Posted on 10/21/2005 9:08:57 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
A test nobody wants to take
Neither side is interested in trying to prove intelligent design.
By MICHELLE STARR
Daily Record/Sunday News
HARRISBURG — 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 parts would 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."
It seems to me that if a test of growing bacteria for 10k+ generations and more under various selective pressures were undertaken, regardless of the results, the very fact the test was perform would demonstrate the testability of an ID hypothesis.
Should the test demonstrate the ability of evolution to grow a flagellum, why would the ID hypothesis then be considered falsified ?
And if so, this whole court case would then be moot and we could all pack up and leave.
I did not realize it was already posted. My purpose in changing the title is not something sneaky, but to CLARIFY the article further.
This "test" is not unlike putting Behe, or any ID/Creationist for that matter, under 'Selective Pressure' and hoping his/their decendents will eventually inherit a brain.
It was also my understanding that ID originated in astrophysics, in speculation that the universe formed with certain laws and physical properties that allowed it to stay together, whereas other combinations would have led to chaos. That had nothing to do with biological evolution, though of course the same "design" led to life.
It seems to me the ID proponents are trying to prove too much, if they claim evolution never happened.
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This "test" is not unlike putting Behe, or any ID/Creationist for that matter, under 'Selective Pressure' and hoping his/their decendents will eventually inherit a brain.
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I don't know if insulting Behe is the right approach here.
If supporters of the NS+RM mechanism did perform the test and the results were not favorable to evolution, they would just say we need more time, or the conditions weren’t right or we don’t know enought yet….ad infinitum.
And the same could be said of Behe and his cohorts if they performed the same test with the same results.
I get it! Much like Communism, they couldn't get the right people in charge to make the thing work.
If it hasn't evolved a flagellum since the beginning of time, why would it do it the next two years?
I'm not a creationist, but suspect there is a "design" underlying the progress of nature. I think the real debate is between design and total randomness. The question is "why?" Scientists can't answer it, not sure religins can answer it accurately, but they try.
I really believe that in the interest of clarity,we should call a spade a spade: neither hypothesis ( i.e. ID or Evolution as presented in the idea of NS+RM ) is really amenable to scientific verification, at least under the current mainstream definition of science.
IMHO, Dembski, Behe and his colleagues could productively adopt the following position:
(1) Evolution (biological change over time, the reproductive modification of organisms, etc.) is an observable fact. By that, they should qualify it by saying they do not MEAN macroevolution. There’s absolutely no proof that mutations have created new species.
(2) Neither hypothesis is scientifically falsifiable, which puts them on an even footing.
(3) Because the RM+NS hypothesis is nevertheless included in most high school text books as a way to explain how life formed, the complementary hypothesis (ID) must also be included for the sake of balance.
4) Natureal Selection is potentially instructive regarding the selective or “pruning” phase of life, however ID could be potentially instructive regarding the generative phase.
The above approach might possibly ( cross my fingers) take care of the educational side of the current debate.
With this out of the way, both ID and Evo sides can then be free to concentrate on coming up with a real model of biological causation, and then helping the cause of science by extending its methodology and definition.
AS it stands now, both sides are talking past each other.
Everything about intelligent design is something sneaky.
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Everything about intelligent design is something sneaky.
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And your proof for that is ????
What you actually mean is that you would like to force them to see things your way. Maybe you should be lobbying your congressmen for a few "re-education centers".
Just compare the posted title to the article title. Proof that someone's being sneaky...
Not at all.
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What you actually mean is that you would like to force them to see things your way. Maybe you should be lobbying your congressmen for a few "re-education centers".
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In an ideal world, we would follow the constitution and get the Federal government out of education and let our local communities decide whether they want to teach ID or not. This used to be the case ( when America's educational system was the envy of the world ) until the feds decided to become our educational adjudicators.
Just as I am against the Feds butting their heads in when Scopes wanted to teach evolution, I am against the same guys butting their heads in when someone wants to present a countervailing idea.
No doubt, but the rule has a purpose.
What this trial is really about is completely supressing even the suggestion that there MIGHT be a God. As usual, the ACLU and liberals in general want you to worship government and you shall have no other gods before government.
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