Posted on 05/08/2006 2:04:49 PM PDT by balrog666
Intelligent Design is only one of many alternatives to Darwinian evolution
There is rich irony in how the present battle over Creationism v. Darwinism has taken shape, and especially the ways that this round differs from previous episodes. A clue to both the recent success and the eventual collapse of Intelligent Design can be found in its name, and in the new tactics that are being used to support its incorporation into school curricula. In what must be taken as sincere flattery, these tactics appear to acknowledge just how deeply the inner lessons of science have pervaded modern culture.
Intelligent Design (ID) pays tribute to its rival, by demanding to be recognized as a direct and scientific competitor with the Theory of Evolution. Unlike the Creationists of 20 years ago, proponents of ID no longer refer to biblical passages. Instead, they invoke skepticism and cite alleged faulty evidence as reasons to teach students alternatives to evolution.
True, they produce little or no evidence to support their own position. ID promoters barely try to undermine evolution as a vast and sophisticated model of the world, supported by millions of tested and interlocking facts. At the level that they are fighting, none of that matters. Their target is the millions of onlookers and voters, for whom the battle is as emotional and symbolic as it ever was.
What has changed is the armory of symbols and ideas being used. Proponents of Intelligent Design now appeal to notions that are far more a part of the lexicon of science than religion, notably openness to criticism, fair play, and respect for the contingent nature of truth.
These concepts proved successful in helping our civilization to thrive, not only in science, but markets, democracy and a myriad other modern processes. Indeed, they have been incorporated into the moral foundations held by average citizens, of all parties and creeds. Hence, the New Creationists have adapted and learned to base their arguments upon these same principles. One might paraphrase the new position, that has been expressed by President Bush and many others, as follows:
What do evolutionists have to fear? Are they so worried about competition and criticism that they must censor what bright students are allowed to hear? Let all sides present their evidence and students will decide for themselves!
One has to appreciate not only irony, but an implied tribute to the scientific enlightenment, when we realize that openness to criticism, fair play, and respect for the contingent nature of truth are now the main justifications set forward by those who still do not fully accept science. Some of those promoting a fundamentalist- religious agenda now appeal to principles they once fiercely resisted. (In fairness, some religions helped to promote these concepts.) Perhaps they find it a tactically useful maneuver.
Its an impressive one. And it has allowed them to steal a march. While scientists and their supporters try to fight back with judicious reasoning and mountains of evidence, a certain fraction of the population perceives only smug professors, fighting to protect their turf authority figures trying to squelch brave underdogs before they can compete. Image matters. And this self-portrayal as champions of open debate, standing up to stodgy authorities has worked well for the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID). For now.
Yet, I believe they have made a mistake. By basing their offensive on core notions of fair play and completeness, ID promoters have employed a clever short-term tactic, but have incurred a long-term strategic liability. Because, their grand conceptual error is in believing that their incantation of Intelligent Design is the only alternative to Darwinian evolution.
If students deserve to weigh ID against natural selection, then why not also expose them to
1. Guided Evolution
This is the deist compromise most commonly held by thousands possibly millions of working scientists who want to reconcile science and faith. Yes, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and our earliest ancestors emerged from a stew of amino acids that also led to crabs, monkeys and slime molds who are all distant relatives. Still, a creative force may have been behind the Big Bang, and especially the selection of some finely tuned physical constants, whose narrow balance appears to make the evolution of life possible, maybe even inevitable. Likewise, such a force may have given frequent or occasional nudges of subtle guidance to evolution, all along, as part of a Divine Plan.
There is one advantage and drawback to this notion (depending on your perspective): it is compatible with everything we see around us all the evidence weve accumulated and it is utterly impossible to prove or disprove. Not only does this let many scientists continue both to pray and do research, but it has allowed the Catholic Church and many other religious organizations to accept (at long last) evolution as fact, with relatively good grace.
2. Intelligent Design of Intelligent Designers (IDOID)
Most Judeo-Christian sects dislike speculating about possible origins of the Creator. But not all avoid the topic. Mormons, for example, hold that the God of this universe who created humanity (or at least guided our evolution) was once Himself a mortal being who was created by a previous God in a prior universe or context.
One can imagine someone applying the very same logic that Intelligent Design promoters have used.
There is no way that such a fantastic entity as God could have simply erupted out of nothing. Such order and magnificence could not possibly have self-organized out of chaos. Only intelligence can truly create order, especially order of such a supreme nature.
Oh, certainly there are theological arguments that have been around since Augustine to try and quell such thoughts, arguing in favor of ex nihilio or timeless pre-existence, or threatening punishment for even asking the question. But thats the point! Any effort to raise these rebuttals will:
1. make this a matter of theology (something the ID people have strenuously avoided). 2. smack as an attempt to quash other ideas, flying against the very same principles of fair play and completeness that ID proponents have used to prop up this whole effort.
