Theism, Intelligent Design, and Science

Remove all ads!

I've started this thread because of a book I've been reading: The Case for a Creator, by Lee Stobel. It is the third in a trilogy of books describing the author's conversion from an avowed atheist and evolutionist to a devoted Christian and proponent of Intelligent Design through a critical, open-minded analysis of the facts. The first, The Case for Christ, looks at the historical evidence and criticism of Jesus Christ. The second, The Case for Faith, tackles the logical and rational criticisms of Christianity. This third book discusses the sciences and asks if Science and Religion are really at odds. To be clear, the author is not a physicist, not a chemist, not a biologist, not a historian, and not a philosopher. He's better: he's a journalist. This means that, instead of just giving his position on something, he talks to the experts, lots of experts.

I've only read 2/3rds of the last book (I started with the sciences), but it's peppered with quotes, references, and in-depth interviews with multi-PHDs, Nobel Prize winners, and respected experts in 6 major fields of science, from cosmology to geophysics to molecular biology to psychology. If the other two books are as well-researched and well-written as this one is, they likely form the single most comprehensive review of the critical evidence and academic support for Christianity ever compiled.

This one, however, focuses specifically on the sciences, and doesn't get much into Christianity specifically so much as Intelligent Design and theism in general. In it, he cites a pretty solid disproof of Darwinism (commonly called the 'kill-shot to evolution') and a falsifiable prediction of Intelligent Design (killing it's primary criticism as a scientific theory), and it's those two things I really wanted to bring before you all (so far at least).

The two are closely related, dealing in the same field of cellular biochemistry. Specifically, Darwin stated in Origins of Species:

In response to this, Dr. Michael J. Behe, himself an atheist turned theist after looking at the evidence, published a book called Darwin's Black Box in which he explains how cells are riddled with "irreducibly complex biochemical machines". The point of it is that these machines have no more simplified form that could have developed into them, and are sufficiently complex to be statistically impossible through random interactions. Because they can't be simplified, because any single removal of any single piece renders the whole system inopperable, they couldn't have arizen through evolution, since natural selection only favors currently working, productive systems. Furthermore, as a test of the Intelligent Design theory, Dr. Behe suggests that no unintelligent process could produce an irreducibly complex system. The author points to several criticisms of the work and idea in technical literature, but all of them fall flat, either attacking the analogy meant to explain the work (and not the work itself) or attempting to disprove the claim and failing to do so.

Now, of course, I recognize that this may be the biassed work of a couple of convinced believers, even if they do have credentials, which is part of why I brought it up here. I've looked through the Wikipedia articles, and criticisms presented are all brought up and conquered in the book (though Wikipedia makes no mention of this).

 

I think your books are a bit old, I recognice the arguments you bring up. I even think it was one of the arguments that was refuted during that trial that was held when they tried to put ID in biology classes. I have seen a very good debunking of the "irreducibly complex system" criticism of evolution. If I remember correctly the examples brought up wasn't "irreducibly complex system".

My point being, if you are interested I think you should read the mirrors to those books. I got quite interested in reading the ones you mentioned here.

 

Well, what are you trying to do with this thread? You haven't given any of the specific arguments from the book so we can't argue against them - did you just want to recommend it, or...?

 

At this point, I just switch off. Perhaps it's my biased perspective, but it seems you've demonstrated very flawed reasoning.

How is somebody who is trained to find a sensational scoop in a story, better than an expert?

 

If I recall correctly Newton was a very religious scientist who looked at the cosmos and its complexity and decided therefore there was a clockmaker type of God.

I'll point out that the understanding lead to errors that overrated the stability if biology (as parts of a created system which implied a lack of extinction) and events we would view as questionable today-such as Louis and Clark being asked to being back a sabertooth tiger from their journey.

From a religious point I would say many theologians (maybe not all but a number in a running tradition) said we God is mysterious to us (as humans) and we don't understand God. God as clockmaker arguably classifies God and puts God in a box labeled X. God may or may not be interventionist-I can be comfortable with arguments for either because I acknowledge not knowing all there is to know about God and think either is possible.

 

I think the implications of the theory have been misunderstood. It may even be a misnomer, I'm not sure. You see, it doesn't matter if individual pieces can be useful themselves (arguably, making it reducibly complex, even if serving a different function), so long as the leap from the most recent previous functional machine to the current one is too large for natural selection to realistically produce.

What I mean is, mutation may add one protien or combine two pre-existing machines all in one go, but it won't fuse three machines and add 40 different protiens all at once. If none of the intermediate steps are themselves useful, then natural selection won't preserve any midway points, either.

Do you have names?

It was halfway a joke. The rest was serious reasoning, though. You see, with any of the individual experts brought up in the book, they would (and have) published books explaining their single position, probably without inclusion of criticism, and only quoting or mentioning the people they know in their field. With a journalist writing the book, you get a multitude of experts, each one facing criticism from the published literature, and each citing their people they know from their fields. Essentially, you get multiple experts in multiple fields and they respond to criticism, all in one go.

