Witness: 'Design' Replaced 'Creation'

AP - Science ^ | 2005-10-05 | MARTHA RAFFAELE

[Junior]

HARRISBURG, Pa. - References to creationism in drafts of a student biology book were replaced with the term "intelligent design" by the time it was published, a witness testified Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school board's decision to include the concept in its curriculum.

Drafts of the textbook, "Of Pandas and People," written in 1987 were revised after the Supreme Court ruled in June of that year that states could not require schools to balance evolution with creationism in the classroom, said Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Forrest reviewed drafts of the textbook as a witness for eight families who are trying to have the intelligent design concept removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum.

The families contend that teaching intelligent design effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the separation of church and state.

Intelligent design holds that life on Earth is so complex that it must have been the product of some higher force. Opponents of the concept say intelligent design is simply creationism stripped of overt religious references.

Forrest outlined a chart of how many times the term "creation" was mentioned in the early drafts versus how many times the term "design" was mentioned in the published edition.

"They are virtually synonymous," she said.

Under the policy approved by Dover's school board in October 2004, students must hear a brief statement about intelligent design before classes on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."

Forrest also said that intelligent-design proponents have freely acknowledged that their cause is a religious one. She cited a document from the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents intelligent-design scholars, that says one of its goals is "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

Under cross-examination by school board lawyer Richard Thompson, Forrest acknowledged that she had no evidence that board members who voted for the curriculum change had either seen or heard of the Discovery Institute document.

The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.

[r9etb]

No one thinks ID is impossible. How could it be impossible? It is impossible for it to be impossible. What's the point?

Narby has stated flat-out that it's impossible, more than once on this thread. I don't claim that this is the "official" position of those opposed to ID, but it is certainly one that is loudly stated by some.

The only question of interest is whether it is necessary, and ID advocates have no curiosity about that.

That's an ad hominem statement, and probably also a strawman. But still, let's look at that "necessary" clause in light of the example we've been considering. Is ID a "necessary" condition in the case of insulin-producing bacteria? No, since one can describe a process by which it could happen without intelligent agents. Is "naturalistic processes" a necessary condition for the same example? Obviously no, because the right answer is that humans did it.

And thus your "necessary" condition fails in this specific example. One can likewise draw a more general conclusion that neither "naturalistic" nor "ID" hypotheses are "necessary." I'll go one further to say that "sufficient" also falls to the side once you enter a world where both naturalistic and "ID" hypotheses can plausibly explain observed phenomena.

But perhaps the word you're really looking for is parsimony: economy in the use of means to an end; especially : economy of explanation in conformity with Occam's razor. It

If ID is a serious intellectual proposition, it should be trying to demonstrate its own irrelevance.

A silly statement.

[js1138]

Parsimony is generally a good thing.

If anyone actually believes that irreducibly complex entities exist, they should be leading the research to reduce them. That's the way science behaves.

[Diamond]

So just because we know that an intelligent agent can recreate some naturally occurring phenomenon, doesn't mean that whenever we observe such a phenomenon there must be an intelligent designer who caused it.

Very true. The question is not whether intelligent agency can always be reliably inferred (in part, because an intelligent agent could mimic a mechanistic process) the question is, can it ever be reliably inferred from a given set of present empirical data for historical claims that are not verifiable via direct observation? It is apparent that in many branches of science these sort of abductive inferences are made all the time - Homicide detectives, historians and archeologists to name a few, because the actions of an unobservable agent can have empirical consequences in the present. I don't know what, other than a metaphysical bias that restricts a priori possible causes to only mechanistic ones as opposed to the actions of agency, that disqualifies this type of scientific reasoning from the study of origins.

Cordially,

[r9etb]

No, the problem with that explanation is that it assumes that not only was that biodiversity created through some sort of genetic engineering, that genetic engineerig was carried out so that it looks exactly as if evolution had actually produced the results.

The problem with your comment is that we already know a large number of methods by which genetic results can be tailored to specific ends. You'll find proof by searching NASDAQ under "biotech".

