December 22, 2005

Evolution, ID, and Science - most recent UPDATE Dec 23rd 2005

Hatched by Dafydd

A powerful lot of arguments were advanced against my position in an earlier post, Unintelligent Redesign of Creationism; I'll essay to answer as many as I can in this one. Note that I will probably return to this post and update it now and again, as people come up with new arguments... so if you're tickled by this sort of debate, bookmark the permalink to this post --

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2005/12/evolution_id_an.html

-- and return often... in addition to the normal checking of Big Lizards for new things, of course! We don't want to lose any custom.

I won't be listing the names of everyone who offers an argument, because it's too much work. Just assume that if you make some argument, many other people have the same argument in mind.

Let me first get the silly non-arguments out of the way; I'll clear the detritus, and then we can concentrate on the salient points:

1. What business is it of a federal court to decide what is or is not science?

This question is akin to the Democrats in 2000 demanding to know why the federal courts were deciding how to count votes in Florida, and the answer is identical: because somebody filed a lawsuit in federal court.

Whenever such a suit is filed, the very first thing the district court must decide is whether the person filing the suit has standing to do so.

I'm not a lawyer, though I sometimes play a "sea lawyer" in this blog... but my understanding is that "standing" means a person has a legitimate reason to bring the lawsuit in the first place. If you get wrongfully fired, I can't prosecute a lawsuit to get you reinstated, because I have no connection to you; you're the one who suffered the loss, so it's up to you to decide whether to sue. But in this case, the lawsuit was filed by the parents of children in the Dover public schools, children who were required to read the ID-supporting statement... so the parents (as guardians of the children) definitely had standing.

The next thing the court decides is whether it, itself, has jurisdiction: that is, whether it is legally empowered to decide the question at the heart of the lawsuit. In this case, the parents alleged that the public schools, which are a branch of the government, were preaching a particular religion to their kids -- which, they alleged, was a violation of the First-Amendment rights of the children (hence the parents) not to have the government establish a religion.

Now "establishing a religion" means something quite different in 2005 than it meant in 1789; back then, it literally meant creating a Church of America, like the Church of England. But today, it means any attempt by the federal (or state, now) government to promote a particular religious belief as the correct one.

Since this is a federal right found in the federal Constitution, it's up to a federal judge to finally decide whether the ID requirement "established" a religion, as forbidden by the First Amendment. That's why a federal judge had to decide whether ID was science, as its proponents claimed it was -- or a religion, as the plaintiffs claimed it was.

2. Of course creationism/creation science/intelligent design is a science! Just go to the Institute for Creation Research and read their arguments!

I will have to stop you right there: I have probably read more creationist literature than you have! But I will not accept any argument that is a variation of "go read this huge web site or this lengthy tome, and I'm sure you find that I'm right and you're wrong." If you can't summarize the argument succinctly right here, I won't address it.

I have no intention of doing your homework for you.

3. Judge Jones was needlessly insulting, proving that he's biased against ID.

As Francis Urquhart says, "You may very well be right; I couldn't possibly comment." This is an irrelevant non-sequitur: Judge Jones may be the biggest butthead in the world, but we're not arguing that point. We're arguing whether evolutionary theory and/or ID are sciences.

4. Maybe ID can't be scientifically proven, but neither can evolution.

You've misunderstood the point of the exercise. In fact, no scientific theory can be "proven." A theory can be disproven, but not proven; at any moment, the best you can say is "it hasn't been disproven yet." And in nearly every case, a scientific model soon will be disproven, to be replaced by an even better model of the physical universe: so it goes.

That is another formulation of the "tentativity" test for science: the best you can ever say about any scientific theory is that it's the best model of the available data you have at this point. The tentativity of science is not a weakness, however; I've had arguments where my opponent has claimed that the very fact that science "keeps changing what it's saying" proves that it's "false."

On the contrary, tentativity is science's greatest strength: a scientific theory simply constructs a model of the universe -- one that explains all previous measured data and predicts new measurements. Thus, gravitational theory explains the observed fact that if you let an object go in a gravitational field (and everything everywhere is in some gravitational field), it moves in a certain way. The theory allows you to predict how an object will move if you drop it or throw it ten minutes from now.

But as new measurements are made, new data produced, you will always find odd bits and pieces that don't fit. The scientific response is to accept the data -- and modify the theory to take it into account. (Of course, your new theory must also take into account all the earlier data, which hasn't gone away!) That is why science is so much more accurate than, say, astrology or phrenology: because it's constantly improving itself by tossing out incorrect, primative formulations in favor of more accurate, more complex formulations.

That is also its "falsifiability," by the way: if objects started behaving differently from what the theory of gravity predicted -- if objects fell along a spiral, for example, or any other curve besides a conic section -- then that would falsify the current theory of gravity; physicists would have to throw it out and come up with a new theory that explained not only the new, weird behavior... but also the thousands of years of previous data!

So nobody can "prove" that evolutionary theory is correct; the question is, can you prove that it is not? I can certainly prove that Intelligent Design does not fit the model of science; can you prove that modern evolutionary theory is likewise not "science?" Read on for that exact argument!

5. The scientific arguments for a young earth are obviously so unanswerable that Darwinists never try to answer them!

Perhaps because -- as above -- the creationists never try to enunciate them! And one quick point: there are no "Darwinists," no more than contemporary Christians are "Paulists" or constitutional scholars are "Madisonites." Charles Darwin published his first cut at the theory of natural selection, the Origin of Species, in 1859; since that time, evolutionary biologists, chemists, microbiologists, and other evolutionary scientists have expanded, altered, refined, and reworked the basic evolutionary ideas for 146 years. Darwin would not recognize the theory today. Nobody is going to argue "Darwinism" with you; try arguing against contemporary evolutionary theory, if you want to be taken seriously.

Now, having disposed of the preliminaries, we get into the real nitty-gritty.

6. Maybe ID isn't science, but neither is evolutionary theory. How is it falsifiable, for example?

Evolutionary theory -- hereafter ET -- is very falsifiable, because it makes a great many predictions! Any one of those predictions could turn out to be wrong... which would, by definition, "falsify" the current ET.

(a) For example, anybody can go out and find fossils. ET predicts that complex creatures evolved from simple creatures; so the earlier in time you look, the simpler the creatures would be. In general, except where geological folding has occurred, the deeper a sediment layer, the older it is. Thus, we should expect, under ET, to find that the deeper you dig, the simpler should be the plant and animal fossils.

(Note that geological folding actually flips sedimentary layers; but you can easily see this and avoid it: you will actually see the sediment layers flop over, like folding a Japanese futon, and the colored sedimentary layers -- and the fossil record -- will be inverted in the folded-over section.)



This is what geological folding looks like

Geological folding

Therefore, if we were to dig in some (non-folded) site and find that the deeper fossils were more complex than the shallower ones, or that the complexity was mixed at all levels, this would cause a volcanic explosion in the field of ET. It would certainly falsify contemporary theory!

Some creationists claim to have found such instances; evolutionary scientists have examined these claims and found them unsubstantiated. If you want to cite such sites, we can discuss the specifics at that time.

Fortunately for ET, however, it is in fact true that the deeper you dig, the simpler the fossilized organisms you find. Surprised? You will not be told this in creationist literature; they adroitly skirt the subject, except where they point to this or that tiny area where they (falsely) claim the fossil record is mixed.

