Posted on 11/13/2005 6:07:54 AM PST by NYer
CBN.com – SEATTLE, Washington - The Dover, Pennsylvania school board is on trial in the state capitol. Their crime? They wanted to tell high school students once a year that evolution is only a theory. They also wanted to mention an alternate theory: Intelligent Design, or ID.
That was too much for some parents. They sued, claiming ID is religious and therefore illegal in school. The judge will decide the case in the next few weeks.
So is ID really just religion in disguise? Do both biology and astronomy support ID? And who are these people promoting ID?
To answer those questions, we went to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the major proponents of ID.
Dr. Stephen Meyer is the head of Discovery's Center for Science and Culture. He says to ban design theory as mere religion is wrong.
"And in fact,” Meyer said, “it's a science-based argument that may have implications that are favorable to a theistic worldview, but the argument is based on scientific evidence."
But perhaps these ID experts are not really reputable?
Mayer stated, "These are people with serious academic training. They are Ph.D.s from very, not just reputable -- but elite -- institutions. And they are people doing research on the key pressure points in biology and physics, and so their arguments are based on cutting-edge knowledge of developments in science."
So what is the evidence from researchers like biochemist Dr. Michael Behe, a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute?
He is an expert on a special kind of bacteria called flagella. Inside the bacteria are exquisitely engineered ‘inboard motors’ that spin at an amazing 100,000 revolutions per minute.
Darwin said that such complexity must have developed piece by piece. Behe said that is bunk. All the pieces must be in place at the same time or the motorized tails would never work.
Darwin's gradual theory has no good explanation for that -- ID does.
Behe makes the case for ID in a video called "Unlocking the Mystery of Life." The video’s narrator declares, “A thimbleful of liquid can contain four million single-celled bacteria, each packed with circuits, assembly instructions, and molecular machines..."
"There are little molecular trucks that carry supplies from one end of the cell to the other,” Behe explained. “There are machines that capture the energy from sunlight, and turn it into usable energy."
ID experts say the more you know about biology -- and some of the weird creatures like this island lizard -- the worse it gets for Darwinism.
Consider the workings of the genetic code. That code produces all kinds of molecular machines, plus all the other components of life. ID advocates say that to believe those components are just Darwinian accidents takes a blind faith in the creativity of dumb molecules.
So with growing evidence of ID, isn't Lehigh University proud of this cutting-edge scientist who teaches there—and wrote the 1996 bestseller "Darwin's Black Box?" Hardly.
In August, all the other (22) biology faculty members came out with a political statement on the department's Web site. They stated that "Intelligent design has no basis in science."
But they cited no evidence, and made no references to any scientific research.
Dr. John West, a political scientist at Seattle Pacific University, is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. He says these political responses to scientific issues are getting nasty.
West remarked that "hate speech, speech codes, outright persecution, and discrimination is taking place on our college campuses, in our school districts, against both students and teachers and faculty members."
In fact, universities are evolving into centers for censorship. Five years ago, Baylor University dismissed mathematician Dr. William Dembski from his position, primarily because he headed a center for ID there.
This September, the University of Idaho banned any dissent against evolution from science classes -- a slam on university biologist Dr. Scott Minnich, a noted supporter of ID.
"The school seems to be confusing where it's at,” West said. “Is it in Moscow, Idaho, or the old Moscow, Russia? ...in issuing this edict that…no view differing form evolution can be taught in any science class."
And at Iowa State University, more than 100 faculty members have signed a petition against ID -- an apparent political attempt to intimidate ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez because he writes about ID.
Gonalez is, in fact, co-author with philosopher Dr. Jay Richards of "The Privileged Planet." Both scholars are also connected with the Discovery Institute.
The book and related video argue that astronomy also shows evidence of design. For instance, the earth has numerous aspects just right for our existence.
Gonzalez explained, "...We find that we need to be at the right location in the galaxy...that we're in the circumstellar habitable zone of our star (correct distance from the sun)...that we're in a planetary system with giant planets that can shield the inner planets from too many comet impacts...that we're orbiting the right kind of star -- it's not too cool and not too hot.”
These are just four of 20 some characteristics of earth that make our planet unique -- right for life, right for discovery by human science.
Richards said, "So you have life and the conditions for discovery happening at the same places. That, to us, suggests that there is something more than a cosmic lottery going on. That sounds like a conspiracy rather than a mere coincidence. So that to me is a tie-breaker in the question."
