Posted on 12/05/2005 4:06:56 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The leaders of the intelligent design movement are once again holding court in America, defending themselves against charges that ID is not science. One of the expert witnesses is Michael Behe, author of the ID movement’s seminal volume Darwin’s Black Box. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, testified about the scientific character of ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the court case of eight families suing the school district and the school board in Dover, Pa., for mandating the teaching of intelligent design.
Under cross-examination, Behe made many interesting comparisons between ID and the big-bang theory — both concepts carry lots of ideological freight. When the big-bang theory was first proposed in the 1920s, many people made hostile objections to its apparent “supernatural” character. The moment of the big bang looked a lot like the Judeo-Christian creation story, and scientists from Quaker Sir Arthur Eddington to gung-ho atheist Fred Hoyle resisted accepting it.
In his testimony, Behe stated — correctly — that at the current moment, “we have no explanation for the big bang.” And, ultimately it may prove to be “beyond scientific explanation,” he said. The analogy is obvious: “I put intelligent design in the same category,” he argued.
This comparison is quite interesting. Both ID and the big-bang theory point beyond themselves to something that may very well lie outside of the natural sciences, as they are understood today. Certainly nobody has produced a simple model for the big–bang theory that fits comfortably within the natural sciences, and there are reasons to suppose we never will.
In the same way, ID points to something that lies beyond the natural sciences — an intelligent designer capable of orchestrating the appearance of complex structures that cannot have evolved from simpler ones. “Does this claim not resemble those made by the proponents of the big bang?” Behe asked.
However, this analogy breaks down when you look at the historical period between George Lemaitre’s first proposal of the big-bang theory in 1927 and the scientific community’s widespread acceptance of the theory in 1965, when scientists empirically confirmed one of the big bang’s predictions.
If we continue with Behe’s analogy, we might expect that the decades before 1965 would have seen big-bang proponents scolding their critics for ideological blindness, of having narrow, limited and inadequate concepts of science. Popular books would have appeared announcing the big-bang theory as a new paradigm, and efforts would have been made to get it into high school astronomy textbooks.
However, none of these things happened. In the decades before the big-bang theory achieved its widespread acceptance in the scientific community its proponents were not campaigning for public acceptance of the theory. They were developing the scientific foundations of theory, and many of them were quite tentative about their endorsements of the theory, awaiting confirmation.
Physicist George Gamow worked out a remarkable empirical prediction for the theory: If the big bang is true, he calculated, the universe should be bathed in a certain type of radiation, which might possibly be detectable. Another physicist, Robert Dicke, started working on a detector at Princeton University to measure this radiation. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson ended up discovering the radiation by accident at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1965, after which just about everyone accepted the big bang as the correct theory.
Unfortunately, the proponents of ID aren’t operating this way. Instead of doing science, they are writing popular books and op-eds. As a result, ID remains theoretically in the same scientific place it was when Phillip Johnson wrote Darwin on Trial — little more than a roster of evolutionary theory’s weakest links.
| When Behe was asked to explicate the science of ID, he simply listed a number of things that were complex and not adequately explained by evolution. These structures, he said, were intelligently designed. Then, under cross-examination, he said that the explanation for these structures was “intelligent activity.” He added that ID “explains” things that appear to be intelligently designed as having resulted from intelligent activity. |
Behe denied that this reasoning was tautological and compared the discernment of intelligently designed structures to observing the Sphinx in Egypt and concluding that it could not have been produced by non-intelligent causes. This is a winsome analogy with a lot of intuitive resonance, but it is hardly comparable to Gamow’s carefully derived prediction that the big bang would have bathed the universe in microwave radiation with a temperature signature of 3 degrees Kelvin.
After more than a decade of listening to ID proponents claim that ID is good science, don’t we deserve better than this?
University of Kansas religious studies professor Paul Mirecki told the Lawrence Journal-World that two men who beat him were making references to the class that was to be offered for the first time this spring.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/13336260.htm
Cool, your words, my bedtime. Talk to you later.
