Science and Culture Today | Page 1281 | Discovering Design in Nature

Discovery Institute today announced the launch of Academic Freedom Day in honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday on February 12, 2009. “We’re celebrating Charles Darwin’s birthday by supporting what he supported: academic freedom,” said Robert Crowther, Director of Communications at Discovery Institute. “Like Darwin, we recognize the importance of having an open and honest debate between evolution and intelligent design.” In his revolutionary On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” This quote is the cornerstone of the Institute’s Academic Freedom Day efforts. The Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is sponsoring Academic Freedom Day, assisting student groups, clubs, Read More ›

Let your voice be heard: If you think it was wrong for Ben Stein to be pushed out as this year’s commencement speaker at University of Vermont, send a message to University President Daniel Fogel at Daniel.Fogel@uvm.edu or 802-656-3186. Apologizing for inviting gifted actor and writer Ben Stein to be commencement speaker at the University of Vermont, University President Daniel Fogel has highlighted what he called Stein’s “highly controversial views” about “evolutionary theory, intelligent design, and the role of science in the Holocaust.” Fogel went on to express penance for inviting Stein by claiming that “Commencement should be a time when our community gathers inclusively, not divisively.” I guess inclusivity is why in 2007 Fogel chose as commencement speaker Democratic Read More ›

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ben Stein “has withdrawn from an engagement to speak at the University of Vermont’s spring commencement after his invitation drew complaints about his views on biological evolution.” The article reports: “According to the Burlington Free Press, the vast majority of protesters were not affiliated with the University of Vermont; only ‘about a half dozen’ objections came from the campus.” So why did protests about Stein start pouring in from outside the University of Vermont (UVM)? The answer seems clear: Stein’s invitation to speak at UVM was first raised to the Darwinist community in a post by PZ Myers titled, “University of Vermont makes an embarrassing decision.” Given the large following of PZ’s blog, Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: Douglas Axe is actually a molecular biologist, not a microbiologist. And it’s been pointed out that the quote I used from Axe’s piece that describes the Darwinian story as requiring 400 million years had a context — the supposed evolution of a proto-insect into a wide variety of insect life forms. However, the way I presented it makes it sound like the whole of Darwinian evolution was only supposed to require 400 million years, which wasn’t what Axe was saying.] As the number of celebrations of Darwin and his theory mount ad nauseam, one evolution researcher suggests that the emperor has no clothes. Douglas Axe, a microbiologist and director of the Biologic Institute, has posted an article pointing Read More ›

Original Article

It’s a big year for all things Darwin.  This month, two centuries after his birth, we commemorate the man and his accomplishments.  And in November, a century and a half after On the Origin of Species was published, we commemorate the beginnings of the theory by which we all know him.

But how exactly should we think of his theory?  Is it to be remembered the way we remember the man–as an important part of the past?  Or is it to be remembered as something more than that–as an intellectual seed that grew into something that thrives to this day?

Many, of course, would like to think of Darwin’s theory in these flourishing terms.  But the growth of something else makes this view increasingly hard to hold.  We refer here to the seldom discussed but steadily expanding body of peer-reviewed scientific work that refuses to square with Darwinism.

Take a look at the recent Genetics paper by Rick Durrett and Deena Schmidt. [1]  They’ve done the math to calculate how long it would take for Darwin’s mechanism to accomplish a particular kind of functional conversion.  And their eagerness to “expose flaws in some of Michael Behe’s arguments” [1] shows that they think they’ve resuscitated Darwinism after Behe pronounced it dead. [2]

Have they?

A survey conducted recently in England reveals that 51 percent of the British public believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of living things, and that intelligent design must be involved. The survey was conducted by the polling firm ComRes for Theos, a theology think tank.

The report of the survey of the British public, published in the Telegraph, noted:

In the survey, 51 per cent of those questioned agreed with the statement that “evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages”…A further 40 per cent disagreed, while the rest said they did not know…The suggestion that a designer’s input is needed reflects the “intelligent design” theory, promoted by American creationists as an alternative to Darwinian evolution.

The irony is that only 10-20% of the British public attend church each week, which is significantly less than half of the portion of the British population who support intelligent design. A similar disparity is seen in the United States, where 80-90 % of the American public believe that design played some role in biology, whereas only 40-50% attend church regularly.
The meaning of this disparity between support for intelligent design and church attendance is obvious: support for intelligent design extends far beyond the segment of the population that is traditionally religious. Weekly church attendance is a minimal criterion to be labeled “fundamentalist” or devout. The inference to design in biology is held by the majority of both the American and British public, and for more than half of people who support design, the reasons are not devout acquiescence to religious dogma. For most supporters of intelligent design in biology, design is inferred empirically.

After generations of Darwinist indoctrination in public schools, more than half of the British public doubts Darwinism as an adequate explanation for life. One can understand the Darwinist panic in the United States and England at even minimal discussion of the weaknesses of Darwin’s theory in public schools. Even with a monopoly on scientific indoctrination, Darwinists are unable to convince even half of the public of the truth of their theory.

Of course, Richard Dawkins was appalled by the results of the survey. The Telegraph article quotes Dawkins:

Dr. Jerry Coyne is a prominent evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. He has written extensively about the Darwinism/intelligent design controversy, and he is highly critical of I.D. Recently in The New Republic, he published a review of two books: “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution” By Karl W. Giberson and “Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul” By Kenneth R. Miller. Dr. Coyne’s review, entitled “Seeing is Believing” is long, and is an fine example of the convoluted arguments used by Darwinists to defend their ideology against the overwhelming scientific evidence that favors design in biology and against the American public who overwhelmingly favor (by a ratio of 3:1) discussion of the strengths and weakness of Darwinism in public schools. Dr. Coyne’s review is, in other words, a fine example of Darwinist ideological distortion of science and endorsement of censorship in education.

So I’ll review Dr. Coyne’s review in detail. I’ll quote Dr. Coyne, then reply.

Early in his essay Dr. Coyne writes:

… the history of creationism in America has itself been an evolutionary process guided by a form of natural selection. After each successive form of creationism has been struck down by the courts for violating the First Amendment, a modified form of the doctrine has appeared, missing some religious content and more heavily disguised in scientific garb. Over time, the movement has shifted from straight Biblical creationism to “scientific creationism,” in which the very facts of science were said to support religious stories such as the Genesis creation and Noah’s Ark, and then morphed into intelligent design, or ID, a theory completely stripped of its Biblical patina. None of this has fooled the courts…

Dr. Coyne misunderstands the history of this issue. Regardless of whether or not creationism has undergone an “evolutionary” process, ID isn’t on the historical continuum with creationism. Creationism is the opinion that Genesis is more or less literally true as science. Many Christians hold to that view, and they have my respect, but I (and the vast majority of I.D. advocates) disagree.
Intelligent design is the opinion that design is empirically detectable in biology, and that it is the best scientific inference to explain many aspects of biology, especially the genetic code and the complex molecular machinery inside cells. I wasn’t a creationist, ever. I was a Darwinist, for most of my life, until I looked closely at the evidence. Most ID advocates have had similar experiences. Most ID advocates were never creationists, and ID is not creationism nor is it derived from it. In fact, ID has been criticized by the creationist community. ID is an appeal to evidence in the natural world, not an appeal to Biblical revelation.

I must say that I’ve never understood the rhetorical force of the ‘God of the Gaps’ argument. The God of the Gaps sneer is invoked to imply the inexorability of materialism as a complete explanation in natural science. Any critique of materialist dogma in science from a design or immaterial perspective is derided as a ‘God of the Gaps’ argument. But the real issue is the gaps, which are plentiful and very wide.

Dr. Novella is fond of the God of the Gaps sneer, in the form of “Dualism of the Gaps.” I have not met a materialist as supremely confident of the complete explanatory power of materialism as he is. It’s ironic, as Dr. Novella claims the appellation “skeptic,” yet he shows no skepticism for his own materialist dogma. Profound skepticism for the views of opponents, combined with complacent credulity for one’s own views, is the stuff of ideological advocacy, not skepticism.

Dr. Novella responded recently to my post in which I clarified my views on the mind-brain problem. He accuses me of using a ‘Dualism of the Gaps’ argument. I’ve merely pointed out that the salient characteristics of the mind, such as intentionality, qualia, free will, incorrigibility, restricted access, continuity of self through time, and unity of consciousness (the ‘binding problem’) seem to be impossible to explain materialistically. Materialistic explanations for subjective mental states are not impossible merely because we lack experiments or evidence. Materialistic explanations for the mind are impossible within the framework of materialism itself, because mental properties are not physical properties. Nothing about matter as understood in our current scientific paradigm invokes subjective mental experience. The essential qualities on the mind are immaterial. Invocation of immaterial causation that incorporates subjectivity seems necessary for a satisfactory explanation of the mind.

Atheist/materialist ‘Skeptico’ (why are these guys/ladies so afraid to have their names associated with their ideas?) has announced the “Golden Woo” awards, which he-she has decided to bestow on people who have expressed views incompatible with Skeptico’s personal ideology. Skeptico explains:

I decided I would start some of my own — The Golden Woo Awards for outstanding work in the promotion of Woo in the previous year. It’s a bit like the Golden Globes, only for, er, Woo.

What is “Woo”? Skeptico explains:

Now, some of you might notice that the award titles look similar to Randi’s Pigasus Awards, with just the words “paranormal,” “occult” etc. replaced with Woo, and might think I’ve just run out of ideas for posts and purloined Randi’s idea as my own. (Cough.) Clearly that isn’t true as I have at least one extra category that Randi doesn’t have. However, if you were to view this post as my Golden Globes in advance of Randi’s Oscars… then you could. Perhaps the great man might even read this and get some ideas for April 1st?…OK so here goes — the Golden Woos for 2008. I hope you’ll find them entertaining.

Skeptico, who emulates atheist/materialist magician “The Amazing Randi,” has decided to give out awards to other people that he believes are devoted to silly ideas. And the first Golden Woo Award recipient is…your humble neurosurgeon and atheism/materialism ‘denialist’:

The scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing related to Woo…Michael Egnor for his tireless support of Intelligent Design Creationism, and especially his many recent assaults on materialism.

Skeptico, who believes that all life, including the genetic code and intricate nanotechnology inside living cells, arose from primeval mud by a process of chance and tautology (random heritable variation and natural selection), is certainly well-situated to recognize Woo. So what exactly is it about my scientific and philosophical views that Skeptico finds so…Wooful?