Posted on 09/28/2005 8:56:34 AM PDT by Crackingham
Supporters of intelligent design argue the concept is not religious because the designer is never identified. But this morning, in the third day of testimony in a federal court case challenging the Dover school district’s inclusion of intelligent design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the designer is God.
Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin on Trial” and “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.”
Johnson, known as the father of the intelligent design movement, wrote of “theistic realism.”
“This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that this reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology,” the writing stated.
Pennock was being questioned by plaintiffs’ attorneys. He will be cross-examined after a morning break.
I did misunderstand your response. Let me go back to the original statement. ID argues that it is the best explanation for the natural world, the appearance of life, etc. I don't see how that is more closed than evolution claiming the same. You can substitute evolution into your response and it is equally valid. We are arguing that unless natural processes can account for certain things better than they do, another answer, ID, fits better. The closed system seems to me to be evolution--which has never yet had to account step by step how one being becomes another. I agree with you that there has to be positive proof for either side to claim victory; but surely pointing out the weakness of the opposition and waiting for an answer is a part of scientific inquiry.
The difference is that evolution requires fossil evidence and DNA evidence to conform to what is possible with a strict common geneology, a single family tree.
ID has no constraints and no predictions. It is an empty hypothesis.
The fossil evidence shows most life started at roughly the same time, and that it hasn't changed since. There is no tree--more like a field of grass. Evolution fails its own tests.
ID has no constraints and no predictions. It is an empty hypothesis.
See: http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1156
Jake
"I like the cartoon (Gary Larson?) where two scientist are at a blackboard with a giant equation written on it explaining the creation; right in the middle of the equation is the comment: "and then something happens here" and then the equation goes on. I think it is the perfect example of scientist not accepting God but allowing for him in their studies."
You missed the caption from the cartoon: "I think you need to work a bit more on the middle, Dr. Jones."
The computer you're sitting in front of is an "observed physical phenomenon". Are you saying it's unscientific to theorize that it arose from anything other than natural causes?
Nothing, as long as you don't try to pass it off as "science" when it clearly isn't scientific.
It shows the flagellum seems to be made of coopted parts via a tinkering process. That doesn't make it a very good candidate to be touted as "irreducibly complex."
Yet, you would think that to prove one system arose from nothing but random chemicals, then transformed itself to something else, one ought to have something a little better than the catch all, murky process, "why, it evolved!"
Are you moving the bar here? Supposedly, some flagellum somewhere is as irreducibly complex as a simple mousetrap. Now you seem to be babbling about abiogenesis. That's more or less another topic. Don't be a shifty little weasel. Be a man. We have trouble finding things that meet Behe's definition of IC.
There's another problem with Behe's waving of IC about as his personal breakthrough to God. Even if something appears tightly IC as Behe defined it, there are known scenarios by which it can have evolved. There's more than one, sorry!
From a less than glowing review of Behe's book:
For one, Behe thought he had invented Irreducibly Complexity. On pages 203-204, he wonders if some unknown mechanism could generate I.C.-ness. He dismisses the possibility. On page 233 he compares his great discovery to those of Newton, Einstein, Pasteur and Darwin. He should instead have compared himself to Nobel Prize winner H. J. Muller [3], who invented irreducible complexity in 1939. Muller argued in some detail that evolution would routinely cause such systems. That conclusion is today a common wisdom of evolutionary biology. Behe didn't rebut Muller's argument because he didn't even know it existed. He says on page 187 that evolution always progresses by addition, but any evolutionist knows that it often happens by subtraction.
His examples - cilia, clotting, the immune system and the bombardier beetle have failed to impress experts on these specific topics. Behe doesn't seem to be up to date. Although he implies on page 114 that he is expert at computer searches for scientific articles, he somehow managed to not find pretty well the entire literature on biochemical evolution. I personally own a textbook entitled Molecular Evolution, despite his claim that no such book exists.
Behe also doesn't seem to be aware of the basic way that the history of a molecule can be studied: namely, by examining its variation across a set of living species. If the tree of descent (phylogeny) of the creatures is known from other data, then it is sometimes possible to deduce a great deal. He dismisses this on page 175, apparently in total ignorance of the successes of the method.
