Intelligent Design Grounded in Science

CBN ^ | November 2005 | By Gailon Totheroh

[NYer]

CBN.com – SEATTLE, Washington - The Dover, Pennsylvania school board is on trial in the state capitol. Their crime? They wanted to tell high school students once a year that evolution is only a theory. They also wanted to mention an alternate theory: Intelligent Design, or ID.

That was too much for some parents. They sued, claiming ID is religious and therefore illegal in school. The judge will decide the case in the next few weeks.

So is ID really just religion in disguise? Do both biology and astronomy support ID? And who are these people promoting ID?

To answer those questions, we went to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the major proponents of ID.

Dr. Stephen Meyer is the head of Discovery's Center for Science and Culture. He says to ban design theory as mere religion is wrong.

"And in fact,” Meyer said, “it's a science-based argument that may have implications that are favorable to a theistic worldview, but the argument is based on scientific evidence."

But perhaps these ID experts are not really reputable?

Mayer stated, "These are people with serious academic training. They are Ph.D.s from very, not just reputable -- but elite -- institutions. And they are people doing research on the key pressure points in biology and physics, and so their arguments are based on cutting-edge knowledge of developments in science."

So what is the evidence from researchers like biochemist Dr. Michael Behe, a Ph.D. graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute?

He is an expert on a special kind of bacteria called flagella. Inside the bacteria are exquisitely engineered ‘inboard motors’ that spin at an amazing 100,000 revolutions per minute.

Darwin said that such complexity must have developed piece by piece. Behe said that is bunk. All the pieces must be in place at the same time or the motorized tails would never work.

Darwin's gradual theory has no good explanation for that -- ID does.

Behe makes the case for ID in a video called "Unlocking the Mystery of Life." The video’s narrator declares, “A thimbleful of liquid can contain four million single-celled bacteria, each packed with circuits, assembly instructions, and molecular machines..."

"There are little molecular trucks that carry supplies from one end of the cell to the other,” Behe explained. “There are machines that capture the energy from sunlight, and turn it into usable energy."

ID experts say the more you know about biology -- and some of the weird creatures like this island lizard -- the worse it gets for Darwinism.

Consider the workings of the genetic code. That code produces all kinds of molecular machines, plus all the other components of life. ID advocates say that to believe those components are just Darwinian accidents takes a blind faith in the creativity of dumb molecules.

So with growing evidence of ID, isn't Lehigh University proud of this cutting-edge scientist who teaches there—and wrote the 1996 bestseller "Darwin's Black Box?" Hardly.

In August, all the other (22) biology faculty members came out with a political statement on the department's Web site. They stated that "Intelligent design has no basis in science."

But they cited no evidence, and made no references to any scientific research.

Dr. John West, a political scientist at Seattle Pacific University, is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. He says these political responses to scientific issues are getting nasty.

West remarked that "hate speech, speech codes, outright persecution, and discrimination is taking place on our college campuses, in our school districts, against both students and teachers and faculty members."

In fact, universities are evolving into centers for censorship. Five years ago, Baylor University dismissed mathematician Dr. William Dembski from his position, primarily because he headed a center for ID there.

This September, the University of Idaho banned any dissent against evolution from science classes -- a slam on university biologist Dr. Scott Minnich, a noted supporter of ID.

"The school seems to be confusing where it's at,” West said. “Is it in Moscow, Idaho, or the old Moscow, Russia? ...in issuing this edict that…no view differing form evolution can be taught in any science class."

And at Iowa State University, more than 100 faculty members have signed a petition against ID -- an apparent political attempt to intimidate ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez because he writes about ID.

Gonalez is, in fact, co-author with philosopher Dr. Jay Richards of "The Privileged Planet." Both scholars are also connected with the Discovery Institute.

The book and related video argue that astronomy also shows evidence of design. For instance, the earth has numerous aspects just right for our existence.

Gonzalez explained, "...We find that we need to be at the right location in the galaxy...that we're in the circumstellar habitable zone of our star (correct distance from the sun)...that we're in a planetary system with giant planets that can shield the inner planets from too many comet impacts...that we're orbiting the right kind of star -- it's not too cool and not too hot.”

These are just four of 20 some characteristics of earth that make our planet unique -- right for life, right for discovery by human science.

Richards said, "So you have life and the conditions for discovery happening at the same places. That, to us, suggests that there is something more than a cosmic lottery going on. That sounds like a conspiracy rather than a mere coincidence. So that to me is a tie-breaker in the question."