IDOID will have to be let in, or the whole program must collapse under howling derision and accusations of hypocrisy.
3. Evolution of Intelligent Designers
Yes, you read me right. Recent advances in cosmology have led some of the worlds leading cosmologists, such as Syracuse Universitys Lee Smolin, to suggest that each time a large black hole forms (and our universe contains many) it serves as an egg for the creation of an entirely new baby universe that detaches from ours completely, beginning an independent existence in some non-causally connected region of false vacuum. Out of this collapsing black hole arises a new cosmos, perhaps with its own subsequent Big Bang and expansion, including the formation of stars, planets, etc. Smolin further posits that our own universe may have come about that way, and so did its parent cosmos, and so on, backward through countless cycles of hyper-time.
Moreover, in a leap of highly original logic, Smolin went on to persuasively argue that each new universe might be slightly better adapted than its ancestor. Adapted for what? Why, to create more black holes the eggs needed for reproducing more universes.
Up to this point we have a more sophisticated and vastly larger-scale version of what Richard Dawkins called the evolution of evolvability. But Lee Smolin takes it farther still, contending that, zillions of cycles of increasingly sophisticated universes would lead to some that inherit just the right physical constants and boundary conditions.
Conditions that enable life to form. And then intelligence and then
Well, now its our turn to take things even farther than Smolin did. Any advocate of completeness would have to extend this evolutionary process beyond achieving mere sapience like ours, all the way to producing intelligence so potent that it can then start performing acts of creation on its own, manipulating and using black holes to fashion universes to specific design.
In other words, there might be an intelligent designer of this world who nevertheless came into being as a result of evolution.
Sound a little newfangled and contrived? So do all new ideas! And yet, no one can deny that it covers a legitimate portion of idea space. And since weighing the evidence is to be left to students, well, shouldnt they be exposed to this idea too? Again, the principles now used by proponents of ID fair play and completeness may turn around and bite them.
Which brings us to some of the classics.
4. Cycles of Creation
Perhaps the whole thing does not have a clear-cut beginning or end, but rolls along like a wheel? That certainly would allow enough macro-time for everything and anything to happen. Interestingly, the cyclical notion opens up infinite time for both evolution and intelligent designers though not of any kind that will please ID promoters. Shall Hindu gurus and Mayan priest kings step up and demand equal time for their theories of creation cycles? How can you stop them, once the principle is established that every hypothesis deserves equal treatment in the schools, allowing students to hear and weigh any notion that claims to explain the world? 5. Panspermia
This one is venerable and quite old within the scientific community, which posits that life on Earth may have been seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos. Panspermia was trotted out for the Scopes II trial in the 1980s, when Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinge were among the few first-rank scientists to openly disbelieve the standard Origins model the one that posits life appeared independently out of nonliving chemicals in Earths early oceans. Their calculations (since then refuted) suggested that it would take hundreds of oceans and many times the age of the Earth for random chemistry to achieve a workable, living cell.
Alas for the Creationists of that day, Hoyle and Wickramasinge did not turn out to be useful as friendly experts, because their alternative offered no comfort to the biblical Genesis story. They pointed out that our galaxy probably contains a whole lot more than a few hundred Earth oceans. Multiplying the age of the Milky Way times many billions of possible planets and comets too they readily conceded that random chance could make successful cells, eventually, on one world or another. (Or, possibly, in the liquid interiors of trillions of newborn comets.) All it would take then are asteroid impacts ejecting hardy cells into the void for life to then spread gradually throughout the cosmos. Perhaps it might even be done deliberately, once a single lucky source world achieved intelligence through well evolution. (Needless to say, Creationists found Hoyle & Wickramasinge a big disappointment.)
So far, we have amassed quite a list of legitimate competitors that is, if Intelligent Design is one. Now a cautionary pause. Some alternative theories that I have left out include satirical pseudo-religions, like one recent internet fad attributing creation to something called the Flying Spaghetti Monster. These humorous jibes have a place, but their blows do not land on-target. They miss the twin pillars of completeness and fair play, upon which promoters of Intelligent Design have based their attack against secular-modernist science. By erasing all theological details, they hoped to eliminate any vulnerabilities arising from those details. Indeed, since the Spaghetti Monster is purported to be an Intelligent Designer, they can even chuckle and welcome it into the fold, knowing that it will win no real converts.
Not so for the items listed here. Each of these concepts adding to idea-space completeness and deserving fair play implies a dangerous competitor for Intelligent Design, a competitor that may seduce at least a few students into its sphere of influence. This undermines the implicit goal of ID, which is to proselytize a fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of the Christian Bible.