The tendency to claim to have classified God and work from those conclusions is dangerous, but is seen in religion without science already. The tendency to cling to something else and seek answers from that is already seen in science without religion. Basically, what I'm saying is that the problems you bring up are real, but already present anyway.

As for Aik, I was really just trying to start a conversation. I figured people like Coin and maybe Ragusa may have heard of it before, may have known other criticism, and the like. Even if not, getting people's reactions to it would be nice. What specific arguements would you like?

 

I don't know any scientist who ever suggested otherwise. The only thing I can think you're referencing in your OP are cellular organelles, and cellular organelles are a frequently cited example of something that is "irreducibly complex". In fact, after the eye, it's the most commonly cited example. However, cellular organelles are not irreducibly complex (nor is the eye), and there are several theories on the evolution of cellular organelles (and numerous living examples of less complex eyes than are observed in the most commonly studied animals).

That's the problem when you ask a non-scientist to refute or attempt to debunk a scientific theory - usually the attempt is not particularly scientific. I know that you are a Christian NOG, and you believe in Intelligent Design. You will find no shortage of theories out there in books and on the internet that agree with you. I'm totally cool with that. You just cannot seriously think that a journalist is a going to debunk evolution - people have been trying for about 150 years now who have a heck of a lot more training and are a heck of a lot smarter than him.

(Also, as an aside, I noticed that you listed this guy was a avowed atheist and evolutionist. What the heck is an evolutionist? It cannot be someone who thinks the theory of evolution is correct, as that would imply that people who believe in the thoery of gravity would be gravatists, and those who believe in relativity are relativists. People who agree with a particular scientific theory are not members of a creed.)

 

I'm firmly in the gravatists camp.

 

Sorry if I didn't make that clear. Yes, Dr. Behe was talking about cellular organelles. The point was that the only cases I've seen of scientists claiming the examples aren't irreducably complex cite less complex systems that are a massive jump from the example. The issue at hand is whether natural selection could bridge the gap, which is only possible when there are functional intermediaries or the gap is small.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here, but the case I'm talking about are scientists trying to disprove the work of another scientist.

First off, I believe ID as more of a philosophical ultimate than a testable scientific theory. It may be testably scientific, but I'm not at all convinced of that.

The issue at hand wasn't a journalist attacking evolution, but a journalist interviewing a proffessor of molecular biology who was attacking evolution.

Aldeth, I think you're making a mistake here. Titles like 'creationist', 'evolutionist', 'abortionist', etc pop up whenever there's a popular debate over the issue. It's just a manner of isolating sides, not identifying a creed. As for the journalist in question, he was what I would call a 'black box' evolutionist, which is probably what most people are. This means that they don't question the theory because they don't know enough about it and don't know any of the challenges to it, as opposed to believing or not believing it based on an understanding of it, it's flaws, it's limitations, and the workarounds/revisions that have been developed. This form is something of a faith-based belief, only here the faith is in the scientific community at large and the educational system (who taught you about it) in specific. The former is debatable on the issue (it's complicated, there are arguements for both sides), but the latter is flat out not trustworthy. The first chapter of the book is entirely spent on detailing the typical 'icons of evolution', the major points and cases that are hallmarks in most if not all textbooks, and their many, many flaws (and frauds).

 

Fair enough, NOG. I just never heard of the term "evolutionist" before. I did not think of myself as an evolutionist, but apparently I am by the way you describe it.

But the larger point remains that cellular organelles are not irredcibly complex. There are a ton of theories out there, the leading of which is symbiotic relationships between more primitive cellular life forms (supported by mitochondria and cloroplasts having their own DNA independent from, and copied separately from, the DNA contained in the nucleus of the cell). That's stuff you can readily research on your own on the internet with a simple Google search.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the prevailing theory for the existence of cellular organelles is that they are originally individual organisms that end up with symbiotic relationships that over time became so dependent on one another that they have become a single organism (eg. mitochondria and chloroplasts?)?


Edit:
Oops, looks like Aldeth beat me to it.

 

Maybe we're talking about something different, here. Dr. Behe was talking about individual functional parts of a cell, like a bacterial flagella, or the cillia found in many cells, or the intracellular transport system. The idea was that the individual systems couldn't develop through natural selection because there were insufficient functional intermediary steps. The criticism was that smaller pieces of one system could serve as another system. The counter was that the gap from the smaller system to the larger system was still vastly too large to be feasible by a single step of random mutation.

 

Creationists do exist. Thus there must be an equivalent, the 'Evolutionist', after all there is God and Satan, or so I presume this bipolar reasoning goes.

While superficially plausible, the term doesn't hold up to scrutiny. To elaborate: I think the term 'Evolutionist' is a ploy. I say that because it implies that scientists who see evidence for the theory of evolution merely 'believe'. That is misleading. The belief in creation and the trust in the correctness of the scientific theory of evolution are not equivalent. These are not two equally valid beliefs.

Research on evolution using proper methodology is science. It is more than belief, among other things it involves correcting erroneous assumptions for instance, and peer review. It has an open end result.

