Posted on 01/30/2006 9:40:22 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Intelligent design is not creationism
By Stephen C Meyer (Filed: 28/01/2006)
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.
But is this accurate? As one of the architects of the theory, I know it isn't.
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.
What signs of intelligence do design advocates see?
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
Dig a little deeper and you may be surprised.
THANK YOU! God works His wonders in mysterious ways. I am astounded at how many people think that IF you think natural selection is a believable explanation for how we developed, you are THEREFORE an atheist. For the life of me, I can't understand how they equate the two. I think it is arrogant in the EXTREME when Christians presume to say how God has -- and has not -- worked his wonders.
The bible tells us that the devil disguises himself very well and masquerades as "righteous" well enough to fool many people. Creationists need to beware: they may be pawns of the devil, because denial of evolutionary theory trades in things that are false. Anyone who believes that planet Earth was created start to finish in 144 hours 4,000 years ago is either scientifically ignorant or in serious denial. Is that kind of denial where God and faith are found -- or is where thrive lack of faith and the Devil??? I have enough faith in God to see His hand in evolution, and enough belief in the Devil to understand that he, also, works in mysterious ways -- such as Creationism.
Fossil evidence is real, the conclusions of thoughtful, intelligent (and often as not religious) men are sensible, and it looks as if the truth is that we evolved over time in various homanid forms. God trades in truth, not lies. Furthermore, evolution does NOT negate any of the ten commandments, nor does it negate the seven deadly sins -- indeed, it seems to confirm behavioral rules, as in: if you indulge in stupid behavior as a society, you risk extinction. Adapt and survive; fail to adapt, and perish. God's rules are unchanging, and we must adapt to them or we perish, as many brutal, pagan civilizations have perished in the past.
Our natural and cultural world is ever-changing, and we must adapt to those physical and cultural realities or we will perish. At the same time, we must adapt to God's unchanging behavioral rules or we will perish. There is, to me, a very nice symmetry. I have faith that God is truth and that He truly works in strange ways. I see His hand in evolution.
You and I agree..
I think that would be an excellent discussion..
Well, let me help you then.
http://www.nwcreation.net/abiogenesis.html
Shhhhhh! The evols are still dreaming that it is. They get rather nasty when they are awakened from their dreams.
Without such challenge, mankind would simply falter and die..
The questions are there because we need to learn the answers..
Call it scientific endeavor if you will, or a need to understand the cosmos, whatever..
If you accept from the start, that there is cause and effect then something ( I call it "God" ) caused the beginning.. ( creation, big bang )
That "God" at the very least, initiated a process that created a physical universe with specific laws concerning mass, energy, time, space, and Life..
We have barely begun to understand the basics so far...
In time, we may catch a scant glimmering of what created everything.. maybe even why..
But anyone that claims they have all the answers now, really presumes too much..
We'll probably never be able to comprehend completely...
But we can have Faith that the Universe, Life, and Mankind is all part of the plan..
So is Evolution.. It's a very small part, but a part..of a much greater plan..
It got us to the point we could appreciate who and what we are, and ask ourselves how we got here..
Whether or not you are buying it isn't the question. The question is whether or not there are problems with the theory of evolution.
And atheists should never be allowed to teach.
Oh, come now..
That's a bit harsh, don't you think ?? ;o)
Not exactly. The debate is still very much alive. The problem for opponents of IC is that, unlike earlier arguments, which were based on ignorance, modern arguments are based on extensive knowledge. Behe declares the flagellum irreducible because we fully understand its operation.
The main problem with the alternatives given to explain away IC systems is that they remove the bias from the evolution equation (directed chance) and you begin working with random probabilities again, and even Dawkins will admit that evolution utterly collapses when it's a strictly random process.
An earlier post nailed this. ID gives a foot in the door to the "God people" and so is attacked for that reason and that reason alone.
You might want to read up on some biochemistry before making too much out of this. I don't blame you, I blame a populist press, but the amino acids found in space suggesting life spontaneously arises would be like saying that discovering ethanol in a gas cloud means that one of these days a meteor's going to land filled with Miller beer.
How do you suppose human language evolved?
This "controversy" only exists in the minds of ID'ers.
The article suggests that ID'ers move on to ribosomes. Their evolution is still unknown.
Then he'll want to read Index to Creationist Claims
-- and --
"The Quixotic Message"
That's true--but he makes a lapse in reasoning when he effectively assumes that the flagellum was "always meant" to be a motor. A simplified version of the flagellum turns out to be a fully functional system for ejecting toxins from the bacteria, and some biologists have proposed a plausible chain of development in which such an ejection system developed into a motor, first by adding a component for more effective dispersal, which provided the side benefit of moving the organism away from its own ejecta.
The burden of proof is on Behe to prove that the structure could not have evolved through selection, and if he's willing to carry that burden then he's doing real science. But it's a heavy burden. My favorite illustration is: suppose that almost any mutation of the bacterial flagellum gene resulted in higly explosive bacteria. This would be good evidence for irreducible complexity, since any hypothetical ancestor would have exploded before it could reproduce.
even Dawkins will admit that evolution utterly collapses when it's a strictly random process.
It's probable that there's equivocation going on about the meaning of "strictly random", but putting that aside I'd like to see the quote from Dawkins. You are in effect saying that he has indicated that evolution can't work without ID, and yet he is well known to say the opposite.
You don't think that a theory that DNA is coded similarly to computer language is worth discussing in a science classroom because you "care" about your children's education?
Gosh, my kids are going to find these things and other theories very exciting when they are old enough to study them. My kids may be the scientists who prove or disprove this, since yours won't be learning about it.
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