Science on TV Evolves : Intelligent Design Hits Prime Time

BreakPoint ^ | 9 June 03 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

In the years that BreakPoint has been on the radio, I've had some strong words about our nation's public television broadcasting system, PBS. Two years ago, for example, I criticized PBS's airing of a deeply flawed series on the theory of evolution. That series was inaccurate and one-sided, leaving out any mention of the scientific evidence that supported the theory of intelligent design.

But today I've got good news about PBS to report. And this is news where you can make a real difference.

Over the past few weeks, here and there around the country, some PBS stations have been broadcasting the one-hour science documentary "Unlocking the Mystery of Life." This program tells the story of the biological theory of intelligent design. Using interviews with scientists and philosophers, computer animation, and location footage -- from such sites as the Galapagos Islands -- "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" describes the emergence of an alternative theory to strictly naturalistic evolution.

Naturalistic evolution, you see, credits all the amazing diversity and complexity of life solely to mindless natural causes, and that's how PBS science programs usually explain biology. That's "usually" as in "the sun usually goes down at night." You'd search fruitlessly if you tried to find PBS presenting the scientific case for a different viewpoint than Darwinian. And so airing "Unlocking the Mystery" points to a significant breakthrough.

The documentary tells such a good scientific story that, earlier this year, PBS made the program available to all of its national affiliates. Local stations could download the program from a satellite link, and -- if they so decided -- put it into their schedules.

Stations in Oklahoma and Michigan have already done so, and in a couple of days, PBS affiliates in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Texas will broadcast the program as well. You can contact BreakPoint (1-877-3-CALLBP) for the days and times of these broadcasts.

Airing "Unlocking the Mystery" on taxpayer-supported public television is great news for intellectual freedom and openness in science. Most Americans learn about new developments in science from TV -- shows like the long-running PBS series NOVA. A well produced TV documentary can take complicated scientific theories and make them accessible and easy to understand -- even fun to watch. For young people, science that might be boring in the classroom becomes fascinating when presented imaginatively on television.

But TV can also exclude scientific ideas if they're deemed too controversial or likely to upset the scientific establishment. Challenges to Darwinian evolution have been seen just that way, religiously motivated and therefore suspect. But science suffers as a result, because there is plenty of evidence that does challenge Darwinism, and the public needs to hear both sides.

So here's what you can do. Call your local PBS station if it hasn't scheduled "Unlocking the Mystery," and encourage it to show the program. Send them an e-mail. If they've already shown it, let them know you appreciate their willingness to present alternatives to Darwinian evolution -- and that you'd like to see more of such programming in the future.

[balrog666]

Do you have a source that isn't a cobbled together quote taken out of context?

Step right up, taking all bets now.

[js1138]

Didn't Gould say the fossil record shows stasis, not upward change?

Gould's "definitive" response to the question of stasis vs "upward change" is found in one of his last books, Full House. Evolution permits stasis when no change is required for survival. Thus, bacteria comprise the bulk of live, by weight. But mutations are constantly providing new kinds of individuals, and some of them survive (which doesn't mean the unchanged individuals do not also survive).

[Aric2000]

We don't skip them, we are just not afraid to say, "We don't know YET."

Why do creationists have such a hard time with science saying We don't know?

Is there a problem with admitting that we haven't figured it out yet?

[Condorman]

There is no evolution experiment which can be separated from ID. There is no way that you can falsify the concept that evolution is non-ID in origin.

If ID is so non-specific that it's predictions are indistinguishable from those of the Theory of Evolution, why do you believe it necessary to ADD ambiguity to the equation in the form of that nebulous, undefined "Designer" character intrinsic to ID?

But of course, that question only applies if your conclusion is correct. In actuality, there are whole classes of observations--mammalian fossils predating trilobytes, or specific combinations of traits on a single animal--that the Theory of Evolution specifically states should never be. It is this predictive power that gives the ToE a leg up on ID. What would ID have to say on the discovery (living, dead, or fossilized) of a feathered salamander?

