Intelligent Design and Evolution at the White House

On August 1, 2005, a group of reporters from Texas met with President Bush in the Roosevelt room for a roundtable interview. The President’s remarks suggest that he believes that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught so that “people are exposed to different schools of thought.” There have been so many articles since his remarks that it’s useful to read the relevant portion of published interview:

Dr. John Marburger III, Presidential Science Advisor, tried to dispel the impact of the President’s comments. On Aug. 2, The New York Times quoted a telephone interview with Marburger in which he said, “evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology” and “intelligent design is not a scientific concept.” Certainly, no one doubts where Marburger stands. One might question whether the President takes Marbuger’s scientific advice seriously, or is simply more concerned about pleasing a portion of the electorate.

Marburger also spoke with Dr. Marvin Cohen, President of the American Physical Society, and recipient of the National Medal of Science from President Bush in 2002. In an Aug. 4 release, Cohen explains that the APS is “…happy that the President’s recent comments on the theory of intelligent design have been clarified. As Presidential Science Advisor John Marburger has explained, President Bush does not regard intelligent design as science. If such things are to be taught in the public schools, they belong in a course on comparative religion, which is a particularly appropriate subject for our children given the present state of the world.” It would be better to hear this directly from the President. Likely, the intelligent design advocates will ignore Marburger’s explanation. Like the fabled little Dutch boy, Marburger, stuck his finger in the dike in hopes of saving the day.

Unlike the brave boy, Marburger did not prevent the flood of print and electronic coverage that ensued. From August 2 to the present, Google-News tracked more than 1,800 articles, commentaries, and letters to the editor on intelligent design. That’s about 120 per day since the President’s remarks.

In the days following the interview, major educational and scientific organizations issued statements that criticized the President for considering intelligent design as a viable alternative to evolution, for confusing religion with science, and for advocating that intelligent design be taught in schools.

“President Bush, in advocating that the concept of ‘intelligent design’ be taught alongside the theory of evolution, puts America’s schoolchildren at risk,” says Fred Spilhaus, Executive Director of the American Geophysical Union. “Americans will need basic understanding of science in order to participate effectively in the 21 st century world. It is essential that students on every level learn what science is and how scientific knowledge progresses.” (AGU, Aug. 2, 2005) AGU is a scientific society comprising 43,000 Earth and space scientists.

Likewise, the American Institute of Biological Sciences criticized the President: “Intelligent design is not a scientific theory and must not be taught in science classes,” said AIBS president Dr. Marvalee Wake. “If we want our students to be able to compete in the global economy, if we want to attract the next generation into the sciences, we must make sure that we are teaching them science. We simply cannot begin to introduce non-scientific concepts into the science curriculum.” (AIBS, Aug. 5, 2005) The American Institute of Biological Sciences was established as a national umbrella organization for the biological sciences in 1947 by 11 scientific societies as part of the National Academy of Sciences. An independent non-profit organization since 1954, it has grown to represent more than 80 professional societies and organizations with a combined membership exceeding 240,000 scientists and educators. (AIBS website)

Science educators are equally dismayed. “The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the world’s largest organization of science educators, is stunned and disappointed that President Bush is endorsing the teaching of intelligent design – effectively opening the door for nonscientific ideas to be taught in the nation’s K-12 science classrooms. We stand with the nation’s leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president’s top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science. Intelligent design has no place in the science classroom, said Gerry Wheeler, NSTA Executive Director.” (NSTA, Aug. 3, 2005) NSTA has 55,000 members who teach science in elementary, middle and high schools as well as college and universities.

The American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.3 million pre-K through 12 th grade teachers, was even harsher. “President Bush’s misinformed comments on ‘intelligent design’ signal a huge step backward for science education in the United States. The president’s endorsement of such a discredited, nonscientific view is akin to suggesting that students be taught the ‘alternative theory’ that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth. Intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom because it is not science.” (AFT, Aug. 4, 2005)

There is a problem here. Obviously, scientists and educators understand that intelligent design has no place in the classroom. Intelligent design is, simply, one of several varieties of creationism that offer religious explanations for the origin and current condition of the natural world. As such, it does not merit being taught alongside evolution as a “school of thought.” There’s significant legal precedent from US Supreme Court that creationism - in any clothing - does not belong in the American classrooms. Teaching creationism is in violation of the separation of church and state, and has been ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court in several cases. It’s unfortunate that the President apparently does not understand that science is not equivalent to a belief system but is description of how the natural world works. Creationism, including intelligent design, is a religious point of view, not science.

