Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Theory of 'intelligent design' isn't ready for natural selection
The Seattle Times ^ | 6/3/2002 | Mindy Cameron

Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by 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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: creationism; crevolist; darwin; dehart; evolution; intelligentdesign
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 581-600601-620621-640 ... 681-697 next last
To: f.Christian
You beat Patrick again.
601 posted on 06/13/2002 6:55:40 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 600 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
Some argue that all species were created at once but if you hold this view you have to take into consideration that the species that exist today represent only a small fraction of the overall number of species (with those that died out being by far the biggest part). So the problem is where did all these critters and plants exist? And the problem becomes even more apparent if we take into consideration that a species consisted not only of two specimen but of many more.

On the other they could have been created over a long span of time. This of course is absolutely consistent with the fossil record. So if a species died out, God could have created a new one, maybe even one that resembled the original one. But then one can ask why this doesn't happen today.

602 posted on 06/13/2002 7:31:07 PM PDT by BMCDA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 599 | View Replies]

To: BMCDA
Some argue that all species were created at once but if you hold this view you have to take into consideration that the species that exist today represent only a small fraction of the overall number of species (with those that died out being by far the biggest part). So the problem is where did all these critters and plants exist? And the problem becomes even more apparent if we take into consideration that a species consisted not only of two specimen but of many more.

On the other they could have been created over a long span of time. This of course is absolutely consistent with the fossil record. So if a species died out, God could have created a new one, maybe even one that resembled the original one. But then one can ask why this doesn't happen today.

Good questions, which evolution explains. Now, I'm not a young earther and my orientation is creation over a long span. One of the things that helped cement my doubts about evolution was the reliance on and the reliability of the fossil record -- I once asked on one thread whether the brontosaurus, my childhood's most famous dinosaur, ever exisited (It's a trick question, the answer is no) to illustrate what I think is an undue dependence on fossils.

If we were to find a fossil of a chichuahua and the fossil of a great Dane would we think they were different species? I suspect yes.

Which segues into the question what exactly is a species? A common definition is something along the lines of creatues that no longer interbreed in a natural environment, a question which can't be answered via fossils, much less at what point could creatures no long fertilize the seed of others something which most occur for macroevolution to be true.

Evolution does provide a good answer as to why chimps are more like man and mice are more like rats. On the other it doesn't answer -- at least very well -- why chimps and man share the same general habitat as do mice and rats.

I would be surprised to find macroevolution to be true but I wouldn't be shocked, nor would I reject macroevolution as a partial answer to the points you raise.

Probably what troubles me more than anything is the political aspects of the debate. I would like to see the opponents of macroevolution to be taken more seriously. You shouldn't have to be an atheist a la Crick or Hoyle to heard while questioning the theory.

603 posted on 06/13/2002 10:09:15 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 602 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
massive computational attempts to look back in history, as proof, has little to do with science

So why did Sagan and Muncaster do it?

Kindly give me a link to the PROOF that Sagan and Muncaster published. It's brain-drizzle, not science, whether it's done by Behe or Sagan.

604 posted on 06/14/2002 12:59:18 PM PDT by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 591 | View Replies]

To: BMCDA
Are you saying speciation doesn't happen today?
605 posted on 06/14/2002 1:03:37 PM PDT by MEGoody
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 602 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
What bothers me more than anything in this debate is that evolution proponents don't seem willing to consider the possibility that macro-evolution may not have occurred and that there is strong evidence for this.

There is not. There is not a single devestating counter-example of procreation extant which could not hope to be explained by evolutionary theory. All there is, of note, is lack of evidence about particular issues, as there is in all natural sciences, but about which far too much is made for evolutionary science.

606 posted on 06/14/2002 1:03:52 PM PDT by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 595 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
If we were to find a fossil of a chichuahua and the fossil of a great Dane would we think they were different species? I suspect yes.

That you'd be way wrong. You are talking about a stretch in bone morphology as big as the span between Eohippus and horse. Paleological zoologists, who assign species names, don't usually know doodly about what critters could have mated with what. They are just guessing, and from recent results from anthropology, probably guessing way off the mark on the conservative side about this.

That's one of the amusing things about this micro-macro fossil gap argument. It is an argument about perfectly arbitrary designations with no real gritty reality behind them. It is just academic bookkeepping. Nobody knows what could mate with what, and bone morphology designations could be (when we can check it out, almost always, in fact, are) way, way off kilter from species separation.

If dogs were extinct, would creationists be running around hooting about the Great Dane/Chihuaua gap? You bet your butt they would.

