American journalist, Cathy Young, wades into the Intelligent Design (ID) versus Darwinian evolution controversy. It is an issue that appears to be causing more of a ruckus in Jefferson’s Republic than in Britain, which until recently, was pleasingly unruffled by attempts by religious folk to roll back the achievements of science (I have not a clue what Islamists think of evolution). Champions of ID seem, at any rate in the United States, to be coming from the so-called conservative side of the political divide. As Young points out, though, it is by no means clear why conservatives should take this stance:
In some ways, evolutionary theory is more compatible with conservative ideas than with leftist ones. Indeed, proponents of applying evolutionary theory to human social structures tend to be viewed by the left with suspicion, particularly on biological explanations for sex roles. As several commentators have pointed out, it’s conservatives who reject the notion that complex organization requires deliberate central planning — in economics. Why should biology be different?
Exactly. The Hayekian idea of spontaneous order is similar in some ways. It is arguable that Darwin’s appreciation of the emergence of complex systems may have been influenced by the writings of the Scottish Englightenment, such as Adam Smith and his famous idea of the “invisible hand”. It is entirely possible to believe in the existence, or indeed entertain the possibility of a Supreme Being and yet still sign up to Darwin’s theory and the subsequent development thereof. An atheist would presumably find it very hard to support ID, I would have thought. Here is a link to lots of stuff about this issue here, from a broadly pro-evolution perspective.
Should ID be taught in schools? Well, as a taxpayer, I object to what I think is a bogus theory being taught with money seized from my wallet. If parents want to teach religious ideas to their children, I have few objections. My only caveat is that parents do not have an unfettered right to indoctrinate their offspring, although given the rebellious instincts of most kids, this is pretty hard to do over an extended period of time in a vigorous, pro-science, pro-reason culture.
ID can only be supported by the blindly religious or the ignorant (Bush qualifies on both counts).
At the moment this whole controversy is little more than a joke, but were ID theology to become mainstream we could confidently expect the once great US empire, which is currently teetering under massive debt and a collapsing industrial base, to have confirmed that it is in terminal decline. Time to pass the batton to China?
Quote from a friend of mine sums it up nicely for me:
“The leader of the greatest, most powerful nation in the world considers it possible (maybe even probable) that the Earth is about 3000 years old, was created in a week, and at some point, a talking snake was involved. Awesome.”
I get fairly angry about people teaching religion as rational fact – so please excuse what im about to say.
Its got very little to do with ‘right’ and ‘left’ more to do with pig ignorant people and their refusal to accept reason and rational thought.
Muslim, Christian or whatever people really should stop believing in that mythical no-existant spirt in the sky. Religion is on a par with believing in the tooth fairy and boogy man.
phew feel better now ive vented.
John East writes:
“ID can only be supported by the blindly religious or the ignorant (Bush qualifies on both counts).”
You are Steve Punt and I claim my free copy of the Graduina.
thanks for putting me firmly in my place, John East. Glad to know that I’m either blindly religious or ignorant–which is it? You’re clearly much smarter than me; could you clear this up for me?
Funny, I don’t require other people to believe as I do (Roman Catholic, and a convert to boot). I sure would appreciate it if atheists would stop insisting that I believe as they do, lest I be “blindly” religious or ignorant.
Following a belief system which claims that by design, it’s deity can not be proven via any rational means, would quite easily qualify as ignorant and foolish.
Richard,
I have no objection to your believing what you want, and I don’t insist that you think the way I do. As to whether you are blindly religious or ignorant, I suspect the former, although I have no way of knowing for sure based on our very limited dialogue.
ID isn’t a “bogus theory”. It doesn’t have enough content to qualify as a theory.
Bob:
Joseph Campbell once told a story about a conversation he had with an Anglican priest who asked him whether he believed in a personal God. Campbell–being one of the “superior” people, i.e., atheist/”rational”–replied that he did not. The priest then asked him whether he would believe if he (the priest) could prove the existence of such a God. I’ve always found Campbell’s reply amusing: “If you could prove this God’s existence, what value would faith have?”
Just to be clear Richard Easbey I dont expect you to believe as i do. But I do reserve the right to call you (and anyone else for that matter) ignorant because of your blind faith in something that defies rationalisation.
On the subject of intelligent design, my mate pointed me in the direction of this. Hilarious 😛
Believing that there is no God is just as much an act of faith as believing that there is one. Whether or not there is a God is not a question that science addresses.
The idea of teaching ID in biology lessons in the US is absurd but I expect most kids will survive the experience. I don’t suppose it will do any more harm than the marxist propaganda, disguised as history, that I was taught at school in the UK.
Matt:
I would reserve the right to call you a “heathen,” then, but that wouldn’t be Christian behavior. I guess I’ll have to just settle for disagreeing with you.
“Believing that there is no God is just as much an act of faith as believing that there is one.”
If this is true, then just about everything has to be allowed this treatment… belief in Santa is just as legitimate as none. Same for elves, unicorns and the tooth fairy. This seems absurd to me.
“I don’t suppose it will do any more harm than the marxist propaganda, disguised as history, that I was taught at school in the UK.”
Are you sure there hasn’t been any harm? You seemed to have overcome it.. but how about the other 95% that generally don’t do things like frequent Samizdata?
