This is a rather belated review of the Horizons Documentary- “A War on Science.”
I didn’t have time to watch the video until now.
Related Posts:
Horizon Origins Poll (here)
Another review (The Groggy Exile ;-))
The programme was cast in the mould of science vs religion documentary with the assumption built in that ID is the latest manifestation of Christian fundamentalists trying to get creationism into school science lessons. The background is the Scopes trial and the following US court cases to outlaw creationism from science education.
Despite this background it did allow several ID people to speak for themselves and this assumption in the background scenery could not prevent some of the key ID point coming across quite clearly.
In most cases the basic ID arguments were presented and the opponents were allowed to respond to this basic arguments with no opportunity for the ID people to come back at their opponents which tended to give the false impression that the anti-ID camp had won the scientific arguments and that ID was left as purely a political/social/religious movement.
Ken Miller appears with his dramatic assertion that the fight against ID is a battle for the “scientific soul of America.”
A very one sided view of the events leading up to the Dover trial is presented as the narrative background to the discussion of ID. No effort is made to present the real problem of secular education in a religious community. Only the anti-ID side were allowed to present what had happened at Dover. This may have been because the pro-ID side refused to give any help however but it was noticeably imbalanced I felt at that point.
ID was defended by interviews with Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe and William Dembski. The arguments focused on the issue of evolution as science and evolution as an integral part of a societal creation story and the concept of irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum.
I thought that the editors of the programme should be commended in allowing the main story of ID to be told by the leaders of the movement themselves and they gave a good overview of the basic ideas of ID.
The UK scientists who spoke against ID came across (to a pro-ID man) as remarkably ignorant of the arguments of ID given that they had agreed to appear on the programme and that they must have spent at least some time seeking to familiarise themselves with its arguments.
I do think that if Richard Dawkins wants to be taken seriously in this debate he will have to change his approach completely. His approach is to snub ID and dismiss it entirely portraying its proponents as “ignorant people” and the “yapping terriers of ignorance” forcing real scientists to “waste their time and effort having to respond to them” He has refused any public debate over these issues based on the argument that to appear in debate with these ignorant people would of itself give the impression that they had a legitimate case that ought to be heard. He maintained that ID is only spreading in parts of the population that “don’t know anything”
David Attenborough seemed to be presenting a version of Stephen Gould’s “two separate magisterial view of science vs religion he argues that ID is religious and no different from creationism. He suggests that religion cannot overlap with science as it belongs in a different category of discourse. It concerns religious emotions and ethical feelings and spiritual values –it is entirely subjective.
The UK spokesmen against ID were not very clear about what it was and what it was saying.
They are way behind the argument and have not bothered to learn the foundational issues.
The impression that the Dover judgement settles the issue over ID even in terms of the legal battles over how ID is taught is an error.
As far as ID is concerned this was a poisoned well from the start. Buckingham and the other pro-creationism members of the school board were from an ID point of view a liability- In Dover ID tried to make the best of a bad job and the Judge sought to make a supreme court judgement about ID for the united states rather than a limited judgement about this particular case.
Overall the BBC is to be commended for allowing the ID proponents to speak for ID themselves and highlighting the importance of the controversy. It was a shame however that they failed to present the underlying issue of conflicting worldviews impacting on education in a society which is still heavily influenced by Judeo/Christian foundations.
26 comments:
They are way behind the argument and have not bothered to learn the foundational issues.
What would you say the foundational issues are?
(This isn't in any way a loaded question - I'm genuinely curious as to what you think the key points are)
Not too sure what you mean by Creationism -but ID is about design detection a legitimate scientific pursuit ask SETI.
SETI is an extended fishing expedition that occasionally comes up with interesting results. When it does so, it first tries to find natural explanations for those results before inferring design.
For example, when SETI discovered a repeating signal, the scientists there put a massive amount of effort into discovering natural explanations. Eventually they hit on the idea of pulsars - beams of radio noise produced by the magnetic fields of spinning neutron stars.
If they'd attempted to use Dembski's Explanatory Filter, they'd have concluded design and would even now be trying to decode the "alien signal", not understanding why they weren't getting anything useful out of it. They instead followed the scientific method of selecting a falsifiable hypothesis ("there's no way a natural object could be generating this signal") and then going out of their way to try and falsify it.
Maybe they're wrong and pulsars are actually signals from aliens. But that should never be our conclusion unless/until all others have been exhausted - i.e. unless/until the hypothesis is well-tested enough to be considered a theory. This is (among other reasons) because the conclusion that it's an alien signal gives us less information as to what the signal might do next, so is far less useful.
Equivalently, it's far less useful to say that a Designer is responsible for the diversity of life than to say that evolution is responsible for the diversity of life, because the former makes no predictions as to what we might discover about life next. That's why I'd expect a serious researcher investigating ID to spend months of his/her time trying to determine how evolution could produce given structures (for example, irreducibly complex ones or ones possessing high CSI) before concluding that it couldn't.
So you could say with some justification that evolutionary biologists are the true ID researchers, because they're the ones trying to falsify the hypothesis that an unknown intelligent entity was necessary for life as we know it to appear.
To conclude: Comparing ID to SETI doesn't leave ID looking too great.
The foundational issues for ID are the need for time and more time to develop new concepts and refine existing ones.
OK, I can accept that as a foundational issue. But, until it's been developed and refined to the point where it's even slightly useful, please excuse me if I look for ulterior motives in anyone trying to pass it off as valid science. In particular, you can expect me to (metaphorically) tar and feather anyone who attempts to teach it in science classes.
I stll maintain that the BBC program was biased -an unbiased program would be to allow both sides equal time and redress; this wasn't the case and its not to be expected.
