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You are here: Home / Politics / Intelligent Design- A National Disgrace

Intelligent Design- A National Disgrace

by John Cole|  November 18, 200512:35 pm| 66 Comments

This post is in: Politics, Science & Technology

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Krauthammer:

Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.

Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose “intelligent design” — today’s tarted-up version of creationism — on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting “God out of your city.” Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.

Let’s be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological “theory” whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge — in this case, evolution — they are to be filled by God. It is a “theory” that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, “I think I’ll make me a lemur today.” A “theory” that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science — that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution — or behind the motion of the tides or the “strong force” that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase ” natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us,” thus unmistakably implying — by fiat of definition, no less — that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

…

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Go, Charles, go.

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66Comments

  1. 1.

    Krista

    November 18, 2005 at 12:46 pm

    That last paragraph was beautifully written. It also illustrates what a lot of the ID proponents are not getting. Most of their opponents are not against ID. They’re not against God, or the goddess, or Allah, or whatever life force you want to credit with creating the universe. They are against all of this stuff being taught in a science class. It makes no more sense to teach ID in a science class than it does to teach French in an English class. It’s a perfectly legitimate language, but it’s not English. You want to learn French? Take a French class. You want to learn about religion? Take a religious studies or philosophy class.

  2. 2.

    metalgrid

    November 18, 2005 at 12:46 pm

    Fascinating about face for Krauthammer. He used to be all in favor of ID for the commoners and evolution for the elite so as to preserve the oligarchical power structure and the maintenance of an uneducated class to horde it over.

  3. 3.

    Joey

    November 18, 2005 at 12:52 pm

    That last paragraph was beautifully written.

    Agreed. Great post.

  4. 4.

    TM Lutas

    November 18, 2005 at 12:52 pm

    Unfortunately, Krauthammer seems to be misstating ID, at least as Behe writes about it. That makes his column useless at getting to any sort of civilized settlement.

    The fundamentals of ID as scientific theory is that irreducible complexity exists and that is incompatible with blind, random chance. That isn’t what Krauthammer is saying ID is and that’s a problem.

    Now you can test for irreducible complexity. There’s a brute force approach which is fairly simple to describe. Take a structure and/or process and identify the genes necessary to express that structue/process. engineer simple, fast breeding, fast living microorganisms that are with the system, without the system, and have every permutation in between. Measure their comparative fitness.

    Are there gaps in performance such that there is no reasonable chain of mutations that would have gotten you from here to there? Congratulations, you’ve got a good candidate for irreducible complexity. Now write a paper up on that and let the evolutionary biochemists figure out where you went wrong (if they can). If there are no gaps, then the flagellum, the blood clot chemical cascade, or whatever is not a candidate for an irreducibly complex system. If you repeat this throughout the entire genome, you’ve eliminated irreducible complexity as a possibility, and thus ID as a scientific theory.

    This does nothing for the promotion of atheism as there are plenty of theologians who are just fine with evolution as how God expressed his will in creating the Universe. But scientists who are playing against theologians aren’t doing science. They’re doing theology and they, themselves should stay out of science class when they do it.

    Either there are ways that these processes/structures could have evolved or there aren’t. We can research the question and come back with an answer using the scientific method. It’s going to be long, hard work in the lab and the question may never be settled in my lifetime as a practical matter. This doesn’t mean that the research shouldn’t be done. This doesn’t mean that professional witchhunts and political correctness can substitute for lab work. It doesn’t mean that doing that research with ID as the hypothesis instead of the null hypothesis is verboten. It certainly doesn’t mean that ID can’t be science.

    There are a few problems in this argument:
    1. Theologians playing scientists
    2. Scientists playing theologian
    3. Scientists working as scientists but being accused of acting like theologians.

    Krauthammer’s getting exercised about #1. I’m unhappy about all three. How about you?

  5. 5.

    John Cole

    November 18, 2005 at 12:57 pm

    Metalgrid- As long as I have been following it, Krauthammer has been hammering ID. Maybe I am misremembering.

    TM LUtas- All of the above.

  6. 6.

    Sojourner

    November 18, 2005 at 12:59 pm

    The fundamentals of ID as scientific theory is that irreducible complexity exists and that is incompatible with blind, random chance.

    The fundamentals of ID is that whatever can’t be explained through the scientific method has to be explained by the assumption of an intelligent creator.

    That’s not science.

  7. 7.

    Lines

    November 18, 2005 at 1:00 pm

    TM Lutas once again writes a ton of big words that boils down to: If man is evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?

    engineer simple, fast breeding, fast living microorganisms that are with the system, without the system, and have every permutation in between. Measure their comparative fitness

    So if it doesn’t happen in the amount of time you allot for it to occur, it can’t occur? Because the various random mutations didn’t create the pre-determined end result you claim that evolution is false? You are falsifying evolution to prove ID?

    If God/Creator is so high above us, how can we determine that ID is correct? Maybe evolution is designed? You seem to be violating Hubris, my friend.

    Oh well, I leave the complex debate on this matter up to the guys at Panda’s Thumb to disprove everything ID’ers claim or attempt.

  8. 8.

    metalgrid

    November 18, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    Mr. Cole,
    CK’s views on ID have evolved from ambivalance, to personally believing in evolution and letting others believe what they may, to him going all out and attacking it. It’s quite possible that he was always against it, but didn’t have the balls to just come out earlier and rip it to shreds as he has done now when it has become apparent which way the wind is blowing. But that would just be ignoring the beliefs of his accomplices in conservative thought that he has supported over that time period.

