Intelligent design is not creationism (Stephen Meyer)

In 2004, the distinguished philosopher Antony Flew of the University of Reading made worldwide news when he repudiated a lifelong commitment to atheism and affirmed the reality of some kind of a creator. Flew cited evidence of intelligent design in DNA and the arguments of "American [intelligent] design theorists" as important reasons for this shift.

Since then, British readers have learnt about the theory of intelligent design (ID) mainly from media reports about United States court battles over the legality of teaching students about it. According to most reports, ID is a "faith-based" alternative to evolution based solely on religion.

Contrary to media reports, ID is not a religious-based idea, but an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins. According to Darwinian biologists such as Oxford University's Richard Dawkins, living systems "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose".

But, for modern Darwinists, that appearance of design is illusory, because the purely undirected process of natural selection acting on random mutations is entirely sufficient to produce the intricate designed-like structures found in living organisms.

By contrast, ID holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by a designing intelligence. The theory does not challenge the idea of evolution defined as change over time, or even common ancestry, but it disputes Darwin's idea that the cause of biological change is wholly blind and undirected.

In recent years, biologists have discovered an exquisite world of nanotechnology within living cells - complex circuits, sliding clamps, energy-generating turbines and miniature machines. For example, bacterial cells are propelled by rotary engines called flagellar motors that rotate at 100,000rpm. These engines look like they were designed by engineers, with many distinct mechanical parts (made of proteins), including rotors, stators, O-rings, bushings, U-joints and drive shafts.

The biochemist Michael Behe points out that the flagellar motor depends on the co-ordinated function of 30 protein parts. Remove one of these proteins and the rotary motor doesn't work. The motor is, in Behe's words, "irreducibly complex".

This creates a problem for the Darwinian mechanism. Natural selection preserves or "selects" functional advantages as they arise by random mutation. Yet the flagellar motor does not function unless all its 30 parts are present. Thus, natural selection can "select" the motor once it has arisen as a functioning whole, but it cannot produce the motor in a step-by-step Darwinian fashion.

Natural selection purportedly builds complex systems from simpler structures by preserving a series of intermediates, each of which must perform some function. With the flagellar motor, most of the critical intermediate structures perform no function for selection to preserve. This leaves the origin of the flagellar motor unexplained by the mechanism - natural selection - that Darwin specifically proposed to replace the design hypothesis.

Is there a better explanation? Based on our uniform experience, we know of only one type of cause that produces irreducibly complex systems: intelligence. Whenever we encounter complex systems - whether integrated circuits or internal combustion engines - and we know how they arose, invariably a designing intelligence played a role.

Consider an even more fundamental argument for design. In 1953, when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotides in DNA store and transmit the assembly instructions - the information - in a four-character digital code for building the protein molecules the cell needs to survive. Crick then developed his "sequence hypothesis", in which the chemical bases in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. As Dawkins has noted, "the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like".

The informational features of the cell at least appear designed. Yet, to date, no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information needed to build the first living cell. Why? There is simply too much information in the cell to be explained by chance alone.

The information in DNA (and RNA) has also been shown to defy explanation by forces of chemical necessity. Saying otherwise would be like saying a headline arose as the result of chemical attraction between ink and paper. Clearly, something else is at work.

DNA functions like a software program. We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know that information - whether, say, in hieroglyphics or radio signals - always arises from an intelligent source. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed: "Information habitually arises from conscious activity." So the discovery of digital information in DNA provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a causal role in its origin.

Thus, ID is not based on religion, but on scientific discoveries and our experience of cause and effect, the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. Unlike creationism, ID is an inference from biological data.

Even so, ID may provide support for theistic belief. But that is not grounds for dismissing it. Those who do confuse the evidence for the theory with its possible implications. Many astrophysicists initially rejected the Big Bang theory because it seemed to point to the need for a transcendent cause of matter, space and time. But science eventually accepted it because the evidence strongly supported it.

