Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
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Posted on 10/07/2005 4:03:19 AM PDT by gobucks
It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually.
Here's why:
1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: families that reproduce people tend to reproduce ideas, as well. The most vocal non-scientist proponents of ID are those delightfully fertile Catholics, Evangelicals, and similarly right-leaning middle-class college-educated folk -- the kind whose children will inherit the country. Eventually, the social right will have the sheer manpower to teach ID wherever they please.
Despite what angry ID opponents may tell you, the advent of ID won't hurt American productivity a bit. Belief in ID does nothing to make believers less capable in science or engineering. No geek in the world will find his computer mojo diminished because of his opinions on irreducible complexity. To the contrary: ID might make biology and the natural sciences more appealing to believers who might otherwise find science to be too far removed from God's presence. As ID appeals to the conservative mindset without hurting anyone's skills, why wouldn't the social right embrace it?
To be sure, believers don't need ID to accept modern science. The Catholic Church, for example, made peace with traditional Darwinist theory long ago. Many scientists see no contradiction between Darwinism and their own religious beliefs. Rightly understood, Darwinist theory doesn't diminish God's glory any more than any other set of rules governing the world. An omnipotent God can act through scientific media as well as miraculous interventions.
But if ID is correct, then the intelligent designer of life must have lavished astonishing care and attention upon the human race to give it unique dignity and value -- as well as handicaps and temptations that only virtue can overcome. The God of Moses and Jesus didn't leave fingerprints at this scene, but it's His MO all the way. And as believers are detectives of the Almighty's presence, they're naturally more inclined to follow the clues revealing that familiar pattern.
2) ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.
"Ewww…intelligent design people! They're just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who're trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads."
There. I just saved you the trouble of reading 90% of the responses to the ID position. Vitriol, condescension, and endless accusations of bad faith all characterize far too much of the standard pro-Darwinian response to criticism. A reasonable observer might note that many ID advocates appear exceptionally well-educated, reasonable, and articulate; they might also note that ID advocates have pointed out many problems with the Darwinist catechism that even pro-Darwin scientists have been known to concede, when they think the Jesus-kissing crowd isn't listening. And yet, even in the face of a sober, thoughtful ID position, the pro-Darwin crowd insists on the same phooey-to-the-boobgeois shtick that was tiresome in Mencken's day. This is how losers act just before they lose: arrogant, self-satisfied, too important to be bothered with substantive refutation, and disdainful of their own faults. Pride goeth before a fall.
3) ID will win because it can be reconciled with any advance that takes place in biology, whereas Darwinism cannot yield even an inch of ground to ID.
So you've discovered the missing link? Proven that viruses distribute super-complex DNA proteins? Shown that fractals can produce evolution-friendly three-dimensional shapes? It doesn't matter. To the ID mind, you're just pushing the question further down the road. How was the missing link designed? What is the origin of the viruses? Who designed the fractals? ID has already made its peace with natural selection and the irrefutable aspects of Darwinism. By contrast, Darwinism cannot accept even the slightest possibility that it has failed to explain any significant dimension of evolution. It must dogmatically insist that it will resolve all of its ambiguities and shortcomings -- even the ones that have lingered since the beginning of Darwinism. The entire edifice of Darwinian theory comes crashing down with even a single credible demonstration of design in any living thing. Can science really plug a finger into every hole in the Darwinian dyke for the next fifty years?
4) ID will win because it can piggyback on the growth of information theory, which will attract the best minds in the world over the next fifty years.
ID is a proposition about information. It contends that the processes of life are so specific and carefully ordered that they must reflect deliberate action. Put simply: a complex message implies an even more complex sender. Separating ordered but random data from relevant, purposeful data -- that is, separating noise from messages -- is one of the key undertakings of the 21st century. In nearly every field, from statistics to quantum physics to cryptology to computer science, the smartest people on the planet are struggling to understand and apply the unfathomable power of information that modern technology has bequeathed to them. We have only scratched the surface of the problem-solving power that the Internet and cheap computing power open to us. As superior intellects strive to understand the metaphysics of information, they will find the information-oriented arguments of ID increasingly sensible and appealing. ID will fit nicely into the emerging worldview of tomorrow's intellectual elite.
This emerging worldview will take a more expansive view of science than does the current elite. Consider the "meme" meme. We all know what a meme is: a thought pattern that spreads from person to person and group to group like a viral infection spreading through a population. Yet memes cannot be bisected, or examined under a microscope, or "falsified" via the scientific method. Even so, we can make statements about memes with varying degrees of objective truthfulness. Is it possible to speak of a "science" of concepts? Right now, the scientific establishment says no. This unhelpful understanding of science will soon be discarded in favor of something more useful in the information age.
5) ID will win because ID assumes that man will find design in life -- and, as the mind of man is hard-wired to detect design, man will likely find what he seeks.
