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.
topocs = topics
It was in reference to applicability in closed systems - regardless, there must be an answer, it wasn't a trick question.
I suppose there is, but I don't know it. I will note, however, that the earth is not a closed system.
Perhaps the superhero to ask about your questions would be WonderWarthog (the hog of steel); see his posts to me on this thread.
I'm also pinging Physicist on this. Perhaps he can shed some light (or heat. What the hell, they're both energy).
Now if we could only pass a law about that stinkin' Krebbs cycle ...
It is a problem when gaps aren't identified and the theory that is used to fill those gaps are presented as unapproachable facts.
Think non-equilibrium thermodynamics. While it is not appropriate here, there is (and has been) a lot of discussion on whether the 2nd Law holds for the Universe. That discussion is even more obtuse than the one for evolution.
Thanks, but this thread isn't worth a ping to the list.
This is absolutely true if you consider that the sun is gradually burning off its hydrogen, by far the largest force in the solar system. The whole solar system is not at issue, however, we're talking about life on Earth. And the earth is not a closed system in any respect, so localized entropy is not a factor.
This reminds me of that scene in Annie Hall, where Alvie Singer is depressed because the universe is expanding into nothingness, and his mother has to calm him down saying, "Brooklyn is not expanding!"
"Thanks, but this thread isn't worth a ping to the list."
LOL, proclaiming a bit of judgment now are you????
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?
Better re-read the article....he defined the solar system as a closed system for all practical purposes involving the 1st & 2nd Laws.
Indeed, one can make the argument that after the 1957 season, Brooklyn has been contracting.
I'd be happy to concede for the sake of argument that the solar system is de facto closed, even though that's not really true. But that's totally irrelevent, because the Earth -- where life evolved -- isn't even remotely closed. You're confusing localized realities with generalized trends. For the Earth to be closed, it would not be able to receive any net radiation, and I'll wager you a large orb of thermonuclear hydrogen that it does.
BTW, I doubt very seriously that you want to make this a question of credentials. I've studied both biology and physics on the post-graduate level, something I seriously doubt you have done.
I was putting Mike's credentials up against your's, and he has graduate degrees in physics as a rocket scientist (engineer). He currently works on Tomahawk missiles.
Anyone who starts an essay with a demonstrably false statement is going nowhere.
And what law of physics allows clocks to be rewound? Or does the winding of a clock violate fundamental laws?
Think about this.
Ping.
Thanks, but I've already decided to bypass this thread. It's not for the list.
Please avail yourself of the actual wording and meaning of the Laws of Thermodynamics before you make a fool of yourself on these threads. Even AIG says this is an argument creationists should no longer use.
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