Why scientists dismiss 'intelligent design' - It would ‘become the death of science’

MSNBC ^ | 23 Sept 2005 | Ker Than

[gobucks]

(snip) But in order to attract converts and win over critics, a new scientific theory must be enticing. It must offer something that its competitors lack. That something may be simplicity (snip). Or it could be sheer explanatory power, which was what allowed evolution to become a widely accepted theory with no serious detractors among reputable scientists.

So what does ID offer? What can it explain that evolution can't?

(snip) Irreducible Complexity (snip)

Darwin himself admitted that if an example of irreducible complexity were ever found, his theory of natural selection would crumble.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down," Darwin wrote.

Yet no true examples of irreducible complexity have ever been found. The concept is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. (snip)

A necessary — and often unstated — flipside to this is that if an irreducibly complex system contains within it a smaller set of parts that could be used for some other function, then the system was never really irreducibly complex to begin with.

It's like saying in physics that atoms are the fundamental building blocks of matter only to discover, as physicists have, that atoms are themselves made up of even smaller and more fundamental components.

This flipside makes the concept of irreducible complexity testable, giving it a scientific virtue that other aspects of ID lack.

"The logic of their argument is you have these multipart systems, and that the parts within them are useless on their own," said Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. "The instant that I or anybody else finds a subset of parts that has a function, that argument is destroyed."

[Psycho_Bunny]

I don't have a dog in this fight but, because we don't know how to yet test something, doesn't render it untestable.

[RoadTest]

Well, science is only mentioned twice by the Creator of everything the "scientists" are studying. In the Old Testament it's scientists in Nebudchanezzar's court.

But a few centuries later we find scientists being called false: "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called": - 1Tim. 6:20

That's all that God bothers to say about scientists. Was Darwin a profane and vain babbler? Where is he now? I heard he repented on his deathbed.

[From many - one.]

What did it say?

[JohnnyM]

"I do not however do it out of fear of retribution of a God"

Neither do most Christians. We do it because we love Him.

JM

[NC28203]

>>> as if no one will ever do a chemistry experiment or a physics experiment again ...

Well, if ID is adopted, further research into many physics experiments related to the origins of the universe might as well come to a halt.

[gobucks]

Reducing it to a line "to waste time thinking about something that is not testable is the mark of the stupid".

There was just one problem with the memo .... she turned out to be really wrong.

[Ready2go]

I.D. is not science, as it can't be tested.

It's a 'faith' that something created this process.

It shouldn't be taught in school alongside science.

---

Howdy there posey2004;

We have millions of eye witness accounts that there's something beyond what we see all around us right now...when this life is over.

That we still exist after we die! And we shouldn't be surprised at this because God told us all about our "new bodies" in the Bible.

But how will anyone know if we can't tell them?

Question: Do Near Death Experiences prove life continues after death?

Answer: Yes. The proof is simple and straightforward. The individual having the experience dies and then comes back to life. When he comes back to life he has information that was not available to him before he died.

The only way this information could be in his possession is that he was alive after his physical death. It is true that not all NDEs produce this kind of information, but hundreds do. FAQ number 5 is an example of this.

Skeptics have no explanation for this so they usually argue that the patient was really semi-conscious at the time. This argument fails because the semi-consciousness state would have to go undetected by an array of the most modern monitoring equipment known to man, as well as a number of doctors and other trained personnel.

In FAQ number 5, even if such a semi-consciousness existed (which it didn't), that would not explain the patient's ability to describe the physical features of the doctors and personnel present while he was dead.

Another, even weaker argument, is that human error was involved and the patient somehow obtain this information without the knowledge of the doctors and staff. This might have merit in one or two instances, but there are hundreds of accounts with this kind of information. It would not be possible that they all were human error.

A strong yes, the Near Death Experiences do prove that life exists after death.

http://www.aleroy.com/FAQz12.htm

Wednesday January 09 08:26 AM EST

Scientists Validate Near-Death Experiences By ABCNEWS.com

Scientists validate "near-death" experiences.

When a car plowed into the vehicle in which she was riding, Leslie's chest was crushed, eight bones were broken and her heart stopped beating for three minutes. Before she was revived, she says she glimpsed the afterlife.

"My next experience was really lying on the ground outside of the car, and it was actually an out-of-body experience that I had," says Leslie, who declined to give her last name. "I was actually floating above my body, and I looked down, and I saw all these men working on this poor girl who was down below, about eight feet below me, and she was struggling."

An estimated 7 million people have reported hauntingly similar "near-death" experiences. And a new study in the British medical journal Lancet gives credence to such accounts, concluding they are valid.