There are other possibilities, and I am sure readers could continue adding to the list, long after I am done, such as
* Were living in a simulation * Weve been resurrected at the Omega Point * Its all in your imagination and so on.
I doubt that the promoters of Intelligent Design really want to see a day come when every biology teacher says: Okay, youve heard from Darwin. Now well spend a week on each of the following: intelligent design, guided evolution, intelligent design of intelligent designers, evolution of intelligent designers, the Hindu cycle of karma, the Mayan yuga cycle, panspermia, the Universe as a simulation and so on.
Each of these viewpoints can muster support from philosophers and even some modern physicists, and can gather as much supporting evidence as ID. In any case they are all equally defensible as concepts. And only censoring bullies would prevent students from hearing them and exercising their sovereign right to decide for themselves, right? Or, perhaps, they might even start private sessions after school, to study the science called biology.
A day may come when the promoters of Intelligent Design wish they had left well enough alone.
"A day may come when the promoters of Intelligent Design wish they had left well enough alone."
I doubt it, but the evos ALREADY wish that IDers would have left "well enough alone" (aka silence IDers).
You may not want to acknowedge it, but there are credentialed scientists who believe in I.D. They are a minority to be sure. Even the article acknowledges that there are many scientists who believe in guided evolution. But again that's not permitted in the schools at this time. But there are a lot more scientists who believe in I.D. than those that are willing to be vocal about it, because of the prevailing bias in scientific circles against I.D..
"You realize, of course, that this would require devoting a significant portion of history curricula to various popular conspiracy theories, physics curricula to various common misunderstandings, etc. etc. etc.?"
You mean grade school kids would be taught the original teaching that Thanksgiving was to give thanks to the Lord in addition to the now politically correct thanks to the Indians revisionist history? Or that Muslims were actually the ones that sacked and burned western libraries before they "saved western civiliation" by keeping some of the books?
I don't it would require every crackpot theory to be taught, because frankly most crackpot theories never gather much of a following.
Christianity is estimated to have more than 2 billion followers, Islam more than 1 billion. Hindus and buddists are far below those numbers.
But we don't have to consider what people believe in third world countries, we only need consider what American's believe and we are primarily Christian. There probably should be a threshold. Something like 5% sounds good to me, but since that would exclude any other groups other than Christians, perhaps we should go with 1 or 2%. But they shouldn't get equal time. That would pick up Muslims and Jews, but then they basically believe in intelligent design and/or guided evolution too. So you really aren't picking up any additional theories.
I'm confident enough that Christian teachings can stand up to any other theories...bring them on. It's better than the kids being taught only one view and not to think critically for themselves.
"The Bible was not written by God."
The Bible was inspired by God. The first five books were written by Moses, and they record that God told Moses to record certain historical facts. So God apparently oversaw the writing of at least a portion of those first 5 books. Moses was confirmed my many miracles in the sight of all of Israel and other nations. SO he had major credibility as a prophet of God.
What's important about those first 5 books is that they lay the foundation for all of the other works of the Bible. It is in those 5 books that you find the tests of a prophet. And it is in reference to those first five books that Israel knew which people were actually prophets and who to listen to and who to include in their canon.
Both the first 5 books and then the following prophets all told us about Jesus. Jesus was not only confirmed by the fulfillment of the prophecies foretold but was also confirmed by many miracles.
His disciples were well known and thus their writings have credibility. The apostles were also confirmed by miracles.
So while God didn't personally write down the words, I'd be real hesitant about discounting His influence. The fact is those words in the Bible hold up a standard that is far better than any other religion or code of ethics that man has come up with. It's readers and followers may not be perfect in implementation, but that doesn't mean the standard isn't the right standard.
"The message in the Bible is: Be HAppy. Mind your own business. Here's a decent set of rules which, if followed, can make a viable, decent society. "
You need to go back and read the Bible again, because that's not the message.
The message is "Be Holy for I am Holy". That doesn't always equate to happiness. God sometimes calls us to do things that make us decidely unhappy. He's our creator and He has that right.
Instead of "Mind your own business" the Bible actually tells us to "Rebuke your neighbor frankly so that you do not share in his sin." Or didn't you read that part? Did you know that God told one of the prophets that if God said that the wicked man will die in his sins, and that if the prophet didn't open his mouth to warn the wicked man, that God would hold the prophet responsible for the man's death? God doesn't tell us to mind our own business, rather he calls us to an active Love for others. We aren't responsible for other's decisions, but sometimes we have a responsibility to speak out of Love. And we have a societal responsibility because God gave dominion of the earth to man. Nowhere do I see God telling us to "mind our own business".
