Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker

The New York Times ^ | December 4, 2005 | LAURIE GOODSTEIN

[Right Wing Professor]

TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution seems to be building momentum.

...

Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's credibility.

On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"There's phenomenal evidence we experience every second that make the theories of Gravity, Mass, etc. the most plausible causes behind those forces."

No there isn't. The experience of things falling down is NOT a confirmation of the present theory of gravity.

"Evolution is not the most plausible theory for the origins of the species."

*The* species?

" The "proofs" are circumstantial where they're not pure inference."

Examples please.

[narby]

DNA evidence doesn't prove anything on its own.

You're wrong.

The common ERV virus sequences found primate and human DNA is the smoking gun proof that we have a common ancestor. And not just a common ancestor species, but a single common individual ancestor. Proof of common ancestry is proof of evolution.

Should you claim that "God put those sequences in those various species", then you must answer why he would do that. Why would a designer insert virus DNA sequences into species that have no useful purpose whatever.

The only possible cop-out is claiming "intelligent evolution". Which makes about as much sense as "intelligent weather".

The natural world is what it appears to be, and has no requirement for the supernatural for it to operate. Philosophy can speculate on where the universe came from, but that's not science, that's just speculation. And about where the species came from, even philosophy can't honestly question whether evolution is the source without denying reality.

[JeffAtlanta]

'What Place, Then, For a Creator?': Hawking on God and Creation
by Craig, William Lane
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 41: 473-491 1990

William Lane Craig's bio...

William Lane Craig is a Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He is an evangelical Christian, having committed his life to Christ while an undergraduate at Wheaton College. He has participated in public debates on topics including the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection and the existence of God, several of which have been published in hard copy.

Craig is best known for his extensive work on the kalam cosmological argument, and has also published material on the philosophy of time and on divine foreknowledge. His publications also include some more accessible works on Christian apologetics. A selection of his essays is available on-line at his Virtual Office.

[Coyoteman]

how about offering an argument for Evolution?

More? Lots more where this came from.

Fossil: KNM-WT 15000

Site: Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya (1)

Discovered By: K. Kimeu, 1984 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.6 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal & radiometric data (1, 4)

Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7, 10), Homo erectus ergaster (25)

Gender: Male (based on pelvis, browridge) (1, 8, 9)

Cranial Capacity: 880 (909 as adult) cc (1)

Information: Most complete early hominid skeleton (80 bones and skull) (1, 8)

Interpretation: Hairless and dark pigmented body (based on environment, limb proportions) (7, 8, 9). Juvenile (9-12 based on 2nd molar eruption and unfused growth plates) (1, 3, 4, 7, 8). Juvenile (8 years old based on recent studies on tooth development) (27). Incapable of speech (based on narrowing of spinal canal in thoracic region) (1)

Nickname: Turkana Boy (1), Nariokotome Boy

See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=38

[PatrickHenry]

The common ERV virus sequences found primate and human DNA is the smoking gun proof that we have a common ancestor. And not just a common ancestor species, but a single common individual ancestor. Proof of common ancestry is proof of evolution.

Species that are more closely related should share a greater portion of their DNA.. Excerpt:

[A]n hypothesis of evolutionary relationships is provided by the fossil record, which indicates when particular types of organisms evolved. In addition, by examining the anatomical structures of fossils and of modern species, we can infer how closely species are related to each other. When degree of genetic similarity is compared with our ideas of evolutionary relationships based on fossils, a close match is evident.

Here's an analogy I posted once before:

You're a teacher. You observe that the test results for students seated one-behind-the-other are somewhat interesting. A misspelled word in an answer from the first student is, surprisingly, also present on the papers turned in by each of the students behind him. It doesn't appear on the papers of any other students. How could such a thing happen?

You also observe that the second student in the row made a spelling error of his own. Amazingly, this too is seen on each of the papers from those seated behind him -- but not on any other student's paper.

Then you notice that the third student in the row made his own error. And that is somehow present on the papers of those behind him -- but on no other papers.

The last student in the row -- perhaps by coincidence? -- just happens to have all of that row's earlier misspellings on his own paper, plus perhaps some of his own.

Question: How blind do you have to be not to figure out how those errors came to be repeated on those papers? And how difficult would it be, even without a seating chart, to figure out who sat behind whom?

[narby]

There's phenomenal evidence we experience every second that make the theories of Gravity, Mass, etc. the most plausible causes behind those forces.

You have a misunderstanding about what a scientific "theory" is.

Patrick Henry's list-o-links has some extended definitions, but the short one is that a scientific theory explains the mechanism behind a phenomena. We really don't know very much about how gravity works, I.E, the "Theory" of gravity. And what we do know is so very tenuous that it could easily be replaced in the near future.

