Science and Culture Today | Page 1302 | Discovering Design in Nature

This is the first in a series of posts in which I will discuss the medical and ethical aspects of persistent vegetative state (PVS). As I noted in an earlier post, I believe that the emergence of PVS as an accepted medical diagnosis is in part a consequence of the emergence of strict materialistic theories of the mind in the late 20th century, especially the theory called “functionalism,” which is the theory that the mind is what the brain does, in the same way that running a program is what a computer does. If the mind is entirely caused by the brain, in a way analogous to the running of a software program on a computer’s hardware, it stands to reason that there would be situations in which damage to the brain would cause the “mind program” to irreversibly crash. This leads to rather obvious ethical implications. Ideas have consequences, and the materialist understanding of the mind has had direct and disturbing consequences for the medical treatment of people handicapped by severe brain injuries. I will explore this connection between philosophy of the mind and clinical medicine in a future post.

PVS came to wide public attention with the death in 2005 by dehydration and starvation of Terri Schiavo, a young woman with severe brain damage caused by a cardiac arrest (probably from an electrolyte imbalance) in 1990. She died because her feeding tube was removed by court order at the request of her husband, who claimed that she had told him that she would have wanted to be deprived of nourishment under these circumstances. The deprivation of water and nourishment to a handicapped person, even with the pretext of accommodating that person’s wishes, obviously raises ethical issues, and I’ll discuss them in future posts. I’ll address primarily the medical and neurological issues in this post.

Denyse O’Leary has taken fellow Canadian Bob Breakenridge to task in The Calgary Herald for writing a column which, as O’Leary says, “is an excellent illustration of why one should not write about big topics without basic research.”

The 2005 Judge Jones decision in Pennsylvania, to which Breakenridge devotes much of his column, has not crimped the worldwide growth of interest in intelligent design. That is no surprise. A judge is not a scientist, and Jones cannot plug gaping holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution is–contrary to its (largely) publicly funded zealots– in deep trouble, for a number of reasons.

O’Leary goes on to rebut a number of false statements in Breakenridge’s piece, and she has an interesting analysis of a recent poll on evolution:

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post anonymously.]

The Establishment clause of the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof […].” Today the popular argument against intelligent design (ID) is that it is just an extension of creationism, which implicates ID as a religious theory. The argument begins when proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution attempt to use some definition of science to disqualify ID from being a scientific theory. Intelligent design is then equated with religion through the assertion that if the theory is not science, then it must be religious in nature. Even Judge Jones adopted this dubious logic in the Kitzmiller ruling, holding that “since ID is not science, the conclusion is inescapable that the only real effect of the ID Policy is the advancement of religion.” As the argument goes, if ID is religious in nature then it violates the Establishment Clause, just like creationism. Consequently, the “ID = religion” argument has become the default argument used by ID’s opponents. The problem with this argument is that ID is actually a secular-based scientific theory. Unfortunately, materialistic theories of evolution have become so ingrained in the scientific community that any alternate view is immediately disregarded as “unscientific,” this bringing the “ID = religion” argument to its starting point.

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post anonymously.]

In 2006, Martha M. McCarthy wrote an article (“Instruction About the Origin of Humanity: Legal Controversies Evolve”) arguing that “concerns have been raised…that if the ‘controversy’ is taught and ID is actually subjected to scientific criticism, this may ‘be more confrontational to students’ beliefs than most high school teachers feel is appropriate.'” (FN 68)

This misguided statement assumes four things. First, it assumes that students have a set of beliefs on the origin of humanity before they take biology. The second assumption is that high school teachers are the final authority on what is taught in public school science classrooms. The third is that high school students should not be exposed to confrontational ideas; her statement is boldly authoritarian. Finally, she assumes that intelligent design is a mere “belief” and that critiquing it has constitutional implications.