The problem here, as in so many other areas of normal human activity, is that the state, as an agent of progressive modernity and social improvement, has annexed one of the primary familial activites—the education of youth—and made of it a political and social engineering enterprise.
It matters little whether the people espousing ID are correct or not, as our society dignifies any number of utterly unscientific beliefs, such as chiropractic, or homeopathy, or such astrological nonsense as planetary alignment and horoscopes, or the highly politicised claims of the environmental Litany, the dogma of the Greens or PETA folks, and the totally unsubstantiated claims about the values of diversity.
Add to these the shoddy scholarship and polemical nature of the race and gender pimps, or the mystical pretensions of peace and justice studies, and there is little credibility in the educators’ moans about being asked to discuss a doctrine that is less than scientific.
What this is really about is the threat to the powers that control the educational edifice if something ordinary parents want can be shoehorned into the curriculum. Even worse, the something is suspiciously like a religious idea, and only non-religious ideas are allowed in our educational facilities.
But, as a sort of thought experiment, let us imagine a society which is not driven by progressive, i.e. collectivist, ideology. In that social environment, parents might educate their children as they see fit—at home, in religious schools, in secular schools, in speciality schools; at great sacrifice, or little, or none at all.
The coercive power of the state would not be involved, no Constitutional issues would be generated, and, as a purely beneficial side-effect, an enormous number of unproductive, paper-shuffling, administrative flacks of one kind or another would have to find real jobs which would not have, as their main consequence, the impoverishment of the minds of millions of children.
Those who judge these questions by a claim of intended good consequences, even when the intention is not the reality, are concerned only with the alleged beneficial outcomes of the statist, collective educational system.
Those who evaluate these questions in terms of the individual rights of the parents and children to provide for their educations and future development as they see fit, accept the fact that some outcomes will be good, and some not so good, and some downright lousy.
Such are the trials of living in a free society, as opposed to a collectivist one, in which the outcomes are invariably lousy, and you better shut up about it.
I covered this one yesterday and realised I’m really not so bothered that it’s taught but I would be more concerned about in which school lesson it’s taught.
As part of Religious Education Intelligent Design ideas form a legitimate topic for discussion. But it has no place in science because it cannot be queried in the same way.
Scientific exploration is well structured, follows a fairly well-defined set of steps, requires rigorous standards of evidence and puts all claims under close scrutiny. Science requires substantial direct and indirect supporting evidence for any theory and its conclusions are still subject to demolition at any moment.
Intelligent design ideas notice how well the world works, marvels at the simplicity here, the complexity there and so concludes that this just couldn’t have come about by chance.
Ergo there’s a god.
GM
I couldn’t care less about ID/Evolution but I want to ask a question of all those who think they are coming down on the side of science. How do you know the science is correct?
This is a serious question. Assuming honest scientists report what they find – which is a big assumption right off – and assuming they invented their theories after careful observation of facts, and then tested them as best they could, then they would be reporting what they have found.
What process do you go through to test their theories? If you haven’t tested them then you are accepting them – hold on to your hats folks – on faith. You may accept evolution because it was taught with AUTHORITY which is very much the same thing. You may accept it because of the consensus of the scientific community which is rather like saying it is fashionable and still amounts to the same faith thing. Or you may have arrived at similar conclusions to Darwin based on your own research which would be a more scientific approach. So which is it?
Bernie,
It’s not quite the same thing.
When one accepts scientific ideas or findings it’s a recognition that there are tens of thousands of scientists out there who experiment, document, theorise and double and triple check each other’s work in the formulation of scientific ideas.
It’s knowing that scientists – some seeking fame for themselves – try to disprove other scientists’ ideas and that, therefore, those that make claims have to be very, very sure of their findings before making them lest they find egg all over their faces.
It’s knowing also that almost anything a scientist measures, tests, tries or experiments with will be measured, tested, tried or experimented in duplicate the world over if he is positing some theory as a result of these activities.
Science is not a very accepting discipline. If you make a bold claim you have to be able to back it up because until you do you’re not going to be taken seriously.
If I have ‘faith’ in science as you put it it’s because I have an understanding of – and so a faith in – the rigours of the profession. I know they get it wrong at times – spectacularly so occasionally – but there is just too much that science gets right to ever justify unthinking scepticism (not, I am sure, that you do personally).
GM
That’s a very cute story, Richard Easbey, but it only serves to demonstrate the true nature of religion. Why would it fear so much to be proven correct if it is so sure of itself? What would God have to lose?
Either way, religious discussions always turn into a mess, and I’ve been proven time and time again that religious individuals are borderline insane, self-contradictiver, and unwilling, and I doubt they are able, to discern any sense whatsoever.
You go ahead believing in whatever it is you need to make it through the day. Know only that it is just as laughable as any other unfounded belief, conspiracy theory or flying apemen which dwell in the deepest recesses of the hollowed out Sun who pass their days dressing up in women’s clothing and naming the stars.
Following your way of thinking, I could justify wiping your kind out because I follow the idea that within wood lives the all-seeing spittle who takes great offense by being carved into crosses, and you could say NOTHING against it because that’s what I happen to believe.
Your friend must be incredibly insightful.
The above controversy is yet another reason not to have State-supported schooling. Is it really a surprise that statists will support collectivist thinking, whether it’s Marxism or Holy Rollerism? Reminds me of the story of the British Communist who went to Russia and, in front of a Soviet official, trampled on a picture of the Queen. He was immediately deported as insufficiently respectful of authority.
