Posted on 07/01/2002 7:25:44 AM PDT by aculeus
My deliberately provocative title is borrowed from Leonard Krishtalka, who directs the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Hired-gun "design theorists" in cheap tuxedos have met with some success in getting close to their target: public science education. I hope to convince you that this threat is worth paying attention to. As I write, intelligent design (ID) is a hot issue in the states of Washington and Ohio (see Physics Today, May 2002, page 31*). Evolutionary biology is ID's primary target, but geology and physics are within its blast zone.
Creationism evolves. As in biological evolution, old forms persist alongside new. After the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, creationists tried to get public schools to teach biblical accounts of the origin and diversity of life. Various courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional. Next came the invention of "creation science," which was intended to bypass constitutional protections. It, too, was recognized by the courts as religion. Despite adverse court rulings, creationists persist in reapplying these old strategies locally. In many places, the pressure keeps public school biology teachers intimidated and evolution quietly minimized.
However, a new strategy, based on so-called ID theory, is now at the cutting edge of creationism. ID is different from its forebears. It does a better job of disguising its sectarian intent. It is well funded and nationally coordinated. To appeal to a wider range of people, biblical literalism, Earth's age, and other awkward issues are swept under the rug. Indeed, ID obfuscates sufficiently well that some educated people with little background in the relevant science have been taken in by it. Among ID's diverse adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists.
ID advocates can't accept the inability of science to deal with supernatural hypotheses, and they see this limitation as a sacrilegious denial of God's work and presence. Desperately in need of affirmation, they invent "theistic science" in which the design of the Creator is manifest. Perhaps because their religious faith is rather weak, they need to bolster their beliefs every way they can--including hijacking science to save souls and prove the existence of God.
William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University and one of ID's chief advocates, asserts that: " . . . any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient."1 Whether or not they agree with Dembski on this point, most Americans hold some form of religious belief. Using what they call the Wedge Strategy,2 ID advocates seek to pry Americans away from "naturalistic science" by forcing them to choose between science and religion. ID advocates know that science will lose. They portray science as we know it as innately antireligious, thereby blurring the distinction between science and how science may be interpreted.
When presenting their views before the public, ID advocates generally disguise their religious intent. In academic venues, they avoid any direct reference to the Designer. They portray ID as merely an exercise in detecting design, citing examples from archaeology, the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project, and other enterprises. Cambridge University Press has published one ID book,3 which, the ID advocates repeatedly proclaim, constitutes evidence that their case has real scientific merit. ID creationist publications are nearly absent from refereed journals, and this state of affairs is presented as evidence of censorship.
This censorship, ID advocates argue, justifies the exploitation of public schools and the children in them to circumvent established scientific procedures. In tort law, expert scientific testimony must agree with the consensus of experts in a given field. No such limitation exists with respect to public education. ID advocates can snow the public and school boards with pseudoscientific presentations. As represented by ID advocates, biological evolution is a theory in crisis, fraught with numerous plausible-sounding failures, most of which are recycled from overt creationists. It is "only fair," the ID case continues, to present alternatives so that children can make up their own minds. Yesterday's alternative was "Flood geology." Today's is "design theory."
Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows. This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks (with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad public understanding of science.
ID creationism is largely content-free rhetoric. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University and an ID proponent, argues that many biochemical and biophysical mechanisms are "irreducibly complex."4 He means that, if partially dismembered, they would not work, so they could not have evolved. This line of argument ignores the large number of biological functions that look irreducibly complex, but for which intermediates have been found. One response to Behe's claims consists of the tedious task of demonstrating functions in a possible evolutionary path to the claimed irreducibly complex state. When presented with these paths, Behe typically ignores them and moves on. I admire the people who are willing to spend the time to put together the detailed refutations.5
The position of an ID creationist can be summarized as: "I can't understand how this complex outcome could have arisen, so it must be a miracle." In an inversion of the usual procedure in science, the null hypothesis is taken to be the thing Dembski, Behe, and their cohorts want to prove, albeit with considerable window-dressing. Dembski classifies all phenomena as resulting from necessity, chance, or design. In ruling out necessity, he means approximately that one could not predict the detailed structures and information we see in biological systems from the laws of physics. His reference to chance is essentially equivalent to the creationist use of one of the red herrings introduced by Fred Hoyle:
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?6 Having dispensed with necessity and chance, Dembski concludes that design has been detected on the grounds that nothing else can explain the phenomenon--at least according to him.
Of course, design has no predictive power. ID is not a scientific theory. If we had previously attributed the unexplainable to design, we would still be using Thor's hammer to explain thunder. Nor does ID have any technological applications. It can be fun to ask ID advocates about the practical applications of their work. Evolution has numerous practical technological applications, including vaccine development. ID has none.
As organisms evolve, they become more complex, but evolution doesn't contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Dembski, like his creationist predecessors, misuses thermodynamics. To support the case for ID, he has presented arguments based on a supposed Law of Conservation of Information, an axiomatic law that applies only to closed systems with very restricted assumptions.7 Organisms, of course, are not closed systems.
ID's reach extends beyond biology to physics and cosmology. One interesting discussion concerns the fundamental constants. There is a well-known point of view that our existence depends on a number of constants lying within a narrow range. As one might expect, the religious community has generally viewed this coincidence as evidence in favor of--or at least as a plausibility argument for--their beliefs. The ID creationist community has adopted the fundamental constants as additional evidence for their Designer of Life--apparently not realizing that many fine-tuning arguments are based on physical constants allowing evolution to proceed. Physical cosmology is largely absent from school science standards. Where present, as in Kansas, it is likely to come under ID attack.
