Posted on 05/19/2005 6:02:32 AM PDT by Nicholas Conradin
"What's all this I hear about Intelligent Decline? Decline isn't intelligent; it's sad. Sad or tragic. Who could think that it's intelligent? That's just...".
"Excuse me, Miss Litella, but the phrase is Intelligent Design. Not Decline; Design."
"Intelligent Design? Oh, you mean that so-called alternative to Darwinian evolution. I see. Never mi….wait a minute! That's still sad; sad or tragic."
Of course, the late, great Gilda Radner, aka Emily Litella, never actually did this sketch on "Saturday Night Live", but I like to think she might have, perhaps prompted by the present recurrence of "debate" over the "theory" of Intelligent Design. (Style mavens generally deprecate the use of shudder quotes, but when dealing with a movement that is built on using common words in unconventional or undefined ways, they are unavoidable.)
The ID party holds that certain aspects of the world, especially details of the anatomy and biochemistry of living beings, are simply too complex to have evolved without guidance. The approved phrase is "irreducible complexity," a "concept" to which we will return. ID partisans have trained themselves not to be too specific about the Designer, either, for they have learned the lesson left by the political failure of their predecessors, the Creation Scientists, namely, that too much frankness in the matter of Who the Intelligent Designer is does not pay. So, carefully avoiding anything that sounds like theology, while all the time the butter remains quite firm in their mouths, they simply aver that there is a Design and that it prima facie evidences Intelligence. "God? Oh, heavens, we're not talking about God. It might just be his next-door neighbor Wilson."
Philosophically this is old ground, of course. William Paley's argument for the existence of a watchmaker, given a watch, is the best known example of the type. Not surprisingly, Paley assumed in his analogy that the watch in question was well made and actually kept time. So the naturalist's response to this form of theism has taken a standard form. He points to the very considerable amount of relevant contrary evidence: black flies, killer asteroids, the vermiform appendix, acne, tsunamis, hiccups, and Jerry Springer, not to mention death and disease and a hundred other varieties of human depravity, all of these suggesting if they do not prove that ours is perhaps not the very best of all possible worlds.
But -- correct me if I'm wrong -- this is creation as we actually know it. Any objective observer must report that the universe, if it is the product of conscious design, is clear proof that the designer is incompetent, a blunderer, an all-thumbs amateur who should not be allowed back into the workshop. (As a lad I read a science fiction story whose premise was that the universe is the product of a young Being-in-training, a kind of test piece by an apprentice not yet ready for journeyman status. For the life of me I can't recall the title or author of the story.) Unfortunately, however well Not-Quite-Bright Design might fly as an intellectual position, it lacks market appeal.
The duplicity of the ID party as to theology is all quite transparent. What seems to be less so, at least to some, is the violence the ID party does to the work of the intellect. Consider "irreducible complexity." What does it mean to say that a given degree of complexity is irreducible? And who gets to say it? Has the ID party discovered a scale by which this question can be answered? Up (or down) to a certain point complexity is open to naturalistic explanation, but beyond that point it is not? "We don't know this yet, therefore it is unknowable." And further, "If you do happen to find it out anyway, don't tell me, because if you do I'll stick my fingers in my ears and go La-la-la-la-la really loud." The "debate" whose current installment is playing out in Kansas is a debate in just that sense and no other.
Then there is the simple fact that the "theory" of ID is no theory at all, not in the sense that the word is used in science. It is not based on the best available evidence; it enables no predictions; and it is thus not testable. It is, at best, a paltry substitute myth that incorporates some of what actual science has learned or theorized but spurns not only scientific rigor but any intention to perform science. It is not, as claimed, a legitimate criticism of a scientific theory but a criticism of having such a theory at all. No less than the Creation Scientists, and no less than dear Bishop Wilberforce in 1860, though far less forthrightly, the proponents of ID wish to draw an arbitrary line and use the force of the state to declare that science shall not cross it.
Had that watch been found, not by the good Rev. Paley -- equipped as he was by culture and training not only to recognize in it the work of a human artisan but to judge his competence according as it got him to tea on time or not -- but by, say, a mud man of New Guinea, the conclusion drawn would have been quite different. The mud man instantly recognizes what could only be the work of a god, its materials unfamiliar, its intricacy beyond imagining, and its purpose utterly occult.