Which brings up another question: how do you know "exactly" what evolution looks like? Is it really indistinguishable from genetic engineering? If so, can you really be so confident in your assertions? And if not, wouldn't you be remotely interested in looking for signs of biotech in nature?

It's the equivalent of saying that even though we think we have an excellent naturalistic understanding of how rain occurs, rain is actually caused by aliens orbiting in an invisible spaceship

[r9etb]

Parsimony is generally a good thing.

Indeed. And for the example we've been discussing, which hypothesis would "parsimony" favor?

If anyone actually believes that irreducibly complex entities exist, they should be leading the research to reduce them. That's the way science behaves.

Neither here nor there: we haven't been discussing "irreducibly complex" systems, but rather a case of intelligent design for which one can suggest two plausible explanations: both ID and naturalistic.

But what you seem to be saying is that "science" is completely uninterested in anything that can't be explained solely by naturalistic processes. That's a fine ideology, but it's really stupid science.

[js1138]

Your example is natural whether it's been tampered with by humans or not.

[r9etb]

Your example is natural whether it's been tampered with by humans or not.

LOL! You're just playing with words now.

Even so ... so what? It's still intelligent design. What is it about that fact that seems to cause you such difficulty?

[js1138]

I'm not playing with words.

[r9etb]

Yeah, you're playing with words. Are you really saying that human intelligent design is somehow a special case of ID because we're "part of nature?"

[RunningWolf]

Finally, do you both agree whether the civil war happened or not, yes/no? Surely you can at least take stand on the civil war."

I already did. Are you incapable of reading?

Are you following the trial? Are these the same tactics and logic your side is using there?

Okay, this non-logic of yours how one has ever proved the Civil War happened, or proved that that the Holocaust happened, and then the you link that with your evolution and I don't get it. ooookaayyy LOL!


Wolf

[js1138]

I'm not saying anything about ID. I'm saying human intelligence is a part of nature. Anthropologists work to discover artifacts made by humans, and engineered organisms will eventually be on the list of things studied by anthropologists.

What you are talking about is forensic science.

[r9etb]

I'm not saying anything about ID. I'm saying human intelligence is a part of nature.

Sure. But this is a thread about ID. And it just so happens that that "part of nature" is capable of practicing intelligent design. Which leaves you in something of a muddle, no? Because it means you've now got to deal with the possibility of a non-supernatural, and non-naturalistic explanation for biological phenomena.

It is no longer possible for you to stand pat on the "naturalistic" explanation, confident in the assumption that the only alternative is a supernatural explanation. And yet you do just that. Why?

[js1138]

Consider a person with sickle-cell trait. Can you think of a test to determine whether this is the result of random mutation rather than the insertion of an engineered gene inserted by space aliens?

[Diamond]

No, the problem with that explanation is that it assumes that not only was that biodiversity created through some sort of genetic engineering, that genetic engineering was carried out so that it looks exactly as if evolution had actually produced the results.

That is an interesting reversal of description in the history of this debate. It seems to me that much of Darwinian explanatory efforts have been aimed at explaining how things that look designed really aren't.

The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and airliners) and things that don't (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (submarines and tin openers) and those that aren't (sharks and hedgehogs). The diagnostic of things that look (or are) designed is that their parts are assembled in ways that are statistically improbable in a functional direction. They do something well: for instance, fly.

Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

So powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-19th century to realise that it is an illusion. In 1859, Charles Darwin announced one of the greatest ideas ever to occur to a human mind: cumulative evolution by natural selection. Living complexity is indeed orders of magnitude too improbable to have come about by chance. But only if we assume that all the luck has to come in one fell swoop. When cascades of small chance steps accumulate, you can reach prodigious heights of adaptive complexity. That cumulative build-up is evolution. Its guiding force is natural selection....
The World's ten Biggest Ideas Richard Dawkins, New Scientist (September 2005)

When I see something that looks like an outboard motor my first thought is NOT that it looks like the cumulative result of an un-engineered process of random copying errors.