(b) ET also postulates an "old Earth," an Earth that is at least hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years old. But we have other methods of dating rock formations that do not depend in any way or form on ET: radioactive dating, for example (not carbon; that doesn't go back far enough). There are also discoveries in astonomy that reflect upon the age of the Earth and the solar system. And astrophysics and geophysics generate theories on planetary formation that tell, e.g., how long a planet must cool before its crust is the temperature found on Earth, or how long a methane-ammonia atmosphere would last before blue-green algae could convert it to oxygen-nitrogen. None of these sciences were developed from ET; they are entirely separate, depending upon separate observations of different phenomena analyzed using different mathematical formulas.

If these alternative methods of dating the earth were to produce "young Earth" results, that would falsify evolutionary theory, big time! But in fact, they all come up with about the same answer: the Earth (the solar system) is a few billion years old.

(c) Finally, if it's really true that later species evolved from older species, then they should have obviously derivative DNA. The DNA molecule was utterly unsuspected in Darwin's day; it was discovered only in the last century, and described in the 1950s by James D. Watson and Francis Crick. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a complex, twisted molecule that uses an arbitrary code of four "nucleotides," which are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. (There is one more nucleotide, uracil, found in some odd viruses.) The body uses the code of these four nucleotides to determine genetic structure.

If the DNA of human beings was completely different from the DNA of chimpanzees, or alligators, or petunias, or sponges, this would be a fatal blow to ET. There is no reason why it should be the same, if the species were created separately; there is no reason why one nucleotide could not be substituted for another, and still serve the same purpose of coding genetic structure.

Yet it turns out that all non-viral, non-anaerobic-bacterial life on the planet uses the same four nucleotides in the same coding sequence. In fact, the closer (in ET) one species is to another -- say humans and chimpanzees -- the more of their individual DNAs are identical: we share about 97% of our DNA structure with the chimps, for example.

So there are three completely separate methods by which ET is falsifiable; yet each of the three alternate sciences yields results that perfectly mesh with the basics of ET. And where there are discrepencies, evolutionary scientists do what they are supposed to do: they change the theory to take into account the new observations. (That is one thing that defines a science.)

Thus, contemporary ET is precisely the refinement of earlier "Darwinism" that survived the falsification test... thus it is, by definition, falsifiable -- unlike ID, which by its very nature cannot be disproven, since it depends upon an intervention by a sentient, supernatural being that could have done anything, including laying false "evidence" to mislead us.

That is enough argumentation for right now; I will return to this post periodically as more questions arise.

7. There are simply too many potential mutations, all but a tiny fraction fatal, for so much evolutionary change to have occurred in only a couple billion years.

There are so many possible mutations -- the figure 10^50 is bandied about -- and only a small number that would be viable and advantageous, and so many of the latter that would have to occur, that it’s mathematically impossible for evolution to have happened in only a few billion years.

Richard Dawkins (among others) has indeed answered this question, the creationists have completely misunderstood the answer -- which leads me to suspect they really don’t understand the underlying math as well as they pretend. The point is that the laws of chemistry and biology act as constraints or filters that prevent the vast majority of those 10^50 possible changes from occurring, restricting the possibility of mutation and other forms of variation to just a sliver of those possibilities.

This is not “functionally equivalent to the generic ‘intelligent designer’ of ID,” as one commenter put it; we see such constraints all the time in non-life physical science: a planet in orbit could mathematically go in any direction at any time; since there are an infinite number of directions, and the planet would have to select one particular direction out of those infinite numbers to keep along its orbit, and since it would have to do this an infinite number of times every second, one might naively say that probability that the planet would follow its orbit by sheer, random chance is zero.

But of course, it’s not “sheer, random chance” that keeps the planets in their orbits; that job is done by the law of gravitation: the planet follows its particular elliptical orbit (bumpy elliptical, since it’s tugged by all the other planets and -- in theory, at least -- all the other bodies in the universe) because its choices of motion are constrained or filtered down to only one.

Similarly, during ontogeny, the cells in a developing body of, say, a horse are constrained by the horse DNA present from the moment of conception. At a deeper level, atoms cannot spontaneously become different atoms because that violates fundamental laws of the universe (except due to radioactive decay -- which is also strictly constrained by its own laws; an oxygen atom cannot suddenly turn into a helium atom at whim).

Molecules cannot spontaneously become any molecule they want, or even any molecule that contains the same atoms: water (H2O), which consists of hydrogen and oxygen -- cannot suddenly turn into hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), even though that also consists of hydrogen and oxygen.

Physics, astrophysics, astronomy, chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, biology, and evolutionary biology are all disciplines built around discovering these “constraints” and formulating them as physical laws. But they all act to one purpose, as far as ET is concerned: to reduce the number of available choices for “mutation” down to only a few possibilities... and the “wrong” (unhelpful) choices do, in fact, wildly outnumber the “right” (helpful) choices -- most mutations are fatal; only a tiny, tiny percent confer a reproductive advantage. That is why evolution takes such a large number of generations... but not an impossibly large number.

8. Doesn't ET violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy)?

By the Second Law of Thermodynamics and by information theory, structures always move towards decay, from more complex to less complex, from more information to less information; the theory of evolution violates this precept.

Structures in a closed system, dude. The Earth is not a closed system... the sun pumps massive amounts of entropic energy (heat) onto the earth, and it is a small portion of that incoming energy that drives evolution. In addition, the sun itself and all the planets are made up of the remnants and debris from earlier stars; it is also not a closed system. And it is presumptively true that the universe itself, which is (so far as we know) a closed system, is losing information and coherency faster than it’s being created.

As to where it came from in the first place, there is not yet a scientific theory that explains how the Big Bang actually occurred, or what existed before it -- if such terms even have meaning, when whatever existed might have had different physical laws (perhaps even including a different set of thermodynamical laws). Everything I've seen picks up at least a few nanoseconds after the BB itself. Science can only theorize about this particular universe with these specific physical laws.

(There is plenty of room to argue that the Big Bang was actually the fiat lux of the Bible; but that is not a scientific argument, and science should stay out of it.)

9. There is no experimental evidence for speciation; nobody has ever seen a new species arise naturally.

This argument displays a faulty understanding of what “experimental evidence” means. It is not restricted to bubbling chemicals in flasks and beakers. Going to a fossil site and looking at what you find there is an experiment, or more accurately, an observation and measurement.

We find new species all the time, but we cannot say whether they really are new, or we just haven’t found them before. In the timeframes required for evolution, only microbes and insects can really be speciated speedily enough for humans to observe it -- and even then only by the “intelligent design” of humans. What this argument demands is absurd on its face: it requires that we sit and stare at some species for a few decades to see whether it changes, spontaneously, into some other species.

But nobody claims that is how evolution works; first, the vast majority of species on the planet at any particular time won’t change into any other species ever, or at least not in any observable time frame. Second, such changes are so gradual, you might not even notice them until such a long time had passed that the entire generation involved in the observation would have died (and you know what the attention span of kids and grandkids is like). And third, the argument demands that we not use any artificial means to accelerate or constrain the variations, because that wouldn’t be entirely “natural.” The “argument” is actually a clever but completely paralogical attempt to set evolution up to fail by making so many restrictions that the creationists know it would be impossible.