[Aquinasfan]

The simple mans idea of science.

What a relief that anyone without an education can claim understanding of that which they have no idea about.

Simple men like this?

A mathematician and a philosopher, William A. Dembski is associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture in Seattle. Dr. Dembski previously taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. His articles have appeared in mathematics journals such as the Journal of Theoretical Probability, in philosophy journals such as Nous, in theology journals such as Epiphany, and in journals such as Perspectives that deal with science/faith interaction. He has published three books. In The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998), he examines the design argument in a post-Darwinian context and analyzes the connections linking chance, probability, and intelligent causation. His most recent book is Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology, which appeared November 1999 with InterVarsity Press.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

<Sigh> You talk as if evolution and ID were polar opposites. They aren't - necessarily. All ID postulates is that the Universe is a result of Intelligent Design. It does not say that evolution could not exist. In fact, most evolutionists will be the first to state that evolution does not happen by chance - which is a good argument for ID.

However, if you don't believe in ID, but do believe in evolution, try falsifying it. IOW, tell me what happens when you remove the design element from your experiments.

[JudgemAll]

Or is it beyond the ability of science to explain?

Can people be scientificaly controled and predicted? You guys are so predictable, by the way.

Why did bird have to face natural selection on the contact of different environment while man did not need to be in contact with outerspace to adapt to it?

[JudgemAll]

The way by which speaking in tongues and snake handling can finally be explained.

Yes, we know, no supernatural job description is needed to stop biggots from being biggoted. Right?

[Aric2000]

Is that another, because the experimenter designed the experiment, the experiment had to have been designed and therefore no experiment can give a scientific answer, because again, the experiment was designed?

The best way to falsify Evolution is to disprove one of its predictions.

So, go find a mammal fossil where it should not be, but be prepared to have to prove it, also be ready to have to go find another in the same place.

Evolution makes predicitons, and those predictions have and continue, to come true. ID makes NO predictions, it just says, GODDIDIT, and that's it. That's not much of a prediction. And it's NOT a SCIENTIFIC theory.

[Aric2000]

Why did bird have to face natural selection on the contact of different environment while man did not need to be in contact with outerspace to adapt to it?

Because we are tool users? Because we can create ways to protect ourselves from the environments we encounter, whereas birds cannot. By the way, what is your point?

[JudgemAll]

So accurate, so politically-Freeping-Incorrect.

Is FR a propaganda machine?

Good point, if man fails to adaptation to propaganda and ends up believing the hammered lies of an evil government, then by this logic one would believe that ignoring the lies of the government and staying out of its contact as much as possible would help it survive.... but I guess this contradicts Darwinian evolution which demands a selection based on adaptation.... but when this adaptation kills, when this accepting and dealing with this environment ends up destroying the race itself, what can Darwin explain to us in this?

Darwin is only a peripheric component of life, of human life, not its centrality most apparently.

[JudgemAll]

My point is that man's "natural" selection did not apparently occur as a result of direct contact to environment, but as a result of imagined and pre-planned contact to environment he or she could imagine or calculate.

Again, man has evolved not out of regular Darwinian adaptation, but has achieved a leap into abstractions that has not been addressed by scientists. While animals mold to environment, man modifies it for his own benefit and comfort. How did that occur? Unless, by Darwinian concept, it is man who is immanent and nature that adapts to it!! according to Darwinian natural selection and evolution.

With man evolution is reversed! It is not man which adapts, but the natural world which is forced to adapt to man! Man of course risks evolving backwardly and fall into moral decay if he or she makes too high demands on nature or on fellow men and women. Yet man evolves, or seem to improve in intelligence, yet he is not motivated to evolve, but to make nature evolve to it, as if man was ultiamte imanent universe to which all things had to adapt, even God.

[Lurking Libertarian]

And the theory of evolution, which denies not only God but love itself, is only the path to greater alienation and ultimately the very acts of self-destructiveness which deny the intellectual validity of evolutionary theory.

