AcademicFreedomBlog

I’ll get back to the Baloney Debate, but I want to mention an interesting
article that appeared in Forbes this week. Dr. Phillip Skell, member of the
National Academy of Science, wrote a commentary responding to criticism of
Darwin criticism. His commentary is entitled "The
Dangers of Overselling Evolution." After a full and fruitful career in
biology and chemistry, Dr. Skell does not take a stand on whether Darwin’s
theory is true or false (even to NOT stand firmly for it is itself
controversial), but he does say that he finds in the theory no utility. His
investigation of 100 years of biology Nobel Prize winners found none whose
discoveries depend on Darwin’s theory of evolution, nor even any that built in
any way upon the theory in developing their findings. So why would scientists
organize a
petition to prevent open discussion on the issue of Darwinism? One can
have scientific reasons for choosing one’s own belief system, but whatever their
reasons for suppressing the free thought of others, they are not scientific.

[You will find reference to Christmas in the correspondence below. This speaks of the vintage of this dialogue, not our sanity.]
Don

In your last message you wrote: “Sometimes evidence may be for one theory AND for another. For example, similarities between body parts in one vertebrate and those in another supports the idea that they may had a common ancestor, because they could have been passed on to both from a common ancestor. On the other hand it is evidence for design, because the parts may have similarities due to a common designer. On the other hand, the human eye is strikingly similar to that of the octopus, but no one argues for their common decent, because of their distinct body plans (something that is there). The conclusion is that similar parts do not necessarily support common origin, but this has no implications against design theory. You can say this is evidence for design, or you can say it is against evolution, depending on your frame of reference. In either case I believe it fits your definition of positive evidence, because it is about what is there, not what is not there.”

This last sentence bespeaks a serious misunderstanding of what constitutes scientific evidence. When you previously wrote “I merely argued that design was the better explanation of the two for the evidence. I am not trying to disprove evolution; I am trying to demonstrate that ID has a legitimate (scientific) place in the discussion of origins”, you demonstrated that misunderstanding again. So here’s a simple question that should allow you to understand the nature of your problem. And we’ll use the Cambrian “explosion”, since you brought it up and presumably must think that it offers a chance for providing positive evidence for design.

Re the Cambrian “explosion”, please tell me* one testable scientific hypothesis*, derived from whatever “design” paradigm you prefer, that would lead to *an outcome unique to your position*. By that I mean that the experiment, if it supports the hypothesis, would generate new observations that are explained by the framework of your paradigm, but cannot be explained within the framework of evolutionary theory.

All I’m asking for is *one *testable scientific hypothesis from the framework of ID/creationism, that will help me understand why you think that this framework is a valid explanation for the observations you cited in your previous message. If you can do that, you will have provided positive evidence for design. If you can’t (and no ID/creationist has been able to do it yet), you will hopefully begin to understand why competent scientists with expertise in the appropriate fields consider ID/creationism to be scientifically vacuous. You should even begin to understand that all of your arguments are negative, and provide no positive support for your preferred paradigm.