607 posted on 06/14/2002 1:13:36 PM PDT by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 603 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
I would like to see the opponents of macroevolution to be taken more seriously.

Than you should hope they undertake some other task soon. Like opposing macro-gravity, which, unlike ID or creationism, actually has a few serious champions amongst the community of leading professional scientists.

608 posted on 06/14/2002 1:21:06 PM PDT by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 603 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
and the obvious failure of such attempts, should they be made, would have no impact whatsoever on science.

It seems they have an impact. Abiogenesis has fallen as a science. Getting life to sponateously arise from chemicals is akin to transmuting lead into gold. Except success is exponentially less likely.

Do you suffer the impression that you can make something true by saying it over and over? The official Tree of Life, not exactly a sideshow to biological sciences, has just been revised at its root due to mutational distance studies of the ribosomes of all the ancient microscopic families. Woese's work, upon which this revision is based, shows that prokariotes are not, in fact, the oldest lifeform. In fact, Ribosomal backvectors suggest that something way older than cellular life had to be the precursor even of thermatoga, the current longevity champ.

You are free to dislike abiogenesis, but you are not free to proclaim that it has fallen as a science without being quite properly dismissed as a delusional crank.

609 posted on 06/14/2002 1:37:18 PM PDT by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 591 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7

I saw. I answered.

Atheists Improve Society #997

Here's how you put it in post 579:

Dr. Harold Morowitz, former professor of biophysics at Yale University, estimated that the probability of the chance formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 out of 10^340,000,000.

Unfortunately, that "impossible odds" argument is par for the creationist course:

Harold Morowitz

Scientific ignorance also leads to the abuse of such citations, and you have to carefully pay attention to context. Coppedge, for instance, also cites (on p. 235) Harold J. Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology (p. 99), who reports that (paraphrased by Coppedge) "under 'equilibrium' conditions (the stable state reached after initial reactions have balanced), the probability of such a fluctuation during Earth's history would be...1 chance in 10^339,999,866." In particular, this is "the probability of chance fluctuations that would result in sufficient energy for bond formation" needed to make a living cell. This statistic is laughable not only for its outrageous size, but for the mere absurdity of anyone who would bother to calculate it--but what is notable is that it has nothing to do with the origin of life. For notice the qualification: these are not the odds of the first life forming, but the odds of enough energy being available for any life to grow at all, in an environment which has reached an effective state of thermal equilibrium--a condition which has never existed on Earth. It is obvious that in an equilibrium state, with no solar or geothermal input, it would be impossible for life to gather enough energy to go on. Who needs to calculate the odds against it? Morowitz was demonstrating a fact about the effects of maximized entropy on a chemical system, not the unlikelihood of life originating in a relatively low entropy environment like the early or even current Earth. The fact is that life began in, and has always enjoyed, an active chemical system that is not only far from equilibrium, but receiving steady energy input from the sun and earth. So this statistic has no bearing on the question of the odds of life.

IOW, as I read it, Morowitz is saying that after the universe experiences its heat death, it will be impossible for even one cell to form - spontaneously or not! - because there won't be any energy gradients left to tap into for the required energy.

If impossible odds arguments are persuasive to you, you should read the other examples on that page. They're real eye-openers.

610 posted on 06/14/2002 2:31:30 PM PDT by jennyp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 593 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
Good questions, which evolution explains. Now, I'm not a young earther and my orientation is creation over a long span. One of the things that helped cement my doubts about evolution was the reliance on and the reliability of the fossil record -- I once asked on one thread whether the brontosaurus, my childhood's most famous dinosaur, ever exisited (It's a trick question, the answer is no) to illustrate what I think is an undue dependence on fossils.

I know you're not a young earther but I included this possibility just for completeness and because there are indeed some YEC here in FR.
The brontosaurus actually did exist. It was only discovered later that a very similar fossil already had been found which was named apatosaurus. Now since these two fossils looked very similar it was concluded that they were of the same species thus the later name (brontosaurus) was redundant and in the end it has been discarded.

If we were to find a fossil of a chichuahua and the fossil of a great Dane would we think they were different species? I suspect yes.

Me too. However we could conclude that they were closely related as is the case with the horse and it's many progenitors. With fossils, size isn't that important than form.

Which segues into the question what exactly is a species? A common definition is something along the lines of creatues that no longer interbreed in a natural environment, a question which can't be answered via fossils, much less at what point could creatures no long fertilize the seed of others something which most occur for macroevolution to be true.