Today, a similar prejudice confronts ID. Nevertheless, this new theory must also be evaluated on the basis of the evidence, not philosophical preferences. As Professor Flew advises: "We must follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Stephen C Meyer edited 'Darwinism, Design and Public Education' (Michigan State University Press). He has a PhD in philosophy of science from Cambridge University and is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle

How do you suppose human language evolved?

That's a tall order... and I'm not necessarily the best person at FR to ask..
blam or Sunken Civ could probably direct you to the proper GGG lists concerning anthropology and history of language..

I would venture this much...
We know that animals use basic sounds and calls for such things as mating, and some animals like wolves use calls for location, ( as do whales, dolphins ) and wolves also use calls to the hunt, indicating prey has been found..
Likewise, wolves, apes, etc., use certain sounds to indicate warning, submission, threat or anger,.. basic emotive states..

I would surmise from this, that (very) early humans did much the same until we advanced to "symbolic thought" and expression.. The association of specific sounds to specific items, or symbols of specific things..
Example: A sound already associated with food.. Extension, good food, bad food, plant food, meat food.. further extension, berries, roots, tubers, grass and seeds, nuts.. fresh meat, old meat, (scavenged) rabbit, deer, elk, antelope, buffalo/bison, horse, bear,...

First such symbolism would have been materialistic, dealing with concrete, identifiable items, and only much later extending into ideas like love, hate, compassion, mercy, trade, gift, theft, leader, etc..

Most words that would gain use in language would be utilitarian, in that they were useful words and symbols, useful enough to be passed on from one group to another, one generation to another..

Isolation of certain groups of humans would see the development of different languages, whose root words can be traced back from our present day languages..
I recall from other discussions that there are several root language groups, I am unsure of the number presently conjectured..

That's not what I said. I said that unless you can provide empirical evidence, you're just engaged in storytelling. Without empirical evidence, saying that X turned into Y is no different than saying "God did it."

You seem near the edge of unscientific discourse. "Empirical" evidence can take more than one form. Creationists like to pretend that the only meaningful "empirical" evidence is to observe directly the common origin of species--essentially, anything short of watching it happen in a time machine isn't "proof".

"Empirical evidence" simply means claims that can be experimentally verified or falsified. For example, endogenous retro-viruses are subject to the empirical claim that only species with a common ancestor will share an ERV at the same site. Basically, the claim would be falsified if one found an ERV shared by humans and gorillas but lacking in chimpanzees.

In this case, the claim that the flagellum is irreducible is falsified by exhibiting a simpler structure which is fully functional--but not necessarily as a motor. That's been done: biologists have found simpler flagella in the wild. They've also found simplified versions of flagella, used to inject toxins into victim cells. They've also created bacteria in the lab with functional flagella despite snipping out many genes. So the flagellum isn't irreducible.

Biologists don't actually claim that the flagellum evolved by that pathway, however. The toxin-injecting structure is produced by a complete set of flagellum genes, with many of the genes turned off. Thus they believe that the simpler structure evolved from a flagellum, rather than vice versa. Other pathways have also been suggested; for example, the flagellum is closely related to a structure used by stationary critters to anchor themselves in place. In such critters, the flagellum doesn't turn, and is sticky.

that is your opinion and certainly not scientific!

Interesting take. . . not.

So how is ID scientific? What hypothesis are they putting fort that can actually be proved? Have any experiments been designed to test these? Are there any proofs?

ID posits that life is simply too complex to have come about naturally. That, sir, is an opinion and nothing more.

The Theory of Evolution posits that complex life arose from simpler forms (proven overwhelmingly by the fossil record) and that the driving force behind this is genetic mutation (proven overwhelmingly by the study of genetics.)

There have been countless studies, experiments and other validations of the Theory of Evolution.

There have been none for ID. The best they can come up with is a fictional conflict within the scientific community and biased and incorrect interpretations of what Evolution is or means.

The FSM is as good an explanation as any.

I'm curious as to your definition of science. The definition I use covers all of these things.