There is the "fact" that gravity occurs, which we understand pretty well, as least up to a point. But the scientific "theory" of gravity is what we're still working on.

Evolution Theory is similar, in that evolution, like gravity, is a fact because it does occur (even the specious "macro" evolution that creationists object to). And there is also a "Theory" of evolution, in that we know quite a bit about how species occur. In fact, the Theory of evolution is quite a bit more firm than the Theory of gravity, even though we're still learning details about it.

[JeffAtlanta]

Natural Language and Natural Selection
by Pinker, Steven; Bloom, Paul
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 707-784 1990

Paul Bloom's bio...

PAUL BLOOM is a professor of psychology at Yale University. He is an internationally recognized expert on language and development, and with Steven Pinker coauthored one of the seminal papers in the field.

He is co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major interdisciplinary journals in the field, and has published over seventy chapters and journal articles in psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience.

Stephen Pinker's bio...

STEVEN PINKER is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Until 2003, he taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.

FWIW, Pinker is a pretty sharp guy in his field.

[JeffAtlanta]

Are Probabilities Indispensable to the Design Inference?
by Koons, Robert C.
Progress in Complexity, Informaiton and Design Volume 1.1.2 March 2002

Here is Koons' self bio..

I obtained an academic scholarship which took me to Michigan State University in East Lansing. At first, I majored in economics, and then in humanities, but eventually, as more and more philosophy courses accumulated on my transcript, I accepted the inevitable and concentrated on philosophy.
My interest in religion and theology continued, and in 1979 I won a Marshall Scholarship which took me to Oxford, where I studied philosophy and theology for two years. While at Oxford, my philosophical interests moved more and more in the direction of logic and formal philosophy.
My combined interests in logic and in philosophical theology led me to do my graduate work in philosophy at UCLA. In 1987, I completed my dissertation on logical paradoxes of truth and rationality. That fall, I came to the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor.

Note that the common thread in the list that provided? Almost none have any graduate level or even undergraduate degrees in biology. The thing they do seem to have though is an strong interest in religion.

Why aren't any lead scientists for pharmaceutical firms signing on to this list? Why aren't scientists that are actually working with infectious diseases signing on to this list?

[ml1954]

I know...you're just teasing the paranoid creationists who think there's more than one of you.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Why is the Pinker and Bloom piece even on this list? From the abstract to that work,

"Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process."

How is this an anti-evolutionary work?
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.pinker.html

[JeffAtlanta]

Does the association of spectral absorption bands in sunlight with the spectral response of photoreceptors in plants imply coincidence, adaptation or design?
by Mims, Forrest M.
Progress in Complexity, Information and Design Volume 1.1.8 March 2002

Forrest Mims, while a prolific writer for Radio Shack, is an amateur scientist.

[JeffAtlanta]

The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory
by Langan, Christopher
PCID Double Issue, Volumes 1.2 and 1.3, Article 1 October 30 2002

Langan's bio...

Raised to value brawn as highly as brains, Christopher worked at various times as a cowboy, firefighter and construction worker, and for the past 20+ years, as a bar bouncer in assorted nightclubs across the East End of Long Island. Without benefit of formal higher education, he has engaged for over two decades in research on mathematics, physics, cosmology and the cognitive sciences.

[Dimensio]

If it's simultaneously completely compatable and also totally at odds with existing well-established science, then it isn't science.

[Dimensio]

you accept every other historical story simply because it was written in a history book. But you can't accept the most documented history book in the history of the world, It has been documented in more languages, more nations, and more times in number, as well as the very stories in the Bible being supported by other religions, and nations.

Argument by "it's in a widely translated book". That's a new one. Still fallacious, but I've never heard that argument before.

[Dimensio]

Again, atheism apparently excludes any being higher than man.

What do you mean by "higher"? Without qualifications I can't say whether or not this is accurate.

[JeffAtlanta]

Some Theoretical and Practical Results in Context-Sensitive and Adaptive Parsing
by Jackson,Quinn Tyler
PCID 1.4.8 December 31 2002

Jackson's bio from his homepage...

Quinn is a computer scientist, novelist, and poet.

[Free2BeMe]

You said, "No there isn't. The experience of things falling down is NOT a confirmation of the present theory of gravity."
There's no better explanation for the experience of things falling down. If the theory of gravity is not responsible, what theory would you put forward? The last thing about gravity, so we can get back on the topic, the theory of gravity isn't even taught as a theory. It's just taught. Why? Because it makes sense. Evolution doesn't. Not because I don't get it. I do. I understand it. But it can't explain the origins of the species.

You said, "*The* species?"
Why the asterisks? I don't get it? Yes, "the species." There's no grammatical mistake using a definite article with species. Don't you say "the trucks." If that's not your point, be more specific.