  9. 9.

    Steve S

    November 18, 2005 at 1:10 pm

    I guess a stopped clock is right twice a day.

  10. 10.

    Jon H

    November 18, 2005 at 1:33 pm

    TM Lutas writes: “The fundamentals of ID as scientific theory is that irreducible complexity exists and that is incompatible with blind, random chance. ”

    No, irreducible complexity does not exist. Just because Behe can’t figure it out doesn’t make it irreducible.

    Behe’s ignorance is not something you want to base your argument on.

  11. 11.

    Oh,Boy.Stupidity!

    November 18, 2005 at 1:45 pm

    Ay-yi-yi. Here we go again. There’s nothing to teach about ID. It can be summed up in one sentence: some scientists believe that discoverable patterns in the universe MAY point to a force that had an invisible hand in shaping the creation of life, the universe and everything.

    Here’s a suggestion: read The Privileged Planet written by U of Iowa astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez and a theologian (shudder, shudder!) from Princeton U. The entire thesis of the book is that planets like Earth, which are suitable for life, are also suitable for learning about the universe. For instance, they devote a chapter or two discussing how our close proximity to a medium sequence star like the sun not only furthers life on Earth, but that that specific type of star has allowed Scientists to extrapolate how other stars, galaxies, etc. are formed.

    The last few chapters discuss the intersection of religion and science through the ages from a scholarly standpoint.

    Not once in the book do any of the authors advocate creationism, they don’t advocate a belief in a traditional God, just that observable patterns of the supernovae, galaxy creation, star formation etc. have led Gonzalez to believe that Discoverability and Habitability are intertwined.

    We certainly don’t want our kids to exposes to something that might kickstart their brain. Nah, let’s just bus to ’em to anti-War rallies so they can suck off the wisdom-filled teat of Cindy Sheehan!

    Another great book to read, which is not about ID, and which was written by 2 non-IDers is Rare Earth, by Ward and Brownlee, a pair of U of Wash professors. You might learn something about the nature of universe and the creation of the Earth. And then maybe you can see where some if not many IDers are coming from.

    You’ll learn more about science in the weeks it’ll take you to plow through the Priv. Planet than you will by sitting 4 yrs. in some lame Public School science class.

  12. 12.

    DaveMan

    November 18, 2005 at 1:52 pm

    Much of the irreducible complexity ‘problem’ is based on a false assumption. Take the flagellum, for example, that is purported to not work if one part is removed. This makes the false assumption that the reduced flagellum must have the same function as the original, unreduced flagellum. The reduced flagellum may have been a stalk with which the bacterium attached itself to a substrate in order to recieve more nutrients/sunlight/etc. Such a reduced flagellum would perform this function nicely and give an evolutionary advantage to boot.

  13. 13.

    les

    November 18, 2005 at 1:53 pm

    Ay-yi-yi. Here we go again. There’s nothing to teach about ID. It can be summed up in one sentence: some scientists believe that discoverable patterns in the universe MAY point to a force that had an invisible hand in shaping the creation of life, the universe and everything.

    And their belief can be tested how? And leads to provable/disprovable predictions how? And enables us to more fully understand the natural world how? And is falsifiable how? I’m happy they believe that, and not so happy that they milk the pilgrims with it, but if that’s what you’re reading you’re not learning one damn thing about science. All praise the god of coincidence and ignorance.

  14. 14.

    Jorge

    November 18, 2005 at 1:55 pm

    Oh, Boy –

    You describe a fantastic philosophy class about the origin and nature of man and the univers. So, why not a movement to introduce more philosophy and even world religion classes as electives in public high schools and Junior highs? I can’t speak for anyone but myself but my issue with ID isn’t that it is taught or that it exists but that folks want to teach it as science or as a competing theory to evelution.

    For full disclosure, I am a born again Christian who believes in both the inerrant truth of the Bible and in evolution. I am capable of believing this because my studies and reading have led me to the conclusion that neither our understanding of faith/religion or of science has matured enough for us to get to the point were we see the intersection were the two become one. Therefore, they still have to be treated as separate spheres.

  15. 15.

    les

    November 18, 2005 at 1:56 pm

    By the by, my ignorant buddy, how is the notion that “the designer interfered with natural processes to create X” not creationism? And although I get the obsession, what does the desire to teach science in science class, instead of whatever you took, have to do with Sheehan?

  16. 16.

    Krista

    November 18, 2005 at 2:03 pm

    Jorge

    I am capable of believing this because my studies and reading have led me to the conclusion that neither our understanding of faith/religion or of science has matured enough for us to get to the point were we see the intersection were the two become one.

    Reading that was so refreshing. Thank you. I don’t know if I agree with you — I think there are just too many unknowns to be able to predict the future of religion and science. Will they peacefully coesist? Will one ultimately dwarf the other? Will something altogether new come along? We don’t know. But it’s good to see someone with strong faith who is doing some critical thinking, and is not afraid to say so.

  17. 17.

