Posted on 11/14/2002 2:36:06 PM PST by Heartlander
Evidence, not motive, weighs in favor of giving schoolchildren all sides
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-by Stephen C. Meyer
Cynical lawyers have a maxim: When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When neither is on your side, question the motives of the opposition.
The latter seems to be the strategy of die-hard defenders of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, now that the State Board of Education in Ohio agreed to allow local districts to bring critical analysis of Darwin's ideas into classrooms.
Case in point: A few weeks ago in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Case Western Reserve University physicist Lawrence Krauss attacked the board's decision by linking it to a vast conspiracy of scientists who favor the theory of intelligent design. Design is dangerous, Krauss implied, because the scientists who favor it are religiously motivated. But Krauss' attack and his conspiracy theory are irrelevant to assessing the state board's policies. It's not what motivates a scientist's theory that determines accuracy; it's evidence.
Consider a parallel example: Noted Darwinist Richard Dawkins has praised Darwin's theory because it allows him "to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' Does this scientist's anti-religious motive disqualify Darwinian evolution from consideration as a scientific theory? Obviously not. The same should apply when considering design.
The leading advocate of intelligent design, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, has marshaled some intriguing evidence: the miniature motors and complex circuits in cells.
But Krauss did not argue with Behe's evidence; he questioned the motives of Behe's associates. Krauss claims to speak for science in Ohio. Yet he stoops to some very unscientific and fallacious forms of argument.
Krauss also distracts attention from the real issue. The state board has acknowledged that local teachers and school boards already have the freedom to decide whether to discuss the theory of intelligent design. But apart from that, the board did not address the subject. The board does not require students to learn about the theory of intelligent design in the new science standards. Nor will students be tested on the theory. How, then, are the motives of scientists who favor intelligent design at all relevant?
The new standards do require students to know about evolution and why "scientists today continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.'' This is a good policy, one that has the facts and the law on its side.
First, the facts: Many biologists question aspects of evolutionary theory because many of the main lines of evidence for evolutionary theory no longer hold up. German biologist Ernst Haeckel's famous embryo drawings long were thought to show that all vertebrates share a common ancestry. But biologists now know that these diagrams are inaccurate. Darwin's theory asserts that all living forms evolved gradually from a common ancestor. But fossil evidence shows the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms in the Cambrian period. Biologists know about these problems.
The state board wisely has required students to know about some of these well-known problems when they learn about evolutionary theory. That's just good science education. Students have a right to know.
Law also supports the board's decision. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Edwards vs. Aguillard that state legislatures could require the teaching of "scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories.'' Last year, in the report language of the new federal education act, Congress expressed its support for greater openness in science instruction, citing biological evolution as the key example.
The state board's decision is very popular with the public. Knowing this, opponents argue that majority opinion does not matter in science. They are right. In science, it's evidence that decides questions. But, ironically, that is an argument for allowing students to know all the evidence, not just the evidence that supports the view of the majority of scientists. Because evidence, and not the majority opinion of scientists, is the ultimate authority in science, students need to learn to analyze evidence critically, not just to accept an assumed consensus.
On the other hand, the majority does decide public-policy questions. And, according to many public-opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of Ohio voters support the policy of telling students about scientific critiques of Darwinian evolution. Others have complained that evolution has been unfairly singled out in these standards. Why not insist that students critically analyze other theories and ideas?
First, there is now more scientific disagreement about Darwinian evolution than about other scientific theories.
Second, evolution, more than other scientific theories, has been taught dogmatically. Scientific critics, as we have seen, are routinely stigmatized as religiously motivated. Fortunately, the State Board of Education's decision will make it more difficult to stigmatize teachers who present the evidence for and against evolutionary theory.
File Date: 11.11.02
I don't expect it to make any impression on you, but this was too funny not to post. As muttered earlier, here's my thorough reading of Discovery Institute's reply to the NCSE Analysis of the Discovery Institute's Bibliography.
Are the scientists unjustified in claiming that their work is misrepresented merely by being cited by Discovery Institute in the context it was? Does their every objection, as Discovery claims, "dissolve entirely?"