And there is more -- the finely-tuned underlying rules of the universe-- or physical constants. One of them is gravity. But what if gravity were not constant?

A film clip from Privileged Planet says: "Imagine a machine able to control the strength of each of the physical constants. If you changed even slightly from its current setting, the strength of any of these fundamental forces -- such as gravity -- the impact on life would be catastrophic."

In plain terms, a bit more gravity would mean any creature larger than the size of a pea would be crushed into nothing. And a little less gravity would mean that the Earth would come unglued and fly off into space.

But Darwinism has been maintaining that advanced life is easy to produce all over the universe.

"Almost everything we've learned in the area of astrobiology suggests that, 'Look, this is just not going to happen very often' -- now that might be sort of depressing for script writers for sci-fi movies, but that's where the evidence is taking us," Richards said.

Despite the attacks on ID, Meyer said the design interpretation of the evidence is exposing Darwinism as a theory in crisis:

"I think we're reaching the critical point where Darwinism is going be seen as simply inadequate,” Meyer asserted, “ -- and therefore the question of (intelligent) design is back on the table."

Just as this city of Seattle has all the earmarks of ID, so does nature, except that nature is infinitely more intricate.

[VadeRetro]

Clarify this for me. Are you saying that Dr. Chien made a false report of the fossils found at the Chengjiang site?

Clarify this for me. Why are you making such a disgraceful sham of understanding I said such a thing in the post to which this is supposed to be a response? Would anyone like to tell me how a reading of this post justifies the quoted question above?

Moog, I'm pinging you because you apparently had never seen the Dummy Dance (AKA "perfuming the pasture pie") before. Told you it was coming. A Holy Warrior is allowed to lie about anything rather than admit anything in combat with the heathen foe. It gets silly and/or ugly, however you want to look at it. The Abnormal Psychology of it all is one of the attractions of these threads for me.

The Holy Warrior Dummy Dance is grownups behaving very badly in public.

[VadeRetro]

The line of human ancestry extends back to the origins of life on Earth, a span of something like four billion years. You think we're looking for one single long-lost ancestor? We think the human line goes through the australopithecines, but there was a time (a lot of time) before the australopithecines. There was a time before monkeys. The line of human ancestry was there, among the primitive primates. There was a time before mammals. The line of human ancestry goes back into that time. There was a time when there wasn't anything much more complex than pond scum. The line of human ancestry goes back through it.

If you don't know what the theory of evolution says or even is about, how do you know it's wrong?

[Dimensio]

As has already been explained, Leakey later changed his opinion on the matter following further study and the discovery of Lucy. Why are you presenting this quote as though it means something? Are you really so hard-pressed for facts that you have to dig up quotes from people who have since retracted them in a dishonest attempt to make it look like they agree with you?

[VadeRetro]

Leakey later changed his opinion on the matter following further study and the discovery of Lucy.

Also, he was talking about A. robustus, which is the rather big-boned and more ape-looking cousin of afarensis and africanus. It was always thought a dead-end branch.

[Liberty Wins]

Patrick Henry has inspired me with his clever chart entitled "Evolution Troll's Toolkit." His wit is devastatingly sharp.

Mine is no chart, as I am computer-impaired, but just a simple list. These words were used to describe me on the last 200 posts:

"Evolutionists' Favorite Vocabulary"

dumb as a stump
fake
hoax
silent slink-off
Dummy Dance
slippery escape
bogus quote
lie
lying
biggest lie
obnoxiously dishonest
pretends
cop-out
cowardly
cartoonish
mischaracterized
misleading
misinformed
misstatements
discredited
yapping
goofy screwup
grossly distorted

Is this the way scientists talk?

[Liberty Wins]

Add these to the list:

disgraceful
silly
ugly
behaving very badly

[edsheppa]

by the same token, physicists do not yet have the means to make "detailed" predictions concerning so simple a physical event as the detonation of a simple single-stage fission bomb.

Hmmm. I think I'd analogize to meteorology instead. Physicists can calculate pretty well the important (from our POV) characteristics of a nuke. Meteorologists, OTOH, can't usefully predict the weather more than a few days out.

[Coyoteman]

I am afraid you set yourself up for some of it.

There are a bunch of claims that are easy for CS/IDers to find out there on the web. They are debunked in numerous places on the web, but time after time people who don't believe in evolution go to those sites and come charging into these threads like they found something new.

Most folks here are pretty polite--the first few dozen times they correct the same errors, but eventually patience grows thin. I think you may have arrived at just that time.