    Barry

    November 18, 2005 at 2:04 pm

    Before reading the books mentioned above, one might wish
    to read the materials at:

    “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle”

  18. 18.

    poikilotherm

    November 18, 2005 at 2:25 pm

    TM Lutas:

    No, Irreducible complexity is EVIDENCE of ID, a la Behe. However specified complexity (another “evidence” of ID) a la Dembski is not synonymous with IC. Putting aside the fact that both these lines of “evidence” for ID are inconclusive at best (ie IC systems can ievolve in vitro and in silico, and their evolution can be explored by standard comparative methods (eg. clotting cascade, which is at best pseudo-IC), I think I’d agree if you said that Krauthammer is merely venting rhetoric. Then again, its an opinion column, so that’s his privilege. Also, he’s not a scientist.

    I think ID is horrible science because it hasn’t lead anywhere. Everything else anyone says is an explanation of the observed phenomenon that ID is useless, and as this column illustrates, such explanations are of varying utility themselves.

  19. 19.

    Oh,Boy.Stupidity!

    November 18, 2005 at 2:26 pm

    You describe a fantastic philosophy class about the origin and nature of man and the univers. So, why not a movement to introduce more philosophy and even world religion classes as electives in public high schools and Junior highs? I can’t speak for anyone but myself but my issue with ID isn’t that it is taught or that it exists but that folks want to teach it as science or as a competing theory to evelution.

    Fine by me.

  20. 20.

    Llelldorin

    November 18, 2005 at 2:27 pm

    I’m not a professional biologist, but I’ll take a stab at this one:

    TM Lutas, your “test” appears to be meaningless. The problem is this sentence:

    Measure their comparative fitness.

    The problem here is that “fitness” isn’t something like “food uptake rate” that you can define and measure, and it depends entirely upon the environment. If you define “fitness” as “fitness for the task of the final strucutre”, then you might (in principle) be able to measure something, but then “irreducible complexity” becomes irrelevant to any discussion of evolution—there are any number of examples of systems originally used for one purpose that evolved to fill some other role (bat wings are an obvious example).

    Remember, in the real world, “fitness” means something more like “is able to fill some niche in the environment which provides food and the possibility of reproduction.” Even if there were in your experiment no “fit” variants, you’d just have proven that no such niche existed in your lab.

    The more serious problem is that no attempt at any such test has been made by ID proponents. Instead we have claims (and frequently, refuted claims) that one system or another is “irreducibly complex.” This is basically what keeps biologists from taking ID seriously–in the absence of actual, useable tests for irreducible complexity, ID proponents are arguing with neither evidence nor results.

  21. 21.

    Oh,Boy.Stupidity!

    November 18, 2005 at 2:28 pm

    And although I get the obsession, what does the desire to teach science in science class, instead of whatever you took, have to do with Sheehan?

    The L.A. public school system provided busses to transport students during a class day to protest the war in Iraq. Too many public schools in the country are interested in promoting political ideology than actually teaching.

  22. 22.

    Oh,Boy.Stupidity!

    November 18, 2005 at 2:31 pm

    You know what I find laughable–even without introducing ID into a science class, SINCE WHEN THE HELL DO U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO AN EVEN CLOSE TO ADEQUATE JOB OF TEACHING SCIENCE?

    Of course, none of this would even remotely be an issue if the govt. got out of the education business in the first place.

  23. 23.

    Faux News

    November 18, 2005 at 2:42 pm

    SINCE WHEN THE HELL DO U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO AN EVEN CLOSE TO ADEQUATE JOB OF TEACHING SCIENCE?

    Well let’s see. I went to public schools in a blue collar factory city in the northeast. Our valedictorian who did K-12 in Public Schools went to Yale for his Ph.D. in Chemistry. I know dozens of MD’s and scientists (PhD level hard sciences not English Lit) who did K-12 in Public Schools.

    Of course stripping science and replacing it with creationism CERTAINLY will keep us way ahead of the curve from say students in China.

    Turd.

  24. 24.

    Krista

    November 18, 2005 at 2:53 pm

    Of course, none of this would even remotely be an issue if the govt. got out of the education business in the first place.

    No, that’s right. Instead, the issue would be that poor kids whose parents can’t afford tuition wouldn’t be able to go to school at all.

  25. 25.

    Matt

    November 18, 2005 at 3:09 pm

    Faux News,

    I went to public school and now I’m almost finished my PhD in chemical engineering. That doesn’t mean I learned a lot about science in public school.

  26. 26.

    Jon H

    November 18, 2005 at 3:21 pm

    “For instance, they devote a chapter or two discussing how our close proximity to a medium sequence star like the sun not only furthers life on Earth, but that that specific type of star has allowed Scientists to extrapolate how other stars, galaxies, etc. are formed”

    By that logic, the entire universe exists so that humans could see nonexistent canals on Mars.

    It’s a bit nutty to draw those sorts of conclusions based on the last hundred years or so of astronomy.

    It’s a bit like saying the entire universe exists so that we could discern the existence of Ra the sun god, and build temples to him.

  27. 27.

    Jon H

    November 18, 2005 at 3:24 pm

    Krista writes: “Instead, the issue would be that poor kids whose parents can’t afford tuition wouldn’t be able to go to school at all.”

    Or the ones who get vouchers, but end up having their kids go to some fly-by-night voucher-grabbing scam school-cum-crackhouse.

    Sure, the market will eventually drive out the bad ones. (Or at least drive them to change their names.) But those kids will never get those years of their lives back.

  28. 28.

    tzs

    November 18, 2005 at 3:53 pm

    We just sold a 200K top of the line scientific instrument to a high school in China for use in research in nano-and biotechnology.