Well, right up front, D.I.'s protests about their characterization of the very nature of the bibliography are disingenuous. Here's one for fans of weasel-wording. The original sentence:
The publications represent dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism (the prevailing theory of evolution taught in biology textbooks), discuss problems that evolutionary theory faces, or suggest important new lines of evidence that biology must consider when explaining origins.How many readers would place the implied first "either" in front of "dissenting viewpoints" as Discovery Institute says it intended,
[Either]... rather than after? "The publications represent dissenting viewpoints that [either] (1) ..." etc.
(1) “dissenting viewpoints that challenge one or another aspect of neo-Darwinism”OR
(2) “problems that evolutionary theory faces”
OR
(3) “new lines of evidence that biology must consider when explaining origins”
The normal, expected parsing casts all the citations as "dissenting viewpoints," with subdivisions listed thereafter. The division shown in their response to NCSE is artificial, not what anyone would read. The scientists have every right to howl if they don't consider their viewpoints as "dissenting."
But what's D.I.'s version of why those same scientists are howling?
In three words: fear, intimidation, and politics.D.I. repudiates the professional integrity of its cited supporters.
Let's look at the rebuttals of the specific complaints, every one of which supposedly "dissolves entirely"--their words--upon detailed examination. I will with one exception skip the scientists who did not respond or were not quoted by NCSE as complaining against Discovery Institute.
1) The first rebuttal to Erwin ignores the substance of his criticism, which is that by using his old paper, D.I. ignores subsequent work clearing up the questions he raised in 1994. D.I. answers him by saying that there were citations elsewhere of that paper (of some unspecified sort) as late as 2000. Simply a dodge. Do the year-2000 papers claim that the problems Erwin now says are cleared up weren't cleared up by 2000? D.I. omits to mention. They don't seem to understand the necessity of addressing whether their characterization of the state of affairs was accurate. That is, they rebut by blandly, serenely misunderstanding. Alamo-Girl would presumably approve, but nothing dissolves here for a juror capable of critical thought.
2) Koonin is rebutted simply by disagreeing with his assessment of his own work. The heavyweights at Discovery Institute know better.
3) Lockhart is rejected by backing off of the intended import of the bibliography. "We didn't say he doesn't believe in phylogeny." That's paraphrased, not quoted. But it's also what they said.
4) The case beaten to death on this thread already: Mindell didn't answer requests for clarification. Most people reading the two quotes of Mindell in the NCSE paper would say that no clarification is reasonably necessary here.
5) D.I.'s position on Paul Morris: "We didn't say that and anyway yes he did say this." (Paraphrased again.) A heavily semantic rebuttal. D.I. pretends that their hints of antievolutionism were never there. But Morris knows what the big words mean and you didn't get it right, D.I. I see nothing dissolving entirely.
6) David M. Williams: another rebuttal by the feigned-puzzlement technique. Here's Williams's comment:
“The short answer to your question, ‘Do you consider this accurate?’ is no.”If the above looks oddly punctuated, it's because D.I. has thoughtfully trimmed all words by NCSE away from the scientists's quotes throughout, even when doing so destroys the sense. At any rate, D.I.'s laughable reply:“our review was written nearly 10 years ago and things have moved on since then. Many of the possible solutions to data incongruence we suggested then have now been acted upon and molecules and morphology agree in many more cases. In fact, many more examples using molecules and morphology together highlight and clarify topics relating directly to many evolutionary issues.”