I'd tend to agree - it probably was biased. The only question is whether it was inappropriately biased. To use the standard (overworked) example: if you were making a documentary about holocaust denial, you probably wouldn't attempt to give each side equal time to explain their views. Historically, the scientific community has done better than any other group at figuring out how the world works, so it seems sensible to give them the benefit of the doubt over unproven challengers.
I'm not sure how the claim that evolution is a materialistic concept arises. The idea that life diversifies by evolution rather than by divine intervention is no more intrinsically materialistic than the idea that the planets are moved by gravity rather than by angels pushing them around. It wasn't even originated by philosophical (as opposed to methodical) naturalists - Darwin was a big fan of Paley before he left on his voyage.
Lifewish as far as I understand it a repeating signal such as the ones that lead to the discovery of a pulsar's would not qualify as complex specified information due to the short sequence length also they would fail in regard to the contingency filter no design conclusion would be made.
I have yet to see a mathematically rigorous definition of Complex Specified Information so I can't comment "officially". If you can help I would appreciate it. For example, why wouldn't a perfect snowflake be considered to be high CSI if you didn't know about the process of snowflake formation?
As far as Judges making Scientific claims im not too impressed... the judiciary are reflecting the concensus of opinion with greater fidelity than governments due to the relativism of the Law.The ruling in Dover was no big surprise-the dominating world view wins out again-Shock Horror!
What, even a Bush-appointed Republican Christian judge? It seems unlikely that such an individual would be willing to compromise their neutrality to push what you claim is a materialistic concept.
I'd also note that 83% of the Pennsylvanian population is Christian, so I'm not sure how evolution could be described as the "consensus". Sure it's the commonly-held view of scientists in the relevant sciences, but they're a very small minority in any population. So why would a judge who was interested in going with the "dominating worldview" choose to support them? Unless of course they make the best case for their views?
Im not too sure that accepting design would be less useful than evolution -especially if ID is actually true -for instance we see examples of front loading.
Accepting design would ringfence certain areas of life's history as off-limits to evolutionary biologist. This is only a problem when you consider that there might be much we could learn from studying the behaviour of evolution in those areas.
If design is actually an accurate description of how life arose then of course the study of these areas will not reveal any evolutionary insights. But if design isn't an accurate description, and yet we still fence these areas off, we'll be passing up on a treasure trove of information about the world. Given the potential of evolutionary approaches to revolutionise engineering, this would be kind of a waste.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that we see frontloading - can you throw me a few examples?
Good luck with the plumbing!
I have some questions.
I have no background in Natural Science, it rears it's head in my field of Politics only in as much as attempting to follow a sceptical critical thinking path to rare conclusions. I therefore have no way of really dismissing the ID technical arguments from those of the anti-ID advocates. Yes, I have read and listened to some things I understand, and a lot more that I do not, about bacteria and the complexity of areas that would seem incredibly complex to me even described in layman's terms.
So, I am not in a place that allows me the luxury of conviction - unless my conviction was to come from elsewhere.
However, my Social (Science) background makes me adverse to facts. Facts are dangerous structures, in my view cause for concern. So, I open myself to the possibility of an Intelligent Designer.
Now, the debate for me has body.
I search texts, listen to lectures, appraise debates. I wonder why some ID advocates want a separation of designed from designer? You've got me, I'm convinced - who/what did it? I can't argue with the 'Science' so I want to see what informs the greater question
I study myriad views of the world on a daily basis, the group mentality of the defensive hegemony, the passionate attacks of the 'new' movers. It's all here. All can see the motives of the natural evolutionists, they act like any other hegemony - as they should - scientific methodology demands defence, Kuhn doesn't require the new dominant theory to always be correct, so fight like hell. But I really don't understand what the pro-ID lobby want.
Why look for admission into Science class? We shouldn't want parity, we should demand dominance. The Science of evolution should be 10% natural selection and 90% conjecture of the nature of the Designer(s). Could someone tell me on this blog why the class shouldn't be filled with Christ, the Aliens and the Flying Spaghetti? Surely it can't be decided on the dominant religion of the local area. If it were, we would have to split the class into two distinct areas. One would inform children of the wonders of evolution, natural selection and irreducible complexity, whilst the other, dependant on which place on the planet this class was taking place, would instruct all in the nature and intentions of the Designer. Some classes, may even teach comparative theories of Design, bringing in the beliefs of others. We would have to think of a name for this.
We cannot get away from the Designer question, because most of any population will ask the question and demand an answer. There's a chance, that however hard we try to concentrate on the Science, the social will dominate. Everyone loves a mystery.
So, I really mean it - what do we pro-ID people want? I can't seem to find a mission statement. I don't know any evolutionists that feel completely fine about calling Darwinian evolution fact and not theory, unless they haven't tripped over a first year undergraduate Philosophy book, so what do we want them to do? Could it be that all theories should be given equal treatment in Science class, and for that matter all other classes? Would there be any theory that would be dismissed out of hand? and if there was, what would be the basis for that exclusion? Some lack of so-called 'Scientific' rigorous methodology, or maybe simply a lack of believers, would that keep out the conspiracy theories. Could we teach Holocaust denial as parity to Auschwitz due to some gaps in the primary source material concerning numbers of dead?
Any answers to my questions are gratefully received.
As a final admission of bias, I noted bacteria in the above piece as an example of irreducible complexity rather than say, the human eye, due to my own Catastrophic Retinopathy. Which means that I am less interested in it's complexity and more concerned with it's absurd reaction to blood vessel damage.
can you have inappropriate bias
Yes. I haven't yet rigorously formulated this particular section of my personal philosophy, but I'd tend to define "inappropriate bias" as "bias without statistical backing". So, if someone demonstrably lies to you regularly, it's OK to be biased against his latest contribution. If, on the other hand, a community has a tendency to promptly and straightforwardly admit its own mistakes then it's OK to be biased in favour of that community's current position, because, if they had any evidence it was wrong, they would have told you.