Here is an analogy: until very recently, no modern scientist had ever seen a supernova occur (people in China observed and reported the supernova that created the Crab Nebula, but that was such a long time ago that there were no modern astronomers). So how did we know there had been supernovae?

Because we saw and measured their remnants, and the theory of astrophysics explained where those remnants came from (supernovae) better than any competing theories: that is, the theory of supernovae explained more observations that had already been made and correctly predicted more new observations than any competing theory.

Then just a few years ago, a nova or supernova began (rather, the light from an ancient supernova began to reach us), and by golly, it turned out they really did occur. Astonomers were right.

And of course, scientists could do the same thing to creationists: they could say, “You claim that God is omnipotent; so prove it... tell Him to create a zebra ex nihilio, right now in your living room, while I watch to make sure it really does spring into existence out of nothingness.”

The creationist would of course have to respond by shaking his fist and quoting “do not tempt the Lord thy God,” which you’ll have to admit isn’t really an answer. The correct answer is “omnipotence doesn’t work that way, and according to the Bible, God hasn’t created animals out of nothingness for thousands of years.”

All right; so now you know how it feels!

(Next update will tackle the ever popular misconceptions about the evolution of the eye and the wing....)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 22, 2005, at the time of 3:55 AM

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In debate, there is a fallacy called the false dichotomy. This is best exemplified by the structure of the argument made by creationists (or followers of "intelligent design," which amounts to the same thing as creationism): creationists cannot prove t... [Read More]

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

"I am afraid that dishonesty is inherent in the entire I.D. project. On the one hand, all the funding for I.D. promotion, and all the fired-up base of support, is religious. On the other hand, the entire point of the thing is to attempt an end run around church-state jurisprudence by claiming that the I.D. project is not religion-based at all. Thus I.D. proponents have to say one thing to their supporters, another to any secular or legal venue they find themselves in."
from NRO That really sums it up for me. IDists are basically dishonest. Instead of working to prove their theory they attack competing theories. They want to push ID into highschool classrooms when ID has no scientific or academic bona fides yet. I think, IDists do not believe their theory has scientific basis at all, and that is why they use these desparate tactics. In fifteen years we will have single chips with the onboard memory and cpu cycles to approximate a human brain. In thiry years Kurzweil projects we will have functional AI's in our population. ID Theory is already historical dust and ashes, and just doesn't know it yet.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 5:14 AM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

With all respect, I have to disagree with your article. Intelligent Design, or (more honestly), the God Hypothesis,
began its life as a scientific theory. Up to about a century ago, anyone
who looked at the world and saw the incredible amount of systematic order
existing in living things had no choice but to conclude that God was
responsible. That all that had arisen through random chance was an idea
that almost no one took seriously. Certainly not in the time frames that
people then (as now) thought reasonable for the age of the earth. It was
a scientific theory: an attempt to understand the world that people saw,
and at the time the only attempt available.
A century ago, Darwin and some others began to suggest at least
one believable alternative to the "God theory". They suggested the
mechanism of natural selection to explain the order existing in life, and
it seemed very reasonable. Now we had two competing theories (there were
actually a few more at the time.) Both were "falsifiable". That is, even
though both theories would be difficult to rule out absolutely, there were ways to decide which was best.
The laws of gravitation are a good example for this. Till Newton,
most people had no choice but to believe that God or angels moved the
planets around (or some sort of celestial spheres very different from our
experience). Newton provided an alternate theory; the planets moved
according to his mathematical laws of gravitation. Using them, he could
predict the planets' movements with remarkable accuracy. This did not
absolutely disprove the other theories - it was still possible to say
that angels were doing it. However, it definitely favored one of the
theories. Either Newton was right, or the angels were carefully
orchestrating the planetary movements according to an inverse square law.
It didn't make any sense to think so, and so even stubborn religions
quickly (in a couple of centuries) began to accept that God might create
a mechanism called gravitation and let it handle running the planets.
The God theory of life is falsifiable, as is evolution. If the
theory of evolution were very successful in explaining what we see, it
would no longer make sense for anyone to say "God is doing it, but he's
following the script of natural selection in doing so". Intelligent design would be abandoned as an pointless complication to a nice simple
theory.
On the other hand, if the theory of natural selection would turn
out to be unsuccessful, we would be justified in going back to the
original theory, for scientific reasons: We want to be able to understand
the world we see, and there would again be only one good way of doing so.
Today the chromosomal relationship between all life is known,
that human beings and germs share mostly the same genes. According to
natural selection, this is quite understandable and necessary. According
to the God theory, it's possible but unnecessary. Thus, though it doesn't
"falsify" Intelligent Design absolutely, it points in the direction of
natural selection's being the more sensible theory to choose.
However, there are indicators in the other direction as well.
Darwin pointed out that his theory depended on species evolving through a
gradual accumulation of small shifts. A wing cannot grow through a single
mutation with any reasonable probability; it is necessary to assume a set
of small changes, each one making the species more fit to survive,
leading from no wing to yes wing. Darwin himself noted that it's very hard to understand how that could be done. A wing or an eye contains so
many different structures; how could half of them be anything but a
detrimental change? He admitted that he did not and could not know the
answer: The fossil record was then too sparse. But, as more information
would be gathered, and the fossil record filled out, he assumed that
perhaps it would illustrate how these small-step transitions had occurred.
That has not happened. The fossil record has been filled out very
much. Where there used to be gaps of millions of years, we now can see
changes that must have happened within ten thousand. Rarely or never have
we seen the very small transitions that Darwin needed. There seem to be
large jumps within remarkably short time-spans.
Worse, we have learned far more than Darwin could have imagined
about the incredible complexity of life's structures. Not only an eye and
a wing, but every single subdivision and sub-subdivision of any part of
every living organism seems to be too complex ever to be built in
incremental steps.
This fact doesn't falsify evolution. It still might be possible
to explain these things. But it is definitely not one of the theory's strong points! Rather, it's something that has to be choked down. History
might have been different, after all. We could have spent the last
century seeing more and more of the tiny shifts that Darwin required. But
we didn't.
If one scientist says, "Yes, there are still large gaps in the
theory of natural selection, but I expect we'll be able to fill them in
eventually," I don't mind. He's entitled to his opinion. But another
might respond in all honesty, "I don't think so. It was a nice idea, but
it doesn't look like it's working out. This theory doesn't seem able to
do the basic job we hired it for - explain where all that complexity came
from! Perhaps your opinion otherwise is not based on evidence, but is
itself a clinging to a religious belief - that there can't be anything
about the universe that requires belief in God to explain."
This dialogue can take place within the boundaries of science.
That is, within mankind's attempts to understand the world.
I apologize for the length of this comment. I kept it as short as
I could!

The above hissed in response by: MikeR [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 7:20 AM

The following hissed in response by: Roy Lofquist

The Darwinists have chosen to fight ID in the courts. Not only are the courts ill equipped to decide these matters but their very authority effectively quashes subsequent debate. It is argued that ID might be taught as philosophy or some such. The Federal judge ruled that ID is a religious doctrine, thus prohibiting it from any mention in public education.

As to whether ID is science or not the evolutionists are begging the question. ID is not a scientific theory. Its proponents have never claimed that it is. It is, in fact, an argument to falsify one hypothesis of Evolution: that speciation is caused by random mutations.

The ID argument is broadly in three parts: probability, information theory and experimental evidence.