The first assumption, that students have preconceived opinions on origins, is probably correct. Students tend to believe what their parents believe until they decide otherwise, so it is fair to assume that students have some opinion on the issue. Interestingly, in two independent polls cited in the article, 55% and 64% of adults questioned on the issue felt that intelligent design (ID) and creationism should be taught alongside evolution. (FN 57) Other polls have shown that upwards of 75% of Americans support teaching ID. One might deduce that if students tend to believe what their parents believe, and a majority, or perhaps a supermajority, support teaching ID, then teaching these theories is not really confrontational to their beliefs. I have a strong suspicion that Ms. McCarthy objects to teaching ID because she is projecting her own views on to others: ID may contradict her own beliefs, but teaching it will not cause great controversy for most students.

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post it anonymously.]

Immediately following the publication of “Teaching the Origins Controversy: Science, or Religion, or Speech?” in 2000 in Utah Law Review, multiple law review articles appeared opposing the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design (ID). It seems that the law review article by Professors DeWolf and DeForrest and Meyer hit a nerve that incited various law students to ardently defend the evolutionary theory they were uncritically taught in high school.

Once such student was Eric Shih, who published an article in the Michigan State Law Review in 2007 entitled, “Teaching Against the Controversy: Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Public School Solution to the Origins Debate.” Mr. Shih argues that “recent demands to ‘teach the controversy’ of intelligent design are nothing more than variations on the balanced tactics ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Edwards.” In other words, ID is nothing more than a mask for creationism.

Mr. Shih’s attacks are misplaced and confused. First, in real-world public policy debates, proposals proposals to “teach the controversy” have explicitly opposed requirements to teach intelligent design. As Stephen C. Meyer explained in a 2002 op-ed titled “Teach the Controversy” in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Larry Moran has a post on Sandwalk excoriating Matt Nisbet for his criticism of P.Z. Myers’ recent desecration of the Eucharist. Myers, a vocal Darwinist and militant atheist, obtained a Eucharistic Host, nailed it, threw it in the garbage, and photographed it, along with a Qur’an and a copy of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
Nisbet, sensitive to the implications of Myers’ performance art, took Myers to task:

Unfortunately I spent much of July at home feeling sick and miserable. For part of that time, all I could do was sit and catch up on episodes of the comedy cartoon, South Park. Before elaborating, I must first note that I don’t recommend watching South Park if you have squeamish ears or a distaste for shock humor. And if you’re a kid, ask your parents before watching it; South Park may be a cartoon but it is not intended for kids. But I confess that I find South Park quite entertaining, largely because they poke fun of all sides of controversial social, political, and scientific issues. It thus seems fitting that South Park would inspire me to blog about Read More ›

Last year I blogged about how Newsweek science columnist Sharon Begley had promoted the multiverse hypothesis as if it were a reasonable scientific proposition, avoiding mentioning to readers that this speculative idea was invented for the purpose of avoiding the conclusion that the cosmos was intelligently designed. As I wrote, “Begley tries to steer the reader into believing the wildly speculative multiverse hypothesis–a pet philosophical favorite of materialists–while barely even hinting that the alternative, and much more elegant explanation, is intelligent design of the cosmos. For those who are informed on this subject, her article comes off as if she is trying to hide the design inference from the reader as a reasonable conclusion to explain the incredible fine-tuning of Read More ›

Yale neurologist Dr. Steven Novella and I have been involved in a vigorous discussion (example here) of the mind-brain problem in science and philosophy. There are real-world implications of our understanding of the mind, and nowhere are these implications more important than in the medical management of people with severe brain damage. Dr. Novella recently posted a commentary on the Terri Schiavo case. Dr. Novella’s post was prompted by a study just published in the journal Neurology that analyzes the media coverage of the affair and offers suggestions as to how experts and journalists can convey the truth of such complex cases to the public more effectively. These are laudable goals.

The crux of the matter, of course, is this: what are the facts in the Schiavo case, and, more generally, what are the real issues involved in the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS)?

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] CSC Fellow Richard Weikart sent us his article, “‘Expelled’ and the Darwinism-Nazi Connection: A Response to Jeff Schloss,” which is now up at the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) website. Weikart details the historical connection between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s Nazi ideology, responding to a similarly ASA-published article by Jeff Schloss.There’s a history with Schloss, which Bill Dembski explains over at Uncommon Descent. Suffice it to say that Schloss is critical of intelligent design and quick to repeat the standard objections to the connection Expelled draws between Darwin and Hitler… and Weikart doesn’t let him get away with it: In his Read More ›