It is impossible to know why Williams thinks the summary is inaccurate, as he has not provided, or at any rate the NCSE has not released, any argument supporting his judgment.That's a stunner in itself. How can you not understand Williams's words above? Discovery goes on, nevertheless:
The only word in the summary that is not either (1) a direct quote, (2) neutrally descriptive (e.g., saying where the authors worked), or (3) a connecting phrase (e.g., “they conclude”) is the noun “myth.” Perhaps this is too strong. Consider, however, Williams’s own statements in the Conclusions section of the original paper:A further instance of what they tried with Erwin. If a paper has been cited anywhere by anyone for any reason lately, D.I. can represent to others that problems it described as current in its day remain unsolved even if they're not. Flimsy excuse for a misrepresentation, that! The lovely thing is that they continue to "misunderstand" this even after it is explained to them. Erwin, above, specifically said that Discovery didn't just quote his old paper, but his old citation of problems that have since been resolved. So far, nothing is exactly dissolving entirely for me.Partly because of morphology’s long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published (e.g., 132, 152, 170), structure or resolution tends to evaporate. (p. 180)Williams’s main objection is that he now thinks the paper is outdated. It is unfortunate that scientific publications do not carry expiration dates, like cartons of milk. A 1982 article on homology from the first author of this 1993 publication, Colin Patterson, is still widely cited in the literature, despite its relatively great age. We are undertaking a survey of the Science Citation Index and other sources to see how often, and how recently, this 1993 paper has been cited in the systematics literature. We will update this reply when those results are in hand.
7) Richardson is rebutted by pretending--more semantics--that his corrections do not change the implications of the DI version. Not for people who can read.
8) Weiss is "rebutted" by 1) pointing out that he makes theoretical allowance for questioning everything except shared ancestry, then 2) conceding that he basically said in a footnote, "Hey, creationists, don't quote-mine my work on evolution, it's not creationism and it's not ID!" but they quote-mined him anyway.
9) Douglas Erwin (second instance): "Oh, yes! Erwin is indeed undermining Darwinism, he just won't admit it!"
10) Gilbert used such words as "sudden" and "saltation" in his work on turtles, words which "raise the hackles" of gradualist Darwinians. The fact that he uses these words is very important to D.I. It's about the semantics, you see.
Gilbert claims that his work is in fact "fully within Darwinian parameters." D.I. stands by their interpretation. Gilbert used the magic words. There follows the usual hurt and puzzled request for clarification which has presumably, as in Mindell's case, been so far ignored. (Sniff! Boo-hoo!)
I'll give a hint of what is going on here. Gilbert is describing the fossil record of turtles, where "sudden" means "sudden-as-in-punctuated- equilibrium," perhaps as little as 50,000 years. Discovery intended for Ohio Board members to read "sudden" as "suddenly, one day ..." So, is anything dissolving entirely?
11) There's a rapturously long recapitulation of Miklos's "indictment" of Neo-Darwinism. He responded to the questionnaire, but NCSE did not release his response. I'd be curious to see it. Miklos is an evolutionary geneticist. He clearly states that macroevolution will have to be understood via molecular embryology, "where the quintessence of evolutionary truth is to be found." (Evo-devo isn't ID. Very, very far from it.)
I can't imagine Miklos liked his treatment here. One thing the NCSE does say and D.I. does not dare question, "None of the respondents to NCSE's questionnaire considered their work to provide scientific evidence against evolution."
12) Wagner explicitly rejects D.I.'s interpretation of his work. D.I. once again "never said he said ... but look what he did say here." Apparently, Wagner is yet another liar/coward/idiot who doesn't know what his own work means. This from people who think it's all about semantics.
13) Ball, his quote lifted out of the context in which NCSE places it, is made to look like an idiot who cannot punctuate or write in sentences:
“the effectiveness of evolution in fine-tuning the properties and features of natural systems.”This turns out to be a key to their reply:
Without more information, it is impossible to say if Ball regards the Supplementary Bibliography summary as accurate or inaccurate. By our estimate, the discussion of evolution in the article is less than 1/30th of its total content.The above is not a paraphrase. That's how D.I. dissolves Ball entirely. D.I. originally quoted Ball extensively on the wonder and ingenuity of biological nanoscale "design." Yes, Ball used the word "design." Semantics again.
Do they not know what Ball is saying? I knew what Ball was saying even before I went back to the NCSE document to see what D.I. edited out. Anyway, here it is from the NCSE analysis:
Philip Ball told NCSE that his paper on biomimetics [33] is in fact evidence for "the effectiveness of evolution in fine-tuning the properties and features of natural systems."Other than D.I. trying to suggest that evolution didn't produce insect flight or silk, whereas Ball is saying that it did ... But only in less than 1/30th of the paper's total content! To keep from being quote-mined, do you have to put "evolution" in every third sentence? Merely putting it in a footnote didn't work for Weiss. Only putting it in 1/30th of his paper didn't work for Ball.[Emphasis mine.]
