Posted on 10/24/2005 1:46:30 PM PDT by Invincibly Ignorant
ARTICLE: The Science Community's Myopia Over Intelligent Design by William Dembski
By attacking intelligent design theory, the scientific establishmentcontinues to insulate evolutionary biology from critique and discussion. The challenge of intelligent design for evolutionary biology is real. This is not like someone who claims that ancient technologies could not have built the pyramids, so goblins must have done it. We can show how, with the technological resources at hand, the ancient Egyptians could have produced the pyramids. By contrast, the material mechanisms known to date offer no such insight into biological complexity. Cell biologist Franklin Harold, in his most recent book, The Way of the Cell, remarks that in trying to account for biological complexity, biologists have thus far proposed merely "a variety of wishful speculations." If biologists really understood the emergence of biological complexity in material terms, intelligent design couldn't even get off the ground. The fact that they don't accounts for intelligent design's quick rise in public consciousness. Give us detailed, testable, mechanistic accounts for the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, the origin of ubiquitous biomacromolecules and assemblages like the ribosome, and the origin of molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum, and intelligent design will die a quick and painless death.
But that hasn't happened and shows no signs of happening. Nor has the "refutation" of intelligent design by scientists and scholars been nearly as successful as attacks--such as last year's "no intelligent design in schools" resolution by the American Association for the Advancement of Science--suggest.
The discussion is ongoing and vigorous. A design-theoretic research program is now taking shape. Moreover, the claim that no evidence supports intelligent design is false — plenty of evidence supports it provided that evidence is not ruled inadmissible on a priori grounds (much as Kepler's elliptical orbits were ruled inadmissible because science "knew in advance" that the orbits had to be circular).
The worst fault of the AAAS resolution is its historical myopia and the ill-effects that portends for biology education. From the start, evolutionary biology has invoked intelligent design as a foil. We don't need to explain the structure of a random chunk of rock. We do need to explain the organized complexity of biological structures like the bacterial flagellum. Why? Because they bear the hallmarks of design. (Why else would cell biologists call them "molecular machines"?). Engineering terminology is not optional here. Evolutionary biology itself makes no sense except in light of intelligent design.
What's at issue is not whether evolution has occurred or the degree to which it has occurred but whether the role of intelligence in the evolutionary process is both indispensable and empirically detectable, thus bringing intelligent design squarely within the fold of science.
Awesome arguement, Tortoise. Really ... very impressive. I am now totally persuaded that you are correct and I just need to bone up on my mathematics. Boy do I feel stupid!
I had thought that the fact that evolutionary biologists hadn't yet conceived of even one of these infinite number of pathways was troubling. Now I understand that they don't need to since the math proves they exist. Gosh, that's intellectually satisfying.
OK, I'm lying. I find your appeal to authority totally unpersuasive. Any collection of 'fundamental mathematical theorems' that prove that all outcomes are equally possible explains nothing, predicts nothing, and is ... well, trivial.
The only authority I was appealing to is mathematics. What I was referring to is the Invariance Theorem, which is one of the cornerstones of a huge swath of mathematics. The point that you missed is that "irreducible complexity" has a strict and rigorous analog in mathematics ("Kolmogorov complexity") that we can prove many things about. What Behe and others are calling "irreducible complexity" is provably NOT irreducibly complex using with straightforward application of the mathematics that defines the very concept.
Any collection of 'fundamental mathematical theorems' that prove that all outcomes are equally possible explains nothing, predicts nothing, and is ... well, trivial.
Apparently reading comprehension is not your strong suit, never mind mathematics. I did not state that all outcomes are equally possible -- you made that part up -- what I stated was that there were a vast number possible pathways between any two states under any reasonable set of constraints you care to put on the transition. The probability distribution of all those possibilities is governed by Occam's Razor; some possible hypotheses are more probable than others. It predicts a hell of a lot as it happens, as one can use the same mathematics to compute the limits of prediction and knowledge in a system i.e. it tells us the limits of what we can know and with what certainty given some body of information.
If you put any effort in actually understanding math instead of disparaging it, you might even be able to contribute something useful to this discussion.
YEC SPOTREP
Ah, could you make sense out of this statement?
You are right. I'm outta here.
What would it benefit any animal to be more intelligent now than in the past?
It isn't about faith - unless you are saying you need faith to believe in evolution.
You=your.
Does that help?
Very few organisms seem to have either found that beneficial or had the evolutionary option...mostly the primates, dolphins and elephants.
Elephants and dolphins are funtionally limited by their anatomy.
In addition, I'm not sure that evolutionary pathway is directly open to non-mammals.
Disingenuous.
It is the IDers who want to force-feed pseudo-science in a biology class to prop up their weak faith.
Are you saying their anatomy doesn't evolve?
Referent for "they" please.
If a scientist studying evolution has concerns, they can always design a research project to approach those concerns in a scientific manner.
And what might that manner be?
And as for "they" - that would be those who refuse to listen to any other side than their own - on both sides.
If you are really asking that a scientific manner is you will need to do a bit of research or take a course on what science is and how it works.
Your "they" referent doesn't seem to track with the discussion.
So I need to figure out whether evolution is actually taking place? LOL
I'm afraid I don't have that kind of spare time. But I'm sure if any major evolution occurs anywhere, I'll read it first right here.
"Over the last 10,000 years, the newly isolated populations of fish have adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions in different lakes and streams, generating dramatic changes in size, color, teeth, jaws, body armor, skeletal structures, and physiological traits. Although these differences are as larges as those normally found between different genuses of animals, they have evolved so recently that different types of sticklebacks can still be crossed in the laboratory."
http://cegs.stanford.edu/Research_Goals.jsp
Okay, I've completed my assignment for the day - lol.
Quote mining.
Their point is to use these critters in studying evolution.
What's yours?
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