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.
ever try herding cats???
it may be easier
I think I'll let that question hang in the air.
For instance, you misinterpreted Number 3, and your criticism concerning Number 5 was addressed in the original comment.
Concerning #2, would you call a claim that said life appeared at the family level then diversified via natural selection, evolution?
Concerning your criticism involving #4 give an example as to how evolutionary theory would be falsifiable if speciation occurs randomly?
Because you can't answer it.
A church is defined by its beliefs. If someone claiming to be a member of a church publicly repudiates or distorts a teaching of his church, his church has a right to punish or excommunicate him.
Galileo's punishment may have been unjust and imprudent, but Church tribunals are not unjust per se.
It's interesting to note the part of my original post you didn't see.
Just as the champaign and lobster arrived. Too bad.
No. That isn't what I meant to imply, and it isn't the implication of my statement. For a more accurate reflection try bracketing the word species with "some" and "occasionally" and you'll be closer to the mark. I never said that genetic drift of separated populations was the only driver of speciation. Why on earth would you draw that conclusion?
Notably, a major difference is that “Chance” is subject to statistical analysis and prediction algorithms (within certain confidence limits). However, I am unaware that such prediction algorithms have yet successfully predicted specific speciation in a complex, large, multi-cellular organism. Am I mistaken?
"Predicting specific speciation" is a fatuous goal, involving as it does geographical isolation and hundreds of thousands of generations. Naturally biologists have done considerable work exploring the statistics surrounding the probability of mutations, successful fixation, genetic drift, etc (they aren't fools, and this has been a completely obvious line of enquiry for decades) and this work has met the expectations of the world we see around us (subject to the limits of our knowledge of these stochastic processes). Observable mutation rates combined with reasonable assumptions about the probability of fixation are more than enough to account for current genetic diversity between and within species.
I call B.S. The essential I.D. position is that living things exhibit multiple features inexplicable by "natural cause" (more specifically by stepwise development from an earlier state, with each step presumptively attributable to natural cause). Therefore any person answering this question who believes God used, or normally uses, natural causes in the creation of biological diversity, certainly must reject the essential I.D. position.
Really this is just an arrogant (and pathetically transparent) gambit to say, "anyone who is a theist ipso facto accepts I.D."
It's almost funny though. A major weakness of I.D., even in it's "hardest" or "strictest" form, is that it's uselessly vague and noncommittal. For instance we are told we must "infer" that certain features are "intelligently designed" because they are (supposedly) impossible to form by natural causes, but all else is a mystery, and intentionally kept so. We are not told, nor will I.D. advocates deign even to speculate, as to how, when, where, etc, "design" is actually instantiated. Likewise I.D.ers propose criteria like "specified complexity" that can (supposedly) identify I.D., but then won't apply them to actual cases in nature.
So I.D. is already compatible, for instance, with any scenario of earth history from one basically indistinguishable from the standard scientific version (where "I.D." would presumably be instantiated subtly and piecemeal over large spans of time) and strict young earth creationism, or even "Last Thursdayism". Now this author proposes to make I.D. even more vague by "essentially" equating it with any version of theism whatever!
I have made no such statements. However, some others (advocates of evolution on this thread, I assume) have done so, at least indirectly. To wit: … Species evolve regardless of selection pressure…
Please don't quote me out of context again. That comment of mine was in response to a specific question of yours, not a general statement that natural selection isn't an important driver of speciation.
I am starting to understand the outrage that scientists feel when they are the victim of quote-mining. In future, Lucky Dog, please re-quote your complete question to me, and my complete response, or don't quote me at all. I've never had to ask anybody that before. Usually I am happy for bits and pieces of my words to be used in ongoing threads, but my views have never been so outrageously misrepresented before.
This is an inappropriate distinction. In science facts, like theories, CAN be discarded, and often enough are. A good working definition of a "scientific fact" might be, "a well confirmed observation". But even a well confirmed observation might be disconfirmed by later observations. For instance an inaccurate count of human chromosome was accepted as factual for some time, but had to be revised when the employment of improved stains gave a different count.
Ping to 691.
Actually, facts are much more likely than theories to be discarded. Theories generally become limited cases in more inclusive theories.
Yes, and why is this a problem?
New life may indeed originate abiogenetically even today, however the conditions have changed drastically.
Today, our planet is replete with life and any organic compound is a convenient food source, so the chances that it's swallowed up by already existing life forms before you get some primitive cell are pretty high.
First of all, it isn't a concession, it's statement of an observation.
Secondly, it ain't gonna happen. For the third time genetic drift has its most major influence upon neutral alleles that are not subject to natural selection. In order for evolution to a new phylum to occur solely by genetic drift, the population evolving must be completely free of natural selection. This is a literally impossible state of affairs. Natural selection and genetic drift are inescapable phenomena. Genetic drift influences chiefly neutral alleles, but natural selection drives the innovation necessary for major physiological changes.
I called "troll" back in 620. NO reason to change.
Wow, this author displays about as much aptitude for logic as my dog!
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