In this situation, the scientific community has historically (treated as a group) admitted its own mistakes. Actually, it has been the discoverer of most of them*, and has corrected its position publically and without rancour. By comparison, the Discovery Institute has a history of using what most scientists would consider dirty tricks to achieve a hidden agenda (as laid out in the Wedge document).
It's not OK to be biased against someone because you don't like them; it is perfectly fine to be biased against someone when they've shown a willingness to mislead you.
Regarding the Materialistic credentials of Darwiniam evolution, Dawkins seems to think it is Materialistic: "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
That just means that it's compatible with materialism. Gravity is also compatible with materialism and, in a world where it was believed that the planets were moved by the pushing of angels, it again would be hard to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. I ask again: how is the theory of evolution any more materialistic than the theory of gravity?
The structure of snowflakes, while the probability of the exact conformation of each individual flake is quite low, is the infallibly predictable result of matter obeying the laws of chemistry and physics under certain conditions.
So how do we know that life as we know it isn't an "infallibly predictable result of matter obeying the laws of chemistry and physics under certain conditions"? How do we check this? How do we confirm that life doesn't fall under the "contingency" branch of Dembski's filter?
Off-topic: why is Dembski's filter even in that order in the first place? Shouldn't it be something like "chance; specification; contingency"? That's pretty much the procedure scientists go through when someone thinks they've discovered a new phenomenon - first they check that it's not an anomaly, then they check that that person isn't imagining or faking it, then they infer that the phenomenon is a product of some unknown natural behaviour. Sometimes the elements of the filter are swapped round even more. How does Dembski justify his particular arrangement in this situation?
ID does not argue against Evolution it argues against naturalistic interpretations of the diversity of life.
Nothing wrong with arguing against philosophical naturalism - I've done that myself. I'd claim, however, that ID goes further - it attempts to argue not only against naturalistic interpretation but also for supernaturalistic** interpretation. That's a fairly strong claim that, if true, would completely destroy the fundamental postulate usually referred to as the Theory of Evolution (that evolutionary forces are sufficient to produce the diversity of life).
If true, this would mean that certain areas, for example the formation of irreducibly complex structures, would be lost causes as far as evolutionary biology was concerned - there would be absolutely no possible developmental pathway for them, so why bother looking for one?
If we accepted this premise, to the point that we trained our schoolkids to think of these areas of research as lost causes, and then later discovered that we were wrong, wouldn't that be a horrific waste of potentially important discoveries?
Most ID'ers hold to a form of evolutionary theory
I know, I can think of at least four variants off the top of my head. And when you think about it, that's actually a black mark against the idea that ID is science. Science attempts to discover accurate, predictive theories about the universe we live in, so it tends to converge on one solution the more manpower you throw at it. Religion... well, as an atheist I'm not really in a position to comment about what religion attempts to do, but it seems apparent that, historically speaking, religion tends to diverge and schism as you throw more manpower at it.
Thus, the fact that ID has completely failed to converge on any single understanding of what happened can be seen as circumstantial evidence against its scientific credentials. Science doesn't do "big tents" of diverse opinions, at least not for long.
* If you disagree with this comment, feel free to present examples, outside the immediate context of discussion, of scientific mistakes corrected by nonscientists
** Or aliens, obviously.
To Allygally,
You said:
"In fact all of the prominent ID proponents are religious people."
There are several others whose names I could dig out if you want but David Berlinski is a prominent non-religious ID proponent. He has a recent article on the origin of life here
Lifewish,
You asked:
"how is the theory of evolution any more materialistic than the theory of gravity?"
The theory of gravity seeks to explain the way objects behave as we observe them. It says that the universe behave in an orderly way. It says nothing about the origin of gravity or its destiny.
The theory of evolution seeks to explain what is historically one of the main strands of evidence for superhuman intelligence in terms of unintelligent causes.
Charles Hodge concluded his study on Evolution with these words:“We have arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism? It is Atheism. This does not mean that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic; that the exclusion of design from nature is as Dr. Gray says, tantamount to atheism.”
Lifewish,
You said.. (I paraphrase for brevity)
1. ID postulates some objects in biology as impossible to be produced by random events.
2. If this is true there is no point looking for a pathway to them using random events.
3. If we teach school kids not to look for a random event pathway and there is one and it is the true explanation of the biological object then they will lose out badly.
This kind of argument can be put the other way around.... If we teach our school kids that intelligent causes are excluded from science and there is a real set of objects which can only be explained by intelligent causes then they will lose out badly.
I think Pascal's wager applies perhaps???
The real point that ID asks is whether it is possible to identify certain objects as having an intelligent cause rigorously and scientifically.... so that we know one way or the other for certain.
That must be both exciting and useful.
Lifewish,
You said:
By comparison, the Discovery Institute has a history of using what most scientists would consider dirty tricks to achieve a hidden agenda (as laid out in the Wedge document).
Can you give some details of the dirty tricks?
Allygally,
You said:
"DI wants to destroy the distinction between state and religion in order to further the cause of theocracy."
The picture that is presented here is that of the present situation of neutrality and reason being assaulted by the forces of darkness and unreason taking us back to a theocracy!
This picture is an illusion.
We all want a legal system to suit our own worldview...There are just different sorts of gods and every state is a theocracy...to make a law you have to be either a god or speak for a god.
In this full-blown biological and Darwinian sense, the term ‘evolution’ means a process whereby life arose from non-living matter and subsequently developed entirely from natural means.
The version of evolution you're talking about sounds more like common or garden evolutionary biology to me. In which case, it certainly doesn't include abiogenesis.
