Posted on 12/05/2005 4:06:56 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The leaders of the intelligent design movement are once again holding court in America, defending themselves against charges that ID is not science. One of the expert witnesses is Michael Behe, author of the ID movement’s seminal volume Darwin’s Black Box. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, testified about the scientific character of ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the court case of eight families suing the school district and the school board in Dover, Pa., for mandating the teaching of intelligent design.
Under cross-examination, Behe made many interesting comparisons between ID and the big-bang theory — both concepts carry lots of ideological freight. When the big-bang theory was first proposed in the 1920s, many people made hostile objections to its apparent “supernatural” character. The moment of the big bang looked a lot like the Judeo-Christian creation story, and scientists from Quaker Sir Arthur Eddington to gung-ho atheist Fred Hoyle resisted accepting it.
In his testimony, Behe stated — correctly — that at the current moment, “we have no explanation for the big bang.” And, ultimately it may prove to be “beyond scientific explanation,” he said. The analogy is obvious: “I put intelligent design in the same category,” he argued.
This comparison is quite interesting. Both ID and the big-bang theory point beyond themselves to something that may very well lie outside of the natural sciences, as they are understood today. Certainly nobody has produced a simple model for the big–bang theory that fits comfortably within the natural sciences, and there are reasons to suppose we never will.
In the same way, ID points to something that lies beyond the natural sciences — an intelligent designer capable of orchestrating the appearance of complex structures that cannot have evolved from simpler ones. “Does this claim not resemble those made by the proponents of the big bang?” Behe asked.
However, this analogy breaks down when you look at the historical period between George Lemaitre’s first proposal of the big-bang theory in 1927 and the scientific community’s widespread acceptance of the theory in 1965, when scientists empirically confirmed one of the big bang’s predictions.
If we continue with Behe’s analogy, we might expect that the decades before 1965 would have seen big-bang proponents scolding their critics for ideological blindness, of having narrow, limited and inadequate concepts of science. Popular books would have appeared announcing the big-bang theory as a new paradigm, and efforts would have been made to get it into high school astronomy textbooks.
However, none of these things happened. In the decades before the big-bang theory achieved its widespread acceptance in the scientific community its proponents were not campaigning for public acceptance of the theory. They were developing the scientific foundations of theory, and many of them were quite tentative about their endorsements of the theory, awaiting confirmation.
Physicist George Gamow worked out a remarkable empirical prediction for the theory: If the big bang is true, he calculated, the universe should be bathed in a certain type of radiation, which might possibly be detectable. Another physicist, Robert Dicke, started working on a detector at Princeton University to measure this radiation. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson ended up discovering the radiation by accident at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1965, after which just about everyone accepted the big bang as the correct theory.
Unfortunately, the proponents of ID aren’t operating this way. Instead of doing science, they are writing popular books and op-eds. As a result, ID remains theoretically in the same scientific place it was when Phillip Johnson wrote Darwin on Trial — little more than a roster of evolutionary theory’s weakest links.
| When Behe was asked to explicate the science of ID, he simply listed a number of things that were complex and not adequately explained by evolution. These structures, he said, were intelligently designed. Then, under cross-examination, he said that the explanation for these structures was “intelligent activity.” He added that ID “explains” things that appear to be intelligently designed as having resulted from intelligent activity. |
Behe denied that this reasoning was tautological and compared the discernment of intelligently designed structures to observing the Sphinx in Egypt and concluding that it could not have been produced by non-intelligent causes. This is a winsome analogy with a lot of intuitive resonance, but it is hardly comparable to Gamow’s carefully derived prediction that the big bang would have bathed the universe in microwave radiation with a temperature signature of 3 degrees Kelvin.
After more than a decade of listening to ID proponents claim that ID is good science, don’t we deserve better than this?
Indeed. Since it is not a scientific theory, there isn't any way to do butkus to it, using the scientific method.
But in the same Wistar symposium publication, C. H. Waddington (in his "Summary Discussion") hits the nail so square on the head that I will quote his remarks at great length:
The point was made that to account for some evolutionary changes in hemoglobin, one requires about 120 amino acid substitutions...as individual events, as though it is necessary to get one of them done and spread throughout the whole population before you could start processing the next one...[and] if you add up the time for all those sequential steps, it amounts to quite a long time. But the point the biologists want to make is that that isn't really what is going on at all. We don't need 120 changes one after the other. We know perfectly well of 12 changes which exist in the human population at the present time. There are probably many more which we haven't detected, because they have such slight physiological effects...[so] there [may be] 20 different amino acid sequences in human hemoglobins in the world population at present, all being processed simultaneously...Calculations about the length of time of evolutionary steps have to take into account the fact that we are dealing with gene pools, with a great deal of genetic variability, present simultaneously. To deal with them as sequential steps is going to give you estimates that are wildly out." (pp. 95-6)
This is also true of the explanation that is supposed to refute ID. Be careful, that sword cuts both ways.
Perhaps if you dispensed with the ad hominem attacks you would see clear enough to notice you just said you "voted for the budget before you voted against it" - figuratively speaking
I do not need to reconcile these statements because they are not in conflict.
