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
So you admit you live in a different world than the rest of us?
That's a silly statement.
And you don't think that could be said for the evolution supporters as well? Posting the same pages over and over. Definitions of theory, etc. We'll all seen them numerous times. Or those who just sit back and call those of us who believe in God liars. Or those who state that evolution is a fact. Yeah, I can see where your side is very well represented on here.
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a38bc8996338f.htm
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b49dbcb0ba0.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/857084/posts?page=65#65.
Anything we ever say about you, you try to turn around. But the situation isn't symmetrical. Virtually all of us are totally familiar with creationist materials, the various creationist players and theories, etc. We hear you just fine. We can anticipate you easily and usually do.
Very few of you know jack about what evolution even says, preferring strawmen along the model of, "So, one day a snake gave birth to a bird. But where O where was there another little bird for it to mate with?"
If you know what's wrong with the preceding statement, tell me. If you don't, thank you for making my point.
I'm sorry, I thought this discussion was about Watson and Crick's discoveries about DNA and coding, as stated by the original author.
Are you seriously equating classroom discussion of the implications of Watson and Crick's discoveries in biology (all of the implications), to aliens and pyramids?
Biotechnology is making it hard to defend Darwinism - setting it on its head, in the words of Barry Commoner in this article. Reductionism should lead science closer to Darwin, not farther away...alas.
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-3commoner.html
Children whose science educations are denied exposure to ID implications, even as a controversy, are missing a lot, imho.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1566808/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1566771/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1564672/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1567579/posts
Of course, you can always check to see what I've posted. Unlike you, I have other interests besides evo/crevo debates.
My problem is I can't really figure out what the platypus is. Where does it fit with evolution? I'm just fascinated by them. Apparently the first scientists didn't even believe they were real. Shouldn't evolution have predicted a creature such as the platypus?
Is this science? "Where does air come from?"
I was a scientist when I was four if it is.
Are you totally stumped? Is this science?
You can't figure it out either. LOL But I didn't expect you to.
The first (non-living) platypus specimens reaching Europe in the 1790s where thought faked, yes. When should evolution have predicted this? It was already history in Darwin's day.
How does evolutionary theory tell us what the next previously undiscovered life form will be? Why haven't you answered my question on what is wrong with the argument "So, one day a snake gives birth to a bird. But where O where is there another little bird for it to mate with?"
After all, you already must be something of an expert on evolution. You know all that weary stuff we've presented on these threads over and over.
"So, one day a snake gives birth to a bird. But where O where is there another little bird for it to mate with?"
Did you really want an answer to that? You obviously have way too much time on your hands. Maybe you could volunteer to teach science at your local high school.
It is your contention that creationists retain as much from these discussions as do evos. Feel free to demonstrate.
Well, not many mammals lay eggs. I guess you are never curious about anything because you already know everything! I am quite honored you would waste your valuable time trying to explain anything to the likes of me. I am awed by your intellect!
What is evolution's analysis of the platypus? I didn't realize there was one.
Some learn from the definitions I post.
Some do not.
That's very odd for someone in your position. You would seem to be militantly pig-ignorant.
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.