My understanding is that evolution divides into the fact of common descent (as you said) and the mechanisms thereof. Neither of these explicitly deals with abiogenesis, although either may cross-fertilise with it.
Natural selection as theory of emergence of new species is bad science today; it does not fit observation. No one, not Dr. Darwin or anybody else, has ever observed natural selection lead to the evolution of a single species in the 3.9 billion years since Earth went biotic.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that we've never seen speciation occurring under laboratory conditions? That's false - my dad has personally speciated fruitflies. If I recall correctly, this was by putting them in different environments rather than by picking and choosing between individuals, so it would probably count as "natural selection".
If you don't think that counts, though, what are we left with? We've observed copious speciation events in nature (here are a few examples). Of course, we can never conclusively prove that any of these are purely as a result of natural selection.
But if we don't accept these, what we're left with is a tautology - we can never observe speciation under natural selection because, if we put the species in conditions where we can observe it sufficiently closely, that automatically renders the selection unnatural. Thus, failure to observe this tightly-defined version of natural selection wouldn't count as evidence against Darwinian evolution.
But no finch ever evolves into a Bald Eagle (or something other than a finch) due to natural selection. That’s what the Grants would have had to discover to find any scientific corroboration for natural selection as a theory of emergence of life or biological evolution of species.
I'd like to point out that this is moving the goalposts substantially. Finches aren't a species; they aren't even a genus; they aren't even a subfamily; they're a fully-fledged (no pun intended) family. And bald eagles aren't even in the same order as them.
Now, speciation, as I've already mentioned, has been observed to a degree more than sufficient to confirm its existence. Given a few hundred years, I'd expect us to eventually spot a transition that could sensibly be described as a transition between genuses (although there'd probably be a great deal of debate over it due to the inherent fuzziness of the terms - when does a twig become a branch?). However, to expect to observe a transition from one order to another is a complete straw man. If you waited a million years, you might just about see it happen in nature, but personally I don't have that much patience.
Evolutionary biology does not predict that we should see order-level changes occurring on a daily basis; if it did, it would have been thrown out years back as quite obviously that does not happen. This does not in any way affect its sufficiency as an explanation for common descent, any more than my inability to watch my grandparents grow up affects their sufficiency as an explanation for where my cousins and I came from and why we all have the same shape nose.
Why did life emerge on Earth 3.9 billion years ago, but not on Mars or anywhere else in this sun system? Natural selection doesn’t work on Mars or anywhere else in this sun system?
The sensible conclusion would be that, since natural selection only works once self-replicating systems are present, it must be easier for self-replicating systems to emerge on Earth. Given that the majority of the reactions necessary to produce life as we know it occur suspended in liquid H2O, this might be because Earth has ruddy great big oceans of the stuff and the other planets don't.
[A big chunk of repeated stuff]
I'd note that copy/pasting is generally considered to be bad form in a discussion such as this one. The logic is that rational discourse can only occur if it takes at least as much effort to make a point as it does to refute it, otherwise it's possible to "win" by snowing your opponents under with dodgy points. This is implemented in scientific discourse by the effort involved to get a paper published in a journal; sadly, blogs have no comparable system.
Living things have a certain level of adaptability on their own. That does not mean that new species pop up on their own through random chance mutations.
The nylon bug disagrees with you here. Developing the ability to digest an entirely new material, purely through a frame shift mutation? Sounds pretty impressive to me.
Given that bacteria do not in general reproduce sexually, it's something of a challenge to know where one species ends and another species begins. However, I'd assert that, if we came across this bacterium without knowing anything about its genetic makeup, we would probably conclude that it was a new species. A few thousand generations down the line, when its new functionality has really been honed, it will probably be hard to claim that it isn't a new species.
Likewise, the orangutans in the Great Ape House at the National Zoo, a species about 14 million years old, do not build cities and do not evolve into chatty people and never will. Wasn’t 14 million years enough time for the orangutans and chimps to start building cities?
Only if there was an evolutionary path from chimp to citybuilder such that every single step en route was viable. If, for example, chimps and orangutans lived in an area where the nutrients necessary to grow a big brain were in short supply, they would probably never get one big enough for citybuilding to really take off.
This is why the Aquatic Ape hypothesis for human origins is so nice - the food at the seashore is a lot richer in the raw materials needed to have a big brain.
Dogs in North America did not evolve from North American wolves. Likewise, European dogs did not evolve from European wolves. What happened to ‘natural selection’ in North America or Europe? It just didn’t work on those continents?
Dude, you have a really impressively weird view of what evolutionary biology says. There's no "predestined" path that stuff is supposed to take; each species just adapts to its surroundings. The Russian wolves apparently adapted to the arrival of humans earliest (by being the most domesticable) and, as a result, got transported round the globe. Purely as a matter of human history, an "invention" like the dog tends to spread from place to place rather than reemerging independently. I recommend the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" for more info on how events progressed after the arrival of humans.
Regardless, pointing to an example where humans got involved and claiming that it falsifies evolutionary biology is as daft as pointing to an example of someone picking an apple and claiming it shows that apples never fall off trees.
Why is it that young people in undergraduate or high school science class must be taught the neo-Darwinists' explanation of the causative mechanism behind biological evolution although it remains unsubstantiated?
It has been substantiated. Every single bit of it that's taught to kids is guaranteed to be rock-hard. Emergence of new features by natural selection and random mutation has been observed in the case of the nylon bug. Speciation has been observed repeatedly both in the lab and in the wild. Emergence of extremely complex traits by manipulation of the environment has been demonstrated in the lab. And then we get on to computer simulations, which is a whole other world of success stories.
The Theory of Evolution (that evolutionary processes are sufficient to explain the diversity of life) hasn't been directly substantiated - no hypothesis ever can be - but it's failed to be falsified so often that there's absolutely no justification for teaching anything else.
