Intelligent Design and Evolution at the White House

SETI Institute ^ | August 2005 | Edna DeVore

[PatrickHenry]

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:

“Q: I wanted to ask you about the -- what seems to be a growing debate over evolution versus intelligent design. What are your personal views on that, and do you think both should be taught in public schools?

THE PRESIDENT: I think -- as I said, harking back to my days as my governor -- both you and Herman are doing a fine job of dragging me back to the past. (Laughter.) Then, I said that, first of all, that decision should be made to local school districts, but I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught.

Q: Both sides should be properly taught?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, people -- so people can understand what the debate is about.

Q: So the answer accepts the validity of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution?

THE PRESIDENT: I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, and I'm not suggesting -- you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”

(Transcript released by the White House and published on August 2, 2005 at WashingtonPost.com)

The reporter got it right: there is an ongoing debate over intelligent design vs. evolution, at least in the media and in politics. There is not a debate in the greater scientific community about the validity of evolution. Further, the vast majority of scientists do not consider intelligent design as a viable alternative to evolution.

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.

[bobdsmith]

Both computers and DNA have start and stop instructions for processing, for instance.

I can accept that start and stop codons can be treated as instructions, but the codons in the gene are simply templates for eventual amino acids, they do not contain opcodes that map onto functions that are performed in any CPU. There are no jump instructions or arithmetic instructions, etc. In my opinion there is a similarity, but only a slight one.

"I never claimed DNA transcription had no direction, I said the overall process is not sequential. Transcription is just one part of the processes. The proteins finally expressed by DNA go on to simultaneously interact with one another to produce the biological effect. This is the real "execution" of DNA, and notice that it is not sequential and nothing like computer execution."

...Only if you've never heard of parallel processing...or if you've never heard of multi-threading

In DNA a string of codons are sequentially read where each codon is mapped to a corresponding RNA codon and inserted onto an "mRNA string". The mRNA string is then converted into a string of "amino acids" which make up a "protein", and many of these proteins interact to produce the biological form.

In a computer a string of program instructions are sequentially read where each instruction is mapped to a function which is executed in the CPU, along with any parameters, and the result is stored. The next instruction is then executed, possibly using any previously stored result. The difference with parallel processing is that multiple instructions can be read and executed, and the results stored at once on seperate processors. That's it. In neither system is there any interaction between protein-like units at any stage. So it's really not similar at all to how DNA works.

and multi-threading is not an architecture, but a programming method, its just a trick to make it appear that programs can run in parallel. The differnet program's instructions aren't actually being processed at the same time.

or if you've never heard of external interrupt driven design...or if you've never heard of fuzzy logic or if you've never heard of neueral nets......

Fuzzy logic is a programming method, and neural networks are algorithms. They are not architectures, and they all run on a PC so they don't add anything new here.

yeah, if you've been isolated from the past 40 years of computer science advances then you *might* be forgiven for thinking that DNA has little in common with computer execution.

Yet I am adament that it does only have little in common. Perhaps where we are differing in opinion is that you treat the similarity of DNA being a sequence of nucleotides and a computer program being a sequence of bits as a majorly important similarity that overwhelms all the other differences, wheras I believe many of the differences are bigger than that similarity.

[Fester Chugabrew]

Insects like the bee do not flap their wings up and down as one might think. The movement of their wings is forward and backward. Lay your right hand on the table (palm down) and move it to the left. That is what the bee does as the first part of its wing beat. This movement produces lift because your hand produces the same effect as an airplane wing. Air moving over the top produces a low pressure because of the greater curvature, a principal known as Bernoulli's principal. Now flip your hand over (palm up) and return it to its original position.

Computer studies shown that the timing of the flip is critical. The wake of the forward stroke allows the wing to recapture energy as the wing is moved back. There is a surge of forces on the wing as this happens which provides great lift at minimal energy. Dr. Adrian Thomas of Oxford University says, "The whole system is a lot more complicated than we thought." A lot remains to be done to understand this, but the maneuverability and efficiency of it indicates man needs to understand to improve his own methods of flying.

To suggest that such systems come about by chance strains credibility to the limit. The enormous complexity of the motion, the design of the wings to do the flying, and the support system that moves the wing all speaks of highly planned and designed structures that we still do not totally understand. There is a supreme intelligence whose wisdom is seen in the smallest of creatures on the earth. A designer who teaches us to know of Him "through the things He has made" (Romans 1:20). [Link]

Powered flight indeed!