    The US may want to pander to its silly religious buggers who don’t want to believe in evolution or the scientific method.

    Me, I know which country I’m going to place MY bets on.

  29. 29.

    Cyrus

    November 18, 2005 at 4:10 pm

    You know what I find laughable—even without introducing ID into a science class, SINCE WHEN THE HELL DO U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO AN EVEN CLOSE TO ADEQUATE JOB OF TEACHING SCIENCE?

    Of course, none of this would even remotely be an issue if the govt. got out of the education business in the first place.

    Ha. What would you replace the public school system with, then? Pure private schools, letting the free market of ideas determine the best ones? I’m sure all the Jews and atheists living in Kansas would like it when their kids get assigned two hours of Bible study a day as homework. And why should someone living in Idaho have to home-school their kids because the local market isn’t big enough to support one right there?

    Would you use vouchers? So parents (the ones who pay attention, have good judgement, and can afford to adjust their schedule as needed, at least) would take their kids and their voucher money out of the bad schools… leaving those schools to get even worse? Thereby screwing over the kids whose parents don’t care or can’t get the kids to another school?

    There are obviously a lot of problems with our public school system, but not one of them is caused solely by the fact that it’s public. Lack of quality teachers, lack of per-pupil spending, lack of parental involvement, cultural anti-intellectualism, education systems and methods that have been refined but never actually overhauled in about a century… A “may the fittest survive” mentality won’t help any of those.

    This reminds me of the national health care argument that comes up every other week at Kevin Drum’s site. He asks for more comprehensive coverage, some right-wingers bring up all kinds of problems with it, and then someone else points out that every country with national health care has a better system than ours. Sometimes real-world and relevant experience shows that the awesome gods of the free market are second-best.

  30. 30.

    jg

    November 18, 2005 at 4:11 pm

    SINCE WHEN THE HELL DO U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO AN EVEN CLOSE TO ADEQUATE JOB OF TEACHING SCIENCE?

    I went to public school. Don’t know how much science I learned but what I didn’t wasn’t the fault of the teacher or the system. Its the students. Try teaching in a class of 30 kids when at least 15 don’t care to learn and where probably 5 are basically in day care until their 16th birthday when they can drop out.

  31. 31.

    RSA

    November 18, 2005 at 4:18 pm

    One thing that bothers me about irreducible complexity is that it doesn’t seem to be well-defined. Here’s what Behe has written concerning IC:

    “a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”

    Suppose someone removes my heart. I cease to function. Does that mean I’m irreducibly complex? No, but what does rule out human beings as examples? Apparently the current state of our knowledge, which is a very weak argument for IC. Now, if there were some mathematical or physical formulation of IC, it might be interesting, but I’ve only seen handwaving examples put forth.

  32. 32.

    Lines

    November 18, 2005 at 4:26 pm

    school vouchers, just another example of Conservative “I’ve got mine, screw you” mentality.

    Public education was developed to bring the lowest parts of society up, to give them a chance and to find the best and the brightest. An educated society is more likely to be a successful society, incuring less debt (oops), less rebellion (not yet, but maybe soon) and one more capable of needing less government.

    Continue to widen the gap between the have’s and the have nots and society will crumble, and the have’s will be the first heads on the pikes.

  33. 33.

    Steve S

    November 18, 2005 at 4:41 pm

    You know what I find laughable—even without introducing ID into a science class, SINCE WHEN THE HELL DO U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS DO AN EVEN CLOSE TO ADEQUATE JOB OF TEACHING SCIENCE?

    I went to a public K-12 school, as well as a public University, and had no problems.

    It seems to me from my experience and relating that to the idiots who complain about our school systems, that some people think the school should teach you everything. That is, they just can’t imagine that you ought to go learn about things on your own outside of the boundaries of school.

    See I didn’t have that problem. Now maybe it was because my mother was a teacher and my father an electrical engineer. But we had lot’s of books around our house, and I read anything and everything. I remember once reading my father’s books on radio antenna design, and built a better television antenna so we could pick up UHF station 29, cause I wanted to watch reruns of Gilligan’s Island without static.

    I’m getting a little bit sick of people blaming their own failures on other people. It’s the responsibility of the parents to teach their children, not the schools.

    Did you know there are parents today who send their children to Kindergarten not knowing how to tie their own shoes? Yes, that’s right… they expect the teachers to teach them such basic things.

  34. 34.

    Lines

    November 18, 2005 at 4:49 pm

    Hey Steve, thats why they have this new fangled stuff called Velcro.

    Also, kids are manipulative. When they claim they can’t “tie their shoes”, a lot of times its a call for attention, a manipulative move to see if they can get someone else to do it, because its really one of the first things that parents do for them that lasts the longest.

    Psychologically, it may not be manipulation, but a method of harkening back to earlier childhood when the stress of learning and working wasn’t there.

    Of course, I’m just running off at the fingers. But I’m trying to point out that kids that claim they can’t tie their shoes in kindergarten may in fact be able to, just choose not to for other reasons.

  35. 35.

    jcricket

    November 18, 2005 at 5:16 pm

    Behe is a guy who knows how to talk a good game, but underneath the surface is totally wrong and willing to contradict his own writings to make ID sound more scientific.

    Behe’s has lied about ID being science. He’s ignorant on the scientific literature on the issues he claims to be an expert in (see the 2005/10/19 entry). He is also wrong about his basic assertions regarding IC.

    Simply put. Nearly all of the supposedly IC systems are not. We already have explanations for most of them. IC only exists as a way to make ID sound scientific, despite the fact that there are other scientific explanations for systems that appear IC. IC would better be renamed “really complex systems that we don’t fully understand the history of… yet”

    That’s all there is too it. We don’t fully understand gravity, or time, or HIV, but we don’t posit a designer to fill the gaps in those theories. Or puff up the evidence against the existance of them.

  36. 36.

    Lines

    November 18, 2005 at 5:28 pm

    Do we really understand anything?

    ID creates an end to the search for knowledge, it ends discussion. If my child writes down an answer for something as “because the Creator says so” will that be sufficient to progress him through life?

    Being willing to accept that changes will occur in science through breakthrough and through miniscule adaptations in knowledge, we’re learning about everything. Creationism and ID both stop the deeper search into a very important area. Is that something we want to teach our kids? “If you really don’t feel like figureing it all out, just put down because God makes it that way”.

    Bullshit, thats all ID is made of. Keep grasping at it though, the disgusting smell will alert the rest of society that you are to be avoided.

  37. 37.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 6:23 pm

    Okay I still think you all and most of the press are getting the wrong idea about ID. It isn’t creationist per se, as far as I can tell. It only “implies” creationism – there’s a difference there. Some people are turning it into creationism, but that’s not the original theory. Just like Hitler turned all kinds of popular sciences at the time, like morphology, into racism, that doesn’t mean he reflected the science’s gist correctly. Communist’s in the Soviet Union turned Karl Marx’s theory of social equality into an oligarchy, doesn’t mean that’s the original theory. Anyway, since this is a big old ID post, I am going to look up some more ID theory later to prove my point once and for all my point here.

  38. 38.

    Sojourner

    November 18, 2005 at 6:49 pm

    Okay I still think you all and most of the press are getting the wrong idea about ID. It isn’t creationist per se, as far as I can tell. It only “implies” creationism – there’s a difference there.

    ID argues for there being an intelligent designer. Exactly who might that be? Frosty the snow man?

  39. 39.

    Steve S

    November 18, 2005 at 6:57 pm

    Okay I still think you all and most of the press are getting the wrong idea about ID. It isn’t creationist per se, as far as I can tell. It only “implies” creationism – there’s a difference there.

    Doesn’t matter what you want to call it.

    It still isn’t science.

  40. 40.

    a guy called larry

    November 18, 2005 at 7:34 pm

    Okay I still think you all and most of the press are getting the wrong idea about ID. It isn’t creationist per se, as far as I can tell. It only “implies” creationism – there’s a difference there.

    My idea about ID is that ID is creationism, with God hiding behind the curtains. But a lot of us can see His feet sticking out at the bottom. How wrong is that?

  41. 41.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 10:24 pm

    The fundamentals of ID as scientific theory is that irreducible complexity exists and that is incompatible with blind, random chance. That isn’t what Krauthammer is saying ID is and that’s a problem.

    Wait, I just read T.M. Lutas’s thread upstream. That was awesome! S/He explained that ID WAS science better than I ever could. I would add to that I have gleaned ID can be tested by measuring the rate of mutations which comprise ‘complex’ mutations (so far ID hasn’t done that well on that score, as apparently complex mutations like that happen quicker than thought)

    I would also like to remind you that the mutations of the eye, a major point on both sides, has only been explained in any depth LAST YEAR, in Science magazine. That was AFTER ID was born. There are still many other unexplained pieces of mutations and natural selection. I still have a feeling that there may be more to the process than we know. That’s why I am not so loathe to consider other theories.

  42. 42.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 10:40 pm

    So if it doesn’t happen in the amount of time you allot for it to occur, it can’t occur? Because the various random mutations didn’t create the pre-determined end result you claim that evolution is false?

    Well if experiment after experiment came up with the same result, and didn’t work at the rate we know certain species needed to evolve (the mutation rate for all genes is fairly constant and measurable, fyi), yes, we could say there may be another element to evolution. If it came up with the opposite result, we would say that ID theory is wrong. Because there is a testable hypothesis, that’s why ID scientific in nature. No one (me) ever said it was proven or correct science.

  43. 43.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 10:48 pm

    Creationism and ID both stop the deeper search into a very important area. Is that something we want to teach our kids?

    ID is an attempt to research the existence of ‘irreducible complexity’ in a fairly scientific way. Nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t conflict with any evolution research in any way, and in fact can only enhance evolutionary theory by making evolution theorists pin down and explain certain phenomena better (like they did last year with the eye). If ID researchers don’t turn up any ‘gold’, and they haven’t, the theory fades. But is it so bad to explore and try to think in new ways? Maybe you are the one who wants to stop the research.

  44. 44.

    Sojourner

    November 18, 2005 at 11:03 pm

    scs:

    You continue to dodge the question. Who/what is the intelligetn designer? If it’s not God, then who/what is it?

    Maybe you are the one who wants to stop the research.

    Could you elaborate on what research they are performing? And where?

  45. 45.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 11:50 pm

    Who/what is the intelligetn designer

    Soj, the theory does not talk about any necessity of a “designer”. The words ‘Intelligent Design’ are just the title and ‘intelligent’ could mean ‘non-random’ or ‘systematic’ and ‘design’ could mean ‘system’ or ‘pattern’. The theory merely examines whether irreducible complexity is possible under mutation and natural selection alone.