And there is more -- the finely-tuned underlying rules of the universe-- or physical constants. One of them is gravity. But what if gravity were not constant?
A film clip from Privileged Planet says: "Imagine a machine able to control the strength of each of the physical constants. If you changed even slightly from its current setting, the strength of any of these fundamental forces -- such as gravity -- the impact on life would be catastrophic."
In plain terms, a bit more gravity would mean any creature larger than the size of a pea would be crushed into nothing. And a little less gravity would mean that the Earth would come unglued and fly off into space.
But Darwinism has been maintaining that advanced life is easy to produce all over the universe.
"Almost everything we've learned in the area of astrobiology suggests that, 'Look, this is just not going to happen very often' -- now that might be sort of depressing for script writers for sci-fi movies, but that's where the evidence is taking us," Richards said.
Despite the attacks on ID, Meyer said the design interpretation of the evidence is exposing Darwinism as a theory in crisis:
"I think we're reaching the critical point where Darwinism is going be seen as simply inadequate,” Meyer asserted, “ -- and therefore the question of (intelligent) design is back on the table."
Just as this city of Seattle has all the earmarks of ID, so does nature, except that nature is infinitely more intricate.
I notice the main article was no exception. I swear I didn't know someone had already used the word "howler" on this thread.
I thought that the author was kind of making a mistake there about the flagella thing.
I swear I didn't know someone had already used the word "howler" on this thread.
That monkey in Brazil is getting pretty loud.
the spin begins
Being heard is not the issue at all. The issue is "venue". That each subject is taught in an appropriate time and place. A private church is the proper place for teaching ID, not a public school. A public school is the proper place for teaching scientific theory, not religious propaganda. The ID fanatics have strapped on their suicide belts of religious propaganda and want to set themselves off in the public schools. It will not lead to more "Christians" as they hope, but too more atheists and worse, the Koran being taught in American public schools. Be careful what you wish for.
Then he no doubt knows what these "special kind of bacteria called flagella" do to little children, and he no doubt admires and loves the designer for thinking this one up.
yep. good response, too.
The problem here is that intelligent design is not a theory. It's only a hypothesis.
Herein lies the problem of I.D.
The belief in the existence of a Designer (caps intended) has been one based on faith. Faith, by definition is not proof or provable.
The statement: "If 'a' is so; then 'b' must be true", more simply; "See the beautiful complexity of this watch? There MUST be a watchmaker who made it"), is not theory.
It's supposition. "Pre-theory" if you like. Not the stuff of science class. There is a cutoff.
Personally, I cannot imagine Lamborghinis, Reuben sandwiches, Maui and Harry Reid are simply the result of an unfeeling cosmos clacking some quarks together at random. They are all sublime and wonderful examples of a watchmaker's art.
Well, not Harry Reid. But you get my drift...
If "ID" was truly a "new" idea, it might be rational to hold out some hope for that scenario. Unfortunately... "ID" is thousands of years old, and *still* hasn't come up with squat.
As I wrote in earlier thread:
Because the scientific community is a monolith, impenetrable and often hostile to new theories, intelligent design proponents have to turn to the public schools to recruit support, a witness said Monday. [...] Fuller talked of intelligent design as being a possible scientific-revolution in waiting in which it challenges the "dominant paradigm" of evolutionary theory. [...] But during cross-examination, he said intelligent design — the idea that the complexity of life requires a designer — is "too young" to have developed rigorous testable formulas and sits on the fringe of science. He suggested that perhaps scientists should have an "affirmative action" plan to help emerging ideas compete against the "dominant paradigms" of mainstream science. [...] As a philosopher, Fuller testified he remains open to all new views, even though he maintains that at the moment, evolutionary theory is a better explanation of the biological world.And in reply to an attempted rebuttal:What the heck is this "new views" propaganda? "ID" isn't a "new" view, it's a very, very *old* view. It existed for thousands of years before science as we know it today began around 1650, or evolutionary biology in 1859.
"The idea that the complexity of life requires a designer" is hardly "too young" to have "developed rigorous testable formulas", it has BEEN AROUND FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, and *still* hasn't managed to come up with anything that holds water in a testable, falsifiable manner.
"ID" has been the world's oldest dead-end hypothesis.
