Posted on 04/15/2006 11:44:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Posted: April 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
I suggested here last week that the established authorities of every age act consistently. They become vigilantly militant against non-conforming dissidents who challenge their assumptions.
Thus when the dissident Galileo challenged the assumptions of the 17th century papacy, it shut him up. Now when the advocates of "intelligent design" challenge the scientific establishment's assumptions about "natural selection," it moves aggressively to shut them up. So the I.D. people have this in common with Galileo.
I received a dozen letters on this, three in mild agreement, the rest in scorn and outrage. This calls for a response.
Where, one reader demanded, did I get the information that 10 percent of scientists accept intelligent design? I got it from a National Post (newspaper) article published two years ago, which said that 90 percent of the members of the National Academy of Science "consider themselves atheists." Since if you're not an atheist, you allow for the possibility of a Mind or Intelligence behind nature, this puts 10 percent in the I.D. camp.
I could have gone further. A survey last year by Rice University, financed by the Templeton Foundation, found that about two-thirds of scientists believed in God. A poll published by Gallup in 1997 asked: Do you believe that "man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation?" – essentially the I.D. position. Just under 40 percent of scientists said yes. So perhaps my 10 percent was far too low.
Two readers called my attention to a discovery last week on an Arctic island of something which may be the fossil remains of the mysteriously missing "transitional species." Or then maybe it isn't transitional. Maybe it's a hitherto undetected species on its own.
But the very exuberance with which such a discovery is announced argues the I.D. case. If Darwin was right, and the change from one species to another through natural selection occurred constantly in millions of instances over millions of years, then the fossil record should be teaming with transitional species. It isn't. That's why even one possibility, after many years of searching, becomes front-page news.
Another letter complains that I.D. cannot be advanced as even a theory unless evidence of the nature of this "Divine" element is presented. But the evidence is in nature itself. The single cell shows such extraordinary complexity that to suggest it came about by sheer accident taxes credulity. If you see a footprint in the sand, that surely evidences human activity. The demand – "Yes, but whose footprint is it?"– does not disqualify the contention that somebody was there. "Nope," says the establishment, "not until you can tell us who it was will we let you raise this question in schools."
Another reader argues that Galileo stood for freedom of inquiry, whereas I.D. advocates want to suppress inquiry. This writer apparently did not notice what caused me to write the column. It was the rejection by a government agency for a $40,000 grant to a McGill University anti-I.D. lobby to suppress the presentation and discussion of I.D. theory in the Canadian schools. Suppressing discussion is an odd way of encouraging "freedom of inquiry." Anyway, the I.D. movement doesn't want to suppress evolution. It merely wants it presented as a theory, alongside the I.D. theory.
Why, asked another reader, did I not identify the gutsy woman who stated the reason for the rejection, bringing upon herself the scorn of scientific authority. That's fair. Her name is Janet Halliwell, a chemist and executive vice president of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She said that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and the McGill application offered no evidence to support it.
The McGill applicant was furious. Evolution, he said, needs no evidence. It's fact. Apparently Harvard University doesn't quite agree with him. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard has begun an expensive project to discover how life emerged from the chemical soup of early earth. In the 150 years since Darwin, says the Globe, "scientists cannot explain how the process began."
The most sensible letter came from a research scientist. "I think that the current paradigm of evolution by natural selection acting on random variation will change," he writes. "I think that evidence will accumulate to suggest that much of the genetic variation leading to the evolution of life on earth was not random, but was generated by biochemical processes that exhibit intelligent behavior."
Then he urges me not to disclose his identity. Saying this publicly would threaten his getting tenure, he fears. Galileo would understand.
He is correct. It does not require adherence to religion to hold to completely unsupported assumptions.
Until such time as science can replicate the Origins of Life, any theory is simply that, a theory.
From a scientist, I will tell you the arrogance and the stupidity is coming from the evolutionists as well.
Despite the pompous certitude of scientists and educators, the fact remains:
A simple functioning enzyme, a primitive life form of any kind, has NEVER been replicated. NEVER.
Ask yourself - why?
It's actually funny- they're better at being consistent with their evolution strawmen then they are at being consistent with their own 'theory'. ID is or is not religion at their convenience, but at least they can agree that the Theory of Evolution covers the origins of life.
But that is exactly it! They don't say it is part of the theory of evolution! They say it is part of Evolutionary Biology!
Yeah they have.
What did you mean by that?
Never.
Placemarker
"Until such time as science can replicate the Origins of Life, any theory is simply that, a theory."
Theory is the highest category in science; there is nothing else for a theory to ascend to. All theories in science are provisional.
"A simple functioning enzyme, a primitive life form of any kind, has NEVER been replicated. NEVER."
This has nothing to do with the validity of evolution.
Talk about arrogance.
"Festival of Make-Believe Controversey" placemarker
Maybe because they're both origin-related.
Hey Guitarman, keep strummin'.
Evolution is not comprehensive enough to incorporate the Origin of Life. Intelligent Design is.
In fact, Intelligent Design is broad enough to include Evolution as the process by which life expanded on earth.
Stop getting wasted, and start thinking.
---
Yockey
Information theorist Hubert Yockey argued that chemical evolutionary research raises the question:
Research on the origin of life seems to be unique in that the conclusion has already been authoritatively accepted … . What remains to be done is to find the scenarios which describe the detailed mechanisms and processes by which this happened. One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written. (Yockey, 1977. A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology 67:377–398, quotes from pp. 379, 396.)
In a book he wrote 15 years later, Yockey argued that the idea of abiogenesis from a primordial soup is a failed paradigm:
Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception on the ideology of its champions. … The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it. Nevertheless, in order to make progress in science, it is necessary to clear the decks, so to speak, of failed paradigms. This must be done even if this leaves the decks entirely clear and no paradigms survive. It is a characteristic of the true believer in religion, philosophy and ideology that he must have a set of beliefs, come what may (Hoffer, 1951). Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has been universally the case in the history of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on the origin of life. (Yockey, 1992. Information Theory and Molecular Biology, p. 336, Cambridge University Press, UK, ISBN 0-521-80293-8).
Yockey, in general, possesses a highly critical attitude toward people who give credence toward natural origins of life, often invoking words like "faith" and "ideology". Yockey's publications have become favorites to quote among creationists, though he is not a creationist himself (as noted in this 1995 email [1]).
Panspermia advocates
Panspermia, the idea that life came to Earth from elsewhere in the universe, is viewed by some as a criticism of abiogenesis. However, panspermia hypotheses simply transfer the origin problem elsewhere without offering a solution, so it does not necessarily address or criticize abiogenesis.
Crick
Francis Crick, molecular biologist and neuroscientist, most noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule, and chemist Leslie Orgel co-proposed Directed Panspermia as the mechanism through which life started on Earth.
Don't make me laugh!
Never has science created anything even resembling life, from non-life.
Evolutionists have resorted to Art Bell-like Panspermia to explain that life on earth came from outer space.
Perhaps you and your ilk should join Scientology so that the Myth of Xenu could help end your sleepless, haunted nights.
E-Meters anyone? Anyone?
ID'ers can still think outside the soup, unlike Evolutionists.
The Origin of Life remains a theory.
ID does as good a job as Panspermia, the notion that life on earth came from outer space. That just outsources the Origin of Life question - a cheap stunt.
I have no problem with evolution being the process by which life expanded on earth - none at all.
I have a problem denouncing a theory when science has no proof whatsoever to the contrary.
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