The closest he comes is telling us to get the board out of our own eyes so that we could see clearly before we try to get the splinter out of our neighbor's eye. But even then he didn't say it was wrong to help the neighbor, just to make sure that we were properly prepared to help.
"If you think the Bible is "the word of God" - you are a fool. All one has to do is calm ones mind and sit outdoors -and YOU will hear the word of God. "
I can tell you definitively based on what you said about "being happy and minding your own business", that is NOT God's voice you are hearing. Because that's not love and God calls us to Love Him and to Love others. Now the truth is that if you love others, you will be more joyful. But joyful is different than being happy and Love is NOT "live and let die - mind your own business".
If they are taught both sides, they can weight the evidence for themselves. I'm confident they will come to the right conclusion. They are going to hear that sometime in the real world anyway. You and I have. But again, whether that particular crackpot theory needs to be taught depends on the threshold you set. If you set it low enough to pick up Muslim beliefs, it might slip in past the threshold, but I doubt even most Muslims deny the Holocaust.
"That is true. Amongst historians, Holocaust denial is not very common. And amongst scientists, intelligent design has very little acceptance."
Well I think ID has more acceptance among scientists than Holocaust denial has among historians, but again you are forgetting "guided evolution" which the article admits has a much higher following. I say teach or at least acknowledge all three, instead of presenting one and only one side.
Well I disagree to an extent. Where Christian teachings do deal with scientific issues, such as creation, then a fair examination of the evidence is in order.
And there is evidence. There are scientists who point to the Cambrian explosion and the fossil record as evidence of something other than evolution. There are scientists who interpret geologic findings as supportive of a massive water catastrophe and pointing to something different than Old Earth. Both interpretations should be explored.
But I agree that a theory shouldn't be presented simply because it is Christian, but where there is evidence for and against a popular theory, then it should be examined.
The body of work in favor of evolution is larger than the body of work in favor of ID. And I'm o.k. with that influencing the amount of time ID has in the classroom, even though it means ID won't get as much time. Guided evolution being the more popular theory is likewise going to be limited to a discussion of what evidence scientists consider that causes them to conclude guided evolution and it shouldn't be simply that they believe in the Bible. But where the complexity of higher organisms causes them to doubt evolution then present that argument. And present along with it the evolutionist's claim that complexity is no barrier to evolution.
Again, the point is, if you are only presenting one side, you aren't teaching the kids to think critically. Or to keep an open mind. And I really think if science teaches us anything, it should include that we don't know everything and that we should keep questioning and testing, even when we think we know something.
Well I simply dissagree with you that they aren't scientific. And I think my post 153, clarifies that. What is presented should be evidenced based. But there are different interpretations of the same evidence.
Psst, psst "evolution".
You said that teaching facts is not a lie. I said, "So what do you have against teaching the Christian religion"? Evidently you don't want ID taught in schools even though it's based on facts. So which do you want? Facts or lies?
Yes you have, by default. As such your objections to ID are not scientific.
The starting axiom of science is that the fundamental properties of the universe do not change.
I reckon that shoots any notion of evolution square in the buns. Is this axiom subject to empirical proof? What makes it more scientific than the dearly beloved FSM?
Are you admitting that your claims are untestable?
No, I am not. I maintain that the presence of organized matter performing specific functions may reasonably be inferred as a product of intelligent design. My claims extend to organized matter, and to that extent they are testable. Further inferences and assumptions, like all inferences and assumptions, are not subject to empirical proof. That does not make them "unscientific."
You said that teaching facts is not a lie. I said, "So what do you have against teaching the Christian religion"? Evidently you don't want ID taught in schools even though it's based on facts. So which do you want? Facts or lies?
And you cannot stick to a subject. You've gone from 'teaching lies' to 'teaching the Christian religion' to teaching ID.
My original reply stated that saying that teaching facts and a scientific theory in school is 'teaching a lie' is not the truth.
I've not mentioned 'teaching the Christian Religion' or teaching ID. Get back to me if and when when you decide what exactly you want to discuss, if anything, instead of just making pronouncements and putting words in my mouth.
There are credentialed scientists that believe in crop circles. There are credentialed scientists that believe in UFOs. There are credentialed scientists that faithfully read their horoscopes. That doesn't make any of these things established science.
They are a minority to be sure.
I doubt it. I think there are probably a majority who, either because of unexplained anomolies, or the repeated success of the principle that there's nothing special about our little corner of the universe, entertain some form of ID, or panspermic notion.
Unlike creationists and other scientific cranks, however, scientists do not have any trouble differentiating these fancies from serious science.
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