Intelligent design’s long march to nowhere

Science & Theology News ^ | 05 December 2005 | Karl Giberson

[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?

---

Karl Giberson [the author of this piece] is editor in chief at Science & Theology News.

[Diamond]

Thank you for your replies. I enjoy the exchanges, and I usually learn more than I impart. I find that if I respect others and treat them the way I would like to be treated, the conversation is more substantive and reduces the need for flame retardant apparel.

I'm mulling over the tinkering designer challenge, but work calls.

Cordially,

[VadeRetro]

We knock out one or two HOX or UBX genes and get fruit flies with stump legs on their abdomens, four wings instead of two, etc.

My own lack of expertise is clearly demonstrated in the previous post. UBX is a HOX gene.

[Thatcherite]

Here is the WHOLE passage:

Wow! Is there a school where ReMine learned to write scientific-seeming gobbledegook like that? Joyce would be proud.

[js1138]

Google the postmodernism generator.

[frgoff]

This is very true; it's not random chance, it's governed by the laws of chemistry, and when you apply those, you find out the formation isn't just highly improbable, it's improbable to the point of being impossible. Behe goes into some of the chemistry in his book Darwin's Black Box.

Just like Sodium and Chlorine will always form ordered crystals when evaporated from solution, there are some chemical reactions that will NOT occur no matter how much time you give them. Graphite turning to diamond under STP, Helium-Oxide, Lithium permanganate, Oxygen Sulfate, etc.

[VadeRetro]

One final point on clarity vs obscurity. Can anyone tell how ReMine would have answered Thomas's challenge in part 3 if he had in fact answered it?

I challenge ReMine to give a simple answer to this simple question in his Round 3 response: "Does Walter ReMine think humans and chimpanzees descended from a recent common ancestor?"

[js1138]

...and when you apply those, you find out the formation isn't just highly improbable, it's improbable to the point of being impossible. Behe goes into some of the chemistry in his book Darwin's Black Box.

Devastating if it were true, but it isn't. Among other problems, you can't calculate the probability of a long series of events without knowing the steps in the series. Behe has just extended the god of the gaps argument to a currently unsolved problem.

Asserting that a problem cannot be solved because it has not yet been solved is the single greatest evil possible in the world, because it denies reason and imagination.

[VadeRetro]

Asserting that a problem cannot be solved because it has not yet been solved is the single greatest evil possible in the world, because it denies reason and imagination.

The most evil thing in the world is hyperbole.

[js1138]

The most evil thing in the world is being a smartass.

[Paul Ross]

"No faster than one per 300 generations?"

You can't read contextually, can you. This was for HIGHER VERTEBRATES. Remember that? Guess not.

This misbegotten effort by you to obfuscate your chalatan ways....is manifest. Your side is doing the hocus-pocus and to label Remine the "charlatan" is dishonesty on steroid. You are shown up when you misquote him this way. SO, wake up and smell the coffee.

And medved was the one always thumped on the Haldane Dilemma, not vice versa. Seems to me he did the same as you, misquoting.

So you are busted: All smoke, mirrors, bafflegab, distraction, and evasion.

Yup, that's you.

[Paul Ross]

Yes.

The School is called the ToE.

[frgoff]

Devastating if it were true, but it isn't. Among other problems, you can't calculate the probability of a long series of events without knowing the steps in the series.

Sorry, it is true. Unlike biological evolution, you've trod on the ground of Physics and Chemistry, true, experimental sciences. Chemists and Physicists don't do archaeological digs and declare they've found a missing link. Chemists and Physicists look at actual, existing chemicals and perform experiments with empirical analysis.

These chemicals have been analyzed. We have re-created some in the laboratory and know the steps involved. Others we've analyzed in the cell as they are being manufactured. The only probabilities involved are the ones that determine chemical reactions: electron affinity, orbitals, activation energies, etc.

We have observed empirically, using the known laws of physics and chemistry, that the intermediate compounds in the steps of formation are chemically unstable and will spontaneously break down outside the specialized environment of the living cell.

Asserting that a problem cannot be solved because it has not yet been solved is the single greatest evil possible in the world, because it denies reason and imagination.

