Debating intelligent design

Science writer Michael Balter recently published an op/ed in the LA Times entitled Let 'intelligent design' and science rumble.

He writes:

Should "Intelligent Design" be taught in school alongside the theory of evolution?

That's the question being tried in a federal court in Pennsylvania, where 11 parents have sued to block the teaching of intelligent design in Dover's high school. But it's the wrong question. A national debate over how best to explain the complexity of living organisms would better serve our children, and adults too.

Balter argues that public schools should teach the controversy. He contends that evolution would garner more public support in a climate where it was actively challenged. Religion is the biggest obstacle to widespread public acceptance of evolution, and creationism was removed from biology curricula to preserve the separation of church and state. So, Balter argues, banning Intelligent Design and Creationism from the classroom is counterproductive because it reinforces the perception that evolution is incompatible with religion.

"Could it be that the theory of evolution's judicially sanctioned monopoly in the classroom has backfired?" Balter asks.

He goes on to suggest a two part solution: public debate and dialectical curriculum. I agree with the first half of his program. I think the public debate about evolution should be expanded. However, I don't think that teaching the controversy is an appropriate compromise.

If students are going to debate Intelligent Design, those debates should take place in philosophy classes. Intelligent design hasn't earned a place in biology classes.

Normally, we let scientists dictate the contents of the science curriculum. If we're educating the scientists of tomorrow, it only makes sense to ask what the scientists of today think the youngsters should be learning.

We only consider teaching this so-called controversy is because politically influential activists have launched an incredibly successful public relations campaign.

Teaching the controversy in science class gives the impression that there is an ongoing scientific controversy, as in, a controversy that is being hashed out among professional scientists as part of a larger research program. There is no such controversy within science.

Allowing Intelligent Design into schools wouldn't burnish evolution's public image. Instead, pitting ID against evolution in schools would be a giant work of political theater at public expense. Adding ID to the science curriculum implies that ID is science. That's exactly what the anti-evolutionists are looking for. These neo-creationists couldn't earn the respect of scientists, so they're badgering civil society to confer the appearance of legitimacy.

The question "Should Intelligent Design be taught alongside evolution in public schools?" is very much the right question. The answer is unequivocally no.

Comments

[Gary Sugar]

Well said Lindsay. But the ID nuts think it is science. A prophecy or myth is a kind of hypothesis. And grasping eagerly at the slightest straws of evidence is a kind of method.

Anyway, the ID battle doesn't worry me too much. I don't think American fundamentalism is increasing. It only looks that way because so much of the world is shedding its myths more readily. Call me easily pleased, but I think it's a huge improvement that ID nuts don't claim the fossil evidence was planted by Satan.

[Dan]

a) what did philosophy do to deserve this?

b) I gather you're talking about high school classes; I'm astonished by how long it's been since I was in high school, but I'm under the impression that there are only a handful of public high schools in the country with any philosophy curriculum, (and to the extent there's any philosophy in high school, I'd much rather see the kids reading Descartes or Locke or Plato than, e.g., Demski) and

c) to the extent that i.d. makes an interesting subject for philosophy, it seems to me to raise questions about the philosophy of science, i.e. what's a theory within the context of science, what is falsifiability, what is the epistemic status of scientific claims, etc. To have a discussion of i.d. in the context of any of those positions is, it seems to me, to proceed from the assumption that i.d. is a sham, a joke, and then to use that to highlight discussions of what science really is (e.g. "so i.d. doesn't present any claims that can be proven false. What does that tell us about it?")

Now, don't get me wrong--I believe pretty strongly that i.d. is a sham and a joke--but to show why, you have to examine its biological claims, something not suitable for a philosophy class.

Personally, I'd love to see every biology teacher in America spend a week at the end of the semester (after the kids have already learned something about how evolution works, and its role in biology) talking about the claims made by i.d., the research project (or lack thereof) of i.d., and, finally, branching out a bit into philosophy of science questions like "what is falsifiability?"

[Bob Koepp]

I agree completely that ID should not be presented in biology classes as a viable alternative to neo-darwinism as an explanation of biological forms. But the more circumspect IDers only present it as a _critique_ of methodological naturalism in biology -- i.e., they argue that "mere" natural selection is insufficient for the generation of certain "complex" heritable traits. In this guise, I think it entirely appropriate that ID be addressed in biology classes that include some discussion of the social, political and intellectual context of evolutionary theory.

Students should learn that the sort of critique embodied in ID (i.e., X could not, in principle, be the product of process Z) requires something analogous to a formal incompleteness proof to successfully challenge the neo-darwinian explanatory program. Students might actually come to understand that it's the failure to provide this sort of formal demonstration, rather than any religious connotations, that undermines ID as science. They might even come to understand that if the ID argument was developed in certain ways, some day it might actually succeed, in scientific terms, in undermining neo-darwinism.

[C.J.Colucci]

Turf issues like where it ought to be taught aside, who actually wants an honest debate about evolution vs. ID? If done tolerably well (though why should this be done better than anything else?), the pro-ID side would be demolished, and a lot of youngsters whose religious faith is tied too closely to provably false empirical notions would begin to wonder what else they had been taught to believe was wrong. I'd actually like to see this, but is it really what the "teach the controversy" crowd wants?