In contrast to that, there is one assumption that Creationists will never abandon, never mind how elusive evidence in support of this assumption remains - that God created the universe. Period. Creationism is belief in the literal truth of the Bible, or if they can't have it literally, in spirit. It is religious fundamentalism, pure faith. The Creationist knows his end result before even starting his research. After all, he has looked it up in the Holy Bible. As a result, what he seeks is merely support for that basic assumption.

The use of the term 'Evolutionist' is unjustifiably relativist. I suggest not using it, and I would object to being labelled that way.

 

There. Not a professor of ecology, but of molecular biology. It's nice to point out something obvious.

One nice obvious thing was that each and every year in the university where I studied biology, a whopping 50% failed the basic course on evolution in the first go. Draw your conclusions if you may, but one thing is certain. Even biologists, or in this case, biology students, sadly don't even have the basic grasp of how the theory even supposed to go. I'm not surprised that there'd be some disagreements to be found about a subject that is not so well understood within the scientific community.

 

No, those are examples of organelles, just like mitochondria and chloroplasts. Flagella and cillia have functionality even if they don't help you move - they help you get food. Echinoderms living today are covered with cillia, but the cillia aren't used for locomotion. In fact, many echinoderms are completely sedentary. The cillia are there to help filter food from the water.

The term intracellular transport system is very vague. You cannot even replicate DNA or RNA without having some type of intracellular transport system. But even the simplest unicellular bacteria have such transport systems. To think that they could not evolve from basic, nucleotide transports into transporting larger, more complex molecules requires no great leap.

 

IMHO, at rhe beginning of all science classes, the professors should say something like this.

"In this class we are going to study <biology> via the scientific method. The discoveries made by great scientists will be examined, and in our lab section we will seek to reproduce their findings. Laws and principles will be studied and their veracity checked in the laboratory as much as is possible given our resources at this institution. This is a science class, ladies and gentlemen. In it we will not be attempting to either prove or refute the existence of any higher power. We will be working off of human observations and measurements only. Such observations and measurements will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of such a being, and we are not going to waste valuable class time discussing it. If you want to talk about God -- either for or against -- go to a philosophy, religion, or sociology class. For now, open your books to chapter 1."

I'm a believer in God. I believe that he created all things. I do not claim to know how he did it. I do believe that he gave me a brain that he expects me to use to understand his wonderful creation. I don't think that requires theological discussions in science classes. I took high school biology, chem and physics classes. God was never mentioned. It didn't hurt me or my faith at all.

 

Nor, I'm sure, do most ecologists have much more than a basic grasp of cellular biology or biochemistry, yet the theory of evolution is still applied to these fields. Anyway, your claim is an arguement of ignorance: i.e. that I don't know that this guy properly understands the theory, so I'll discount his claim against it.

Yes, I realize that both cillia and flagella have other purposes, and I even know that cillia can serve multiple functions without alteration (not sure if you're talking about the exact same flagella or a modified version). The question isn't resolved, though. Can you get from the previous functional system to this functional system in one jump?

LKD, I'd like to agree with you entirely, but the issue is more complex than that. Much of science today has become entrenched in the materialistic assumption, to the point that scientists who question it even outside of scholarly work are criticized. On top of that, in many cases, the legitimate criticisms of evolution have been discarded or only 'explained away' by some of the most bizzare leaps of faith science has ever seen, and these actions are vehemently defended by their supporters, moreso than a scientific theory should be. I'm not arguing 'God is the Answer' should be taught in schools, but rather that some scientific ideas have become disturbingly close to a religion.

 

I don't understand what you're asking. Most people when talking about cillia or flagella talk about the kind that has a little motor mechanism attaching it to the cell wall or membrane that allows it to move or rotate allowing the organism to move, which is stated to be irreducibly complex. I pointed out that there are other organisms with cillia that don't have motors attached, thus showing that a less complex version exists. Cillia for filtering food are not even complex, so it's senseless to argue that they are irreducibly complex. They're basically just polymer chains of molecules.

I also don't see why you need to necessarily jump from point A to point B in one jump. Help me out here, as I'm obviously not getting something.

 

As I understand it, the 'motor' of the cillia is also the linker between the two parts. Is this replaced with a non-motive linker in these cillia?

There are two options:
1.) The jump is made all in one go. Here, natural selection would support and preserve the new form because it is profitable. Unfortunately, the nature of mutation substantially limits what this can functionally be.
2.) The jump is made in a multitude of steps. Here, small mutations gradually alter one thing into another. The problem with this is that survival of the fittest would not preserve a non-functional system. This means that each intermediate would have to be independantly functional.

Put the two together and you only get mutations that lead to a functional mechanism. That means each jump between one functional mechanism and the next has to be made in one go.

 

Here you go, NOG. Dawkin may be an arrogant sod, but when it comes to evolutionary biology, the guy knows his stuff. His book, Climbing Mount Improbable, is more or less exactly on the subject you are talking about. It's always interesting to read the opposite sides of an argument.