As far as your "proofs."
1. See what I posted about the DNA sequence
2. The fossil record. Two things. The amount of fossilized remains found is only the smallest fraction of species purported to have existed. Though there is science and skill in finding them, most of it is random. Without a more complete fossil record, I can't see how it's possible to make anything more than the most base generalizations. With the fossil record found, evolution tries to look at two similar fossils and says this one species turned into that one. As with the DNA evidence, this is pure inference. There is no way to say that. Just because fossil species one is found in one time period and fossil two found in another means nothing. If maybe you had a couple of million of fossils of each, that would be different. But if you only have a handful of fossilized remains for a species, when millions of that species existed, you can't date them exactly. Without using dates, what proof would you used to say this fossilized specie evolved into that one? Similarity? That can't prove anything. Also, as some pretty significant fossil findings (example, some of the more recent "feathered" dinosaurs)used to support evolution have turned out to be misinterpreted or just fake (google it yourself, I want to keep this as short as I can).
3. Evolutionist say that since bats & people & seals have the same number of bones in their appendages, they must have come from a common ancestor. Again, inference. I could go into more about why this exists this way.
4. Evolutionists say what about mitochondria. For cells dependent on more than glycolysis for ATP production, the mitochondria is likely the most important component of the cell outside of the nucleus. It is the organelle that carries out metabolic respiration. It has its own circular stranded DNA like a bacteria that replicates on its own when the rest of the cell does, so people say the cell must have evolved with captured bacteria that also evolved into mitochondria. That's silly just by itself, that they would BOTH happen to evolve together over thousands or millions of years (how long do cells live?) in a way that would allow them both to exist together as a single cell. Isn't it more likely that as the most important organelle outside the nucleus, it should have its own DNA so it can make its proteins necessary for metabolic respiration ON SITE. Doesn't it also make sense that if it has its own DNA, it would replicate along with the rest of the cell. Does to me. By the way, its the mitochondrial DNA (which we inherit from our mothers) that allows scientists who also support evolution to say that humans all descended from a single mother (see the mitochondrial DNA Eve theory).
5. Evolutionists also say if we were created by intelligent design, the creator must not have been too intelligent or we would be better made. They point to the flaws of the eye. The point is, the eye is made as good as it can be & still function as a part of the human body. If it were its own organism, then maybe it could be what those criers call perfect. In fact, our bodies (and all life) is so intelligently designed that evolutionists call it the most amazing machine ever created.

Also, don't forget this:
1. mathematics & statistics shows you can't get order out of chaos. For this, you can't get more highly complex organisms out of the chaotic happenings of natural selection.
2. Chance can't be responsible for anything. Chance is just a term used in statistics. Chance can't cause anything. Chance doesn't make the penny land on heads or tails, it just helps predict the statistics of which it will land on.
3. While still on chance, when figuring the chance that a penny will land heads-up 10 times in a row, you have to multiply the chance it will do so once (1/2) by itself 10 times (1/1024). What's the chance that enough genetic changes would occur to evolve a bacterium into even a protozoan with organelles & a nucleus, much less a human, even if you allow for billions of years. All the evolutionary progress made in the first million years is more statistically likely to be erased by a lethal mutation than furthered by a helpful mutation.
4. Evolution can't explain something as fundamental as sex. Within a species, one organism has to mutate into a male & another has to mutate into a female, in such a way that it happens in both where they can sexually reproduce fertile offspring. But before they can sexually reproduce, they have to evolve haploid tissue within their diploid bodies in order to produce gametes that allow fertilization to take place. Give me a break!
5. Last for now then got to go (Christmas season, you know):
If you're walking down the beach & see an undulating pattern in the sand, you'd say it was caused by repeated wave action during high tide. If you were walking down the beach & saw in the sand "Joe Loves Jane," you'd be an idiot to attribute it to the repeated random actions of waves at high tide and not to an intelligent creator.

[Dimensio]

And YOU have been told before about the large and growing number of ID scientists, and you act as if you've never heard it before.

I have never denied that there are scientists who accept ID. You are again lying.

[Dimensio]

And as far as support for evolution, support is not proof, show me the proof.

You are demanding a standard for evolution to which absolutely no field in science is ever held. Nothing in science is ever "proven", it can only be supported by evidence or confirmed false through contradictory observations.

I'm getting sick of telling this to people who claim that evolution is somehow untenable. If you don't understand this fundamental aspect of scientific inquiry then you certainly are not qualified to speak on perceived weaknesses of any scientific theory.

[Dimensio]

They'll probably completely ignore the issue, as Sun does every time someone reminds him or her that the statement as given is dishonestly misleading.