Theory of 'intelligent design' isn't ready for natural selection

The Seattle Times ^ | 6/3/2002 | Mindy Cameron

[jennyp]

To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.

Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.

Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.

The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.

The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.

Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?

As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).

Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.

In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.

It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.

The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."

Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)

Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."

In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).

The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.

Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.

I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.

That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.

Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Well, Man has gills. He uses them to talk with.

[Tribune7]

As predicted by evolution, and as NOT predicted by Genesis or so-called "Intelligent Design."

How about Ecclesiastes:

"As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal.
-- Ecc 3:18-19

Evolution hasn't fallen.

If you are talking abiogenesis, it's fallen. If you're talking solely about biological evolution, I think it's on shakey ground. Irreducible complexitiy is a very persuasive challenge to it.

[Sabertooth]

Equating God == good is a reification error.

I wasn't familiar with the term, so I did a little surfing around... from the standpoint of logic, this appears to be true. I'm also not sure it matters, as I've already accepted the cognitive dissonance of tautologies and paradoxes.

It's not my expectation to grasp God only by way of logic. I'll make use of it here and there, but in theological matters I fully accept that I'm going to need faith at times, and just shrug my shoulders at others.

But don't you see, what you dismiss as "trying to put God in a box" is merely our attempt to reconcile God with logic! The box IS the constraints of logic. If you don't want your God to have to be limited to being logical then that's your choice, but you really have to shut your mind off at that point, IMO. Then the only thing that's left is chanting.

Our logic is four-dimensional. What passes for logic here would defy nature and logic in a three-dimensional, planar universe. The insistence of three-dimensional beings that we conform to their logic would be futile.

Such I believe is the case when we expect God to fully conform to the logic we understand.

That's not shutting off one's mind, nor chanting. It's simply a recognition that there are different spheres of knowledge. Science is one. Theology is another. A person's understanding of one might be informed by the other, but one cannot demand that one conform to the other. When you do you end up with pseudoscience and pseudotheology competing in the classrooms, and elsewhere.

Much of the conflict goes away if Creationists and Scientists would simply, sincerely agree that science is properly agnostic.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Unfortunately, Einstein didn't get everything right. In this case, God acts a bit like Big Jule.

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker.

[VadeRetro]

This one, eh?

You remembered!

[ConsistentLibertarian]

You don't need to assume any of the conditional probabilities are zero to make the comparison. The likelihood principle is an attempt to state whether an observation tells in favor of a theory or favor of an alternative to it. Since it's presupposed by Paley's argument, I don't see why you'd object to it. Heck, I'm the one with (Bayesian) reservations. This is your premise, not mine.

[Gumlegs]

That's not shutting off one's mind, nor chanting. It's simply a recognition that there are different spheres of knowledge. Science is one. Theology is another. A person's understanding of one might be informed by the other, but one cannot demand that one conform to the other. When you do you end up with pseudoscience and pseudotheology competing in the classrooms, and elsewhere.

Much of the conflict goes away if Creationists and Scientists would simply, sincerely agree that science is properly agnostic.

Agreed. 100%.

[donh]

If you can find any evidence of monkeys in Africa buying and selling bananas on a futures market, I'll gladly concede the argument.

All higher primates engage in peer group quid-pro-quo common pooling of various paired food resources, over long time frames, including human hunter-gatherers. Econometric demonstrations that this is a major, perhaps critical, survival trait abound. This not a hairsbreath different from buying and selling bananas on the futures market.

[donh]

If you are talking abiogenesis, it's fallen.

abiogenisis hasn't "fallen", any more than divine intervention has fallen. To make abiogenesis fall, you need a dispositive proof. Complexity arguments amount to saying "if I can't think how it was done, it must be a miracle."

Many theories based on this miracle notion ion have "fallen" since the scientific revolution began. It doesn't appear to be a good bet on its track record.

[donh]

I should also point out that any testing of competing theories based on "probability" is pretty pointless

Ah! A breakthru. This would include the theory that you can't possibly evolve an eye because it is too complex.

[Alberta's Child]

Econometric demonstrations that this is a major, perhaps critical, survival trait abound. This not a hairsbreath different from buying and selling bananas on the futures market.

What you are saying, then, is that higher primates regularly engage in the type of complex economic "transactions" that aren't even carried out in most parts of the world among human beings.

[donh]

But macroevolution hasn't been proven.

From now on, I am going to actually physically spank anyone who claims science is in the proof business. It is not. There isn't a single proof in all the natural sciences taken together. We can develop more confidence in our theories, but we cannot prove them. We like Darwinian explanations because they explain lots of things we've observed, not because we're absolutely convinced. There is a ton of pursuasive evidence, and an endless series of field predictions that worked out, for Darwinian, which is why we think its a good bet.

Kindly provide your positive PROOF that all fossil gaps will not be filled if we are patient enough a keep digging.

[donh]

Kindly specify the class of human beings that would not rely on relatives and friends to get them through unexpected hard times? That do not go to dinner at each other's homes? That do not understand the Irish potatoe soup story?

Future trading is just one manifestation, among many, of the urge to secure the larder through reciprocity and trust--a trait shared with all higher primates and most large social predators.

[donh]

. If this were the case, then one would expect to find Scandinavians or Eskimos who have begun to "devolve" back to the point where their bodies would still create Vitamin C.

Whether some particular change is evolving or devolving is a human value judgement. Human value judgements are not consulted by the evolutionary process. Only to comic book super-heros is every piece of evolutionary armament a boon. Evolving creatures lose things all the time because they become expensive excess baggage. Why don't penguins fly? Because flight doesn't do them much good, and it's hellishly expensive to maintain the capability.

[Alberta's Child]

Why do you insist on taking my statement out of context? The full statement is as follows:

I should also point out that any testing of competing theories based on "probability" is pretty pointless when you have already negated the possibility that one of the theories is correct.

I am certainly willing to test any theories on the basis of "probability" if competing theories are tested on a level playing field. As far as the "logical flaws" of evolution are concerned, someone needs to answer these two questions for me:

1. Why hasn't the "missing link" been found? (And don't tell me that we're still looking for it -- one would think that any archaeologist who can find bones dating back millions of years would be able to find large numbers of quasi-human remains dating back tens of thousands of years.)

2. Why don't we see evidence of: a) ill-formed "mutants" from prehistoric times in which the evolutionary process didn't quite work out right (i.e., a pteradactyl with only 50% of the wing structure needed to fly), and b) any evidence of a macro-evolutionary process at work today?

[Alberta's Child]

Kindly specify the class of human beings that would not rely on relatives and friends to get them through unexpected hard times?

You can go to any corner of the globe and find people who rely on relatives and friends to get them through unexpected hard times. I was specifically referring to those parts of the world (you can read about them almost every day in the newspaper) where people rely on "relatives and friends" to get them through every single day of their lives.

[donh]

The tide is turning, evolutionalists...jump on board, or sink!

Sure. As soon as anyone you've named publishes their theories in reproducably testable form in "Nature" or any reputable micro-biology journal.

[Alberta's Child]

Kindly provide your positive PROOF that all fossil gaps will not be filled if we are patient enough a keep digging.

So that's what science has come down to? A theory must now stand simply because it has not been disproven? Kindly provide your positive PROOF that if we dig down to the center of the earth we will not find that the earth is actually operated by a Wizard of Oz pulling all kinds of switches and knobs.