As Cleopatra once said "Denial runs deep"
You stated science does not make base assumptions there can only be material explanations - then you said science makes base assumption there can only be material explanations because that is science's realm of competence. Two completely contradictory statements.
I'll not be answering the rest of your post because I don't understand it,
I see, time to dive for the tall grass.
Science isn't in the business of refuting ID. I would guess that a slight majority of scientists probably think ID is true, at this point. The vast majority of all scientists, however, would not for a moment think that ID has even begun to put its money where its mouth is in terms of putting up a theory with sufficient detail to provide for a single falsifiable test of any significant practical scientific viability. It took discrepencies in the perhilion of mercury to take Einstein's theory off the drawing board. No such equivalent test has even been proposed for ID, much less been performed.
Sometimes an insult is an ad homonem--as when it is in place of a relevant answer to an argument. Sometimes an insult is just an insult that's well deserved because one persists in being dense as a stump when something pretty simple is explained to you over and over in progressively simpler terms, and you insist on flopping around like an alligator in heat instead of thinking about what's being said to you. -- figuratively speaking.
Sounds good to me. The adventure is in the journey, not the destination as far as abiogenesis is concerned.
Are mathematical formulas "detectable"? I think you are trying to imply science is based on the dogma of empiricism which is simply not true. There is empirical science and there is theoretical science.
Explanations in terms of as yet indetectable stuff, such as God, or ID or string theory or continental drift, or a relative universe, have to eventually put up or shut up in terms of detectability.
So since string theory is undetectable therefore it is considered supernatural just as God? (actually you may be closer than you think). As for your "put up or shut up" statement - that is illogical - basic Aristotelian logic demonstrates absence of data is proof of nothing.
The only claim science makes about indectable causes, such as God or ID, is that it doesn't know squat.
So you are claiming science does not know squat about anything that cannot be "detected"? What about theoretical science?
ID is every bit as detectable as the evolution-based explanations that are supposed to refute it.
since it seems to bear repeating in formal philosophical vocabulary: philosophical materialism holds that material is all there is. Neither science nor I advance this claim, no matter how hard you squint in order to see the use of the word "material" as a claim to formal philosophical materialism.
More denial. This is your definition of science:
donh(672): Science concerns itself with material explanations of material phenomenon, because that's the function of science.
You claim all science all can do is create material explanations of material phenomenon.
This is the definition of materialism:
Materialism is the philosophical view that the only thing that can truly be said to 'exist' is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of 'material' and all phenomena are the result of material interactions.
Like it or not - deny all you like - your definition of science and the definition of materialism are identical. I don't doubt you do not fully understand your definition of science is rooted in the dogma of Materialism - but it is. Your concept of science starts with a material assumption. That is the dogma of Materialism. Science should not start out with any a priori assumptions other than man exists and is capable of rational thought. Understand that neither you nor science has proved all that exists is material therefore holding an assumption like that is dogma - not a scientific conclusion.
Finally we agree. Now just tell that to all the Evo's that claim ID has been refuted.
I would guess that a slight majority of scientists probably think ID is true, at this point.
Well, that statement was unexpected.
The vast majority of all scientists, however, would not for a moment think that ID has even begun to put its money where its mouth is in terms of putting up a theory with sufficient detail to provide for a single falsifiable test of any significant practical scientific viability.
All right - what's going on here? I agree 100% but would also like to note that natural selection is not falsifiable.
It took discrepencies in the perhilion of mercury to take Einstein's theory off the drawing board. No such equivalent test has even been proposed for ID, much less been performed.
Darn, you have ruined this entire debate - I completely agree with you.
More ad homenem attacks with a little childish logic added for flavor. So you try to justify ad homenem attacks by claiming they are justified because I don't agree with your side of the argument - OH THE IRONY!
Like it or not - deny all you like - your definition of science and the definition of materialism are identical. I don't doubt you do not fully understand your definition of science is rooted in the dogma of Materialism - but it is. Your concept of science starts with a material assumption. That is the dogma of Materialism. Science should not start out with any a priori assumptions other than man exists and is capable of rational thought. Understand that neither you nor science has proved all that exists is material therefore holding an assumption like that is dogma - not a scientific conclusion.
Maybe if you can come up with a way to measure the weight of love, or the chirality of a miracle, or the voltage of an equation, then science can deal with the nonmaterial. But until that happens, donh is exactly right: Phenomena that are unconnected somehow to the material world are forever outside of science's competence.
Darwinian evolution is accepted by FAITH; it not true science that can be tested in any laboratory. It is a belief system, not science.
"Darwinian evolution is accepted by FAITH; it not true science that can be tested in any laboratory. It is a belief system, not science."
Everything you just said is 100% wrong. Not that you care about the truth. :)
It seems to me that if this is the way materialism is defined, the science today is not materialist nor has it been for a very long time.
Having glanced through that, I see I won't be buying ReMine's book. Thanks.
Like who. All I remember reading in this thread is that ID ain't a science, which, until it manages to propose a doable experiment, is plainly obvious.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.