I thought your definition was Psychology..
Let me check..
Your post #29.. " Philosophical argument IS science, however, many folks use faulty logic and/or invalid arguments. "...

NOW you want to change the argument to a definition of Science..

I pointed out.. "One definition" of Psychology, and said I accepted Logic as scientific, but not stuff like ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and epistemology..
That is why I originally stated my opinion that Psychology is not science.. It includes discussion/debate on subjects like religion, morality, and other subjects that cannot be dealt with under the scientific method..

I will not play your Game of changing the subject...
If your personal desire or goal is the self-gratification of "winning" the argument, instead of a search for truth and knowledge, then simply declare to yourself that "you have won" and go about your business..

But you do agree that language is unique to humans?

No..
Rudimentary language exists, as I stated among the animals.. to what extent is presently difficult to determine..

There is at least some evidence that the Porpoise is quite intelligent, and may have a language that is quite complex..
There is at least one example among apes, Koko, that has learned American sign language...
While her intelligence is probably on the 10 year old level, she has the capacity to utilize language once it is shown to her..She (and other apes) don't have the vocal equipment for human speech.. and probably don't have that additional mental bridge to creative symbolism that humans employ..
Koko was able to pass on her use of sign language to her offspring.. A totally unexpected development...
Gorillas and Chimps may be far more intelligent than we have been giving them credit for in some respects, and more limited in others.. There is still a lot of research to be done in animal intelligence and communication..
Some parrots and other birds have recently shown what appears to be the ability to use language in a creative and constructive manner.

I think language exists in varying degrees among several species, from the rudimentary to the complex..

So wouldn't you assume apes would be able to communicate more like humans than other animals?

More like humans?
That is highly debatable.. More like apes would be accurate.. better than most mammals and birds, probably..

I would be hard put to make the distinction between whether certain species of the great apes have the skill or capabilities that make them able to communicate "more like humans"..
I don't have the expertise in the field..

Koko has expressed fondness, jealousy, frustration, ( in various forms, including personal frustrations over things like sex, attitude, relationships, personal freedom, etc..) possession, personal identity, sadness and loss, happiness...
She makes jokes, expresses anger and her likes and dislikes...
Much of her communication is very "human" in that respect...

But she had to be taught..
Her creativity is limited to "words" she has learned from her teachers and caretakers.. ( she can combine learned words to make "new" words for new ideas or things, but seems to lack the capacity to actually "make" a new word of her own devising.. )

So, there is not only a physical limitation as to vocal hardware, but a mental limitation as to concept and creativity..
I don't think we know yet, where to draw the line..

Likewise, Porpoise, Parrots, etc.. that have the ability to vocally mimich human speech have so far shown very limited mental ability as well..
In the case of Porpoise and Parrot, it may be a difference in thought process in the former, and mental capacity in the latter..
I think the porpoise will be found to be very intelligent, but operates (mentally) on a different level.. We will have to find a common ground on which to communicate..
The parrot however, IMHO, will probably never be much than a living tape recorder with limited original thought capability.. I just don't think they will be found to be intelligent enough for any meaningful use of language..

I'm not sure where you're getting Psychology from. Didn't bring up Psych.
I take exception to your demeaning view of certain philosophic subject, like epistemology and yes, even morality, as being 'unscientific' or not subject to the 'scientific method'.

As a matter of fact, the first google hit for 'scientific method' has the premier book on the Philosophy of Science (by Thomas Kuhn) listed.

You do realize that the scientific method is a philosophical system of inquiry?

And to put forth logic as the only valid field in Philosophy is to display a certain misunderstanding concerning the nature of the study.

Guess what I got my degree in? I'm a big Physics geek, too, hence my love for the Philosophy of Science. Sure, there are twits, but they usually don't earn the degree.

And only if we share something do I 'win'. If I've offended then we've both lost.

I'm not sure where you're getting Psychology from. Didn't bring up Psych.

You're absolutely correct.. I must have had a Dyslexic moment there, and somehow trasposed Philosophy to Psychology without realizing it..
The Definition I supplied however, was for Philosophy, not psychology..