One of my specialties is radiocarbon dating, and you would not believe the number of times people go to the same anti-evolution sites and "discover" the magic bullet which will destroy the whole field in one shot. After I see the same thing a dozen times, even I get testy.

The problem is, it is often the same people, on different threads, making the same errors--even after being told the other side of the story--they have to be repeating the same errors deliberately. Most scientists hate errors more than almost anything else, so the reception can be a little sharp.

Anyway, I hope that explains a bit about where you have fit into the discussions here.

[VadeRetro]

Are you going to dance forever or are you going to retract your little "misstatement?" All you've done so far is add another one that fell flat at once, the bogus citation of Leaky. People can see you dodging this. Your statements are still out there, even while it is obvious they cannot be accepted as offered. Won't do, you know.

Don't have the integrity?

[edsheppa]

From here:

For any formal theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability (my emphasis), T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent. ...

In 1936 Gerhard Gentzen proved the consistency of first order arithmetic. ... Gentzen showed that the consistency of first order arithmetic is provable, over the very weak base theory of primitive recursive arithmetic mentioned earlier, using the principle of quantifier free transfinite induction ...

Gentzen's proof also highlights one commonly missed aspect of Gödel's second incompleteness theorem. It's sometimes claimed that the consistency of a theory can only be proved in a stronger theory. The theory obtained by adding quantifier free transfinite induction to primitive recursive arithmetic proves the consistency of first order arithmetic but is not stronger than first order arithmetic. ... The resulting theory is not weaker than first order arithmetic either, since it can prove a number theoretical fact - the consistency of first order arithmetic - that first order arithmetic can't. The two theories are simply incomparable.

So, as I was saying, an implicit assumption of Godel's work is that only so-called finitistic proof methods are allowed.

[Liberty Wins]

"Why are you presenting this quote as though it means something?"

Well, it does illustrate the way paleos are always changing their mind (after further study) and re-classifying or re-labeling or re-visiting the claims they had made years ago, usually in well-attended press conferences. That's poor planning, because you can only cry "wolf" so often.

[edsheppa]

Dembski's so-called explanatory filter is flawed for several reasons but the most fundamental is that it cannot differentiate between a designed phenomenon and one due to unknown natural causes.

[Liberty Wins]

"Most scientists hate errors more than almost anything else, so the reception can be a little sharp."

Thank you, coyoteman, for the gentle reply. But is verbal abuse a good way to convince people?

[Ichneumon]

Maybe a more precise term would be explosion of "phyla."

Exactly, which is why it's such a knee-slaping howler when the ID folks mistake "phyla" for "species" in that list. It's such a bone-headed, even-a-child-should-have-caught-it error that one has to wonder just what sort of ID "scientists" are at work there.

You might be interested in the description given by Dr. Paul Chien, Chairman of the biology department at the University of San Francisco, after returning from studying the Cambrian-era discoveries in China:

Why would I be interested in the spin put on the Cambrian fossils by a paid shill of the Discovery Institute (the "ID" propaganda mill) and signator to the infamous "Wedge Document" outlining the propaganda goals of the ID movement, who has no expertise in Paleobiology or evolutionary biology, and has published no research or papers on the topic?

Why do you guys keep dipping back into the tiny "creation science" of "scientists" when you're desperate for support? Oh, right, because the vast body of *real* science doesn't actually support your dishonesties.

"The general impression people get is that we began with micro-organisms, then came lowly animals that don't amount to much, and then came the birds, mammals and man.

...because that's exactly what all the evidence shows.

"Scientists were looking at a very small branch of the whole animal kingdom, and they saw more complexity and advanced features in that group.

No, they weren't looking at "a very small branch" of the whoel animal kingdom, they saw that pattern in all branches of the animal kingdom. Is Chien lying, or just incompetent?

But it turns out that this concept does not apply to the entire spectrum of animals or to the appearance or creation of different groups.

Sure it does.

Take all the different body plans of roundworms, flatworms, coral, jellyfish and whateverall those appeared at the very first instant.

Horse manure. The "Cambrian explosion" came over a BILLION years after the appearance of the first micro-organisms, and tens of millions of years after the appearance of complex multi-celled organisms of the Vendian period.

Is it Chien's position that the "first instant" of life lasted over a billion years?

Again, is Chien lying, or just ignorant? With IDers, it's often *so* hard to tell.

"Most textbooks will show a live tree of evolution with the groups evolving through a long period of time.

Because they have.

If you take that tree and chop off 99 percent of it, [what is left] is closer to reality; it's the true beginning of every group of animals, all represented at the very beginning.