I submit that the only people who are teaching unsubstantiated science in classrooms are the less ethical faction of the ID movement.
One day there are no flowers in the fossil record. The next day there were flowers. This is not consistent with evolution through minute incremental changes over millions of years to evolve a new life form.
Correction: one million-year period there were no flowers, the next million-year period there were flowers. This is a result of the fact that flowers are an incredibly useful trick, which would thus have spread like wildfire once the plants happened upon it. This is completely compatible with evolutionary biology - in fact there's an entire model, known as "punctuated equilibrium", that's designed to figure out precisely how these sort of events work and how they arise from the mechanisms of evolutionary biology. Of course, you might not have heard of it - it's only been around for about 30 years.
But I advance the position that science points (not theology points, not philosophy points, but science points) to the workings of an external force – some force external to Earth and the cosmos.
I would advance the position that all you've demonstrated so far is a lack of knowledge of at least 30 years' worth of evolutionary theory. You might want to do some background reading here. I recommend TalkOrigins.org as a good place to start
I'm sorry I can't comment on your cosmological arguments - I'm not up to speed on that stuff. The links were interesting - thanks for pointing to the NASA site.
The theory of gravity seeks to explain the way objects behave as we observe them. It says that the universe behave in an orderly way. It says nothing about the origin of gravity or its destiny.
The theory of evolution seeks to explain what is historically one of the main strands of evidence for superhuman intelligence in terms of unintelligent causes.
But until fairly recently the (supposed) perfect order of the Heavens was considered to be a major plank of religious thought. That's why Bruno got burned alive and Galileo got put under house arrest.
The fact that religious groups gave up on that particular strand of evidence some centuries ago doesn't change the fact that gravity also cuts such a strand.
Maybe in a couple of hundred years' time proponents of the next theory to challenge religious beliefs will be saying "well, you accepted evolution, what's so special about our theory?"
You said:
By comparison, the Discovery Institute has a history of using what most scientists would consider dirty tricks to achieve a hidden agenda (as laid out in the Wedge document).
Can you give some details of the dirty tricks?
Well, firstly, the fact that they have a hidden agenda in the first place. Scientists are supposed to 'fess up to any ulterior motives. This is an extremely important rule.
Secondly, the fact that they tried to get their beliefs taught in schools without passing peer review. Targetting children with unconfirmed conjectures is a tarring-and-feathering offence of the first order.
Thirdly, their prominent use of a list of scientists who purportedly doubt the sufficiency of Darwinian evolution in an attempt to bolster the ID cause. That's at least three fallacies rolled into one:
1) the statement the scientists are signing up to is so vague that the majority of the evolutionary biology community could sign up to it
2) the statement doesn't mention Intelligent Design, so any attempt to use it as promotional material is assuming a lack of alternatives
3) the majority of the scientists do not work in remotely relevant fields, and are thus not going to be much more competent than complete laymen
Fourthly, their propensity for rather blatant quote mining.
There are a couple of other examples of things that affect their credibility, but I'd say that these are the key ones.
Of course, none of this would be so much of an issue if their work were to pass unbiased peer review, because then we'd know that, whatever their motivations, their work was good enough to be worth reading. Even if they managed this, their conduct would still be somewhat worrying.
I must confess that I made a daft mistake when I wrote the original comment. The example I was thinking of of ID movement dishonesty was of Dembski anonymously "reviewing" books he didn't like on Amazon - I'd managed to confuse myself into thinking he was a DI member. It is sheer good fortune that I got him confused with an organisation that also has a reputation for playing silly blighters.
Uh... I'm an idiot twice over. Literally ten seconds after hitting "Login and publish" I noticed that Dembski is indeed a senior fellow of the Center for Science and Culture (subsidiary of the DI) - I must have missed his name the first time I checked.
Fortunately, apart from the lingering air of incompetence they generate, my two mistakes cancel each other out perfectly. Dembski's reviews are indeed an example of DI dirty tricks.
Hmm, have just noticed a post in response to one of my points that I missed first time round.
This kind of argument can be put the other way around.... If we teach our school kids that intelligent causes are excluded from science and there is a real set of objects which can only be explained by intelligent causes then they will lose out badly.
I think it would be inaccurate to say that intelligent causes are excluded from science. They're only excluded if they fail to make predictions. If you're able to go into detail on the psychology and methodology of the God/aliens that you believe created this world, to the extent that it allows you to predict stuff that evolution doesn't predict, then I for one will be happy to label your beliefs as being at least as scientific as the social sciences.
It's just the attitude of "an intelligent being did it. We don't know how, when, where, why or what and we have no intention of investigating these questions, but we're sure an intelligent being was responsible" that is deeply unscientific.
I think this parody of the Intelligent Design movement said it best:
"Q: When did the Designer do the designing?
A: That's not something we can answer, it's more of a philosophical question.
"Q:How did the Designer do the designing?
A: Again, this is more of a philosophical question, so we can't say.
"Q: Is the Designer still designing?
A: Philosophical.
"Q: Is there anything Intelligent Design tells us about the Designer?
A: Yes, Intelligent Design says there is an Intelligent Design and an Intelligent Designer."
Anyway, back to the debate:
The real point that ID asks is whether it is possible to identify certain objects as having an intelligent cause rigorously and scientifically.... so that we know one way or the other for certain.
The ID movement as I understand it doesn't just ask that question; it:
1) attempts to answer it by semimathematical techniques
2) ignores all commentary from mathematicians and scientists pointing out why those techniques don't work
3) infers, by application of these techniques, that certain biological structures are designed
4) ignores any evidence that they could have evolved
5) attempts to get its conclusions taught in schools as an alternative to evolution.
There are of course exceptions to this behaviour pattern, such as your good self. However, to claim that ID just asks an interesting question is somewhat misleading.