Actually, what it looks like is that the position of all materialists and evolutionists is scientifically and morally bankrupt. Look, the guy lost a tooth. He was beaten severely. That proves beyond question evolutionists and materialists are plumb dumb and wrong. It also proves that you had best repent before the rest of us fundies don red baseball hats and wool gloves. Deal with it. Be sure to check the bushes outside before you go to sleep.
So why do you have the American flag on your home page? You belong in an atheistic society such as China. Certainly anyone who would call Washington and Lincoln mentally defective should not feel at home here.
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
It smarts not in the least to be "shamed" by someone who knows neither the One to whom all are accountable nor any significant reason for pronouncing judgment upon others.
Again, not unexpected.
I expected shameful gloating over an act of violence. I never expected the disgusting bile that Fester vomited forth.
I've observed Creationists for the last half century. It's sad to say, not much has changed.
...Just a minor glitch in the heartless process of natural selection, etc. Just the "laws of nature"
What a class act you are, FC.
I did. Over on the main thread more than one person has expressed chagrin the beating was not more severe. I hit abuse on the first of those. No result. Evidently management agrees that Mirecki was not damaged enough.
I have to say I'm withholding judgement on this incident until the police weigh in. We've seen too many cases like this that turned out to be fakes. But if it turns out to be legitimate, I will be blogging on the FReeper reaction, and it won't be pretty.
You gotta be kidding me.
It's possible. It's kind of a shame when people want pity so badly that they'll stage something like this. If this is the case, he should suffer the consequences of filing a false police report.
We've seen too many cases like this that turned out to be fakes.
I gotta see this. Where?
The "narnia" review thread is almost as bad. Perhaps the Moon has slipped phase tonight.
Just to comment before the fact: if it's a fake, the faker should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law; likewise if it's real, same to the perps.
Inappropriate!
And what will that be? A broad brush that equates your opponents with the village idiots surrounding castle Frankenstein? Well, it may come as a surprise to you, but I'm sure most Creationists decry physical violence against anyone. But, whatever comes of the story, if the violators exist, they should be appropriately punished and it should be aggravated punishment for allowing opportunists to use Creationists/IDers as scapegoats.
Perhaps, but there are some (on this and other threads) celebrating it. Your response if refreshing in this matter.
Bingo!
I can't help being a bit skeptical. Oh well, we'll know soom enough.
I really think most Creationists, felt "OH NO". It is no help to anyone to have that happen. I don't even want the other outcome to occur, it, to me is just as bad. I'm stuck. This is a distasteful situation. It might be wise to consider what the Gideon rep told me about his actions when the police told him to leave. He was handing out Bibles to those who would accept them. He left without comment. This happened in the U.S.
And thank you.
I recommend PERMANENT VI™ for the guilty party. People who are that warped and demented deserve to be cyber-shunned.
I did find the comments about Matthew Shepherd problematic; that case was not fake, but I still see (various internet sites, sometimes FR) some justyfing his murder.
Festering placemark
Yes, people do rationalize things. But that is not truly rational.
1) Atheistic liberatarians can never live down that they live under a system instituted by God-fearing men.
They skirt that (ahem) inconvenient point.
(But I confess that I delight in it.)
Our wonderful (and brilliant!) system of government allows for the greatest latitude in personal freedoms exactly BECAUSE it was devised by God-fearing men.
2) Science progressed in Europe not despite of, but largely BECAUSE OF the influence of Christianity.
Science could not have evolved anywhere else on the globe as rapidly as it did in Europe precisely because Christianity (almost always) was tolerant of scientific inquiry. Certainly far more so than Islam. It also valued education, which directly supported science.
Abiogenesis is their *weakness* in the discussion of creation vs. evolution.
If it were their strength, believe me, you'd be hearing more about it. But they can't tout it, because no one understands it.
(Again: Remember that Genesis says specifically that "the Earth brought forth life"--which implies evolution from abiogenesis. Judaic tradition sure describes the origin of all things better than Eskimo, eh?)
