Five critiques of Intelligent Design

Edge.org ^ | September 3, 2005 | Marcelo Gleiser, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Scott Atran, Daniel C. Dennett

[antiRepublicrat]

The Onion has the best take on ID, with it's "Intelligent Falling" theory. Newton was wrong, and gravity can't exist!

[ml1954]

Materialist scientists expect physical answers to all questions.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Scientists seek to discover physical answers to physical phenomena.

[ShadowAce]

Your final statement ("I am not a scientist, but I can think through evidence fairly well, and make connections to patterns.") renders the question marks to which you refer mere rhetorical devices.

In that case, I apologize. That statement was meant to assure the replier that, while I am not a scientist, I would probably be able to follow any logical argument s/he presented.

I apologize for not being more clear.

[johnnyb_61820]

"Does this subject belong in a science class though? I am not that familiar with the topic but I heard it is based in Creationism. If that is true, then it belongs in religious type classes."

It has nothing to do with theology. It is mostly mathematics-based. Intelligent Design simply says, "there are certain marks that indicate that an object or system is the result of an intelligent designer". This includes humans or other creatures that are intelligent designers. To put the method shortly, Intelligent Design looks for systems that are organized within a chaotic system. Dembski has written extensively about the mathematics behind this in his books. I've written a short explanation of the idea here:

http://crevo.blogspot.com/2005/03/setting-facts-straight-on-intelligent.html

There is also another aspect of Intelligent Design which is focused on removing certain assumptions from science, namely materialism. Materialism is a rather bad philosophy anyway, for numerous reasons.

[snarks_when_bored]

Darwinists can't prove evolution. They can't replicate it. That's why it's a "theory", which is just another word for "Faith".

The thing I don't understand is why the monkey people are so hysterical about Intelligent Design. Why is your faith superior to our faith?

Perhaps the most difficult thing for non-scientists to understand is that science is NOT a matter of faith. The scientist who's doing her job doesn't 'believe in' her results in the way that a religious person 'believes in' a deity. Rather, she seeks to find out whether her results are real (that is, in the phenomena rather than in her mind or her instruments), and then attempts to connect those results to other results in the context of some theory about what she's seeing. If she's successful in that, she attempts to widen the scope of her investigations, always mindful that she might have to modify her explanations of what she's found in light of new evidence and/or arguments.

We're always on the way towards truth in empirical science, never there already. That unsettles lots of people, who long for absolutely certain answers to the questions that haunt them: What am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Because evolution—rather, than, say quantum electrodynamics—seems to offer unpalatable answers to some of these questions, people reject evolution, clinging to the answers that satisfied earlier generations.

[antiRepublicrat]

There are plenty of theories in science that are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Name one.

[ml1954]

There are plenty of theories in science that are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Name them. And how you know they've been proven beyond a 'reasonable doubt'?

[Join Or Die]

I believe it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Prove me wrong!

[ShadowAce]

Gravity

[Ignatius J Reilly]

"Why is your faith superior to our faith?"

Are you a pastafarian then? I too have been touched by his noodly appendage. I insist that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism be given equal time with evolution and ID

[SouthWall]

Faith in the words of a God who chose to reveal Himself to and through, his creation.

Revealed to, not forced. Some see God in all that is around us. Some do not see.

[JasonSC]

That's why it's a "theory", which is just another word for "Faith".

Wrong.

[ml1954]

I do happen to believe we're not random bits of matter that accidentally came together.

You mean your vanity will not permit you to consider the possibility.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Note that ice-core rings and varves and other tree-rings from other parts of the world (rather the Historical Edge of North America) also can be used. They all agree.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The thing I don't understand is why the monkey people are so hysterical about Intelligent Design.

Because it pretends to be science. While not intentional, it's also a way to prevent the creation of future scientists. This will put us in the hands of foreigners or mark the end of our technological society.

We already have a problem because of the shortage of Americans going into health care, engineering or grad schools. Convincing students that science will cause them to lose their souls, will prevent many from entering any scientific field.

[rob777]

I agree with you, but the idea that evolution is the accidental combination of random bits of matter is false---that's not what evolution posits.





Technically, you are correct. The problem is that the term evolution has been redefined so that it refers to a random process. Unfortunately, this is the way it is taught in a lot of schools. This take on evolution has been labeled "NeoDarwinism" by those who question whether the observable facts of evolution are a result of a random process.

A good compromise would be to simply point out the observable facts of evolution in Biology classes and inform the class that the question of whether this happened as a result of a random process, or by design, is a question for philosophy classes. If we simply stuck to the dictionary definition of evolution, a lot of the controversy would go away.

EVOLUTION: a process of change in a certain direction : UNFOLDING b : the action or an instance of forming and giving something off : EMISSION c (1) : a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state

The above definition makes no claim as to whether the process is random, or the result of design. Unfortunately, as I said above, that is not the way it is being taught today.

[antiRepublicrat]

I used to believe in evolution. But my questions quickly became unaswerable.

"Believing" was your problem. You don't believe a theory, merely accept it as the best that the scientific community has to offer as an explanation for what we see. If you're looking for "Truth" then science is the wrong place.

As far as unanswerable questions, you expect too much of science. Newton had unanswerable questions, and attributed his observations to acts of God, much in the same way ID attributes unanswered questions in evolution to God. In Newton's case, we later found out the scientific reasons. Give it time.

[Mylo]

"Materialism", or material explanations of phenomenon, cannot be removed from Science. If it is immaterial it cannot be measured, observed or predicted. Without observation, measurement or prediction there is no Science.

So I have two questions for you...

1) How successful have non-material explanations been in observing and predicting the universe; as well as settling issues of factual disagreement?

2) How many Scientific theories are dependent upon an unobservable and unmeasurable force acting upon matter with an unknown mechanism?

[snarks_when_bored]

Still, 'local school boards under state supervision' is the primary model in the United States, it seems to me. And, after all, it's a local school board (in Dover, PA) that started this latest fracas in the ongoing science vs. nonsense feud.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Or the Euler-Mascheroni constant. Rational or irrational?