Posted on 04/15/2006 11:44:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Posted: April 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
I suggested here last week that the established authorities of every age act consistently. They become vigilantly militant against non-conforming dissidents who challenge their assumptions.
Thus when the dissident Galileo challenged the assumptions of the 17th century papacy, it shut him up. Now when the advocates of "intelligent design" challenge the scientific establishment's assumptions about "natural selection," it moves aggressively to shut them up. So the I.D. people have this in common with Galileo.
I received a dozen letters on this, three in mild agreement, the rest in scorn and outrage. This calls for a response.
Where, one reader demanded, did I get the information that 10 percent of scientists accept intelligent design? I got it from a National Post (newspaper) article published two years ago, which said that 90 percent of the members of the National Academy of Science "consider themselves atheists." Since if you're not an atheist, you allow for the possibility of a Mind or Intelligence behind nature, this puts 10 percent in the I.D. camp.
I could have gone further. A survey last year by Rice University, financed by the Templeton Foundation, found that about two-thirds of scientists believed in God. A poll published by Gallup in 1997 asked: Do you believe that "man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation?" essentially the I.D. position. Just under 40 percent of scientists said yes. So perhaps my 10 percent was far too low.
Two readers called my attention to a discovery last week on an Arctic island of something which may be the fossil remains of the mysteriously missing "transitional species." Or then maybe it isn't transitional. Maybe it's a hitherto undetected species on its own.
But the very exuberance with which such a discovery is announced argues the I.D. case. If Darwin was right, and the change from one species to another through natural selection occurred constantly in millions of instances over millions of years, then the fossil record should be teaming with transitional species. It isn't. That's why even one possibility, after many years of searching, becomes front-page news.
Another letter complains that I.D. cannot be advanced as even a theory unless evidence of the nature of this "Divine" element is presented. But the evidence is in nature itself. The single cell shows such extraordinary complexity that to suggest it came about by sheer accident taxes credulity. If you see a footprint in the sand, that surely evidences human activity. The demand "Yes, but whose footprint is it?" does not disqualify the contention that somebody was there. "Nope," says the establishment, "not until you can tell us who it was will we let you raise this question in schools."
Another reader argues that Galileo stood for freedom of inquiry, whereas I.D. advocates want to suppress inquiry. This writer apparently did not notice what caused me to write the column. It was the rejection by a government agency for a $40,000 grant to a McGill University anti-I.D. lobby to suppress the presentation and discussion of I.D. theory in the Canadian schools. Suppressing discussion is an odd way of encouraging "freedom of inquiry." Anyway, the I.D. movement doesn't want to suppress evolution. It merely wants it presented as a theory, alongside the I.D. theory.
Why, asked another reader, did I not identify the gutsy woman who stated the reason for the rejection, bringing upon herself the scorn of scientific authority. That's fair. Her name is Janet Halliwell, a chemist and executive vice president of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She said that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and the McGill application offered no evidence to support it.
The McGill applicant was furious. Evolution, he said, needs no evidence. It's fact. Apparently Harvard University doesn't quite agree with him. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard has begun an expensive project to discover how life emerged from the chemical soup of early earth. In the 150 years since Darwin, says the Globe, "scientists cannot explain how the process began."
The most sensible letter came from a research scientist. "I think that the current paradigm of evolution by natural selection acting on random variation will change," he writes. "I think that evidence will accumulate to suggest that much of the genetic variation leading to the evolution of life on earth was not random, but was generated by biochemical processes that exhibit intelligent behavior."
Then he urges me not to disclose his identity. Saying this publicly would threaten his getting tenure, he fears. Galileo would understand.
From my list of definitions (see post #79, above, for the full list):
Religion: Theistic: 1. the belief in a superhuman controlling power, esp. in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. 2. the expression of this in worship. 3. a particular system of faith and worship.Religion: Non-Theistic: The word religion has many definitions, all of which can embrace sacred lore and wisdom and knowledge of God or gods, souls and spirits. Religion deals with the spirit in relation to itself, the universe and other life. Essentially, religion is belief in spiritual beings. As it relates to the world, religion is a system of beliefs and practices by means of which a group of people struggles with the ultimate problems of human life.
That's rather lame. Religious organizations are socially self-serving by promoting the ideas of a few and providing funding and career paths for these men.
Do any of those links or books describe a falsifiable test or prediction that ID makes?
This is the third or fourth article I've read in recent weeks where pro-Iders describe the push for ID as a movement.
That kind of language is associated with religion (or cults) and political ideology. We've all heard of the communism movement, conservative movement Vs. the "progressive" movement, the charismatic movement, the scientology movement sweeping Hollywood...
Interesting that IDers see themselves as part of a movement.In the back of their minds, even they realize that this ID crappola doesn't even begin to meet the criteria for being a theory.
So if paint doesn't dry in thirty seconds it isn't going to dry, and any reference to time in invoking magic?
Darwin used observed rates of variation in domestic plants and animals to calculate the minimum age of the earth. His estimate was not surpassed in accuracy for many decades. That is the power of an explanatory model. The need for time is not going to argue in your favor.
D'oh!
For the same reason that biology blends into chemistry and chemistry blends into astronomy and cosmology, and why elements of all of these figure into geology and why many of them are important in anthropology.
Science is a seamless discipline. No one person can master all of science, so there is specialization. But everyone in science expects that all observable phenomena can ultimately be attributed to a small set of universal laws and uniform principles.
So anyone in the science of biology expects the definition of life to be pushed back in time and in simplicity, until it becomes impossible to define a precise transition between living and nonliving.
That is a expectation and a conjecture. It is not different in principle from the expectations of any other science. All observable phenomena will eventually be natural phenomena.
This does not change the fact that the study of evolution is a sepatrate discipline from the study of biogenesis. Just as planetary astronomy is a differnt discipline from that of cosmology.
I give you credit for attempting a reasonable line of argument, but no credit for responding to the correct post or poster. I am not the source of your quote, and I am not the best person to respond.
I have seen you line of argument many times, an I believe it to be faulty. Everyone carries several point mutations. They are seldom fatal or severely detrimental, and they do not need to be specifically selected in order to become widespread in a population.
It is observed in the fossil record. It is strongly indicated by genetic features. It is strongly indicated by distribution of species - ie island species being similar to nearby mainland species.
Common descent is not compatible with any possible set of observations. It is only compatible with a very small subset of possible observations. It just so happens that the set of observations that is our reality happen to be compatible with common descent. Coincidence huh?
Nor would ibe expected. What's your point?
Nor would ibe expected. What's your point?
Or ... CONSPIRACY???
Differnet mutations can be fixing throughout the population simultaneously. There is no genetic constraint that one must fix throughout the entire population before the next one can begin doing so.
Even, given the number of genes and number of alleles per gene in a typical organism, the number of zeroes after the decimal required for probabilities to combine to produce a new species is a number staggeringly small (astronomically small is not an adequate description)
Factor in what I mentioned above and redo your calculation. And I recommend you show the values you use and the workings if you want anyone to accept your conclusion. Otherwise it looks like you have just plucked the conclusion of "staggeringly small" out of thin air to support what you already believed.
Before I let you get away with this, let me ask you to back it up. What specific process or mechanism required for evolution has not been observed? Exactly where in the fossil record is a miracle required? Where else in the presumed tree of life is a miracle required? Which branch or fork requires a miracle. Be specific.
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