*Beginning* of the modern body plans, yes, but hardly of "every group of animals". But at that stage (in the Cambrian) the difference between, say, the early Chordata (the lineage which eventually produced us and all other birds/reptiles/mammals/fish/etc.) and the early Uniramia (the lineage which eventually produced insects and other related invertebrates) was just the difference between a wormlike organism with a central nerve bundle along its back, versus a wormlike organism with a central nerve bundle along its ventral surface.

So when Chien says something as ridiculous as the following:

"Since the Cambrian period, we have only die-off and no new groups coming about, ever.

...remember that he's twisting the facts so badly that he's claiming that the rise of fish, the rise of ambhibians, the rise of reptiles, the rise of birds, the rise of mammals, the rise of all forms of insects, the rise of octopuses/squids and other complex molluscs -- ALL these from humble Cambrian-era wormlike beginnings -- Chien is dishonestly saying that these are not "new groups coming about" at all.

Ok, he's *not* an idiot -- he's a baldfaced liar, spinning the facts so badly that they bear absolutely no resemblance to the actual facts.

How can you tell when an IDer is lying? His lips are moving.

There's only one little exception citedthe group known as bryozoans, which are found in the fossil record a little later. However, most people think we just haven't found it yet; that group was probably also present in the Cambrian explosion."

And of course, those "little exceptions" like mammals, dinosaurs, birds, etc., which Chien sort of "forgot" to mention, and which arose long, long after the Cambrian (during a period where Chien lies and says that "we have only die-off").

Gosh, it's pretty strange how mammals arose from wormlike Cambrian beginnings during a period when there was "only die-off". Exactly how did those worms "die off" and become mammals? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Liberty Wins, aren't you even *embarrassed* to post horse crap piled this high?

Say hello to your distant ancestor, kids:

That's an early chordate. Lying ID "scientist" Paul K. Chien claims that when *that* kind of creature's descendants evolved into elephants and all other vertebrates, it was *not* the rise of a "new group" of animals.

This fossil reveals another one of lying ID "scientist" Paul K. Chien's lies as well -- that's a PRECAMBRIAN chordate, which lived BEFORE the Cambrian era. But liar Chien claims that the Cambrian was the "very first instant" where "all" the major groups originated. Um, but then what's that chordate doing *before* the Cambrian?

I do have to thank Liberty Wins for one thing though -- further adding to the evidence which indicates that IDers and AECreationists are liars who will grossly twist the truth in order to dishonestly prop up their unsupportable position.

[Dimensio]

Well, it does illustrate the way paleos are always changing their mind

Except that Leakey was referring to something other than the species to which Lucy belonged. So you present a quote from Leakey on one species and ask a question about another. Why do you think that Leakey's quote has any relevance?

[AndrewC]

Placemarker due to unknown natural causes.

[Ichneumon]

But is verbal abuse a good way to convince people?

It's certainly called for when they're knowingly lying in a dishonest attempt to confuse the reader, yes.

And treating a liar more gently only gives the liar a graceful "out" which he in no way deserves, and at the same time it may give viewers of the discussion the false impression that it's just a minor disagreement over details, and not the liar caught red-handed trying to pass a lie off to the audience.

A verbal ass-kicking is very much called for.

[Coyoteman]

the way paleos are always changing their mind (after further study)

Possible addition to your new "Troll Toolkit"

To shorten it, maybe "Your theories keep changing"

Might fit

To Liberty:

Science is supposed to change; theories are corrected, extended, or sometimes even tossed out entirely, as new data is brought to bear. To not do so would violate the scientific method. For you to criticize science for following its stated method is neither a very logical nor a very productive argument.

[Liberty Wins]

I got on this thread in the beginning because I was concerned to read that Intelligent Design scientists were being persecuted.

The actions taken against them by academics and the mainstream media do not look good to the public. It looks like totalitarian thought control.

If their research leads to nothing then evolution theory will have been strengthened. On the other hand, if they come up with some valid discoveries, we all benefit.

In the spirit of free enterprise, may the best ideas prevail.

[Ichneumon]

[Well, it does illustrate the way paleos are always changing their mind]

Except that Leakey was referring to something other than the species to which Lucy belonged. So you present a quote from Leakey on one species and ask a question about another. Why do you think that Leakey's quote has any relevance?

It's because he made the mistake of believing a creationist source. They told him it did, so in his inability to judge the material for himself (due to his near total unfamiliarity with biology) he fell for it.

What *I'm* curious about is why he's not hopping mad about being used by the creationists like that, and being made a fool of by them.