The Dini-gration of Darwinism

Texas Tech University biology professor Michael Dini recently came under fire for refusing to write letters of recommendation for students unable to "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the following question: "How do you think the human species originated?"

For asking this question, Professor Dini was accused of engaging in overt religious discrimination. As a result, a legal complaint was filed against Dini by the Liberty Legal Institute. Supporters of the complaint feared that consequences of the widespread adoption of Dini’s requirement would include a virtual ban of Christians from the practice of medicine and other related fields.

In an effort to defend his criteria for recommendation, Dini claimed that medicine was first rooted in the practice of magic. Dini said that religion then became the basis of medicine until it was replaced by science. After positing biology as the science most important to the study of medicine, he also posited evolution as the "central, unifying principle of biology" which includes both micro- and macro-evolution, which applies to all species.

In addition to claiming that someone who rejects the most important theory in biology cannot properly practice medicine, Dini suggested that physicians who ignore or neglect Darwinism are prone to making bad clinical decisions. He cautioned that a physician who ignores data concerning the scientific origins of the species cannot expect to remain a physician for long. He then rhetorically asked the following question: "If modern medicine is based on the method of science, then how can someone who denies the theory of evolution -- the very pinnacle of modern biological science -- ask to be recommended into a scientific profession by a professional scientist?"

In an apparent preemptive strike against those who would expose the weaknesses of macro-evolution, Dini claimed that "one can validly refer to the ‘fact’ of human evolution, even if all of the details are not yet known." Finally, he cautioned that a good scientist "would never throw out data that do not conform to their expectations or beliefs."

The legal aspect of this controversy ended this week with Dini finally deciding to change his recommendation requirements. But that does not mean it is time for Christians to declare victory and move on. In fact, Christians should be demanding that Dini’s question be asked more often in the court of public opinion. If it is, the scientific community will eventually be indicted for its persistent failure to address this very question in scientific terms.

Christians reading this article are already familiar with the creation stories found in the initial chapters of Genesis and the Gospel of John. But the story proffered by evolutionists to explain the origin of the species receives too little attention and scrutiny. In his two most recent books on evolution, Phillip Johnson gives an account of evolutionists’ story of the origin of the human species which is similar to the one below:

Darwinists, who proclaim themselves to be scientists, are certainly entitled to hold this view of the origin of the species. But that doesn’t mean that their view is, therefore, scientific. They must be held to scientific standards requiring proof as long as they insist on asking students to recite these verses as a rite of passage into their "scientific" discipline.

It, therefore, follows that the appropriate way to handle professors like Michael Dini is not to sue them but, instead, to demand that they provide specific proof of their assertion that the origin of all species can be traced to primordial soup. In other words, we should pose Dr. Dini’s question to all evolutionists. And we should do so in an open public forum whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Dini’s silence as well as the silence of other evolutionists speaks volumes about the current status of the discipline of biology. It is worth asking ourselves whether the study of biology has been hampered by the widespread and uncritical acceptance of Darwinian principles. To some observers, its study has largely become a hollow exercise whereby atheists teach other atheists to blindly follow Darwin without asking any difficult questions.

You have got to be kidding! You presume to judge the mind of God?

Not nearly as much as the "intelligent design" folks do when they claim that something allegedly shows "evidence of design". Aren't *they* "presuming to judge the mind of God" and jumping to conclusions about how he might or might not want to do something? Or whether he would even care to at *all*?

You said, "'Designed' DNA would show significantly different features from evolved DNA."

Yes, and I stand by that statement, without needing to make any "presumptions about the mind of God" at all, nor even the presumption that a "god" was involved (as opposed to the possibility of, say, Xarg the highly advanced alien working on his creation-of-life doctorate project).

My response: Maybe if YOU designed it. But you didn't, and I think who did may understand it a tad better than anyone within creation itself.

You completely miss the point.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, though.

My argument is in no way predicated on any presumption about who/how/why design might/must happen. It's only based on the following obvious statement: Design is not constrained to the same highly restricted limits that evolution is.

In other words, no matter who's doing the designing, for whatever goal, the products of their design are wildly unlikely to fall *exactly* within the many and varied constraints that the results of evolution are. That is, unless the designer perversely took enormous care to make sure his designs, *exactly* mimicked *only* the sorts of results that evolution was going to produce, in every possible way (including time sequencing, etc.) -- my only presumption about an alleged designer's "mind" is that he's not intending to deceive us by "covering his tracks" via "faking" evolution-looking products.

