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.
I was making fun of the original poster. I also happen to be a scientist who believes in God and accepts evolution.
Then don't argue that ID is the "newer" theory. It just makes you look dumb.
To me the mistake that most people make is assuming God is a seperate deity, a man/being who sits in the clouds and makes all these decisions. What I believe is true is that everything is God, there is no seperation. When you wonder if God is intellegent it depends who you talk to. You talk to Ann Coulter you are talking to God as intellegent, you talk to Ted Kennedy you are talking to God as a moron. To deny there is no God is ridiculous. If there were no God there would not be anything. That there is something instead of nothing proves that God exists, but again all of "this" could all be a dream. It`s the Matrix!! AAAHHHHH!!!!!!! It must be! How else could there exist such illogical things such as liberals and Hillary? OMG it`s TRUE!!! AHHHH!
IDer's are to science what Cynthia McKinney is to politics.
" Old or new is beside the point."
The claim was that older scientists are afraid of new ideas; that ID was a new theory. I pointed out that ID (in it's present form)is older than evolutionary biology (in it's present form). ID had its day and lost. It has yet to provide a testable claim about the alleged designer.
Creationists are to science what Bill Clinton is to your daughters.
Looks like the FR evolutionists need to have a talk with the Harvard evolutionists and get them straightened out since "the origin of life was never a part of evolution." Those ignorant Harvardites.
That wouldn't follow logically, either.
But let's tackle a couple of those assumptions. Where has it been shown that 90% of scientists are atheists? Or is that a label that is being placed on them if they don't believe in a 6,000 year old earth?
Self-proclaimed atheists? Give me a link. Anything.
I'd guess the number is in the single digits.
Fact is, you don't have to be a scientist to be a Darwinist. I don't have to be a scientist to be a Galileoist. I don't have to be a manufacturer to be a Henry Fordist.
If you pour a cupful of theology into a pot of science watered down with a broth of statistics and sociology, I guess you come up with this article.
Hey, it's a point of view, and expressing it is okay with me. Not all points of view are required to make sense before they're published.
Id is to science what "The Da Vinci Code" is to Christianity.
I'm not sure anybody said that the emergence of the first life isn't an important question, just that its a separate question from the observed change in allele frequencies over time we call evolution.
ID is to science as... um, no wait, there is no connection. :)
Why I did!! I saw her, liked her, she liked me, we engaged in reproduction and produced little ones that were slight variations of ourselves but were slightly changed or different. They have had little ones that are slightly changed and different. We are the variety of a population. I have observed evolution (ongoing change and difference) and predict it will continue. Did you not have any selection and remain a clone from a clone?
No they aren't. Most scientists are also Christians. You really don't see how this is possible, do you?
And the word "selection" is a verb (See #12).
No, "select" is a verb. "Selection" is a noun.
Sir Linksalot has entered the world of bizarre self-parody.
Seeing as how he is on the CRIDer (your) side, I will let this comment stand.
From This article
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.
Maybe you should ask the author of this article for more info about the National Post article.
Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to 'intelligent design,' to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.These Steves are only the tip of the scientific iceberg, because the name "Steve" is given to only about 1% of the population. Therefore, the 700 Steves probably represent about 70,000 scientists. See also Project Steve update.
The Steves alone are greater in number than all the scientists (of every name) who have signed statements questioning evolution, and most of the evolution skeptics aren't biologists. For example, the much-publicized list of 500 names collected by the Discovery Institute includes only about 154 biologists, less than one-third of the total. Those 500 signed a rather ambiguous statement, which says:
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.In contrast, two-thirds of the 700 Steves are biologists, so the biologist-Steves are about 466 in number. Steves are 1% of the population, so they represent approximately 46,600 biologists. Compare that number to the 154 biologists' names collected by the Discovery Institute. They're the totality of biologists who are evolution skeptics. These competing lists clearly tell us that evolution skeptics are a tiny fringe group -- about one-third of one percent of biologists.
Therefore, notwithstanding the unending demands to "teach the controversy," there literally is no scientific controversy about the basic principles of evolution. Scientists, especially those in the biological fields, are all but unanimous in their acceptance of evolution.
I'm a mechanical engineer, a thermdynamics kind of guy. While evolution certainly occurs (slow gazelles end up dead), there is also obviously an "evolutionary gradient". That is, you don't see that defy physics- which is akin to saying there are evoltionary limits and a preconceived master plan of what is possible. So, I don't see how one position negates the other.
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