Say what you will, but the lack of progress with the abiogenic field speaks volumes about the limitations of our understanding of how life first formed. We simply *don't know,* but only a few honest biochemists will fess up to the truth. The rest remain guilty in their silence.
There's a huge amount of peer pressure to toe the line in science. If you want continued grant funding, you need a good word from your peers as a future reference. If you don't have it, you lose your livelihood. Few will dare to buck the establishment.
ID is new. There's no hurry. I think they're onto something, because they can't disprove Intelligent Design. In fact, many unanswered questions are hinting at, pointing at, Intelligent Design as the cause for why we can't answer a simple question: How did Life begin?
Why should there be something...rather than nothing?
While we cannot (and probably never will be able to) prove ID, the circumstantial evidence for it is overwhelming...but not quite proof.
Conversely, they cannot disprove I.D.
As for me, I view evolution and the entrenched cabal defending-it-at-all-costs as very close-minded. They're putting forth their own "just so" story.
For me, I view evolution as the Theory of Accidentialism.
There just hasn't been enough time elapsed here on Earth to generate life from inorganic materials, even by their own theories.
There's also the problem that life appeared the minute liquid water was able to form. In reality, that's the point where the countdown should have begun, and add many billions of years to that date. But that's not what happened. Life seemed to have been either introduced, or pre-programmed to introduce itself (Genesis, anyone?).
Either way, I think this univese was meant to have life in it. We have some bacteria that have more than a hundred times the genetic material you would expect for a bacteria...is it meant to be "seed material" to create other organisms?
Here we are, living on this Goldilocks world...right orbit, smack dab in the ecospshere...right inclination...right star...right part of the spiral arm...right age...a tiny fraction in change of temperature and matter wouldn't exist...quantum gravity "tuned" to be just right...even Hoyle said that it appeared as if Someone has "monkeyed" with the physics of the universe, that it was fine-tuned for life....
I'm sorry, but I think O.J. murdered Nicole because of all the circumstantial evidence, and I think God exists because of all the circumstantial evidence, too.
We're sitting here discussing the evidences for Design in biology. There's PLENTY, if you want to be honest about it.
But what's more important--there's even MORE evidence for Design in the cosmos. Some of the older Christians here can recollect when a select sect (cult, cabal...I'll use the word "sect") of slightly less-than-honest-to-the-general-public astronomers held out for far too many years for the Steady State Theory, held out beyond all reasonableness, and held out--by their own admission--because the thought of a universe with an "origin" carried too weight of an implication, and made them "uneasy." (Hints at the existence of a God to whom they might be accountable.) It all gets down to the desire to be libertine, rather than accountable.
If the universe is ultimately uncreated, eterally self-existent, or even accidental...then it has no purpose, and neither do we. Morality becomes irrelevant.
If, however, it was created, then morality becomes paramount. And this frightens some. But on the good side, it would mean that love, perception of aesthetic beauty, and the concept of altruism and mercy actually do have meaning, and our having them was by no means an accident.
I'm sickened by a few deceitful astronomers who clung tenanciously to the Steady State Theory (now on the ash heap), only to discard it and immediately jump onto the (minority) bandwagon of Brane Theory. They weren't held accountable. (Scolding would be sufficient.)
They'll simply do anything to DENY that this universe had an origin, a creation, in time.
(Brane Theory says that another universe "bumped" into this one, creating it. It conveniently begs the question of what created THAT OTHER universe. Another "just so" story we're supposed to accept. Oh, and there are 11 dimensions to it...did I mention that? We're supposed to lay back and accept this stuff, cut from whole cloth, unprovable, posited from nothing but imagination, and yet we cannot posit a Creator? Dudes, you guys must play by the same rhetorical rules. If you can make up your universes, we can posit God, for whom there's tons of circumstantial evidence.)
My $0.02, again. YMMV (your mileage may vary).
Let's all rest easy.
Sauron.
I hear you Sauron. Thank You.
Wolf
I believe you're moving the bar. You asked if anyone could prove that life could be made from non-life. I gave you one example of how this might be done.