..The probability argument is that the chances of mutations sufficient to constitute speciation are so small as to be impossible. The numbers vary but almost all calculations show that this probability is less than one in ten to the fiftieth power, that is one in 100000..... with fifty zeros. These mutations would have to occur billions of times to account for life as we know it. Richard Dawkins in his book "Climbing Mount Improbable" addresses this issue. His argument, as near as I can determine, is that there are "patterns" in nature which favor certain mutations. The existence of these patterns is functionally equivalent to the generic "intelligent designer" of ID.

..The information theory argument is that information always decreases much as thermodynamics states that entropy (disorder) always increases. We have never witnessed a spontaneous generation of a more information rich structure in nature.

..Experimental evidence for speciation by random mutation does not exist, even in the form of encouraging hints. The evolutionists say that mutation is the only plausible explanation. ID says that it is not a plausible explanation.

I am sure that anybody can find fault with my description of the issues. A full discussion would be thousands of words long.

As to whether ID is, by its nature, to be precluded from the Great God Science by definition I ask that you consider all of the other academic subjects that pretend to be science.

Perhaps the most glaring example of modern scientific mysticism is the current "Big Bang" cosmology. This postulates that more than 90% of the universe is composed of mysterious "dark matter" that is, by definition, undetectable save for subtle gravitatioanal influences. This in spite of the fact that there are far more plausible explanations that do not require mysterious unknown matter and laws. Foremost among these are works by Halton Arp, Hans Alven (Nobel Prize), Fred Hoyle and Eric Lerner.

What we have here is Galileo redux. The academic establishment is fighting tooth and nail to exclude the barbarians at the gates. It should be noted that almost all of the foremost Darwinists are also vocal Atheists.

What has been ignored in this whole debate is the question of whence DNA? Evolutionists flatly refuse to address this problem. In this they are most assuredly correct because nobody has advanced any plausible explanation at all for the origin of DNA. If ID had addressed this problem it would have been ignored because there is no establishment invested in it. But, if you can't explain DNA except as "mysterious" then manipulation of DNA is a trivial extension of whatever caused DNA.

The above hissed in response by: Roy Lofquist [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 7:56 AM

The following hissed in response by: senorlechero

MikeR hits a bullseye.

matoko kusanagi completely misses the target, and infact slanders promoters of ID. It is not dishonest to question evolution. We want ID taught as a theory that "Questions" ET(I'll use Dafydd's term, though I disagree with his attempt to sever it from Darwinian Evolution).

The above hissed in response by: senorlechero [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 9:09 AM

The following hissed in response by: Jack Tanner

'Now "establishing a religion" means something quite different in 2005 than it meant in 1789; '

No it doesn't.

'But today, it means any attempt by the federal (or state, now) government to promote a particular religious belief as the correct one.'

No it doesn't.

I believe the Establishment Clause also begins 'Congress shall pass no law' not 'A School Board shall make no decision'

The above hissed in response by: Jack Tanner [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 10:09 AM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

senorlechero, that was Derbyshire, not me.
i say again, disproving someone else's theory does nothing to prove yours. And why are IDists afraid to prove ID theory in the court of Science? Where are your research assistants, graduate students, classes in ID 101, professors of ID, and research institutes?
I think you CAN"T come up with any of those things, and you are afraid to try.
;-)

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 10:15 AM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

And, MikeR, evolution arose as a COMPETING theory to the god hypothesis, not by poking holes. ID must become a competing theory to be valid.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 10:47 AM

The following hissed in response by: RBMN

I don't think there's any harm in saying that evolution is a complete theory, that requires only the debrie of stars in a certain configuration to begin working. BUT, I think it's also fair to say that our particular evolution path may be special in some way. We don't know. We'll never know. We may have had some intelligent "extra-terresterial" help. We don't know. There's no way to know, so it will always be an open question. Why not raise the question? The answer doesn't have to be God--just advanced intelligent life. A certain number of us started life as one of two identical twins, were twins for a few days in our mother's womb, and then were alone, but we'll never know if that's how our life started.

The above hissed in response by: RBMN [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 10:58 AM

The following hissed in response by: Jim

Hum. Senorlechero (what a curious nom de plume) disses Matiko & she comes back with; "...I think you CAN"T come up with any of those things, and you are afraid to try."

Hum, hum. It's beginning to sound like a religious argument.

However... Dafydd's point 4, 'that you can't really prove it but you still use it as long as it works' is the best, in my opinion, argument for modern day evolutionary theory.

Creationism (to call a spade a spade and not ID) is fine, if one wants to believe it, but useless, -what can you do with it?

Using MD evolutionary theory however augmented with paleontology, geology, etc. one can extrapolate data to discover petroleum, coal and other great plastics feed stocks and precursors!

Yes I know that's a stretch but I am suggesting we use MD evolutionary theory BECAUSE with it we can quantify existing data and point the way toward future discoveries. When it doesn't work and we can't fix it we'll abandon it. Shucky darn, very few people dance to make it rain any more -but once it was the rage.

By the way; I've always felt it was the height of hubris for believers to tell God that he can't use evolution in The Great Scheme Of Things.

Also apologies to Mr. Lecher and Matiko-san, I didn't mean to diss your beliefs/positions, only to point out you're getting a bit personal rather than letting the facts err... , theories, speak for themselves.

The above hissed in response by: Jim [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 11:13 AM

The following hissed in response by: senorlechero

matoko kusanagi

Are you denying that you said "That really sums it up for me. IDists are basically dishonest"? I cut and pasted it from your comments above.

Your comment lead me to think that you know nothing about ID.

Jim. You said "Creationism (to call a spade a spade and not ID) is fine, if one wants to believe it, but useless, -what can you do with it?"

My answer would be this.........if Knowledge of our natural universe points to an intellegent design, people should be asking themselves "who is the designer?"

No offense taken from your comments. It is odd that you would consider his and mine in the same vein..........as he starts with calling ID proponants "dishonest" and all I did was state that we were not dishonest. Perhaps your sense of credulity toward believers keeps you from seeing the difference.

But that's ok..........I really don't expect an even playing field

The above hissed in response by: senorlechero [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 3:51 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

IMPORTANT NOTE:

I will not answer ID v. Evolutionary Theory in the comments section; if I consider an argument of general enough interest, I'll answer it with an update to the main body of the post, presenting it in the most general format possible.

I will use the comments to respond to points that are off the main topic.

Roy Lofquist:

The Federal judge ruled that ID is a religious doctrine, thus prohibiting it from any mention in public education.

It's perfectly legal to discuss religion in the public schools; you simply cannot establish one religious faith as truer than the others... by (for example) teaching it in a science class.

The new Dover school board -- a bunch of Democrats elected precisely because of outrage over the previous, pro-ID board -- has already said they plan to offer a class in ID in the sociology department, but to teach it as part of a comprehensive class on religion.

Senorlechero:

We want ID taught as a theory that "Questions" ET.

I'm sure you do; and I have no problem with that... it the proper place, which is a class in comparative religions.

However, ID is not science, and it should not be taught as science, because that violates the First Amendment... just as it would if the Norse creation story were taught as science (the cosmic cow licking the first man out of the ice, and all that).

Jack Tanner:

Now "establishing a religion" means something quite different in 2005 than it meant in 1789;

No it doesn't.

Jack, I'm not going to debate with you the idea that judges can interpret what the Constitution means. That is the subject for a different post.

