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New posts by emailExtract: ‘Intelligent design’
From the chapter ‘Nature’
In August 2005, George W. Bush gave his official imprimatur to another cooked-up ‘controversy’, which centred on the teaching of biology in US high schools. It represented a miraculous victory for those who opposed the science of evolution, and who now called their alternative scheme ‘intelligent design’ (ID). The idea behind ID, familiar from the mid-nineteenth-century arguments over Darwin, was that some biological structures were so complex that they could not have occurred through evolutionary processes, and must instead have been ‘designed’ by an ‘intelligence’. This kind of argument used to go by the name of ‘natural theology’. Its most famous early exponent was the theologian William Paley, who argued in this way: if we see a watch, we infer the existence of a watchmaker; so when we see complex life, we should infer the existence of a God.
ID kept the same creationist argument, but changed the angle of attack by substituting vocabulary. Gone was any explicit mention of theology or God, replaced by the usefully vague ‘intelligent’. That adjective also had a secondary use: when one hears the phrase ‘intelligent design theorists’, it is perhaps tempting to understand ‘intelligent’ as referring to the theorists themselves, as well as to the design. By contrast, IDers tended to refer to their opponents – that is, biologists – as ‘neo-Darwinists’, as though scientists around the world were desperately clinging on to an old and unfashionable idea. This appellation handily ignored the existence of the twentieth-century revolution in the genetic understanding of evolution, and also imputed to scientists an idolatrous reliance on one man, Darwin, as though he were the false god of an ‘evolutionist’ religion.
The phrase ‘intelligent design’ itself was first popularised in a notorious 1987 American biology textbook called Of Pandas and People, earlier drafts of which had referred approvingly instead to ‘creationism’ and ‘creationists’ before the new jargon was simply dropped in. The term was quickly adopted by religious sympathisers, and gradually gained traction through the 1990s. Its cheerleaders creatively employed many tricks of language-twisting and code-phrases to gain ever more publicity for their cause, culminating in two major trials in 2005, in Kansas and Pennsylvania, that hinged on the question of whether ID should be taught alongside evolutionary theory in high-school biology classes.
When addressing audiences of fellow believers, proponents of ID were quite frank about their motivations. ‘Intelligent design’ was engineered as a weapon in the war between Christianity and godlessness. The famous 1999 ‘Wedge Document’ that was leaked from the carefully named pro-ID organisation, the Discovery Institute, set it out explicitly. ‘Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.’ One of ID’s founders, Phillip Johnson, expressed the essentially religious nature of the concept thus: ‘There’s a difference of opinion about how important this debate is. What I always say is that it’s not just scientific theory. The question is best understood as: Is God real or imaginary?’ Another ID advocate, William Dembski, wrote: ‘Any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.’ ID’s proponents were motivated to criticise evolution not for its scientific content, but because they believed the view of life as having arisen from natural processes robbed the world of meaning. ‘Intelligent design theory’ would rectify this catastrophe by basing school discussions of biology firmly on Christian principles.
However, there was the pesky obstacle of the US Constitution to contend with, particularly the Establishment Clause that prohibited the government from promoting religion, and which had led the Supreme Court to strike down previous attempts at teaching creationism in science classes. ID’s novel approach to this problem was to deny that it was religious, and instead to claim for itself the status of science, so that it should be taught alongside evolutionary biology.
ID’s claim to be science was implicit in its self-description as a ‘theory’. In the parlance of science, a ‘theory’ is not just a casual guess, but a well-established understanding that accords with the present evidence and reliably explains or predicts features of the natural world. On the other hand, IDers regularly referred to evolution as ‘just a theory’, appealing to the ordinary-language sense of ‘theory’ as meaning a mere guess: in this way, you might have a theory about why your friend acted the way she did last Thursday; or you might even sarcastically deride another friend’s opinion by saying ‘That’s just your theory’. So ID carefully worked the same word in two directions: appropriating the technical sense of ‘theory’ for itself, and demoting it to the casual sense for the enemy.
Evolution makes predictions – for example, about what kinds of fossils should be expected to be found at different strata of rock, including intermediary forms such as the winged dinosaur archaeopteryx; or about the results of genetic experiments in the laboratory, including the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria – and they are repeatedly confirmed by observation. Evolution also has majestic explanatory force, in accounting for the features of current life on the planet. It can inspire awe; but IDers felt that awe was their turf. So for ID, evolution was ‘just a theory’. ‘Intelligent design’, on the other hand, was purportedly a ‘theory’ in the sense of a robust, scientific theory, and yet, weirdly, it did not do much explaining or predicting. Officially, for example, it did not hold even a view as to who the mysterious designer was. All of its proponents believed that the designer was the Christian God, but since to admit this would be to admit that ID was disguised religion, and so unfit to be taught in science lessons, they preferred to leave the official theory vague.