Scientists Study Near-Death Experiences

ABCNEWS' Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson says this study lends more credibility to the possibility that these near-death accounts are accurate because the researchers conducted the interviews soon after the experiences occurred. The study does not provide a way to scientifically measure whether or not there is life after death, however.

The study reported in Lancet looked at 344 patients in the Netherlands who were successfully resuscitated after suffering cardiac arrest in 10 Dutch hospitals.

Rather than using data from people reporting past near-death experiences, researchers talked to patients within a week after they had suffered clinical deaths and been resuscitated. (Clinical death was defined as a period of unconsciousness caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain.)

About 18 percent of the patients in the study reported being able to recall some portion of what happened when they were clinically dead; and 8 to 12 percent reported going through "near-death" experiences, such as seeing lights at the end of tunnels, or being able to speak to dead relatives or friends. Most had excellent recall of the events, which undermines the theory that the memories are false, the study said.

"We don't even begin to have the tools to debate the subject on a rational scientific basis," Johnson told Good Morning America. "I don't think our belief in afterlife is defined on a cause of the brain." Johnson, who serves as assisting minister of the Community Covenant Church in West Peabody, Mass., said belief in the afterlife remains primarily a matter of personal faith.

Brain Down, Consciousness On?

Lead researcher Pim van Lommel of the Hospital Rijnstate in the Netherlands said the study suggests that researchers investigating consciousness should not look in the cells and molecules alone.

Even when the brain is not showing signs of electrical activity, it is possible that a person can still be conscious, he said. In other words, people can be conscious of events around them even when they are physically unconscious.

"Compare it with a TV program," he told The Washington Post . "If you open the TV set you will not find the program. The TV set is a receiver. When you turn off your TV set, the program is still there but you can't see it. When you put off your brain, your consciousness is still there but you can't feel it in your body."

Many people describe seeing their own bodies from a distance, as though watching a movie. Others say they felt their bodies rushing toward a brilliant light.

Some who have had this experience say it's a sign there is a tunnel that leads to eternal life, but researchers do not really know what the visions mean. The study does not address whether there is such a thing as the soul, God or the afterlife.

"I think what's happening is that people are trying to validate their experience by making these paranormal claims, but you don't need to do that," said Susan Blackmore, a psychology professor at the University of the West of England in Bristol. "They're valid experiences in themselves, only they're happening in the brain and not in the world out there."

She believes the experiences are like a movie that our brains run at times of extreme traumatic stress. The brain creates endorphins which can reduce pain, and under extreme stress, these large amounts of endorphins produce a dreamlike state of euphoria.

Life Beyond Death

Some of those who described the experiences to ABCNEWS say they feel they were given the opportunity to explore life beyond death.

"I was looking down, and I saw my body, and I saw the doctors," said Jessie Lott, one woman who was resuscitated.

"I had come into this place of brilliant, beautiful life," said another, Dannion Brinkley.

"The feeling of peacefulness, the feeling of utter acceptance, utter — I mean, love, and it sounds so hokey, and I hate that part of it, because there aren't really good words to describe it," Leslie said.

Another woman described how she felt she was being pulled toward a giant tunnel, a common theme in the near-death experiences.

"I couldn't stop it. I didn't know why I was moving. I was just pulled right through this enormous, infinite tunnel," said Diane Morrissey.

Blackmore says science can also explain those tunnels: Electrical brain scans show that in our last moments, as the brain is deprived of oxygen, cells fire frantically and at random in the part of the brain which govern vision.

"Now, imagine that you've got lots and lots of cells firing in the middle, towards fewer at the outside, what's it going to look like? Bright light in the middle fading off towards dark at the outside," Blackmore said. "I think that's where the tunnel comes from. And as the oxygen level drops, so the bright light becomes bigger and more immediate, and you get this sensation of rushing forward into the light."

Scientist Turned Spiritual Healer

But not all scientists are skeptics when it comes to explaining near-death phenomena, and researchers have debated such issues for years.

Joyce Hawkes, a cell biologist with a PhD, had an accident that forever changed her life — and her view of science. She suffered a concussion from a falling window.

"I think that part of me — that my spirit, my soul — left my body and went to another reality," she said. She was surprised at the experience.

"It just was not part of the paradigm in which I lived as a scientist," Hawkes recalled. "It was a big surprise to me to have this sense of something different than the body — a consciousness different than the body — and to be in this wonderfully healing, peaceful, nurturing place."

Hawkes now works as a spiritual healer.

"I think what I learned was that there truly is no death, that there is a change in state from a physical form to a spirit form, and that there's nothing to fear about that passage," she said.

The Dutch researchers found that people who had such experiences reported marked changes in their personalities compared with those who had come near death, but had not had those experiences. They seemed to have lost their fear of death, and became more compassionate, loving people.

