out here is that Darwinism, in particular evolutionary psychology, itself undercuts the claim that ID may be safely dismissed.
Charles Darwin’s insight holds that people are simply animals and that, like all animals, we got to be the way we are because our ancestors beat out the evolutionary competition and survived to pass on their genes. Evolutionary psychology extends this idea. There are some behaviors that increase the chances that a given person will be able to pass on his genetic information. One, for instance, might be murder, often committed against rivals who given the appearance of seeking to diminish the odds of our raising viable offspring that will carry our DNA. A classic illustration is the crime of passion, where the angry husband shoots the sexual rival who has been having an affair with his wife.
From this perspective, a main evolutionary-psychological impulse that drives males in particular is the drive to fight off rivals. For rivals threaten to reduce our access to reproductive assets — namely, women — by lowering our status in a social hierarchy. In certain neighborhoods, all it takes is a disrespectful look or word, a “diss,” especially in front of women, to get a man killed.
In evolutionary psychology, as in common sense, it is apparent that males highly value whatever source of status or prestige they have managed to secure. We value status so much that some are willing to kill over it. Others are willing at least to wound, if only with words.
One prominent evolutionary psychologist, Harvard’s Steven Pinker, has written frankly about rivalry in academia, and the use of cutting rhetoric in the defense of established ideas: “Their champions are not always averse to helping the ideas along with tactics of verbal dominance, among them intimidation (‘Clearly…’), threat (‘It would be unscientific to…’), authority (‘As Popper showed…’), insult (‘This work lacks the necessary rigor for…’), and belittling (‘Few people today seriously believe that…’).”
I bring this up because Intelligent Design aggressively challenges the status of many professionals currently laboring in secular academia. And because one of the hallmarks of the defense of Darwinism is precisely the kind of rhetorical displays of intimidation, threat, authority, and insult that Pinker describes.
For instance in a section on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, entitled “Q&A on Evolution and Intelligent Design,” you will find numerous statements as if lifted almost verbatim from Pinker’s examples — ridiculing ID as “non-scientific,” an idea whose “advocates have yet to contribute in a scientifically rigorous manner,” who “may use the language of science, but [who] do not use its methodology.”
When you consider that ID theoreticians have published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, in formidable academic presses such as those of Cambridge University and the University of Chicago, such denunciations start to sound like a worried defense of status more than a disinterested search for truth.
If the Darwinian establishment is vexed, that’s understandable. A century and a half ago, the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species with its materialistic implications signaled the overturning of Western society’s traditional matrix for the granting of status: namely religion. From Darwin forward, intellectual prestige was bestowed not by religious institutions but by secular ones, the universities.
It has remained so until today. Now, with many parents and school-board members signaling their impatience with the answers given by secular academia to ultimate questions — like, where did we humans come from — the secular hierarchy would be foolish not to be concerned. It would be perfectly in keeping with their own Darwinist views — about how men especially will fight to defend their source of status — to expect secularists to struggle violently against any challenge that may be raised against Darwinism, no matter where the truth of the matter may actually lie. Being the animals that we are, we are programmed through our genes to do just that.
In a wonderful irony, the only intellectual framework in which people can genuinely be expected to pursue truth dispassionately, even if that truth undermines our sense of personal prestige, happens to be the religious framework, in which people aren’t animals at all but rather beings created in the image of God.
In the case of ID versus Darwin, this observation may not tell us which side to embrace. It should signal, however, that when secularists insist that real science must lead to the view that life and intelligence arose through chance genetic events, we needn’t accept that view as gospel. I’ve offered a reason to doubt the Darwinian establishment, not necessarily to reject it. When laymen, including conservative journalists, follow the scientific majority on a question like this, rather than the dissenting minority, they should at least be aware that they are following guides who, while claiming to be disinterested, are anything but that.
For the most part it is circumstantial and rife with a priori assumptions you and your pals fail to acknowledge. As such, you are defending a philosophy, not science. Your bluster bomb cut-and-paste data dump is a case in point. If you really cared to defend your position you would cordially engage the debate point for point. As it is, you are but a raging ideologue who cannot be convinced that, just because things look alike, they might not be historically derived from one another.