And what's to understand about DNA? It's a simple organic polymer. You know. Plastic.
I find that akin to "What's to understand about Linux? It' a simple sequence of 1's and 0's."
Well, when you think it is that simple, you end up with billion dollar spacecraft crashing into the surface of Mars instead of gently landing there.
I think we're all honest about the appearance of design in life, even Dawkins admits that. It is that some assert that it can appear by chance and unguided selection.
Abiogenesis is not part of the theory of evolution, and the theory of evolution says nothing about creation. The tenor of your posts suggests that you have a bizarre idea that those who support evolution are atheists. That is false, and so your following few paragraphs are based on a false premise. BTW abiogenesis is being studied, and if I were you I wouldn't predicate my faith on those studies ultimately failing to provide a naturalistic explanation. Worshipping the God of the Gaps is risky.
There's a huge amount of peer pressure to toe the line in science. If you want continued grant funding, you need a good word from your peers as a future reference. If you don't have it, you lose your livelihood. Few will dare to buck the establishment.
THis is just paranoid nonsense. The fame and fortune that would await anyone who falsified a central unifying theory such as evolution with genuine evidence would be undying. The idea that scientists (most of whom are religious believers) are hiding the evidence to further some kind of evolutionist agenda is beyond parody.
ID is new. There's no hurry. I think they're onto something, because they can't disprove Intelligent Design. In fact, many unanswered questions are hinting at, pointing at, Intelligent Design as the cause for why we can't answer a simple question: How did Life begin?
ID isn't new, it is one of man's oldest ideas. In the last few-thousand years ID hasn't produced one single insight. Incidentally are you aware of the opinions of the main scientific exponent of ID, Michael Behe?
Is that a set of beliefs you are happy to sign up to? If not then best drop the support for ID.
Either way, I think this univese was meant to have life in it. We have some bacteria that have more than a hundred times the genetic material you would expect for a bacteria...is it meant to be "seed material" to create other organisms? Here we are, living on this Goldilocks world...right orbit, smack dab in the ecospshere...right inclination...right star...right part of the spiral arm...right age...a tiny fraction in change of temperature and matter wouldn't exist...quantum gravity "tuned" to be just right...even Hoyle said that it appeared as if Someone has "monkeyed" with the physics of the universe, that it was fine-tuned for life....
About .000000000000000000000001% of the universe appears to be "fine-tuned for life" as you put it. Isn't that rather wasteful. Another way of putting it would be, "to get life like us, you'd need a universe and a planet just like ours", Well duh! And wasn't your argument just now that life was so unlikely that God had to tinker to make it appear. Now you've reversed that stance to say that we've got a goldilocks universe where all this is inevitable. Which is it, then?
It all gets down to the desire to be libertine, rather than accountable. If the universe is ultimately uncreated, eterally self-existent, or even accidental...then it has no purpose, and neither do we. Morality becomes irrelevant. If, however, it was created, then morality becomes paramount. And this frightens some. But on the good side, it would mean that love, perception of aesthetic beauty, and the concept of altruism and mercy actually do have meaning, and our having them was by no means an accident.
You make an enormous jump from "The universe was created" (if we accept that, for the sake of argument). To "morality becomes paramount". Whence comes this jump. Why should the creator of the universe share our notions of morality? Why should the creator of the universe care about us at all? He seems to have created this "rather large" artifact of which we form a vanishingly tiny and insignificant portion. To get a sense of the scale of the universe, imagine a cubic mile of fine powder, 10 grains to the mm, 1000 grains per cubic mill. Each of those grains is a sun in the universe, spread them out so the average distance between them is many miles. Near one of them, and a thousand times smaller is a miniscule speck, and on its surface is... us. You really think that the whole shebang was created just to get us? What kind of Goldilocks universe is that wastefulness?
The joke's on you kid. The whole book is a hoax.
If I created the impression that I was suggesting that science should be poll driven I made my argument poorly.
My intention was that the "public relations" of the situation isn't being handled well.