"I can hardly wait to die, and yet I don't have a death wish. I live my life a hundred percent more now because I have such a fine appreciation about what might happen to us and where we might go," said Morrissey.

[mdmathis6]

Don't forget...it was mostly 6ker's(yeah okay and a sprinkling of a few deists here or there) who FOUNDED this country and birthed our freedoms and our constitution. Our political beliefs that allow atheists to attack our churches were founded out of RELIGIOUS IMPULSES. Our constitution is based on scientific absurdities such as religion and morality that guarantee the free speech anti religious scientists use to denounce the religious impulses of the populous....Perhaps these scientists should demand that our constitution be abolished in favor of a scientifically planned one!

[fishtank]

Baloney.

If a Chinese company is going to reverse engineer a computer, or a Mercedes, (or a nuke) are you telling me that they won't have to use science and engineering to accomplish their task?

Of course not.

"It can't be tested", is like saying that the fields of cryptography, archeology, forensics, etc "can't be tested".

All of these areas involve the study of the workings of an intelligence on matter.

Your statement is incorrect.

[js1138]

It's interesting that the Discovery Institute disagrees with you.

[SirLinksalot]

Here is William Dembski's response regarding the so called "Nylon Bug" as evidence of Random Mutation plus Natural Selection creating complexity :

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/348#more-348

---

The problem with this argument is that Miller fails to show that the construction/evolution of nylonase from its precursor actually requires CSI at all. As I develop the concept, CSI requires a certain threshold of complexity to be achieved (500 bits, as I argue in my book No Free Lunch). It’s not at all clear that this threshold is achieved here (certainly Miller doesn’t compute the relevant numbers). Nor is it clear that in the evolution of nylonase that anything like pure neo-Darwinism was operating. Instead, we see something much more like what James Shapiro describes as “natural genetic engineering” (go here). And how do systems that do their own genetic engineering arise? According to Shapiro, Darwinism (whether neo or otherwise) offers no insight here.

Let’s look at nylonase a bit more closely. Nylonase appears to have arisen from a frame-shift in another protein. Even so, it seems to be special in certain ways. For example, the DNA sequence that got frame-shifted is a very repetitive sequence. Yet the number of bases repeated is not a multiple of 3 (in this case, 10 bases are probably the repeating unit).

What this means is that the original protein consisted of repeats of these 10 bases, and since it is not a multiple of 3, it means that these 10 bases were translated in all three possible reading frames (the second repeat was one base offset for translation relative to the first repeat, and the next was offset one more base, etc). Moreover, none of those reading frames gave rise to stop codons. Since the 10-base repeat was translatable in any reading frame without causing any stop codons, the sequence was able to undergo an insertion which could alter the reading frame without prematurely terminating the protein.

Actually, the mutation did cause a stop codon; but the stop codon was due not to frame shift but to the sequence introduced by the inserted nucleotide. Simultaneously, the mutation introduced a start codon in a different reading frame, which now encoded an entirely new sequence of amino acids. This is the key aspect of the sequence. It had this special property that it could tolerate any frame shift due to the repetitive nature of the original DNA sequence. Normally in biology, a frame shift causes a stop codon and either truncation of the protein (due to the premature stop codon) or destruction of the abberant mRNA by the nonsense-mediated decay pathway. Nonetheless, the nylonase enzyme, once it arose, had no stop codons so it was able to make a novel, functional protein.

Most proteins cannot do this. For instance, most genes in the nematode have stop codons if they are frame-shifted. This special repetitive nature of protein-coding DNA sequences seems really rare; one biologist with whom I’ve discussed the matter has never seen another example like it. Maybe it’s more common in bacteria. Thus, contrary to Miller, the nylonase enzyme seems “pre-designed” in the sense that the original DNA sequence was preadapted for frame-shift mutations to occur without destroying the protein-coding potential of the original gene. Indeed, this protein sequence seems designed to be specifically adaptable to novel functions.

There is something very special about the nylonase host gene that isn’t true of most genes in general and gives it much greater evolvability. As an aside, the function of the original gene (before it mutated into a nylonase) appears unknown (I’d be grateful for any insight here). The original paper suggested that the host gene was unlikely to encode a functional enzyme on account of lacking the amino acids normally found in active enzymes, so maybe it played some structural role that was not critical for the cell (no mention was made whether the host gene was a duplicate).

Here is a reference to the original paper: “Birth of a unique enzyme from an alternative reading frame of the
pre-existed, internally repetitious coding sequence”, Susumu Ohno, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 81, pp. 2421-2425, April 1984.