I think Bush laid out his ID/Evolution views as carefully as he usually does when discussing his religious views. He said that both sides should be taught in schools. He was careful not to mention in which classes they should teach them.
I am of the position that ID should never be taught in any science class because it isn’t science whatsoever, but others have said that it would be worthy of a discussion in a science class to discuss the difference between science and philosophy/religion.
I agree with that take to a point, but the problem I have is that I don’t trust the school systems to handle that discussion in such a way that wouldn’t further muddle this whole topic.
Since I can’t trust it, science over here, religion/philosophy over there. And Bush has never stated that ID should be taught in SCIENCE classrooms.
Gary Monro
Gary I would love to believe it is as you say but I cannot as it would be unscientific!
The one major thing I want my kids taught about science is scientific method and logic. Nothing else in science is as important as that. With it we can think and arrive at conclusions that will help us. Without it we are at the mercy of any kind of conman be they scientist, politician, or religionist.
What you describe is justified faith. My point is that faith in Evolution or faith in Intelligent Design are both faith and are both just as nutty just for that reason. It isn’t whether or not one or the other has more validity but how one arrives at a conclusion.
Intellegent Design my ass!! Have you seen how far back the complaints queue stretches!
97% of all living things, that have ever lived are already extinct. That’s plants, animals, fish, bacteria etc. What kind of intellegence is that? What did those guys do wrong (apart from eat everything in sight) ?
Duncan Sutherland
There is ID and there is ID. Not all who people who support ID believe “…that the Earth is about 3000 years old, was created in a week, and at some point, a talking snake was involved” and I seriously doubt that “The leader of the greatest, most powerful nation in the world considers it possible (maybe even probable)…” believe any of the things you cite.
Just as there are shades of belief in God (hence different religions) there are shades of ID. Some people look at the night sky, or a newborne baby, and can’t help but think that there must be more to this all than pure chance.
If you choose to see this as a colossal accident then so be it. But it isn’t necessary to ridicule people who don’t
Bernie,
I don’t know that Blair is Prime Minister. I mean, I’ve never met the guy. I don’t know that Antartica is mainly ice because I’ve never been there nor do I truly know that the Bernie to whom I am now replying is the same Bernie I replied to earlier because I didn’t stand over him/her/them when he/she/they wrote his/her/their comments.
My faith in all of the above – as with my faith in the descriptions of generally accepted scientific theory (some very small amount of which I’ve validated personally) – is nothing like faith in an unseen, untouched, unmeasurable and unquantifiable spook. I actually can prove some of the above and can certainly reproduce many of the scientific discoveries that go towards our multitude of descriptive thoeries for the universe. I can do nothing to demonstrate the existence of a super-natural designer.
GM
I have yet to be satisfied with any of the means by which Scientific Creationists and IDers intend to evaluate their “theories.” (“I dunno” no more equates with “God did it,” any more than “I dunno” equated with imaginary friends opening the supermarket door for me when I was a kid.)
Proponents of ID should simply fess up. They have a specific improvable answer already as to who the Intelligent Designer is, and it is a god – a specific God in fact (Zeus et al. are right out), who operates beyond the laws of physics and causality (or otherwise by His own set of laws that we can never understand in a gazzillion years).
That alone puts it outside of the regimes and disciplines of science, though it can stay in the disciplines of religion and philosophy. Teach it there, but keep it out of Biology so we can cut up the former Mr Froggy and Mr Whiskers in peace.
Yes they’re all religious nuts. For example:
Steno – The Father of Geology
or perhaps this nut who felt the earth quiver ,
Reverend James B. Macelwane, S. J.
or how about this moonbat,
Nicolas Zucchi. S.J.
Yea those religious people crazy and unscientific.
/sarc off
Gary
Indeed this is true and helps to make my point. We have faith in a lot of what we believe to have been scientifically discovered. But if we have not gone through the discovery process ourselves, or at least studied how the discoveries were made, then we are taking them on faith and we should note the fact. The point of my original comment was to point out how even those of us who reject religious faith can still be blinded by our faith in science.
Mr Jrdroll,
Richard Dawkins himself wrote that, prior to Darwin, atheism was stupid. Until Darwin came along, that the Universe and everything in it was created by an intelligent being was the only theory that came close to explaining biology. That was then.
Your point is about as insightful and relevant as the point that Newton didn’t understand microprocessors.
Why does anyone care what Bush thinks about this? Is it relevant to his job?
Invited to choose between having my kids educated, my car fixed, or my elderly relatives cared for by (a) people of character, spirit, and dedication who believe in pseudoscience, or (b) unionized, time-serving drudges who believe in real science, which would I choose?
EU Referendum recently refered to a Booker column mention of a BBC interview on precisely this issue, the complaint being the disrespect the BBC showed to an ID proponent who was also a ‘scientist’. (yeah, long chain innit)
The comments link is
http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80&sid=04a0d6074d7b5e3c179edd55f51e1943
My take was –
Richard,
While I love and admire both you and Christopher Booker when you are commenting on the lunacies of the modern European and British political establishments, and while I also support 99.99% of the time when you are dishing it out over the idiocies the state maintained broadcaster, this issue of Intelligent Design is one area where I must side with the beeb against two of my journalistic heroes.