The undeniable fact of the matter is that, rightly or wrongly, our society has allowed judges that power for more than two hundred years; and that today, judges routinely apply some parts of the Bill of Rights to the states (under the incorporation doctrine) and interpret the establishment clause of the First Amendment differently than James Madison or John Monroe would have, and these judges are just as routinely upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court may not always be right, but it is nearly always final.

Matoko Kusanagi:

And, MikeR, evolution arose as a COMPETING theory to the god hypothesis, not by poking holes. ID must become a competing theory to be valid.

I should have mentioned earlier, this is a very good point of yours.

You cannot attack ET by "poking holes" in it; ET itself does that to itself all the time... that, in fact, is how science progresses: someone pokes a hole in existing theory (that is, some expected observation goes awry), and there is a mad scramble to modify the existing theory so that it takes that unexpected observation into account... while still explaining all the years of expected observations, too.

ET has changed drastically over the decades; for one big, glaring example, the smooth, gradual, continuous evolution that Darwin imagined long ago gave way to "punctuated equilibrium," in which evolution occurs in fits and jumps, in between long periods of virtual stability.

Microbiology, the discovery of DNA, and nuclear chemistry have all caused significant alterations in ET... and in each case, by "poking holes" in existing theory.

ID can only be a science in its own right if it concocts a competing, consistent, and scientific (as defined in the earlier post) theory to explain the origin of species... something other than "God did it in six days, as the Bible says."

RBMN:

Why not raise the question?

Heh, obviously I have no problem with this, since here I went and "rais[ed] the question" myself!

I don't have any mental block against believing that evolution occurred because of the intervention of God, of Gid (His slightly less omnipotent cousin), or of the aliens from Arthur C. Clark's stories "the Sentinel" and "Moonwatcher," two of the stories that later became part of 2001: a Space Odyssey.

But until someone comes up with scientific evidence for such -- something beyond the creationist argument, which boils down to "I don't understand how evolution could have occurred naturally, so it must be impossible."

Jim:

By the way; I've always felt it was the height of hubris for believers to tell God that he can't use evolution in The Great Scheme Of Things.

Well, to be fair about it, that is actually the claim of ID: that God created all the species on Earth, but He did it by first creating evolution.

As I said, I have great sympathy for this viewpoint; I'm one of those who cannot see how human intelligence could have simply evolved naturally. But I recognize that Dafydd saying "I don't understand that, so it cannot be true" is structurally the same as an ID proponent saying "I don't understand how the eye could have evolved, so there must have been an intelligent designer."

Thus, lacunae in my ability to understand various aspects of evolution is not evidence that evolution requires an intelligent designer; it's evidence that I'm too dim-witted to understand everything!

That's enough for now.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 4:59 PM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

senorlechero.

But that's ok..........I really don't expect an even playing field

No, you don't WANT a level playing field. That is what infuriates the scientific community. You want perferential treatment for ID. You want ID to go into highschool classrooms without doing the heavy lifting. I have no objection whatsoever to ID becoming a science. But I am less and less convinced that it can.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 6:56 PM

The following hissed in response by: FredTownWard

1. With your descent into legalisms you completely (deliberately?) missed the point. Of course the current SCOTUS-accepted blatant and deliberate misreadings of the First Amendment require precisely this ruling, but it has nothing to do with what the Constitution ACTUALLY SAYS. Allowing open, in-your-face advocacy of religious beliefs in a government-controlled classroom does not by any definition of the word "establish" a religion. Only banning the advocacy of all other religious beliefs does so, which is why I can accuse the SCOTUS of establishing atheism.

2. I'll believe that you "have probably read more creationist literature than you have" when you are willing to admit that scientific arguments can be made in favor of Creationism and not before because they can be and have been, at http://www.icr.org/ among others. Of course you are certainly under no obligation to open your mind to such scientific arguments so long as you are willing to concede that your views on Evolution versus Intelligent Design are based on something other than science.

3. The judge's insults are relevant because their very injudicial nature calls into question his judgement. Like the umpire who rants about how much he despises one of the teams, this doesn't PROVE he was biased, but it sure raises the question.

4. Uh huh, "tentativity" is the word I'd use to describe people who go to court in order to prevent the public expression of opposing ideas. As for the rest, OF COURSE Creation Science is falsifiable! A 4 billion year plus old Earth would do it quite nicely, which is why Creation SCIENTISTS have put in so much work analyzing (and discrediting) radioactive dating, which brings us to

5. OK, I'm beginning to see the problem here. If you are being honest, you've obviously never SEEN, much less read any scientific arguments in favor of Creationism so until you correct this deficiency in your knowledge you'll just have to take my word that they exist. Whether they would or even could convince you is a question only you can answer, but so long as you strictly avoid them in favor of only exposing yourself to silly church tracts you'll never have to worry about it. I can only offer my personal experience: as a student and believer in Evolution science, I said to the Creation scientists, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" They did, at least to my CURRENT satisfaction.

6. Yes Evolution is falsifiable, unless you are careful to examine only the evidence that fits it. Another large area of research in Creation Science is the accumulation of evidence that falsifies evolution. The standard Evolutionist response of, "I'm not listening, and I'm calling my lawyer!" is a little weak.

In conclusion it is clear that you are unable to (or refuse to) distinguish between creation SCIENTISTS and religious believers who like creation because it fits their faith better. I offered you a website where you could begin to examine and test such scientific evidence and arguments. You were not interested. Well, no one says you have to have an open mind about such things...

unless you want to call yourself a scientist.

The above hissed in response by: FredTownWard [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 22, 2005 9:08 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

FredTownWard:

1. With your descent into legalisms you completely (deliberately?) missed the point.

Irrelevant to this post, which is not about the judge's ruling.

2. I'll believe that you "have probably read more creationist literature than you have" when you are willing to admit that scientific arguments can be made in favor of Creationism and not before because they can be and have been, at http://www.icr.org/ among others.

This is silly and insulting, Fred. Do you really demand that I agree with your position before you will believe I'm not ignorant?

3. The judge's insults are relevant....

No they're not. See #1 above.

4. As for the rest, OF COURSE Creation Science is falsifiable! A 4 billion year plus old Earth would do it quite nicely, which is why Creation SCIENTISTS have put in so much work analyzing (and discrediting) radioactive dating.

No, because even if you accept the old Earth, God could have constructed it already aged. There is no imaginable observation that has, as one of its possibilities, the disproof of creationism, because one can always say that God simply chose to make it that way: He chose to make fossils, He chose to arrange them simplest to most complex, He chose to make an old Earth, He chose to leave lying around fossils of creatures that never existed, like dinosaurs or trilobytes.

5. OK, I'm beginning to see the problem here. If you are being honest, you've obviously never SEEN, much less read any scientific arguments in favor of Creationism....

That is correct: none exist, so I haven't seen any.

I have, however, read extensively in the literature that claims to offer scientific evidence for creationism. But it doesn't really.

6. Yes Evolution is falsifiable, unless you are careful to examine only the evidence that fits it. Another large area of research in Creation Science is the accumulation of evidence that falsifies evolution.

You misunderstand the term "falsifiable," which is not the same thing as "disproven."

Falsifiable means that predictions are made that can be tested, and that if the testing goes a certain way, it would disprove the theory. Thus, all scientific theories are falsifiable; but no currently accepted scientific theories have been falsified. (If they were, they would no longer be accepted.)

