Posted on 02/14/2002 3:30:12 PM PST by jennyp
According to scientists, teachers, and civil libertarians, the Taliban has invaded Ohio. Creationists have devised a theory called "Intelligent Design" (ID) and are trying to get Ohio's Board of Education to make sure it's taught alongside Darwinism. Unlike creationism, ID accepts that the Earth is billions of years old and that species evolve through natural selection. It posits that life has been designed but doesn't specify by whom. Liberals call ID a menace that will sneak religion into public schools. They're exactly wrong. ID is a big nothing. It's non-living, non-breathing proof that religion has surrendered its war against science.
Creationism used to be assertive and powerful. Darwinism wasn't allowed in schools. As Darwin gained the upper hand, conservatives fought to preserve creationism alongside evolution. They lost the war on both fronts. Courts struck down the teaching of creationism on the grounds that it mixed church and state. Meanwhile, scientific evidence discredited the belief that the Earth was created in six days and was only 6,000 years old. Like the Taliban, creationists were washed up. Their only hope was to flee to the mountains, shave their beards, change their clothes, and come back as something else.
What they've come back as is the Intelligent Design movement. Gone are the falsifiable claims of a six-day creation and a 6,000-year-old Earth. Gone is the God of the Bible. In their place, ID enthusiasts speak of questions, mysteries, and possibilities. As to whether God, the Force, or ET created us, ID is agnostic. "We simply ask the question as to whether something can form naturally or if there must have been something more, a designer," Robert Lattimer, an ID proponent in Ohio, told the Columbus Dispatch. "Our main contention is that [evolution-focused curriculum] standards are purely naturalistic and leave no room for the possibility that part of nature can be designed."
This soft-headed agnosticism matches the soft-headed arguments for including it in the curriculum. They're the same arguments leftists have made for ebonics. According to ID proponents, the committee in charge of Ohio's science curriculum is too "homogenous" and lacks "diversity." It marginalizes alternative "points of view" to which students should be "exposed." A conservative state senator says some people "think differently, and all those ideas should be explored." A conservative member of the state education board says Ohioans deserve a science curriculum "they can all be comfortable with."
Behind these pleas for diversity is the kind of educational relativism conservatives normally despise. "Biological evolution, like creationism and design, cannot be proved to be either true or false," writes one ID enthusiast in Ohio. Since evolution is an "unproven theory," says another, "belief in it is just as much an act of faith as is belief in creationism or in the theory of intelligent design."
The response of liberals, teachers, and scientists has been hysterical. They accuse the ID movement of peddling "intolerance," fronting for the Christian right, and trying "to force a narrow religious ideology into our schools." If Ohio lets ID into its curriculum, they prophesy, the state will become an "international laughingstock," triggering a corporate exodus, a decline in property values, and the collapse of Ohio's standard of living. They refuse to acknowledge a difference between ID and creationism. "This is just a new paint job on the same old Edsel," says an Ohio University physiologist.
The analogy is inside out. Creationists haven't repainted their Edsel. They've taken out the engine and the transmission. Without distinctive, measurable claims such as the six-day creation, the 6,000-year-old Earth, and other literal interpretations of the Bible, creationism no longer materially contradicts evolution. The reason not to teach intelligent design isn't that it's full of lies or dogma. The reason is that it's empty.
Advocates of ID do offer interesting criticisms of Darwin's theory of evolution. They argue that natural selection doesn't account for the rise and fall of species, that many biological mechanisms wouldn't make organisms more fit to survive unless those mechanisms appeared all at once, and that the combinations necessary to create life are so complex that it would be statistically impossible to generate them by chance. My colleague Bob Wright answered these criticisms in Slate last year. I don't know whether they stand up to his rebuttal or not. But I do know this: They don't add up to a theory.
A theory isn't just a bunch of criticisms, even if they're valid. A theory ties things together. It explains and predicts. Intelligent design does neither. It doesn't explain why part of our history seems intelligently designed and part of it doesn't. Why are our feet and our back muscles poorly designed for walking? Why are we afflicted by lethal viruses? Why have so many females died in childbirth? ID doesn't explain these things. It just shrugs at them. "Design theory seeks to show, based on scientific evidence, that some features of living things may be designed by a mind or some form of intelligence," says one ID proponent. Some? May? Some? What kind of theory is that?
