Posted on 12/22/2009 7:53:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Believers in human-caused global climate change have been placed under an uncomfortable spotlight recently. That is thanks to the Climategate scandal, centering on e-mails hacked from the influential Climate Research Unit (CRU) at England’s University of East Anglia. The e-mails show scientists from various academic institutions hard at work suppressing dissent from other scientists who have doubts on global warming, massaging research data to fit preconceived ideas, and seeking to manipulate the gold standard “peer review” process to keep skeptical views from being heard.
Does this sound familiar at all? To me, as a prominent skeptic of modern Darwinian theory, it sure does. For years, Darwin-doubting scientists have complained of precisely such abuses, committed by Darwin zealots in academia.
There have been parallels cases where e-mail traffic was released showing Darwinian scientists displaying the same contempt for fair play and academic openness as we see now in the climate emails. One instance involved a distinguished astrophysicist at Iowa State University, Guillermo Gonzalez, who broke ranks with colleagues in his department over the issue of intelligent design in cosmology. Released under the Iowa Open Records Act, e-mails from his fellow scientists at ISU showed how his department conspired against him, denying Dr. Gonzales tenure as retribution for his views.
To me, the most poignant correspondence emerging from CRU e-mails involves discussion about punishing a particular editor at a peer-reviewed journal who was defying the orthodox establishment by publishing skeptical research.
In 2004, a peer-reviewed biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution published a technical essay of mine presenting a case for intelligent design. Colleagues of the journal’s editor, an evolutionary biologist, responded by taking away his office, his keys and his access to specimens, placing him under a hostile supervisor and spreading disinformation about him. Ultimately, he was demoted, prompting an investigation of the Smithsonian by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
The public has been intimidated into thinking that “non-experts” have no right to question “consensus” views in science. But the scandal in at the University of East Anglia suggests that this consensus on climate may not be based on solid evidence.
But what about the Darwin debate? We are told that the consensus of scientists in favor of Darwinian evolution means the theory is no longer subject to debate. In fact, there are strong scientific reasons to doubt Darwin’s theory and what it allegedly proved.
For example, contrary to Darwinian orthodoxy, the fossil record actually challenges the idea that all organisms have evolved from a single common ancestor. Why? Fossil studies reveal “a biological big bang” near the beginning of the Cambrian period (520 million years ago) when many major, separate groups of organisms or “phyla” (including most animal body plans) emerged suddenly without clear precursors.
While all scientists accept that natural selection can produce small-scale “micro-evolutionary” variations, many biologists now doubt that natural selection and random mutations can generate the large-scale changes necessary to produce fundamentally new structures and forms of life.
Thus more than 800 scientists, including professors from such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale and Rice universities and members of various national (U.S., Russian, Czech, Polish) academies of science have signed a statement questioning the creative power of the selection/mutation mechanism.
Increasingly, the Darwinian idea that living things only appear to be designed has come under scrutiny. Indeed, living systems display telltale signs of actual or intelligent design such as the presence of complex circuits, miniature motors and digital information in living cells. The information and information-processing systems that run the show in cells point with a particular clarity to prior design. The DNA molecule stores instructions in the form of a four-character digital code, similar to a computer code. As we know from our repeated experience -- the basis of all scientific reasoning -- systems possessing such features always arise from minds, not material processes.
Thus, despite the orthodox view that Darwin showed “design could arise without a designer” there is now compelling scientific evidence to the contrary.
The question of biological origins has long raised profound philosophical questions. Have life’s endlessly diverse forms been the result of purely material processes or did a purposeful intelligence play a role? It’s not surprising that such an ideologically charged issue would illicit strong passions, leading even scientists to suppress dissenting views with which they disagree.
All the more reason -- in this debate as in the one about global warming -- to let the evidence, rather than the consensus of experts, determine the outcome.
-- Dr. Meyer is director for the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He is author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, honored in the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2009. He received his Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University.
Plug it into your favorite search engine along with "Ronald Fisher evolution" and "Edmund Ford evolution" for starters.
Do see a problem with just random mutation plus natural selection creating a functional 750 megabyte piece of code (est of info content of human DNA) even over billions of years. That’s why I think the modern ToE is at least missing some parts.
It isn't the ToE that's missing parts (although it is incomplete like most scientific models and theories). What you cite are strawmen propagated by anti-evolutionists. "Random mutation and natural selection" leaves out the effects of the order and consistency of natural laws. Look up "cumulative selection and protein domains" to find out why the mathematical models used to calculate the probability of DNA occurring by chance used by anti-evolutionists is wrong. Also look up "whole genome duplication" and "polyploidy" to see how genetic information can be doubled rather quickly. Look up the "Triangle of U" and "comparitive genomics", too.
Look up "Monte Carlo Methods" and "genetic programming" to see how random events can be used to increase information.
For the record, I see evolution as the tool God used to create us and other life.
I have no problem with God and Creation either provided that such beliefs correspond well with the preponderance of evidence.
+1
Look up “protein domains” and “cumulative selection” to find out why the model used to calculate the probability is wrong.
"For example, contrary to Darwinian orthodoxy, the fossil record actually challenges the idea that all organisms have evolved from a single common ancestor. Why? Fossil studies reveal “a biological big bang” near the beginning of the Cambrian period (520 million years ago) when many major, separate groups of organisms or “phyla” (including most animal body plans) emerged suddenly without clear precursors.