OHNO ON-LINE:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=345072

COMPLETE PDF:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=345072&action=stream&blobtype=pdf

[jihadjim]

Evolution is a religion just as any others. Applying mathematical probability of natural selection to EVERY species on the planet, including plants, animals, sea creatures, and insects for each have evolved from a single cell has a probability of zero taking even the most extreme estimate of the earths age into consideration. Then having to start nearly from scratch after the demise of the dinosaurs. Now THAT is taking something on faith. Indoctrinating young minds on such nonsense is not science -- its a cult. The fact of the matter is we don't know and until we do all THEORIES should be taught. Hell when I was a kid in early 70's we were being told of the coming Ice Age by the parents of these same psuedo-intellectual 'scientists'. Now its global warming - hey I got an idea maybe its the fricken Sun. By the way what caused all the global warming the eliminated the first Ice Age? Caveman cooking Bronto burgers?

Of course then there is that sticky problem of when time began and where did all that matter come from that was involved in the big bang.

As bug bunny says 'what a bunch of moroooons'

[mdmathis6]

I saw a program once concerning the darker side of near death experiences....some folks come back swearing they've been in hell but only God's grace with a stern admonition to change their ways had saved them from His eternal wrath!


The darker side of NDE's are what we should be paying closer attention to!

[jps098]

You make a classic error. You limit God's power. Keep in mind that the creationist has faith in the Bible, and knows that the original creation cannot be tested anymore than the Big Bang.

The Bible says Adam and Eve were created as adults, as well as the plants and animals being mature. IF A GOD can produce a mature system, would not this mature system include photons of light and energy in transit?

The issue for you is the big IF. Since you do not see God as a possibility, you do not see how God overcomes your objections.

Having spoken with a few 6K types myself, I have noted that most consider your objection for light's time of travel as meaningless because they argue that a God that creates the universe is also the God that sets the laws of nature and a miracle is the suspension of those laws.

[doc30]

it is NO WONDER I.D. has been making the inroads it has

ID has made inroads only with the uneducated. Science education in the U.S. is degenerating into intellectual affermative action by letting IS in the door. The title of the articel is correct. Implementing and [un]education in ID means science has to be destroyed. Every branch of science must be gutted, rewritten and warped to fit ID. The U.S. will ot be a leader in science any more. The only thing that will stop it is by importing scientists from other countries where religion isn't taught as science.

[trisham]

It goes without saying that scientists are smarter, more honest, and more rational than the rest of us. Didn't you get the memo where it told us that we weren't allowed to question this?

*****************

LOL! I thought it was a law.

[atlaw]

I believe it was Julian Huxley (but it might have been a different Huxley) who said, "Darwin's theory allowed us to get rid of God, and God was really getting in the way of our sex lives."

Yeah, those biologists. Always at the disco in their open necked shirts, gyrating, snorting coke and arranging yet another orgy. We have to crack down on that corrupt and sinful pack of hedonistic criminals before its too late. And burn their evil writ -- the dreaded biology text.

[Sam Cree]

I'm starting to get the idea, after reading this article, that the whole question of ID vs evolution is more an argument of philosophies than an argument of science. Of course in the past, I believe naturalists did also refer to themselves as philosophers.

[Join Or Die]

I base my moral foundation on the following logic tree:

1. Would I be upset if someone did to me, what I am about to do to them?
   1. Yes (Don't do it)
   2. No
      1. Even if I am fine with this happening to me, would my action violate someone elses private property and in turn rights?
         1. Yes (Don't do it)
         2. No (Go for it)

For example:

1. If I feel like punching someone in the face randomly (I don't really.) I ask myself, would I want to be punched in the face? The obvious answer is no, so it would not be moral to punch someone else in the face.
2. If I feel like groping that cute girl: Would I mind if she came up to me and groped me? There's a chance I wouldn't mind if I was attracted to her so I ask myself the second question: Would my groping her violate her private property/rights? Yes it would because her body is her private property and I have no right to touch it without her explicit permission
3. I feel like helping a lady trapped in a burning car: Would I want her to help me if I was trapped under a burning car? You betcha! Time to save a life.

I was not raised in a religious environment (My single experience at sunday school was traumatic at best, but I don't hold it against all religion) but I was raised in a family that taught me to respect others and treat people the way I want to be treated from an early age. Throughout my short life I have developed the rules I described above as my method for determining what is right and what is wrong. I follow those rules because I respect my fellow man, not because I want something.

[Sam Cree]

"Which means that science is itself is based upon a simple faith statement: we have to believe that when scientists say something is true, we know it is true."

I think it more to the point to say that when science demonstrates something through the scientific method, we have good reason to believe the experiment. No argument, though, that the scientific method is often overlooked.

OTOH,If I am not mistaken, evolution is taught as scientific theory rather than as truth.