Fact remains, Philosophy is, generally speaking, speculation upon a subject or topic..
It deals with beliefs, ethical behaviour, morality, and concepts.. existence, God, meaning of life..

I will still argue that Philosophy is not Science..
It is conjecture..

Further, I would note that Religion is not Science either..
It is not "demeaning" in any sense of the word to refuse to include an unrelated discipline within a class..

I take no "offense" at your argument..
But fact is fact.. Philosophy is not Science..

As a matter of fact, the first google hit for 'scientific method' has the premier book on the Philosophy of Science (by Thomas Kuhn) listed.

Actually, that link lists this book..

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962).

Further, from Wikipedia, " Philosophy of Science "..

--------------------------------------------------------

The philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this respect, the philosophy of science is closely related to epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of language.

The philosophy of science seeks to explain such things as:
* the nature of scientific statements, concepts, and conclusions, and how they are created
* the types of reasoning used to arrive at conclusions and the formulation of the scientific method, including its limits
* what means should be used for determining the validity of information (i.e. objectivity)
* how science explains, predicts and, through technology, harnesses nature
* the implications of scientific methods and models for the larger society, including for the sciences themselves.

--------------------------------------------------------

Note the study of concepts, assumptions, ethics, implications..
All philosophical, ethical, moral, etc..

How did the transformation from laying eggs to live birth happen? Did it occur among different mammals at the same time? Why do the monotremes still lay eggs?

Still don't know anything? Does ignorance need to be presented in science class as "science?"

In the chart below, modern times are up top. The lower you go, the older.

The likeliest history:

Placentals  Marsupials Monotremes Reptiles
   |             |          |         |
   |             |          |         |
   ---------------          |         |
          |                 |         |
          |<--Live Birth    |         |
          -------------------         |
                   |                  |
 (hair,            |                  |
 jaw/earbone       |                  |
 changes, etc.)->  |                  |
                   |                  |
                   --------------------
                             |
                             |

There has been controversy in the past whether the marsupials branched from the line leading to placentals, as above, or monotremes. Molecular data is tending to confirm the version above, the "therian hypothesis."

Less than three minutes from my post to your response. How much of this did your little brain get?

Phylogenetic analysis was carried out on RAG1 from seven placental, 28 marsupials and all three living monotreme species... The relationship between the three groups of mammals is consistent with a therian history of mammals, with the monotremes as the sister group to a clade containing marsupials and placentals.

You've got to get out of the instant-response War Room and start reading and thinking.

As for using a computer not making you a Luddite, I can't imagine what your theory is for how that happened. Perhaps God waited 2000 years before he let angels start pushing electrons through the wires?

Here's part of the section on anatomical vestiges in Talk Origins 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. (Example 5, a bit over halfway down the page):

Reptiles and birds lay eggs, and the emerging young use either an "egg-tooth" to cut through a leathery keratinous eggshell (as found in lizards and snakes) or a specialized structure, called a caruncle, to crack their way out of a hard calcerous eggshell (as found in turtles and birds). Mammals evolved from a reptile-like ancestor, and placental mammals (like humans and dogs) have lost the egg-tooth and caruncle (and, yes, the eggshell). However, monotremes, such as the platypus and echidna, are primitive mammals that have both an egg-tooth and a caruncle, even though the monotreme eggshell is thin and leathery (Tyndale-Biscoe and Renfree 1987, p. 409). Most strikingly, during marsupial development, an eggshell forms transiently and then is reabsorbed before live birth. Though they have no need to hack through a hard egg-shell, several marsupial newborns (such as baby Brushtail possums, koalas, and bandicoots) retain a vestigial caruncle as a clear indicator of their reptilian, oviparous ancestry (Tyndale-Biscoe and Renfree 1987, p. 409).

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.


Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe hardcover Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference	The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side Is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate by Delvin Lee "Del" Ratzsch	Science and Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective Del Ratzsch