The evidence that you are trying to use to disprove evolution, falsifies creation.
Isn't cognitive dissonance a wonderful thing : )
From a Stastistics textbook ….
“The number of permutations of N objects is N!” That is … 1x2x3x4x5x … x N.
“The total number of possible selections of r objects from N distinct objects is called the number of combinations of N objects taken r at a time and will be called C(N,r)”; and C(N,r) = N!/(r!(N-r)!)
. Given Jones’ standing in scientific circles, I’d say that he's right. Ref ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liR5aGC9pn0
Interesting terms — will look them up. Hence, BTTT...
Gotta add: aren’t “missing parts” and “incomplete like most scientific models and theories” the same thing? More succinctly, aren’t “missing parts” and “imcomplete” actually synonymous? That’s all I was saying.
That said, you’re pointing to “cumulative selection and protein domains” was very helpful. Never really dug into that before. Answers a lot of questions I’ve had re: info content of DNA. Good stuff.
(BTW, my baliwack is really physics — or was, I’ve been out of it for a while. Still, this stuff is a fun read for me.)
Ahh, dissembling again GGG? You are a young earth creationist. You believe that and have so stated.
You don't get to have it both ways. You can't claim that the earth is only 10k years and try to use evidence from 500 million year old fossils to try and prove the earth is only 10k years old : )
‘GLOBAL WARMING’ FIX? Hose up to stratosphere with balloons; Pump out sulfur particles...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2511875/nathan_myhrvolds_anti_global_warming.html
[simulated volcano?]
Are there genuine objectors on FR? I wasn't aware of any.
The real objections to TOE aren't on the basic theory. There is simply too much evidence behind it.
The real legitimate questions regarding TOE are what it doesn't answer. How did life first start? What are the mechanisms that is life? etc. etc. Answering those questions might be like Einstein answering the Mercury orbit question, and it might completely transform the science. Force still equals mass times acceleration but now we know that energy equals mass. Newtons equations are still valid, but we have a much bigger picture now.
My reply was in response to the frequent identification of those who question the basic premise of Darwinism with Literal 6 day creationists.
First, a basic fact: while many intelligent design proponents believe in a Creator (which is their world-view right), not all do. Some hold that some immanent principle or law in nature could design the universe. That is: to believe in intelligent design is not necessarily to believe in a transcendent creative being.
However, what is rhetorically significant is the further fact that the term “creationist” is very often used today in a derogatory way.
Traditionally, the word was used to describe the world view that God created the universe, a belief shared by many ID scientists, and even some ID critics. But now, that same term is too often used dishonestly in an attempt to associate intelligent design, an empirically-based methodology, with Creationism, a faith-based methodology.
Some Darwinist advocates and some theistic evolutionists seem to feel that if they can tag ID with the “Creationist” label often enough and thus keep the focus away from science–if they can create the false impression that ID allows religious bias to “leak” into its methodology–if they can characterize it as a religious presupposition rather than a design inference –then the press and the public will eventually come to believe that ID is not really science at all.
In short, anti-ID ideologues use the word “creationist” to distract from a scientific debate that they cannot win on the merits. The only real question is whether someone who uses this dubious strategy is doing so out of ignorance (having been taken in by it, too) or out of malice.
Darwin's hypothesis does not rest upon equations, but rather observation and supposition. I suspect you know this already, but I wanted to clarify this for the rabble.
I do not doubt the basic hypothesis of evolution -- that life forms evolve, but the dynamism of any organism's genetic code, combined with recent and reputable observation, does point to a better theory which is far more, how do I say, Lamarckian in nature.
Unlike simply noting the similarities and differences between certain populations in various stages of isolation and drawing conclusions as to the mechanism by which those variations have arisen, the process of measuring, experimenting, observing, predicting and re-confirming, say, how phenotype alterations write themselves into the genotype is how real science occurs.
If you throw out observations because they do not conform to your hoped for outcomes is not real science.
Thus; back to the AGW topic, when half of the Russian temp data is thrown out because it fails to demonstrate the hoped-for warming of IPCC "scienticians", we see bad science.
Dogma is a crutch for small minds - in any field.
I would be correct 99 out of a 100 times doing that : ) I can accept those odds.
First, a basic fact: while many intelligent design proponents believe in a Creator (which is their world-view right), not all do. Some hold that some immanent principle or law in nature could design the universe. That is: to believe in intelligent design is not necessarily to believe in a transcendent creative being.
Do you see the flaw in your logic? How can you believe in intelligent design without an intelligent designer?
If you can overcome that flaw in your logic, maybe the rest of your post might have a point.
You say “suddenly” but the “Cambrian Explosion” went on for 30 million years.
I kind of agree. I have been reading some interesting stuff, try this http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html it is on how toxo can affect behavior.
Thus; back to the AGW topic, when half of the Russian temp data is thrown out because it fails to demonstrate the hoped-for warming of IPCC "scienticians", we see bad science.
The New Zealand and Australian adjustments are even more clear cut. It is becoming very clear that Jones et al cherry picked their sources, added heat to the UHI and cooled the past. That is how they created the hockey stick.
I was one of the people who submitted a FOI to HADRCUT.
It is all relative. A million years here and a million years there and pretty soon you are talking real time.
You have my apologies. I mistakenly took you for a creationist or an ID'er. Sometimes sarcasm can be a little too subtle for me.
Again, please forgive me for lumping you in with the fundies.
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