I had a look at booker, I then went on to read the relevant article by Dr Stephen (not Steven as Mr Booker wrote, sorry, not a criticism, merely a help to searching) Meyer.
The heart of his argument is the following statement –
“Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion.”
While I cannot do it in the space available in the comments section of your blog, nor in the time normally allocated to a blog comment, I certainly find these assertions, and the conclusion drawn, to be highly questionable and easily refutable.
I am sorry, but despite the impressive polysyllabic verbiage this really is just junk pseudo science.
Bernie at al,
The issue of faith and science is a non issue. I have no faith whatsoever in science. I don’t have to. Faith is acceptence without proof, precisely the opposite of what science offers.
As an athiest, I have faith (not knowledge) that there is no god, but as someone with scientific training I have confidence (not faith) in the validity of work done while following the methods of science.
I cannot persue every area of scientific research, replicating every experiment ever carried out, validating every datum ever quoted and drawing my own conclusions, but I do have confidence in the procedures followed by those who have carried out those experiments, because the value of those procedures has been validated again and again.
Where knowledge is available faith is meaningless, and the scientific method is the greatest generator of new knowledge yet created.
Squander one
Well that’s a nice “quote” coming from a self described atheist and evolutionist. . You secular folks should acknowledge that you can’t prove the higher power doesn’t exist. You evolutionist have another problem. Most scientific work is in repeatability of experiments. Since you can’t ctl-alt-del the universe, evolution will always be a theory.
Squander two
For the reading impaired as directed by provisions of the ADA, my point was that many scientific people have also been religious.
The fight over ID seems to me a distraction when we should be spending time in history or civics class teaching our children about how Darwinism morphed into Eugenics and did a lot of harm to society. Further, we need to say that one lesson to be learned is to be careful of some scientific theory being taken to an extreme that is not supported by the science, but is supported by folks who think it is.
That said, for folks to not be able to discuss ID in a calm and rational way is to be less educated than desired. At least in these United States there are a lot of folks who believe in God and quite a few who are prepared to accept ID. How do we dialogue with such folks without putting them off by saying they are just plain stupid? Since this is an ongoing dialogue in my home, I find it an important question.
Sign me a commited Roman Catholic who accepts evolution, but sees God as able to intervene.
That’s like saying that Samizdata and the Guardian are similar in some ways – both are British and online. But there are vast difference between the two that make analogy silly. And the difference between evolution and Hayekian spontaneous order is even vaster, and analogiesw between the two even sillier. The latter is intelligently designed. A system involving a zillion random chemical processes can’t be compared to a system involving a zillion independent intelligences.
That said, for folks to not be able to discuss ID in a calm and rational way is to be less educated than desired.
I’m not able to discuss ID at all. What destroys my calm, if not my rationality, in its purported proponents is that they never say what it is, only what it is not. Where’s the theory? How does it explain anything, if it could equally well apply to any other state of the world?
Darwinism is a theory–one of the strongest in all science. A literal interpretation of Genesis can be a theory, though not a very good one.
The truth is people who say they (or, often, are claimed by others to) support the “theory” of ID don’t all believe the same things about creation. ID is a battle standard behind which people with all sorts of incompatible and incoherent beliefs can rally behind the vague common feeling that there is some form of Divine Providence and evolution threatens that.
Chris writes: “Believing that there is no God is just an act of faith as believing there is one”.
Garbage. One is not required to “prove” a negative. The onus rests with people who believe in undefined entity (surely a contradiction) that has the power to start universes, cause tidal waves, heal the sick, and part the fargin Red Sea. To rely on the evidence of one’s senses, as rationalists do, is not the same sort of belief system.
The older I get, the more I despise the sophistry of many religious people and their utter contempt for the basic rules of logic.
Alan Henderson, you are wrong. Of course I accept there is a big difference between biological evolution and the emergence of things like markets, laws and languages. The point is that the likes of Adam Smith and arguably even Bernard Mandeville got the idea out of how complex orders could come about without a central, consciously directed PLAN. That surely must have had an effect on the intellectual world in which C. Darwin and others operated. It is hardly “silly” to point that out.
Jrdroll says, “You secular folks should acknowledge that you can’t prove the higher power doesn’t exist.” JR, it’s your fantasy, so it’s up to you to prove it.
C R Krieger says, “We should teach how Darwinism morphed into eugenics and did a lot of harm to society.” Words fail me.
If this is the level of argument from ID supporters then I think I may as well move on to another topic.
Isn’t the whole debate about ID/Evolution irrelevant ultimately.
Surely separation of state and church is a universally good thing. At the same time people have every right to choose their religious beliefs and it’s just common courtesy to have their right to hold those beliefs respected.
Religion should not be taught in state schools. Private schools are a different matter. Creationism could be taught as part of science classes although it would take very little time to debunk it.
Besides, holding bizarre or whacky beliefs is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes its just the sign of an open mind. Albert Einstein and Eric Gill are two examples that spring to mind.
Alan K. Henderson: I can’t find your quote in all the stuff above it, but the folllowing might be of interest:
I attended a lecture by Richard Dawkins here in Glasgow (which that year was Europe’s City of Culture – there’s more here than some people think) and after it asked him if he was at all influenced by Hayek. I wasn’t at all sure (and am still not) whether Hayek’s “spontaneous order”, a sort of “black box” into which information is fed, digested and then produces results which look planned, but aren’t, had any relevance to natural selection &c.