    And by the way, I just saw your rude comment in the other thread. I’m disappointed in you Soj, as you had never been particularly rude before. I hope you don’t make it a habit.

  46. 46.

    scs

    November 18, 2005 at 11:57 pm

    Take a structure and/or process and identify the genes necessary to express that structue/process. engineer simple, fast breeding, fast living microorganisms that are with the system, without the system, and have every permutation in between. Measure their comparative fitness.

    To answer your question “Could you elaborate on what research they are performing? And where? ” I believe Behe did some of these kinds of cellular experiments. I don’t believe they proved valid, however, as there are too many other factors involved. Which goes back to my point that ID is scientifically based, in other words, it is NOT theology like so many people think. Just maybe not correct science. But an interesting attempt none the less.

  47. 47.

    Jon H

    November 19, 2005 at 12:43 am

    “I believe Behe did some of these kinds of cellular experiments.”

    I don’t think he did them, he just thought them up.

    They’re rather fuzzy to be valid experiments. Too many uncontrolled variables.

    I wouldn’t say that the ability to describe a poorly-conceived experiment which ‘could’ support your theory necessarily makes your theory scientific.

    Young kids getting their first taste of science and experimentation come up with things like that.

  48. 48.

    Jon H

    November 19, 2005 at 12:45 am

    scs writes: “Soj, the theory does not talk about any necessity of a “designer”. The words ‘Intelligent Design’ are just the title and ‘intelligent’ could mean ‘non-random’ or ‘systematic’ and ‘design’ could mean ‘system’ or ‘pattern’. The theory merely examines whether irreducible complexity is possible under mutation and natural selection alone.”

    You know, don’t you, scs, that one of the aspects of the Dover, PA case has been the usage of a textbook called “Of Pandas and Peoples”, which is an Intelligent Design book.

    There are copies of earlier drafts of the book, in which it was explicitly Christian creationist. They scratched out the creationist bits and replaced them with ID jargon.

  49. 49.

    Jon H

    November 19, 2005 at 12:59 am

    scs writes: “I would also like to remind you that the mutations of the eye, a major point on both sides, has only been explained in any depth LAST YEAR, in Science magazine. That was AFTER ID was born. There are still many other unexplained pieces of mutations and natural selection. I still have a feeling that there may be more to the process than we know. That’s why I am not so loathe to consider other theories.”

    So, using ID, how exactly would we have filled in those gaps about the eye? You can be darn sure ID contributed nothing to it, because ID has nothing to contribute to eye research.

    If it was declared “irreducibly complex”, research stops. Who’s going to spend money researching something that has been declared “irreducibly complex”?

    On the other hand, how do you know something really is irreducibly complex?

    You don’t know. You can’t. You can hit a wall, run out of resources, reach the limits of your instruments, suffer a failure of imagination, and declare it so, but you can’t *know*. Somebody in the university next door might be solving the problem that kicked yo butt.

    That being the case, who has the authority to declare something ‘irreducibly complex’?

    The only reason to use the term “irreducibly complex” is to declare an area to be god’s work and off limits, a no-go zone.

    And that serves science not at all. It doesn’t serve mankind at all. The whole concept serves only to cast creationism in a pseudo-scientific camouflage so it can be snuck into schools and allow disingenuous instruction of students that evolutionary theory is vastly weaker than it actually is.

    In other words, it’s basically political.

    It is to science what Ebonics was to English. It’s Scibonics.

  50. 50.

    Beej

    November 19, 2005 at 1:06 am

    Fifty years ago there were a lot of very smart women who had very few choices when it came to working outside the home. If you didn’t like needles and weren’t a great typist, the field you were most likely to choose was teaching. Since society didn’t consider women to be the “breadwinners” then, and men were supposed to support the family, school boards and taxpayers didn’t see any need to pay teachers well. After all, they were mostly women and they either were married or would be married, and then their husbands would be the “breadwinners”. This set of circumstances produced a whole bunch of very smart, very good teachers for a very low price.

    Today, all those circumstances have changed, but school boards and the public still seem to think they can get those very smart, very good teachers for a very low price. They’re wrong. Today very smart women can be doctors, lawyers, politicians, architects, or anything else they want to be and make a whole lot more money than they would as teachers. The pool of very smart people who want to be teachers is a whole lot smaller today than it was 50 years ago.

    Now that isn’t the only problem with public education, but it’s certainly one of the major ones. It’s simple, really. If you want public schools to be better, hire better teachers. To hire better teachers, you need to pay them more.

    And, please, please, don’t hand me that old saw about “teachers are supposed to be dedicated to their students, not to money”. As one of my Education Department Profs used to say, “I can be just as dedicated on $80,000 a year as I can on $30,000.” And, yes, you saw that right, the average starting salary for teachers in my state is slightly less than $30,000 per year. Disgraceful!

  51. 51.

    Jon H

    November 19, 2005 at 1:36 am

    ” The pool of very smart people who want to be teachers is a whole lot smaller today than it was 50 years ago.”

    And you really have to jump through a lot of expensive hoops to be a teacher.

    Bill Gates would have a hard time getting hired to teach business in many school systems. No college degree, let alone a Masters’. He’d probably be able to get a special waiver, but many, many talented, experienced people would not, and would be faced with a long, expensive education and training and certification process, followed by a low-paying job.