As Wright explains, Darwinian theory makes predictions that can be tested. It predicts that the average difference in size between males and females will correspond to the degree of polygamy in a species, and that in species in which females can reproduce more often than males, females will be more sexually assertive and less discriminating about their sex partners than males will be. These predictions turn out to be true. Darwin claimed that humans had descended from apes. If fossils unearthed since his death had exhibited no such connection, his theory would have been discredited. What empirical predictions does ID make that, if proven untrue, would discredit the theory?
John Calvert, the country's principal exponent of ID, answered that question in a treatise he presented to the Ohio board. Calvert described the "methods" by which scientists can "detect" design in nature.
In summary, if a highly improbable pattern of events or object exhibits purpose, structure or function and can not be reasonably and rationally explained by the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry or some other regularity or law, then it is reasonable to infer that the pattern was designed. — the product of a mind.
That, in a nutshell, is ID. It offers no predictions, scope modifiers, or experimental methods of its own. It's a default answer, a shrug, consisting entirely of problems in Darwinism. Those problems should be taught in school, but there's no reason to call them intelligent design. Intelligent design, as defined by its advocates, means nothing. This is the way creationism ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I don't think it needs one, but it certainly could benefit from one, hm? (Maybe you could elaborate on the question. I have a basic idea of what you're getting at.)
It may also be a problem for life. We don't have the benefit of a large sample, and our inability to observe broadscale evolution is a limiting factor in our ability to reach conclusions. There is evidence that the representation problem is indeed a problem for biological evolution, and that simple non-mapped self-replicators do not have evolvability. Here from Brian Goodwin:
"In a classic experiment, Spiegelman in 1967 showed what happens to a molecular replicating system in a test tube, without any cellular organization around it. The replicating molecules (the nucleic acid templates) require an energy source, building blocks (i.e., nucleotide bases), and an enzyme to help the polymerization process that is involved in self-copying of the templates. Then away it goes, making more copies of the specific nucleotide sequences that define the initial templates. But the interesting result was that these initial templates did not stay the same; they were not accurately copied. They got shorter and shorter until they reached the minimal size compatible with the sequence retaining self- copying properties. And as they got shorter, the copying process went faster. So what happened with natural selection in a test tube: the shorter templates that copied themselves faster became more numerous, while the larger ones were gradually eliminated. This looks like Darwinian evolution in a test tube. But the interesting result was that this evolution went one way: toward greater simplicity. Actual evolution tends to go toward greater complexity, species becoming more elaborate in their structure and behavior, though the process can also go in reverse, toward simplicity. But DNA on its own can go nowhere but toward greater simplicity. In order for the evolution of complexity to occur, DNA has to be within a cellular context; the whole system evolves as a reproducing unit."
So two problems (at least) with chemical replicators which prevent evolvability: 1) A natural fitness function rewarding simplicity over complexity, and 2) All known life has proofreading of translation and transcription to lower the natural chemical error rate. So simple self-replicator without proofreading may be unavoidably susceptible to extinction by error catastrophe.
Evolvability lies between the extremes of too few or too many mutations.
Mutational frequency is only one of the variables determining evolvability. We can replicate computer program code, for instance, and select for enhancement. The problem is that computer code was not designed for evolvability. Mutations will NEVER be beneficial. (The command "RUB PROGRAM" will not compute!) So mutations need to have at least the possibility of being beneficial.
This may be a narrow range, but it isn't something different. When evolvability increases, it's a second order effect of natural selection.
People have speculated that evolvability may itself be evolvable. This has yet to demonstrated, to my knowledge, and indeed as I pointed out before to you, there are real chicken egg problems with this speculation.
I agree there's a directional bias. Again, developmental and environmental constraints play a large role, IMO. Not to forget initial condition problems.
We are mostly in agreement then. The question becomes can developmental and environmental constraints help determine the range of potential evolutionary trajectory, or can they only work within a pre-existing range.
My understanding of the exchange between you and Nebullis is that the models used to explain Darwinian evolution, Random Mutation followed by Natural Selection, do not converge on a evolutionary solution. That is, when the modeled environment is made cold the modeled beasties do not adapt, they die, or some such untoward result.
The article gets most of it right.
Well, no it doesn't. Without parsing on my part to prove a point, the article is a deeply flawed religious/political tract.
ID is basically a hodge podge of criticisms of Darwinism, some good (Dembski) and some not so good (Behe, Wells). ID is not a consistent body of scientific theory by any means and few if any ID 'theories' have been proposed as tests in the laboratory. It doesn't propose an alternate theory beyond 'God did it', which is of course an untestable hypothesis.