14) Brooks is another hurt puzzlement along the lines of Mindell. "He didn't say where we distorted his words." Discovery needs to buy a clue on these cases. He probably doesn't think he's a "dissenting viewpoint."
15) Deamer protests about the D.I.'s use of "greater realism" (making Deamer's more of a "dissenting viewpoint" than it is) where Deamer would have said "increased understanding." D.I. pretends that their usage is validated in a long quote from a colleague's work that cites Deamer. The implication of the long quote is that the colleague somewhere used their words or something close. Not so. More smoke and mirrors from the self-imagined masters. These guys ought to be ashamed of themselves.
16) Orgel, who has criticized some abiogenesis theories, complains that he is a Darwinian and does not belong on D.I.'s bibliography. D.I. says they didn't say he wasn't a Darwinian, etc. etc. (But, again, all the scientists listed have been characterized as "dissenting viewpoints" by their mere inclusion.)
17) Szathmary thinks he's a cutting-edge Neo-Darwinist. D.I. isn't sure if that's a refutation of their characterization or not. BWAHAHAHAHA! Szathmary's dissolved entirely and is too dumb to know it.
I realize that you do not value the math assertions of intelligent design. However, even if ID were to disappear tomorrow - the algorithmic form of nature would nevertheless be addressed in other research:
Max Tegmark Is ``the theory of everything'' merely the ultimate ensemble theory?
Jürgen Schmidhuber Algorithmic Theories of Everything
Iain Stewart Department of Computing, Imperial College, London
You'd better hope there are no scientists on the jury.
Hmmmm ... I wonder if there were any scientists on the Scopes jury? Scopes jury
That's a project for a slow night (LOL!)
The key word there is "proof" which, as we've discusses a hundred times here, doesn't exist in science.
But the decision as to what will be taught is not made by scientists, it's made in a court of law or a school board hearing. The public at large is also a "jury" and yields influence on both.
That is to say, that even if Dembski, et al, are correct, they will not be remembered or given credit for a lucky guess made without any scientific foundation.
I imagine there are people who also think Hawking made a lucky guess concerning black holes. But Hawking had scientific reasoning for thinking they should be there; likewise, Dembski predicts they will find "dense, multi-layered embedding of information" in biological systems. In any case I doubt that Dembski will be forgotten.
Perhaps. But I think I dismiss the statistical arguments for good reason. A posteriori calculations of the odds just don't mean much in terms of evolution, because nowhere is the goal predetermined. There is no teleology in evolution, no goal, and therefore the "odds" of arriving at some particular structure or organism are just slapped on afterwards without any basis in reality. Something was going to arise, but nobody specified in advance what that something should be. The odds of any particular something arising are the same as the odds for any other particular something arising.
By way of a short example, my (old) phone number used to end in 2194. Imagine that - what are the odds that it would be that particular number? Why, the odds are one in ten-thousand that I would get that particular number assigned to me by the phone company. Clearly, the fact that I beat such long odds is evidence that some higher power guided my number assignment, right?
But it's just silly when you think of it like that, of course. I had a phone, so I was going to get some number assigned to me. And that number was just as likely to pop up as any other.
And so it is with evolution. Calculating the odds of us appearing is meaningless - something was going to appear, and we're no more or less likely than any other organism, real or potential.
I realize we can never come to agreement...
Oh, I don't know about that. Eventually, the weight of the evidence will force one or the other of us to admit that we were wrong. And then we'll be in agreement ;)
If the mathematical observation were as simple as the example you gave, it would indeed be meaningless. But if the prediction is confirmed that there is an actual algorithm in a biological system, then I suggest the meaning is quite significant --- because an algorithm is a step by step instruction to a specific end, like a program. If confirmed, the onus would be on the naturalists to explain a random mutation origin for the logic.
But, as you say, eventually, the weight of the evidence will force one or the other of us to admit that we were wrong. Hugs!
