Posted on 10/20/2005 6:39:01 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Intelligent design and evolution proponents agree that a test on bacterial flagellum could show if it was or wasn't able to evolve, which could provide evidence to support intelligent design.
But neither side wants to test it.
The test calls for a scientist to place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under selective pressure and let it grow for 10,000 generations — roughly two years — to see if a flagellum or an equally complex system would be produced, according to testimony on Wednesday. A flagellum is a whip-like structure that can propel the bacteria.
Michael Behe, biochemistry professor at Lehigh University, testified in U.S. Middle District Court that he didn't know of anyone who had tested bacterial flagellum that way, including himself.
During cross examination by plaintiffs' attorney Eric Rothschild, Behe said he hadn't completed the test because he has better ways to spend his time. He also said he already knows intelligent design is science.
"It's well-tested from the inductive arguments," Behe said. "When we have found a purposeful arrangement of parts, we have always found this as designed."
Outside court, Dover school board members Alan Bonsell and Sheila Harkins said if anyone should perform the test, it should be the evolutionists.
"Somebody could do that if they wanted to," Harkins said. "If somebody believes intelligent design is not science, certainly they have a means to prove it's not."
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said scientists — who widely accept evolution as the cornerstone of modern biology — aren't going to take two years on an expensive test to disprove something they don't consider science.
They wouldn't bother, she said.
"This is not the first time creationists have tried to get scientists to do their work for them," Scott said.
This time around, even if the flagellum grew, Scott speculated that intelligent design proponents would say the test refuted the design of bacterial flagellum, not intelligent design.
They could still point toward design of the immune system and blood-clotting cascade as evidence, Scott said.
Behe has testified that if evolutionists ran the test and it didn't work, they would provide a reason such as they didn't have the right bacteria, selective pressure or length of time.
Evolution is harder to falsify than intelligent design, Behe said. He describes intelligent design as a fully testable, falsifiable scientific theory.
The design, he testified, is inferred from the purposeful arrangement of parts. During his time on the stand, he also testified about the concept of irreducible complexity, which means organisms are too complex to have evolved by natural selection or genetic mutation, so multiple systems had to arise simultaneously.
Scott said scientists couldn't disprove the purposeful arrangement of parts because too much could qualify. Anything outside of purposely arranged partswould be in state of chaos, she said.
The purposeful arrangements of parts is quickly taking over as the essence of intelligent design from the idea of irreducible complexity, Scott said.
Bonsell and Harkins believe intelligent design qualifies as a testable and falsifiable scientific theory, and Bonsell said he was ready for it to be put to the test.
"I'm all for scientific discovery and doing scientific experiments," Bonsell said. "They're the ones that are not."
Here's another good article from the same newspaper: Behe insists proof absent.
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do you have a link for this?
Who is "ross"?
The good old York Daily Rectum. A source of factual information every day. I used to read about the Pope being
infallible, now science is infallible. We can't know for sure what the weather will be more than a few days ahead.
We change weather forecasts every six hours. But we know
what happened a long time ago for certain (evolution). When
I went to public school in York County 30 years all points
of view were presented. They even used the G word.
All views? Really?
Even Last Thursdayism?
And it is impossible to say where I will be in a month from now, but one could find out where I was a month ago - detectives answer such a question for money.
Therefore, looking-back is a science (e.g., Paleobiology), looking-forward in a distant future an art usually practiced by charlatans (e.g., chiromancers).
I dont remember Last Thursdayism, but I do remember the
Moody Bible Institute film talking about God creating the
Earth. I hope you aren't offended that I saw such a film in 9th grade Biology, but we just weren't so broad-minded
as to blindly believe in evolution. Hey do you preach global warming, too?
I have no idea what 'evolution proponents' would agree with this. No competent biological chemist thinks a flagellum could evolve de novo in 10,000 generations in a single bacterial culture.
Troll City
Thanks for the ping!
It does seem bizarre. There's some really shabby thinking here about who has the burden of coming forward with evidence for ID. It's not the job of scientists to waste their time dis-proving ID's claims.
An IDiot wan't do it, because they haven't the expertise to properly design the experiment and carry it out. A Microbiologist won't do it because it's a waste of time and money.
No Debate Among Scientists - Regardless of Faith, Intelligent Design Is Not Science
Archaeologist R. Joe Brandon has organized a massive, four-day online campaign in the scientific community in response to the Discovery Institute's ongoing efforts to include Intelligent Design content in public school science classes. The petition, at http://www.ShovelBums.org, was circulated between September 28th and October 1st to scientists trained in evolutionary theory and gave them an opportunity to publicly state that Intelligent Design should not be taught in public schools within the science curriculum.
The results were overwhelming -- 7,733 signatories, more than half of whom are scientists with Ph.Ds. "I organized this project as a response to the Discovery Institute's four-year petition initiative which gathered only 400 scientist signatures opposing evolution and promoting Intelligent Design as a scientific theory," said Brandon.
"During my short, four-day experiment, I received about 20 times as many signatures at a rate that was 697,000 percent higher than what Discovery Institute can claim."
Scientists who signed the petition, including 21 National Academy of Science members, nine MacArthur "genius" awardees, and a Nobel laureate, object to efforts to place Intelligent Design on par with scientific theory, Brandon said.
Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University agrees. "To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory."
Michael Behe, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, is often at the center of the controversy pushing for ID's acceptance. Yet, twenty of his peers at Lehigh University remarked collectively that "As Michael J. Behe's faculty colleagues ... we lend our voices to the chorus of nearly all scientists who conclude that 'Intelligent Design' is not a scientific theory, but rather a loosely veiled attempt to explain natural phenomena by invoking the concept of a supernatural entity. Intelligent Design is not a scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution and has no place in the biology classroom."
The Discovery Institute introduced a "Friend of the Court" brief in the ongoing Kitzmiller v. Dover case on October 3rd in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that scientists agree that there is no scientific theory in Intelligent Design. The brief, signed by a comparatively scant 85 scientists, asserts that "the nature of science is not a question to be decided by the courts."
Signatory and biologist Mark Siddall of the American Museum of Natural History replied, "This is not a fight about what the nature of science is. Scientists have already determined that. It's a fight about what our daughters and sons will be taught is the nature of science."
Siddall, who helped Brandon analyze the massive response to the petition, added, "R. Joe's efforts elicited an overwhelming response from the scientific community -- one that cut across lines of faith as deeply as it did across fields of scientific study."
Shovel Bums LLC, http://www.shovelbums.org, is a free service for all levels of archaeology and Cultural Resources Management (CRM) employment. This 8,500 professional member community was founded in 1999 by R. Joe Brandon and has grown by word of mouth to be the largest archaeology organization in the world.
read later
Hmmmm. I graduated in 12.
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