Science and Culture Today | Page 1466 | Discovering Design in Nature

John Derbyshire of The Corner, and Darwinists on every street corner, insist that we should never cram God into the gaps of our scientific knowledge.

As if detecting design meant cramming the designer into the work itself: Imagine Leonardo da Vinci trapped inside the Mona Lisa.

Derbyshire proceeds apace: “History shows that these puzzles always get resolved sooner or later in a natural way, … sending the ‘God of the Gaps’ traipsing off to find a new place where he can hang his starry cloak for a while.”

Bracket off for the moment that this particular history of modern science is an urban legend.

Derbyshire’s argument falls apart all by itself, apart from the historical record. Because more and more things have been explained with reference to impersonal causes, Derbyshire argues, we can never assume that something in nature cannot be explained thus.

That simply doesn’t follow. Consider an analogy.

The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State continues to serve in the Ministry of Dis-Information when it comes to intelligent design theory. A dogmatic opponent of intelligent design, the Rev. Lynn recently authored an op-ed that dismisses ID out of hand — not even bothering to take on any of the empirical, scientific claims made by Dr. Michael Behe or any other ID theorists. Comes now Darrick Dean of Science Watch. Dean gives the Rev. Lynn the full-court press in a very noteworthy blog post. Rev. Lynn wishes to continue playing the motives game instead of assessing the scientific arguments for ID. But as Dean argues, the red herring arguments can cut BOTH ways.

Secondhand Smoke is the new weblog operated by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith. His voice is a welcome addition to the blogosphere and his new blog is well worth the visit. An author, attorney and leading voice on many bioethics’ issues, Smith’s work does not involve intelligent design — though he does kindly mention ID and Michael Behe’s recent New York Times op-ed “Design for Living,” in a blog post (here). So while Smith’s work is not the subject of this blog, many readers may be interested in his analysis and commentary on many science-related issues. He has some important and timely articles this week at National Review Online and Daily Standard.

In a recent post at The Corner, John Derbyshire wrote that “we are actually quite close to a point where we CAN do evolution in the lab.” To make his point, Derbyshire cited an article by Carl Zimmer in the February, 2005, issue of *Discover* Magazine: “Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State University Prove Evolution Works.”

We don’t buy it. Discovery fellow (and Ph.D. biologist) Jonathan Wells found the claims in Zimmer’s article laughable, and he was moved to write a satirical review that we are posting here. Although the tone is tongue-in-cheek, the quotes from Zimmer’s article are real, as is the force of Wells’ argument.

Darwinists at Michigan State University Prove Computers Work by Jonathan Wells

For centuries breeders have been modifying existing species by selecting desirable variations, yet this procedure has never produced a new species. Still less has it produced new organs or body plans. In 1859, however, Charles Darwin wrote that variation and selection explain the origin of species and all of life’s diversity, and his faithful followers are still looking for evidence that he was right.

As we saw in Derbyshire II, the pattern of the fossil record doesn’t fit the Darwinian prediction of a gradually branching tree of life, even where punctuated equilibrium is invoked to shoehorn the transitional intermediates into those gaps John Derbyshire puts such faith in.

The problem gets even uglier when Darwinists try to explain away the fossil record leading up to the Cambrian Explosion. What story do these strata tell? Animals didn’t exist; and then they did — not just dozens of species but dozen of phyla. If you want some idea of how large a category phyla is, consider that sharks, mice, humans and otters are all members of the same phylum.

If natural selection working on random genetic mutation built this menagerie of animals, it had to do it one extraordinarily tiny, functional improvement at a time, one generation at a time, over tens and even hundreds of millions of years. If we had even a tiny fraction of a fraction of the Precambrian life forms, we would have so many transitional forms we would be hard-pressed to draw the line between one phylum and another, so thoroughly would they bleed one form into the other. But we find no such fossil pattern in the Precambrian.

Derbyshire suggests that the precursors of the many Cambrian phyla were soft-bodied and so never fossilized: “[S]oft body parts hardly ever get fossilized,” he writes. “We are working from a pretty scanty data set here.”

The problem is, many soft-bodied creatures did fossilize, and they tell a different story from the one Darwin told. Consider this passage in which Meyer et al., marshall evidence from mainstream evolutionists working in paleobiology:

Finding bias in MSM newspapers like the Houston Chronicle is like finding design in nature, not at all hard to do. Sunday, The Chronicle decided to publish Michael Behe’s op-ed that appeared last week in The New York Times.

The headline the Chronicle perched atop Behe’s column nicely illustrates the petty biases of the paper’s editorial board: “Intelligent design: Creation explained or quackery?”

This didn’t surprise me. Two years ago in the midst of the Texas controversy over error-ridden biology textbooks a Chronicle editorial board member sent us one of the tackiest letters we’ve received from the media. We approached the Chronicle and asked them to meet with us to talk about textbooks and challenges to Darwinian evolution — much as other major Texas papers like the Dallas Morning News — did at the time. The editor responded:

Barbara Forrest is at it again. In her latest review of Meyer & Campbell’s Darwinism, Design & Public Education Forrest substitutes strident affirmation for science and scorn for reasoned argumentation. Forrest never chooses to engage the arguments of design theorists but rather questions their qualifications: “John Angus Campbell, who also serves on the journal’s editorial board, is a rhetorician. Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher.” What pray tell was your Ph.D. in Barbara? And why is it you don’t apply that same standard to Robert Pennock when he deigns himself fit to comment on evolution?