The human mind seeks order in everything. The entire body of knowledge available to mankind reflects our incorrigible desire to analyze, systemize, hypothesize, and theorize. It may well be that our brains are physically configured in such a way that we can't help but find order and design in the world. Don't look so surprised, evolutionists -- a brain attuned to order and design is a brain more likely to survive. The ability to detect design is essentially the ability to detect patterns, and the ability to detect patterns is the key to most applications of human intelligence. Hammers tend to find nails, screwdrivers tend to find screws, and the human mind tends to find design. Of course, the propensity to see designs doesn't mean that the designs aren't actually there. But the quintessential human perception is one of design -- and, to the extent that perceptions define reality, a theory built on the perception of design has a huge advantage over its competitors.
The only remaining question is whether Darwinism will exit gracefully, or whether it will go down biting, screaming, censoring, and denouncing to the bitter end. Rightly or wrongly, the future belongs to ID. There's nothing irreducibly complex about it.
Douglas Kern is a lawyer and TCS contributor. To see another view of the debate over ID, read "Descent of Man in Dover" by Sallie Baliunas on TCS today.
All of those subjects are important. We are living in a society where technology is key to our competitiveness. Sadly, we are turning into a society where the understanding of our technology is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. That is not a good position to be in.
This article is truly hard to refute, except by saying "it's dumb" ...
ID will win out for the very reasons that he states, just as Relativity won out over Newtonian physics. Most of the time Newtonian mechanics works just fine, but it is in the breach that it is proven insufficient.
You certainly can't have the Bible and evolution. The Bible clearly states man was created by GOD - not evolved from apes. How do you reconcile that?
I'm not sure if I see which side of the creationist arguemetn you are on, but I will say that creationism and genetics do not mix. Genetics is supported by evolution and is used to establish ancestral relationships. If you believe in creationism, then you cannot, in good faith, understand genetics.
http://www.atheists.org/evolution/
How about this?
Are you saying there can be no advances in technology without the fervent belief in the TOE?
I'm glad you highlighted the Darwinism...exit paragraph.
There are too many folk who seem to accept that this is just an attempt to add a few sentences to a general biology class.
It is an attempt to replace science with theology.
Upthread there was a post pointing out that, of all the reasons listed for id "winning", none was that it's scientifically correct!
I'll go find it and post a ref
Oh. Well since you say so, what you've said about the integrity of the scientific method MUST be true, and I MUST by faith accept its veracity.
Conflict over, yea!
Wrong.
An atheist organisation can say anything it wants...you need to get a ref from the field itself.
Relativity did not 'win out' over Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics is the basic material taught in undergraduate science classes. Relativity is a refinement of Newton for more extreme conditions.
Your statement theat ID will 'win' over evolution has two problems when compared to your physics example. First, by making this statement, you are arguing that evolution is real and ID further refines evolution. In other words, you are saying that ID incorporates evolution which means you support evolution.
Secondly, and more importantly, you are saying ID offers and extrapolation of evolution. It offers testable predictions that evolution does not have. Unfortunately, you don't understand that ID makes no testable predictions and offers no new insight. It is a supposition at best and has no observed evidence to support it. Nor does it have any means of testing to falsify it. Therefore, it is not science and it does not 'fill the gaps.' Remember, EVERY scientific theory has gaps, but that is not sufficient to invalidate those theories.
"Becuase it is mathematically provable that there exist no computable test that can differentiate between a random sequence and a highly complex sequence."
But that may be because a random sequence doesn't really exist in the first place and that they are ALL highly complex sequences. Have you been trapped by your own logic?
How can it be when it doesn't explain anything.
One REALLY important thing a theory about the history of life has to address is how did animals end up where they are today. For example how did marcupials end up predominantly in australia, why does Hawaii have no indiginous mammals. Why does it have the plantlife it does?
How can ID take over from evolution when evolution presents a very good answer for these questions, but ID hasn't even put forward any answer to this question?
I am saying that advancement in science is limited when "God did it" becomes an explanation. And in biology, yes, advances will be limited because evolution is the framework through which much of biology is based. I guess you are not worried about the next avian flue pandemic because evolution doesn't work. Species were created accoriding to their kind and don't evolve into other kinds. So the avian flu virus cannot evolve into a form that is human transmittable. I guess you can say that to the 50 million people who died last time such a virus EVOLVED.
Actually that's God.
It was post 64 by Kjobs.
"Why is it non-scientific? First because it is not testable: it is impossible to design a test which potentially falsifies ..."
--->
Astronomers, Cosmologists, and other Physicists have been working on explaining certain other non-biological natural phenomena which similarly have no 100% bullet-proof "testable", way to do experiments and recover definitive data from those tests. For one very simple example, consider the problem of what happens to matter and information when it enters a "Black Hole" ... yet we endorse this type of research as being "science" though there is (apparently) no physical way to verify such hypotheses.
Many other high energy physics and cosmology endeavors are similarly working in the blind most of the time.
What is the difference between such research and ID hypotheses and research?
The flu virus is still a flu virus, isn't it? It didn't mutate into a frog or spider, did it?
Nop. This means that you have not developed a model to distinguish between random and seqwuential. It is intellectual bias that prevents this from being developing.
Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
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