Show Me the Science [Critique of Intelligent Design, by Daniel Dennett

New York Times ^ | August 28, 2005 | Daniel C. Dennett

[AZLiberty]

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Is "intelligent design" a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn't such a hoax be impossible? No. Here's how it has been done.

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[b_sharp]

He suckered you in with a red herring. He purposely misses all the evidence that points to common ancestor while harping on our inability to know exactly why those changes took place. Knowing how, and knowing the consequences of it, are more important than knowing what exact conditions prompted the change.

[dynoman]

I'm cool with it, and I'll wait until you carch up.

[Jeff Gordon]

If you think that I am IDer because I believe that God laid out all the rules for the physical universe and life at the moment of the Big Bang, then so be it. I am IDer in that context. I am and IDer in that context if and only if the concept includes God was "hands off" from that moment.

One book that I find of great interest is Darwin's Dangerous Idea. This book sets forth the idea that evolution is an alogorithm. It is an algorithm built into the laws of physics.

[Jeff Gordon]

I think we can both agree that Ann is an outstanding work of art not matter how she came to be.

[Jeff Gordon]

You are implying he would resort to evolution? Why?

Occam's razor.

I am a retired Silicon Valley engineering executive. Over the years we planned many projects. We worked hard and applied all of our knowledge and experience in attempts to make our original plan the final plan. Of course, things never worked out that way. Making changes in the plan while the project was under way is expensive, complex as well as time and energy consuming. If I had been omnipotent, my first plan would have been the final plan.

If I were an omnipotent God creating the universe, I would get everything right in that first moment. I would rather spend my time fishing than making ongoing adjustments to my failing plans.

[Junior]

And ID proponents claim they have no religious basis for their campaign either. It's odd that, for a supposedly genetics-oriented research project only one of the board of directors even works in the field of biology.

Even more telling is the wording of its prize criteria (which I pointed out earlier). If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I ain't gonna buy its claim that it's a chicken.

[b_sharp]

"Where are the inaccuracies?"

The entire analogy.

[WildTurkey]

ID created hemorrhoids?

[Kevin OMalley]

read later bump

[Coyoteman]

PILTDOWN MAN

Once known by all true scholars of human evolution to be an ancient ancestor of man. This true "ape man" had the jaw of a modern ape and the skull of a modern man. Today this ape-man is not so well known among true scholars of evolution.

RADIOCARBON DATING

A remarkably precise method of actually measuring the age of any carbon-containing sample. Except for certain spurious (young) dates, radiocarbon, like other methods involving the decay of radionuclides will, given several absolutely safe assumptions, invariably indicate a ripe old age for any specimen consistent with a slow process of evolution.

I'll take on a couple of these (have to leave some fun for the rest of the folks).

First, the author's characterization of Piltdown Man being "once known by all true scholars of human evolution to be an ancient ancestor of man" is incorrect. Some researchers recognized early on that Piltdown didn't fit. Friedrichs and Weidenreich had both, by about 1932, published their research suggesting the lower jaws and molars were that of an orang (E.A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, revised edition; The MacMillan Co., 1946). This is what a 1946 textbook shows, several years before the claims for Piltdown were completely falsified. I could probably find an older textbook, but I think the point is made.

Second, on radiocarbon dating your author cites no evidence against it! All we have is tongue-in-cheek humor. Sorry, this is an area in which I have some familiarity, and I can assure you that radiocarbon dating is pretty accurate. It has been calibrated with bristlecone pines, which through tree-ring dating can be taken back some 10,000 years. When you date a 10,000 year old section of a tree and calibrate your curve, there are pretty good odds you will be very close to the correct date.

Two additional points: you can't date old fossils with radiocarbon dating as it only extends back some 50,000 years. Unless you believe that everything is young, say about 4004 B.C.???? (Also, fossils are ROCK! There's no carbon there anyway. Send the author you quoted back to the science books.)

Oh, you say! I'll take that 4004 B.C. date, so radiocarbon should work! Well, if dinosaurs were around about 4004 B.C. or so, give or take a few centuries, we should have lots of dino bones in the sites archaeologists test and radiocarbon date. Bones last quite a while in most soils, and teeth tend to last even longer. Guess what? None! Nada! Zip! Zero! Even a nearly-blind archaeologist would notice a dino tooth!