    I can understand the desire to impose standards, but come on. The current system is counterproductive.

    IBM has started a special program to help and encourage employees to transfer to teaching . Which is great, but it just shows how the states erect barriers that dissuade people.

    The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail.

    The workers would have to get approval from their managers to participate. If selected, the employees would be allowed to take a leave of absence from the company, which includes full benefits and up to half their salary, depending on length of service.

    In addition, the employees could get up to $15,000 in tuition reimbursements and stipends while they seek teaching credentials and begin student-teaching.

  52. 52.

    The Raven

    November 19, 2005 at 7:52 am

    “The fundamentals of ID as scientific theory is that irreducible complexity exists and that is incompatible with blind, random chance. That isn’t what Krauthammer is saying ID is and that’s a problem.”

    Why is that a problem? All that Krauthammer has to do is point out one of the reasons why “Intelligent Design” theory is bogus and he’s home free.

    But since you bring up the point, TM, let’s look at it some more. To begin, we have to understand what this argument is about and who is making it. In general, we know that people engaged in scientific endeavors aren’t struggling to “prove” the basic assumptions of Natural Selection. Darwin’s theory appears to be correct. So, it’s safe to say that scientists aren’t promoting ID.

    Religious people – evangelical Christians in particular – would very much like to “prove” the existence of God. They have a lot of reasons to do that. They want converts and they want money. They’re afraid that a secular society would be immoral. They’re worried that we’ll be punished by God if we don’t worship Him. These are the proponents of ID.

    Other commenters above have put paid to the nonsense of “irreducible complexity.” But let’s look at “blind, random chance.” That’s a misunderstanding in and of itself. Natural Selection – the mechanism of evolution – contains the word “selection.” Living organisms adapt to the environment with a concrete agenda: survive. This isn’t blind and it isn’t random. The effects, of course, are amazing to behold, but the process is fairly clear and it doesn’t present science with any significant problems.

    All this crap about flagella and blood-clotting is hoo-hah tailored to bamboozle the rubes. Behe loves to trot out his “mousetrap” and “wristwatch” analogies, both of which beg the question of whether living organisms follow the logic of man-made objects. Once he sneaks that one by, it’s downhill running.

    Lastly, ID is not “scientific theory” at all. It’s theology. It’s the kind of thing Aquinas or Augustine might have considered over a glass of brandy in front of a nice cozy fireplace.

    One of the biggest problems we face as a society is the ever-shrinking number of scientists that we’re producing. Other countries are getting ready to pass us by (if they haven’t already). Every moment of class time in our schools that is wasted on religious dogma is a loss of incalculable measure. We finished all this up in the 1920s – and this weird rebirth of fundamentalism is like some crazed zombie popping out of the ground on us.

  53. 53.

    Kimmitt

    November 19, 2005 at 1:11 pm

    Okay I still think you all and most of the press are getting the wrong idea about ID. It isn’t creationist per se, as far as I can tell.

    I mean this in the nicest possible way, but are you aware of the fact that the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary?

  54. 54.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:26 pm

    Who’s going to spend money researching something that has been declared “irreducibly complex”? …The only reason to use the term “irreducibly complex” is to declare an area to be god’s work and off limits, a no-go zone. …And that serves science not at all

    Do you really think science would stop if someone declared something I.C ? Well IF the ID people can prove that there is a biological system too complex to be developed by mutation and natural selection alone, then THAT would be a pretty darn good scientific discovery. Of course they would have to show show through logic or experiments how they proved it. And then you know as soon as ID people came out with some theory, other non-ID scientists would then be burning to prove ID crap, and take ID ideas and show that while they might not be able to prove the opposite yet, they can at least show where ID logic or experiments are flawed, and how their ideas are not correct.

    That is called science. It’s an adversarial system mostly. You don’t get afraid of bad ideas and try to repress them, you show them with facts and reasoning where their ideas are wrong. And so far evolutionary scientists have made good inroads in doing so. Controversy and new ideas, even crazy ideas, keep the system going forward in my opinion.

  55. 55.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:27 pm

    Kimmitt, read the theory first before you comment. Read what TM Lutas said above.

  56. 56.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:31 pm

    usage of a textbook called “Of Pandas and Peoples”, which is an Intelligent Design book. … There are copies of earlier drafts of the book, in which it was explicitly Christian creationist. They scratched out the creationist bits and replaced them with ID jargon.

    Well see my earlier posting above about the difference between the original theory and the people who often twist those theories for their own purposes. You should still be able to separate the two objectively.

  57. 57.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:41 pm

    Lastly, ID is not “scientific theory” at all. It’s theology.

    I don’t know what church you went to, but I never heard of a church that delivered sermons on cellular biology, the rate of random muations of genes and whether it is sufficient to explain complex developments, and the systematic development of certain biological parts in areas such as the eye. But hell, if you did go to such a church, please let me know where it is. I’d love to attend a few services.

  58. 58.

    tzs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:46 pm

    SCS, so-called Intelligent Design is nothing more than god-of-the-gaps warmed up over again. You may want to investigate some history of philosophy further.

    “Difference between original theory” and “people who often twist those theoreis for their own purpose” is a red herring. We’re not dealing with some Platonic idea of ID; we are dealing with how it has been defined by its proponents. Let me flip this on its head: what evidence would you accept to demonstrate that ID is nothing more than warmed-over-creationism?

