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.
Sort of like ignoring the pink elehant in the middle of the room. Everyone knows it's there, but no one wants to talk about it. Why?
If you say so.
Link ping
Selection does not imply an intelligent agent, but it does imply a nonrandom agency.
Every living individual differ from the mean of its species in countless ways. Some are faster, some smarter, some bigger, some stronger.
My parents brought some boxwood plants from Virginia to Florida more than fifty years ago. They were taken from a variety that grows to more than six feet tall in Virginia, but in Florida, they have never reached two feet. They are stunted. Meanwhile, a variety of the same species, more adapted to Florida, has grown to be huge in just ten years.
Neither variety is right or correct. There is no way for a plant to know in advance where its seeds or offspring will be transported, or how the climate will change. In any given environment, some individuals will produce more offspring than others. That is selection.
If individual populations are isolated long enough, they will accumulate enough changes that they will not interbreed with members of what was formerly the same species.
In some cases, this lack of interbreeding is behavioral rather than genetic. They simply don't mate, even though they could produce offspring if forced to mate.
What do we call a scientific doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof?
Because there's no evidence one way or the other. My personal belief -- irrelevent as it may be -- is that the first life on earth was created by God. But that's belief, and there's a dearth of facts.
You guys are fun. :-)
Got to agree with you AK. There is NO doubt our physical forms have a transitional or evolutionary link to other hominids. There is also NO doubt that we humans are alone on the earth as regards Free Will, self awareness - and for those who believe - immortal souls.
I don't know if Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, etc had free will. I guess so: they certainly banged a lot of interesting rocks together in Olduvai gorge. I'm not sure that Christianity is predicated either way - after all, it's quite possible that we will meet Aliens one day who are also being saved by Christ, or aliens who will need such saving (or aliens who are not fallen - imagine that!). It's these sort of questions that I wish Christians would show interest in, rather than this tired 19th Century controversy.
Totally unsupported assumption from the data cited.
On a previous thread Dimensio wrote:
I submit five hypothesis regarding the origin of the first life forms.a) Natural processes occurring entirely upon earth resulted in chains of self-replicating molecular strands that eventually became the first life forms.
b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.
c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.
d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.
e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.
From a post by Dimensio here.
Evolution can proceed, after life begins, no matter which of these five scenarios took place. Attempts to say the theory of evolution can't be accurate, because the specific method for the origin of life is unknown, are false.
There are things evolution doesn't explain. ID, on the other hand, explains nothing. It merely invokes a magical designer who uses pixie dust to work his inexplicable wonders.
How many logical fallacies can you count?
Highest verified number wins a special prize!
You believe that you can judge my faith?
Only the Almighty can do that.
If only you could be so strict in assessing the data you believe to be supportive of non-intelligent, non-design as capable of producing an intelligble universe populated by intelligent beings. You might actually be consistent. BTW, I agree with you that the author's conclusion is not specifically supported by the data.
One did, Giordano Bruno.
The Church had him burnd at the stake in 1600 for heresy.
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