Tell me the experiment or observation that, if it goes a certain way, would disprove creationism; bear in mind my response to #4 above.

I offered you a website where you could begin to examine and test such scientific evidence and arguments. You were not interested.

Dude, the ICR has been around since long before the World Wide Web even existed. I am quite familiar with their books and papers.

I have already told you I will not do your homework for you... if you have a specific argument that has not already been asked and answered here, I will respond.

But I will not respond to an open-ended suggestion that I go to the ICR's website and spend a few weeks reading all of their documents, in the off chance I'll find the killer argument for your position that you have been unable -- or unwilling -- to post here.

Paddle your own canoe!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 23, 2005 12:58 AM

The following hissed in response by: srmorton

Daffyd:

I have been enjoying your blog since you started
it, as well as your guest "appearances" on CQ. I
have never commented before, but this discussion
on creation vs. evolution hit home with me and I
just had to comment.

I had to reconcile this conflict for myself many
years ago due to my personal experiences. I am
a minister's daughter who has both a BA and a MA
in Biology. I have also been an instructor in a
community college in NC for over 20 years. I
have never had a doubt in my mind that God created
the world and all that is in it, but I also know
that natural selection (NS) can and does occur. NS
is the means by which evolution is believed to
take place. In order to teach evolution, you have
to know a great deal about the theory. The more
you discover about it, the more you can see that
there are flaws in the theory and that it is just
as impossible to believe that all of the order
in the universe happened by chance mutation as it
is to believe that God created everything all at
once, which is not what is claimed by intelligent
design (IT).

I came to the conclusion that it does not really
matter HOW God chose to create the universe. It
only matters that He did. The creation account
in Genesis follows the pattern that is described
in evolutionary theory (for example, life began
in the ocean). It would be a pretty good guess
for Moses (the author of Genesis) to get the
pattern correct unless he was inspired by God.
Time to God is meaningless and Moses may have
used the time frame of a week because it was
convenient or because it was something the reader
could relate to - it does not literally mean a
week.

I would like to mention here that in science we
empasize the scientific method and stress that
matters of faith and belief do not lend themselves
to testing by the scientific method. The evidence
for evolution can not be verified by anyone who
was actually there at the time. I was surprised
to find several years ago that some scientific
evidence FOR creationism does exist thanks to one
of my students who lent me a copy of Ken Ham's
The Answers Book. I highly recommend it (or his
new updated version).

I would also like to mention that it is sometimes
a difficult thing to teach evolution as I do in
the Bible belt. When you question the deep-held
beliefs of your students, they may close their
minds to the valuable scientific information that
you have to impart to them. I always preface any
discussion of evolution by emphasizing that it is
a theory (NOT a fact, as some of my colleagues
believe) and that it should be no threat to their
personal belief because, if matters of faith can
not be proven by science, they also can not really
be disproved by science. My friends who have the
deepest "faith" in evolution are also avowed
atheists and have a mission to dispel any notion
of a belief that God could have anything to do
with it from the minds of their students. IMO,
if the hard-core evolutionists were so certain of
the infallibility of their theory, they would not
mind having IT presented as an alternative. Most
advocates of IT are not asking that it be taught
INSTEAD of evolution, but that it be taught in
ADDITION to evolution. It seems to me that it is
the evolution absolutists that are afraid of the
comparison rather than the intelligent designers.

Of course, their names escape me now, but I have
read of several people from different fields of
science who after a lifetime of research and study
in their particular field of science came to the
conclusion that such a marvelously functioning
world could not have happened just by chance.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on this
topic. BTW, I LOVE the design of your blog site.
I am a cat lover, but I have always had a fondness
for lizards and try to keep my Siamese cat from
catching them and playing with them until they
(unfortunately) are no longer alive to play with.
Were I to tell one of my co-workers that, he would
say that I was interfering with natural selection!


Posted by at December 23, 2005 04:21 AM

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Comments:
Daffyd:

I have been enjoying your blog since you started
it, as well as your guest "appearances" on CQ. I
have never commented before, but this discussion
on creation vs. evolution hit home with me and I
just had to comment.

I had to reconcile this conflict for myself many
years ago due to my personal experiences. I am
a minister's daughter who has both a BA and a MA
in Biology. I have also been an instructor in a
community college in NC for over 20 years. I
have never had a doubt in my mind that God created
the world and all that is in it, but I also know
that natural selection (NS) can and does occur. NS
is the means by which evolution is believed to
take place. In order to teach evolution, you have
to know a great deal about the theory. The more
you discover about it, the more you can see that
there are flaws in the theory and that it is just
as impossible to believe that all of the order
in the universe happened by chance mutation as it
is to believe that God created everything all at
once, which is not what is claimed by intelligent
design (IT).

I came to the conclusion that it does not really
matter HOW God chose to create the universe. It
only matters that He did. The creation account
in Genesis follows the pattern that is described
in evolutionary theory (for example, life began
in the ocean). It would be a pretty good guess
for Moses (the author of Genesis) to get the
pattern correct unless he was inspired by God.
Time to God is meaningless and Moses may have
used the time frame of a week because it was
convenient or because it was something the reader
could relate to - it does not literally mean a
week.

I would like to mention here that in science we
empasize the scientific method and stress that
matters of faith and belief do not lend themselves
to testing by the scientific method. The evidence
for evolution can not be verified by anyone who
was actually there at the time. I was surprised
to find several years ago that some scientific
evidence FOR creationism does exist thanks to one
of my students who lent me a copy of Ken Ham's
The Answers Book. I highly recommend it (or his
new updated version).

I would also like to mention that it is sometimes
a difficult thing to teach evolution as I do in
the Bible Belt. When you question the deep-held
beliefs of your students, they may close their
minds to the valuable scientific information that
you have to impart to them. I always preface any
discussion of evolution by emphasizing that it is
a theory (NOT a fact, as some of my colleagues
believe) and that it should be no threat to their
personal belief because, if matters of faith can
not be proven by science, they also can not really
be disproved by science. My friends who have the
deepest "faith" in evolution are also avowed
atheists and have a mission to dispel any notion
of a belief that God could have anything to do
with it from the minds of their students. IMO,
if the hard-core evolutionists were so certain of
the infallibility of their theory, they would not
mind having IT presented as an alternative. Most
advocates of IT are not asking that it be taught
INSTEAD of evolution, but that it be taught in
ADDITION to evolution. It seems to me that it is
the evolution absolutists that are afraid of the
comparison rather than the intelligent designers.

Of course, their names escape me now, but I have
read of several people from different fields of
science who after a lifetime of research and study
in their particular field of science came to the
conclusion that such a marvelously functioning
world could not have happened just by chance.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on this
topic. BTW, I LOVE the design of your blog site.
I am a cat lover, but I have always had a fondness
for lizards and try to keep my Siamese cat from
catching them and playing with them until they
(unfortunately) are no longer alive to play with.
Were I to tell one of my co-workers that, he would
say that I was interfering with natural selection!