  59. 59.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:54 pm

    Let me flip this on its head: what evidence would you accept to demonstrate that ID is nothing more than warmed-over-creationism?

    I would have to see the theory is based on NO biological principles at all. But so far they did make some good comments on irreducible complexity (ic), issues that evolutionary scientists have been grappling with themselves and still are grappling with. So my point is, it is not COMPLETE hocus pocus. I just hate exaggeration and hysteria on any issue.

  60. 60.

    tzs

    November 19, 2005 at 1:58 pm

    Also, scs, remember the comment about “having an open mind doesn’t mean you should let your brains fall out.”

    I disbelieve in an Intelligent Designer for the very same reason that Laplace gave to Napoleon about not including references to God in his “Mechanique Celeste”: “Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.”

    We don’t assume the existence of an Intelligent Designer because we have not yet run across any data that indicates the need for such. Evolution explains things quite well. Before anything else, you’re going to have to come up with an anomaly in existing data that would require such as a hypothesis. And no, no matter what Behe and others have said, we have not found such. Simply because it would comfort certain people’s religious belief systems is not adequate.

    Remember, as Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

  61. 61.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 2:12 pm

    We don’t assume the existence of an Intelligent Designer

    I repeat, ID does not talk about explicity about an Intelligent Designer. It examines whether irreducible complexity is possible through mutation and natural selection alone. Please read the theory first before you comment. And read up on the issues evolutionary scientists are dealing with as well. Read about the recent developments in the theories related to the development of the eye. It’s not such a long standing resolved issue as many people think.

  62. 62.

    scs

    November 19, 2005 at 2:19 pm

    Okay, I have kind of a fyi related to my thoughts above on how even bad ideas can move science forward.

    Above I linked ‘morphology’ with Hitler. I meant to say ‘phrenology’ which was basically a pseudoscience about a hundered years ago that studied the shape of the human skull to get insight about the workings of the mind. Here is an excerpt from Wilipedia:

    Many of the basic premises of phrenology have been confirmed by medical science. Phrenologists were the first to claim that all mental activity, including emotion, takes place in the brain. Furthermore, modern methods such as fMRI demonstrate that different types of activities take place in different regions of the brain. Recent studies also support the related claim that neural centers can become enlarged with use (J. Neuroscience, 17, 1997). Thus, many of the claims of phrenology have been absorbed into modern scientific thinking.

    Nevertheless, most of the practical implications of phrenology are now generally considered false. In particular, the ability to judge character based on skull shape has no modern scientific basis.

    Although the idea was crap, it got scientists interested in how the brain controls the thoughts of humans, so through these wacky ideas, true science developed. Thats what I think ID will do. In fact, it already has, as we are starting to see new papers on issues such as the development of the eye, which I feel may have been spurred by the ID controversy. So even bad ideas can have some merit.

  63. 63.

    Steve

    November 19, 2005 at 6:56 pm

    The blood clotting cascade is not IC in that dolphins are missing one of the “IC” components (Hagmann [sp?] factor) and their blood clots just fine and they obviously exist. So far all of Behe’s examples, even his mouse trap, have seen quite a bit of work done that calls the IC aspect/impossible evolution claim into serious doubt.

    Further, with duplication and loss of function it seems quite plausible that IC structures could very easily come into existence. While redundancy in engineering is seen as a feature, with evolution there is less re-ward for redundancy and hence seeing systems that don’t have built in redundancies could easily come about.

  64. 64.

    Jon H

    November 20, 2005 at 12:57 am

    scs writes: “We don’t assume the existence of an Intelligent Designer

    I repeat, ID does not talk about explicity about an Intelligent Designer.”

    Well, no, because that would beg the question of who the designer is, and that gives away that it’s just creationism, and so ID would fail in its entire reason for existing – to sneak creationism into science classes.

    In order for Intelligent Design to get into classrooms, it *must* avoid the elephant in the room and pretend there is no designer.

    “It examines whether irreducible complexity is possible through mutation and natural selection alone. Please read the theory first before you comment. And read up on the issues evolutionary scientists are dealing with as well. Read about the recent developments in the theories related to the development of the eye. It’s not such a long standing resolved issue as many people think.”

    Question: What does “long standing” have to do with *anything*?

    I don’t get this. You’re saying it’s irreducibly complex, yet you point out that there are new discoveries. If it’s irreducibly complex, there can be *no* new discoveries. If something is irreducibly complex, it’s a dead end.

    Of course there are new discoveries about the eye. Why would there not be? That’s what science *does*!

    I really don’t get why you keep saying that. Are you trying to get Behe off the hook for being wrong? He was working off of earlier research, and drew a wrong conclusion, as demonstrated by scientists who failed to accept that Behe was correct?

    That just demonstrates the vacuity of declaring things Irreducibly Complex.

  65. 65.

    Neo

    November 22, 2005 at 8:59 pm

    It has always been said that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with typewriters that they will eventually turnout the works of Shakespeare, but, in reality, the works of Shakespeare were not turned out by the mutant attempts of a thousand monkeys with typewriters. Literary ID ?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. The Politburo Diktat » Blog Archive » Saturday Links says:
    November 19, 2005 at 2:49 pm

    […] Krauthammer – Phony Theory, False Conflict Sir Charles takes apart ID. Yes, Bill, I’m doing the wave along with Cole. In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase ” natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us,” thus unmistakably implying — by fiat of definition, no less — that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science. […]

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