So there are two down. You folks can deal with the rest.

[Dimensio]

Did you observe the Taj Mahal being built? No. But you assume a designer because every experience with something so obviously designed always is the product of a designer.

And with things like the Taj Mahal, I have a basis for comparsion. What is the basis for comparison for the universe by which I can infer design?

Can you not admit that the universe dwarfs the complexity and wonder of a man-made building? The effect cannot be greater than the cause.

Complexity does not necessarily imply design.

Thanks for illustrating my point.

Your "point" is founded in faulty logic.

Also, Marx wasn't simply a social engineer that happened to be an evolutionist. It was integral to his system.

Which is why The Communist Manifesto was published eight years before Origin of the Species.

Not only was Marx an "evolutionist", he was also -- apparently -- a clairvoyant.

The French Revolution based on humanism produced nothing as great as our system of government.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Marx or the theory of evolution. Why are you bringing it up?

Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, but Darwin asked him not to, afraid of the backlash it might cause.

Ah, when you can't attack the facts because they go against you, shamelessly lie about the motives.

You have no justification for the claim that Darwin was "afraid" of the backlash potential. Darwin simply said that he was not a student of economics and thus it would not be appropriate to credit him to any economic philosophy. To try and assert knowledge of some kind of cowardly fear is nothing more than outright dishonesty on your part.

Honesty was never a strong suit amongst creationists in general.

I notice that even you don't want to deal with Darwin's imbecilic and evil racial and biological views.

I've seen a lot of shamelessly dishonest creationist tactics, but this takes the cake. Here you imply that I am somehow dodging the issue of Darwin's racism, even though you never made mention of it in your original post. I "don't want to deal with" an issue that you never brought up in the first place? Please, try to be a little less transparent with your bogus claims.

"if this book were to find general public acceptance, it would bring with it a brutalization of the human race such as it had never seen before." [1]

Got any context for that quote?

And truly, time showed that Sedgwick was right to have doubts. The 20th century has gone down in history as a dark age when people underwent massacres simply because of their race or ethnic origins.

Except that the theory of evolution is simply a descriptor for what is seen in biological systems. Attempting to blame the theory of evolution for abhorrent acts committed like others is like trying to blame gravity when someone is pushed off of a building. Except that in the case of someone being pushed out of a building, gravity would actually be somewhat responsible for their death.

Ranting and raving about genocide does not falsify the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution simply states that all life on earth originated from a common ancestor through processes of mutation and natural selection. There's no implicit command in the theory to kill people. Only complete gibbering morons think that the theory of evolution actually promotes genocide.

Most Darwinists in our day claim that Darwin used the expression "By the Preservation of Favored Races" in the subtitle to The Origin of Species only for animals. However, what those who make this claim ignore is what Darwin says about human races in his book.

Darwin claimed that the "fight for survival" also applied between human races. "Favored races" emerged victorious from this struggle. According to Darwin the favored race were the European whites. As for Asian and African races, they had fallen behind in the fight for survival.

Oh, boy, more semantic games!

Darwin was describing his observations regarding the development of civilizations and explaning what he saw as the consequences of "undeveloped" civilizations. He wasn't making a direct value judgement of "good" or "bad" on anything, but creationists -- unable to comprehend that science does not make value judgements -- jump on this as "proof" of approval of genocide when in reality it's a lack of reading comprehension.

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. [2]

Mined quote, addressed here. Not that you'll pay any attention to it. Facts and reality are anathema to creationists.

I notice that thus far you've just tried to smear Darwin. You've not actually provided any evidence whatsoever to show that the theory of evolution is in any way false.

As for the other races which he saw as "inferior," he maintained that it was essential to prevent them multiplying and so for these races to be brought to extinction.

This is an outright lie. Darwin never made any such claims and you cannot find any writings of his that support this notion. You are a liar for claiming that Darwin wanted this.

Darwin's racist side showed its effect in much of his writing and observations. For example, he openly set out his racist prejudices while describing the natives of Tierra del Fuego whom he saw on a long voyage he set out on in 1871. He described the natives as living creatures "wholly nude, submerged in dyes, eating what they find just like wild animals, uncontrolled, cruel to everybody out of their tribe, taking pleasure in torturing their enemies, offering bloody sacrifices, killing their children, ill-treating their wives, full of awkward superstitions". Whereas according to the researcher W. P. Snow, the Tierra del Fuegians were "fine powerful looking fellows; they were very fond of their children; some of their artifacts were ingenious; they recognised some sort of rights over property; and they accepted the authority of several of the oldest women." [3]

Hmm. More smears on interpretations of Darwin's cultural attitudes, not a single bit of information attempting to refute his theory.

You don't actually have a valid argument against the theory of evolution, do you? You think that by simply smearing Darwin you somehow score points. You don't. Science doesn't work that way. Even if you somehow discovered that Darwin was a child-killing cannibal, it would not in any way be evidence that there is fault with the theory of evolution. Evolution stands on its own merits; the morality or immorality of Charles Darwin does not affect its validity.

The major haters of the last 100 years have been evolutionists. Men like Nietzsche (who often said God was dead, called for the breeding of a master race, and for the annihilation of millions of misfits), Hitler, Mussolini, Marx, Engels, and Stalin were all outspoken evolutionists, and these people and their theories have been responsible for the slaughter of multi-millions of people, and the destruction of freedom all over the earth. It is amazing that so many liberals, radicals, fascists, communists and the easily impressed worship at Darwin's shrine.

Ah, broad assertions without a bit of evidence behind them. Of course, it doesn't help your case that Stalin rejected Darwinian evolution and had scientists who taught it imprisoned in the Gulags. But let's not let fact get in the way of a good creationist rant. If you have to outright lie to claim that evolution is responsible for abhorrent social policy (and science theories of biological systems do not translate to proper social policy, you have to lie in order to do it), you'll do it because creationists just don't care about honesty.

Furthermore, Darwin's theory's denying the existence of God

I'm stopping right here. You have just lied once too often for me. Evolution does not, in any way, imply a lack of existence of any gods. Only outright liars claim that it does. You've demonstrated that you're not here to engage in rational discussion. You're just here to spread whatever lies and libel you can in order to distract attention from the fact that you don't have a single valid argument against the theory of evolution. Nothing you say can ever be trusted.

Or rather, your source can't be trusted. You don't seem to have a single argument of your own, so you copied an entire article verbatim. Your source is a liar, and you're just a parrot.

[WildTurkey]

PILTDOWN MAN

A fake created by a French priest.

[Coyoteman]

razorbak better get in here and fight. I think he's about to go down for the third time!

[VadeRetro]

ID created hemorrhoids?

And the Black Death.

[dynoman]

So the Origin of Life Prize is run by a bunch of ID proponents?? If you are going to make that charge you will have get a lot more detailed and specific than you have been.

You bought that dog, now make him hunt.

[dynoman]

If it's Occam's razor, creation is the simplist explaination, isn't it?. Snap of the fingers and it's all there. Why do you imply God didn't get everything right, the way he wanted it, in that first moment? What's wrong with it that man's free will problems can't explain?

[Jeff Gordon]

Creating everything at the snap of the fingers is far more complicated than creating some basic matter and the laws of physics. It just takes more time. More time means more time for fishing.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin, but Darwin asked him not to, afraid of the backlash it might cause. " (Razorbak)

It should be noted that Darwin was a conventional classical liberal whig who was attracted to free markets. His economic convictions were diametrically at odds with Marx.

"I notice that even you don't want to deal with Darwin's imbecilic and evil racial and biological views. " (Razorbak)

Darwin's views on race were quite open-minded for his day. He was against slavery, and on his voyage on the Beagle he had heated arguments with the ship's captain Fitzroy over it. He was disgusted by the savage treatment of slaves in South America.

That he considered whites to be superior to darker skinned peoples only placed him squarely in the majority opinion of his day.

"For example, he openly set out his racist prejudices while describing the natives of Tierra del Fuego whom he saw on a long voyage he set out on in 1871."(Razorbak)

He was already an old man by 1871 and spent most of the day in bed from a medical condition that made him an invalid for much of his adult life. He was only on one Voyage, and that was in the 1830's.

" Men like Nietzsche (who often said God was dead, called for the breeding of a master race, and for the annihilation of millions of misfits)"(Razorbak)

1) Nietzsche was not an evolutionist and had little regard for natural selection.