[Michael Balter]

C.J. raises a very good question. Intelligent design advocates are pushing for ID to be taught alongside or as an alternative to Darwinian evolution--not the same thing as a real debate, which I advocate. If they resist a real debate, then they have to tell us why; and if they would be demolished in such a debate, then why should evolutionists object to it?

[Jason E.]

No, of course it's not what they want, C.J., which is why a real debate is nearly impossible in this circumstance. Time and time again, religious zealots turn simple, straightforward debates on what should be obvious issues, like display of the ten commandments in courtrooms, away from actual debates and into shrieking contests in which they loudly proclaim that those opposed to whatever it is they're up to this time are attacking God, or persecuting their religion, or whatever. The main pushers in ID may be avoiding this sort of excess, thinking they can make a Trojan Horse of the issue by claiming there's a controversy and sneaking their "scientific" alternative hypothesis in the back door, but many of those who are allied with the ID backers are the usual screaming bunch of, let's be honest, lunatics. The result is a twisted sort of win for them, no matter the outcome. If punches are pulled in the scientific debate, and shortcomings in science are conceded to, then people will give them excessive credibility. If no punches are pulled, and the anti-ID side of the debate seeks to fully discredit them, then the rabble start shrieking and it makes for an ugly spectacle that can be replayed on video again and again among extremist evangelicals as further proof of the elite, godless, ivory tower establishment persecuting them for their Godly faith. This just furthers the resolve of the wingnut contigent, and helps them rope in more unbalanced faithful. So, while the idea of debating them and showing conclusively why this is not science seems appealing, since it should be so easy to do, it's simply not a good idea since the pattern of behaviour in almost every situation where the evangelical right is debated turns from debate into pyschological and emotional manipulation. If people were rational on the whole, then a debate would be a great idea, and those who back ID would go away thinking "Well... they're right, this just isn't science. Maybe we're on to something, but we need a better basis of research to even reach the point of a scientific hypothesis. We have no business teaching it as science until then." and it would most likely be a fad for a while, pumped up by private research dollars, and slowly fade away as nothing resembling a solid scientific idea comes from it.

But, people aren't rational on the whole. If cornered on an issue like this, an issue which ultimately stems from irrational and emotional beliefs, they will fall back to their strongest point, which is the power of their emotional response to the idea, the energy of their need to not just believe, but have proof for that belief, and, failing that, at least have no dissent that might inconveniently cast doubt on their belief. The reason they can never be debated is that they think they are automatically right, and nothing will convince them otherwise. A debate is only possible when neither side holds to this sort of absolutism. Science does its best to patrol against this since the very basis of scientific progress is the constant incompleteness of theories and continued expansion and elaboration of ideas, but arguing with the faithful is a losing proposition since they do not share this idea of the mutability of ideas and the extension of knowledge. The only idea they can accept as wrong is the opposing idea.

[quisp]

I am willing to let the IDiots teach their IDiocy in school as long as they all sign oaths that they will not be availing themselves of any "theoretical" bird flu (or other) vaccines.

[Contratimes]

Dear Ms. Beyerstein,

I was attracted to your blog for two reasons: You describe yourself as an analytic philosopher and you earned your M.A. at Tufts.

I, too, have a fondness for philosophy and, though I did not attend Tufts, I married into a Tufts family, with many graduates from there among my inlaws, and even one current Tufts administrator among my brothers-in-law.

Let me ask you this: Is Darwinian theory, as it currently stands, perfect? Is it complete? Is it infallible?

Of course, these are very different questions. But what do you think? If it is perfect, is this not unique among all epistemologies? If it is not perfect, where are its flaws, its weaknesses? Are these weaknesses merely philosophical, or could they be discussed scientifically?

It's a lot to ask, I know.

Now, you said that evolution is a given. I agree. That's fine, and even creationists I know agree, since the Genesis account shows God creating all living creatures initially as vegetarians. Obviously, the "emergence" of carnivorous/omnivorous humans is problematic. Something HAD to evolve.

OK. With that said, let me toss a few things your way. In 1980, I attended a debate at MIT on evolution/creation between a prominent and popular MIT biology prof and a guest, a Mr. A.E. Wilder-Smith. If you would like to read Smith's bio and credentials, read here.

The lecture hall was packed with over 700 students. And the debate was spirited and lovely. Wilder-Smith particularly set the tone, and at the end, though he was a proponent of ID, he received a standing ovation from all.

What did he say? One thing I recall is this: You cannot form life accidently: it cannot happen by chance. What is necessary for life are key bio-chemical ingredients and -- "concept", or so he called it.

So, when a person in a thought experiment tosses the formative ingredients of life into a blender, turns on the switch and waits for the inevitable (or so it goes) combinations whereby life begins, Wilder-Smith made this point: The blender is a concept, it is something already constructed: it is not pure chance. Pure chance is for all the randomness of all possibilities of all things, in some wild infinite continuum, to somehow combine. But combining itself is a concept (here I fail to do him justice).