What Forrest more often than not fails to comprehend is that merely asserting that “there is no argument” and “ID is not science” doesn’t settle the issue when the nature of science itself is under question. Like a species of medieval inquisitor, Forrest will brook no debate on this issue. Instead of appeals to evidence or logic, she appeals, ad naseum, to authority. Could it perhaps be because where logic and evidence come into play, and where the game is not rigged, Forrest will lose?

The Washington Times today ran with a straight news piece on the plight of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, who has been under fire recently for allowing a pro-ID paper to be published in his former journal the peer-reviewed “Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.”

The Times reports that there is now an investigation underway:

John Derbyshire recently rebutted a series of objections against Darwinism and, in the process, leveled a series of objections against intelligent design. He dismisses design by ignoring the actual arguments of its theorists and shadowboxing with letter writers instead. He shows, thereby, a lack of seriousness on his own part by trivializing and demeaning scholars whose views he apparently has not really bothered to understand.

One problem is that Derbyshire’s objections against design theory often state the positions of leading design theorists–in other words, he agrees with leading design proponents without even realizing it.

For instance, one of his blog visitors tried to refute Darwinism by asserting, “The fossil record is incomplete.” Derbyshire responded, “Well, duh. Fossilization only happens under extraordinary circumstances.” That’s correct.

He then goes on to assert that the fossil record is nevertheless complete enough to make inferences about the origin and history of species. Still agreed.

Then Derbyshire parts company with leading design theorists. He thinks the gaps in the fossil record protect the theory of common descent by natural selection. But the gaps don’t. The fossil record is a growing problem for neo-Darwinism because attempts to explain away the absence of transitional intermediates between phyla and even lower groups have failed.

John Derbyshire keeps reburying the design argument over at The Corner, with evidence he assures us is elsewhere. By assembling a host of misconceptions about design theory into a single, compact essay (generally unencumbered by supporting evidence), Derbyshire has done us a great service, providing us a forum to respond to each misconception in a series of posts over the next several days.

I’ve never met John Derbyshire. I love his name. It makes me think of England and Middle Earth. I imagine him wearing a stylish derby and living in a tasteful shire somewhere, an articulate conservative with strong opinions — but who just might stop and take a second look at a position with a much older pedigree than Darwinism, one that has gotten a boost in recent years from discoveries in molecular biology, big bang cosmology, astrobiology, information theory, and physics.

Derbyshire begins with a rhetorical flourish: “I like a good knock-down argument as much as the next person, but I must say, ID-ers are low-grade opponents, at least if a bulk of my e-mails are any indication.”

Hmmm. If Derbyshire likes a “good knock-down argument,” why is he arguing with his inbox instead of with the best design arguments (of which he appears oblivious)?

I don’t think Derbyshire likes to have his cherished opinions knocked down at all. Most of us don’t. So we have to fight our tendency to guard our pet scientific theories from contrary evidence. We have to put our theories in empirical harm’s way, and see if they continue to stand when assailed with fresh evidence. It’s called “The Scientific Method.”

But for Derbyshire, Darwinism is the damsel and he will not have her virtue besmirched, will not have her dragged into the dock to be cross-examined, will not have her competing for our affections like a common harlot. Intelligent design, he writes, “is, by the way, not a scientific theory, though it may be a metaphysical one.”

Rhetorically punchy, but is it a scientific way to defend a theory–victory by definition?
Derbyshire also informs us, “All the ID arguments have been patiently refuted many times over.” Were they refuted exclusively with metaphysical arguments? No. Leading Darwinists often rebut ID arguments with scientific arguments. Then when a design theorist rebuts the Darwinist’s scientific arguments by pointing to contrary evidence in the natural world, suddenly (according to Derbyshire) it’s no longer a scientific argument.

Such desperate efforts to keep design theory out of the ring should impress no one.

Notice, too, where Derbyshire retreats to the dogma that design theory isn’t science. It’s right after he states, “A good scientific theory fits the data better than a poor theory.” Hear! Hear! But Derbyshire immediately senses the danger. You see, Darwinism does a horrible job of explaining all sorts evidence in biology and paleontology (e.g., irreducibly complex devices like the mammalian eye, the bacterial flagellum, and blood clotting, the sudden appearance of numerous animal phyla in the Cambrian Explosion, the lack of any examples of macroevolution).

On these points, Darwinism is the aging boxer, past his prime. In contrast, the design hypothesis fits these data points nicely. Sensing this, Derbyshire quickly tries to get Darwinism’s strongest contender, intelligent design, out of the ring. “That other guy’s not a boxer. He’s a slugger, a ninja street fighter. I saw him down at the dojo last week! Watch out or he’ll use some of that Kung Fu voodoo on you!”

OK, that isn’t a Derbyshire quotation, but neither have leading design theorists made some of the silly arguments Derbyshire lists to the exclusion of strong design arguments. Consider what philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has to say about the Darwinist habit of defining intelligent design out of the competition: