FAQ on Intelligent Design
Dean
The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture has an interesting questions and answers on Intelligent Design.
The more I learn about these guys, the less worried about them that I get.
Why are some people so afraid of this discussion? Do they think they're going to get God Cooties or something? Will peer review be destroyed? Are we going to go back to burning heretics?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Intelligent Design Blog
- Further Thoughts On Intelligent Design
- FAQ on Intelligent Design
- ACLU Sues Over Intelligent Design
Of course, people tend to get ID confused with creationism, which is a whole different theory entirely. It DOES go beyond the physical evidence to make claims about the identity of the intelligence.
I would say, don't teach creationism in schools, because that's definitely a religious theory. But I've read a couple ID books and never seen them stray from the scientific. Why couldn't we talk about alternatives to evolution in our schools and have a civilized dialogue about the values and flaws in all our current theories?
It always worries me when a group refuses to allow a discussion about alternatives to their philosophy. After all, evolution's the right theory, right? So what do its proponents have to fear from an honest evaluation of it? Won't the facts prove them right in the end?
You're thinking like an adult. Children don't have the capacity to make such judgements. At the college level one should be able to examine the alternatives to evolution in, say, a philosophy or history of science class.
Dean
The theory of evolution is as much a theory as the theory of gravity or the theory of relativity. Would you propose that we teach possible alternatives to these theories as well? By what criteria would you use to judge one alternative over another?
You can believe in God and still accept Evolution. Evolution can simply be the mechanism used by G*D to create life. Since I can't open the links to Discovery.org, I don't know what it is saying. However, I want my kids learning science in science class, and Evolution is science.
I'll handle the teaching of morality.
Then you have nothing to be afraid of from an examination of all sides of the issue, do you?
Also, Scott, I would be careful about giving everything that is labeled a "theory" equal standing. Since you can never actually prove a theory to be true, just fail to disprove it, one theory, such as the theory of gravity, might have much more support than another, such as evolution. In other words, one theory might have very little evidence to refute it, while another has quite a bit. I think our knowledge of evolution is still a bit incomplete, and some if it is likely to be wrong.
First, for general info on evolution, visit this link
JDS
The fossil record isn't as incomplete as you might think. Whenever I hear of "gaps" in the fossil record, I need to know which "gaps" we are talking about. For example, the evolution of the modern day horse from eohippus -> modern day horse is supported by the fossil record..
Next, we are able to watch evolution occur all around us. For example, drug resistant strains of bacteria. Natural Selection - the mechanism driving evolution - creates these wee beasties. We create drugs that whacked 'em, but a few with the random mutation that allowed them to survive our whacking, then multiplied and passed along this mutation to their offspring.
Also, fruit flies. We are able to induce mutations in them and watch the effects over several generations.
Also, Evolution is as sound as other theories. Parts of the theory may change (ie Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium vs. Gradualism) just like Quantum Physics appeared under the Theory of Relativity. However QP did not overthrow Relativity, just like Punctuated Equilibrium will not overthrow Evolution.
Kacie
Again, I have nothing to fear - but I am an adult. Children aren't able to appreciate grey areas and are unable to make judgements based on evidence. To them things are or aren't.
Evolution is the basis of modern biology. You cannot teach the latter without the former. Evolution does not threaten religion, but religion does threaten Evolution and therefore Science - which is why people like me get worked up about alternatives being taught in our schools.
From what I remember, most of the gaps had to do with human beings. Also, I'm not actually arguing against evolution (which I support), I'm simply saying that not all theories have the same standing, and I think there is still alot left to be learned about evolution. I think the theory of gravity, for example, is alot more sound than the theory of evolution.
Also, while your comments concerning children may be correct, I don't think it ever hurts to provide alternative explanations and criticisms of existing theories. Critical thinking doesn't occur on it's own, but must be taught, and I think primary and secondary schools in this country do a woefully inadequate job of teaching this. If informing children about other theories, such as intelligent design, helps them to realize that there is some disagreement out there, and allows them to weigh the arguments on both sides, I don't see how this would hurt. Hell, I was practically an adult before I realized that there wasn't a scientific consensus on global warming.
I agree with you on critical thinking. However, I fall back on my previous comment:
If we are going to teach alternatives to Evolutions, why not teach alternatives to Relativity, Gravity, and Electro-magnetism? Evolution is not as weak a theory as you might think.
The problem is not limited to you: most biologists have a weak understanding of Evolution.
So what exactly is Evolution? From my link above:
"Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A gene is a hereditary unit that can be passed on unaltered for many generations. The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population."
One of the greatest intellectual epiphany's occurred in adulthood when I realized that there was no "goal" to an organism's evolution. Everything was up to chance.
Say I have some bacteria on my computer keyboard. If I spray Lysol on them and kill 99.9% of them, the descendents of that .1% are going to be tougher to kill the next time I disinfect my keyboard. Do it enough times and I will eventually have a keyboard that has strains of bacteria that are not affected by Lysol.
So what explains that? Did an Intelligent Entity protect that .1%? No - chance did, and that .1% was able to reproduce and pass along the genes that helped it survive.
I can test and prove this using the scientific method.
Now if the Intelligent Entity bestowed some magical ability upon the bacteria to help them survive my Lysol-nuking... I can't prove or disprove this. It is therefore not Science.
Philosophy? Perhaps. But not Science.
Well, for one, because there aren't any alternatives to teach, at least not reasonable ones held by any substantial number of people.
The problem is not limited to you: most biologists have a weak understanding of Evolution.
That's kind of arrogant, don't you think? I'm not sure you even no how "weak" my understanding is of evolutionary theory is. While I don't think I'm an expert in it, I do think I understand it pretty well. There's nothing in your explanation of evolutionary theory that I didn't already know. And it was never a great epiphany for me to understand that their was no "goal" to an organism's evolution. It seemed to follow from the rest of the theory.
Again, I'm not really arguing (and don't want to) the merits of the theory, but I might ask the question: "How does evolution explain how radically different human beings are from other creatures?" I'm not sure it adequately explains this, and this is an important question to alot of people.
I guess my point in all this though, is that, theories do get changed, adjusted, and replaced as we learn more. I often wonder how many things that we treat as fact or strong theory that just aren't true. I don't think it ever hurts to question our knowledge and look for alternative explanations. Even with children.
I write this as a strong proponent of evolutionary theory, but you're not doing the case for it much good. Evolutionary theory is nowhere close to as strong as the other theories you name, such as gravitation or relativity.
Let's start with a basic fact - no one has ever observed speciation, which is a central plank of evolutionary theory. This is in stark contrast to the other theories you discuss which have large amounts of experimental data to back them up. This is not a small matter.
Secondly, evolutionary theory isn't very predictive. Quantum mechanics, for instance, generates exceptionally precise predictions of the effects of certain actions. What, if anything, has evolutionary theory ever predicted? It is very useful as a post-hoc explanation, but again this is not a small difference.
Either of those two points alone justifies treating with alternatives to evolutionary theory but not gravitation or relativity. I also don't think you have much understanding of them yourself, as quantum mechanics has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of relativity. In fact, they're contradictory (i.e., in their current forms they can't both be true). Quantum mechanics may indeed overthrow the theory of relativity.
As for teaching children alternatives, I think that by the time children are old enough to be taught evolutionary theory, they're old enough to be taught that science is about rational argument and evidence, not recieved dogma.
Evolutionary theory is strong, robust and has survived for almost 150 years. Elements that compose the theory may change over time, but the theory itself isn't going to go anywhere anytime.
This isn't dogma. Dogma is something you accept without evidence. The evidence of Evolution has been accumulating for centuries, and will continue to do so. Ditto Gravity. That theory has lasted 400+ years, and most likely will never be overturned.
Sorry, but there are many observed examples of speciation:
Here's a link with a sample below:
5.1.1 Plants
While studying the genetics of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, de Vries (1905) found an unusual variant among his plants. O. lamarckiana has a chromosome number of 2N = 14. The variant had a chromosome number of 2N = 28. He found that he was unable to breed this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.
5.1.1.2 Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis)
Digby (1912) crossed the primrose species Primula verticillata and P. floribunda to produce a sterile hybrid. Polyploidization occurred in a few of these plants to produce fertile offspring. The new species was named P. kewensis. Newton and Pellew (1929) note that spontaneous hybrids of P. verticillata and P. floribunda set tetraploid seed on at least three occasions. These happened in 1905, 1923 and 1926.
5.1.1.3 Tragopogon
Owenby (1950) demonstrated that two species in this genus were produced by polyploidization from hybrids. He showed that Tragopogon miscellus found in a colony in Moscow, Idaho was produced by hybridization of T. dubius and T. pratensis. He also showed that T. mirus found in a colony near Pullman, Washington was produced by hybridization of T. dubius and T. porrifolius. Evidence from chloroplast DNA suggests that T. mirus has originated independently by hybridization in eastern Washington and western Idaho at least three times (Soltis and Soltis 1989). The same study also shows multiple origins for T. micellus.
5.1.1.4 Raphanobrassica
JDS
You are obviously a smart person, and I meant no offense about my comment but I am writing rather quickly and so am not proofing my comments like I should.