First you have to specify what you mean by "algorithm", though. Lots of biological processes are stepwise progressions to a specific end. The Krebs cycle is an "algorithm" of sorts, but surely you're not suggesting that the mere fact that it is a process with a specific purpose is itself evidence of design.
The Miller article barely touches on the Cambrian and just gives excuses about the preservation of fossils. It is not specifically concerned with the Cambrian itself which is what Meyer was talkig about. The Morton article makes many extrapolations with little substance. Even then he can account for only a small part of the 70 odd phyla which arose suddenly in the Cambrian. Let it be noted that one of the things which arose in that time was the eye on vertebrates. So no, as far as the Cambrian goes evolution cannot explain it and your calling Meyer a liar was totally uncalled for when even the vast majority of evolutionists consider the Cambrian 'a problem' for the theory.
Actually, even though the evolutionists and popular culture make it look otherwise, Darrow and the evolutionists lost the Scopes trial. Also to be noted is that the evolutionists specifically picked a fight. The teacher purposely broke the law to start the whole thing. That the evolutionists have made it look like a win for their side seems to be the result of Goebbelian propaganda at its best.
But there indeed is scientific foundation for Intelligent Design. Perhaps the three most important questions in science have already been decided in favor of ID. The Universe is claimed by most scientists to have had to have been designed and the atheists are only left with the improbable possibility of 'infinite universes'. Abiogenesis likewise has been deemed impossible by science and the atheists cannot even come up with a theory which may explain it according to scientifically known facts. The process by which life reproduces from one cell to 100 trillion cells of exactly the right kind in exactly the right places is called by scientists a program.
So yes, ID has been verified in all the important places. All that is needed is for the world to find out the truth.
Of course there is and you know the proof is the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum. But that is not the sole argument for ID. The other argument is specified complexity and we are finding proof of it daily in the human genome. We see that a single cell mutating and reproducing itself not according to plan causes cancer and can kill an individual. Such a high degree of exactness being a requirement for life shows that organisms cannot be altered at random. What evolution has claimed that one can easily add new functions to an organism has been totally proven to be false. Each new function requires many changes, many genes, many additional supporting and controlling functions for it to be able to arise by a simple chance mutation.
general_re wrote:
There is no proof of irreducible complexity anywheregore3000 responded:
the proof is the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellumQuestion for general_re:
Request for gore3000
If/when general_re has the time to respond, would you be so kind as to rebut his post?
What are your reasons for rejecting the bacterial flagellum?
I think I gave something of an answer in 676, but to restate, I don't reject the flagellum per se, I reject the notion of "irreducible complexity" itself. The argument about the flagellum is essentially of the form "I don't see how the flagellum could have evolved. Therefore, it's irreducibly complex. Therefore, it didn't evolve, it was created."
The problem, as I said, is that this is nothing more than an argument from ignorance. "I don't see how X evolved" has no bearing whatsoever on whether X actually evolved - it's a personal confession, not a statement of fact.
And even worse, it's generally used to reinforce completely circular reasoning. We don't see how it could have evolved, therefore it's irreducibly complex. How do we know it didn't evolve? Because it's irreducibly complex. How do we know it's irreducibly complex? Because can't see how it evolved. Round and round we go...
Irreducible complexity is an empty proposition, from beginning to end. It rests directly on an argument that's been known since Aristotle to be logically flawed. Therefore, it is of no value in determining the truth or falsity of evolution.
Now give me an example of something irreducibly complex that isn't obviously man-made...
No, that is not the argument about the flagellum. It is not an argument from ignorance, it is an argument from knowledge. There are some 40+ genes involved in the functioning of the bacterial flagellum. Scientists through 'knock down' experiments have sequentially knocked off single genes. When any of those 40+ genes is silenced and made inoperable the entire flagellum does not work at all. Further, just about all the genes used in the flagellum mechanism are specific to the flagellum and are not used for anything else. The argument about irreducible complexity was taken from Darwin. It was the one argument he claimed would destroy his theory. Well, the proof has been given but evolutionists decline to admit it.
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