I work in a fairly technical area (not science) and I work with clients every day that don't have a clue. They're not stupid, they're not morons, they're ignorant of the issue surronding a reasonably technical area.
Not that I would even use the word ignorant, rather I try to explain, using situations that they can relate to their lives, the reasons why they're morons (there's a bit of an attempt at humor there). If I were to simply say "hey, you guys are morons" I suspect I'd be shown the door immediately and lose a client.
For instance as a non-scientists I have an idea of what the word "theory" means: "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.". However the scientific definition of theory is, of course, quite different.
It's not the publics fault that they go with the one they're likley to understand from their non-scientific lives. They're not morons, they've simply not been exposed to the fact.
So the point I was trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that it is incumbent on science to educate, not simply call people morons. Present a cogent argument starting with the basics and continue from there.
It may not work, but I would observe that in the last 30 years science hasn't engaged in enough education. We see junk science used to advance an agenda and fairly or unfairly, it's a big brush that the public sees as tarring all science. We also see science that has become, at least in my view, timid in challenging junk science because of tenure, funding or even being outcasts in their peer group.
Rather than education it's been more of a case of "we're real smart, we're right, you don't agree, you're an idiot".
Simply a thought.
* Evolution is true
* All of life on earth shares a common ancestor (by implication including men and other apes)
* The earth is billions of years old
* There is no physical evidence that the designer has intervened in natural processes such as evolution for many millions of years
* The Designer may not still be around
Of course you may well be content to agree with that set of beliefs, but it is hard to be sure without asking you. Most self-professed Freeper IDers recoil when they discover what the scientific vendors of ID are selling. Curiously they seem to have signed up to it without checking what it is.
The "Cambrian Explosion" is an oft quoted troublesome event of creationists and IDers. Explosions sound like exciting events don't they. But it doesn't seem to bother professional biologists so much. The "explosion" did last for tens of millions of years, which is actually a very large number of generations, and there were pre-cambrian organisms, but their fossils were just so small we didn't have the techniques to spot them until relatively recently.
What you say isn't unreasonable. Part of the problem that those of us on the evo side of the debate is that we see the same canards and easily refuted weak arguments for creationism/ID coming at us again and again.
Various forms of this behaviour can be very irritating, which makes us tend to post snappily.
* The same Freeper posting the same refuted argument again and again in a thread
* An evo refutes an argument, and then sees it pop up again from the same poster in a later thread as if the refutation had never happened
* Argument by lucky dip, where a Freeper posts a succession of arguments and as each one is refuted just goes back to their favourite creationist website for more, ad nauseam within the same thread. Don't they realise how stupid this makes them (and by extension their religion) look?
* Argument by continuous cheerleading for bad arguments being posted by other Freepers, without ever actually proposing any arguments of their own.
* Putting forward arguments which could only be true if 99% of professional biologists are either stupid or liars engaged in an enormous atheist conspiracy. (the classic 2LOT argument falsifies evolution is an example of this, do the posters really think that biologists are unaware of the 2LOT?)
But you are quite right. We owe it to the lurkers and newby creationist posters who have genuinely been misled to be as factual and down-to-earth as possible, and to avoid being snappy. I fail all the time myself though.
Do you have any examples of what you mean by "Junk science" in this regard. The scientists of my acquaintance are an opinionated bunch who are quick to deride any notions that they regard as fallacious, and who don't seem overly concerned with maintaining the status quo and not rocking the boat. Scientists are naturally argumentative.
In the past I've seen "junk science" used as a catch-all term that describes science whose conclusions a poster feels uncomfortable with, without regard to the actual validity of the science.
The range of dates I've seen for the Cambrian explosion from 5 million to 30 million years, which is hugely problematic for the theory of evolution. So, in literally no time at all geologically, all of the phyla of the world appear literally at once. Their fossil precursors were all microbes.
BTW, the term "explosion" has no meretricious appeal for me. I find that "explosions" are used by theorists to get themselves out of the corners they've painted themselves into.
We have a winner.
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