You've no doubt heard this: Put ten monkeys at ten keyboards and let them type away. Eventually, or so it goes, they will, by accident, type out all of Shakespeare's works.

Wilder-Smith, as you might guess, pointed out that "keyboards" and "monkeys" and "English" and "Shakespeare" are all concepts: they've been conceived. There is nothing random about them.

This, however, is random (and even this is not complete): Put an infinite number of monkeys before an infinite number of keyboards with an infinite alphabet corresponding to an infinite number of changing languages and you will get---nothing. (Remember, you first have to create the monkeys and the keyboards. And "infinite" can be replaced by "vast", if you'd like.)

This sort of thought experiment is much closer to what scientists are talking about when they are talking about the genesis of life. Sadly, too few scientists, at least the ones speaking in pop-culture, seem to fairly describe what Wilder-Smith aptly criticized.

Now, why share this? Because you are wrong when you say that it is philosophers and not scientists who are "pushing" ID (Wilder-Smith was a scientist, was he not?). There are many competent scientists behind the movement (and as you should know from Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, anomalies in paradigms are always noticed by minorities; and revolutions or even just corrections are resisted by the authoritarian scientific bodies).

Moreover -- and forgive the pedestrian quality of this question -- could you please point to that scientific study, that scientific experiment, that proves or demonstrates that discussions of theistic design are not permitted in science? Or are you dismissing ID on philosophical grounds? If so, your criticism itself is not scientific. Should we heed it?

Look, science and the philosophy of science (and knowledge) are inseparable. You know that. That you would erect a barrier, a bifurcation, in this inquiry is disappointing.

What you are suggesting, ultimately is this: you are suggesting the truncating, the limiting of scientific inquiry. You're suggesting that if I find something, some ancient thing, and I find pilasters and columns and capitals and friezes and a portico, I can only describe them as things having evolved (which they have), but I cannot infer a builder.

I had a biology professor who was a world-renowned specialist on estuaries. He was a Harvard graduate, with his PH.D. earned from there as well. And he was an evangelical Christian who voiced publicly that his Christianity and science were inseparable: the two enfused each other. He could see beyond the mere mechanisms to a machinist: he could see beyond the mere evolution to something that First Conceived.

Why limit science to studying merely the machine? How do we KNOW that God-talk and scientific inquiry are mutually exclusive? What if we've been blinding ourselves unintentionally, solely because we've created a non-scientific division in order to preserve some sort of false illusion that scientific knowledge and religion are incompatible? Who says, and on what SCIENTIFIC basis do they say it, that science and ID are incompatible?

Peace to you,

BG

[Gary Sugar]

"Put an infinite number of monkeys before an infinite number of keyboards with an infinite alphabet corresponding to an infinite number of changing languages and you will get---nothing."

Huh? If reality is infinite, it has to include everything possible.

"Is Darwinian theory, as it currently stands, perfect? Is it complete? Is it infallible?"

Parts of it are perfect; other parts are imperfect. But what is the point in arguing? You believe in miracles.

[Bob Koepp]

Contratimes (BG)-
Scientists _should_ cultivate humility about the achievements of science. Religionists _should_, likewise, cultivate humility about their grasp of ineffable mysteries.

But this talk of "concepts" as if they were the source of some magical who knows what... puh-leez. E.G. ... "The blender is a concept, it is something already constructed: it is not pure chance." Are you quite sure that a kitchen appliance is a concept? Do you really intend to suggest that something "constructed" cannot mix things up in a way that is, for all practical purposes (including theoretical praxis) random?

[A Guy in Ecstasy]

The reason ID should not be tought it that nobody actually beleives it. No one. It is the product of organizations seeking to undermine the rational, progressive viewpoint. It is only a wedge to reopen the debate over the separation of church and state. I've blogged about that here: http://www.ximtc.net/home/?p=87. But the main reason not to teach it is that it isn't religion, and it isn't science, so what is it? An egenda.

[Jason E.]

The main issue, in my mind, is that the ID folks haven't put up anything testable even in the remotest, nor have they put up anything verifiable by collected or existing data. Evolutionary theory has changed a lot since Darwin, and will continue to change and expand just as concepts of modern physics have come a long ways since the "lumineferous ether" and other seemingly good ideas that just didn't pan out. This is the nature of science.

But, in order to progress scientifically, the ideas put forward need to have testable conclusions that are distinguishable from currently held ideas. This is what makes them scientific ideas and not "beliefs" or "opinions".

If someone wants to believe, in a non-scientific manner, that there was or is some sort of master architect who planned on the design of life, they're free to have that non-scientific belief, even in the presence of the scientific model of biological evolution. This is quite a different thing than what ID is proposing, which is that there is scientific proof that there are components of biological systems and biological systems themselves which are incapable of self-assembling and therefore there must be the work of an intelligent designer.