The difference between the mud man, gazing in awe at the watch, and the ID man, coolly regarding the bacterial flagellum, is that the mud man acts in good faith. The ID man is heir to a culture of knowledge-building that has evolved over millennia, and, for quite private reasons that have nothing to do with the rest of us, he declines the legacy. To be sure, he has every right, for himself, to decline whatever, and however far, he chooses. It only remains for the rest of us decline to decline with him. That would be intelligent.
Robert McHenry is Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and author of How to Know (Booklocker.com, 2004).
read later
Yes, and with periodic revivals. This was posted as my April First thread:
The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved. From 1928, with the same arguments still heard today.
A person who disdains ID might find a simple object such as a toaster. He never thinks it assembled itself or evolved from it's parts or the raw materials that they are made from.
The same person looks at the simplest creatures and plants, made up of millions of cells which all have different and perfectly coordinated purposes and somehow concludes it was all a big coincidence.
Fairly interesting to contemplate.
The other day on the Disovery channel, I heard a physicist calmly state:
"We really don't have a good theory of planetary formation at present." He went on to explain the short comings of the various theories and the work to find something that fit all the evidence.
When evolutionists are willing to act like grown up scientists, they can claim the same respect as grown up scientists.
What is actually amusing is the continued insistence by evolutionists that although irreducible complexity exists in every other physical system in the universe and in the mathematics that describe those systems, it is amazingly completely absent in biological systems.
The concepts of evolution have now been spun down, James Carvill like, into such terms as "big coincidence". It's so very hard to fight such deliberate ignorance.
You can't "force" someone to open their eyes and think, especially when keeping them shut is so emotionally satisfying.
This must by why Darwin himself said that he shudders to think of how his piecemeal evolution could explain the human eye.
"You can't "force" someone to open their eyes and think, especially when keeping them shut is so emotionally satisfying."
Amen, brother, and this reaction at the emotional level is very leftist in its essence.
yes!
Continuing on, I provided my view of the range of reactions that I have observed among colleagues, which seems to me a suitable ending for this overview of the controversy:
I've received four kinds of responses regarding the Meyer article. The first is one of extreme hostility and anger that the peer-review process was not barred to a "creationist" author—no questions asked (a minority view). The second is what I'd term the herd instinct: this response arises when some key people (often members of the first group) are upset. Some people, once they begin to feel the heat from individuals with strong opinions, feign being upset too or actually become upset, for fear that they'll seem to be a "supporter" of an unpopular or despised position. Many of these individuals initially displayed no concern or qualms about the paper until some loud voices displayed their discontent. Those in the third category don't really care about the issue one way or the other, because it doesn't impact their research. In terms of population size, groups two and three are by far the largest. The fourth group consists of those who found the paper "informative," "stimulating," "thought-provoking," (real quotes I've heard from colleagues about the paper), including some who are in agreement with some of Meyer's ideas. Many members of the third and fourth groups have told me that in their opinion sooner or later the design issue will have to be debated in a reasoned manner.
The evolutionists have now left the building!
Which merely shows the relative security of evolution theory. Which has been attacked by bozos for over a century now, and is more firm than ever.
It wouldn't surprise me that some of the recent attention to such things as the dinosaur/bird transition, and the discovery of several new transition species, was spurred on by the attacks on evolution from non-scientists.
Attacking evolution merely scares up more money for studies, which continue to find evidence that strengthen the theory.
"This must by why Darwin himself said that he shudders to think of how his piecemeal evolution could explain the human eye."
Except that... he went on to explain it. It would help if people using this quote would actually read what Darwin said, in total, instead of repeating only half of his statement.
Darwin said nothing of the sort. He, in fact, dismissed objections of this type.
From the 6th edition of the Origin of Species
Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.
The children can now begin to play.
I hear ya. So please explain the difference between "it's all a big coincidence" and however else these folks think that these things occur in lieu of a plan? Keeping in mind that evolution is not the topic and has not been addressed by me. I happen to think that evolution is a decent theory to explain what tools may have been used to create.
BTW, if you were referring to me personally, please refrain from doing that in the future. Stay away from personal attacks and insults and all will be well.
Feel free to cite an example.
No evolutionist I'm aware of considers evolution 'a big coincindence'.
This is the sole talent of ID. To quote mine this "expert" or that. They do no research. They do not publish. They merely stir up their constituencies and collect money from them just as the environmentalist organizations take money from well meaning greenies.
I'm sure the ID promotion business is very profitable.
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