Evolution Thread - Part XVIII - specifically: Intelligent Design ...

Remove all ads!

I stumbled over this lecture by Dr. Ken Miller, a Roman Catholic professor of biology at Brown University, taking on Intelligent Design (ID) as a political phenomenon. He addresses two key objections of ID: the paucity of intermediate organisms in the fossil record and, more importantly, Michael Behe’s theory of irreducible complexity.

​

I personally don't care about ID but I thought that NOG in particular might be interested (or Gnarff if he is still lurking).

 

My only question is did you really watch a Youtube video that was almost two hours long?

 

Yes, actually. While doing my laundry.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of time on my hands. Dragon Age has it all.

I think we beat Behe's theory to death in the last thread (literally). As for the other topic, while the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record is both real and distinct (to the point that evolutionists are trying to come up with new theories to explain sudden and periodic change), there are also valid explanations. When Darwin wrote his theory, the science of paleontology was young and new. No doubt he envisioned the layers of the Earth chalk full of a consistent line of fossils, a real fossil record. Instead, the 'fossil record' is vastly piecemeal and empty. After 150 years of development, we still don't have any fossils from some pretty large stretches of time, even in the geological sense. In the others, we have fossils of a few species, or maybe even hundreds of them, but nothing even close to what a full ecosystem should look like (as we imagine it at least), and a full skeleton is a vast rarity at best (in fact, I don't know of any, but that's not to say there aren't any). This 'fossil record' has more in common with the bullets found on Petersburg National Battlefield than they do with any real record. Paleontologists today are trying to piece together a story played out millions to hundreds of millions of years ago off of a handful of degraded still photos, in essence. Don't get me wrong, it's an admirable profession and, in general, they've done an admirable job (with a few glaring exceptions), but Darwin's expectations, and that of anyone looking to them for hard proof or disproof of evolution, is sadly misplaced. If there were a trial today, and paleontology played the key role, no matter who was accusing who, the result would most likely be 'not guilty due to reasonable doubt'.

 

In the video they refer to a trial in which the verdict was indeed the complete opposite. I found the video to be quite good. The second hour is Q&A which I did not bother with. It was good piece to watch/listen to while I was cooking.

 

I don't have two hours either. What are the main points?

 

Wait, what?

 

Evolutionist: a scientists specializing in evolutionary theory. Would you prefer evolutionary biologist? Except that we're talking more about paleontology here. Maybe an evolutionary paleontologist? Except that those are both '-ists', too. I presume that's what you were objecting to? I don't know why. None of the other fields do. Well, except for astronomy, but that's a whole different story.

 

Harbourboy,
he refutes the two points, carefully and compellingly. Since there probably are adherents of Intelligent Design around here, that would interest them.

Hello NOG

Personally, I think that there is no need to waste time and effort on building a construct like Intelligent Design. Christian faith does not compel belief in creationism as literalist Protestants define it.

Anti-Evolutionists have gone to great lengths to in order to create the construct of Intelligent Design. It is formulated deliberately to cast doubt on science and to be persuasive. It takes time to methodically dissect that. That accounts for the length of the video.

Professor Ken Miller in this video is an educator in the best sense of the word. A video by professor Richard Dawkins would as factually correct and perhaps more entertaining, but since he is abrasive and scornful towards Deists, he would be less persuasive. This professor takes religious people seriously. Maybe it has to do with the motto of Brown University? In deo speramus.

 

He talks about the different strategies that intelligent design advocates use to promote their views and get it into classrooms in America as well as the legal and political processes involved. What I found most amazing is how much power individual school boards apparently have in America and how its composition is so critical.

He also talks about a few trials where the merits of intelligent design have been measured and the outcome has chiefly been that it's not fit for science education, even when the judges themselves have been quite conservative.

Lastly he discusses the main points of intelligent design and explains why its chief arguments are flawed and why exactly it's not fit to be called science.

 

For those with limited amounts of time: I have two screens, and I have it running on the left screen while I play Diablo II (easy, since that game isn't that great on dialogues).

 

Here, we agree entirely.

 

Every time I wonder whether evolution would be possible, I just look at how a wolf has been transformed into a Great Dane and a Chihuahua in just a few thousand years, and I realise what sort of changes would possible over hundreds of millions of years.

 

HB, that doesn't take a few thousand years. There was a good study I saw a few years ago about domesticating foxes. They took a number of wild foxes captured as cubs and progressively bred them for prolonged 'puppy personality' (psychologically speaking, domestic dogs never mature). In five generations, not only did they essentially have dog personalities, they saw all the same coat patterns and a number of similar body shapes (ears, skulls, hair length, etc). It's all there genetically already, its just that the wild animals that manifest a few of those characteristics generally die off because they aren't competitive. The genes stay in the mix, though.

 

NOG,
indeed, dogs are bred. There is human intervention. Selective breeding can create quick change over a relatively short time.

And then, evolution can go very fast. Nylon was first synthesized in 1935. A bacteria was discovered that already has developed an enzyme to break down Nylon, that eats Nylon. That's some 75 years time.

 

False.

 

I struggle to understand why this topic gets such heated political attention, especially in the USA.

 

Harbourboy,
simple: Because ...

• ... there is a significant percentage of Literalist Protestants in the US. Meaning that to them the inerrant Bible is literally true, and the book of Genesis describes how God created earth. In a nutshell: Since the Bible is right, Darwin and evolution must be false.
  .
• ... Republican politicians (thesis: are forced to? as a result of the idiotic primary process?) cater to this part of their base, at the expense of alienating science friendly and libertarian conservatives. To get the idea how that looks in practice ...
  .
• ... there is a generation of home-schooled conservatives coming of age (think of the Regent university Alumini serving in the Bush 43 administration), starting to enter politics themselves. Some see themselves as 'spiritual warriors' against the demonic forces of 'pluralist secularism'. Creationism is just one of a couple peculiar ideas these people tend to have. These people will 'live it' and eliminate the need to be catered to. If you look for the scariest stereotype, think Michelle Bachmann.

 

Care to elaborate? Why do you believe which part of that is false?

• 
  This is the real driving force. That the other two are issues at all is only as a result of this one. Too many Christians (and it's not just Protestants, just mainly Protestants) have embraced the Religion-vs-Science false dichotomy. This isn't only a problem of the Religion side of the arguement, it's just a more obvious problem for them.

 

I believe that it's false to claim that all the varying traits observed in dog breeds was 'all there genetically' in their common ancestor (the wolf).