1) attempts to answer it by semimathematical techniques
2) ignores all commentary from mathematicians and scientists pointing out why those techniques don't work
3) infers, by application of these techniques, that certain biological structures are designed
4) ignores any evidence that they could have evolved
hi Lifewish,
I'm not trying to jump into this debate, but just wanted to point out how your above comments on ID exactly fit the Neo Darwinian Evolution too:
Neo Darwinian Evolution,
1) attempts to support it by semimathematical techniques
2) ignores all commentary from mathematicians and scientists pointing out why those (macroevolutionary) techniques don't work
3) infers, by application of these techniques, that all biological structures are simply evolved out of nothing
4) ignores any evidence that they could not have evolved (by mutations & selection)
1) attempts to support it by semimathematical techniques
Evolutionary biology doesn't just support itself by semimathematical techniques. It uses a range of evidences, up to and including the holy grail of science: predictive power. To the best of my knowledge, ID has yet to demonstrate any predictive power.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with semimathematical techniques as long as they're well-tested and well-supported by solid evidence.
2) ignores all commentary from mathematicians and scientists pointing out why those (macroevolutionary) techniques don't work
Care to give examples? The explanations I've seen so far all seem to eventually boil down to "it looks implausible, hence it must be designed".
3) infers, by application of these techniques, that all biological structures are simply evolved out of nothing
Well, technically it only infers that they could have evolved out of nothing. This is an important distinction.
4) ignores any evidence that they could not have evolved (by mutations & selection)
Such as?
1)....
This is the main problem of evolutionary biology. It is not based on true mathematics, statistical information and probability calculations. So its observations and predictions are quiet open to personal judgement and wishful thinking. Bird evolution is a very good example.
as long as they're well-tested and well-supported by solid evidence.
How one can well-test and well-support evolution? is Neo- Darwinism testable? How can we test the bird evolution? They say ID is not testable, but how about the MacroEvolution itself?
2)Care to give examples? The explanations I've seen so far all seem to eventually boil down to "it looks implausible, hence it must be designed".
The whole ID is about giving such examples. But not only examples but mathematical proofs and real calculations. The correct word here is not "implausible" but "impossible". ID methods can easily show that most of macroevolutionary models can't even come close to "universal bound probability" i.e. they are impossible. If you think their calculations are wrong that's something else but as an engineer I found their math much more accurate and convincing than that of evolutionists.
...and in same way the evolutianary method boil down to "it must have been evolved so our assumptions must be true and there is no design"
3)Well, technically it only infers that they could have evolved out of nothing. This is an important distinction.
they could have evolved but how? mutation/selection is not scientificly proved. macroevolution has never been observed. It's very open to personal interpretation. Arrange some set of fossils and then claim they form an evolutionary path from mammal to whale, it may look convincing at first glance but is this an empirical fact?
4)ignores any evidence that they could not have evolved (by mutations & selection)
Such as?
Such as many objections done to this mutations/selection thing from many scientists that I'm sure you are quite familiar with them.
As I said before ID guys gave lots of those examples. Its upto us to believe in them or not but keep in mind those guys are real scientists.
Before ID there were also many other scientists who continously opposed the evolutionary monopoly in biology.
British Astronomer Fred Hoyle and his assistant Wickramasinghe wrote books to mathmatically disprove the macroevolution. Hoyle believed in Panspermia theory but again he always admitted that the whole story of life needs an external intelligence to enter into the picture. Without an intelligent touch it would be impossible.
I just came across this article, which claims that David Berlinski doesn't actually support ID. From the article:
David Berlinski, a mathematician and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and a sharp critic of neo-Darwinism, also signed the statement of dissent. But in an e-mail message, Berlinski declared, "I have never endorsed intelligent design."
Obviously there's no way to confirm this, but, if true, the "token atheist" of ID is no more.
AllyGally: Berlinski is a member of the Center for Science and Culture, so he probably already knows about the Wedge document - they were the ones who wrote it in the first place.
Allygally,
I am still left wondering whether you have actually read the Behe astrology interchange in the transcript....
I acknowledge that the John West quote of Judge Jones is misleading and I would have preferred Dembski to come clean and admit that he was wrong about the Shallit deposition etc.
Behe's point was that astrology at that point in history was a mixture of science and superstition. There was real testable stuff there which was tested and the junk got thrown out.
We want to avoid throwing out any babies with the bathwater.
Well spotted Lifewish ;-)
In my experience all agnostics are practical atheists...do they count?
This is the main problem of evolutionary biology. It is not based on true mathematics, statistical information and probability calculations.
That's true in part, although some bits of it are fairly decent, mathematically speaking. All the population dynamics stuff is fairly rigorous, as is the study of genetic algorithms and ALife systems. Problem is that the field of biology as a whole isn't particularly amenable to mathematics (and I speak as a maths student here). That doesn't in any way discredit evolutionary biology, any more than the relative intractability of weather prediction discredits meteorology.
How one can well-test and well-support evolution? is Neo- Darwinism testable? How can we test the bird evolution?
Well, for example, in the case of bird evolution you can look for strong evidence that the current hypothesis is accurate, and for any evidence whatsoever that the current hypothesis is inaccurate.
Examples of strong evidence in support of the current evolutionary hypothesis for bird evolution include the existence of fossils like archaeopteryx, the fact that a point mutation in birds can cause them to produce scales instead of feathers, and the fact that a similar point mutation can cause them to produce alligator-like teeth. (I'm currently looking for a primary reference for the feathers-to-scales mutation - I'll let you know when I've found one)
["Strong evidence" in this case is defined to mean evidence that looks like it's going to be really difficult for an alternative hypothesis to adequately explain. "Adequately explain" is defined to mean that said evidence naturally follows from the premises]
Specific routes have been proposed for the question of how this evolution from dinosaur into bird could take place. The current best guess is that the dinosaurs in question, having recently developed partial warm-bloodedness, were able to find a use for downy feathers, which are basically just frayed scales. The insulating effects of the down would then be boosted by equipping each feather with a more rigid structure, allowing the feathers to lie in layers. Once this rigid structure was present, it wouldn't take much for a mutation to give these already lightweight dinosaurs the ability to glide. And once that started to become a useful trait, the sky really wouldn't be the limit.