Behe argues that many biochemical systems would cease to function if various crucial elements were missing. However, there are many examples [4] of biochemical systems that continued to function when put to just such a test. As that article says,
"It is a hallmark characteristic of evolved biochemical systems that there are typically multiple causal routes to a given functional end, and where one route fails, another can take over."In particular, Behe spent Chapter 4 saying that the clotting cascade couldn't be reduced. But there are lab mice from which we have removed several parts of the clotting cascade, and they seem quite normal. Behe did not mention any of these experimental results, presumably because he didn't know about them.Behe argues strongly for "intelligent design". So, just exactly when did this designer operate? From Behe's examples, He can't have just created each species - Behe says on page 5 that he "has no particular reason to doubt" common descent. On page 227 Behe throws out the suggestion that the original cell contained all of the design information used later. He suggests on page 231 that scientists do research to check if it could be true.
It's really puzzling that Behe thinks research is needed. We already know facts proving that theory wrong. For one thing, at least billions of species have existed. It's quite out of the question to store that much information in one cell. Next, there's no mechanism for making the stored information come out at the right time. We've studied the genes of many species, and found no such stored information in any of them. A simple calculation shows that mutation would have scrambled the information long before it was time to use it. And why do different groups of species do the same thing in different ways? Eyes seem to have arisen independently at least 40 times, and we say that because the eyes work in unnecessarily different ways. Clotting and cilia are different in different creatures, too. In short, how come he didn't know that his suggestion is already disproven?
Exactly if my child has the option to take a course that includes reference to God good. However, science is usually mandatory and I'm very uncomfortable with it being taught there. Simple fact is what type of Chrisitanity is going to be taught. I know if the snakes come out my kids outta there LOL.
It is a long piece but argues 1) Evolution cannot provide a direct pathway, 2) Evolution has not provided an indirect pathway, and 3) ID makes more sense. If you are truly interested in beating the ID argument, this paper is the best I've seen for irreducible complexity. I've read papers against irreducible complexity that use the flagellum, mousetrap, and other examples that really fall short of the mark.
#2 Does ID predict the continual filling in of gaps?
This is from "Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge." Dembski.
The challenge that here confronts evolution is not isolated but pervasive, and comes up most flagrantly in what’s called the Cambrian Explosion. In a very brief window of time during the geological period known as the Cambrian, virtually all the basic animal types appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no trace of evolutionary ancestors. The Cambrian Explosion so flies in the face of evolution that paleontologist Peter Ward wrote, “If ever there was evidence suggesting Divine Creation, surely the Precambrian and Cambrian transition, known from numerous localities across the face of the earth, is it.” Note that Ward is not a creationist.
So to answer your question, Yes, with substantially the same species. Just like you get. Isn't it interesting that the vast majority of fossils don't fall into the tree diagram? They don't display a common ancestor unless you pick and choose only the fossils you want. That leaves the rest unaccounted for. Unless you have a better theory like ID.
#3 See: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=496 Page 5
Horizontal gene transfer was identified in bacteria and archaea already by 1990. It was thought for the following decade that hgt was not a significant factor for the more complex eukaryotes. Recent studies of complete genome sequences however have identified substantial hgt in many of the branches of the eukaryotic domain. Examples include hgt involving the protists (unicellular eukaryotes) such as the parasite Giardia Lamblia11, flowering plants,12 algae,13 fungi,14 and nematodes, the most abundant of all metazoans, including the worm Caenorhabditis elegans as well as many plant and animal parasites.15 The latter group is especially significant for it involved relatively complex, multicellular organisms, and because some of the transferred genes are critical to the functioning of the recipient species.
Thus horizontal gene transfer must be considered a significant source of genetic variation in all three domains of life. The purely vertical pattern of inheritance axiomatic to Darwin’s theory of evolution from his own writings down to the present clearly is inadequate to explain the observed complexities of the origin of genes.
#4 You said test four is a big loser either way, but that isn't correct. If it confirms the test, then the result credits the theory that devised the test. If not, not. You're mixing it up by saying this way is bad for ID and this way is good for Evolution... At any rate, you may have an interest in: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=496 Page 6.