Science in general, and evolutionary biology in particular, arose after thousands of years of ID's *failure* to advance human knowledge or produce workable theories or techniques. *Science* is the "newcomer" here, and has managed to gain enormous widespread acceptance and produce *incredible* results (which a couple of centuries ago would have been considered utter sorcery), precisely because it proved vastly more insightful than the age-old presumption of "ID".
And during centuries of stunning scientific progress in every field imaginable, ID has still produced... nothing but further excuses of how they "just need a few more years, then you'll *really* see results!"
Perhaps Fuller should get a clue.
"I want to see where intelligent design is going to go," Fuller said.
Fuller should brush up on history. I've seen where ID has gone. Absolutely nowhere in over 10,000 years. What are the odds it'll finally produce some results *now*?
What is in fact young and absurdly underdeveloped [...] is the notion that a generalized test for the products of an intelligent actor might be feasible.
*Everything* about ID is "absurdly undeveloped", and my point is that they have no excuse, since the ID postulate is hardly a "new" one, it has been around for millennia.
And yet, throughout all of human history, and throughout the entire rise of science, and despite millions of "true believers" across all that time who desperately desired to produce some evidence of ID to shut up those uppity "naturalists" (think of all the brilliant minds who were devout "IDers" and adept at science, like Newton), they've still come up empty after all this time.
Old religious views (the only such views around for 'thousands of years') don't propose such a test (or care about one, since they take a supernatural 'designer' literally on faith.)
See above. There have always been countless of the devout who also sought in vain for "evidence of ID" within philosophy, within science, etc.
Is it really so clear that one can't come up with an information theoretic test [...] ?
What *is* clear is that the IDers have so little evidence or established body of work that even after all this time, they admit that their "science" is in its "infancy" with regards to results. And yet, for some reason, they're absurdly confident that they'll have a breakthrough "any day now", if only those cranky scientists will lower their standards enough to let the IDers catch up...
I think the word intended was "flagellate." Probably, the author misheard it. Still, he's out of his depth in a mud puddle.
I can just hear him say, "Get flagella out of here!" I think you are probably right, though I'm no scientist.
Then why the rush to censor competing theories?
The fact that "IDers" *have* to rely on faith clearly indicates that they can't rely on actual evidence for their position, because they have none.
several inaccuracies...
1. Abiogenesis is not a part of the theory of speciation through mutation and selection known colloquially as "the theory of evolution"
2. Random mutation is one described and statistically predictable (meaning: given a large population of operant genetic samples, a known period of time, and known environmental factors, the rate of mutation is predictable even though the precise loci of individual mutations cannot be predicted) mechanism. Another is polyploidy. Another is viral insertion.
3. you evidently do not understand the second law of thermodynamics, and misapply it in your starting assumptions.
4. there is no censorship of ID - there is open dissection, analysis, and rebuttal of it as non-science. It has no positive data, describes no mechanism, makes no predictions, and is not falsifiable.
The rules are not knowable, not even under basic arithmetic.
But, we can be sure that no future Universe will violate this.
A basic property of ID is the hypothesis that the rules in whatever state they are discovered, favor humanity.
The rules may be something like Darwin's pareto optimization.
That there exists pareto optimization just highlights the game theoretic nature of the Universe.
I would expect that there is sufficient fodder in this concept alone to argue that certain Darwinian theory is a special case of ID.
Then why the rush to censor competing theories?
Nothing's being censored. Get a grip.
As I pointed out earlier, however, people are refusing to allow lies to be told in science class. That's not censorship, that's basic academic standards.
Similarly, science journals prefer not to publish shoddy crap, which is why most "ID" articles to date (when the IDers bother to submit any at all, which is rare) get bounced -- they suck as actual science. And the reason for this is because ID itself is a pseudoscience pretending to be a real science.
So are snowflakes. You can make the argument that God made every snowflake. But quite obviously He did not do so in the manner implied in Genesis. A "Special Creation" of every snowflake.
Life is beautiful, but species came about via evolution, which many Christians think was Gods most elegant creation.
The author says he wanted the low-down, so he went to the ID side and talked to one guy. That's apparently how you get the story on a controversy.
He didn't understand squat. He came back and wrote it up. The editor looked at it, said, "Man, I don't understand all that technical stuff but that's heavy!" and rubber-stamped it to go.
If he'd talked to ANYBODY else and showed them what he had from his Meyer interview, that person would have said, "Bud, you've confused organs and organisms."
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