Michael Behe, author of one of the celebrated ur-texts of popular ID, Darwin’s Black Box, was asked to confirm this at the Dover Area School District trial in Pennsylvania during October and November 2005, where a group of parents were suing to overturn the district’s decision to use the ID bible, Of Pandas and People, in biology class. Their counsel, Eric J. Rothschild, asked Behe: ‘You believe [the designer is] God, but it’s not part of your scientific argument?’ Behe responded: ‘That’s correct.’ In other words, ID as a ‘theory’ observed some biological feature and said: this must have been designed, but we have no idea who designed it, and we are not even interested in finding out. Actually, they were certain they knew.
As well as pretending ignorance as to the identity of the designer, ID also had nothing to say about how the purported design actually happened. What were the physical mechanisms by which the designer fiddled with molecules so as to produce his desired animals? ID offered no answers, not even any hypotheses. In Dover, Michael Behe defended this odd reticence by comparing it to astrophysics. Rothschild asked Behe to confirm the statement that ‘intelligent design does not describe how the design occurred.’ Behe responded: ‘That’s correct, just like the Big Bang theory does not describe what caused the Big Bang.’ The comparison was vastly erroneous. Big Bang theory describes what caused the universe as it appears to us now, offers a massively detailed description of what happened during the Big Bang itself, and does indeed have ideas about what caused it.
As it happens, the theory of the Big Bang was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, who wrote that his idea remained ‘entirely outside of any metaphysical or religious question’. The Vatican, indeed, officially took the view that God was the ‘cause of causes’, setting the universe in motion to operate according to natural laws, and that religion was therefore compatible with robust scientific theories, including evolution. The fundamentalists of ID, on the other hand, hated what they saw as the ideological consequences of evolution too much to adopt such a view. Yet their competing ‘theory’ of ‘intelligent design’ was completely silent on what happened during the hypothesised design, or even when it happened. It just must have happened, right? Don’t ask me how.
In general, for a ‘scientific theory’, ID was curiously reluctant to answer scientific questions. Why did, for example, the mysterious Intelligent Designer give vertebrates, including humans, a flawed eye with a blind spot, but bless the humble squid with a different type of eye that suffered no such problem? ID studiously avoided the question. Why did the Intelligent Designer give humans an organ, the appendix, which resembles a withered version of that for digesting plant matter in other animals but serves no function in people except occasionally to poison them? What principle of intelligent design causes five-month-old human foetuses to grow a thin coat of fur all over their bodies while still in the womb, where it was not cold, and then lose it before they were born into the world, where it might well be cold? Don’t ask.
ID’s strategy was instead to focus on unanswered problems. As with any scientific field, areas of evolutionary biology are incompletely understood. To scientists, these areas suggested new research, experiments and hypotheses. To IDers, they represented a chance to claim that these questions would never be answered by science. We cannot currently explain how this part of a bacterium evolved, they would reason, so it must have been created by an intelligent entity. This type of argument had for centuries been known as the ‘God of the gaps’. It is easy to do: you simply find a gap in current understanding and claim that it can only be filled by positing God.
Modern IDers used exactly the same idea, only now dressed up in pseudo-scientific terminology. William Dembski coined the phrase ‘complex specified information’, to denote information – such as that encoded by the human genome – that in his view could in principle not have come about through natural causes. (Sometimes he described it as ‘souped-up information’, though the flavour of the soup remained obscure.) Michael Behe, meanwhile, promoted the notion of ‘irreducible complexity’, according to which some biological systems could not in principle have evolved, since if you remove any one part they no longer work. Both phrases amount to the logical fallacy of proof by definition. I make up a technical-sounding phrase that really means ‘designed’. I say that some biological feature can be described by this phrase, and then try to argue that therefore, that feature must have been designed. But this is only an illusion of logic: the inference follows directly from the way I have carefully stacked the linguistic decks. In fact, in their a priori ruling-out of scientific explanation, the phrases ‘complex specified information’ and ‘irreducibly complex’ are both just rhetorical appeals to ignorance.
