Intelligent Design?

A growing number of academics claim there exists irrefutable evidence of intelligent design
in certain aspects of the natural world.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone actually found proof of the existence of God, aliens or some other universal intelligence? Indeed it would.

Yet not much has changed since these words were penned:

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all
- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
 

Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution

National Centre for Science Education
Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools

"Truly intelligent design
One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And life, in his opinion, is a kludge.

No intelligent designer would have put the genomes of living organisms together in the way that evolution has. Some parts overlap, meaning that they cannot change jobs independently of one another. Others have lost their function but have not been removed, so they simply clutter things up. And there is no sense of organisation or hierarchy. That is because, unlike an engineer, evolution cannot go back to the drawing board, it can merely play with what already exists. Biologists, who seek merely to understand how life works, accept this. Engineers such as Dr Endy, who wish to change the way it works, do not. They want to start again."

To read entire article, go here.

"Michael Shermer is one of Americas necessary minds. A reformed fundamentalist who is now an experienced foe of pseudoscience and superstition, he does us the double favor of explaining exactly what creationists believe, and then of demonstrating that they have no case. With his forensic and polemical skill, he could have left them for dead: instead he generously urges them to stop wasting their time (and ours) and do some real work. "   Christopher Hitchens

An excerpt from
Why Darwin Matters

by Michael Shermer

Charles Darwin is back in the news, with Kansas school board members once again shifting seats Left and Right (with liberals this time winning out), leaving us with a perplexing paradox: in science, evolution is one of the half dozen most well supported theories, right up there with the big bang theory of cosmology and the germ theory of disease; yet, a 2005 Pew Research Center poll found that 42 percent of Americans hold strict creationist views that living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time and that 64 percent said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution in public schools, while 38 percent said they think evolution should be replaced by creationism in biology classrooms.

How can we explain the great divide between what scientists think and what the public accepts? Being that I was once a creationist when I was a born-again Christian student at Pepperdine University, but have since devoted much of my scientific career to defending the teaching of evolution through popular science books and magazines, I think I have an answer in the form of one general and six specific reasons.

The syllogistic reasoning behind the general fear of evolution is as follows: Evolution implies that there is no God, therefore Belief in the theory of evolution leads to atheism, therefore Without a belief in God there can be no morality or meaning, therefore Without morality and meaning there is no basis for a civil society, therefore Without a civil society we will be reduced to living like brute animals.

This is what bothers people about evolutionary theory, not the technical details of the science. Most people do not know, nor care about, adaptive radiation, allopatric speciation, phenotypic variation, assortative mating, adaptation and exaptation, gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, and the like. What people want to know is this: If my kids learn about evolution in school are they going to become atheists? Will we lose all meaning and morality? Will society go to hell in an immoral handbasket?

This general fear leads to six specific fears about evolution.

1. A general resistance to science. This reaction falls under the rubric of what I call the Conflicting Worlds Model of the relationship of science and religion, where one is forced to choose one over the other. In particular, if scientific discoveries do not appear to support religious tenets, believers tend to opt for religion, nonbelievers for science.
2. Belief that evolution is a threat to specific religious tenets. Many people attempt to use science to prove certain religious tenets, but when they do not appear to fit, the science is rejected. For example, the attempt to prove that the Genesis creation story is accurately reflected in the geological fossil record has led many creationists to conclude that the Earth was created within the past 10,000 years, which is in sharp contrast to the geological evidence for a 4.6 billion-year old Earth. If one insists on the findings of science squaring true with religious doctrines, this can lead to conflict between science and religion.
3. Misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. A significant problem is that most people know so little about the theory. In a 2001 Gallup poll, for example, a quarter of the people surveyed said they didnt know enough to say whether they accepted evolution or not, and only 34 percent considered themselves to be very informed about the theory. Because evolution is so controversial, public school science teachers typically drop the subject entirely rather than face the discomfort aroused among students and parents.
4. The fear that evolution degrades our humanity. After Copernicus toppled the pedestal of our cosmic centrality, Darwin delivered the coup de grace by revealing us to be mere animals, subject to the same natural laws and historical forces as all other animals. Yet, Copernicus no longer generates controversy because his theory of heliocentrism is fully embraced, whereas Darwins theory remains controversial because people of faith have been told that it is a threat to their religion.
5. The equation of evolution with ethical nihilism. This sentiment was expressed by the neo-conservative social commentator Irving Kristol in 1991: If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuadedor even if it suspectsthat its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. Similar fears were raised by Nancy Pearcey, a fellow of the Discovery Institute in a briefing on Intelligent Design before a House Judiciary Committee of the United States Congress. She cited a popular song urging you and me, baby, aint nothing but mammals so lets do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Pearcey went on to claim that since the U.S. legal system is based on moral principles, the only way to generate ultimate moral grounding is for the law to have an unjudged judge, an uncreated creator.
6. The fear that evolutionary theory implies we have a fixed human nature. The first five reasons for the resistance to evolutionary theory come almost exclusively from political conservatives. This last reason originates from liberals who fear that the application of evolutionary theory to human thought and action implies that political policy and economic doctrines will fail because the constitution of humanity is stronger than the constitutions of states.