My point to you was that I thought I knew evolution until I really studied it. When I finally grasped it, it was an important event in my intellectual development.
However I believe that one of the biggest problems we have today in our society in regards to science is the proliferation of pseudoscience (afterall, I bet your local newspaper has a horoscope). ID is part of this pseudoscience, as is the supposed "weakness" of the Evolutionary theory.
Evolutionary Theory is NOT weak. It is not called into question by biologists, and while I can't think of any alternatives to Gravity off hand, I'd bet I would come up with some if I did some googling. Come to think of it, I did recently read some things about a scientist who supposedly discovered anti-gravity back in the 1950s.
As a naturalist, a cichlid breeder (fish often studied by evolutionary biologists) and a former researcher of wild chimpanzees (Tanzania), I take Evolution seriously (obviously). But intellectual arguments help keep my brain sharp, and my arguments current.
Show me bacteria that has envolved into something other than bacteria. You can't. They only adapt, just like we adapt once we have had some illnesses, and don't catch it again.
As Annoying Old Guy points out, the theories put forth thus far have not been very useful in predicting what new discoveries we will find. Instead, the theories are updated post-hoc, often radically and without strong consensus amount evolutionary scientists, based on what we do find. In other words, since evolution is a fact, then "it must have happened this way, because this is what we observe." If people want to reason that way, fine. But it ain't science.
Regarding the points about "elements of the theory changing", well, yes they have, rather fundamentally over 150 years. When you look at specific elements of the theory from the early days, that are still held without question, there aren't very many at all. As oppossed to theories of gravity, electromagnetism, etc, which are so well refined that we've built an advanced civilization based on our certainty about them.
Consider our confidence in the laws of gravity, chemistry, and mechanics, upon which we risk our lives whenever we board a jet airplane. Most of us do this regularly without thinking. If it were possible hypothetically to take such a potentially life-risking action that depended on the correctness of a particular evolutionary theory, do you think that there would be many takers?
Um, the theories of gravity and relativity contradict each other (I assume you mean Newton's theory of gravity, generally considered not quite correct.)
More to the point, while it is generally agreed that life forms have been evolving for a long time, ID questions only the idea of "natural selection" which is the reason proposed for WHY life forms evolve. It is not proven WHY evolution occurs. How the heck would anyone prove that? Natural selection certainly has not been disproven, but that's not proof. Mainly, scientists believe in natural selection because of Occam's razor. Why believe in an intelligent mysterious creator if you don't need to? That's a pretty good argument, but nor proof.
I realize that I have been carrying on an experiment in evolution without even realizing it:
3 years ago I found a lone Orange Zebra (pic here) baby in a tank. I nicknamed her Tina – the name of the winner of Survivor! around that time. I took her out of a tank, and put her in another tank with smaller fish of mixed species – all African Cichlids from Lake Malawi.
She grew quickly and within a year I had several broods of babies in that tank thanks to Tina. Tina was so busy that at want time there were two generations of her babies loose in the rocks and a new batch of fry in her mouth (the African cichlids are mouthbreeders).
Some of these babies I sold to local pet shops; others I gave away to friends, but I ended up keeping most of them. They are quite beautiful and easy to keep.
One thing that intrigued me was that about a quarter of her babies were dark blue and striped. All along I had thought that her mate was a large male Orange Zebra in the same tank who was most likely her father (it’s hard to engender fish morals these days). So where were these dark guys coming from?
As the fry grew up, the 3/4s of them looked just like their mother – a nice attractive reddish orange. The remaining fry looked suspiciously like the Kenyi (pic here) aka “Ken” I had in the tank. And I realized that Tina hadn’t committed incest after all: she had mated with Ken.
Tina passed away this Summer, having had at least two dozen broods of young. I have two tanks filled with her progeny, and you know what?
I haven’t had a brood of babies since she died.
And I realized today why thanks to this thread:
Her babies are all sterile hybrids.
The definition of a species is the ability to breed successfully and raise fertile young. Both Tina and “Ken” belonged to the genus Pseudotropheus – but Tina’s species was “estherae” while Ken’s was “lombardoi”.
So my tanks are filled with sterile hybrids. Bummer that...
I just thought of a great way to test evolution: radiation. After all, radiation causes mutations, which cause evolution. So let's all irradiate ourselves and see what happens!
I'll sit outside all day without sunburn lotion. Dean will sit in front of his microwave for a few days. Scott and John can play Catch with some uranium. Soon we'll all be supermen!
What, no takers? Why not? After all, think about all the great mutations that popped up after Chernobyl. Don't you want to move on to the next stage of evolution like those people?
I can't find anyone at all that has faith in the theory of evolution. Even my doctor, who SAYS she's a believer, insists on leaving the room before giving me an X-ray.
Maybe it's because I've never seen of a single experiment where irradiating a creature under lab conditions produced a beneficial mutation. I've seen a lot of pictures of three-eyed babies, two-headed cows, and flies with useless wings, but never any evidence that radiation ever does anything GOOD. Can anyone find any proof for me?
Sorry, I probably came across as more annoyed in my last response than I really was. I think we might be talking past each other a little. I don't disagree with you about evolutionary theory and I don't think it is a weak theory, although perhaps not as strong as, say, the theory of gravity, but not very far from it. But skepticism is also a part of science, so I believe that criticisms of evolutionary theory should be addressed.
And while I think science and the scientific method are important, they exist in a world that includes religion and philosophy, among other things. I think it's useful for a child to know that not everyone subscribes to the theory of evolution and why they don't, just so they are aware that there is some debate. I'm not for treating something as science that is not scientific, but I don't see a problem with providing a scientific explanation and comparing it to a philosophical or religious one.
In my opinion, to do otherwise would be like discussing the scientific benefits of embryonic stem cell research without addressing the fact that some people have ethical issues with this line of research.
It's important to note where the preponderance of evidence lies, but to forcibly banish all other ideas from the classroom essentially tells kids that science and biology are now dogma. What the book says can't be questioned and if you discuss the possibility that it's wrong or mention that your mom told you something different you'll just get yourself in trouble. Don't dare think about science or try to understand how the world works. Just read your textbook and take it on faith.
I am not confusing adaptation.
In your example, whatever genes you have that helped you survive could be passed along to your offspring, making them less likely to die from it. An example of this is malaria, which is more likely to kill people from non-malarial regions than those from equatorial areas.
Note that in this example, the resistance against malaria occurs at the genetic level and is the result of chance mutation. This is to avoid confusion with Lamarkism.
Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution: it drives adaptation which in time results in new species.
Bacteria don't need to evolve into anything else. There is no pressure to. They are quite successful as they are.
Steve
Why Judeo-Christianity? What if my kid is a pagan?
Your responsibility as a parent is to teach him morality and/or religion as you see fit.
There are some people who claim the Holocaust never happened. Should we allow them time to speak in the classroom? Study their texts? As a secular American of Jewish ancestry, I would hope not. But I would be hard pressed to stop you from doing it at home.
Maor
Sorry, but the two theories don't contradict each other; Relativity is an extension of Gravity. Gravity works on the macro level, relativity on the micro. Ditto Quantum theory. QT hasn't overthrown Relativity, but it has extended it and refined it.
As for your arguments against Natural Selection, read this to learn more about the mechanism. The key point is random genetic drift. That's the randomness that I failed to grasp in the past.
Again I ask, why teach ID in school? You want to get God back in school, fine: have comparative religion class. Say a prayer in the morning. I have no problem with any of that.
But ID is pseudoscience. There is no evidence for it, no experiments that have stood up to peer review and no testable hypothesis that can be made.
From a scientific perspective, it is junk and has no place in a science curriculum.
Again I understand your viewpoint and I have no problem with anyone in this thread so far.
Bryan
Learning about alternative view points is fine, but ID is Creationism for intellectuals. Do you really believe that evolution will be taught based on "the preponderance of evidence"? ie All the evidence supports Evolution, none IE? Do you really believe that is the objective of the Creationists?
The whole purpose is to introduce creationism, which makes about as much sense to a biologist as forcing kids to read Michael Moore in history class does to a conservative. Michael Moore may have his place; after all, I've read Marx, Hitler, Mao, and a bunch of other demogogues without developing a taste for dictatorship. The issue is context:
ID is not science.
"Bacteria don't need to evolve into anything else. There is no pressure to. They are quite successful as they are."
Thank you for making my point. But first in your example you did call it "evolution". Now you are saying that they don't evolve. You can't have it both ways.
As for you examples with the fruit fly mutations, hinderances instead of useful mutations were produced. Quite to the contrary, if anything they de-evolved.
ID may, indeed, be the correct explanation for life on Earth, but it's not science and should not be taught as such.
They have a hypothesis. The next thing to do is to support it. Their arguments are less about supporting their theory, and more about using trying to tear down natural selection. That's not how you put forth a new model. You have to support your model using good facts.
On top of that, their arguments against natural selection don't really hold water, for the most part.
So should it be taught as science? No, not unless they can support it better. Alternate theories are fine, if they are supportable. If not, they don't deserve equal footing.
It's certainly possible we were made by aliens, or God or who knows what. That's fine by me, if you can show evidence. (In the case of God, like I said, it's really not something you can show eivdence of. So talk about it all you want in philosophy, religion, or whatever class, but it isn't science and shouldnt' be presented as science any more than comma rules are. It's the wrong class, not the wrong information.)
As an example of how their arguments don't hold water (against natural selection) -- one argument is that the probablity is too low. Well, I mean, it doesn't matter how low the probablity is, really, if that's how everything turned out. I mean, the probability of winning the lottery is really low, but someone does do it. With all the planets in the universe to be a little experiment, it offers ample oppurtunity. Add the anthropic principle -- if it didn't happen, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. It's a self-selected data point just like your average unscientific exit poll. ;)
You can't make that the basis of a new model.
The unproven assertion that ID is creationism for intellectuals is a base canard. Several scientists came to ID completely apart from faith. Aristotle, an early scientist, back when science was just a minor branch of philosophy, reasoned his way to intelligent design in contradiction to the religious authorities of his day. Scott, the fact that you keep repeating that ID is not science convinces me only that you have blind spots about the nature and history of both ID and science. The rest of your arguments are very good and very useful. Ditch that one.
Yours,
Wince
Actually, the anthropic principle doesn't apply to this one. We are here, therefore something happened. But is that something classical natural selection (which I'll call NS from here on out), or is that something intelligent design (ID)? That it happened is beyond question; how it happened is what's under discussion. The fact that it did happen is the only thing that the anthropic principle proves. And what the ID proponents are saying is, "Well, this event happened, and NS, the current model, is so low-probability that I can't really see it causing this event that I know to have happened. Therefore I think we should look at another model."
Now the number of planets in the universe, and whether there are enough of them that the (very low-probability) event of NS was bound to happen somewhere -- that's a different question. With a probability of 10% and 250 tries, you're going to get the desired result more than once. With a probability of .0001% and 25 tries, you're almost certainly not going to see the desired result. This argument turns into a numbers game. And because of the paucity of hard evidence as to the number of planets in the universe (we know about our own solar system, and we think we've spotted at least one gas giant in orbit around Proxima Centauri, but we're pretty much guessing as to the rest of the universe), becomes valueless because everyone will reach their own foredetermined conclusion based on what they already believe, NS or ID.
One argument that can be advanced against ID is that it's a less-scientific hypothesis than NS, because it's harder to set up experiments. To test NS, you could take a short-lived species like the fruit fly, or particular species of bacteria, and set up an experiment to run thousands of generations over several years under a variety of conditions, trying to see if their mutations develop into separate species or merely merge back into the main gene pool. If you're trying to test ID, which postulates an intelligence responsible for the way things are set up, that kind of requires you to get in touch with that intelligence somehow and say, "Hey, would you mind helping us out with a little experiment here?" And if said intelligence refuses, your experiment isn't going to work too well. Therefore ID is a harder theory to test by experiment than NS. (And NS itself is pretty hard to test by experiment, given the extremely lengthy periods it postulates for most changes to occur).
"What, no takers? Why not? After all, think about all the great mutations that popped up after Chernobyl. Don't you want to move on to the next stage of evolution like those people? "
This is a common misconception. You see it all the time in Sci-Fi -- that there is some sort of order to evolution, and things are evolving to "higher" forms. This isn't true at all, for natural selection. All it is is the environment of an organism slowly nudging a species one way or the other. That's the only difference between, say, dog breeding and evolution. Dog breeding is artificial selection -- selection for some characteristic by a human. Natural selection is merely the same thing, only it's the mindless environment doing it. So, in that sense, ID is just artificial selection on a grand scale. All very well and good, but I'd like the evidence of the so-called Intelligent beign they have doing this selecting. I'd like their evidence that it's more than simply the environment.
And, I'm afraid to tell you, Scott, your exmaples are artificial selection. ;) But it is very related to natural selection -- it's simply the actor that is different. Even Darwin knew this, folks. If you've ever read his book, On the Origin of Species, he does an excellent job of introducing evolution to the lay person. He understand it's a difficult concept, so he takes you there slowly. The stage he brings you to before he explains natural selection is artificial selection, to prove that animals can change over time through passing on their characteristics because of an external force. For example, dog breeding. I don't think anyone doubts that people can breed dogs and have made dramatic changes to them through breeding. After he makes that point, he simply says his theory says that the environment can do the same thing over time, to receive even more dramatic results.
"One of the major arguments had something to do with serious gaps in the fossil record that just don't make sense based on the large number of fossils that have been found.... From what I remember, most of the gaps had to do with human beings."
But we're still finding fossils. In the past 10 years, we've found amazing new hominid species in the fossil record. There was a really excellent find in 2002, in fact. Here's a summary of some of what we know: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/ Let me know which holes you're talking about. ;)
In my classes (I was a molecular biology major) we did go over evolutionary theory and what to expect of the fossil record. It's important to understand the process of how things become fossils. For exmaple, animals that didn't have bones are far less likely to be seen in the fossil record, because squishy parts don't make good fossils. Animals with higher numbers are more likely to end up as fossils -- for example, right now there are way more squirrels or dogs or rats than there are elephants. Elephants are big, they need a lot of food and territory, so as a species they have fewer members. Therefore, they won't be equally recorded as fossils compared to rats. Animals that lived in swamps, or bogs, or near tar pits ;) are more likely to be fossils than those that didn't. Fossils are, in fact, extremely unlikely to happen. The only reason we have so many is just that so many creatures have existed on this planet for so darn long. Scientists now are far better at preseving finds, and finding fossils than they used to be.
"but I might ask the question: "How does evolution explain how radically different human beings are from other creatures?" I'm not sure it adequately explains this, and this is an important question to alot of people. "
It all depends on your point of view. In my opinion, they aren't that different from other creatures. That's actually something that points to a common ancestor -- we all use common molecular building blocks, common biochemical pathways and processes, and are alike in so gosh darn many ways, it's amazing. Evolutionary theory doesn't expain anything about why X creature is like X and why Y creature is like Y, other than to say "because that's what the environment selected". Over 3.5 billion years, it's pretty powerful. ;) How does ID do any better job of explaining how humans are so like or so much unlike other species?
"Let's start with a basic fact - no one has ever observed speciation, which is a central plank of evolutionary theory. This is in stark contrast to the other theories you discuss which have large amounts of experimental data to back them up. This is not a small matter. "
Who's obseverved special relativity directly? :P We've done some experiments that had results consistent with it. Who has observed geological processes? Yet people don't often argue that they don't happen. Some sciences are easier to experiment with because they happen instantly. Evolution is one that takes a huge amount of time, so running an experment isn't nearly so useful. But changes in species' populations over time in response to environmental pressure has certainly been observed.
"Secondly, evolutionary theory isn't very predictive. Quantum mechanics, for instance, generates exceptionally precise predictions of the effects of certain actions. What, if anything, has evolutionary theory ever predicted? It is very useful as a post-hoc explanation, but again this is not a small difference. "
Well, you have the time thing again. ;) But evolutionary theory (well, genetic theory really...) helps explain altruism in animals, hive-based populations, and other htings that don't seem immidiately obvious. Why would an animal submit to being sterile in order to support a queen who is going to mate with someone else? Because they share DNA, and by supporting the queen, they have maximized their ability to pass on DNA related to theirs.
Another example would be Scott's Lysol-resistant bacteria. Not only would he breed a population of Lysol-resistant bacteria over time... but once he stopped selecting for the Lysol-proof ones, the environment would start selecting for bacteria *without* the resistance if they didn't need it, because resistance like that tends to be less energy-efficiant for the bacteria, and any bacteria that accidentally lose that ability fare better, have more kids, and dominate the population.
I should go look for my evolution class notes. Probably lost them in the last big move.
Survival of the fittest does not mean the strongest win. It uses the meaning of "fitness" before it meant people exercising. ;) It means that whoever can make more successful babies is the fittest. They "fit" their environment the best. And if they do that by being stronger and faster, good. If they do it by sneaking into nests and eating their competitor's babies, that also works. If they do it by waiting until all the other males are out fighting over females, then sneaking into the female's nests/caves/etc. and fathering lots of kids that the nice strong males protect and raise... well, that works too. Those characteristics are "selected" for the next generation, who will do another round of exerimentation. If it turns out that this strategy is bad in the long run, because it renders all of the males weak and sneaky and no one can protect the mommies and babies anymore, then environmental pressure might swing back ot selecting for the stronger males. It's all about equilibrium... not about "evolving to the next level".
I could go on for hours. I won't. :) I'll jsut say that I agree with Scoot that the majority of people just don't really understand evolution. It's not arrogance, it's not condecension, it's just true. Evolution is tricky. ;)
Exactly. But if you're going to go out and publish papers that space aliens are tinkering with us, I want you to show me space aliens. Otherwise it's all conjecture. ;)
My point about probabilities was simply that that WAS a primary point of conern for the ID-ers. That NS couldn't be possible because it was "so unlikely". But my point is that it isn't really a valid argument.
ID can most definitely be disproven. After all, if someone can find a convincing natural explanation for the existence of irreduceably complex biological systems or the creation of specified complex information, Behe and Dembski and Berlinski and the other IDers would concede defeat. However, so far, no one has.
Hey, Dean, what's your take on the irreduceably complex idea?
"Their arguments are less about supporting their theory, and more about using trying to tear down natural selection."
If you read some of the IDers books (which I suspect you haven't from the way you misrepresent their ideas) you would see that they spend plenty of time on providing evidence for their theories. It's just that proving their theory necessitates disproving natural selection first, THEN proceeding to give evidence for their theory. You don't see any physicists trying to prove superstring theory without giving an explanation for why their theory is better than their opponents', after all.
"their arguments against natural selection don't really hold water"
The Discovery Institute links to not only positive but also negative reviews. I have never seen a Discovery member that has not had an easy answer when questioned by a critic. To which arguments are you referring?
"one argument is that the probablity is too low." That's not a central tenet of the ID theory. They deal mainly with specified complex information and irreduceably complex systems. This supposed argument about probability is simply a straw man. You sound quite ignorant of what, exactly, ID is trying to prove.
"In the case of God, like I said, it's really not something you can show eivdence of. So talk about it all you want in philosophy, religion, or whatever class, but it isn't science and shouldnt' be presented as science any more than comma rules are."
First the probability mess, then this. You're confusing (or deliberately conflating) ID with creationism, which is completely unrelated. ID says only that they can find scientific evidence of intelligent design; they make no claims as to who the designer is. In fact, many IDers are agnostics; the most famous, Francis Crick (co-discoverer of DNA) believed life was seeded on this planet by aliens! (Many suspect he went a tad senile in his old age.) They would agree with you that science cannot determine the nature or personality of the designer(s) and that such a determination would be better left to a philosophy class. This is just another straw man.
Human beings could fill in for the intelligence in this equation. Like I said ID only tries to prove that AN intelligence was operating, not a specific intelligence. If humans can create life in a laboratory, then that should be enough proof. In fact, we already know that human intelligence is quite capable of guiding evolution--look what we've done to dogs and cats and horses and any other domesticated beast. Evolution guided by intelligence (artificial selection) works quite well.
If you were trying to prove creationism, or any other theory that posited the existence of a specific being like the Christian God, then, yes, your experiments could be in trouble if he weren't in a cooperative mood.
Specifically, in Scott Kirwin's "Lysol" example, he says something like, "no intelligence protected that .01%".
But an intelligence did act to kill that 99.9%, no?
Hence, if evolution does occur in that specific example, that is absolutely evidence of Intelligent Design.
The same thing if a scientist is able to produce evolution with fruit flies, or dogs, or what-have-you.
...unless you evolutionists are asserting that scientists are non-sapient?
Now wouldn't that mean the ID theory just might be true ?
The concept of evolution, for me, comes from observing that everything is always changing, and connected. Thus everything affects and is affected, always. Maybe everything is going around in a big circle, but we'd never be able to prove the circle is final. Even life goes in a direction, that of producing more life, and different life forms. Children are an example.
I say thought is a form of life, and one which is directed in its mechanism, always creating not just new but same thought, but different thought. Otherwise there would be only one thought, and we couldn't even recognize that as a thought, because we wouldn't have any other thoughts to recognize it with. We would not be able to create new thoughts, which we can.
We find intelligence in things. But no theory or law explains itself. I like saying that, but can't prove it. Yet, like the incessant interaction of things, there is perhaps no end to finding laws and creating theories. We would not know what it was if we saw it -- could not know that it was The End. So with a Designer. How would we know it was the Designer?
The existence of life has been a problem, that of life coming from the "dead". This doesn't bother me, but only shows we don't understand it, and that our concepts are always limited, though useful. Our concepts change, too, as we create different ones.
Therefore, I accept evolution as a mechanism. Life has come from the dead through the evolution of the Universe. Why fight it, instead of trying to understand it. We know we exist and the Universe exists.
In my opinion, the Designer concept is one looking for a cessation of thought. Why be alive thinking if thinking ends? In a major way we are thought and are driven to create. Boredom is not fun.
Thus, in my view and that of others - some Natives - we will always be "confroned with" mystery, "The Great Mystery". [Luther Standing Bear, speaking of religion, by which I think he meant attempts to explain everything or find the Designer.]
As an Inuit once said when asked, "Do you believe ?" responded,
"No,we do not believe. We fear.
Life,itself is the mystery within which we live.
Seemingly irreducible to mere words.
1) I am an atheist. I believe natural selection is a sufficient explanation for life as we know it.
2) I remain utterly unafraid of Intelligent Design theory and see no reason to condemn it or declare it not-science.
3) The ID people have in fact published peer reviewed papers, and they're working on more from what I hear.
4) I think it perfectly appropriate in even K-8 science classes to tell children that there are flaws and holes in evolutionary theory and that many, many people have strong problems with it, and that that's perfectly okay.
Indeed, it is fairly clear to me that after decades of fighting over this, a huge number of people have very strong feelings about this. As a non-believing, atheistic heathen, I have come to the conclusion that efforts to ban these discussions from the science classroom are doing far more harm than good, and driving far more people away from science than toward any greater understanding of science.
5) There is no universally accepted theory of gravitaty. Gravity is an observed fact; gravitation is a theory and one that is universally recognized as incomplete and flawed somewhere, with big holes in what we understand of it.
6) It was, the last time I looked, generally acknowledged that Quantum theory and Relativity cannot be reconciled, and despite the fact that both theories are spectacularly successful one or both of them must be wrong somewhere. Hawking's done much to bring them together and to show where they can be worked together, but unless I've missed something the last few years everyone (including Hawking) acknowledges that the two theories still cannot be entirely reconciled to each other.
7) Every time I look at the talk-origins site, I'm put off by how much gaseous pomposity I find there, and how much verbage you have to wade through to get to the hard data. Consider the article which they mention the handful of instances of speciation having been scientifically observed; you have to wade through pages of thundering narrative and other bloviating nonsense before you finally get to documentation of the very few significant cases where this has been found. (At least that's what was there the last I looked--and when I pointed this out some fuckwit had the gall to tell me that maybe I was just not qualified to understand all the bloviating. Ooooo-kay, thank you come again!)
8) Every time I look at talk-origins, I find more definitive and absolute declarations of fact than I have in any peer-reviewed scientific paper. Which is just another red flag for me.
9) From what I've seen, talk-origins also does an awful lot of cherry picking of the most dunderheaded creationists to pick apart. They seem to take great fun in this. It reminds me of political arguments wherein people cherry pick through Democratic Underground or Free Republic looking for the biggest chowderheads so they can say "see! see! look how awful those people are!"
I admit that their problem may be lack of decent editing. Whatever. It's too damned hard to find the hard data on that site--what with all the definitive declarations and condescending rhetoric you have to wade through to get to it, I mean.
10) Philosophically and politically, I believe that the ACLU is guilty of attempting to ban books and ban free thought in the classroom by trying to use the courts to keep Intellectual Design out of the science classroom. I despise what they're doing.
And I continue to suggest that those demanding that these things be forbidden from class materials are doing far more harm than good, driving people away from the sciences rather than toward them, and I wish they'd bloody well stop it!!!
Look at any book on elementary logic and you will find that "Slippery Slope" is one of the very most common forms of logical fallacy.
So before someone responds with questions like, "Should we allow astrology and voodoo and witchcraft into the science classroom too?" I have one suggestion: tell me where and when someone has proposed that, and we can discuss it. Until then, stick to the subject at hand, please.
Beyond that I'll simply repeat that I believe these choices are the right of local school boards and parents to decide, not the Federal government. If you want to go holler your head off about it at your local school board meeting, by all means be my guest. If we live in the same school district maybe I'll go with you and shout right alongside you in agreement. But can we please stop with the bullying tactics of using the Federal courts to try to determine the curriculum for every locality in the nation? PLEASE can we stop???
Nope, there was that famous 1919 measurement of the location of Mercury which guaranteed Einstein his Nobel Prize. Definitely not a micro level.
Newton's law of gravity just isn't correct unless you add a disclaimer "This law is precise to a high degree but cannot guarantee exact results for extremely precise measurements"
I don't think anyone saw anything wrong with hives and altruism until a simplistic view of evolutionary theory questioned them. So evolution doesn't really "explain" these phenomena, it is merely consistent with them.
Okay, I'm going to simplify things for myself.
So far this is what I'm hearing:
Evolution is controversial. Many people question it, and many don't believe it. So let's discuss it in science class.
Fine. Many people believe in astrology. Perhaps a few of you do.
Astrology is poppy-cock. There is no evidence that it exists.
By your logic, we should teach it alongside astronomy so that kids can decide for themselves? What if the teacher who teaches it believes it?
Next, evolution is as close to a fact as science gets. Intelligent Design refutes this fact, and therefore is an extraordinary claim as plate tectonics was when it was first theorized back in the 1920s.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. That proof was found for plate tectonics beginning in the 1950s.
Show me the extraordinary proof of ID and I'll consider it.
I more thing:
I agree with you that local school boards should decide. I'm a true conservative, meaning that I don't particularly like the federal government sticking its nose where it constitutionally doesn't belong.
But rest assured, that should a local school board pull this stunt with ID, I'll be there.
ID does not contradict evolution. It only contradicts natural selection. There is far, far, far more evidence for evolution than for evolution via natural selection.
Yours,
Wince
I'm from Missouri (really!):
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