[b_sharp]

"Without or without self-replication, what does the presence of a machine imply?"

That somebody once used the metaphor of a biological machine to make the visualization of biological organisms easier, and creationists are trying to use this metaphor to imply that biological organisms are designed because machines can only be produced by an intelligent agent. This is nothing but a logically inept piece of semantic nonsense.

[Fester Chugabrew]

So it is only a matter of appearance, and not substance, that biological entities function as machines?

[b_sharp]

"You have seen the Author's original code?"

You can disassemble just about any program. The compiler will frequently leave its own signature as will the programmers.

[GoLightly]

Look up "ring species". There are examples of species transitions happening right now.

I've been reading about the greenish warblers & have a question which I've been unable to find an answer. I'm hoping your or someone else can send me in the right direction to get the answer. How many generations did it take for the ring to come full circle?

[b_sharp]

If I might interject. I've considered the analogy between a computer program and DNA to be quite good, pretty much since I started delving into the subject. As an ex-programmer*, I tend to see many things in terms of code, syntax, procedures/function/methods and sequential instructions. I also find the analogy of DNA and a recipe convincing.

The idea of codons as instructions and the ability to use iterative and recursive looping is very appealing because it suggests the production of a great deal of information/processing with very short pieces of code.

However it is just an analogy, and as in any analogy the metaphor is not the proposition, the metaphor of a program is not the same as the DNA. Analogies can be and are, taken too far, such as when someone wants to link design to a natural phenomena such as DNA. By introducing a metaphor that in effect anthropomophizes the phenomena and then replacing the reality of the phenomena with the metaphor it becomes a simple matter to apply the properties inherent in the metaphor to the reality.

*For about 10 years I wrote environmental engineering programs, ported mainframe programs to Intel, converted FORTRAN to 'C' and used a number of database languages.

Note: At the time I quit programming, multi-threading was sequential; each program was given a specific number of tics before control was given to the next program. Parallel processing was essentially sequential in that the decision made on which CPU to send an instruction or group of instructions was done one group at a time. The same goes for distributed processing.

[b_sharp]

bit, nibble, byte, word, double-word...no programming word in that bunch. 'Word' can be used to signify a data type or a machine/compiler specific number of bits, generally the same as the instruction length(but not always). When I first read the post I had assumed he meant the latter.

[b_sharp]

"So it is only a matter of appearance, and not substance, that biological entities function as machines?

Yes. As I stated before, the metaphor of a machine is simply that, a metaphor. You are attempting to make a biological organism into a machine so you can assume design. The similarities of biology to machine do not outweigh the differences between biology and machines.

[Southack]

"You are attempting to make a biological organism into a machine so you can assume design."

Oh come on, give the man some credit. There **are** biological machines in use today, you know!

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_7_20/ai_55030849

The Biological Machine INNOVATOR: CARLO MONTEMAGNO Cornell University

In what looks like a vision Yom The Terminator, an engineer at Cornell has integrated living tissue with Machinery.

In 1997, a team in Japan discovered that a protein called ATPase--the power source within cells--produces enough force to move a tiny device. Carlo Montemagno and his team set out to see if they could work ATPase into a biomolecular motor. First, they altered the proteins with chemical "handles" that bonded tightly with metals. Now they are trying to attach the molecules to a microscopic rotor. Fixing magnetic bars to the rotors could generate current to power a tiny machine that delivers drugs to cancer cells.

[LogicWings]

It is due to the efforts of the Discovery Institute. If you track, it every single ID justification comes back to Behe, Dembrenski and the others there just pumping this junk out. Rush Limbaugh's brother had the same tired arguments on his column today, (from the same cast of characters.) This is a very tiny community of "so-called scientists" that are determined to inject their belief systems into the compulsory government schools and, as a result, destroy science.

[GoLightly]

And how do you discern deliberate purpose rather than something that appeared and stuck around because its presence was advantageous?

The question of advantageousness is neutral or we are wandering off into something other than science.

[mordo]

Doesn't your theory take into account that not all intellect fits into your patterns?

To: Just mythoughts
Now you're just babbling. Usually, the best thing to do in these situations is to refrain from posting. It follows from the adage: "it is better to keep silent and let people think your an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

That's his way of not having an answer, and not being honest about it either.

This is more of the 'best of the best' contributions from the evo gang, those towering intelligentsia giants LOL!. He is just babbling.