At a time when industrial, academic, and business leaders are calling for more American students to train in engineering, mathematics, science and technology, we need to teach science in science classrooms. Let’s teach the scientific ideas that are supported by overwhelming evidence such as gravitation, relativity, quantum mechanics, and evolution. Creationist ideas/beliefs, such as intelligent design, don’t belong in science classrooms. In our haste to leave no child behind, let’s not leave science behind either.

Are you really too stupid to do your own homework? Apparenty I am. Your posting history clearly shows you aren't capable of answering the question I asked. I trust you will continue your cowardly bob and weave when confronted with questions, and blame your inability to answer on me.

Finding a pig in the wild that produces human growth hormone, for instance, should set off alarm bells that this animal escaped from a lab

That would be a logical inference, but it would not be provable.

And even if you say that some cases of bioengineered animals could be identified by such clues, this does not mean that every bioengineered animal could be identified as such. At most, you can say that it may be possible to provide evidence that some such cases were humanly bioengineered.

This still tells us A) nothing about the larger question of non-human intelligent design of other things, and B) nothing about how intelligently designed things can be reliably identified as such. I have yet to see any IDer produce an algorithm for identifying IDed things.

"And I'll repeat yet again, that x is humanly designed does not imply that y was designed by a non-human intelligence. Insofar as you limit yourself to the statement "humanly designed objects are intelligently designed", it is trivial. And you cannot logically bridge the gap between x and y."

There is no "gap." If something is intelligently designed (e.g. lab pigs), then for this discussion it hardly matters if humans or some non-human intelligence did the designing.

Likewise, if an intelligently designed life form implies anything, then again it matters not if humans or non-human intelligence did the designing (for the sake of this debate).

Incorrect. If you fail to teach gemologists that man-made diamonds are in fact, made by Man, then you will eventually raise a generation or two of gemologists who will permit the collapse of the diamond market from their ignorance. Thus, your suggestion to not teach such "trivial" things is ill-advised. Teach the basics.

You missed my point. What they would need to be taught is:

Some diamonds are man-made.

What I said was:

All man-made diamonds are man-made.

If you can't understand that these are two different propositions, well then, there is nothing further I can do to help you.

Your statement that humanly designed things are intelligently designed is a variation of the latter quote, and is a tautology.

"That would be a logical inference, but it would not be provable. And even if you say that some cases of bioengineered animals could be identified by such clues, this does not mean that every bioengineered animal could be identified as such."

No, and no.

It would be provable if the DNA code were properly read and understood.

Likewise, it would be provable if conclusive evidence of irreducible complexity were found in the beast.

So I've given you two separate, distinct methods of proving what you claim is unprovable. You've countered neither method. Ergo, methinks that you've lost this debate.

Your description of stasis and change is somewhat off base. What Gould would call rapid evolution still requires hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.

No I'm not suggesting that "rapid change" happens in a century...I'm just pointing out that the recognition of punctuated equilibrium forced an alteration from classical Darwinism.

Would they be classified as the same species, or assumed to be interbreeding species?

They could be seen as either. But again, my point isn't that Darwin was wrong in suggesting evolution...Only that modern evolution theory has diverged from the gradualism Darwin favored. Not that gradualism doesn't happen - it does. But so does stasis, and so does relatively rapid branching of one species into two.

Fossils do not have DNA

Actually, DNA can be extracted from fossils sometimes these days...But that's not really relevant.

Does that leave open the possibility that other life forms could likewise have been created from some form of intelligent design?

Of course, that possibility was open regardless of the answers to the previous questions. As has been shown to you repeatedly, there is no logical connection between the truth of your previous propositions and this one. You are trying to make a connection where none exists.

Thus, those who claim that ID is unscientific are, at best, incorrect...and at worst misleading.

It is unscientific because, as formulated, it is untestable and unfalsifiable. Should ID ever make testable predictions, then it will become a matter of scientific interest.

"Your statement that humanly designed things are intelligently designed is a variation of the latter quote, and is a tautology."

And tautologies are not necessarily bad. For one thing, they are ALWAYS TRUE, at least by definition.

"Only the strongest survive" is a tautology, for instance.

That you admit above (though you use the craven "things" instead of the more descriptive "life forms") that Intelligent Design is correctly responsible for creating some life forms should cause you to stop and think a bit about your own support for a theory (read: Evolution) that can not explain those particular transgenic life forms.