2) He never called for the breeding of a Master Race.

3) He never called for the killing of *misfits*


As for Hitler, he knew about as much evolutionary biology as you, and hadn't read any Darwin either, just like you.

"Furthermore, Darwin's theory's denying the existence of God "(Razorbak)

He never denied the existence of God. Stop making things up.

Don't stop posting though, because you are good for laughs.

[itsahoot]

or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science?

Why not it has worked for evolutionists for years.

[b_sharp]

Apparently, some process has preserved proteins for a remarkably long period of time--tens of millions of years. Scientists like Jeff Bada don’t know what that process could possibly be. Therefore, it is valuable to do research to find out what that process is. If we can figure out what that process is, then maybe we can figure out how to use that process to preserve food or some other useful, perishable product. Maybe we can even use that process to preserve living cells. Then we could live forever. Finding the secret to eternal, youthful life is one that many people would dearly love to discover. It is no wonder that Matthew Collins can still get funding to discover how osteocalcin can have “such spectacular survival.”

Indeed, it would be an interesting thing to find a magic elixar that could preserve living cells; however that is not the situation here. Nor does the ability to preserve organic material in fossils have anything to do with giving humans a longer lifespan. The majority of fossils are not 100% mineralized.

Scientists are asking, “How can this protein be so fresh when it is contained in such old bones?” We should consider the possibility that they will never find the answer because they might be asking the wrong question. Maybe they should ask, “How can these bones be so old when they contain such fresh protein?” That throws a whole new light on the subject. They won’t ever figure out how protein can last for tens of millions of years without breaking down if protein can’t really last for tens of millions of years. They will be wasting their time.

The fossils are not dated, the 'rock' the fossils are found in is dated. A lack of air, acid and microbes is all that is necessary to preserve organic molecules. Place a body in space and it will never degrade. Further to that, the composition of the rock the fossil is originally buried in determines how much of a fossil mineralizes.

The second question (“How can these bones be so old when they contain such fresh protein?”) is as important to address as the first. If it is true that the world is not millions of years old, and that dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago, then it suggests an entirely different approach to finding eternal life. That’s why it is so important for scientific investigation to discover the true age of proteins and the bones that contain them.

We have determined the age of the rock those fossils are found in through quite a number of measurement and calibration techniques. All of which agree.

Evolutionists believe that the coastline of the sea that covered the Great Plains occasionally moved back and forth from Louisiana to Canada, laying down a different kind of layer of sediment each time. The coastline receded whenever the land was uplifted. Whenever the land dropped, the sea came back and covered Montana again. So these layers represent different eras of geologic time.

This cycle has been verified not just in Montana, but in Saskatchewan and Alberta. However I question the author's insistence on over simplifying the process to just continental movement as a cause for this cycle. The oceans also went through cycles as the pole ice advanced and retreated.

Evolutionists claim that, “The present is the key to the past.” Where in the world do we presently observe tides that rise and fall 3,000 feet, causing the shoreline to move back and forth 1600 miles? What would make evolutionists believe that this ever happened? We don’t know.

Obviously the author has no knowledge, as he admits, of the evidence for a internal sea extending from northern Canada to the Gulf. His use of prejudicial language in this paper is obviously intended to be the redirection in a little verbal slight of hand. We all know how important that redirection is when trying to deceive. The variations in sea depth occurred over long periods of time as attested to by the multiple layers of buried coral reefs in Saskatchewan. Along with these reefs are layers of potash deposits 100s of feet deep amongst salt deposits also hundreds of feet deep. Saskatchewan has many kimberlite deposits which are associated with volcanoes and diamonds. All that is left of those ancient volcanoes that created the kimberlite are numerous eroded rings of igneous rock. These volcanoes had to have enough time not only build up to sizes comesurate with the size of the kimberlite deposits but to erode to little more than flat rings.

Creationists, on the other hand, believe that most of these layers were created by Noah’s Flood. We have seen modern evidence, particularly at Mount St. Helens, that flooding can produce many feet of layered rock in a single day. So it is consistent with modern scientific observation that if a flood suddenly covered the Great Plains of the United States, it would leave the layered deposits that we actually do find.