In Behe’s case, this was dramatically illustrated during the Dover trial. One of his favoured examples of ‘irreducible complexity’ at the time was the immune system of vertebrate animals, so Eric J. Rothschild stacked in front of Behe a pile of books he had previously lent him, that Rothschild claimed represented the leading research into the topic, with titles such as Evolution of Immune Reactions, Origin and Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System, The Natural History of the Major Histocompatibility Complex, and so on. Behe had not read any of them. ‘I am quite skeptical,’ he opined, ‘although I haven’t read them, that in fact they present detailed rigorous models for the evolution of the immune system by random mutation and natural selection.’ Rothschild was incredulous. ‘You haven’t read the books that I gave you?’ he asked. ‘No,’ Behe replied. ‘I haven’t.’ Apparently, it is not necessary to know everything the enemy thinks. It suffices to insist that whatever they think must be wrong. ID’s inbuilt prejudice against any type of naturalistic explanation for its favoured talking-points, and so its inescapable religiosity, could not have been more clearly demonstrated.
Vacuous though they were, ID’s jargon-phrases of ‘complex specified information’ and ‘irreducible complexity’ did have the undeniable virtue of sounding sort-of-scientific. And in this way they could function as stealthy stalking-horses for the prime idea of ID itself. Following similarly farcical court hearings in May 2005, the Kansas State Board of Education drafted a new version of its Science Standards, which claimed in its prefatory ‘Rationale’ that it did not include ‘Intelligent Design’. However, attentive reading revealed the following passage later on: ‘Whether microevolution (change within a species) can be extrapolated to explain macroevolutionary changes (such as new complex organs or body plans and new biochemical systems which appear irreducibly complex) is controversial.’ See that little ‘irreducibly complex’ smuggled in there? That, as noted, is code. It is used by no one except proponents of ID. What it really means is ‘intelligently designed’. What is more, the terms ‘microevolution’ and ‘macroevolution’ themselves are ID fictions, expressing the strategy of accepting some parts of evolutionary science because the evidence is so overwhelming, and focusing highly selectively on a few examples. Kansas education functionaries had once again become the laughing stock of the civilised world during the trial. Perhaps it would be more politically efficient to adopt ID by stealth, using its special code-language to reassure the initiated.
It was time to conduct an experiment. I decided to test the hypothesis of ID-by-stealth, and wrote to each member of the Kansas Board. Two of the minority disagreeing with the new draft, Sue Gamble and Bill Wagnon, replied in agreement with my analysis. Of the majority who were pushing the new draft, only Kathy Martin replied. She wrote that the new Science Standards document did ‘not support or repudiate Intelligent Design’. ‘Please explain to me,’ Martin requested, ‘why “irreducibly complex” could not be used when referring to scientific data/evidence being studied by scientists.’ Once I had explained this, she responded a second time, very graciously, to wish me luck in my ‘search for truth’. On 8 November 2005, by a vote of six to four, the board approved the new standards . . .
Footnotes have been removed from online text
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Dear Steve,
Before I even heard of your book Unspeak (which I’m looking forward to reading)it hadn’t escaped my notice about the way language is used by the “Powerful” these days!
I have given this very topic a LOT of thought and there’s no doubt in my mind that the so-called Christian mind speaks with a forked tongue: it has to do with the way “Christians” are conditioned from birth, i.e., to “think” in a schizoid (disassociated) way!
Thank you for writing your book - from what I’ve read and heard so far, it is just what we need!
ME
There are plenty of Christians throughout history, as well as of my personal acquaintance, who are very powerful and subtle thinkers. My arguments in “Intelligent Design” and elsewhere in the book are in no sense anti-Christian, or anti-religion in general. They are simply opposed to dishonesty and deception, whether by certain people who call themselves Christians or by others of any or no spiritual beliefs.
i wanted to say i read your book recently and i found it really good.
my only criticism would be that you didn’t use enough arguements from the left but again since most of the propaganda’s coming from the right and those in power thats very understandable :)
imo it’s a book that everyone should read, well researched and interesting
Hello Rach,
Thanks for your comment; I’m glad you enjoyed the book.
Indeed you answer your own question: had I written Unspeak in the 1970s I would have concentrated on the rhetoric of the Carter and Callaghan governments. As it is, though I do refer to the institutionalised Unspeak of Maoist China and Soviet Russia, and to contemporary Unspeak by environmental campaigners and some anti-war commentators, the main target is Unspeak by those currently in power.
Regards,
Hi Steven, Really enjoyed the book but was curious that the American edition jacket rather less brings to the fore the ‘War on Terror’ phrase. perhaps a bit of publisher no-speak?
Always thought that ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland was a classic bit of unspeak as was the’Emergency’ the term for WW2 in the Republic (the Free State as it was then). Once again thanks for a great book.