I do not mind in the least if you prefer to remain oblivious to the weak nature of what you call "evidence." Comparative morphology is no substitute for direct observation. You do not enjoy the latter when attempting to pass off an amoeba-to-man progression of biological entities as "scientific."
You may also pretend to remain oblivious to the fact that other points of view are taking root in educational institutions both sacred and secular. As it stands, your acerbic bluster is but a mirage, a paper tiger. It will disappear in the light of truth, both religious and scientific.
One of the proofs of creation is that there is no evidence for evolution. Another one is that it doesn't matter how many pages of evidence for evolution get posted to impress us all. ("No one is going to read it all anyway.")
That really is the hope, isn't it?
This is an area of argumentation I'm thoroughly unintersted in, so I haven't read the articles, but here is their page on it.
"No it doesn't. If your MISunderstanding of the laws of thermodynamics were correct, then it would be impossible for a fertilized egg to grow into a adult. Obviously, something is very wrong with your grasp of the laws of thermodynamics."
Actually, what the article said was that going from disorder to order without a specific, ordered MECHANISM to do so was not possible. The fertilized egg is itself a specific, ordered mechanism.
I'm not sold on the argument from thermodynamics, but you might at least characterize the position correctly.
If you would kindly put all that useless information on a roll of toilet tissue I would be more inclined to put it to good use.
"And it's not as if offers any intellectual content. You can't learn anything by studying it. "It's too complicated. I'll never understand it. Therefore it can't have evolved." That's not going to teach you much."
That is not the ID argument. The ID argument is essentially that chaos doesn't order itself. If you find order that is not directly related to natural law and statistically impossible from chance, then it is a reasonable inference to say that an intelligence was involved in its order.
Let's look at DNA, specifically. DNA is a symbolic codal system. It has mechanisms for relaying messages which are transcribed, decoded, and then implemented by a reading machinery. Is there ANY OTHER EXAMPLE of a symbolic codal system that was not created by an intelligence? Can you think of even ONE?
BFLR = bump for later reading
Actually, it's that just because one person _thinks_ they have evidence, it does not really mean its evidence. Ultimately, the arguments for Darwinism are metaphysical in nature. It is based on the assumption of scientific materialism
The arguments from homology are especially bad. Every instance of "convergent evolution" is evidence that homology is meaningless in determining ancestry. The whole marsupial/placental convergence speaks against homology as a basis of anything at all.
Then you add in the fact that vertebrates account for only about 1% of the fossil record, and that non-vertebrates show even LESS evidence for evolution than the vertebrates. Oh yeah, and the reason why vertebrates are so useful for showing evolution is that most of them are represented by just a few bones and the rest are simply inferred. Recently they found out they had to redraw the lineage of one of the major groups of dinosaurs because their previous one -- you know, the one with transitional forms -- well, their transitional forms were based off of ONLY TEETH! They had transitional body parts assumed for the entire rest of the organism, but the entire existence of the assumed transitional species was based on teeth! Then this small amount of evidence was removed because they found the actual animal that the teeth belonged to -- a crocodilian species!
So, if you restrict your data to the vertebrates where you can pretend you have whole animals from just a bone or two, which represent 1% of the available evidence, you can show some things that might look to some people who are predisposed to it that you might have an evolutionary transition.
Of course, even then, as much as Darwinists want to paint creationism as being non-science, I'd like to point out that making up hypothetical ancestry charts isn't part of experimental science by the same criteria.
That's not true. The Talk.Origins newsgroup, which specializes in this sort of debate, keeps a list of people who have changed their minds as a result of watching, or participating in, the "crevo" debate.
The overwhelming majority of them have changed their minds *away* from the anti-evolution position. Hmm, what do you suppose *that* means about the strength of the evidence on each side?
I've received nice FreepMails from folks over the years from other such "converts".
Why are you even bothering with these threads?
Because they really *aren't* fruitless. Furthermore, even if the "die-hards" never learn anything, there's value in presenting information for the people "on the fence", as well as demonstrating to visitors that not *all* conservatives fit the stereotype of anti-science know-nothings. You'd be amazed at how many people have been driven away from conservatism by the antics of the hardcore creationists.