The above hissed in response by: srmorton [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 23, 2005 4:28 AM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

Most advocates of IT [sic] are not asking that it be taught INSTEAD of evolution, but that it be taught in ADDITION to evolution. It seems to me that it is the evolution absolutists that are afraid of the comparison rather than the intelligent designers.
Look, i'm going to say this one last time. If ID wants to be a science, it must behave as a science. The scientific community is up in arms because IDists are trying to push ID into high schools when it is patently unready. By all means, teach ID alongside evolution, BUT DO IT IN COLLEGES! Imagine quantum theorists trying to push quantum mechanics into highschools fifty years ago. In order to be a credible, competing scientific theory, ID needs body of evidence, researchers, grad students, texts and a curriculum. And don't whine about establishment science being hostile to ID. Establishment science is hostile to all unproven new sciences. Its their job! Show me the university that has ever refused research grants, unless of course there are strings on the results. But i think IDists better get busy because the singularity is breathing down our necks and It will change everything.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 23, 2005 7:41 AM

The following hissed in response by: senorlechero

matoko kusanagi

You should set your hysterical pre-conceptions aside and read what is actually written (and meant)

The level playing field I meantioned was in reference to another person's comments placing equivallancy on your comments slurring proponants of ID (you called them dishonest....then denied it) and my comments stating that we are not dishonest.

I have not stated my thoughts on ID being taught in the classroom, although I think the science behind it is clear (daffydd's unequivocal comments otherwise excepted)

My personal opinion is that when people (like you) inject their personal views on religion (you seem to have a distain for some forms of it) they negate their arguments

The above hissed in response by: senorlechero [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 23, 2005 7:44 AM

The following hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi

Why IDists are dishonest:
1. what derbyshire said ^^.
2. arguments for ID being taught in highschool classrooms always devolve into "you hate religion" and "well, you want to teach aetheism".
3. The Discovery Institute funds lawyers and propaganda for school boards, instead of scientific research on ID. If ID is a science, why aren't they putting their money where their mouths are?
4. IDists complain furiously that they can't get traction in the scientific community when they haven't even tried to develop a credible base of research. Their argument for ID is all argument against evolution.

I believe all religions are ESSs (evolutionarily stable strategies) and have disdain for none of them. I have no personal views on any form of religion. I am a SCIENTIST.

The above hissed in response by: matoko kusanagi [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 23, 2005 8:16 AM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

Dafydd, it's been quite a while since you posted here, and you said you'd update it "now and again". I know I posted some good arguments, but I didn't expect you to give up completely! :) It would be nice to hear back from you.
MikeR

The above hissed in response by: MikeR [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 21, 2007 11:08 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

MikeR:

Before proceeding further, I strongly recommend you read a particular book.

Don't worry, I'm not steering you to some atheist's denunciation of faith; I urge you to read a book written by an evangelical Christian, who of course believes deeply in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God... but who also believes in evolution by natural selection.

Collins sees evolution as the mechanism by which God created life (that is, believes half of the core of ID) -- but does not believe that there are "unexplainable gaps" that compel belief in God as a scientific proposition (the other half of the core of ID).

The book I recommend is The Language of God, by Francis Collins... who, in addition to being an evangelican Christian, also knows a little something about evolution.

He is the head of the Human Genome Project, the multi-year project to map every, single chromosome of the human genome.

Please read this book; I think it may change your mind. The argument you make is what Collins calls the "God in the gaps" argument, and he devotes considerable time showing why that not only doesn't work -- it's a bad argument for those who truly believe in an omnipotent God to make.

This book answers every argument you raised in your comment... and not only that, you will enjoy reading it! You will enjoy reading a book by a scientist who emphatically rejects the Richard Dawkins idea that you can only be a scientist if you are also an atheist. Collins, of course, is every bit as much a scientist as Dawkins -- which completely logically disproves Dawkins' supposition.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 22, 2007 3:13 PM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

Okay, I read it! But I don't think that the book answers every argument I raised. Roughly speaking, I made the following three points:
1) ID is an actual scientific theory (by my definitions, of course) that predates Darwinian evolution. Its current manifestation, of course, is only a decade or two old, and is pushed by religious guys. - I think Collins probably agrees
with this point, and indeed doesn't question the skill or sincerity of the current proponents of ID, just their conclusions.
He doesn't like the theory because it's a "step backwards" [I don't have the book to quote from, so I'm paraphrasing from
memory], but tough; if it would turn out to be true, it's better to back up and try again than stick to what's false.
2) It is falsifiable, in the sense that experiment can potentially make other theories more attractive. It's a silly fussy
idea to insist that there has to be a single experiment that rules a theory out, and I suspect that people who insist on that
are just trying to select a certain outcome in the discussion. - I didn't see that Collins discussed this, though he did
mention an ID proponent who made this point.
3) I claimed that observations since Darwin have failed to support certain claims of the theory of natural selection. - On
this point Collins certainly disagrees! He claims that more and more we have seen intermediate cases of things that had
originally seemed irreducibly complex.
Well, there's no way I'm going to argue with Francis Collins; I'm not a biologist at all. But that doesn't mean he's right in
his conclusion. This is ultimately an issue for the experts in the field, who understand the fine details of their
profession.
However, I'd like to mention several caveats:
a) Loads of the experts have a tremendous prior bias on this issue. They are not willing to consider the possibility that
there are things that mechanical science cannot explain. That's not my claim; [I expect we agree that] this is something they
say loudly themselves. Since such could never admit that the only possible theory is not working, their opinions on the
subject are highly suspect.
b) Strange though it seems, Dr. Collins is probably one of that group. For whichever reasons (no question but that his scientific
understanding may be one of them), he has decided to pick a theological view which avoids any risk of conflict with science.
As he explains many times, any other choice runs the risk of losing, and harming people's faith in the bargain. He's from the
"Surrender first" crowd. I would rather wait and see what happens and where the truth lies; we can do the theology later.
c) Of course, if the scientific evidence were as overwhelming as Dr. Collins feels it is, none of this would matter. But the
truth is that the examples he brought weren't very convincing to me.
The majority of his proofs were that life has common ancestors, as evinced from its DNA. That is a point that (most) ID
theorists agree on, so these proofs are not relevant in the present discussion.
On the main issue of disagreement with ID, whether natural selection can be the mechanism that explains the structure of
life, he didn't have very impressive examples (IMHO). For instance, he found a case of some stickleback fish that are in the
process of losing their back plates. And another was malaria's development of resistance to fluoroquine, which of
course is impressive but (I understand) can happen with a tiny change in the shape of a single protein. The same with the
flagella example.
d) As I said, I'm not a biologist. But a lot of this seems to be an issue of forest vs. trees. I do have a lot of training in
physics, and I don't think that any number of calculations about entropy are going to convince me that the current universe
is a likely consequence of a random start. A lumpy soup of quarks with slight random variations is what any sane person would
expect. The fact that science can explain this detail or that doesn't really change my basic view of the world - that it was
obviously designed. [Collins, of course, would agree with me on this.]
Exactly how G-d managed things, did he set it up and let it run or do fine-tuning on the way, is an issue for scientists and
theologians to work out. But [again IMHO] I don't see the "gaps" in the same way that Collins does. Even within his corner of
the world, biology and natural selection, it still seems to me that what he calls gaps are infinitely bigger than the
standing wood. The world is so intricate and complex. (I understand that it's unreasonable and unnecessary to expect
biologists who believe that natural selection can explain everything to work out every detail of how it happened, but still.)
As to the work done by ID theorists to actually disprove evolution, for instance, Behe's irreducible complexity of
this structure or that, and the more recent attempts to calculate the speed of natural selection of large organisms by
observing very quickly reproducing micro-organisms - I don't know if these will be successful or not. But that's a different
issue.
e) I didn't see, as I said, that Collins questions the sincerity or the skill of the ID community. I wonder if he would
approve of the difficulty they have had in getting their work peer-reviewed and published.
A lot of it may come down to whether one thinks that they are real scientists doing real work, or just religious loonies who
would rather not deal with reality. Are they a real second point of view, or are they lying to themselves and others?
Speaking as a layman, some of their work seems well done to me; they don't remind me, for instance, of the people who
occasionally mail me things disproving Special Relativity. On this point, I think Dr. Collins would agree.
f) I don't have a lot of experience in using genetic algorithms, but I have studied them and thought about how to use them in
my work. One thing that is very important in developing one is the value function. How does one assign a value to various
outcomes which will encourage the results desired, but gentle enough so that slight progress is favored? If the value
function is not chosen very carefully, the algorithm will go nowhere, since small changes in the "right direction" won't be
encouraged.
The basic disagreement between the scientific establishment and the ID theorists is on the nature of the value function
called "staying alive". We didn't get to choose it, it came with the universe. Is it (I) gentle enough that we would expect
smooth paths allowing useful change from one organism to another quite different one, or (II) does it look like a bunch of
delta function spikes (viable organisms) spaced incredibly far apart in a essentially flat plain of the nonviable? I
certainly don't know the answer, but I imagine that anyone's first intuition would have been strongly the latter. 'Course,
that's not a proof, but to me it's another indication that you can't expect me to believe that this is all running on its own
- "Argument from Incredulity".
g) Since natural selection is a theory where its most basic claim (i.e., f(I) above ) is difficult to demonstrate (aside from
the fact that there are all these birds and bugs out there), I think it's a great thing that someone is trying to knock holes
in the theory. Even if the theorists involved have a bias (as does the other side), that can only be healthy for the science
and help it be understood better. Surely having to deal with irreducible complexity and rates of mutation in rapidly
reproducing microorganisms is good for our understanding of biology, and the ID people deserve credit for raising
these issues. I find the hostility, contempt, and close-mindedness directed toward them to be pretty unpleasant, just as when
religious people sometimes show that same attitude toward people in science.
h) Weird as it seems, the world is run by non-scientists. This is true even about scientific issues. School boards, for
instance, will continue to decide what their kids should be taught in science classes (until the courts stop them, of
course). And non-scientists on the boards have to use their own best judgment. If the scientists can't convince them, if the
school boards don't trust the scientists to be unbiased, I don't see that the scientist get to say, "We'll decide what's
science!" You can decide, but then we have to decide too. (The same, of course, is well-known for a jury hearing expert
testimony, and for patients who are given advice by their doctor.) Sorry, but there it is; it's our school.
This post was even longer than the first one.
MikeR