Dear Gregory,
Thanks for your comment: I’m glad you enjoyed the book. What different publishers choose to emphasize on the jacket is a black art I don’t really understand. ;)
Dear Steve,
I really like your stuff, and I\’m going to track down a copy of Unspeak soon. I just wanted to point out something I found odd in the ID extract:
\”By contrast, IDers tended to refer to their opponents - that is, biologists - as \”neo-Darwinists\”, as though scientists around the world were desperately clinging on to an old and unfashionable idea. This appellation handily ignored the existence of the twentieth-century revolution in the genetic understanding of evolution, and also imputed to scientists an idolatrous reliance on one man, Darwin, as though he were the false god of an \”evolutionist\” religion.
\”Neo-Darwinist\” actually would accurately describe any evolutionary biologist who accepts the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis which brought together Darwin\’s natural selection with Mendelian genetics. Neo-Darwinism doesn\’t ignore modern genetics.
I think I see what you mean: that by referring to biologists in this way, it looks like \”Neo-Darwinism\” is just some motto on the (politically motivated) biologist\’s flag, different in style but not in kind to the motto \”Intelligent Design\”. Is that right?
Hi tigerbear,
Thanks for the information on the NDMS. I agree with your characterization of why IDers use the term “Neo-Darwinism”, but I will happily point out in the next edition the fact that it has a respectable scientific derivation.
Best,
Hi Steven.
You are quite right that ‘intelligent design’ is a very loaded term. It is quite interesting that by limiting their arguments to ’science only’ and removing any theology, they are unable to give answers for ‘when’ or ‘how’ this design happened (even though they may have coherent theological answers for this.) Unfortunately for ID supporters, by legitimizing the removal of any theology from science they are supporting the very thing that keeps creationism out of mainstream science; naturalism. I personally don’t think science should limit itself to naturalism, since to me it is the search for knowledge and truth, and should not be limited to naturalistic models.
I’m not sure where you got some of the material for one particular paragraph, but I think it could do with some checking (or at least an indication that answers have been provided by people for these things). I’ll try to address some of that below. I don’t necessarily agree with all these things, but for the sake of providing another side of argument I’ll say them anyway.
“Why did, for example, the mysterious Intelligent Designer give vertebrates, including humans, a flawed eye with a blind spot, but bless the humble squid with a different type of eye that suffered no such problem?”
This argument is well known from one of Richard Dawkins’ books, A Blind Watchmaker. The argument has been de-constructed and reconstructed in defence by many different people and books. Whether or not the argument has survived through this is quite difficult to discern and certainly is not as straight-forward as your writing suggests.
You are someone who understands the power of words, and this is apparent in your choice of the words ‘flawed’ and ‘bless’. Simply because the eye is wired with the nerves in front does not mean it is flawed. It may not seem logical to put the nerves in front, but just because it’s not the way you would make an eye doesn’t mean it’s flawed. There are actually a couple of good reasons why it may be better to have the nerves in front. Having the nerves in front and the receptors facing away from the incoming light limits scattered light (allowing us to see better) and blocks ultraviolet light from damaging the eye. A squid needs no protection against ultraviolet light in the water, and seeing highly scattered but brighter images is better than seeing nothing at all in such a dark environment. As for the blind spot, it has no affect on any day-to-day activities and really isn’t detrimental to us in any way.
“ID studiously avoided the question.”
Perhaps you studiously avoided looking for their answer?
“Why did the Intelligent Designer give humans an organ, the appendix, which resembles a withered version of that for digesting plant matter in other animals but serves no function in people except occasionally to poison them?”
I agree that having an organ with no function is not very good design. However, the appendix has a quite well researched function; it has nothing to do with digestion though (which is why people probably considered it to be a useless thing to attach to the digestive system). Especially important in infants, the appendix allows the immune system to access small amounts of bacteria in the intestines so it can begin to produce antibodies in readiness for possible infection. As an adult you can live without it, but it certainly serves a function in development.
“What principle of intelligent design causes five-month-old human foetuses to grow a thin coat of fur all over their bodies while still in the womb, where it was not cold, and then lose it before they were born into the world, where it might well be cold? Don’t ask.”
Why not ask? The hair isn’t lost before they are born into the world. They have at that development stage the same number of hairs that they will have at any stage of their life. All that happens is the hair follicles change between 3 different kinds of hair as development continues. The first kind, called lanugo is highly insulative, and is found on unborn or premature babies and some adults with unusually low fat levels. Without a layer of fat, a foetus needs the hair to regulate temperature even while in the womb. By the time the baby is born it has the insulative layer of fat it needs to protect it against the cold. So, since the lanugo hair is no longer needed, it is changed by the body into vellus and terminal hairs. Terminal hairs are the long, coloured kind we have on our heads (and a couple of other places), and vellus hairs are the very short colourless hairs we have covering the rest of us.
Of course, even if we did lose those hairs, it still wouldn’t be good evidence that we evolved from more hairy mammals. This is because if we lost a feature through evolution it would most likely be gone or completely disabled in our genomes. In other words, it would not appear as a feature at any stage of development. Ernst Haeckel’s idea of ‘embryonic recapitulation’ (that embryos somehow replay their evolutionary path, for example growing hair like an ape-like creature) not only has no basis in genetics, but was discredited as mostly fraudulent in the 1800s (!) and the fraudulent evidence in question is still in the slow process of being removed from text books today.
I happen to think both evolution and creationism are very reasonable theories and often the same evidence can be used to support either. I provided the other side of the story here so that you might know the other side of the story even exists. I agree that ‘intelligent design’ is an example of unspeak, but some of your arguments against it are not correct or necessary.
By the way, I enjoy your writing.
Mark.
Hello Mark,
Curiously, what you have to say bears close relation to the talking points to be found on the creationist website answersingenesis.org. My references, documented in the book, are to biologists.
On one brief point:
if we lost a feature through evolution it would most likely be gone or completely disabled in our genomes.
Incorrect. About one in 5,000 whales, for instance, grows hindlimbs. This is because of a malfunction in the genetic mechanism to suppress hindlimb development. The genes for the hindlimbs are still in the whales’ genome.
I happen to think both evolution and creationism are very reasonable theories
The first is a theory; the second isn’t, as explained above.
often the same evidence can be used to support either
No evidence supports “intelligent design”.
I provided the other side of the story here so that you might know the other side of the story even exists.
Erm, thanks, but having read through the entire transcripts of the Dover and Pennsylvania trials, and much of the writings of leading ‘ID’ crowd, I was all too aware that “the other side of the story” (or rather, the anti-story) exists. Thanks for dropping by!
Hi Steven,
Correct, some of my references did come from answersingenesis.org. The articles on that site are written or reviewed by qualified biologists, geologists, doctors, etc. Many of the resources they cite come from peer reviewed scientific journals including many evolutionary journals. I also got some of my information from Wikipedia, and a few other places.
I did not say that it would definitely be lost or completely disabled in our genomes, I said that this was the most likely case. It is quite reasonable to suggest that if evolution occurred then we would find some cases of genetic information from our lineage remaining. The reason it is not likely though is because when natural selection stops acting on those genes (for example after a suppressing gene is developed) they are not actively maintained in the gene pool.
Creationism is a theory. It makes falsifiable predictions and follows the scientific method just like any other theory; it is not naturalistic though, hence it’s exclusion from ‘modern science’. To say it is not a theory is quite uninformed.
Intelligent design is supported by a lot of evidence. In any other field of research, arguments by design are seen as completely valid and are very common. Why can an archaeologist say that an arrowhead was made by someone even if they never saw them, yet a biologist can’t suggest a designer for creation? One of the good evidences supporting intelligent design is Behe’s work. While you claim his work regarding ‘irreducible complexity’ is a rhetorical appeal to ignorance, you provide no evidence to support this. Irreducible complexity simply refers to a system that a system no longer works if you take away any one of the components. ID is often accused of being unfalsifiable, but consider this: To falsify the claim that ‘a certain system could not have been formed in steps’ you only need to demonstrate a process that can do that without a designer. On the other hand, to prove that evolution didn’t produce the system would require an infinite number of trials to see if it was possible (not falsifiable).
No arguments by design require that the designer be known. ID no more has to answer the question ‘ok so who/where is the designer?’ than evolution has to answer ‘where did I put my keys yesterday?’ in order to be a valid theory. You said “[ID] had nothing to say about how the purported design actually happened”. Behe was correct in pointing out that it’s irrelevant. Of course, if you insist that it is relevant, I should point out that evolution has nothing worthwhile to say about how the purported first life form happened by chance. There are simply no solid answers yet in evolutionary literature, to the point that a few respected evolutionists have examined the odds of life occurring here by chance and decided aliens must have put the first life here instead!. Creationists are accused of invoking ‘God of the gaps’ while evolutionists happily invoke ‘evolution of the gaps’ (we have no idea how it happened but evolution did it for sure).
If you know the other side of the story exists, then to continue to present ID as though it provides no answers to your questions in your book is intellectually dishonest.
You can believe whatever you want to believe and interpret evidence however you want, but I suggest in any future editions of your book you mention that ID does have answers for some of those questions (even if they are unsatisfactory to you), and remove things like saying the appendix is useless/vestigial (which is simply a factual error).
Thanks for replying,
Mark.
Creationism is a theory. It makes falsifiable predictions
No it doesn’t. Even Michael Behe was forced to admit, that under the loose definition of “theory” he applied to “Intelligent Design”, astrology would qualify as a theory too.
To falsify the claim that ‘a certain system could not have been formed in steps’ you only need to demonstrate a process that can do that without a designer.
Which has been done for every one of Behe’s examples of supposed “irreducible complexity”, as I go on to show in the book.
On the other hand, to prove that evolution didn’t produce the system would require an infinite number of trials to see if it was possible (not falsifiable).
It’s very easy to falsify evolution. Just bring me a fossilized rabbit found in a billion-year-old stratum of rock.
ID does have answers for some of those questions
No, old-style creationism has much-rebutted “answers” of the kind you regurgitate, but the leading “Intelligent Design theorists” do not mention them, probably because even they know they are bogus.
remove things like saying the appendix is useless/vestigial (which is simply a factual error).
I won’t, because it isn’t:
The anti-evolutionary literature is citing reputable biologists on this issue. You should look at the wording carefully on talkorigins.org; note how they put in ‘as a separate organ’, which is slightly misleading when considering the appendix may not be a separate organ. Here are two medical texts providing evidence that the appendix is not vestigial (taken from an article on answersingenesis.org):
Henry L. Bockus, M.D., Gastroenterology, 2:1134–1148 (chapter ‘The Appendix’ by Gordon McHardy), W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, Pennslyvania, 1976
Frederic H. Martini, Ph.D., Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology, p. 916, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1995.
Of course, this is just evidence, and there is also evidence to suggest that people without their appendixes have equivalent immune function to those that do (which can suggest that it has no function, though it is possible the body can compensate as it does with other missing structures). So, while there remains some dispute about the purpose or lack thereof of the appendix, it is most certainly not as clear-cut as either the evolutionists or creationists make it sound. There is some information about the different possible uses of the appendix and evidences on Wikipedia.
However much you try to obfuscate the issue with unverified appeals to the same two texts always cited by creationists, the consensus of meta-studies of all the currently available evidence is that the appendix is a vestigial version of an organ that digests cellulose in other animals, and serves no known function in human beings.
I almost admire your determination to continue pretending that there is some kind of controversy here, and your sly pose as a disinterested observer who sees “both sides of the story”. But you really should hop over to http://pandasthumb.org, where refuting your crowd’s arguments is considered sport.
Regards,
SP
Just a comment about the usage of the term ‘darwinist’ by Fundamentalist creationists. Its hardly news that creationists do not use, speak or even understand language as normal people do, they are after all,experts at torturing both logic and the english language. When a creationist uses the term ‘darwinist’ the pro-science side is often quick to point out that that term is essentially meaningless, like calling someone or gravitationist, or an einsteinist(sp)?. Or else they launch into long rambling disertations about the subtle differences between classic darwinist theory and the modern sysnthisis. Thats all well and fine but sometimes even the fine folks at the Pandas Thumb are perhaps a little too smart for there own good. They love to point out creationists flawed useage of the term with long drawn out essays, but many(not all) do not seem to realize what creationists mean when they call someone a ‘darwinist’.
Simply put, ‘Darwinist’ to a Fundy creationist =Enemy. To them the term is a catch all for everything they hate, be it rationlism, secular society, science, Pro-choice, enviromentalist, whatever it needs to mean at any one moment. They use the term in the same way Nazi Party propoganda in Germany in the 1930’s would refer to a Jew, or communist parties would refer to its enemies as ‘Bourgeoisie Capitalists’ or ‘Counter- revolutionaries’. When used in this manner, the term employed doesnt need to techically accuate or even close to it. Accuracy isnt even a requirement, its simply a way to identify and target a real or perceived ‘enemy’. It just needs to be repeated loudly and often along with the acompanying message, ‘This is our enemy and needs to be destroyed’.
If american creationists had the political power to swing it, anyone that openly disagreed with them would be forced to sew a darwin fish on there clothes and wear them in public . If you want a real example of ‘Unspeak’ Try to find a creationist that will candidly tell you what there definition of a ‘darwinist’ really is. The one thing that hinders creationists (thankfully) is that ‘Darwinists’ look pretty much like anyone else and therefore, as loaded terms(and labels) go, its a little hard to get much traction out of it. But in some ways its not hard to see why the creationists like to use it in the manner they do, its vague, ill-defined, can be used as a grab-all to incite the ‘troops’ whenever they need it to.
Douglas:
Indeed. That’s sort of what I was hinting at by
imputed to scientists an idolatrous reliance on one man, Darwin, as though he were the false god of an ‘evolutionist’ religion
But you put more meat on the point.
“It makes falsifiable predictions and follows the scientific method just like any other theory; it is not naturalistic though”
It’s not possible for a non-naturalistic theory to “make falsifiable predictions”. A naturalistic theory is a generalization, or universalization, of a set of empirical observations; the predictions that it makes are logically determined by implications of the generalization, and it can be falsified by other observations that contradict the generalization. But a “non-naturalistic theory” doesn’t have predetermined logical consequences … if it did, it would just be another naturalistic theory. Specifically, theistic creation posits a “creator” with no physical or causal constraints; a “first cause” that can “cause” anything it “wills”. Claims as to what is “predicted” by this “theory” are necessarily arbitrary and ad hoc, and generally take the form of rationalizations for how known facts, such as the Cambrian explosion or many cultures having flood myths, are “predictions” of the “theory” (and these rationalizations usually involve selective or just plain erroneous treatment of the evidence). OTOH, every day thousands of predictions by scientists are borne out by new observations (and other predictions are falsified by same). Non-naturalistic “theories” add nothing to our understanding of the world.
They love to point out creationists flawed useage of the term with long drawn out essays, but many(not all) do not seem to realize what creationists mean when they call someone a ‘darwinist’.
Actually, in my experience, they all realize that.
In this case, tigerbear was referring to Steven Poole’s characterization, not of “Darwinist”, but neo-Darwinist. You seem unaware of the distinction. Creationists rarely use the term “neo-Darwinist” — why would they, when “Darwinist” far better fits their aims? But scientists and historians of science do use the terms “neo-Darwinist” and “neo-Darwinism”, while shying way from “Darwinist” and “Darwinism”.
Indeed. That’s sort of what I was hinting at by
imputed to scientists an idolatrous reliance on one man, Darwin, as though he were the false god of an ‘evolutionist’ religion
No one here, and certainly not the folks at pandasthumb, who make this point over and over again, have disputed that.
But you put more meat on the point.
No, he conflated two different terms (much as you mix two different metaphors) and missed tigerbear’s point entirely, as well as mischaracterizing “the fine folks at the Pandas Thumb”.
Creationists rarely use the term “neo-Darwinist”
No, you’re wrong, they do use it all the time, which is why comment #7 was a useful correction for me.
Sorry about mixing my metaphors, though. ;-)
the consensus of meta-studies of all the currently available evidence is that the appendix is a vestigial version of an organ that digests cellulose in other animals, and serves no known function in human beings
Y’know, you’re doing some unspeaking of your own by making claims in such absolute terms. Yes, the evidence indicates that the appendix is a vestigial version of a cellulose-digesting organ, but a common characteristic of evolution is systems that take on new functions when the old functions are redundant or unnecessary. From
http://www.talkorigins.org/faq.....endix.html
“The vermiform appendage—in which some recent medical writers have vainly endeavoured to find a utility—is the shrunken remainder of a large and normal intestine of a remote ancestor. This interpretation of it would stand even if it were found to have a certain use in the human body. Vestigial organs are sometimes pressed into a secondary use when their original function has been lost.”
and
Today, a growing consensus of medical specialists holds that the most likely candidate for the function of the human appendix is as a part of the gastrointestinal immune system. Several reasonable arguments exist for suspecting that the appendix may have a function in immunity. Like the rest of the caecum in humans and other primates, the appendix is highly vascular, is lymphoid-rich, and produces immune system cells normally involved with the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) (Fisher 2000; Nagler-Anderson 2001; Neiburger et al. 1976; Somekh et al. 2000; Spencer et al. 1985). Animal models, such as the rabbit and mouse, indicate that the appendix is involved in mammalian mucosal immune function, particularly the B and T lymphocyte immune response (Craig and Cebra 1975). Animal studies provide limited evidence that the appendix may function in proper development of the immune system in young juveniles (Dasso and Howell 1997; Dasso et al. 2000; Pospisil and Mage 1998).
They go on to say that
However, contrary to what one is apt to read in anti-evolutionary literature, there is currently no evidence demonstrating that the appendix, as a separate organ, has a specific immune function in humans (Judge and Lichtenstein 2001; Dasso et al. 2000; Williams and Myers 1994, pp. 5, 26-29). To date, all experimental studies of the function of an appendix (other than routine human appendectomies) have been exclusively in rabbits and, to a lesser extent, rodents. Currently it is unclear whether the lymphoid tissue in the human appendix performs any specialized function apart from the much larger amount of lymphatic tissue already distributed throughout the gut. Most importantly with regard to vestigiality, there is no evidence from any mammal suggesting that the hominoid vermiform appendix performs functions above and beyond those of the lymphoid-rich caeca of other primates and mammals that lack distinct appendixes.
So the appendix apparently doesn’t provide any specific function as a differentiated organ, but it’s an overstatement to say that it “serves no known function in human beings”.
No, you’re wrong, they do use it all the time, which is why comment #7 was a useful correction for me.
One instance isn’t “all the time”, and that particular reference says “the dominant theory of evolution today is neo-Darwinism”, which is basically true, and is not the sort of use of the label that Douglas S. was referring to, so my conclusion is that you’re just another intellectually dishonest person who happens to be on “our side”. I’m sorry I wasted my time.
I guess you concede the point on “neo-Darwinist”.
Meanwhile, you say:
it’s an overstatement to say that it “serves no known function in human beings”
But the article to which you appeal, which I already cited earlier, says, as you yourself quote:
the vermiform appendage—in which some recent medical writers have vainly endeavoured to find a utility
If they’ve vainly endeavoured to find a utility, I don’t think it’s an “overstatement” to say it serves no known function.
One instance isn’t “all the time”
No it isn’t. I didn’t want to clutter my comment with the vast number of possible examples. You’re welcome to look them up yourself, if you can be bothered.
I’m sorry I wasted my time.
Sure, me too.
For anyone still interested, that Discovery Institute link says:
Of course this is not “basically true”. It is at the very least a heavily loaded description of “neo-Darwinism”.
Other examples of ID proponents loosely using “neo-Darwinist” as a propaganda tool can be found here, here, here, here, and ad nauseam.
You know, TM, its hardly conflatation when one simply points out an essential fact. I am quite aware of the differences in meaning between the various terms employed. The *point*, if you prefer an even shorter version, creationists simply dont care about the *proper* consisce definitions of classical Darwinian theory VS. the modern definition. Whats so hard to understand about that? They sometimes refer the ‘enemy’ as neo-darwinist’s. Great, most of them prefer to call us all ‘darwinist’s. Less syllables, easier to remember and rolls off the tongue a lot better without the neo- in front. And you know, FRIW, PT and the other pro-knowledge groups out there, and there writers do a wonderful job and are preforming an extemely important service. That doesnt mean that *sometimes* when the issue comes up, **some** of them tend to go off on a tangent. There only human after all and sometimes…..we\they just dont see the forest for the trees. There defintions (when given) are 1000% correct and very clearly stated. I called them fine people because they ARE fine people, doing an important job. I just happen to think it would be useful to focus on what *creationists* truly mean when they say utter ‘darwinist’. If both parties are on the same page, great, theres nothing to discuss beyond we aggee to disagree. But thats…not really whats at stake in the evolution wars is it? The creationists would only be truly happy when the very concept of biological evolution if purged from every book, library, school and yes, every mind in western civilization. Sorry if I happy to think thats more important than whether we can win the creationists hearts and minds by correcting there mis-coneceptions over the prescise defintion of modern evolutionary thought.
I think this modest example exemplifies what I see as a disturbing trend in moderm discourse. Dont talk about the root issue(or seldom address it directly), or whats really motivateing the other party, just discuss definations and tangential issues for so long the original point gets buried or pushed off to the side so far you hardly remember what your supposed to be talking about in the first place. If pointing that out offends TM….awfully sorry
God lord i like this. I’d forgotten about the debate concerning whether or not theories are well-informed and supported science or just “casual guesses”. That’s another one that will never get resolved. Especially if some theories really are guess work and others not…
And ANON or ME, the use of language as a brain-washing tool is scary and very much on practise everyday. What a world…
Some great analysis. But I think that by arguing so vehemently for the uselessness of the appendix you undermine your own debate a little. Are you trying to imply a “science of the gaps”, where that which does not straight away appear a particularly intelligent design feature invalidates the very concept of intelligent design?
It doesn’t - just as the gaps in scientific knowledge don’t invalidate science, so can a creationist (or ID-er) fall back on saying that God works (and designs) in mysterious ways, beyond our understanding - but it doesn’t have to. Because even if the appendix were found to serve a useful purpose, it would not disprove the theory of evolution - and even if the theory of evolution were disproved, it would not make ID a remotely plausible or scientific alternative.
Once we start defending a scientific theory - rather than merely the scientific method of finding a theory - we have effectively accepted that this is a scientific debate between scientific theories. It’s not. As you rightly affirm, the idea of, say, irreducible complexity is nothing more than an appeal to ignorance, a ruling out of scientific method and knowledge. By arguing for evolution, rather than just for science, you buy into the very “unspeak” you intend to oppose.
Steven:
See http://intelligent-design-hypothesis.com