Science and Culture Today | Page 1236 | Discovering Design in Nature

Precisely thirty years ago this month the late Stephen Jay Gould published an article in volume 89 of Natural History purporting to demonstrate Alfred Russel Wallace’s “fatal flaw.” Wallace, who co-discovered natural selection in his now-famous Ternate Letter of 1858, first startled Charles Darwin and then prompted him after years of ponderous delay to finally complete his Origin of Species and rush it to press. By November of the following year his magnum opus was in the hands of the English public. But Wallace would break with Darwin over the source of the human intellect. While Darwin thought man and animal different in degree not kind, Wallace felt that the special attributes of the human mind, its facility for abstract reasoning, mathematics, music, even wit and humor was inexplicable by Darwin’s own principle of utility, namely, the idea that no attribute in any species would arise and be maintained unless it afforded it a functional advantage in its struggle for survival. Admitting that none of these most human of traits promoted survival, Wallace instead suggested that these qualities were explicable only through some “Overruling Intelligence.” Darwin and his disciples have been horrified ever since. Pointing to Wallace’s insistence that natural selection can only “fashion a feature for immediate use,” Gould issued his indictment: Wallace’s so-called “fatal flaw” was his “hyperselectionism.” But does this charge hold up?

[Editor’s Note: Further commentary on this fossil discovery, including responses to criticisms, can be found here.] When Tiktaalik was reported in 2006, the media went Darwin-happy over the discovery of an alleged transitional fossil. BBC News announced, “Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving into land animals.” At MSNBC, Tiktaalik co-discoverer Ted Daeschler was quoted boasting that, “If one considers adaptation as a process of collecting tools to live in a new environment, the new finding offers ‘a snapshot of the toolkit at this particular point in this evolutionary transition.” The article even postured Tiktaalik as an actual ancestor of tetrapods, stating: “Scientists have caught a fossil fish in the act of adapting toward a Read More ›

The debate between Darwin and design is coming to Tampa, Florida with a major one-night event featuring some of the leading voices challenging Darwinian evolution. Discovery Institute senior fellow and national radio personality Michael Medved will lead a two-hour discussion about the evidence for intelligent design and the challenges it proposes to modern evolutionary theory. Joining him will be Signature in the Cell author, Stephen C. Meyer, leading Darwin skeptic and author of The Deniable Darwin David Berlinski, and scientist, scholar and writer, Thomas Woodward author of Darwin Strikes Back. The event will take place at The A La Carte Pavilion, Tampa, FL, Thursday, January 28th at 7pm and is hosted by the C. S. Lewis Society. Discovery Institute is Read More ›

A recent article in ScienceDaily titled “ Introns Nonsense DNA May Be More Important to Evolution of Genomes Than Thought,” actually demonstrates nothing like Darwinian evolution. Introns are stretches of DNA within genes in Eukaryotes that do not code for proteins. But they aren’t functionless and can play important roles in splicing together proteins. According to the ScienceDaily article: “The scientists also found what appear to be “hot spots” for intron insertion — areas of the genome where repeated insertions are more likely to occur. This implies the occurrence of convergent genetic evolution of introns at specific locations, or as the article repeatedly puts it, “parallel intron gains.” The study’s principal investigator, Michael Lynch, was clear about the implications: Michael Read More ›

Incomparably more influential than any science textbook, Wikipedia with its seen-as-if-through-a-funhouse-mirror rendering of intelligent design passes along with its distortions directly into the bloodstream of popular consciousness. If you’re ever looking for a way to kill time, counting errors per sentence in any Wikipedia article that touches on ID will soak up plenty. This of course is a way to really kill time — not to use it effectively by somehow correcting the errors. No class of people on the planet has more time on their hands than the guys who edit Wikipedia articles. As part of what seems to be a 24/7 unpaid job, they stand ready at a moment’s notice to change any attempted correction back to its original erroneous version.

Along with other falsehoods, the ranks of Wikipedia errors include a group of myths, comprising a Darwinian Mythos of superstitious, credulous, fallacious and legendary beliefs about intelligent design. Among these, the myth as to falsifiability or testability ranks high on the Wikipedia Scale. The latter is a rough measure of how important a particular mythic theme is to the overarching conception of Darwinism as unquestionable “fact,” gauged by how insistent the Wikipedia editors are in emphasizing it.

Regarding the mythic idea that intelligent design can’t be tested or falsified and is therefore unscientific, the Wikipedia editors quote the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. They cite the distinguished scientist and philosopher Judge John E. Jones. They cite blogger PZ Myers on “Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.” They quote philosopher Elliott Sober: “Defenders of ID always have a way out. This is not the hallmark of a falsifiable theory.”

Yet isn’t it funny that the Darwinist faithful are often perfectly happy to launch attempts to clobber intelligent design on factual and scientific grounds — just as if ID were genuine science — only to retreat immediately behind the barricade of the Falsifiability Myth? If they had confidence either in the myth or in the attack, presumably they would choose one and stick with it.

For many years, Jerry Fodor has been an outspoken critic of Darwinian reasoning in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind / language. As a graduate student, I saw him present a colloquium on these topics, in front of a semi-hostile audience, and admired his bravado in refusing to kneel before the Altar of Darwin. Sorry if that language seems over the top, but after the end of the Darwin Year, the steady worshipful attitude towards old Charles has finally got to me.
Now, in the wake of his controversial and much discussed London Review article, Fodor — along with cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini — has made his arguments fully general in What Darwin Got Wrong.

Try to imagine being operated on without anesthesia. A kidney is removed and then, while you are still fully awake, the surgeon displays it to you for your consideration in his hand. Sounds like a very bad nightmare but this is the kind of thing Dr. Josef Mengele did routinely with patients at Auschwitz. What would inspire a human being to such devilry? What influence, perhaps early in life, might have nudged him off the course of what could have otherwise been a conventional medical career?

There are two big stories arising from the California Science Center’s censorship last October of the pro-intelligent design film Darwin’s Dilemma. The first big story, which was the primary focus of a Los Angeles Times article last week, is the act of censorship itself. As an agency of state government in California, the Science Center is required to abide by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. The Science Center didn’t have to rent its facilities to the public, but once it did so, as a government agency, it was legally obliged by the First Amendment to treat all citizens equally. But there is another big story tied to the Science Center that hasn’t received sufficient attention yet: The Center’s Read More ›

Die-hard defenders of Darwin claim that there are no valid criticisms of their viewpoint and cannot publicly admit that there is any credible dissent from neo-Darwinism. At times, the NCSE has even been forced to argue that it is “possible to discredit” the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list by referring people to a YouTube video titled, “Evaluating an antievolution petition,” created by some would-be internet critic. That’s right — in their desperation to attack the Dissent from Darwinism list, the NCSE cites to some random YouTube video. That video has some major misunderstandings about the Dissent from Darwinism list. Its creator seems to be following what Michael Behe has called the “principle of malicious reading,” which “ignores (or doesn’t comprehend) Read More ›