You're off worrying about tautologies, when instead you should be re-evaluating your entire belief system.

"It is unscientific because, as formulated, it is untestable and unfalsifiable. Should ID ever make testable predictions, then it will become a matter of scientific interest."

I'm fine with that hurdle. You want a test for an intelligently designed lab animal, and once given that test, you'll forever again admit that ID is scientific?!

I'm up for that, but can your own frail beliefs handle such a black and white litmus test for a competing theory?

...Which is to say, it doesn't matter what is typically meant. What matters are facts.

No, what matters in this debate is what the "scholars" (Behe, Demski, Berlinski, etc) who are proposing the "theory" of intelligent design mean by it. And that is very different from what you mean by it.

"The history of science is in fact one of holding on to theories until a better explanatory theory arises. Planetary orbits were believed to be circular for centuries despite massive evidence to the contrary. Circularity did not fit the data, but it satisfied the requirement of perfection attributed to the creator."

For those of you who like to beat Gallileo to death, this is precisely the reason Gallileo was not liked -- the idea of a sun-centered system completely invalidated Aristotelian physics, and since he did not have a replacement system, they thought of his idea as hooey. This is much the same way Darwinists are treating ID. Despite the fact that Darwinism fails to provide much of an explanation for the biodiversity we see, people feel they have to cling to it because the alternatives would require too much upheaval in science, and invalidate a lot of what we think we know.

There is no "gap."

There is. I've already proven the general case, so your refusal to cede the point is a continuing exercise in illogic.

If something is intelligently designed (e.g. lab pigs), then for this discussion it hardly matters if humans or some non-human intelligence did the designing.

Sure it matters. You, in fact, are the one making the distinction when you say that because humans designed x, then y might possibly have been designed by a non-human intelligence. You are trying to use the trivial case of human design to bootstrap your way to a general statement about 'Intelligent Design'. I've already shown this doesn't work. Further, you have yet to demonstrate that you can reliably identify humanly designed things without prior knowledge, let alone those allegedly designed by non-human intelligence.

They could be seen as either. But again, my point isn't that Darwin was wrong in suggesting evolution...Only that modern evolution theory has diverged from the gradualism Darwin favored. Not that gradualism doesn't happen - it does. But so does stasis, and so does relatively rapid branching of one species into two.

Ichneumon has a great compilation of passages from Origin of the Species where Darwin hypothesizes how ordinary gradual evolution could produce punctuated equilibrium. But Darwin never seemed to run with the idea, so Gould & Eldredge ressurrected it and got all the credit.

"it doesn't filter and it doesn't explain"

Care to be more specific? Are there other types of causation besides chance, law, or agency? Do you disagree with his methods of disproving chance and law? What, specifically about it do you have problems with?

It would be provable if the DNA code were properly read and understood.

Okay. If DNA could be "properly read and understood", how could you then, without prior knowledge, 'prove' human design? Please elaborate.

Likewise, it would be provable if conclusive evidence of irreducible complexity were found in the beast.

How would you conclusively prove irreducible complexity?

So I've given you two separate, distinct methods of proving what you claim is unprovable.

You've asserted two 'methods' exist. You haven't actually provided them.

You can't be serious. Sorry, but no, your trivial case -- as I've already demonstrated -- has nothing to say about the larger question of non-human 'Intelligent Design' vs. naturalistic evolution as the origin of species.

If you wish to offer the Design Inference as a philosophical or religious concept, I'd have no objection to that. But it isn't science.

You want a test for an intelligently designed lab animal, and once given that test, you'll forever again admit that ID is scientific?!

You read what I wrote. For ID to be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis (let alone theory) for the origin of species, it must make testable predictions.

"No, what matters in this debate is what the "scholars" (Behe, Demski, Berlinski, etc) who are proposing the "theory" of intelligent design mean by it. And that is very different from what you mean by it."

No, what matters to science are facts. The above-mentioned people may be scholars, may be hacks, may be on crack, doesn't matter. Nor do they own any theory. For all that I know they simply state things that are easier for you to refute than the facts as they actually exist.

Stick with facts.

the idea of a sun-centered system completely invalidated Aristotelian physics, and since he did not have a replacement system, they thought of his idea as hooey.

Huh? Seems to me that the idea of a sun-centered system was precisely a 'replacement' of the old Ptolemaic system.

"There is. I've already proven the general case, so your refusal to cede the point is a continuing exercise in illogic."

Incorrect. You are confusing your analogy, which is flawed, with being correct and applicable. It isn't.

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