It matters not to people who want to close their eyes to the evidence, sure. Don't presume that your tactics apply to everyone. They don't.
(no one is going to read it all anyway).
Many people do, actually. You're wrong again.
You still can't PROVE that a fish became an amphibian or an amphibian became a mammal or an ape became a man. If you have absolute proof of that please call the Smithsonian or a major university, they will be interested in the new material.
I'm well aware that there's no way to "prove" anything to someone who insists upon being stubborn enough to refuse to listen. But not everyone is like you. Many people actually are intellectually honest enough to want to examine the best available evidence and follow it where it leads, as they know that this is the best path to find, or at least get closer to, truth. Evidence and the methods of scientific testing are all about doing "reality-checks" on your beliefs.
Other people, I know, very much prefer *not* to compare their beliefs to reality.
Other than that, you have faith in evolution and I have faith in God. You keep your faith and I'll keep mine.
I don't have "faith" in evolution. I have knowledge, understanding, and evidence. Which is a far more reliable and valuable thing.
Mike is correct in that, as far as energy transfer between solar systems, our solar system as a whole is a closed system.
That, however, has nothing to with the staus of the Earth within that closed system.
In the essay you posted, Mike Shelton summarizes:
******************
SUMMARY:
The earth is not a closed system. ..............
Reasonably, our solar system can be treated as a closed system for most ordinary thermodynamic studies.
Within a closed system, there are subsystems that can gain complexity spontaneously, provided there is a greater loss of complexity in another interlocking system.
********************
Did you follow that?
The solar system, as a closed system, is gaining entropy as required by the laws of Thermodynamics.
BUT, and this is the critical but,
in Mike Shelton's own words..............
"....Within a closed system, there are subsystems that can gain complexity spontaneously, provided there is a greater loss of complexity in another interlocking system."
Do you understand that?
The Earth is a subsystem of the solar system as a whole.
The Sun bombards the Earth with a immense amount of solar energy every second. (Therefore, it is not a closed system.)
As I explained in my Post 100, biological organisms can become more complex on Earth because energy is being pumped into that subsystem (Earth) by sunlight which power photosynthesis which transforms solar energy into biochemecally stored energy in the form of sugars which powers biological creatures who become more complex as they live their lives.
Those creatures then grow not only extremely complex biological bodies but also invent and build fantastically complex machines such as........the cruise missile that Mike Shelton works on.
And where is "the greater loss of complexity" in another interlocking system that Mike Shelton writes about?
It is in the 4 million metric tons of hydrogen that the Sun that the Sun consumes every second.
I fully I gree with what Mike Shelton wrote.
The problem seems to be that you are not undrestanding what he wrote.
Either that, or he is writing one thing and saying another and fooling those who do not understand what he is saying on both sides of the debate in order to have fun and entertain himself.
The astute reader will note that Fester's scattershot blast of blustering invective is a perfect example of how NOT to actually "cordially engage the debate point for point".
He does nothing but make broadside after broadside, and never once attempts to "engage the debate point for point".
*I'm* the one who posts specific examples of evidence, and tries to get people to discuss the *specifics* of that evidence.
*Fester* is the one who avoids any "point for point" discussion, and just goes off in a rant that could be used as a form-letter to *any* science article he prefers not to actually think about.
Tally up another creationist who can't actually manage to discuss the evidence itself, and can only make excuses for why "it don't matter anyway".
Maybe there's a document you can refer us to. I was unaware that any billion-year-old human fossils have been found.
Actually, what the article said was that going from disorder to order without a specific, ordered MECHANISM to do so was not possible. The fertilized egg is itself a specific, ordered mechanism.
Someone *else* posted that. The person to whom *I* was responding actually did present an argument so stupid that it would rule out things like fertilized eggs growing into adults.
But getting back to your point -- evolution itself is such a mechanism, so no problem.
I'm not sold on the argument from thermodynamics, but you might at least characterize the position correctly.
I did. It's not *my* fault that PastorJimCM's position was so poor.
1. Specifically, which process or processes are
identified as being thermodynamically invalid? [Identify the
process such that it can be researched.]
2. Specifically, which evolutionary mechanism theory
postulates the process or processes identified in (1) as being
necessary to evolutionary change? [Identify the theory such
that the claim can be researched.]
3. Defend the claim that the process identified in (1)
and referenced in (2) has not been observed in extant
populations. [Processes which are observed to happen in
extant populations are highly unlikely to be thermodynamically
invalid. Indicate sources that tend to confirm the claim that
the process is not observed to happen.]
The other night I was watching a debate between an evolutionist and a Int. Design debater. The evolutionist use the Corvette as an example. You see the corvette evolved from the regular Chevy. It grew and became more intricate etc. etc. I once heard the same argument from another evolutionist about how the Wright Bros. first flew in a paper and stick model and now we have evolved into going to the moon. Well, Duuuuuhhhhh. Did it ever occure to these idiots that both of those items evolved from an " outside power" (men engineers) Actually they were making the point for the Int. Design guy. With stupidity like that , Evolution theory isn't going to be doing much recruiting in the future.
That is not the ID argument.
It may not be *yours*, but there are plenty of ID arguments that *do* boil down to some variation on that.
The ID argument is essentially that chaos doesn't order itself. If you find order that is not directly related to natural law and statistically impossible from chance, then it is a reasonable inference to say that an intelligence was involved in its order.
And that version of the argument, as stated, is simply wrong. Chaos *does* order itself. Furthermore, "not directly related to natural law" is impossibly vague and amgibuous. "Statistically impossible by chance" requires complete knowledge (i.e. omniscience) to determine in any sufficiently complex system. And even granting you all *that*, it is not a "reasonable inference" to say that "an intelligence was involved", because evidence *against* any one explanation (e.g. "occurring by chance") is *not* evidence *for* any other explanation "by default".
Rather than repeat myself, here's an excerpt of an earlier post where I had to explain the same fallacy to someone:
If additional facts are compiled they MAY either prove or disprove spontaneous generation, and if they prove spontaneous generation is not possible, then QED a Creator must exist.WRONG!
The IDers keep making this fallacy over and over again, and never seem to grasp their error no matter how many times it has been explained to them.
They keep laboring under the mistaken impression that evidence *against* evolution -- or in this case against "spontaneous generation" -- is somehow evidence *for* a conscious designer.
False. Wrong. Negatory.
That's not how epistemology works.
The short explanation for why is that it's the fallacy of the false dichotomy to think that there are only two possible explanations: 1. spontaneous generation, 2. a designer, and that if either one is shown false, then the other one "must" be true by default. Nope.
They could *both* be wrong.
I can think of at least half a dozen alternative hypotheses for where life might have come from. It's hardly like "a designer" is the only possible explanation left if "spontaneous generation" were somehow to be ruled out.
"QED" my butt... Go back to whomever taught you how to construct a proof, and demand a refund.
Evidence *against* another hypothesis is not evidence *for* a creator. Period. The only thing that would count as evidence for a creator is, dumroll please, actual evidence *for* a creator. You know, results which are characteristically consistent with the predictions made by the creator hypothesis, and which distinguish it from the alternatives. Got any?
For further insights on this point, see Distinguishing rationalization from logic and associated links.
Let's look at DNA, specifically. DNA is a symbolic codal system.
Admit it, you just made that up. "Symbolic codal system" is a term that appears *NOWHERE* on the entire internet, including anywhere in all of the 12-million-plus technical papers cataloged by PubMed and other technical databases.
It has mechanisms for relaying messages which are transcribed, decoded, and then implemented by a reading machinery. Is there ANY OTHER EXAMPLE of a symbolic codal system that was not created by an intelligence? Can you think of even ONE?
Not offhand, no. Did you imagine that this somehow disproves the DNA case? It doesn't.
And you're mistaking the analogies that are used to help people understand DNA, with the actual DNA itself. DNA is not "symbolic". It does not contain "symbols". DNA is a molecule, with mass, chemical properties, etc. DNA is not a text, nor is it a blueprint, nor a recipe, nor computer code. It does not send "messages" that have a "meaning" beyond their physical arrangement. ribosomes do not "read" DNA or RNA. These are all helpful metaphors, but do not mistake the metaphor for the reality.
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