Cordially,

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Okay, this non-logic of yours how one has ever proved the Civil War happened, or proved that that the Holocaust happened, and then the you link that with your evolution and I don't get it. ooookaayyy LOL!"

Again, I am sorry you don't understand logic and proof.

<<<<< I already did. Are you incapable of reading?

"Are you following the trial? Are these the same tactics and logic your side is using there? "

Again, I gave you an answer as to whether I believe the Civil War happened. I said yes it did, that it would be crazy to believe otherwise, given the preponderance of the evidence. We can't, however, PROVE it happened, because proof is not something we can do outside of certain mathematical and logical statements, where all the premises are defined to be true. Creationists want evolutionists to *prove* speciation, when proof is never demanded of any other science.

What got us to this point on this thread was an assertion that it took more faith to believe in evolution than the Resurrection. This is absurd. I have repeatedly asked for ANY physical evidence that the Resurrection happened, and I am still waiting. Creationists demand absolute proof for evolution, yet they expect everybody to believe in their stories with NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE whatsoever. Why they can't just say they believe it on faith is beyond me.

They deride evolution (and a great many other sciences too, such as cosmology, geology, particle physics) as being like a *religion*, a term that they use with scorn in this case. They have a desperate need to be taken seriously by science, but when science does and finds them lacking, they can't handle it.


"...and I don't get it."

No Wolfie, I doubt you ever will.

Don't ping me again until you come up with that physical evidence of the Resurrection.

[js1138]

Of course it doesn't LOOK like that. You've got a schematic diagram. DNA LOOKS like Tinkertoys when you make your model out of Tinkertoys.

[RunningWolf]

I get it just fine. I understand logic and proof just fine, but you are going off the deep end with it.

I am not a creationist (whatever that is) and I don't deride science.

I do think the scientists (or least people here that ostensibly hold themselves out to be scientists) overreach with their wrong headed conclusions in what they divine in the evidence.

Wolf

[BMCDA]

It is apparent that in many branches of science these sort of abductive inferences are made all the time - Homicide detectives, historians and archeologists to name a few, because the actions of an unobservable agent can have empirical consequences in the present.

Yes, but this is only the case because we deal with an agent with known attributes. Especially in this case where the agent is human we have quite a good grasp of his methods, motivations, abilities and, very important, his limitations.
This is obviously not the case with an unspecified agent who supposedly did X with unknown methods and for inscrutable purposes. Such a designer is compatible with just about any observation because you don't have a 'bounded' model of the designer as is the case with human designers for instance.

I don't know what, other than a metaphysical bias that restricts a priori possible causes to only mechanistic ones as opposed to the actions of agency, that disqualifies this type of scientific reasoning from the study of origins.

No, the reason why we exclude ID if nothing is known about the supposed designer is the fact that it is not falsifiable.

[r9etb]

Can you think of a test to determine whether this is the result of random mutation rather than the insertion of an engineered gene inserted by space aliens?

Can I, personally? No. Somebody who does genetic engineering for a living would have a far better chance of proposing such a test, were one to exist, as he'd have some idea of what to look for.

Now, given that I readily acknowledge that random mutation plays a role in biological phenomena, I am not bothered by the possibility that random mutation could be responsible for sickle-cell traits. (And, given that sickle-cell traits confer some degree of immunity to malaria, I can see a mechanism by which this trait would be passed on naturally.) So a lack of a suitable corresponding test for "alien induced sickle-cell traits" would be no big deal to me.

Then again, we know that humans can at least pursue similar results -- for example, a great deal of progress is being made in the field of gene therapy for cystic fibrosis.

The question in that case would be: could one think of a test to determine whether the results of the cystic fibrosis gene therapy came as a result of random mutation? At the same time, could one think of a corresponding test to determine whether the gene resulted from intelligent agents?

[r9etb]

Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

Which just goes to show that Mr. Dawkins is not an engineer. Real engineers know that birds are far more aerodynamically elegant.