Intelligent Design: An Ambiguous Assault on Evolution

LiveScience.com ^ | 22 September 2005 | Ker Than

[SeaLion]

Editor's Note: This article is the first in a special LiveScience series about the theory of evolution and a competing idea called intelligent design.

TODAY: An overview of the increasingly heated exchange between scientists and the proponents of intelligent design.

COMING FRIDAY : Proponents argue that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, but a close look at their arguments shows that it doesn't pass scientific muster.

Science can sometimes be a devil's bargain: a discovery is made, some new aspect of nature is revealed, but the knowledge gained can cause mental anguish if it contradicts a deeply cherished belief or value.

[snip]

Darwin's truth can be a hard one to accept. His theory of evolution tells us that humans evolved from non-human life as the result of a natural process, one that was both gradual, happening over billions of years, and random. It tells us that new life forms arise from the splitting of a single species into two or more species, and that all life on Earth can trace its origins back to a single common ancestor.

Perhaps most troubling of all, Darwin's theory of evolution tells us that life existed for billions of years before us, that humans are not the products of special creation and that life has no inherent meaning or purpose.

For Americans who view evolution as inconsistent with their intuitions or beliefs about life and how it began, Creationism has always been a seductive alternative.

Creationism's latest embodiment is intelligent design (ID), a conjecture that certain features of the natural world are so intricate and so perfectly tuned for life that they could only have been designed by a Supreme Being.

[article continues...]

[From many - one.]

newsgatherer: 43 posted on 09/22/2005 8:29:12 AM PDT by fizziwig
newsgatherer posted:
"God created English, see Genesis 11"

I responded:
Thank you. So, when God creates something it doesn't have to appear right away and it can evolve.

....and you went off on the tangent that is in your post.

Do you have a response to my post that is relevant?

[akdonn]

Yeah, the bible was written 200 years after the death of JC and every word came directly from the big G. Then there have been all of the re-writes...

That would be like writing the history of to formation of the United States in 1976.

Faith is a wonderful thing...for fools.

[akdonn]

You can't "assault" evolution. It's a theory, based on what we know--not some rubber dolly that ignorant and impotent "believers" can beat up!

[Junior]

Sure, you can handwave anything away if you want. However, the science of dendrochronology is fairly well established.

[Junior]

Really? Explain why it's a circular assumption. Please provide research and details.

[js1138]

God created English, see Genesis 11

Too bad about all that Chaucer and stuff.

[js1138]

Ah. The Bible Code. ID in action.

[js1138]

Evoltion can be assalted? Is evolution a religion? Is Darwinianism a kind of faith?

Do you consider faith and religion synonymous with false and silly?

[Lexinom]

Darwin's truththeory

Fixed (no charge, ma'am).

[Lexinom]

The evidence is all around, not only in what you see, but in your own very self-awareness by which you may see. You're playing dumb: all know the truth deep down, and suppress it because you know what it implies, just as those who taught them did.

Evolution is not provable. Neither is Creation. But a substantial body of evidence - evidence which, I must add, is commonly interpreted with the conclusion as a premise - points to a young earth:

* The sun's source of energy. The solar "wind" constantly streaming into space from the rotating surface "exert a dragging effect that is strong enough to stop the rotation of the convecitve zone in only one million years" (Howard 1975). Time to question the premise: millions of years...

* Origin of comets. Halley's comet loses approx 1 percent of its mass each time its orbit nears the sun. It should have a life of a few thousand years. Where do all these comets come from? J.H. Oorts rather absurd notion (for which there is no proof) of a comet cloud "out there" is necessariy to reconcile this problem with the millions of years required for Lyell's long geological ages required for evolution. It's far simpler to question the premise.

* Meteorites and tektites. According to research by Petterson, approximately ten-millionths of an inch per year of material from outerspace blankets the earth. Extrapolating this number over five billion years, Apollo should have sank into the surface of the moon. Instead, the dust was, according to Neil Armstrong, "maybe an eighth of an inch" - not even remotely close to Isaac Asimov's dire prediction.

* Earth's decaying magnetic field. This field changes at a constant rate. Polarity reversal have occurred. In 1989 two respected paleomagnetists, R. Coe, and M. Prévot, reported evidence in two thin lava flows at the same location of two rapid reversals in a short period of time - obviously from a global catastophe.

* Stalactites. Any cavern tour guide will assure tourists that stalactites in the cave took "millions of years" to form to two or three feet from water working on the limestone. Yet, two-foot-long stalactites can be seen in abandoned bored tunnels, such as one in London in disuse for about half-a-century.

* Polonium radiohalo signatures in basal granite. Dr. Robert Gentry introduced this research in 1974. Polonium has a half-life of about 3 minutes, and is one of the fourteen stages of the uranium 238 decay process. White-hot magma takes far longer than that to cool. Now, only daughter products (lead-206) are found in the central inclusion of these decay signatures. Yet, we are told that A) the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and B) that the half-life of uranium 238 is 4.51 billion years. Thus, where is the undecayed half of the parent U-238 product that should still be present? Or was it, in fact, created by fiat with polonium, not uranium?

(Source: Taylor, Ian T. In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order. Minneapolis: TFE Publishing. Fourth Edition, Mar. 2001. pp. 329-336.)

Both evolution and creation are accepted on faith, the evolutionist's protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Constancy of rates is accepted on faith because in our short lives they are not empiracally provable (and the evolutionist would not be pleased with what little evidence is available). Only one theory, however, is tenable when we let the facts drive the conclusion and not vice-versa.

[SeaLion]

LOL! Thanks for the 'pepper' you've added to this thread!

[RetroFit]

Perhaps the use of the word demonstrate was a poor choice. But, and correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, I would not categorize all truths that do not lend themselves to a naturalistic approach to be an "arbitrarily agreed" upon truths either.

Basic logic (modus ponens, modus tollens, etc.) truths alone are just ideas. That you can construct experiments to prove them does nothing to bring the ideas themselves into the realm of the physical. Nor are they temporal truths that are just arbitrarily agreed upon until consensus shifts the other direction. They are either true or they are false independent of consensus. Some truths are self evident. A>B and B>C thus A>C requires no further evidence to demonstrate the validity of the claim. Nor is it's truth contingent on the agreement of arbitrary number of people.

Also, while I may not subscribe to all of Descartes, his statement of "I think, therefore I am" alludes to a component of a mankind that exists that is of an immaterial nature.

Again, it comes down to what a person (perhaps arbitrarily) accepts as sufficient evidence. Why must the only way to answer the original question as to the existence of a "God" be through a naturalistic test if we cannot apply the same standard to man's identity or ideas that themselves are intrinsically true? It is a presupposition that "God" must first be the type of being that can only be observed naturally before his existence can be verified. Why must that be the paradigm?

[newsgatherer]

First, define "Evolves" Are you talking about evolution? If so also pelase be so kind as to define "Evolution" Than I will answer you.

[newsgatherer]

but I respect your right to hold that opinion.
Thank you and I also.

What about the other questions? (Let me repeat them:)

Second, what non-documentary evidence do you have that, if there is a God, that it is Yahweh/Jehovah and not, for example, Vishnu or Oden?
I have never seen a change in the heart and behavior of a man change with believe in any other than Christ Jesus

Third, what evidence do you have that the Muslim interpretation of things, in which the Koran was given to the Jews and Christians who then perverted it into the current forms of those religions, is false (assuming that you do, in fact, believe it to be false)?
The book of islam didn’t appear until 600 plus years after Christ, 2,000 years after Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.

Fourth, on your believe in the Bible; if the Bible said something that you knew, from non-biblical sources, for an absolute fact was not true, would you believe the Bible? For example, if the Bible said "all cats reproduce by laying eggs out of which kittens hatch," would you believe cats lay eggs or would you conclude that the text is wrong and believe what you know to be the truth?

But, that is a hypothetical that has never been shown. There is no instance in the Bible, the holy Word of the Living God, that can be shown to be false. Not even the stopping of the sun.

[newsgatherer]

Space aliens are fact?

What in the world are you talking about?

[newsgatherer]

By matching the tree-rings from the present backward you can establish the age of a particular ring on the dead trees. Then you can date that ring and establish a calibration curve.

Now first, let me say, I enjoy your post and replies.