He thought for some time (“Who the hell’s Hayek?”), then said “The economist? No.”
The poor chap had a heavy cold, and there was nothing more to say, anyway.
As for ID, it strikes me it resembles “The God of the gaps”. More important, it holds up a sign:
SCIENTISTS! AT THIS POINT STOP WORKING ON THE PROBLEM.
But scientists shouldn’t accept that prohibition.
“He thought for some time (“Who the hell’s Hayek?”), then said “The economist? No.””
Interesting. To me the similarities between darwinism, ecology, economics and politics are blindingly obvious, to the point where I could certainly argue that they are just aspects of a single area of study. They are each about resources, their usage, players interactions and resultant effects.
But everything is ‘just’ as theory. As an agnostic myself, I do not preclude the possibility that the best current theory available to me (the ‘No God’ theory) could be wrong. However the idea that there is indeed a God is also ‘just’ a theory and not the most convincing one in my opinion.
Cathy Young made the point very well that whereas both Creationism and Darwinism are theories, evolution is the only one which is actually scientific.
The God theory is not testable and therefore doesn’t meet Poppers famous definition.
Faith is defined as firm conviction without proof, so those of a theistic bent don’t really need to argue at all. They don’t need proof. They have faith.
Atheists could be definied as having faith in a mechanical integral universe that exists without the agency of some extrenal supernatural force. However, this is a very different kind of faith as it is testable.
If that make any sense.
“Cathy Young made the point very well that whereas both Creationism and Darwinism are theories, evolution is the only one which is actually scientific.”
Sigh.
Again.
Why does this always come up? Don’t they teach anything in schools today?
Darwinism isn’t ‘just’ a theory. Creationism isn’t a theory at all.
The word theory has a different meaning when used in science than when used in lay parlance.
To the general populace the word “theory” is effectively synonymous with the word “conjecture”. An assumption based on limited information. To a scientist the closest appropriate term to this is hypothesis. Creationism is an hypothesis; a suggested explanation which forms the basis for further research and experimentation.
To a scientist an hypothesis doesn’t get promoted to the status of a theory until it has been tested nigh to destruction and survives. Darwinism has survived every attempt to question or disprove it for nearly a century and a half. Creationism, and ID, haven’t. Their proponents are singularly good at making assertions, but equally, singularly bad at testing those assertions. And if an assertion, or hypothesis, isn’t tested it isn’t science.
For Darwinism to reach the exalted status of a theorydom means it has shown itself again, and again, and again, to be pretty near bullet-proof. Unlike creationism.
The “God theory” isn’t one. God is merely an assumption, one based on exceedingly little in the grand scheme of things.
Now, to be fair, and to humour you, I don’t deny the meagre possibility that indeed the universe was constructed by a sentient entity. However, the possibility shouldn’t even be considered until at least some form of evidence leads in that direction.
Otherwise, it just sounds like superstition, intellectual laziness and desperate assumptions to me.
“The universe is too complicated!” Too complicated compared to what? Chances are, if it happened to be “simple”, you’d use that as an argument as well.
Chris
Read the post again. Isn’t that what I just said.
Bob
I have to ask, was that post in response to me, because if so, where in my post did I actually argue in favour of creationism and where does the “complicated universe” bit come in at all.
I’ve read Behe and found the complex of irreducible complexity in certain biochemical processes to be an interesting way of looking at things and not unscientific at all. Essentially, the idea is that if you have a complex enough systems whose component parts would logically be selected against (a great many individual portions of the blood clotting mechanism will flat out kill you if unmoderated by other portions of the process) there is no reason to believe that 10 or 20 or 30 independent mutations will all come together in one individual to give you an advantage when if you only get 90% of the necessary mutations, you’re severely disadvantaged.
The process of how complex biochemical pathways came to be hasn’t been fully explained by evolutionary theory as far as I can tell. Properly calculating the odds of such a thing happening randomly and checking against the available time since the creation of the planet (or even the universe) can yield a body of improbables that, cumulatively, point to an intelligent designer that’s nudged things along. ID, as science, has nothing to say about the nature of that designer at all.
The problem of properly calculating the chance of combinations coming together, assuring that things are actually irreducibly complex (ie their individual components would be strongly selected against and are unlikely to have arisen en masse), and knowing the available times for these assemblages to have been accomplished is not an easy task but none of it seems to be unscientific or even untestable.
ID may or may not be right as a matter of science. An awful lot of hypotheses don’t pan out in the end. I don’t think it improper for a science classroom to take an hour to discuss the possibility of irreducible complexity and the problem of there being enough time from the creation of the planet to today for evolution to be a reasonable theory is out of place in a school curriculum whether public or private. The honest, undeniable truth is that we don’t have enough knowledge on the origin of life to eliminate the improbables. We’re not even close.
hmmm… why are all you atheists so threatened by those of us who don’t share your belief in a random, cold universe that ultimately means nothing?
Hmmm… Why are all you believers so threatened by those of us who don’t share in your belief (This time, actually following the definition) in a universe which apparently owes it to you to cater to your whims and fancies?
An I.D. theory (more accurately, an a-priori metaphysics) I’m rather fond of lives here http://www.ctmu.org/Articles/IntroCTMU.htm. Not that I agree all his conclusions (some of the logic is strained), but the initial reasoning is quite interesting.