Well, again, I don't agree. ID posits that design is the direct result of intelligence and can be identified as such. It is in direct opposition to chance or randomness. Dembski attempts to reduce this to mathematics and claims he has done so. It's thus science and stops where science should stop. Behe shows very clearly in Black Box that many micobiological systems can be likened to mini-machines that will not function without any one of many critical components. This implies that these components had to come together in parallel fashion rather than in Darwinian serial fashion over great lengths of time. Also implied is that any partial/incomplete evolution of these mechanisms would likely represent a survival disadvantage. Wells' Icons is a catalogue of misrepresentations by the Darwinists to the public which makes clear that their facts and arguments are fundamentally empty. Here "empty" is a generous interpretation -- "knowingly fraudulent" may be appropriate.
ID is a reaction to the 'god of the gaps' problem.
It may or may not be but must nonetheless stand as science.
As scientific knowledge advances, the role of supernatural deities gets smaller and smaller.
Not necessarily, to my way of thinking. God may just be much deeper and more subtle than we mere humans give "Him" credit for.
Of course, in 50 or so years when we have genetic sequencing licked, it will be tougher to refute the fossil genetic evidence.
Maybe, maybe not. This plea by the Darwinists for more time to explain the facts wears thin.
Right now ID folks like the well funded Discovery Institute are doing their best to insert ID as a legitimate topic for discussion in the scientific mainstream, but they are failing. The only attention they get is in the political sphere.
I don't agree with this interpretation. ID has substance.
I have to give ID some credit. At least they don't think the Earth and the cosmos is 6000 years old, the speed of light is slowing and men walked with dinosaurs.
This is unnecessarily condescending. Those of us who believe that Darwinism is severly lacking in substance and the last refuge of atheists, on the evidence, are not fools.
You jump from biological evolution to prebiotic chemistry without a break! And those replicators are exactly the type of evolutionary programming which can be modeled, and only modeled because we have no significant facts to support the pre-biotic emergence of life.
I'm flagging AndrewC to this one because he has picked up on the idea you wish to perpetuate and that is that models of evolution don't work. That is just not true and because of the precision in your statement above, I think you are aware of that. In general, directed evolution works, both in the test tube and in computer models. (think of ribozymes, and drug design) More difficult, because it is far more complex to model, is open-ended evolution, which is closer to the idea of natural selection than directed evolution. But, tremendous strides have been made in recent years, not via traditional GAs but via networked automata. It's a gross understatement to say that life is difficult to model. The inability to model life does not speak to the validity of clearly elucidated mechanisms, such as natural selection, which play a role in the evolution of all life. Mechanisms which are supported by real-life processes.
I know of few people who are strict Darwinists in the way you define it above. You've actually defined neo-Darwinism and beyond the vocal apologists for that school, the scientists working in the field have moved beyond the definition you give. How necessary is it to point out the systems of epigenetic effects, spacial/developmental constraints, differential splicing and promoter utilization or gene network and hierachy which facilitate evolution? Further, neo-Darwinists would count themselves among those who understand the importance of genetic drift, self-organization, emergence, and maybe even the Simpson-Baldwin effect. Why do you argue with me about mechanisms beyond natural selection when I'm one of the few people here promoting them?
Evolvability is an certainly an interesting area of study. That and other areas such as metamorphosis, redundancy, death, ontogeny may elucidate intrinsic mechanisms which act on evolution in addition to natural selection.
But what does this have to do with Intelligent Design?
I don't think anybody can disagree with that. But, of course, the St Louis drunk when only allowed to stagger East will eventually fall into the Atlantic.
But, when he's allowed to stagger any direction he'll stay put?
No most likely he'll end up in a gutter somewhere.(or another bar)
I suppose I should just let this pass, but those who know me well . . . ;-} Suffice it to say that the world does not divide neatly into Darwinists and Creationists, much as the Evols would wish it to be so.
I wrote: There is evidence that the representation problem is indeed a problem for biological evolution, and that simple non-mapped self-replicators do not have evolvability.
You responded: You jump from biological evolution to prebiotic chemistry without a break!
We were talking about life's platform (bio-chemical), in opposition to the digital platform, so there was no leap. Historical chemical evolution is necessarily an outfall of MN, though it may in fact be pure fiction. The representation problem is not insurmountable for digital evolution, and it's obviously not insurmountable within the bio-chemical platform either. But make no mistake: the existence of the problem has real implications for MN vs. ID.