This is a solid hypothesis, which can then be subjected to further tests as new data comes in.
I would agree that the Theory of Evolution (that evolutionary processes are responsible for the diversity of life) is not directly falsifiable, in the same way that I'm fairly sure that a rarefied design inference isn't directly achievable. However, that doesn't mean it's not indirectly falsifiable. All ID needs to do to falsify the ToE is produce an hypothesis for some part of evolution that makes better predictions about future discoveries than the current best evolutionary hypothesis for that part of evolution.
So far, when ID proponents have proposed a model, it hasn't made any predictions at all, which makes it fairly easy for the evolutionary approach to surpass it. This is odd - I'd have thought it'd be very easy for ID to make good, powerful predictions. For example, most designers I know tend to modularise and reuse their code. Therefore, if the ID conjecture is accurate, we should see regular reuse of DNA sequences in situations where, as far as we can tell from the fossil record, two species aren't remotely related. For example, when we explore the genes responsible for fins in fish and whales, we should find that they're very similar.
If ID made predictions like this, and then went out and tested them, and repeatedly discovered that the evidence matched these predictions - despite the fact that evolution would not be able to explain such a homology* - then not only would I be happy to consider ID science, I would also be happy to acknowledge it as a very strong hypothesis and eventually accept its introduction into schools.
The current version of ID, by contrast, gives the impression that they're avoiding making any predictions for fear of being proven wrong. That's not terribly scientific.
(Sorry for going on at such length - this is an issue to which I've been giving much thought over the past couple of days)
The correct word here is not "implausible" but "impossible". ID methods can easily show that most of macroevolutionary models can't even come close to "universal bound probability" i.e. they are impossible.
Again, speaking as a maths student, I have yet to be directed to any mathematical explanation that is even remotely rigorous. I haven't read The Design Inference yet (it's on my To Do list) but I have dissected in some depth Dembski's Displacement Theorem, and it is my almost-professional opinion that it is complete bull (full details available on request). This isn't encouraging.
And other approaches I've come across such as Irreducible Complexity are blatantly an attempt to formalise the idea that something doesn't look like it could have arisen naturally. Without providing any explanation beyond personal intuition. The fact is that irreducibly complex structures form in nature all the time. Given this, I can't see why they shouldn't be able to form in biology.
If you're able to explain why exactly something like the evolution of a bacterial flagellum would be impossible, I would of course be grateful.
If you think their calculations are wrong that's something else but as an engineer I found their math much more accurate and convincing than that of evolutionists.
You know, there's a scientific hypothesis about that :P
(No offence intended - the hypothesis in question is entirely tongue-in-cheek)
...and in same way the evolutianary method boil down to "it must have been evolved so our assumptions must be true and there is no design"
I'd tend to say it boils down to "we know certain methods of production of complex systems are within the reach of evolution. On the premise that evolution was behaving the same way back then that it does now, let's see if we can figure out a route by which this thing could have evolved. Then let's try to falsify that route."
You are, of course, perfectly welcome to take the same approach with Intelligent Design, making predictions as detailed above and searching for direct evidence that such a Designer was actually active back then. However, just saying that a Designer did it, without providing a methodology or making any predictions, isn't going to cut much ice. In fact it's on the borderline of being scientifically nihilistic.
mutation/selection is not scientificly proved.
Fundamentally, that's true of absolutely everything in science. Heck, gravity hasn't been proved - it's just that we've got so much evidence in support of it that it seems fairly daft to deny its existence.
I've gone into some detail of why a similar state of affairs holds with mutation/selection earlier in this thread so I won't bog it down further by repeating myself.
Arrange some set of fossils and then claim they form an evolutionary path from mammal to whale, it may look convincing at first glance but is this an empirical fact?
No, it's a working hypothesis. If it's an accurate hypothesis, we can expect to find more data supporting it and no data refuting it. At present I'm not aware of any data refuting it.
Feel free to provide an hypothesis that makes stronger predictions if you can think of one.
Such as many objections done to this mutations/selection thing from many scientists that I'm sure you are quite familiar with them.
Most of the ones I'm aware of are creationist canards that have been thoroughly refuted decades ago. If you're aware of any that you don't think fit that bill, I would very much appreciate being appraised of them.
(Disclaimer: the first thing I'm likely to do is check TalkOrigins.org for a convincing rebuttal. You may wish to double-check that any such rebuttal is flawed before presenting your objections)
As I said before ID guys gave lots of those examples. Its upto us to believe in them or not but keep in mind those guys are real scientists.
Science shouldn't be a matter of belief - in fact the faith and scientific approaches to phenomena are, IMO, fundamentally antithetical. If ID really is a matter of belief then that's a sure sign that something is seriously wrong with it. If they're both correct and scientific, they should be able to demonstrate to any impartial observer that their hypotheses are the best ones available.
As an aside, I'd note that their being "real scientists" doesn't necessarily mean that their objections are in any way meaningful. As exhibit A, I present the Nazi pamphlet "100 Scientists Against Einstein", published in response to Einstein's receipt of the Nobel Prize. Einstein famously responded: "If I were wrong, one would have been enough."
British Astronomer Fred Hoyle and his assistant Wickramasinghe wrote books to mathmatically disprove the macroevolution.