What is their proof of these ideas? I've read through everything the Discovery Institute has to say on it and I haven't seen one thing that passes as even the grain of an idea to prove this proposal. Instead they just repeatedly dump out ideas like how many different ways there are for a particular polypetide to be strung together, and how amazingly unlikely it is that the one form that works for that particular purpose is the one that gets assembled in cells. So what? This is an absurdity. It's like rushing into a room all excited because you saw something very rare and unlikely, and then telling the people once you've got their attention that you just saw license plate number GMH-735 on a car in the parking lot. It's amazingly rare! Only one of the more than 17 million possible sequences is that sequence, and you saw it! It must be a sign of something!

That's pretty crazy, isn't it? To think there must be proof of some large plan in random sequences? Sure, sequences of proteins aren't entirely random in life. But, I think they just answered their own question by pointing out the many different ways a protein can be strung together and saying this particular for is unlikely and very specific for the purpose. There are a very large number of ways things can be put together, and over the billion plus years of organic evolution, an incredibly large number of these ways have happened through cellular accident and random mutation. The ones that work are the ones that continue to be made. Natural selection is responsible for this high specificity of structure, and the reason it can be so powerful and give rise to so many forms is precisely the very large number of ways things can be put together. Or, at least, there is no reason to think that there is any other causative agent based simply on the fact that this structure is very unlikely, any more than there is to think that license plate number GMH-735 has a special and deeper meaning, or that a cloud that looks like a bunny rabbit is an attempt on the part of the divine powers of the universe to communicate with you.

Furthermore, the evidence against any good planning in the design of organic life is legion. Take the eye for example, one example that old-fashioned critics of evolution like to use. Sure, if you took any component out, it wouldn't work like it does, but there are many examples of eye-like organs that give a useful amount of optical data to the organism that bears them without being anything like our eyes, and, all the components of complex eyes like humans are present in other organisms. Furthermore, if you look at it as a work of engineering, it's complete crap and it's rather amazing that it does a decent job at all. The nerve network that transfers data from the receptors to the optic nerve is on top of the sensors, requiring a large patch of the retina to devoid of sensors to allow the collected nerve fibers to pass through the retina. Humans usually don't notice this blindspot due to saccadic motion and the presence of two eyes, which allows the missing bit of image to be smoothed over nicely by the brain. I work extensively with semiconductor sensor arrays, and this would be equivalent to putting the output decoder for a CCD smack in the middle of the array instead of around the edges, and suggesting that in order to obscure this flaw, you just wiggle it about some and take a bunch of pictures and average them, or maybe use two and set them up so that the flaws cancel out. Do you think I'd have any takers if I tried to promote such a bad design? This is a laughably bad sort of design. Despite the astonishing and amazingly complex infrastructure of life, there are some equally amazingly badly designed components. If living things really were intelligently designed, I'd expect much better, honestly. It's a testament to the sheer diversity and tenacity of this thing called life that organisms manage to trundle along with their inept designs and massive collections of junk DNA, developmental imperfections, and harmless, minor, mutations. At their basic level, living organisms to me look just like what I'd expect from random reshuffling and accumulation of mutations in large strings of catalytically self-reproducing macromolecules.

[frylockfreak]

Anyone with 6 neurons going to attempt to answer the poster Contratimes? Or are we going to continue to get bovine scatology from the clingon groupies?

[Some guy]

Here's an Intelligent Design site worth mentioning: Intelligent Design of Kansas

[Contratimes]

RE: Gary Sugar. Odd that you should assume that I believe in miracles, particularly since I've said no such thing. Of course, this allows you to scurry off from what I've written without answering it. Thus far, your response is meaningless.

Again, which part of Darwinism is perfect? How do you know that? Do you know it scientifically? And did you PERSONALLY determine that it was perfect, or did you rely on the authority of someone else, trusting in their testimony, by faith? And where is it imperfect, and how do you know that? How would you correct it?

Re: Bob Koepp. These are not my ideas, they are someone else's. What of "concept" anyway? Each of our scientific labels, eg. laws, evolution, finite -- are these not only categories of the mind, imposed onto reality to shape it for the commerce of communication? Are there really LAWS, or just repetitions that we call laws? If there are laws, you mean to say that there is some sort of structure, some sort of framework upon which the universe subsists? Or are we into something like high-end Kantian categories, where what we are all talking about is the laws of perception, and not laws of the external world at all?

Blending, to blend, a blender. Yes, these are concepts, actions, constructs. They are mental figures. And, as you know, the idea of blending is used metaphorically: You have chosen to evade by hiding behind a feigned obtuse literalism. I am not in a kitchen.

And for the life of me, I do not know what you are asking in the last question.

Re: Jason

I am impressed by your expansive understanding. But I beg of you to stay off the fallacies. You see, I recently built something rather large, a sculpture really. And I built it according to an ancient Japanese tradition: I intentionally built imperfections into it. I did this not because I wanted to fool anyone; I did this as a humble act, knowing that I am imperfect. Besides, the imperfections make the sculpture LOOK LIKE IT WAS CRAFTED, and not like it just fell from Plato's archetype garage.

How about this: I say the sun is a God. You tell me that scientists have shown it be nothing but a fusion reactor, helium driven. And I say that you've only told me what God is made of. Am I wrong? Have you limited your scientific inquiry? I think you might have.

The blindspot on the eye, as you know, might in fact be necessary for superior vision. Sadly, science has yet to see its use. As you know, science, including Darwinism, is in its earliest infancy. We are, after all, primitive in our understanding. Don't you know that someday people are going to laugh at the 21st-century scientist as something of a superstitious dolt?

Lastly, you assume that ID believers think that the Design they claim to see is perfect. But most IDers, if they are merely religionists as you all seem to suggest, would see fallenness and corruption in the bio-diversity we all agree exists. Of course things change, adapt (how DO they do that?) and evolve. Of course the Design might be flawed! Who has stated that it wouldn't be? Who has stated that the Design is meant to be static? Who has stated that there is no entropy, that there is no declination in the cosmos? Have I? Hardly.

Why, pray tell, do most people think that each evolutionary step is an improvement, by the way? Is that idea reached at by scientific methods, or is it another form of religious faith?

Lastly, there is no way, not at present, that capital E Evolution, not the mechanism but the religion attached to the mechanism, is testable. My dog has clearly evolved from Canis Lupus. But that is a whole different thing than suggesting that science has certainty about cosmic or terrestrial origins.

Good luck!

BG

[Jason E.]

OK, here we go:

>Why limit science to studying merely the machine?

I'm not sure what you mean by this exactly. If by this you mean that we limit science to studying simply the things that physically exist, "the machine", then I think the answer is pretty self evident. If it doesn't physically exist you can't really study it in a lab, can you? I know that sounds somewhat glib and sarcastic, but I mean it honestly. Even if there was no doubt there was a God, you still wouldn't be able to study miracles in the lab since they operate outside the normal operation of the laws of the physical world and are the direct actions of God. Even if God was so obvious in its existence that it appeared in the sky every month or so and shouted "How y'all doing? How do you like my universe?" and gave all of mankind a big thumbs up and a cheerful grin for being good sports and playing along with its game, you still wouldn't be able to study God in the lab because if God created all that is then it is external to all that is, and so can't really physically exist in the same way a loaf of bread or a ballpoint pen exists. It's outside the bounds of the universe and when it appears in the sky, you're seeing a big gaping hole in reality where God pops its hoary head in. In such a world whether or not God created the universe wouldn't be subject to much debate, true, but scientists would still be busy trying to fathom the operational laws within the phyical universe. Evolution might even be a conclusion of scientists within this sort of a world. In the process of figuring out life and what it does and how it works, perhaps they'd find that mutation and natural selection was the mechanism by which life speciated, and that it arose quite naturally out of the complex molecular soup available in this universe. Even with God popping in once a fortnight to pose for photos, or showing up unexpectedly at popular nightclubs with the vigin Mary on one arm and Mary Magdalene on the other, this could still be true. If the bulk of data collected supported this veiwpoint we'd have to conclude that haing made the natural universe God relied on the natural laws of it to give rise to the naturally occuring life therein. From this we'd conclude that God must've really known what it was doing when it shazaamed the universe into being, which wouldn't be to surprising given it's God we're talking about. If, on the other hand, we found part numbers or serial numbers encoded in cellular mechanisms, then we'd conclude that God must've specifically constructed life in a separate act of creation from the natural world, and that we aren't actually natural things, but rather artificial creations of God. In that case, I'm sure medical researchers would be trying to figure out what toll free number to call to order new parts. Or, at least, they would be badgering God at its regular appearances to at please provide a repair manual. Simply put, since you can't make God do things, you can't put God to the test, so God isn't a part of scientific theories which are based on things that are repeatable and testable. If God were widely known to exist, you'd be able to conclude that the hidden surprise inside the final set of physical natural laws is God, but since, at current times, God seems to be a bit more camera shy than that, whether or not God is the jack-in-the-box underlying everything is a matter of personal belief and not fact, and, in either case, God is exempt from these physical natural laws and not subject to study by science.

>How do we KNOW that God-talk and scientific inquiry are mutually exclusive?

See above. You can, while speaking of why you study science and the social context in which you do it, talk about God all you want. That's a personal belief and people are entitled to it. In any case, it doesn't make any sense to cop out on looking for natural laws and say "Oh, that? It's like that because God did it." because God is not a natural law.

>What if we've been blinding ourselves unintentionally, solely because we've created a non-scientific division in order to preserve some sort of false illusion that scientific knowledge and religion are incompatible?

They're incompatible as far as good science consisting of simply throwing your hands in the air, declaring everything "irreducibly complex" and saying "God did it!"

They're not incompatible as far as someone being both a scientist and a religious person, provided they're willing to not look for scientific truths in their religious beliefs, or religious truth in their scientific endeavors, just as they would not expect improving their golf game to make them better at poker, or expect their practice at tae kwon do to help them grow prize winning tomatoes for the county fair. Yes, these are all things that can hold someone's interest and sustain their delight in life, and so in a general way a set of interests will have some spillover value that influences each other, but you shouldn't expect specific applications to be transferable.

>Who says, and on what SCIENTIFIC basis do they say it, that science and ID are incompatible?

I do. Because I said so. Trust me... I'm a scientist! Seriously, though, it's for all the reasons I've discussed above, and then some. The evidence just isn't there to consider it a plausible line of scientific inquiry. This has no bearing on whether or not this means there's a God, and whether or not this God intended life to arise and do the things it does. ID just doesn't have the chops to measure up as a scientific theory. Furthermore, it's not really needed. To need such a theory, you'd have to disprove that abiogenesis from simply molecules, such as amino acids, which are found abundantly in primordial material, is impossible. So far, it looks to be anything but. IDers propose that it's impossible to have abiogenesis because DNA cannot synthesize proteins all by itself, needing assorted enzymes and other materials. However, there are a number of other organic self reproducing polymers that can relativel easily self-assemble and can do so all by themselves without an attendant cell, and some of these are capable of giving rise to DNA transcriptions of themselves and other molecules. Along with reproducing itself, simple oligonucleotides can exist in autocatalytic networks that start looking quite a bit like the innards of a extremely primitive cell-like mechanism called a protobiont, which had long been proposed by mainstream scientists. So, it's just not needed. It brings nothing new to the table, it doesn't meet the criteria of a scientific theory, and it proposes nothing new and testable. It's just a divisive political mechanism that serves to cheapen both science and religion by trying to make a malformed chimera of the two.

[Jason E.]

OK, so you're saying God is a proponent of wabisabi and this is why "designed" life is so imperfect?

Also, I don't know anyone, except anti-evolutionists, who see each evolutionary step as an improvement. Personally I consider myself no more "advanced" than the crabgrass that threatens to overwhelm my lawn from time to time. We've both made it thus far in the natural selection lottery, therefore we're both examples of organisms that are equally "fit" for survival. It's not a race, there is no prize for winning, and it's not even possible to win. I don't think it's even possible to lose, for that matter.

As far as I know the blindspot in not necessary for superior vision. The fovea has some advantages, and in some cases is called the "second blind spot" since in low light situations it's fairly useless, so maybe this is what you're talking about, but the main blindspot caused by the nerve fibers going through the retina is just plain a bad design. It's a hodge-podged bubblegum and baling wire approach to design, just like I'd expect from a soup of mutating autocatalytic molecules. Of course, I'm a fan of wabisabi myself, so I find this crusty imperfection of the universe to be delightful, since it's often surprising and not infrequently rube-goldbergesque in its unecessary complexity. I like games that keep me guessing, and trying to figure out this goofy universe certainly qualifies.

[Contratimes]

Oiks. So much to think about.

Let me start with Wabi-Sabi. I did not say God is a proponent of Wabi-Sabi. I am saying that you never considered that he might be, and that you discounted the imperfect. For all anyone knows, if there is indeed a God, and if He is omniscient, a perfect retina is impossible and/or unnecessary.

So then, if you are no more advanced than crabgrass, as you say, are you then equal to a fundamentalist? Is the 'mechanism' of natural selection actually biased in favor of religious fundamentalists, and that the same mechanism actually works against modern scientific minds, such as the one you so clearly possess? Are fundamentalists actually the fittest who will survive? And if it is not possible to "lose", as you say, why would anyone oppose creationism, ID, or any variation of religiously-held cosmology? There is nothing to lose, is there, in that?

Moreover, if there is no telos, no end to which we are all progressing, if there is no purpose, how pray tell did meaning and purposiveness actually evolve from non-meaning? Is it mere psychology, a mere bio-defense common to desperate humans? How did fear evolve if there is nothing to lose? Is belief in evolution, or the power of reason or the scientific method equal to nothingness, and thus a mere intellectual crutch?

And if there is no end, how do we know if we've progressed at all? There is no sense in saying we've gone from X to Y if we don't know what X and Y are, or where they stand in relation to P and Q. Progress is impossible without some bearing to what was and what is yet to come. If I leave my house tonight and set off to nowhere, rest assured I will get there, though I will never know it. And I can confidently predict that I will never proclaim that I've progressed.

Ahh, I get it. You want me to trust in science because you are a scientist. Hmm. Interesting. You do not tell me that I must ALSO be a scientist in order to have your understanding. How similar, and yet how unlike, a Christian you are. Why? Because the Christians tell me that they see something I don't: the resurrected Christ, the authority of the Bible, etc. But they at least tell me that if I become a Christian, all based on the testimony they tell me to trust, I will see and know what they see. But alas, you tell me to trust in your authority (like a Pope) but you do not tell me to become a scientist myself in order to see what you see. Curiously apparent is that you assume I am not a scientist.

What is the speed of light? Tested it yourself lately? If not, then you accept that constant on faith. You are what then, a science-fundamentalist?

If you tell me that I should TRUST you because you're a scientist, then alas, we have fallen into the abyss of unreason, and we have become faith-driven religionists with lab-coats.

I am not, as you might suspect, a sceptic. I am pointing out that more of your worldview is based on faith than you realize. You have purged God from the lab, not because He is outside of science, but because you do not know if He is inside it. You posit that a miracle is something outside of natural law, and I say it is inside, though the laws we are presently seeing by are abbreviations of the laws we have yet to see. Why do things fall to the ground? One generation of scientists believed things so fell because of humours, or of water, or because of the need of things to be at rest. Another generation believes something else. You mean to tell me that we are so omniscient that we can tell, as we write, that God and what is considered miraculous will never have a place in the scientific laboratory? I think that to believe so is to purposely limit human knowledge and inquiry.

Moreover, if we begin with the conviction that reason is our only guiding principle, we cannot use, if we are real scientists, reason to prove reason. The conclusion is assumed in the premise. How is that dissimilar to looking for God in a lab, epistemologically speaking?

Lastly, if we could put ourselves back inside the tomb in Jerusalem in 33 A.D. (or 33 CE), with all the most advanced scientific instrumentation and all the most advanced forensic equipment, do you mean to suggest that there is nothing science could say about whether Jesus did or did not come back from the dead? Are you saying that science is limited only to declaring that, if Jesus did not rise, then he indeed did not rise; and that if he did rise, then science could only say that his resuscitation is outside the realm of science? Are you saying that science is confined to speaking only in the negative and not the positive about what appears to be miraculous?

Thanks for your patience as I parade my doubts before all to see. I will brace myself for your correction. (That's unfair. You've been quite gentle.)

BG

[Bob Koepp]

Contratimes -
I'll just address the points you directed toward me...

What of "concept?" Well, although scientific _labels_ might be or reflect "only categories of the mind," most scientists don't study labels or categories -- instead they study the things to which we apply labels, the things we categorize. Your/Wilder-Smith's remarks were objectionable, not because of the "blender metaphor," but because you were moving between descriptions of a process and the labels we use to talk about that process in a rather unintelligible way. I'm not surprised that when I mimicked your language in a literal voice it struck you as nonsensical. It was nonsensical, and my literalism was pointed rather than obtuse. Further, the need to respect this distinction between words and objects, between de dicto and de re modes of speech, holds regardless of the metaphysical status of so-called "laws of nature."

So I'd recommend that you graciously accept my willingness to include discussion of ID in biology classes as a sort of "formal critique" calling into question the generative capacities of selection processes. But until that critique is refined to provide what I've desribed as an analog to a formal incompleteness proof, there's no good reason to indulge ontological speculations about what restores completeness. Such speculations won't make it past the door of a classroom where scientific standards of argument apply.

[Jason E.]

>I did not say God is a proponent of Wabi-Sabi.

My comment on that was more than half in jest. I'm often a joker. It is an entertaining idea that the world is imperfect because God likes a little imprefection to balance out the design.

>So then, if you are no more advanced than crabgrass, as you say, are you then equal to a fundamentalist?

We're both human beings, as far as species goes, and evolution is a biological concept, so yes.

>And if it is not possible to "lose", as you say, why would anyone oppose creationism, ID, or any variation of religiously-held cosmology? There is nothing to lose, is there, in that?

As far as evolution is concerned, there's no losers or winner, there's just things happening. As far as ideas and human society, I prefer ideas that allow us to explore yet more ideas, expand our options for behaviour, and alleviate human misery along the way. I'd prefer we don't go back to a limited world in which all knowledge is claimed to be contained in a single small book and discussion of anything outside that is forbidden.

>Moreover, if there is no telos, no end to which we are all progressing, if there is no purpose, how pray tell did meaning and purposiveness actually evolve from non-meaning?

There is no purpose as far as I can tell. Meaning and purpose to one's life is largely a matter of personal beliefs and desires. Or, you simply can enjoy the ride. Whatever.

>Ahh, I get it. You want me to trust in science because you are a scientist.

Again, a jest. That's usually what "But seriously..." means after a statement. Although, if you want answers on scientific viewpoints, it's usually a good idea to ask a scientist, yes. Of course, you'll get a number of answers, and a number of caveats, and a bunch of disagreements, but eventually you'll get a general feel for what the current scientific view on whatever subject your asking about is.

>What is the speed of light? Tested it yourself lately?

It's been a over a decade since I measured it directly and on purpose, but I use it in calculations quite often and when I put things together based on those calculations, they usually work the way I expect, so I can be reasonably assured that it's still the same.

>If not, then you accept that constant on faith. You are what then, a science-fundamentalist?

And, if not in a mood to measure it directly, I can derive it theoretically from some other constants that are also easy to measure. Furthermore when I get information from a fellow scientist, I can be confident that it's valid since that is part of how we make science work. You do cast a skeptical eye if it's pertinant to your specialty, and I have found a couple cases of data abuse that led to false conclusions among my peers. It happens, but we all look out for it. If you don't catch it in your own work, your peers will probably point it out to you. Scientists, if they're any good, are skeptical of their own work first and foremost. In many cases I've intentionally rigged data analysis so that until I send stuff back through a database I have no idea what set, the one that should show an effect or the one that shouldn't, I'm working on when doing cleanup and regression of data, so, when I hit the go button on last data reshuffle, it's always a surprise to me if the experiment actually worked. This adds hours to my work, but I do it to avoid any bias. I don't trust myself not to apply wishful thinking to my own experiments, since doing that is human nature.

>I am pointing out that more of your worldview is based on faith than you realize.

Not really. I accept on faith the five Peano postulates so that I can do mathematics, among other things. I think if you'd care to look into it you'd find that a vast majority of scientists are fully aware of the faith they use to be able to do work they find meaningful or interesting.

>You posit that a miracle is something outside of natural law, and I say it is inside, though the laws we are presently seeing by are abbreviations of the laws we have yet to see.

So God's just a bigger, better scientist, then? Well, give us a few thousand years of scientific development and then we'll be gods, eh? Sounds rather blasphemous, if not downright Satanic. If it's really miraculous, then it would have to be something that can't naturally happen. Otherwise it's just the universe doing what it does normally, and, at best, it's just an application of advanced technology. Yes, in time we'll do some amazing things, I have no doubt. I've pulled off some pretty good tricks of my own. I've transmuted elements, and measured the position of atoms to within a fraction of an angstrom. My little sister, the geneticist, does tricks all the time that I find amazing. She snips and splices DNA, creating whole new genetic sequences, and then condemns the nascent species to doom in the autoclave if it doesn't measure up to her specs. Are scientists gods? Do we do miracles? No. We're people. We do science. It's a really fun game for all ages and any number can play.

>Lastly, if we could put ourselves back inside the tomb in Jerusalem in 33 A.D. (or 33 CE), with all the most advanced scientific instrumentation and all the most advanced forensic equipment, do you mean to suggest that there is nothing science could say about whether Jesus did or did not come back from the dead?

If you were right there at the time and you expected a miracle then I suppose you could prepare in advance to take some measurements on a miracle, provided one happened, but being in the right place at the right time to measure a miracle seems like a longshot at best. You can't exactly go around staking out every grave waiting for people to come back to life on the off-chance that they might be God incarnate. I suspect the families at the funerals might not welcome your presence, for starters. Plus, what sort of measurement apparatus would you take? Would you even know what you were trying to measure? If you don't get a good data point can you tell God incarnate "Wait, wait, I didn't get a good reading on that one. Can you do that again?"

>Are you saying that science is limited only to declaring that, if Jesus did not rise, then he indeed did not rise; and that if he did rise, then science could only say that his resuscitation is outside the realm of science?

Yes. If the guy was not just merely dead but really most sincerely dead, and he came back to life all on his own, and visited his friends and then went to go share a bench in the dugout of heaven with God for ever and ever, amen, then this is outside the realm of science. There's no solid evidence any of this happened, and it's much to late to go look for clues, but a lot of people think it happened, and that's a matter of personal belief, not an issue of science.

>Are you saying that science is confined to speaking only in the negative and not the positive about what appears to be miraculous?

We do things that appear miraculous all the time, but are they miraculous in a real religious sense of direct action of God, the being that created the cosmos and can pretty much do whatever it damn well pleases? No. Scientists can levitate frogs and cheese sandwiches which is a pretty cool trick, and we can do lots of other really funny and clever things, but these aren't miraculous. A miracle is something that happens outside the scope of natural laws and is the direct action of an omnipotent supernatural being, says so right on the label. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm baking some bread and have to go tend to that. For some reason I always seem to end up with much more than I intended to make...

[Bob Koepp]

Contratimes -
Since I'm sometimes a bit slow on the uptake, it just dawned on me that the notion of 'randomness' that you think obscures a weak plank in the research program of evolutionary theory is probably not the notion of 'randomness' that evolutionary biologists contrast with selective processes. I might be wrong about this, but it seems that the notion of 'randomness' that you use is drawn from "pure" probability theory. Suffice it to say that in that context, randomness is a very slippery, troublesome notion.

But that's not the way evolutionary biologists ususally use the term 'random.' Nor do they suppose that events they call random are uncaused, or even have some determinate probability associated with them, though they might also believe either or both these things. When evoultionary theorists describe the generation of new variations as a random process, they mean only that it is not biased in the direction of increases in fitness. There are, of course, biologists who study variation and actually look for bias of this sort.

In other words, when the notion of 'random variation' figures in evolutionary accounts, there may no covert metaphysical commitments of the sort one might suspect are being made.

[Trystero]

It's not like science is the only field where the practitioners (in general) get to define the boundaries.

Suppose I wanted to add to a Spanish cirriculum a chapter on words like boat-o and stop-o. And then when people protested, I could point to certain parts of North America where these kinds of words are spoken. And I could make complex arguments about how language is a living thing and its use changes it over time.

And you would go to Spain or Mexico, and talk to a native speaker of the language, and come back to me and say "dude, you have got to be kidding me!"

And then I would run around with my hair on fire complaining about the unjustice of "appeals to authority".

[mudkitty]

What debate?

[mudkitty]

I think it would behoove all of us if we stoped conflating Darwinism with Evolutionary Theory.

[Jim Johnson]

If you are interested in a short essay by a real, live evolutionary biologist on the nuttiness of ID and those who peddle it see the essay by Allen Orr in the New Yorker from last May. Here is hte URL:
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050530fa_fact