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

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.

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.

This is a mistaken question,

WHAT? If macroevolution is true, then what I described must have occurred.

That is not in the least true.

Individuals do not start new species, as a general rule, so attempting to locate the exact point of individual speciation is another fools errand. Please indicate that you made some attempt to understand my original reply to this contention.

Zoologists invent species as a matter of referential convenience. Despite numerous attempts by creationists to hang arguments on it, there is no solid reality to our species designations to demand to see the interfaces of. There is only a continuous cloud of diminishing probability that any given critter will successfully mate with any other given critter.

Here's where I keep referring to "fallen science." Guppy breeders have created lyre-tail guppies. Why would DNA come about if RNA was doing it's job?

Why would simians come about if primative anthropods were doing their job?

Times change. The earth cools. Other alternative approaches become so much more efficient in the altered environment that they prevail.

Yes, that would indeed be the view of a layman. However, we do not consult the views of laymen to determine scientific issues

Unless you're asking for money. You're not saying that a self-defined "community of experts" should be above scrutiny are you? Remember Carl Sagan predicting a new ice age because of oil well fires in the Gulf War?

No. This isn't relevant to anything I have suggested. What I have suggested is that you don't rate and rank scientific ideas by counting the noses of the pigs at its feeding trough. We do not use popular democratic criteria to evaluate ideas in science. We find our most knowledgeable thinkers on the subject to hand, require that they publish formal papers to exacting criteria, and apply only the excruciating critical judgement of other scientists, selected because their training allows them to understand the issues, to the results.

To do otherwise would be like consulting pigs about proper table setting.

we consult the views of our best specialized scientists

Like Francis "ET" Crick?

Is Francis Crick an abiogensis scientist? No. He he helped figure out how DNA work produces protein. His opinion on subjects outside his formal publishing specialization is so much flatulant gas. Try Woese, or Fitch&Margoliash, for example, who have published under science's exacting criteria for the technical journals, on the subject under discussion.

Summing things up real fast:

Crick is among the most brillant scientists living. Because he's basically honest yet can't admit to the existance of God, he has resorted to crediting space aliens for our creation.

The guppies were your analogy to the simplicity of RNA changing to DNA.

Since you don't like the math proofs, how would you falsify abiogenesis?

Crick is among the most brillant scientists living. Because he's basically honest yet can't admit to the existance of God, he has resorted to crediting space aliens for our creation.

With 6 billion people in it, the world is brimming over with brilliant guys. They all have lots of opinions. Until those opinions are vetted in referreed technical journals, they are entertainment, and do not in any manner represent the current opinion of science on any subject. There are some opinions about abiogenesis that survive this scruteny. Crick's outpourings on the subject are not among them, and therefore, referencing him is in no manner authoratitive about the current state of science, which is presently quite open to perceived issues in abiogensis.

And, by the way, the "space aliens planted seeds" theory does not really answer any extant questions very satisfactorily: where did the space aliens come from?

The guppies were your analogy to the simplicity of RNA changing to DNA.

RNA didn't "change" to DNA. The RNA is still running the show. DNA is just offline tape storage, which we probably once got along fine without, when things were hotter, and efficient production of mRNA was not all the rage.

Since you don't like the math proofs, how would you falsify abiogenesis?

You have to divide this into two questions: How would I formally falsify abiogensis? By examining the entire state space of the universe as if it were a giant chess game I could read backwards in time and constructing of eden proof: ie, a proof that some point in evolution could not be reached from a starting point with no life in it. I think it is a safe guess that humans will never have enough resources to attempt this proof.

Less formally, you could refute abiogensis if you capture a wild example of life forming by some other means. Feel free.

Like I said, to refute a thing, you need positive evidence to the contrary. Pointing out that you don't yet know everything, as creationists and complexity honks do, is a pointless truism.

There's quit a bit in both links about how short half-lives for sugars would make it very unlikely they were available as prebiotic reagents.

uh huh, prebiotic reagents, eh? Kindly submit your proof that sugar in the ATP cycle was the only possible energy capturing and conserving cycle that could have been employed pre-biotically. If you want to talk about short half-lives, consider mRNA. After it's been used by a couple of ribosomes to produce a protein, it breaks down and has to be disposed of. If it didn't, and nothing else intermediated, your cells would fill up and explode with unneeded protein & mRNA junk--unless, of course, you didn't have any DNA in the first place, and just got your mRNA from a finite store--say, a golgi body for example--or by a complex cyclic relationship of various RNA set in a feedback loop regulated by the constant, well-throttled outpouring of johnny-on-the-spot mRNA.

Since you don't like the math proofs, how would you falsify abiogenesis?

As Hoyle and Morowitz did.

I think it is a safe guess that humans will never have enough resources to attempt this proof.

So it can't be falsified. (This means it has fallen as a science,)

All I can suggest is that nobody really tries very hard to understand the nature of the notion being presented.

When you say nobody do you mean the authors of those links or science in general?

Even the vast majority of scientists don't want to think about this subject at all. Which is why such arrogant pronounciations, such as you have referenced, about the death of abiogensis based on so little rigor pass for scientific opinion in the popular mind--since few scientists will betrouble themselves to mount a defense.

As Hoyle and Morowitz did.

They, of course, did nothing of the sort. In terms of my suggested computation, they picked one back-vector out of countless trillions of the back-in-time computations that would be required to examine the universe exhaustively. As they say, it's not that you're right; it's not that you're wrong. It's that you aren't even in the game.

Kindly submit your proof that the approaches I have suggested are the only possible ways to falsify abiogensis.

You are crossing the line from silly to pointlessly ridiculous. I asked you how you would falsify abiogenesis and you basically said you can't.

I'm content with the math proofs indicating that for all practical expectations it is false. In my view, it has been falsified.

Even the vast majority of scientists don't want to think about this subject at all.

Which means . . .(see post 650)

Which means that science is not a democracy, just as I said. When you want to ask a particular scientific question, you ask the people working on it, and you don't give a cat's poop what anyone else thinks, because anyone else's opinion is uninformed to the point of uselessness.

they picked one back-vector out of countless trillions of the back-in-time computations

Actually -- since we have an rough estimate of the size and age of the universe and provided for a very generous margin of error -- there isn't "countless trillions." Which is the point of the calculations.

You are crossing the line from silly to pointlessly ridiculous. I asked you how you would falsify abiogenesis and you basically said you can't.

Oh really. Where did I say that no one could come up with a counterexample? Where did I say that mine was the only possible approach? You have a real problem with categories don't you? Believe it or not, my opinion does not represent closure on what science is capable of thinking. I know this may be a shock.

I'm content with the math proofs indicating that for all practical expectations it is false. In my view, it has been falsified.

And I wish you every happiness with your view, but if you continue to suggest that this is science's view, I will continue to object, as it is plainly not.

Really? And what is the granulatity of the universe to which such calculations could be applied? How will you dismiss the problem that God plays dice below the quantum length?--thereby requiring you to branch the calculation and consider multiple possible previous universes at the each discrete timemark every time you step back? Assuming time comes in packages that are ultimately discrete.

Again, you are mistaking a random calculation for a definitive proof--the gulf between the two is beyond wide.

multiple possible previous universes

I'll grant you that abiogenesis is in the same scientific category as "multiple possible previous universes."

Again, you are mistaking a random calculation for a definitive proof--the gulf between the two is beyond wide.

Again, you are mistaking my claim that the odds of 1 to 10^340,000,000 for abiogenesis (which is a premeditated calculation, not a random one) is definitive. I'm just pointing out that it is far more rational to believe in God.

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