Sadly, I haven't read Hoyle's book either (I'll add it to my horrifically-long To Do list). If you can present any of his mathematical arguments here, I will of course be happy to discuss them - arguments of that sort are the reason I got interested in the ID debate in the first place.
* Evolutionary biology predicts that fish fin genes should be no more similar to whale fin genes than they are to human arm genes. Evolutionary biology does, however, predict that whale fin genes should be far more similar to human arm genes than they are to fish fin genes. I have no idea if anyone has checked this.
In my experience all agnostics are practical atheists...do they count?
I propose a scoring system:
Start off with 100 points for a scientist supporting ID, and then apply these moderators:
1) Scientific qualifications:
- Divide by 2 for a non-PhD
- Leave as is for a non-tenured doctorate
- Multiply by 2 for a tenured doctorate
- Multiply by 4 for a Professor
2) Relevance of field:
- Divide by 4 for a scientist in a field with no relation to evolution (engineer, nutritionist, sociologist etc)
- Divide by 2 for a scientist in a partially relevant field (pretty much anything biological + certain areas of mathematics + probably some stuff I've missed) but hasn't actually studied evolutionary biology
- Leave as is for a scientist in a partially relevant field who has studied evolutionary biology
- Multiply by 4 for a scientist in a directly relevant field (anything with "evolutionary" in the title + most areas of bioinformatics)
3) Initial bias:
- Divide by 8 for a strongly evangelical or fundamentalist Christian (or equivalent in another religion)
- Divide by 2 for a moderate or lapsed Christian
- Leave as is for an agnostic
- Multiply by 8 for an atheist
- Multiply by 65536 for Richard Dawkins
Does that sound about right?
I was pondering including a "creationist canard" index too, to check for a person's susceptibility to known bull but, given the theme of this discussion (specifically that I'm fairly sure that ID is the next generation of said creationist canards), that would be problematic.
You know, I think that's one of the best analogies I've ever seen. Mind if I steal it?
This blog is such a great source of metaphors :)
Not any more.have you noticed the absence of IDers for the last few days. Does that mean that us pesky "darwinists" have won the argument?
You wouldn't be surprised, would you?
That's a little unfair - this blog often goes quiet then springs back into life. I doubt the current period of quietness implies any "victory" on behalf of supporters of evolution.
Websites, Forums and Blogs are not places that one thoery will win or lose. It requires much more in-depth analyses and a detailed scientific look. Also it's difficult for all of us to come here and continously post. We need to pay attention to other aspects of life like work and other things.
I wanted to post lately but couldn't give enough attention.
As a small note for the relation between engineers and the ID I can say:
It is very likely and usual for an engineer to detect, analyse, understand and admire works of another engineer.
Lifewish commented on John Umana’s comments...
Natural selection as theory of emergence of new species is bad science today; it does not fit observation. No one, not Dr. Darwin or anybody else, has ever observed natural selection lead to the evolution of a single species in the 3.9 billion years since Earth went biotic.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that we've never seen speciation occurring under laboratory conditions? That's false - my dad has personally speciated fruitflies. If I recall correctly, this was by putting them in different environments rather than by picking and choosing between individuals, so it would probably count as "natural selection".
Please let me know when anybody succeeds at speciating something other than a fruitfly from a fruitfly. Natural selection must be ruled out as a scientific explanation, though perhaps it has become a form of blind faith among some. JU
But no finch ever evolves into a Bald Eagle (or something other than a finch) due to natural selection. That’s what the Grants would have had to discover to find any scientific corroboration for natural selection as a theory of emergence of life or biological evolution of species.
I'd like to point out that this is moving the goalposts substantially. Finches aren't a species; they aren't even a genus; they aren't even a subfamily; they're a fully-fledged (no pun intended) family. And bald eagles aren't even in the same order as them.
How is this moving any goalposts? Dr. Darwin named his work, Origin of the Species. That’s what we’re talking about, how new species originate. My point is that nothing comes out of the finch family other than another finch. Take as much time as you want, but give me a new species from lab work if your viewpoint is to be scientifically viable. JU
Now, speciation, as I've already mentioned, has been observed to a degree more than sufficient to confirm its existence. Given a few hundred years, I'd expect us to eventually spot a transition that could sensibly be described as a transition between genuses (although there'd probably be a great deal of debate over it due to the inherent fuzziness of the terms - when does a twig become a branch?). However, to expect to observe a transition from one order to another is a complete straw man. If you waited a million years, you might just about see it happen in nature, but personally I don't have that much patience.
Here’s a little wager to consider: We know from mt-DNA studies that all dog breeds evolved from a small group of grey wolves in East Asia. So, why not take a group of grey wolves today and see if you can come up with any Chihuahuas through whatever selective breeding techniques you may choose to employ, but only sticking with the group of grey wolves (no introduction of dog genes permitted). JU
Why did life emerge on Earth 3.9 billion years ago, but not on Mars or anywhere else in this sun system? Natural selection doesn’t work on Mars or anywhere else in this sun system?
The sensible conclusion would be that, since natural selection only works once self-replicating systems are present, it must be easier for self-replicating systems to emerge on Earth. Given that the majority of the reactions necessary to produce life as we know it occur suspended in liquid H2O, this might be because Earth has ruddy great big oceans of the stuff and the other planets don't.
Have you considered WHY it is that three-quarters of Earth is liquid water – but no where else in this sun system? Just pure coincidence, just good luck? I know you are trying to avoid it, but Darwinists need to come to grips with the cosmological arguments that I mentioned. Just can’t be explained by pure coincidence or chance. I'm all in favor of this debate -- As John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty states, “[T]ruth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.” Debate is a good thing, but we should stick to science, not to unsubstantiated theories that fly in the face of microbiology.
Stay well. John Umana
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