I think we had this discussion some time ago. Fact is you cannot apply the same species concept to fossils as you do to living organisms. What's more important with fossils isn't so much what species they belong to but how they are related to other fossils. So if you find a fossil you simply give it a name because you need to categorize it and the only way to do this is by the appearance of what is left. I don't know how similar two fossils have to be in order to be assigned to the same species so you have to ask a palaeontologist.
I don't know how macroevolution is exactly defined but if you define it as two populations being unable to interbreed then I think this has been observed. There was some sort of worm which has been separated from the original population for twenty years. After that they could not produce any offspring with those worms that remained in their original habitat.
Some time ago there have been ring species presented as evidence of micro- and macro-evolution. I don't know if tests have been made to find out whether the two subspecies at the end of the ring could be fertilized with each other but if this is not possible then you just have to wipe out one of the subspecies in between and you'd have macroevolution.
Also there is no known mechanism that would prevent macroevolution so if a population splits up and and the two new populations are no longer in contact there is no reason why they cannot diverge genetically until they are no longer compatible.

On the other it doesn't answer -- at least very well -- why chimps and man share the same general habitat as do mice and rats.

Honestly, I don't know why there is a problem.

611 posted on 06/14/2002 2:57:01 PM PDT by BMCDA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 603 | View Replies]

To: MEGoody
Are you saying speciation doesn't happen today?

No, I was just saying that we don't observe a new species just popping into existence from nowhere.
So a new species with the size of an elephant or a rhino appearing somewhere would be good evidence in favor of this hypothesis.

612 posted on 06/14/2002 3:10:15 PM PDT by BMCDA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 605 | View Replies]

To: donh
Here's the sources for Sagan/Muncaster

Creationist Site

Talk.Origin

It's brain-drizzle, not science, whether it's done by Behe or Sagan.

So Behe and Sagan have somehow less claim to scientific authority -- maybe I'll grant you Sagan -- than you? How about Hoyle? Or Crick? They've both said abiogenesis is impossible largely due to mathematical impossiblity.

What you are looking for is a miracle. You're next project should be finding the perpetual motion machine.

613 posted on 06/14/2002 8:06:52 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 604 | View Replies]

To: jennyp
IOW, as I read it, Morowitz is saying that after the universe experiences its heat death . . .,

I think you are reading it wrong which it isn't hard to do since it rather poorly written. The article you posted is basically a criticism of James Coppedge who cited Morowitz, -- a biophysicist and Robinson Professor in Biology and Natural Philosophy at George Mason University, with a Ph.d from Yale where he was an associate professor of biophysics, something not noted in the link.

A direct attack on Morowitz's assumption of a 239-minimum protein genome can be found in the critic of Coppedge at your link.

Since the link you provided has a very strong evolutionary bias let me give you a different view which expounds on Morowtiz's position and features his math.

614 posted on 06/14/2002 8:34:50 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 610 | View Replies]

To: donh
That you'd be way wrong. You are talking about a stretch in bone morphology as big as the span between Eohippus and horse.

So do you believe the brontosaurus actually existed?

615 posted on 06/14/2002 8:36:57 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 607 | View Replies]

To: BMCDA
The brontosaurus actually did exist.

No, but let dohh see if he can answer.

I don't know if tests have been made to find out whether the two subspecies at the end of the ring could be fertilized with each other

If they have been they aren't widely known.

616 posted on 06/14/2002 8:46:27 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 611 | View Replies]

To: donh
You are free to dislike abiogenesis, but you are not free to proclaim that it has fallen as a science without being quite properly dismissed as a delusional crank.

And you're quite free to waste your years -- or even 3*10^19 if you had them -- trying to get life to spontaneously arise from a chemical soup.

617 posted on 06/14/2002 8:58:09 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 609 | View Replies]

To: donh
Actually, according to Morowitz 3*10^19 years wouldn't even be enough. Sorry.
618 posted on 06/14/2002 9:00:43 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 609 | View Replies]

To: donh
And actually, if through some leap of knowledge we were to get life out of chemicals it wouldn't be spontaneous, would it?
619 posted on 06/14/2002 9:05:36 PM PDT by Tribune7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 609 | View Replies]

To: Tribune7
And actually, if through some leap of knowledge we were to get life out of chemicals it wouldn't be spontaneous, would it?

That depends on how they got life out of chemicals. If they let it evolve then it would be spontaneous - even if they selected specific starting conditions for the experiment.

Remember: Every experiment involves some design. The whole point of an experiment is to reduce the randomness in the starting conditions to only that part which is under test. Everything else is supposed to be held constant, else the experiment would be invalid.

620 posted on 06/14/2002 10:02:10 PM PDT by jennyp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 619 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 581-600601-620621-640 ... 681-697 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson