Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Occasionally a social issue becomes so ubiquitous that almost everyone wants to talk about it -- even well-meaning but uninformed pundits. For example, Charles Krauthammer preaches that religious conservatives should stop being so darn, well, religious, and should accept his whitewashed version of religion-friendly Darwinism.1 George Will prophesies that disagreements over Darwin could destroy the future of conservatism.2 Both agree that intelligent design is not science.
It is not evident that either of these critics has read much by the design theorists they rebuke. They appear to have gotten most of their information about intelligent design from other critics of the theory, scholars bent on not only distorting the main arguments of intelligent design but also sometimes seeking to deny the academic freedom of design theorists.
In 2001, Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s research on galactic habitable zones appeared on the cover of Scientific American. Dr. Gonzalez’s research demonstrates that our universe, galaxy, and solar system were intelligently designed for advanced life. Although Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in his classes, he nevertheless believes that “[t]he methods [of intelligent design] are scientific, and they don't start with a religious assumption.” But a faculty adviser to the campus atheist club circulated a petition condemning Gonzalez’s scientific views as merely “religious faith.” Attacks such as these should be familiar to the conservative minorities on many university campuses; however, the response to intelligent design has shifted from mere private intolerance to public witch hunts. Gonzalez is up for tenure next year and clearly is being targeted because of his scientific views.
The University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, is home to Scott Minnich, a soft-spoken microbiologist who runs a lab studying the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic rotary engine that he and other scientists believe was intelligently designed -- see "What Is Intelligent Design.") Earlier this year Dr. Minnich testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the teaching of intelligent design. Apparently threatened by Dr. Minnich’s views, the university president, Tim White, issued an edict proclaiming that “teaching of views that differ from evolution ... is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses or curricula.” As Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf asked in an editorial, “Which Moscow is this?” It’s the Moscow where Minnich’s career advancement is in now jeopardized because of his scientific views.
Scientists like Gonzalez and Minnich deserve not only to be understood, but also their cause should be defended. Conservative champions of intellectual freedom should be horrified by the witch hunts of academics seeking to limit academic freedom to investigate or objectively teach intelligent design. Krauthammer’s and Will’s attacks only add fuel to the fire.
By calling evolution “brilliant,” “elegant,” and “divine,” Krauthammer’s defense of Darwin is grounded in emotional arguments and the mirage that a Neo-Darwinism that is thoroughly friendly towards Western theism. While there is no denying the possibility of belief in God and Darwinism, the descriptions of evolution offered by top Darwinists differ greatly from Krauthammer’s sanitized version. For example, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins explains that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In addition, Krauthammer’s understanding is in direct opposition to the portrayal of evolution in biology textbooks. Says Douglas Futuyma in the textbook Evolutionary Biology:
“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”3
“Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next. … However elevated in power over the rest of life, however exalted in self-image, we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals. …”5
Mr. Luskin is an attorney and published scientist working with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash.
Nite all.. tomorrow is another day.. probably... Maranatha..
So you're saying that a human being is not merely a sum of his parts? Now why didn't anyone else think of that?
/sarcasm.
This is an interesting development. I've been arguing emergent properties (a phrase I got from Ernst Mayr) for about six months, and it turns up here.
Too deep for ya, eh!...
You packed it in before the good part.. Think about it.. You can do it..
Please don't take the liberty to put implications in my mouth that aren't there. I too believe in the risen Lord, however I don't believe the bilge that these Evil hucksters are spewing to the useful idiots on this site and others.
There was no good part. Regardless of how often they're rebutted, the usual suspects post the same tired stuff as if it had never been answered. It's not discussion, it's testifying.
Who answered it.. Surely not you.. That I've noticed..
I have not read all posts but the ones I have you seem to just carp.. to generate strife.. I had a son like that once when he was a teenager.. No matter the answer, how I phrased it or presented it.. He thought he could outwit me when I was simply trying to give him answers..
The truth was.. he didn't want answers.. He wanted to argue.. Makes me wonder if you even are a professor.. You know, the sophomoric attitude ugh ! demeanor, ugh Oh! you know.. You're a professor..
Jeepers A-G, the correspondents who greet us with such predictable disdain apparently did not get much benefit from the last time we did that. We have some really "stiff-necked" people hereabouts who simply refuse to take anything we say seriously. They have shut their ears, and shut their minds. It may be hopeless....
They say that they have answered my objection before -- that a human being must be more than the chemicals out of which he is composed. I'm sure they recognize that man is more than that; but their own doctrine prevents them from giving more than lip-service to the idea. For matter and the non-phenomenal aspects of human reality cannot be integrated in terms of their own model.
So I have not had my "objection" answered by them, ever. Since your "objection" is the same as mine, I tend to doubt you would have any satisfaction from "trying one more time." These folks just don't want to hear it. The spiritual closure is apparently virtually complete, and I gather they like it just fine that way. We'd need a crowbar to pry the spiritual reality that dwells in each man back open again.... FWIW
Sorry to be in such a gloomy mood this morning. But of a truth, there are none so blind as they who will not to see.... A depressing fact, but one that I can live with.... And apparently, sadly, will have to.
What we can do is pray for our correspondents, that by the grace of the Spirit of God they will be drawn into His light in His own time. Thanks so much for writing, Alamo-Girl!
Well, while we're sharing, your posts appear to be largely semi-literate sycophancy. Have a nice day.
AG argues complexity introduces new properties so that, "...new features emerge (such as intelligence in biological life) such that new language is necessary to describe the whole."
This could have been written by Ernst Mayr. It is almost identical to phrases I have been posting for months.
Whats wrong with that.. if true..
You don't like dumb people or loyalty.?..
How did you get so smart or uniquely brilliant.?.
But this is a non-sequitur. Mayr thinks (or thought) biology is an "autonomous science": You don't need theory when you've got "all the facts." (But who possibly could have "all the facts?) That is, biology doesn't need to deal with physics, which makes theory preeminent in the qualification of "facts." Plus he is a reductionist (to the material). In short, he does not credit any idea of "non-phenomenal" reality. But when he has to explain non-phenomenal things -- such as emergent complexity -- he has recourse to "smart chemicals" (my phrase).
This does not satisfy; it is fraught with self-contradiction. FWIW.
Aside from the fact that your characterization of Mayr is completely wrong, your sentences are well written.
If you can't state your opposition's position correctly, you can't argue effectively against it.
Is water smarter than hydrogen or oxygen taken separately? Can the properties of water be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen studied separately?
I would rather have recourse to smart chemicals than willfully ignorant people.
This morning at post 1085, Right Wing Professor says sarcastically: ” So you're saying that a human being is not merely a sum of his parts? Now why didn't anyone else think of that?” - and at post 1086, js1138 adds: ” I've been arguing emergent properties (a phrase I got from Ernst Mayr) for about six months, and it turns up here.”
But of course I was quite sure they knew all of this last night which made their reactions (1066, 1067, 1073-1075) to your post 1065 “bizarre” – at least to me. After all, if the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts what is a hurricane, a snowflake, a dog, a cat, a human being?
This reminds me of those TV episodes where the walls drop immediately to seal a biohazard in the laboratory when one is “sensed”. But what on earth could you have said at post 1065 to make such an auto-response occur?
If the whole were not greater than the sum of its parts, how can we explain language? Why does a word exist for tree, person, cat, snowflake. Indeed, why does DNA code exist?
And if the existent in physical reality is not characterized geometrically by its travel on a worldline which comprises its unique history, then why do we ask about autonomy at all? In that event, there would be no difference between Right Wing Professor and betty boop – no difference between this and that tree, this and that amoeba, this and that protein, etc.
The language, the autonomy, the geometry, the communication, the order itself is why we cannot and should not stop with the physical/chemical but instead reach to the mathematics, the philosophy, the theology.
Jeepers. For years, we’ve been talking about self-organizing complexity, cellular automata, autonomy, semiosis and various aspects thereof – including the math, the physics, the philosophy, the cosmology, the theology. We’ve discussed the movers and shakers in those fields. Not just Mayr but also Shannon, von Neumann, Chaitin, Kolmogorov, Rocha, Pattee, Kauffman, Einstein, Bohr, Tegmark, Steinhardt and more. And not just the scientists and mathematicians but the philosophers as well such as Voegelin, Plato, Aristotle. And not just philosophy but theology, ancient manuscripts, Scriptures and other Spiritual insight.
Perhaps it is because we have a record of speaking to spiritual matters, that the “sensors” go off and the walls come down? In which case, what can I say but Praise God! and join with you in prayer for all who do not yet sense that they belong beyond the geometry of their worldline.
BTW, for Lurkers interested in the sidebar to the sidebar on Mayr:
And as H.H. Pattee observes: ”Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories is what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists, like the skeptics I mentioned above, are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts.
The difference between what you are saying and what we are saying is that emergent properties are an observable feature of the natural, material world as understood by mainstream physicists, chemists and biologists.
Emergence and reduction are both valid ways of studying phenomena, just as style and grammar are both valid ways of examining writing. No mystical properties need apply in the domain of science.
Some prefer continuity. Some prefer latency. Why should a particular compound exhibit superconductivity when the common elements by themselves don't?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.