Merry Christmas

Dave

Dave,
Again I will take two tacks on our dialog: One is an attempt to address an argument of yours (prediction), and one refocuses on what I find to be a less than satisfactory response to my argument (probability). I will take the latter first.
Probability. Declaring “gobbledygook” and “strawman” without explaining why you think so is not a satisfactory response to an argument. I was prepared to retract my comments about evolutionists ignoring probability when I checked on your Panda’s Thumb site, but found it to be merely an attack on Phillip Johnson’s writing ability. It had nothing to do with probability.
This points to one reason I don’t want to refer to the arguments of others to answer our questions. References to research and factual data is valuable. Referring to the arguments of others (without restating them as one’s own) raises all kinds of unknowable history and extraneous paths. Besides we have something most text responses don’t have, and that is a one-to-one, back-and-forth accountability for the arguments (a real dialog). I find our dialog stimulating, challenging me to think through and clarify my own position. I hope the same is true for you.
Starting from monomers instead of atoms, both of which do occur in nature, may be a step toward improving the odds. If you mean hydrocarbons, fine; if you mean nucleotides, they don’t occur except from organic sources or a scientist in a lab (whom I would argue is intelligent). Either way the probability of it generating a life form is about as much as starting from bricks instead of dirt to explain a house.
You have added “contingency” to your evolution equation. By that I assume you mean some form of constraint on probable options, such as a covarion-covariotide model. It proposes that only certain portions of a gene are subject to mutation and thus change. A random constraint on probabilities does not improve the probabilities, because the ratio of useful to harmful probabilities remains the same. If it is a biological mechanism that guides the option choice, something not yet found, then you have an arguably Lamarckian mechanism, which needs a bigger explanation. Evolution’s options remain a) chance with incredibly small probability, b) Lamarckian guided evolution (which begs a designer), or c) no generation of new information at all. Chance is certainly no more capable of telling us who, where, when, or how than is ID.
As for prediction, creationists can boast Nicolaus Steno, who developed today’s principles of geology, based on sedimentation from flood waters; and William Smith who predicted the location of coal seams for English mining companies. (Now don’t get hung up on whether there was a world-wide flood. The point is that these creationist models were and are predictive.) Then we must include Louis Pasteur, who’s convictions on the origins of life from his understanding of the Bible led him to develop experiments to refute spontaneous generation. History is replete with scientists who made later-substantiated predictions based on a design inference. Today you might consider the proposition of Astrophysicist Hugh Ross that physical life is only possible by an incredible number of constants and ratios that exist in the universe, most of which, if not all, have no known reason for their “settings,” other than their requirement for life. His website boasted 93 last time I checked, but the list has grown over the years since his prediction that there would be more. (Here you have someone with whom creationists strongly disagree, but his ID model predicts with results.) There is also the hypothesis of Gornzalez and Richards that the universe is designed to encourage discovery of its laws. As you know, their predictions led to findings published in the Privileged Planet. If you can refute any of these examples without attacking the character of the scientist, feel free. (I take attacking character as a sure sign that the objector has nothing to say on the real issue.) If you wish to offer any predictions that evolution makes that design doesn’t explain equally well, I’m open.
My all-time favorite evidence is observational. It is language. There are 6 to 7 thousand living languages, depending on who’s counting, 200 of which have internally-developed written forms, and 4000 of which have written language by intervention (computer-assisted Bible translators). Each contains a logic, a grammar, symbols with implications (meaning) based on composition, and the compositions are limitless. In no case, living or extinct, is there a known language that was not developed by intelligence. DNA is a written language. It too, contains a logic, a grammar, each character has specific meaning that depends on its composition, and the compositions are limitless. All our experiences tell us that pure chance produces only disorder (for example, glass) or eventually result in equal dispersion (for example, air). Pure rules produce only side-by-side repetition (for example, crystals). A combination of rules and randomness always produces chaos (fractals), which left to its own eventually leads to a recognizable, repeating pattern within itself. Only intelligence produces non-repeating order of any kind. The above principles are how we know when we discover an extinct written language instead of random marks on a rock. Which then holds the greater evidence for intelligence—DNA or the Rosetta Stone?
Now I’ll make a prediction: The universe has rules (laws of physics), and it is observed not to be a crystal. The only options remaining are therefore fractal structure or intelligent design. The atom is not the same structure as any molecule made of atoms, even though molecules have order. The earth is not the same order as the solar system, but it is ordered; the solar system is not the same order as our galaxy, but it too has order. The Milky Way is not organized the same as the galactic groupings, but the groupings seem to be in a consistent arrangement on that level, and the galactic groupings seem to be in a string or soap bubble arrangement. I predict that if another level of order is found beyond the soap bubbles, it will not be a repetition of any of the previous levels of order. What then should I conclude about the who, what, when, and how of the universe’s structure?
Don Mc

[Don]
“In the first few sentences of your last email, and throughout, you present all evidence as either for or against evolution. You are not accepting evidence as possibly being for or against any other position. Therefore, if you see evidence supporting evolution, then it is positive evidence; if it does not support evolution, then it is negative evidence. You cannot see positive evidence for design, as long as you look only from the position of Darwinian evolution. My argument to you about design in the Cambrian Explosion was not presented as negative evidence for design. That there are no interim forms in one layer (a negative observation) is only part of the argument. That there is fantastic order in the immediate next (a positive observation) is the other part. Together they are evidence. One without the other is meaningless. Also, notice that in my argument I did not say that the evidence negates or even counters evolutionary theory. I merely argued that design was the better explanation of the two for the evidence. I am not trying to disprove evolution; I am trying to demonstrate that ID has a legitimate (scientific) place in the discussion of origins.”

I’ll keep coming back to this until it seems to be understood. Design, as an explanation, has one very big disadvantage over evolution. Design has no *mechanism*. You cannot tell me HOW, even on a theoretical level, a designer generated the events that led to the observations that you are citing. Evolutionary theory has a mechanism, and that mechanism is consistent with natural observations. In addition, BECAUSE it has a mechanism, it is predictive. We can generate predictive hypotheses and test them. You can generate nothing of the sort.

So evolutionary theory has both explanatory power and predictive power. Lacking a mechanism means that design has neither. You can look at the observations and claim that they are “evidence” for design. But you could look at ANY observations and claim the same thing. If you don’t think that is the case, *please give me some observations that are incompatible with the design explanation*.

“As for a mechanism: In the equation “chance plus natural selection,” “natural selection” is only an eliminating factor, a filter, a terminator. All generative power must be in “chance.” Your response to my comments on nylonase was to say, actually to my surprise, that you believe change plus natural selection actually is a sufficient mechanism to explain the existence of life in its many forms. This implies to me that you do not see any reason to continue to investigate cause-and-effect for this molecule, that this molecule of thousands of atoms just happened by chance. Worse still, that a DNA pattern happened by chance that happened to work for giving instruction to produce just the right molecule to work in this specified new environment. That is not consistent with the scientific curiosity needed to drive discovery of new knowledge. It is however consistent with the reductionism that divorces one field of knowledge from another. It is consistent with not recognizing mathematics as having any bearing on other forms of science.”

This is, I’m sorry to say, gobbledygook as well as a veritable forest of strawman arguments. I am not saying, and no reputable biologist has ever said, that nylonase or any biomolecule “just happened by chance”. Chance plus selection plus contingency explains nylonase perfectly well.* I seem to have missed the design explanation for that observation*, and what predictions could be made from that design explanation. Do you have an explanation? Does it have a mechanism? No? Well, then please quit trying to explain away the perfectly good evolutionary explanation with strawman arguments and irrelevancies.

“Just as a person can mentally disassociate science and philosophy, so evolutionists seem to disassociate chance and probability. A probability of .05 (one in 20) is considered robust among data across the sciences, but never applied to the probability of chance resulting in a desirable molecule. Discovering that organic molecules are produced exclusively by an independent set of molecular instructions has only made the probability more remote. The mathematic improbability of evolution by chance was clearly pointed out at the Wistar Institute conference of1966, and has been ignored by evolutionists ever since.”

Again, simple strawman arguments. IF you make bad assumptions you can make the math do anything. One bad assumption is that the biomolecules must be generated randomly from monomers; calculating probabilities from that bad assumption could indeed lead to the mistaken conclusion that evolution is impossible. Ignoring contingency is another bad assumption; the “search space” for evolution is significantly smaller than Dembski and others would like to admit. Garbage in = garbage out, as the engineers say. The probabilities are adequate, and that has been proven by mathematicians who are not biased by a conclusion-first approach to the problem. So no, it is simply incorrect to say that the mathematic improbability is too low. It is simply incorrect to characterize it as “evolution by chance”. And it is simply incorrect to say that it has been ignored by “evolutionists” ever since. See http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/02/fisking-dembski-1.html for just one recent example, and pay attention to the bad assumptions that are revealed to be behind Dembksi’s bad conclusions.

It is also interesting, again, to note that this negative argument moves you not one nanometer closer to evidence FOR design. So despite your protestations above, you return again and again to arguing against evolution, without ever giving evidence that your preferred notions can explain anything.

So I’ll sum up with this plea, again. If design is to be accepted as a better explanation, it needs new evidence. That evidence should consist of an explanation for some observations that can compete with evolutionary theory with regard to both explanatory power (mechanism) and predictive power (again dependent on the discovery of a mechanism). Ideally the predictive power should lead to some experiments that have been done, and where the new observations are inconsistent with evolutionary theory and are derived from design principles. Since no one has identified these design principles (who, where, when, how?), that evidence has not been forthcoming in your comments so far.

Mark

I hate to interrupt our Baloney dialog, but I can’t let this one go by unaddressed:
I am referring to Jerry A. Coyne’s thoughts in his February 4 article in The New Republic, “Seeing and Believing.” He so well illustrates the bias that he claims not to have. To begin, I must agree with his premise—Darwinism and belief in God are not compatible. I love the way he puts it in the fifth paragraph: Sure, “both attitudes can be simultaneously embraced by a single human mind. (It is like saying that marriage and adultery are compatible because some married people are adulterers.)”
He is also probably right that the many scientists who will be celebrating and speaking on “Darwin Day” “will be speaking more to other scientists than to the American public.” (I find his statistics refreshing.) Where he misses the boat, however, is in a balanced view of the issue. In his second paragraph he lets his bias show: “On one side we have a scientific establishment and a court system determined to let children learn evolution rather than religious mythology, and on the other side the many Americans who passionately resist those efforts.” There is little more frustrating to me than a half truth. Yes, on one side is the bulk of scientists along with a determined court system. (I would have said a predetermined court system.) And on the other is the American people. But then how does he describe their positions? The Americans stand with religious mythology while the scientists and courts stand with letting children learn.
It really doesn’t take much investigation to reveal that most ID proponents advocate more exposure to evolution for children (meaning pros AND cons), while most evolutionists seek the status quo (can we call them conservatives?) of only exposure to supporting arguments and evidence.
As for the religious mythology part, consider the majority of Coyne’s article, dedicated to describing the evolution of Creationism. Again he is right in how Creationists have cleaned up their act and gotten down to scientific approaches instead of just pointing to their Bibles. He is right that judgments on laws and school board decisions have made them go back to the drawing board for more acceptable approaches. But he is wrong in assuming that there is no true science behind their arguments and he is wrong in conflating creationism and ID. Let me take those one at a time.
If science is truly non-theistic, it should not matter what paradigm the theorist holds. If a theorist holds that there is written revelation from God, or that there is the possibility of an undefined designer, or a spaghetti monster, or that nothing exists but mater and energy, so what? What should matter is if there is observable evidence to support testable hypotheses. And the determination of whether an hypothesis is testable should have nothing to do with credence the observer places in the theory. The evidence is there or not there (observation), and it does or does not support the theory (construct validity). This should be the test of inclusion as science.
And placing ID and creation into the same bucket, just because they oppose the same explanation of the observable universe, is only done by selective fact-gathering. The evidence presented in Coyne’s article is the slight changes in Creationist approaches to the law and courts. Then he leaps to made Behe’s views on change to be an evolutionary step in creationism. He can’t imagine two separate paradigms that question Darwinism, much less the reality—that ID is not a single belief system. A wide variety of faiths and lacks there of are behind those who are open minded enough to look at design evidence.
If ID is traced to any unifying thought, it is a vacation taken by a Berkley law professor who sought an intellectual diversion from his usual focus. Phillip Johnson picked up a stack of books on evolution simply to learn. What he discovered was an appalling dearth of factual support, which as a lawyer he found unacceptable. If anything, ID is the child of Darwinism. How could the author miss this? Doesn’t it speak for the possibility of this happening among other scientists? Is it too far fetched that other evolutionists have created other evolutionary trees to support pre-conceived notions of common origin that don’t really represent the total package of evidence?
Looking at the present, concluding what you want to believe, then searching the past for only the facts that support your view is not science. It’s not history. It’s a “just-so” story befitting of Rudyard Kipling.
But don’t we all tend to do that? Include myself. That’s why it is important for the sake of science to allow all biases to the table, not just those who from the beginning will not consider the possibility of a designer.