I never said the problem of the origins of life cannot be solved. I said that spontaneous generation is categorically ruled out by the laws of physics. This is a step toward a solution because we have now found one explanation that will not work and we can quit wasting time pursuing it.

However, your comment of devastating shows that you are an idealogue on this issue. The idea of finding out that spontaneous generation, or other purely naturalistic explanation is devastating shows that you are NOT interested in going wherever the evidence leads, but that you will accept one and only one destination.

[Last Visible Dog]

I see that you have the same sort of myopic problem with the word "refuted" that you have with the word "materialism".

Sorry, none of the arguments have been refuted either and many of the quotes imply all argument have been refuted. Keep digging.

[js1138]

This is a step toward a solution because we have now found one explanation that will not work and we can quit wasting time pursuing it.

Imagin my surprise that you would say this.

[Last Visible Dog]

What's "theoretical science"?

Many forms of mathamatics, theoretical chemistry, and theoretical physics (to name a few).

Try these links:

National Center for Theoretical Sciences

Michio Kahu, Theoretical Physicist

Theoretical Physics defined in the Wikipedia

[quant5]

"Partly I believe this can be chalked up to the ID proponents not having clue one on how to test for design. Their whole thesis revolves around, "this looks like it was designed, so therefore it must have been -- and besides, Darwin sucks." "

I would tend to agree with you about testing and the scientific method if it should be written into text books as fact. I believe intelligent design happened, but perhaps advocates of teaching such should be compared with written accounts of creation and scientifically tested in a lab.

Einstein believed in intelligent design. He prayed to God that he would uncover the secret of light. The bible says that God is light. Einstein set-up scientific process that explains light and transformation to matter. Could you quantify God is light? It sure explains a lot about E=MC2, the big bang and the process of creation. It also explains how God is an etheral being, not constrained by time. In fact, at the speed of light time ceases to exist, it stops. Science quantifies much of the creation story and perhaps that statement alone should be written in text books. But demanding it be written into text books as the scientific process is, well that is a bit premature.

[Last Visible Dog]

Do you agree, LVD, that science is not materialist?

Science is not limited to the material realm. Remember, thoughts are not material yet science can study the thought process.

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

Uh oh.

Am I in trouble again?

;)

[Oztrich Boy]

Give us an example where a supernatural explanation has been demonstrated to be superior to natural explanations.

What the heck does supernatural have to do with what I said. BTW: medicine, human flight, and electricity where all considered supernatural at one time. Supernatural is merely beyond our current understanding of the natural world.

That is not the sense in which any literate person from Thomas Aquinus on has used it.

It has always meant "transcending the powers or ordinary course of nature"

But if your "what will eventually discovered to have a natural explanation" is to be used, how will that erxplanation ever be found if science declines to look for it. In other words
Perhaps you can tell us how science can abandon empiricism and still be science.

[Last Visible Dog]

Not even close.

Yeah. Right.

For an avowed aristotalian

I never claimed to be an "aristotalian"

Science concerns itself with things that can be detected.

Tell that to Theoretical Physicists

Science concerns itself with things that can be detected. Science does not claim that the things it can detect are the only things that exist.

So you are claiming non-material things exist - but science can't concern itself with them yet science is not materialistic. Yeah. Right.

Philosophical materialists claim that only what you can detect, exists. Ergo, scientists are not philosophical materialists.

Yeah. Right. You claim science can only concern itself with material things yet science is not materialistic. Right. Fancy bit of tapdancng you are doing here. The text of YOUR definition of science is the definition of Materialism. In your definitions - in regards to science, only the material exists. Then you go on to try and claim science knows there are non-material things but somehow science is unable to study them.

HINT: All thought is based on some sort of philosophy. All thinking is based on a priori assumptions. Your definition of science claims science has an a priori assumption of materialism. That was may point all along. Materialism is the dogma (the a priori assumption) of many that claim to be men of science. Materialism is not a requirement of science any more than Christianity was a true requirement of science is medieval europe.

Ergo, scientists are not philosophical materialists. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Sorry dude - nearly nonsensical rambling does not constitute proof.

You claim science can only deal with the material yet science is not materialist - like your earlier statements, that statement is completely contradictory and is certainly not proof.