Great discussion folks.
Islamists believe that “man did not descend from monkey”. Islamists view of evolution (and understanding of natural selection) is no different than that of ignorant Christians.
All religions boil down to the same thing except for their fairy tales and myths, over which they will continue to argue.
Just so we can get a few things straight in terms of fact and theory, I will piggyback on what Chris said by using the famous Stephen Gould quote from the following essay–
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don’t go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s in this century, but apples didn’t suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Moreover, “fact” doesn’t mean “absolute certainty”; there ain’t no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Incidentally, Talkorigins.org is probably the best spot for those with questions concerning evolution and ID. Especially those who have fallen for the Behe Irreducilble complexity argument. You can start here and work your way forward. I would suggest you fire up the coffe pot.
Perry said:
That’s not correct. The physics with a little technology show that we can repeatedly send space craft to where ever in the solar sytem. Or design types electrical mechanical, chemical or civil engineering devices. So most physics and its helper mathematics are obviously not theory. They are fact.
john east said:
Johnathan said:
If I say “America doesn’t exist” under Jonathans rules of engagement that is all that is necessary for me to put forth. Of course the statement is ridiculuous. But folks of the “God Is Dead” variety leave the impression that all they need to say is what you(religious) think is stupid and then when ask for proof of your position say “You can’t prove a negative”.
Since we are a time limited species, I would just like openess in this sort of debate. When you secularists are able to time travel to the furtherest edges of the universe and return, when you are able to set the clock back to the beginning and return and are able to go into the future and return, I reserve judgement on my position.
Oh, come on. The fact is, you can see America. You have evidence of America. You even have direct influence from America.
It is not such with your idea of God.
Explain to me how God is any different than, say, pixie fairies, or yellow orbs of flaming Pepsi-Cola soaring through Jupiter between the hours of 12:01 and 12:07 in the evening? What evidence do you have to prove he isthere?
It appears that it isnt the atheists being threatened when the theists are demanding junk science be taught as science.
…teach ID,fine. In a theology class. Its valid theology. It’s not valid biology.
This is really one of the more idiotic things I have read. The ascent of the US largely occured when the majority of the population believed in creationism. Belief in evolution or ID or creationism is largely irrelevent to the economic well being of a country. It has nothing to do with anything of material importance. As far as I am concerned children ought not be indoctrinated in public schools on any of these subjects because it truly doesn’t advance.
As far as evolution goes, I am a supporter but I think evolutionary biologists think they know far more than they actually do. And while cases of speciation have been described in literature, it isn’t enough to call a few examples of microevolution as observations of evolution. Speciation in reality doesn’t take very much to occur, just mutate a few key receptors involved in the reproductive cycle, and voila you can prevent two organisms from sexually reproducing.
What is particularly laughable is the people who claim that cultured HeLa cancer cells are an example of speciation. The next thing we know, environmentalists will be using the Endangered Species Act to prevent cancer patients from receiving medical treatment. After all, we know that cancer is an example of revolutionary biology, where cells in a multicellular organism throw off the shackles that keep them in their place in “society.”
jrdroll: not so (at least that is my theory :-)). The very short explaination… You think you are in (say) America. But it could be you just think you are in America and in fact you are a deluded movie fan who watched endless reruns of US shows and who has never left (say) India in their life. It may seem real to you but you are actually bonkers. In fact, everything could be an illusion and you in fact exist in some form of virtual reality (which in a sence we all actually do as there is far more to reality than we can directly experience).
So how can you know anything is a fact? Well whilst there may be a theory that we are just dreaming reality, there are other far better theories that suggest reality is, well, real and quite objective. It may be ‘just’ a theory but it is a bloody good theory and thus that is the one I form a critical preference for, rather than the notion everything is just an illusion.
In other words, my theory (well, Karl Popper’s really) is that reality exists objectively but our understanding of it can never be other than conjectural.
“Reality is real” isn’t just a theory, it’s the only sensible theory – because if you theorize a “matrix” you can theorize that even the “outside” exists only in the mind of a movie director, and so onward. It’s an infinite regress. Most bad metaphysics results in those – along the lines of “so who created God?”. An infinite regress in metaphysics is a good sign that your explanation explains nothing and begs the very question it was intended to answer.
Without the concept of forming critical preferences for the most likely theory, every theory vanishes down the black hole of infinate regression, Jacob.
jrdroll’s grasp of the laws of logic make me realise that the influence of the Englightenment in western culture is skin-deep.
When a religious person claims that denial of the existence of God requires the same act of “faith” as belief in the existence of God, they ignore the evidence of the senses and the way in which we apprehend external reality with our intelligence. Religious faith is not like that. It is not testable or falsifiable. It is not, therefore, in the same bracket as scientifically acquired knowledge.
By all means teach religion in studies about religion. But the attempt by some religious types to teach it as science as if one were studying biology or astrophysics betrays a complete disregard for basic intellectual rigor and honesty.
To go back to Cathy Young’s original article, which is excellent, I find the attitude shown by conservatives, normally keen to apply evolutionary ideas to the social world, rather quixotic.
“Without the concept of forming critical preferences for the most likely theory, every theory vanishes down the black hole of infinate regression.”
That is simply not true, Perry. That regression stops at axioms.