The third unexpected discovery deals with regions of a genome that do not carry the code for a protein. At the time that the project to sequence the complete human genome began, it was already realized that most of the genome did not code for a protein. As little as 2 percent (and probably even less) of the human genome of some 3 billion base pairs was thought to be in the actual genes. The rest was thought to be largely “junk DNA,” that is, stretches of DNA that had no function. The evolutionary theoretical basis for the idea of “junk DNA” was that if a segment of DNA was not part of a gene that carried the code for a protein, then there was no mechanism for natural selection to act on this segment. The segment would be hidden from the action of natural selection because it would not be expressed in any form that affected the functional properties and hence the survival of the organism. Instead the segment would be affected by periodic random mutations that would scramble any code that originally might have been carried by the segment.
Today the experimental evidence suggests that much, though probably not all, of the non-coding regions of the genome have critical roles in the development and function of an individual. Completion of the human and mouse genome sequences in particular has resulted in useful insights into the function of non-coding DNA.17 There appear to be fewer genes in the human genome than the more than 100,000 that many specialists thought were present before the completion of the human genome project. Most current estimates range from 30,000 to 60,000 genes, with a few going higher. The small number of genes suggests that the non-coding regions must have key roles to play, including even repetitive portions of the DNA.18 As the authors of a recent review point out, “From genomic analysis it is evident, however, that with increase of an organism’s complexity, the protein-coding contribution of its genome decreases....”19 Clearly the non-coding regions must have crucial roles in accounting for this complexity.
So now the challenge goes back to you. It is not good enough to say that evolution is right because ID is wrong.
1)What are the predictions that evolution makes that it hasn't backtracked on--like irreducible complexity, the tree diagram, etc? Do you have any links to anything that actually demonstrates the pathways used when one life form becomes another? Evolution is still just a theory, and it has a lot of holes in it that are better explained by ID. Every time it gets down to the nitty gritty of evolution--the pathways used, you get wishful thinking and the explanation "it evolved."
2)Show me the best example your side has come up with of an actual pathway that could have been used for any transition. It needs to be plausible, step by step, and can't resort to the magic ingredients of "millions and millions of years" and "it just evolved."
A simple question inevitably comes up with ID -- who, or what, designed the designer?
And to say that this question is irrelevant to the idea that biological organisms on earth were designed is to deny a very rudimentary line of inquiry when forensically analyzing an item for evidence of design -- who designed it, and for what purpose?
These questions inevitably lead to the conclusion that the designer is an undesigned, omnipotent, prime mover whose motivations we cannot understand. Sounds like God to me.
This is too close to true. "ID is the theory that ID is the best explanation."
In fact, ID has precious little intellectual content or explanatory power. ID = "Goddidit!"
It comes in two flavors, weak and strong. The "strong" flavor can be stated "Every word in the in sacred text ..." [Insert name of sacred text, e.g. 'Book of Genesis', here] "... is absolutely literally and concretely true." To my own best knowledge and belief, there are no unfalsified versions of the strong flavor around. For instance, the literal Genesis version of strong-flavor ID had already flunked against the hard evidence of geology 30 years before Darwin published.
Then there's weak-flavor ID. That is stated, "No matter what you see, Goddidit. Whatever you find, God left it looking like that." That hasn't been falsified and never, ever will be. It's also intellectually empty and useless, telling you nothing, nothing, nothing about the world.
Wow.
I really can't imagine how one explores the idea that a big supernatural guy decided to create the singularity at t0 of the universe unless he decides to show up and reintroduce himself.
My "babbling about abiogenesis" is not babbling about abiogenesis. Again, for Evolution to make its case, at some point some evolutionist is going to have to demonstrate one life form becoming another without appealing to "it evolved." I'm looking for a pathway, and until your side puts one up, its a pipe dream.
The computer you're sitting in front of is an "observed physical phenomenon". Are you saying it's unscientific to theorize that it arose from anything other than natural causes?
Yes. 'anything other than natural' = supernatural. Scientific theories do not deal with anything supernatural. It is unscientific to theorize anything arose from supernatural causes. Man is not supernatural. The computer I am sitting in front of is man-made. You get the idea.
I found http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Defense_of_ID.pdf very interesting, pages 8-11 deal with your objection very well. They argument boils down to an explanation of how science is currently locked in place to only use methodological materialism. The graphic of the chess board is telling.
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