BUT

Tree rings do not mean one per year. It is has more to do with rain and climate, a tree can have more than one ring per year. I have seen trees cut with an average of 2.5 rings per year.

Am I a scientist? Nope, but I have been cutting down trees for more years than I care to acknowledge, and on the piece of land I live on, there are some trees that are less than 15 years old. How do I know? Cause I was here and where the trees are was pasture, not trees. I cut one down that had over 30 rings. Tree under 15, over 30 rings.

Now, I am not going to say that all trees have more than one ring per year, don’t know about that. Don't normally count the rings, usually just cut em down, split em, stack em and burn em.

But this one day, I was taking a break, had nothing better to do and so I counted rings in cut down trees.

Grab a chain saw go out to a farm, ask the farmer if you can knock down some fire wood for him, and ask him how old the trees are along the side of his fields, he'll probably know. Cutem down, count the rings and stack them up nice and neat for the farmer. If he is hesitant, offer to split and stack them, that will get him, if not, well, come on up here I have a few you can cut. (Split and stacked, near the door I bring them in of course)

[newsgatherer]

Dude, shhhh, haven't you gotten the talking points yet? ID makes no claims about the nature of the "designer" (wink, wink).

Dud? I aint no sea trurtle, I've seen Nemo, Dude, Dude indeed. Humph.

But, I do like:

H1>In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth!

Opps, there I go again, why slap my wrist and call me a CHRISTian.

[blowfish]

But, that is a hypothetical that has never been shown. There is no instance in the Bible, the holy Word of the Living God, that can be shown to be false. Not even the stopping of the sun.

True. I could claim that monkeys flew out my butt yesterday, and nobody could disprove that either.

[edsheppa]

Some truths are self evident. A>B and B>C thus A>C requires no further evidence to demonstrate the validity of the claim.

Have you never played rock-paper-scissors?

And, no, I'm not trying to be facetious. The post-modernists do make a deep point (while missing a deeper one) when they speak of reality being socially constructed and scientific facts being theory laden. These are agreements which are to some extent arbitrary. But that takes us to your main point...

Again, it comes down to what a person (perhaps arbitrarily) accepts as sufficient evidence. ... Why must [methodological naturalism] be the paradigm?

Because the agreements are not entirely arbitrary. The objective component is that they work. Naturalism has, again and again, been a means of obtaining reliable knowledge about the world. No other scheme has. Isn't it the mark of sanity to eschew what has not worked in the past and instead pursue what has worked?

[RetroFit]

Isn't it the mark of sanity to eschew what has not worked in the past and instead pursue what has worked?

I think this claim goes too far. While I agree that naturalistic tests can work when applied to the kinds of things that lend themselves to that sort of observation, I don't think I'd agree that they are 1) infallible [science is all the time formulating different conclusions while applying the same naturalistic approach] and 2) superior to other methods of knowing things. The only way rock-paper-scissors could be comparable to the A>B and B>C thus A>C example would be to add the additional proposition C>A. But at that point the conclusion A>C would be nonsense. I'm not sure it is helpful to us given the discussion.

While we may apply a postmodern deconstruction as to what '>' means, it will still not invalidate the truth intrinsic to the statement with the given propositions.

This may be a simple truth, yet it is one that appeals to our intuition. This requires no further observation to conclude it's truth. Nor does it require any kind of methodological (thank you for the clarification :) ) naturalistic test to conclude. This seems to me to be an evidence for the capacity to "know" certain, nonphysical things apart from the naturalistic paradigm.

A person can exhibit the same physiological (observable) signs for both joy and sorrow. Theoretically, from a physiological standpoint, they could be indistinguishable. What is it within the individual that enables them to distinguish the difference? How is that 'process of discernment' observed and tested. If I am imagining my mother's face in my mind's eye how could one apply a test to identify what it is I'm seeing? True, they are just a pattern of neurons firing, but what is it that interprets that pattern? You could not replicate the firing pattern and reconstruct the image externally from myself.

These are merely simple, if not incomplete, illustrations to show that there are some things that exist that cannot be observed or tested from a methodological naturalistic approach. Concluding that a "God" must not exist because he fails a naturalistic test seems to be premature since the presupposition is that "God" must first be the type of being that could first be subjected to that kind of test. This seems to be putting the cart before the horse in some respect.