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.
How about this definition.
Human: Any living organism that differs by at least 1% from the genome of a chimpanzee, but not by more than 2%.
That would be us, and only us. The gorilla and all other apes have a greater than 2% difference in DNA from a chimp.
Do you qualify?
The bacterial flagellum has already been dealt with on another thread.
Welcome to the evolutionists.
And still no answer.
How is asking for the definition of human bogus? Unless you just don't have an answer, then you consider it bogus. I understand scientists often disagree about a lot of things but something as basic as the definition of human should be something they can agree on.
Why didn't you just say that? Humans breed, thereby making them human.
I may very well misunderstand it, but I believe that ID theory is an attempt to quantify the information content of biological systems. It is based upon the premise that a complex and highly specific system, regardless or origin, that performs a given specific function cannot arise through unguided evolutionary processes. If it can, then the Darwinists need to step up to the plate and at least propose such a mechanism. They have not yet done that.
The designer's name is totally irrelevant. Is this really so hard understand?
Irrelevant or unknown? I would like to hear opinions on this.
what's the evolutionary explanation of homosexuality?
(Scientific Community):(ID) :: (Catholic Church):(Copernicus)
Not true. It has been elucidated many, many times.
ID rests on two principles: irreducible complexity amd purposeful arrangement of parts--both of which are sophistry. How does one test for irreducible complexity? According to Behe, one sees the "puposeful arrangements of parts." And what is the operational definition of "purposeful arrangement of parts?"
This is not science nor can it ever be with such "slop" in the foundation of basic terms--it is, as I have said, pure, unadulterated sophistry.
Magnetism. Magnetic colons and pelvic bones. :-)
And mathematics tells us that there are an infinite number of possible causal pathways for every possible structure and pattern, the vast majority of which are not 'intelligent' by the weak definition used here.
I'm still waiting for a rigorous definition of 'intelligence' from the ID proponents. A hypothesis built upon handwaving is still handwaving.
'Human' is a probability distribution -- it has no definition.
I'll listen to the IDers when they can provide a rigorous definition of 'intelligence'.
I'd like to know so I can kick his butt.
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