Re: Finally, I beat Jason Spaceman to an anti-evolution article
- From: "noctiluca" <robertlcamp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 29 Jul 2005 09:16:08 -0700
Steven J. wrote:
> This is in response to George Neumeyer's July 29, 2005 article, "The Monkey
> Wrench."
>
> http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8514
>
> To start with the last point first, the Discovery Institute does not list
> "hundreds of scientists who now regard [Darwinism] as in intellectually
> bankrupt theory." What it has is a list of hundreds of people, not all
> scientists (and most of the scientists are not in fields relevant to
> evolutionary theory) who agree that "I am skeptical of claims for the
> ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the
> complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory
> should be encouraged." Charles Darwin (who thought natural selection was
> the principle but not sole mechanism of evolution) could have signed that
> statement. Richard Dawkins could have signed it (if he didn't suspect the
> motives of the people gathering signatures); after all, like any modern
> biologist he's heard of genetic drift. The statement does not say that
> "Darwinism" is "intellectually bankrupt," or that humans do not share
> ancestry with monkeys (and mushrooms), or that the causes of evolution are
> "supernatural" or require intelligent guidance, or that mutation and natural
> selection do not, after all, account for a very great deal of the complexity
> of life. There are signers of the statement who hold to any or all of these
> positions, but it would hardly be reasonable to infer either that all the
> signers subscribe to any of them, or that those who do have scientific
> reasons for rejecting these aspects of evolutionary theory.
>
> There are, certainly, some people with scientific credentials who dispute
> "Darwinism" (an interesting choice of terms, which both personalizes and
> treats as a political ideology -- like "Marxism" -- whatever it is they
> dispute, and can encompass anything from "humans are related to chimpanzees"
> to "there is no God" (the latter claim is not, strictly speaking, part of
> any scientific theory, including modern evolutionary theory). This is not
> the same as saying that they have an actual scientific case for their
> dissent. In general, the "case against Darwinism" is a laundry list of
> unsolved problems with evolutionary theory or cosmology, with the
> implication that a "god of the gaps" should be invoked to, not solve those
> problems (such a "designer" neither answers the question of why the universe
> has these features rather than others, or provides any hint of how the
> "designer" caused it to have these features), but at least a label to paste
> over a handwave.
>
> Richard Sternberg, object of the Discovery Institute's sympathy, bypassed
> normal peer-review processes to publish a paper that had next to nothing to
> do with the actual subject of his journal (in a journal dedicated mainly to
> taxonomy, Meyers published a review article claiming that "Darwinism" cannot
> explain the Cambrian explosion). This might reasonably be expected to raise
> some eyebrows, and some heated objections, especially if the article misuses
> sources.
>
> It is entirely false that "Darwinists" are trying "to prevent the teaching
> of any concepts besides random variation and natural selection" (although it
> should also be noted that these phenomena apply to life that already exists
> in a universe that already exists, so if "Darwinists" are indeed limited to
> these ideas, they are not promoting any ideas about the origins of life and
> the universe). As noted, even quite conventional evolutionary theorists
> accept the idea of genetic drift (changes in gene frequencies not involving
> selection), and many are open to more outre ideas. The objection of the
> Discovery Institute, properly stated, is that "Darwinists" insist on
> naturalistic explanations (although they are hardly, as a group, bigoted
> about what sort of naturalistic explanations), and rule out
> supernaturalistic ones.
>
> But this to me seems a very sensible limitation on science. "Naturalistic,"
> in this context, refers to causes which have some humanly-discoverable
> nature and act according to that nature. One can predict, to some extent,
> the effects these causes will produce, and see whether those effects
> actually exist. One can test naturalistic hypotheses. If a cause is beyond
> human comprehension -- if one can have no idea of how it might work or what
> effects it might produce, if it is consistent with any observable outcome --
> then that cause cannot be the basis of a theory and cannot actually explain
> anything (that is, it cannot say why a phenomenon has the characteristics it
> does, rather than other imaginable characteristics).
>
> Dissidents against "Darwinism" have a series of arguments, consistently bad
> (although not necessarily consistent in any other respect).