I'm flagging AndrewC to this one because he has picked up on the idea you wish to perpetuate and that is that models of evolution don't work. That is just not true and because of the precision in your statement above, I think you are aware of that.
(Hmmm. So you think I'm deliberately perpetuating something that I know is not true? LOL! Maybe that's not what you really meant to say. )
I'm a bit at a loss at Anderew's interpretation. I've repeatedly stated that I believe RM & NS are capable of driving evolution. They just are not sufficient to produce it, not within the digital nor within the bio-chemical platforms. EAs can clearly produce evolution. But when they do, the evolution is always frontloaded as a product of design. If it is possible to luck into evolutionary systems by chance, why have we never heard report of a lucky, improbable evolutionary systems accidentally arising within the digital realm?
This knowledge of experience that we have with evolutionary systems -- that they always are a product of design -- is ignored in the epistemology of methodologically naturalistic evolutionary biology.
You've actually defined neo-Darwinism . . .
I'm aware that I use the terms neo-Darwinism and Darwinism interchangably, as do most people who involve themselves with the debate.
. . . and beyond the vocal apologists for that school, the scientists working in the field have moved beyond the definition you give.
Glad to hear it!
Why do you argue with me about mechanisms beyond natural selection when I'm one of the few people here promoting them?
I said that I felt we were mostly in agreement (about mechanisms beyond natural selection).
I think perhaps we're in disagreement about the implications of the fall or impending fall of a strict neo-Darwinism, however. The Modern Synthesis is a great example of what happens when philosophical slant replaces requirement for evidenciary support. Neo-Darwinism is about as philosophically unfriendly to ID as a school of thought can be, due directly to MN assumption being transferred (through the "gaps") directly to neo-Darwinian paradigm.
But what does this have to do with Intelligent Design?
Movement away from neo-Darwinism is good for ID. Here from James Shapiro: (I recognize that Shapiro's not an IDist. But can't you see how his perspective is ID friendly compared to, . . . say the perspective of Richard Dawkins? I mean, Shapiro almost sounds like he's writing an engineering manual!)
"As I see it, a 21st Century view of evolution has to include the following features:-jazz• Major evolutionary change to the genome occurs by the amplification and rearrangement of pre-existing modules. Old genomic systems are disassembled and new genomic systems are assembled by natural genetic engineering functions that operate via non-random molecular processes.
• Major alterations in the content and distribution of repetitive DNA elements results in a reformatting of the genome to function in novel ways --without major alterations of protein coding sequences. These reformattings would be particularly important in adaptive radiations within taxonomic groups that use the same basic materials to make a wide variety of morphologically distinct species (e.g. birds and mammals).
• Large-scale genome-wide reorganizations occur rapidly (potentially within a single generation) following activation of natural genetic engineering systems in response to a major evolutionary challenge. The cellular regulation of natural genetic engineering automatically imposes a punctuated tempo on the process of evolutionary change.
• Targeting of natural genetic engineering processes by cellular control networks to particular regions of the genome enhances the probability of generating useful new multi-locus systems. (Exactly how far the computational capacity of cells can influence complex genome rearrangements needs to be investigated. This area also holds promise for powerful new biotechnologies.)
• Natural selection following genome reorganization eliminates the misfits whose new genetic structures are non-functional. In this sense, natural selection plays an essentially negative role, as postulated by many early thinkers about evolution (e.g. 53). Once organisms with functional new genomes appear, however, natural selection may play a positive role in fine-tuning novel genetic systems by the kind of micro-evolutionary processes currently studied in the laboratory.
A more speculative feature of a new evolutionary vision is the idea that much of the creative assembly of complex new systems may proceed prior to expression through rearranging components available in the functionally redundant or "facultative" part of the genome (54). This kind of "experimental" natural genetic engineering process may be considered an activity of the R & D sector of the biological information economy (55)."
See my #123.
What falsifiable prediction does MN make?
That evolution has occurred, I do not doubt.
That you can demonstrate that chance and natural selection are the mechanism for evolution is dubious. You might even be correct, but you don't have evidence.
Why the insistence on overreach on this point from evolutionists?
What's wrong "we don't know" the mechanism for evolution?
How silly.
The absence of Perfect Design is not a disproof of Intelligent Design.
How is saying "if I can't figure out how this was done it is, ipso facto, proof of natural causes or random processes" not itself completely subjective?
That is why I used the engine/transmission analogy.
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