Actually this is a misrepresentation of what happened at Mt. St. Helens. The layers of rock sediment around Mt. St. Helens is of limited type and is a loose aggregate. The rocks found elsewhere in the US, including the Grand Canyon are of various types of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock that was deposited in layers through cycles of volcanic eruption of ash and lava as well as deposition of silt from salt and fresh water seas.

If you compare the valleys cut through the loose sediment of Mt St. Helens to the Grand Canyon, you find the wall angles are different, such as you would find when comparing loose silt and solid compressed rock, the system of meanders in the Grand Canyon left a number of isolated or partially isolated horse shoe shaped valleys called oxbows whereas the valleys at Mt. St. Helen's do not show this.

When investigated carefully, using the known properties of clastic flows, lava, geologic structures and hydrodynamics it becomes obvious the Grand Canyon was built up, eroded, built up, eroded, and so on, numerous times over a long period of time.

Examples of the differences in valley type, wall angle, sediment level and tributaries resulting from flow through different media can be seen in the patterns left by rivers cutting through the shield of northern Saskatchewan, which is igneous rock covered by a thin layer of soils, and the pattern left by the same river as it cuts through southern Saskatchewan which has a sedimentary rock base (slates) covered with 100s of feet of sand and soils.

There is nothing unscientific or unreasonable about this scenario. Geologists generally believe that the precipitation levels during the ice age were higher than they are today. (There isn’t enough snow today to cause an ice age. That’s why we aren’t having one now. So, it must have snowed harder during the ice age.) If there was more snow, there would be more rain, too.

Where the heck did this guy get the idea there is less 'snow' now than in the past? Snow is just moisture in the form of crystals.The amount of free water depends on the amount tied up in glaciers.

The coulee explanation given has a much simpler explanation. The eggs were laid at a time of low or receding water level, immediately covered and then some time later, during the ice age, were uncovered.

It is beyond me why the author is trying to date the finds through ice age occurrences.

His dating of the ice ages is also silly since there are lakes in southern Saskatchewan containing up to 9000 varves. Each varve shows a definitive layer of seasonal pollen, lake organisms and mammal droppings. There is even a native settlement buried near the lowest varve. Had the glaciers only receded 3000 to 4000 years ago,those varves would not be preserved, nor would the community.

I used a paintbrush to dust some of the loose sand off some of the bones I was digging, but stopped doing that rather quickly. The brush not only removed the loose sand, it also dug into the “rock” and even the bones. I wished I had brought along one of those battery-powered hand-held fans for blowing the dirt off the bones. I just wasn’t prepared for such soft “rock” and fragile bones.

I have found many coprolites in sedimentary rock, primarily fine sand. The sand was moved to my area by the advancing glaciers along with the fossils. The fossils are 65myo whereas the sand was deposited 60,000 years ago. Where is the problem? Fossils do end up in concretions. The badlands of Saskatchewan are virtually identical to the badlands of Alberta and Montana where rock was ground down and transported from the north to the south and ended up covering other layers. Some of this material carried fossils, some of the glacial movement uncovered then recovered fossils. Not all sediment has the opportunity to solidify.

As for the egg's fragility, the author is tying to imply little or no change in the composition of the shell of the egg. What he doesn't mention is the type of mineralization those eggs would go through given the minerals contained by the sediment the fossils were buried by. He also didn't mention that the interior of the egg would be less dense than the exterior.(fewer minerals leach through the exterior). Many of these eggs become coated in calcium carbonate which is a soft easily broken covering.

BTW, those fossil shells were not willy nilly used to date the surrounding rock. Fossils of many organisms are specific to a particular stratum which is radiometrically dated. Those fossils when found at different locations are used as 'strata markers' so the stratum being worked on can be given a general date.

While talking to the leader of the expedition, I happened to mention in passing that I felt uncomfortable referring to the stuff we were digging as “rock.” She replied that she knew exactly what I meant. She used to call it “sediment”, but a more senior professor rebuked her saying, “it can’t be sediment because it is 75 million years old.” Since she really believes it is 75 million years old, she doesn’t call it sediment anymore. Isn’t it interesting that a preconceived interpretation can affect the description of data?

As is evidenced by the author of this paper.

Rock isn't dated by it's 'solidness'.