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.
"What's your degree in? Dentistry?"
"What hypotheses do Young Earth Creationists employ to predict a Microwave Background Radiation of 3 degrees?"
Wonder who it was that started that false doctrine that the earth was young, it sure did not come from the Bible????
Dishonest or dumb? I report; you decide.
I have no background here, but what is the problem with considering either the solar system or the universe as a closed system? Does energy lost via friction and heat become unrecoverable?
Which statement shows that you have no understanding of thermodynamics. The Laws of Thermodynamics in no way contradict evolution. The key term is "localized order". That the entropy of the UNIVERSE tends to a maximum does NOT mean that smaller systems cannot become more "ordered". This happens because the localized system uses more energy to generate the "order". A non-biological example---crystal growth.
Just how many times does this falicy need to be explained on FR? Why haven't you read any of the crevo threads where this is discussed?
The short answer is that the 2nd LoT involves a *closed* system. And the earth is NOT a closed system. It gains considerable energy from the sun, and that is where the 2nd LoT argument against evolution completely falls apart.
Just like all the other arguments against evolution have fallen apart, for 150 years.
Neither. "The earth is not a closed system" is correct and does NOT contradict the comment "our solar system can be treated as a closed system". Why---because the SUN is a major source feeding external energy into/onto the earth's "systems". However, the "solar system" has no such large external energy source.
The problem is that including the sun, which is external to the earth, when trying to apply the second law of thermodynamics to evolution on earth (which is what is being discussed), is dishonest. To put it another way, the sun is an external (to the earth), source of energy, and the second law applies only to closed systems. By using "the solar system," as "the closed system," the writer dishonestly (or dumbly), changes the rules of the game in mid-stream.
Does energy lost via friction and heat become unrecoverable?
Sorry, I don't see what this has to do with evolution.
My point -- see the bolding in the part of the article I quoted -- was that the author was being dishonest or dumb in conflating the two.
Could you be afraid that if evolution is true, then the Bible is false and you'll spend eternity not existing?
No, it's simple and correct science. Just tracing the energy flows in the thermodynamic system. It's kind of difficult to deny that the energy from the sun drives much of what happens on earth (and not just for living systems, either).
Since they are both theories, how does it really matter?
No. Wrong. The author was CONTRASTING the two, as there is a major thermodynamic difference between them.
I don't think those questions are relevant to the current topic of Creationism because of what the Leaders of the Creationist Movement have themselves said.
ID'ers are always saying (such as the Leader of the DISCOVERY INSTITUTE that I watched a month back discussing this topic on C-SPAN), "Creationism has nothing to do with Religion! We are merely putting forth an alternate Theory of how the Universe came into being that we feel is equally as valid a Theory as the Theory of Evolution".
Therefore the original topic of Creationism has NOTHING to do with Religion and your question is nonsensical.
To put it more bluntly: I wish these Creationist whack-jobs would get their stories straight. They are totally inconsistent at EVERY turn in what they say during their arguments.
Nonetheless, I will NOT see the Creationist Trolls destroy the Conservative Movement NOR will I see them destroy FreeRepublic.
I will defend this site against their insidious attempts to undermine its reputation.
However, to answer your original questions: 'No' and 'Yes'.
Hope this helps,
~The Doc
No. I am a Ph.D. in Biochemisty and Molecular Biology working at a major US university doing Medical Research.
Whats your job?
But that doesn't apply only to the Darwinists. That applies to both sides, IMHO.
Shalom.
Premise: The Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLOT) is the Silver Bullet against the Theory of Evolution. It is, indeed, a central stake through the philosophical heart of the atheist who must leave God out of the picture.
In light of the premise, I read the author's comments on the second law in reference to the earth, and then in the next sentence, the solar system, as an attempt at bait & switch.
Sorry, I don't see what this has to do with evolution.
It was in reference to applicability in closed systems - regardless, there must be an answer, it wasn't a trick question. I really don't have the background and it strikes me that if energy can be irretrieveably lost due to friction and heat, even in a closed system, then there is at least a modicum of possibility in alternate theories to the theories being put out.
No need to get too defensive, I'm sure not the person to disprove any of these threories, I just soak up info as it comes to help me formulate my own opinions.
The problem is when a gap is filled by "God did it" claim. Our ancestors had countless gaps filled by acts of God, gods, or demons. Science filled most of these gaps with knowledge. If the Hand of God was not ultimately needed to explain all these countless gaps in knowledge, why do we need to ask for it when we discover new gaps in knowledge?
Oh my. Two topocs i try not to get into here are Evolution and the Civil War. But here goes, on #1:
From what I remember of high-school science, the scientific method starts with observing and investigating known facts and working to find a model that explains those facts. Constant new observation, testing, and adjustment of the model (or hypothesis) are required. And the inquiry should start out with no preconceived notions.
Religious faith ("that which passes all understanding") is a different matter. One cannot "disprove" the existence of God, although some have tried. It explains what science cannot - and there is a lot it can't explain.
Science without a spiritual sense is very dangerous and destructive.
Just my two cents.
Actually the silver bullet against their argument is that if the 2nd LoT contradicts evolution there is no good reason why it doesn't contradict all of chemistry as well.
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