I have only scratched the surface here. Don't assume everything is fine in your school system even if it seems free of conflict. Peace may mean that evolution, the core concept of biology, is minimized. No region of the country is immune. Watch out for the guys in tuxedos--they don't have violins in those cases.
Adrian Melott is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is also a founding board member of Kansas Citizens for Science.
Letters are encouraged and should be sent to Letters, Physics Today, American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3842 or by e-mail to ptletter@aip.org (using your surname as "Subject"). Please include your affiliation, mailing address, and daytime phone number. We reserve the right to edit.
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References 1. W. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill. (1999), p. 206. 2. See http://rnaworld.bio.ukans.edu/id-intro/sect3.html. Another source is http://www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs/JCCC/05%20Wedge_edited.html 3. W. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1998). For a review by W. Elsberry, see http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/dembski7.html. 4. M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, New York (1996). 5. See http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/catalano/box/behe.htm. See also http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/behe.html 6. F. Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York (1983), p. 18. 7. W. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. (2002).
The question would still be: Was the fundamental symmetry designed by an intelligence?
Does the selection of the appropriate symmetry not count as design?
It would.
Or does the intelligence consciously have to trace the shape of every mud puddle, and intentionally select the location of every crater on the moon? To what extent can nature be trusted to govern her own affairs, and have the outcome still be called "designed"?
That's a permutation to be pondered after the matter of the "intelligent designer's" existence is established.
How can God exist before time was created?
Established?
Oh, and I know it's a crude queston, but what if the "intelligent designer" was drunk that day (or the godly equivalent) and the universe was just an messy accident (as I meant with the chicken fart possibility). Would that matter? Would that change anything in your belief? Does it have to be your conception of an ID'er or will any one do?
When I first read the Bible it hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't see it -- or even consider it -- as deep, complex poetry. I saw it as rather simple reporting aimed at simple people done with a sincere attempt at honest and accuracy, especially the Gospels and Epistles in the New Testament.
Obviously to establish a pecking order among the conservatives. If you are not a Bible-toting, tongue-speaking, born-again right –wing Christian you have yet to achieve conservative enlightenment and are in need of further teaching, during which time you will be relegated to a lower status within the group. This my friend is just part of the sorting process.
It's a simple word.
Oh, and I know it's a crude queston, but what if the "intelligent designer" was drunk that day (or the godly equivalent) and the universe was just an messy accident (as I meant with the chicken fart possibility).
I mean this with all sincerity. That is a far, far more rational view than the idea we are an accident.
Would that matter?
Would it matter if God's command was not Do Unto Others As You'd Have Them Do Unto You?" Of course. But that is not the case, is it?
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him
Hmmm, if we are in God's image and we are in a 4D universe, doesn't that mean God is at least 4D???
If our bodies and minds are in his image, and our minds work in both parallel and sequential fashion, doesn't that mean God's mind must also -- hence progress in time.
Your allegation sounds heretical.
There is much to be learned from the Bible. But I can say that about many books. I wonder why the Word of God doesn't startle me in a way no other book can. Why isn't the style so breathtaking I can't deny its source? Why is there no content that is not contemparaneous to its composition? Nothing that can be held up and said, "See, those guys would have had no way of knowing this. Only God could have been the source."
That's exactly what I mean. If the "intelligent designer" is just another term for the specific god of your religion, then why not call it "God" and quit pussyfooting around with the deceptive labels?
Isn't that exactly what the article is about - the deliberate deceit of the creationists and their stealth campaign to sneak (the Christian) God into the schoolhouse?
Indeed. That would demonstrate intellectual consistency, a characteristic which is worthy of respect. However, ID, which is obviously nothing but stealth creationism, is an unworthy ploy.
Exactly. Most people don't check their integrity at the door (or the keyboard).
However, ID, which is obviously nothing but stealth creationism, is an unworthy ploy.
I wonder how many will belly up to the bar...
I'll take a finger or two ... measured vertically, not horizontally.
Three Laphraoigs, straight up.
Both of them have said that apes and people are descended from a common ancestor.
Behe: Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it...." (Darwin's Black Box, page 5).
Dembski: In the question/answer period following the talk, I asked Dembski if the similar defects in the genetic makeup of apes and humans that make us the only creatures incapable of making our own ascorbic acid (vitamin C) weren't possible evidence of common ancestry, and Dembski astonished the creationists in the audience by admitting that, yes, it was possible that humans and apes share common ancestry. source
As we do on our coins and in our Pledge of Alligence? How about we just use "Our Creator" as Jefferson did in the Declaration of Independence? The reason we can't, of course, is that the Supreme Court has forbidden the use of those words in teaching how our existence came about.
and quit pussyfooting around with the deceptive labels?
Deceptive? "Intelligent Designer" is illustriative. The label was designed -- no pun intended -- for a theory showing that it was impossible for life on earth to have come about by accident. The phrase is meant to be inclusive so that non-supernatural reasons --namely space aliens may be considered as a possibiity. Why? As I noted, the Supreme Court has banned the teaching of God's existence, although we still appear to be allowed to allude to it in the Pledge.
It is a truth we are created. How can we as a culture inculcate that truth if our highest court prohibits us from teaching that truth?
Isn't that exactly what the article is about - the deliberate deceit of the creationists and their stealth campaign to sneak (the Christian) God into the schoolhouse?
Deceit? I'll be the first to say I want Christian values (or Jewish values since they are basically the same) taught in our schools. Jefferson and Franklin would (did, actually) say the same thing.
For squaring and cubing, it's better to use ² and ³ metacharacters ("²" and "³"), since they won't alter adjacent line spacing like [sup] is wont to do (2 like on this line).
So? Does that necessarily mean they can't espouse ID theory? Good counterexample to the Darwinists' hysterical charge that ID is "creationism in a cheap suit," though....
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