>
> Michael Behe argues that mutation and natural selection cannot build what he
> calls "irreducibly complex" molecular systems. This argument depends on the
> assumptions that mutation can only add new components, not delete or modify
> already-existing components (although mutations that do both are known), and
> that the function of a system cannot change over time. Neither assumption
> is remotely sound. Behe claimed, at one time (perhaps still does) that no
> serious attempts had been made to reconstruct the evolution (by mutation and
> selection) of any complex molecular system, ignoring papers that did
> precisely that published before his book _Darwin's Black Box_.
>
> William Dembski hopes to identify "design" by identifying systems that meet
> some "specification," and ruling out either simple regularities of nature
> ("law") and complex contingent combinations of regularities of nature
> ("chance") as explanations. This depends on the would-be detector of
> intelligent design being omniscient, or at least on knowing all the laws of
> nature and all the possible ways they might interact, which seems unlikely
> to be the case. Dembski, in practice, resorts to assuming that if a
> scenario, sufficiently detailed to satisfy him, has not been produced for
> the evolution of some biological structure, no such explanation is possible
> even in principle. This is, of course, the classic argument from ignorance,
> and is not a serious critique of "Darwinism." There might indeed be
> mechanisms, or even Agents, undreamt-of by current evolutionary theory at
> work in the history of life, but arguments like these will never uncover
> them.
>
> Perhaps the most noteworthy aspects of these arguments is that they assume
> both that "designers" are inherently supernatural (although ID proponents
> are not averse to arguing that scientists in fields outside biology are
> willing to consider design -- but only by natural agents with understandable
> methods and motives), and that one can detect design without having any idea
> of how the designer thinks or works either before or after the design is
> detected. Finding an arrowhead tells you something about the maker's
> abilities and goals, but apparently (if Phillip Johnson's relegation of all
> concern about the Designer's design philosophy to "theology" is an
> indication) finding that the bacterial flagellum and the human immune system
> tells you nothing about the Designer (e.g. that He can't decide whether to
> make us sick or keep us healthy, or that there is more than one designer, or
> that "Darwinism" is the Designer's method of implementing design). The
> opponents of "Darwinism" want the first scientific theory in history that
> has no tiniest clue as to how its proposed cause actually operates, or what
> effects it might be expected to produce.
>
> Jonathon Wells argues against "Darwinism" by pointing out that, e.g. genetic
> comparisons put crocodilians closer to birds than to lizards, and sea
> urchins and starfish closer to vertebrates than to other invertebrates.
> That these results merely confirm phylogenies inferred before genetic
> comparisons were possible (i.e. that they support at least the part of
> "Darwinism" that deals with common descent and relationships among living
> groups) seems to elude him entirely. Note, by the way, that Wells denies
> not merely the efficacy of mutation and natural selection, but shared
> ancestry of humans and other species; Dembski and Behe do not do this
> explicitly. None of these people deny outright that humans have nonhuman
> ancestors, although most seem happy to provide aid and comfort to those who
> do deny this.
>
> And that, of course, is the whole point of the case against "Darwinism." It
> is not a scientific case (or at least, it is a very, very bad one); it is a
> god-of-the-gaps apologetic for whichever variant of old-fashioned "I don't
> come from no monkey" creationism one happens to favor. It's principle
> purpose is not to foster research or provide new directions for scientific
> inquiry, but to provide political support for inserting creationism and/or
> removing evolutionary theory from the schools. There's a perfectly good
> reason for scientists and science teachers to give it neither respect nor a
> place in the curriculum: it isn't science. Yes, a few scientists embrace
> it; are you, of all people, going to insist either that every position taken
> by a scientist is scientific? You certainly cannot argue consistently that
> scientists cannot confuse ideology with actual theory or evidence.
Well done. Regardless of the deaf ears it might fall on at the AS.
Also, couldn't help notice the makers of those conservative t-shirts
aren't above a little pulchritudinous purveyance.
Robert
>> -- Steven J.
.
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- Finally, I beat Jason Spaceman to an anti-evolution article
- From: Steven J.
- Finally, I beat Jason Spaceman to an anti-evolution article
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