Let's take a little trip through a thought-experiment:

Let's say you and I are walking through Yosemite Valley, and we find a large heap of boulders and rubble at the base of a towering rock cliff. I say, "my conclusion is these rocks broke loose from higher up that rock cliff and came crashing down to the valley floor through the natural forces of gravity and erosion (which loosened the rocks to start with)." You say, "I think God created these rocks in their current position in this piled-up shape because they were part of his choices for the Design of this valley."
So, how do we settle the disagreement? Even leaving aside the point that you seem to be "presuming the mind of God" by presuming that he even gives a flying fart about the configuration of this insignificant rockpile in the first place, I start by pointing out, "well, I've examined this rock pile and the cliff face and the surrounding ground in great detail, and I note that there is a freshly exposed spot high up on the cliff face, of the right size and shape to match the mass of rocks down here, and have even found some boulders which seem to exactly fit into the contour of the cliff face they appear to have separated from. Furthermore, the fragmentation and scattering of the rocks down here match very closely the predictions of equations which model how rocks tend to break when they impact at the velocity they would have been traveling if they had fallen from that height, plus there are scrape marks along the cliff wall consistent with falling rocks cascading down along the wall. And the amount of rock dust on the surrounding trees and ground matches very well what one would predict if a mass of rocks this large were to fall to here and scatter billowing dust outward from the point of impact. Plus detailed analysis of this rock pile shows it to be identical in composition to the part of the cliff face up at the point of presumed origin, and not with rock from the cliff farther down, or the original rock making up the valley floor. I also note that the apparently broken boulders show faces which appear fresh, not oxidized or weathered, contrary to their external surfaces, lending credence to the notion that old rocks fell here somewhat recently and broke when they landed, Etc. etc. etc. etc. In short, every examined fact about the rock pile's configuration, content, and all surrounding traces is entirely consistent with the evidence one would see if these rocks did, indeed, fall from up there and landed here. Therefore I conclude that that's what almost certainly happened."
You reply, "All well and good, but the Designer of this rock pile, in placing the these rocks Just So for his own purposes, could have chosen to pick rocks which happened to match the upper part of the cliff face, peeled off a layer of the upper cliff face such that it was fresh unweathered rock and was of a shape to fit the boulders down here, cracked the rocks similar to how they could have broken by a fall, scattered rock dust around, carefully treated certain rock faces so they would weather less than others, and so on, all for his own reasons which we can't fathom because He Works In Mysterious Ways. But the point is that he *could* have set up this rock pile in just this way, because placing and carving rocks and scattering dust is certainly within his power. Therefore this rockpile is consistent with my assertion that God purposely put them here this way, they didn't actually fall into place."
My reply is, "Okay, but since you admit we can't know the Mind of God, i.e. *why* he would do *anything* any given way, you have no reason to claim that he had any motive to place the rocks and modify the surrounding landscape in exactly *this* way versus any other. If he wanted a rock pile here for (pick any/all conceivable reasons), there are practically an infinite number of ways he could have done it which would turn out *not* to match *exactly* the results of a bunch of naturally fallen rocks. Don't you find it odd that if he indeed did personally design and place this rock heap, he'd do it *only* in ways that *exactly* mimic a natural rock fall, and which in *no* way, not even a single way, differs from the results of a natural rock fall? If he did it for his unknown purposes, he could just as likely have placed them in an arrow-straight line, or consisting of marble instead of granite, or without all the surrounding dust, or in a nice circle, or any of the billion other ways that might have fulfilled his intention (whatever it was) but clearly not exactly mimicked the results a natural rock slide. Unless you're going to "presume the mind of God" and argue that he did it to *fake us out* into thinking there was a natural rock fall when in fact it wasn't (and if he did, maybe we should believe what he clearly *wants* to make us believe...), why presume that God was involved in the placement of this rockpile at *all*? Why not just go with the most obvious -- it looks exactly like a natural event, therefore let's presume it is unless we learn something to the contrary? Furthermore, if *all* other rockpiles we find turn out to be similarly consistent with naturally produced rockpiles, by what argument do you cling to the notion that God is in the business of designing rock piles at all? Why would he *bother* doing so if the results all end up like they would if rockfalls and glacier displacements and so on were just left to do their usual thing unassisted? In short, why would an alleged 'designer' *always* produce results that gave the overwhelming impression of things that occurred naturally? Wouldn't you think that every so often he'd tire of those limitations and design something that drew from the more limitless possibilities of what he could do by using *all* his design options?"

You're now invited to provide the rebuttal, because I can't think of any words to provide for your side of the argument that don't sound lame at this point.

I design computer programs.

And you never limit yourself to *only* those styles of program design which could have been formed by a genetic algorithm, do you?

Thus my point.

Your programs show features that are clearly designed, by virtue of *not* being the sort of thing one would expect from an evolutionary product. For trivial examples, your programs contain comment lines (no evolutionary process would ever produce human-readable comment lines), and variables with names in English (no evolutionary process would exactly reproduce the English language.)

See what I mean?

The simpler, the more elegant. I think creation is a wonder in its utter simplicity/complexity combination.

Oh, please... I'm talking about identifiable features that are far more objective and specific than "it's simple" or "elegant".

For example, that link I gave you (did you read it?) notes that there are embedded chunks of viral DNA buried within our own DNA, from ancient infections in our ancestors which in a sense became "fossilized" in our own DNA and copied to subsequent generations. What's astounding is that there are such chunks where the exact slice of viral DNA appears in exactly the same spot in the DNA of species *across taxon lines. In other words, for example, there are endogenous retroviruses shared (and not shared) by various members of the primate family like this:

If humans and other primates *don't* share common ancestors, *why* do we share what appear to be inherited relics of past viral infections, which would be *astronomically* unlikely to occur in exactly the same DNA location if they were all acquired independently? *Why* does the pattern of how various examples are shared *exactly* match a cleanly nested "family tree" like the one above? *Why* are there *no* unexplainable counterexamples (for exaple, such a viral relic would blow an evolutionary origin theory if it were found in both, say, humans and gibbons but not other primates, because that would flatly contradict the inheritance implications of *other* found viral relics)? More to the point, why are they there *at all* if the primates were "separately created" by a designer? What conceivable (or even inconceivable) reason would he have to "fake us out" by inserting clear evidence of relics of infection inherited from a common ancestor if there really *was* no common ancestor? Why would he do it this way *thousands* of times, across most known species and biological family trees, in a way *always* consistent with evolution? And if the designer is in the habit of placing random viral pieces in our DNA for the Mysterious Ways excuse (oops, I mean "reason"), then *why* would he *never* insert them in a way that's inconsistent with a common ancestor model? Why does he constrain himself so? *Why* would he also do this "fakeout" in a way that's consistent with the fossil record? Why would similar DNA evidence clearly match in every way family trees across very wide-ranging groups of living things:

And why would *that* match the fossil, chemical, geographic, and other DNA evidence for evolution so well also? Why wouldn't he *ever* do things some non-evolutionary way, since he's free to follow his design desires any destination he chooses?

Why does the alleged designer never design things inconsistent with an evolutionary origin?

And if he's trying so hard to make his handiwork *look* like evolution from common ancestors, maybe we should believe what he's trying to convince us happened.

Another thing. Lots of us have our favorite web sites supporting our opinion on both sides. There garbage on both sides as well. I haven't read ALL of them. But I haven't read the entire tax code either. I still know I have to pay my taxes.

Um, okay. Is this your excuse for not reading the arguments and evidence I linked for you which impinge directly on your own arguments?

Evolution (a general term if ever there was one) is a great theory. I think it is an interesting theory. My guess is that parts of some versions of it are ultimately right on, especially when dealing with micro-evolution.

There's also a huge amount of evidence for common ancestry and other "macroevolutionary" results.

But to embrace the theory as FACT is, well, really bad science.

It would be if that's what we were doing, but it's not. We're quite clear on the distinction between which parts are fact and which parts are theory.

You mention matching predictions. Ptolomy's theory matched predictions - to a point - and it turned out to be utterly wrong from the very beginning (earth centered universe).

The point, though, is that *very* early on, they noticed things which *didn't* fit the theory.

Similarly, if life on earth were designed instead of evolved, there would be *countless* observations which wouldn't fit at *all* into an evolutionary framework. But there aren't.

It helps also if you change your predictions as new information surfaces. And in some cases, that IS what's going on with evolution theory.

Indeed. Let me know when the "intelligent design" side modifies their position.

The real problem with arguing against evidence for intelligent design and why it's not fair for me to argue too much is that just as evolution can try to solve its problems by throwing more time into the mix,

This is a gross misrepresentation of how evolution "solves its problems".

ID people can argue that you cannot second guess a creator. Anything discovered can be arguably the way He designed it,

To the point of perversity, yes. Sooner or later, the argument that "sure, all this matches evolution, but maybe God just wants to make it look that way" starts to sound pretty silly. The only way that ID can be taken seriously as a valid theory is if it ever drops the "maybe God *wants* it that way, we dunno" foundation and starts to find things that are clearly and unambiguously outside the realm of what could have occurred naturally. If things really *were* designed and created, there should have been *thousands* of clear examples by now. But there are not. And no, Behe's examples are at best in the "could be argued either way" category, so don't bore me with those and I won't bore you with the rebuttals.

It's like adding a bolt to a piece of metal that doesn't hold anything together. It's just there, to confuse those who MUST DISCOVER it's original function. It's function is to keep them buisy for the creator to get a good laugh.

Ah, well then, you *do* presume to know the Mind of God after all...

You need to lighten up. The theory is not worthy to be RELIGIOUSLY defended...

I don't defend it religiously. I defend it scientifically.

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