Tman points to a very well traveled page on Michael Behe’s points on irreducible complexity. Unfortunately for his assertions, it doesn’t do much for the proposition that Behe is unscientific as much as it does for the idea that Behe is wrong.
We teach wrong scientific theories as a matter of course in K-12 science classes. We teach Newtonian physics. We teach the Bohr model of the atom. We even teach (briefly) about models where the sun revolves around the earth. We know that these models are wrong but they are still pedagogically useful and thus are still taught.
The point of the originating article is not that Behe et al are right or wrong (which would inform the manner of the teaching of ID but not its ultimate coverage in compulsory education as evolution’s most realistic present challenge) but rather that Behe et al are not proper science in that it is untestable, unfalsifiable.
While the work necessary to prove or disprove scientific ID is enormous, it is conceptually simple to explain and is, inarguably science.
1. list all structures and processes of life.
2. identify such structures and systems as are believed irreducibly complex or could not arise in the time available.
3. take your list and test each one to identify how it in particular is or is not irreducibly complex or how its arising could not reasonably occur in the time available for it to happen.
4. If you end up with an empty list, ID is proven wrong. If you end up with a long list, ID might have something to it, go back to step 3 and test again. An idea remains scientific if the methodology for testing it to failure is a brute force approach.
As a matter of reality, I’m not sure we’ve even completed step 1 and the anti-ID ideologues want to abort the whole process by slapping bad word labels on ID and discouraging people by torpedoing their careers if they work with the idea.
ID, as it is scientifically explored, is likely to increase our knowledge of the origins of life as systems that are wrongly viewed as irreducibly complex become explained more clearly (it’s inevitable that some of the early guesses are going to be wrong). We’re going to learn an awful lot about mutation along the way and statistically identifying mutation rates as well as rates at which useful mutations arise. This stuff is both useful research and adheres to the scientific method. The effort to label it as unscientific is simple professional political maneuvering, alike to the effort by Galileo’s Ptolmaic rivals to get him charged by the Inquisition.
As a matter of christian theology, I think that ID ultimately fails. It is incompatible with the present understanding of most apostolic christians which comprise the bulk of christianity. The points of incompatibility are not unworkable but it’s an uncomfortable fit.
As a matter of faith, I’m uncomfortable with ID. As a matter of science, I think it should be tested out like any other hypothesis.
Richard Easbey is right. Why do atheists have such a probleme with believers? Why are you all so threatened if your “faith” in materialism is so strong?
Sulaiman it is only you ignorance of religion that surpasses you ignorance of IT.
LIke Richard, I’m a Roman Catholic, and I can assure you that the !”all religions are the same” line is a fucking load of shit! ( yeah, Catholics can curse!)
I can assure ya dumplin’ that there,s a vast chasm seperating Islam from Christianity. Despite the boasts of Islamists ,we’ve little or nothing in common. How many Christian suicide-bombers have you spotted on The Tube? Is you real name Otto?
Your remark about descending from monkeys is plain stupid. Intelligent Design merely posits an invisible hand; it , in no way, excludes THE REALITY that we are descendants of early primates ( who were Apes, by the way).
Intelligent Design is, for the most part, a variation on the theme of Plato’s Logos.
So for clueless atheists, I suppose Plato operated on “blind faith”.
They waste our time trying to get middle-eastern folktales treated equally with scientific theories, and their theocratic machinations are scary.
(1) Prof. Antony Flew, a lifelong atheist, has recently become a deist, impressed by mathematical calculations about the probability of life arising accidentally.
(2) It always amuses me to read the worshipful essays about space rockets on this site and then to recall that Wernher von Braun was a scientific creationist.
(3) It’s easy to be a modern, scientific, rational, fairy-tale-free transhuman physicist. You just have to believe that this universe is only one of many which are hidden from any possibility of our perceiving them. You must have more faith in polymorphous-perverse multiversity, my children…
Meanwhile, may the Lord bless you and keep you and make the light of His countenance shine upon you.
Effra, a truly patronising post.
We seem to be in a situation almost exactly the reverse of that of about 80 years ago during the Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee (was it?). Then, indignant fundamentalists, who knew they were right, wanted it to be forbidden to teach Evolution in schools. Now we find indignant Evolutionists, who know they are right, wanting Creationism and Intelligent Design banned from being taught in schools.
When President Bush mildly suggested that all of these might be taught and students (pupils we call them here) decide which is most convincing, he is excoriated as an obscurantist fundamentalist, intent on pushing a Christian agenda. Anyone would think that he was in favour of forbidding Evolution to be taught, whereas he was simply enunciating a principle, perfectly consistent with that of free speech and the test of market forces, which most of the readers of this blog support.
I listened to Harold Evans, BBC substitute for the late lamented Alastair Cooke, going on about this yesterday morning. Anyone would think that civilization (what there was of it) in America was sliding into the abyss. How much more adroitly and urbanely would Alistair Cooke have dealt with the topic!
Harold Evans took over from Cooke? My God (in a strictly non-creationist way) what have we come to when such a debauched Huffpo like that can inherit such a mantle? PJ O’Rourke would have been my choice for Letter From America, or anyone who could show such fervour for New York as Cooke did.
I am shocked that no-one has brought up FSM Creationism and the growing campaign to bring this school of thought to its proper prominence in the American schoolroom.