The above hissed in response by: MikeR [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 18, 2007 1:04 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

MikeR:

I want to respond to this, but it might be a couple of days, as I want to sit down and compose a more complete comment than I can do in a few minutes.

If I haven't responded by, say, Friday, please remind me.

Thanks!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 19, 2007 12:07 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

MikeR:

I cannot respond to every point you make; it would take me days. But I'll try to hit the highlights.

1) ID is an actual scientific theory (by my definitions, of course) that predates Darwinian evolution.

You can have any definition you want. But there is a consensus definition among working scientists of what is a scientific hypothesis, theory, or system... and ID doesn't fit it.

2) It is falsifiable, in the sense that experiment can potentially make other theories more attractive.

That isn't what falsifiable means. Can you construct an experiment, even theoretically, that (if repeatable) could have as one of its possible outcomes the disproof of the idea, not that God set up the universe by physical laws He created and then let it run -- weak ID (we can call it "id") -- but rather that He can and does intervene again and again to create and maintain the world we live in?

I sure can't: In any such thought experiment I construct, any supposedly falsifing measurement can be dismissed by saying "an omnipotent God could create that measurement if He wanted to do."

3) I claimed that observations since Darwin have failed to support certain claims of the theory of natural selection. - On this point Collins certainly disagrees! He claims that more and more we have seen intermediate cases of things that had originally seemed irreducibly complex.

The cause of your confusion is probably that, like many others who reject "Darwinism" (the term you use), you believe that evolutionary biology is a theory handed down from on high by Charles Darwin... and that the very fact that it changes with every new discovery, remeasurement, or reinterpretation is a sign of weakness.

Rather, that is the great strength of science: That nothing is offered as a complete, unchanging solution; that everything is forever tentative. It's not a political philosophy, where change usually means abandoning principles.

Many, many, many ideas about evolution by Darwin himself have turned out to be wrong. Thus, the evolutionary biologist figures out how to modify the theory so that it easily and naturally accounts for the new data.

When I had this same argument with John Hinderaker, he exclaimed at this point that this was as clear a disproof of evolution as anyone could make: It must be false, because true things never change... they are eternal!

I'm not sure I was ever able to explain that what is "true" in science is the process; the substance changes constantly -- in response to the process.

So I would certainly expect many "observations since Darwin [to fail] to support certain claims of the theory of natural selection." That's exactly how science progresses.

And that is why no scientist ever calls evolutionary theory "Darwinism." Use of that word marks its speaker as a non-scientist.

e) I didn't see, as I said, that Collins questions the sincerity or the skill of the ID community.

No. Their manifest errors arise from faulty assumptions, observations, and rules of inference... not from venality or ignorance.

That's about as much as I'm willing to deal with at the moment... but I think there is much in my comment here to consider.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 22, 2007 4:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

Listened to Michael Behe on Dennis Prager from last Tuesday. Awful show: As I've told Dennis before (by email), for these kinds of things he really must have the guest on for at least two hours. Dr. Behe never reached a single important issue. Not even his fault; Mr. Prager didn't give him time, and wasted most of the time agreeing with him. I anyway think that there needed to be a counterpoint on with Dr. Behe - Francis Collins would have been great, or pretty much any competent microbiologist. Prager is just not up on these things. [I feel the same way concerning all the endless anti-global warming guests he has on: It would mean ten times as much to me if he had two guests; one for and one against.]

Anyhow, someone called in near the end, and as usual Dr. Behe never really got to answer. The questioner mentioned that ID is not falsifiable, and that no one could do biology without natural selection. I've rarely heard Dennis so upset at a caller - he was actually spluttering in anger at the caller's foolishness. [Interestingly enough, the latter point is something that Francis Collins agreed with in his book.] It is really hard for laymen to understand this rule of falsifiability, and that the vast majority of the scientists discussing ID quote it routinely helps to make most laymen distrust them as being biased.

Anyhow, the "rule" is wrong (as I explained at length in my very first post), no matter how many scientists believe in it. This isn't my idea; I got it from David Deutsch's "The Fabric of Reality". He's an extremely good scientist; he actually pioneered the field of quantum computing. He's also a virulent believer in natural selection and evolution. His book drifted into sheer lunacy at the end, but most of it was very interesting. And he had a nice section on Popper's epistemology, where he makes this point crystal clear. The issue is not the ability to disprove - that's just one (usually effective) criterion. The true issue is always the ability to decide which theory fits the world better.

"The cause of your confusion..." to the end of your comments. Here you're attacking a straw man; I agree with everything you said (I do have a lot of training as a scientist, though I haven't been one for a while.)
MikeR

The above hissed in response by: MikeR [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 9, 2007 2:30 PM

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