[Junior]

Pointing out that someone is reading something into a post that isn't there, or is missing something that is, is not "not having an answer." Pointing out someone is being willfully ignorant is not "not having an answer."

JMT's level of knowledge on the subject -- indeed, just about every creationist's level of knowledge on the subject -- of evolution is woefully lacking. But your average creationist doesn't mind parading this ignorance to the world. And, when caught out, he or she will attempt to change the focus of the discussion (c.f., the "DNA is not life" lateral).

Now, you can congratulate yourself all you want that "they don't have an answer" but I've been on these threads now for seven years, and having to respond to the same creatkionist claptrap on every single new thread (such as "the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all life degenerates) gets tiring. Why can't your average creationist actually do a Google search before posting such drivel? Methinks it's so they don't have to face reality. After all these years I'm getting downright Boortzian. I refuse to put up with the Bull Puckey. If a creationist can't be bothered to do research before posting, I'm going to ridicule him or her. That's all he deserves.

[mordo]

Well I am not a creationists that is some convient label for you for sure.

And your 'just babbling .. better to keep silent' reply is a years old standby going back into the early 90's on bbs msg boards. So yeh its not an answer.

How much research is need to see the evo-gang is full of Bull Puckey? Well I'll answer you not much. And I've read plenty on lots of subjects believe it or not.

If you guys were about any kind of real dialog it might different, but you aren't
Ridicule Mordo if it makes you and the gang feel better. He'll come back at from the same place you goons operate from and it ain't a nice one.

[Junior]

Well I am not a creationists that is some convient label for you for sure.

You just play one on TV.

And your 'just babbling .. better to keep silent' reply is a years old standby going back into the early 90's on bbs msg boards. So yeh its not an answer.

It is after having dealt with this particular individual on this and a couple of other threads. When he attempts to change the subject or brings up irrelevancies, then he is just babbling.

How much research is need to see the evo-gang is full of Bull Puckey? Well I'll answer you not much. And I've read plenty on lots of subjects believe it or not.

Research is always important. It keeps one from making grade-school mistakes. And, if you've actually "read plenty" on the subject, prove it.

If you guys were about any kind of real dialog it might different, but you aren't

How can one have "real dialog" with people who repeat the same canards from one thread to another and never seem to learn anything in the meantime? How can anyone have "real dialog" with people who read things that aren't there ("Evolution is just an attempt to prove God doesn't exist!") and don't see the things that are there (Ichneumon's "tip of the iceberg" posts that take up three or four screens and give just a smattering of evidence for evolution)?

Ridicule Mordo if it makes you and the gang feel better. He'll come back at from the same place you goons operate from and it ain't a nice one.

Really. Let's see your arguments showing that evolution is "Bull Puckey." Two gets you three they're based on some cartoon version of evolution one finds at the average creationist website. Post the best you have, but do me a favor. Once we've taken them apart and shown where you are wrong, promise you will never use those arguments again. Otherwise, you're just another of those tabula rasa creationists.

[AntiGuv]

I was unfamiliar with the name beforehand, but now that I've read up a bit regarding Mr. Bahcall it is a very sad loss indeed.

[Fester Chugabrew]

The similarities of biology to machine do not outweigh the differences between biology and machines.

I'd be interested in seeing you list the similarities and differences without engaging a circular argument. The more we lean about functions of the biosphere, the more apt becomes the word "machine" to describe them, and the more reasonable it becomes to attribute intelligence to their design. As it stands, the biosphere works with a greater quantity and complexity of data that the mind of an intelligent human being can know.

Be that as it may, I hardly think the adoption of a metaphor to explain reality to be a scientific practice.

[Just mythoughts]

The 'gods' at Darwin Central cheer you, you are acceptable, you mightily thrashed those stupid ignorant DNA carriers.

What a disgusting dirty religion you practice. You call me a "creationist" as though it is a word of degradation, yet you are willingly ignorant of the FACTS of what I believe.

I do NOT fit the profile of "creationists", can your Pee Wee brain focus that?

I do not care what you believe. The Heavenly Father wants your attention He knows where you are and He knows what you think, you can hide nothing from HIM.

I do thank you for exposing exactly what the religion of evolution is really about, RIDICULE of anyone who alters or mutates your FOCUS. Parents everywhere get a real insight what to expect from the evolutionists in class rooms across the nation. A bunch of Creator denying control freaks heaping ridicule upon the hated creationists.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

[PatrickHenry]

800. Prime!