Designs on Us. Conservatives on Darwin vs. ID.

NRO ^ | 8/3/05 | David Klinghoffer

[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.

[longshadow]

"Blessed are they who have been touched by His Noodly Appendage." placemarker

[Stark_GOP]

"I was warning him that if he continues to spread such nonsense when he knows for a fact that it false, then it would make him a lair."
---
Sad. Calling someone a liar is the only arrow you seem to have in your quiver.

[Right Wing Professor]

Since we know of only one way coded systems come into existence (development by designers) then when we find a coded system, the burden of proof is on the people who say it wasn't coded by designers to show how it was formed.

Who's 'we'? I know of a self-replicating coded system that arises purely by the evaporation of a simple binary salt in water.

[TOWER]

Sad. Calling someone a liar is the only arrow you seem to have in your quiver.

No, it's just an arrow I have to fire often...

[johnnyb_61820]

If you are talking about salt crystals, you are incorrect, as they are not a coded system. It's repetetive and structural, but not coded. If it is coded, could you please tell me what the codes are, and what external system this codes for?

[johnnyb_61820]

"Thus, our thoughts are not automatically irrational just because they might be the result of natural occurances."

Assuming you are correct (and I think you are not), you would still not have any reason to believe that they are rational. Likewise, you would be in principle not even able to make a determination that X or Y is rational or irrational -- it would be decided for you by chance and nature. If you assume that some people are rational and others are irrational, you would have to say that those who are rational or irrational have (a) no control in whether they are rational or irrational, and (b) no control in whether you think they are rational or irrational. Which means that any determination of "rational" and "irrational" is ultimately meaningless, because we don't have control of either being rational or detecting it.

[Right Wing Professor]

If you are talking about salt crystals, you are incorrect, as they are not a coded system. It's repetitive and structural, but not coded

I'm talking about cadmium iodide, whose many structures are repetitive on a long repeat, just like DNA. They carry binary information about the ordering of layers in the crystal.

If it is coded, could you please tell me what the codes are, and what external system this codes for?

What 'external system' does RNA code for?

[cartoonistx]

"How" life came into being has not so fascinated me as "why"! Regardless of your belief on this subject, I find it hard to believe that non-life begat life without purpose. If nonliving things can be said to have purpose then what, praytell, IS life anyway? It's easier to believe in God.

[TOWER]

Then I will repeat one of my other points. Your logic is if our thoughts are rational then they must have been created by an agent. Logically, the agent must also possess thoughts that would have been created by another agent. So how high is your stack of turtles?

[TOWER]

It's easier to believe in God.

Believing in god is also easier than adding fractions, but doesn't mean that I never do math.

[balrog666]

Later.

[cartoonistx]

Math rarely involves unprovable speculation. Arguments about life's origins seem to be nothing but.

[cartoonistx]

Math rarely involves unprovable speculation. Arguments about life's origins seem to be nothing but.

[beavus]

As you say, it's still a belief, just like evolution. So how does it really matter?

Where did I say that?

At any rate, it is irrelevant to argue that something is a "belief". The mere fact that people in general hold statements to be true is not only dull but utterly misses the point of any debate. Wahabism is a belief, democracy is a belief, particle physics is a belief, astrology is a belief, 2+2=4 is a belief, and if you believe vague accounts of Chinese brainwashers during the Korean War, 2+2=5 is also a belief.

What matters is that what people hold to be true (their beliefs) corresponds to what actually is true. For those of us who are not omniscient, this comes down to the reasons for a belief. For some people, e.g. IDers & poofists, the strongest type of evidence is the emotional appeal of their cultural upbringing. This "evidence" is so persuasive to them, that mundane simple and repeatable observations must be explained in terms of it, no matter how contorted and bizarre the explanation.

Some of us, on the other hand, see that the universe changes continuously with time and never seems to violate certain physical laws. Since that was true 10 minutes, 10 hours, and 10 years ago, we find no good reason to believe it wasn't also true 10,000, 10 million, and 10 billion years ago as well. However, if we ever see fully developed furry creatures poofing into existence before our very eyes, we are prepared to concede to the IDers.

[VadeRetro]

The arguments from homology are especially bad. Every instance of "convergent evolution" is evidence that homology is meaningless in determining ancestry.

This snuck past me the first time. Homology is really about things that are recognizeably the same structurally even if their function has changed. For instance, the digits of a bat's wing and an oppossum's forepaw. The functions are different, but they're the five things on the end of the front two limbs of a mammalian quadrupedal form.

Convergent evolution is about initially unrelated things that are pushed under selection pressure to a similar appearance. The tasmanian (marsupial) "wolf" and the placental wolf are favorite creationist example, but make a misleading one. There are homologies and convergences, but the homologies are there because of common descent. The convergences are 1) detectable, and 2) not the same as the homologies. You can always tell a marsupial by the pouch and a number of other diagnostic features. The thylacine in particular looked an awful lot like a kangaroo in the head, in the rump, and while sitting up.

Probably a better example of convergent evolution would be the hummingbird hawk moth and the real hummingbird.

No scientist, given any real examination, would say the above is a bird. Nevertheless, the first impression is uncanny. I've seen one myself lately and it's spooky. (I'm not sure how or why I saw one, but I saw one. I can find no reference that says they're supposed to be here, but one was.)

[VadeRetro]

The real dope on thylacines:

The Thylacine Museum.

A thorough treatment. Lots and lots of pictures including the only movie clips ever taken.

[balrog666]

Mike claims the solar system is closed, and I guarantee you he has far more credentials in this respect than you. I have seen him debate this issue many times, and everyone to date has gone away with their tails between their legs. Would you like to debate him on line?

Funny how he's so ignorant on physics and biology then.

[johnnyb_61820]

"Your logic is if our thoughts are rational then they must have been created by an agent."

I think you miss the point. I'm not talking about an external agent at this point. I'm simply pointing out that unless purposeful causes are distinct from material causes, then there is no rationality. If you claim that all causes are material, then you have no basis to believe in rationality. I'm not quite sure what you took me as saying, but I am really just talking about the sufficiency of the material and have not yet ventured into talking about God. I'm talking about the non-material of our own existence. If our thoughts are simply the product of material causes, there is no reason to trust them, but it doesn't matter because we don't have a choice. If however, material causes are not all that exist, then we again have reason to trust our reasoning, and the ability to do so. However, given that science is the study of the material, that means that science is limitted as a matter of fact, and there do exist causes outside the material. Therefore, in order to make the claim of non-material causes, one cannot simply assume that they don't exist, but actually prove that there were none acting that caused the phenomena in question.

[johnnyb_61820]

"I'm talking about cadmium iodide, whose many structures are repetitive on a long repeat, just like DNA. They carry binary information about the ordering of layers in the crystal."

Being repetitive is not the same as being a code. DNA codes for proteins, though there is no direct physical link between DNA and proteins. The message is independent of the medium.

[stuartcr]

#99, last line 5th word.

For that matter, all religions are beliefs. I have to disagree with the 2+2=4 though. I think if you were to hold up 2 fingers on each hand, and ask almost anyone in the world, throughout history, to represent the total number of fingers you are holding up, you would see 4 fingers.

With regared to beliefs, how would anyone know that a belief corresponds to the truth? Myself, I really do not care what is presented in classrooms about this subject, because I think they are probably both valid.