Andi Lucas
If you want ‘shocked’ try Dinosaur Adventure Land where they can apparently prove that fossils are fake and that men and dinosaurs lived in harmony in Peru …
Good grief! My flabber is well and truly gasted.
Obviously the FSM needs a much fancier website for the kids along these lines.
Findlay,
I wasn’t going to post on this thread again, but congratulations, your comments have drawn me back in again.
When you say, in reference to a dum, ignorant Bush statement in support of ID, but perhaps more likely intended to secure the moron vote,
“……whereas he was simply enunciating a principle, perfectly consistent with that of free speech and the test of market forces….”
You display a total and complete lack of understanding of science and technology.
We didn’t achieve our current luxurious standard of living, and control of nature by some democratic process of free speech and customer approval. We achieved it by exercising intelligent free will, logical thought, and investigation and testing of the world around us.
If you wish to deny this process I suggest that you go back to eating wild fruits and carrion and living in a cave, which is about as far as we would have progressed if we hadn’t used our intelligence to take charge of our destiny.
John East
I’m not sure what you’re carping at. If you scroll up a bit you’ll find that I’m in the anti-ID camp. What I find disturbing is that a lot of fellow campers come close to wanting to ban discussion about ID and ban its being taught in schools. Creationism even more so.
I pointed out that this is exactly the opposite of the situation 80 years ago.
Whether we like it or not, we do have a democratic process and free speech and I for one wouldn’t have it any other way. I would say that such a culture would promote “intelligent free will, logical thought, and investigating and testing of the world around us.” Certainly societies that don’t have a democratic process and free speech (and there are still plenty of them) don’t seem to do so well. The USSR was a spectacular demonstration of this.
As for Bush’s statement being a dum (? never mind, I do that sort of thing too) ignorant statement in support of ID, I took it just as much “in support” of Evolution and Creationism. I’m afraid the idea that Evolution should or could be challenged seems to worry people who believe the facts in favour of it are so obvious that they don’t need to bring them out again and see what other people have against them.
I have a botanist friend (Ph.D.) who is so impressed by the extraordinary complexity of, for example, the basic organelle the flagellum (never mind what it is, you non-biologists) that he cannot imagine how it was evolved, with each step being functional. For those who want to know more, see the article in The American Spectator on ID (favourable) of, I think July, which my friend was so delighted to find confirming his views that he has been very dilatory in returning it, which is why I can’t give more details about it. My friend is an atheist, in case that needs to be made clear.
I argue that this to stop thinking about a problem – not a scientific attitude. There might be case for putting it to one side until we know more. After all, people in the Middle Ages might have believed that it was possible to get to the moon, but building bigger and better catapults would still not be the answer.
For some reason, it seems to be OK to bash Bush. But at least it must be said: BUSH IS NOT STUPID. His academic record was superior to Al Gore’s and he was Governor of Texas for two terms and is going to be President for two. One doesn’t get to these positions by being stupid. They said the same, ad nauseam, about Reagan, who had the same record, and then had to admit, reluctantly, from his voluminous papers &c (never mind his record, bringing about the fall of the USSR, when everone said it couldn’t be done) that they were wrong.
There’s a mindset (mainly of the left) that says: If you disagree with me, you are not only wrong, but stupid. This is simply arrogance (if I may make an equally dogmatic statement!)
Sorry I’m late…
But such complex structures always involve consciously-directed plans. The only similarity between them and evolution is the decentralization.
The comparison is like the vast majority of violations of Godwin’s law: the Nazi analogies represent overwhelming dissimilarities that make the razor-thin similarity meaningless.
Question: why can’t ID theorists assume the possibility of multiple intelligences?
Alan, sorry, I still don’t agree with you. When I mentioned language, for example, as an example of a complex phenomenon emerging through time and evolving, I don’t think of it as something that has been consciously planned. Of course in some nations like France the powers that be try to enforce rules of language, but English is a powerful example of how letting something evolve reaps dividends.
I suggest you go and read the great Dr Hayek to see if he endorses the idea that financial markets develop through conscious planning. Yes, many rules and regulations are planned, but they nevertheless evolve across time, often in ways that would confound earlier businessmen and lawmakers. That is why I drew out the analogy.
Findlay,
My previous post was somewhat “robust”, and I apologise for that, although I still have difficulty accepting free speech as a justification for teaching ID to impressionable children.
John East (again, but con simpatico)
Exactly the same attitude the Tennessee School Board (or wherever it was) had 80 years ago to teaching children Evolution.
When I hear what children do get taught in some US schools, a sort of muticultural relativist mish-mash, by all accounts, I’m far more worried.
No hard feelings, old chap!
ID is scientific. It may be wrong, but it is scientific. You can prove a negative, and ID is trying to do this. The falsifiable experiment for ID goes like this: identify what qualities constitute design. I can easily see this as a mathematical equasion of “this is the probability of a helpful mutation, this is the probablilty that this mutation will survive, this is the amount of time it will take for this mutation cross with this other mutation to create complexity.” If there hasn’t been enough time (and that is what I have seen so far) then it supports ID.
ID is in fact, in a large way, more scientific than Evolution, in that ID can make falsifiable predictions. ID can predict whether or not it is possible to see certain amounts of genetic variation in a given time frame; if more than that amount of variation is observed, then ID is falsified. Evolution, on the other hand, simply moves the goalposts when new fossils are found, regardless of earlier predictions.