I hate having to repeat the same thing on thread after thread after thread, but the theory of evolution in no way denies God or love or morality or anything but the most hyper-literal reading of Genesis.

[JudgemAll]

I hate having to repeat the same thing on thread after thread after thread, but the theory of evolution in no way denies God or love or morality or anything but the most hyper-literal reading of Genesis.

Genesis is only wrong in that man existed actualy before the natural world did. If we go by the sociological logic of the Bible, man is to which the world adapts, and not the reverse. And this is a flat contradiction to the extention of Darwin's evolutionary theory to the explanation of the creation of man as the ultimate paroxism of evolution. Maybe the pig, the monkey or the Dolphin are the paroxism of evolution, for they had to adapt to nature. On the other hand, with man, it is nature which has to adapt to it.

[JudgemAll]

And there lays the foundation of control. If you or I can make others adapt to ourselves, by making ourselves poorer and making you pay for our health, then we control you.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Silly me. I always thought that theories were advanced to explain observed phonomena, not for prediction. And while it may not be good at prediction, ID does offer explanations for rule and order in the universe that are not explainable by evolution sans ID. IOW, it plugs holes that are glaringly obvious in a standalone version of evolution.

But of course in your argument that Evolution is falsifiable, you assume that ID is not a part of the equation.

Fair enough. In order to be consistent and fair, you also have to assume that any ID-based tools and techniques are invalid to support such a position.

With that in mind, now try falsifying evolution (or anything else, for that matter).

[Last Visible Dog]

ID is NOT scientific, never can be, because it's whole PREMISE is nonscientific. GODDIDIT is not a valid premise, because it is nonfalsifiable.

That is an absolutely silly and ignorant statement.

BTW: HELLIFIKNOWWHATDIDIT is not a valid premise and as I understand it - that is the foundation of your position.

BTW: GODDIDIT is not "nonfalsifiable" (there IS a possibility of proving this point)(Remember, absence of evidence NEVER proves ANYTHING) - the belief that there is no God in "nonfalsifiable".

NOTE: ALL theories of cosmology are currently "nonfalsifiable" therefore using you logic we would be better off just howling at the moon.

You are full of clichés – science has no use for clichés

[Aric2000]

Man is a tool maker, and yes, we try to control the environment, but leave a man without tools in the middle of the sahara, and he will die, leave him in the arctic without tools and he will die, leave him in the woods a few days without his tools, and unless he knows survival skills, HE WILL DIE.

Natural selection still applies to us, just not in the major way it applies to wild animals.

Humans that WOULD NOT have survived thousands of years ago, are not only surviving, but having children of their own.

We have changed our environment, because we evolved the brain power to build tools in our quest to survive. Instead of evolving and adapting, as soon as we hit that magic theshold of brain power, we began changing the environment to fit us.

Evolution has not stopped, but it has been slowed down. and in some cases, even reversed, because some of the bad mutations that normally would die out, are now able to propogate through the species. Not saying it's bad, don't get me wrong, but due to our medical advances, people that normally would NOT have survived to reproduce, now are. So, YES, we could indeed be deevolving.

With the amount of idiots I see out on the freeway, I would have to guess it is a definite possibility.

The idiots are not only surviving, they are reproducing at an alarming rate.

[Aric2000]

Youare going for that whole cosmology thing again, we are talking ID theory, and Biological evolution. They claim that ID will somehow replace evolution, and it won't.

Can you go get a life and quit trying to argue ENTIRELY different points?

I am talking ID, and BILOGICAL evolution and you know it.

Quit trying to turn this into another of your pissing matches please, because it is not only dishonest, it's STUPID!!

[Last Visible Dog]

ID to them awaits data before they'll give it credence as a viable theory. Until that happens, ID is outside the purvey of science.

That is silly. Unproven theories are NOT outside of the purvey of science. Don't be silly, all theories start "outside the purvey of science"