All of these fears are baseless. If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe10,000 years ago or 10,000,000,000 years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened. Likewise, it should not matter how God created lifewhether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of Gods works command awe regardless of what processes He used.

As for meanings and morals, it is here where our humanity arises from our biology. We evolved as a social primate species with the tendency of being cooperative and altruistic within our own groups, but competitive and bellicose between groups. The purpose of civilization is to help us rise above our hearts of darkness and to accentuate the better angels of our nature.

Believers should embrace science, especially evolutionary theory, for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divinity in a depth never dreamed by our ancient ancestors. We have learned a lot in 4,000 years, and that knowledge should never be dreaded or denied. Instead, science should be welcomed by all who cherish human understanding and wisdom.

Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right - Professor Steve Jones
 

Keep abreast of developments with:
Creation Watch

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools,
intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science"
-The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory
 

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

The Illusion of Design

by Richard Dawkins
November 2005

The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings and wagon-wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes, and solar systems). Mount Rushmore belonged firmly in the second category until the sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved it into the first. Charles Darwin moved in the other direction. He discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics the laws according to which things just happen could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion. To such people, if a heart (or an eye or a bacterial flagellum) looks designed, thats proof enough that it is designed.

No wonder Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwins bulldog, was moved to chide himself on reading the Origin of Species: How extremely stupid not to have thought of that. And Huxley was the least stupid of men. The breathtaking power and reach of Darwins idea extensively documented in the field, as Jonathan Weiner reports in Evolution in Action is matched by its audacious simplicity. You can write it out in a phrase: nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for building embryos. Yet, given the opportunities afforded by deep time, this simple little algorithm generates prodigies of complexity, elegance, and diversity of apparent design. True design, the kind we see in a knapped flint, a jet plane, or a personal computer, turns out to be a manifestation of an entity the human brain that itself was never designed, but is an evolved product of Darwins mill.

Paradoxically, the extreme simplicity of what the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called Darwins dangerous idea may be its greatest barrier to acceptance. People have a hard time believing that so simple a mechanism could deliver such powerful results.

The arguments of creationists, including those creationists who cloak their pretensions under the politically devious phrase intelligent-design theory, repeatedly return to the same big fallacy. Such-and-such looks designed. Therefore it was designed. To pursue my paradox, there is a sense in which the skepticism that often greets Darwins idea is a measure of its greatness.

Paraphrasing the twentieth-century population geneticist Ronald A. Fisher, natural selection is a mechanism for generating improbability on an enormous scale. Improbable is pretty much a synonym for unbelievable. Any theory that explains the highly improbable is asking to be disbelieved by those who dont understand it.

Yet the highly improbable does exist in the real world, and it must be explained. Adaptive improbability complexity is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve and that natural selection, uniquely as far as science knows, does solve. In truth, it is intelligent design that is the biggest victim of the argument from improbability. Any entity capable of deliberately designing a living creature, to say nothing of a universe, would have to be hugely complex in its own right.

If, as the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle mistakenly thought, the spontaneous origin of life is as improbable as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747, then a divine designer is the ultimate Boeing 747. The designers spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations. Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does he need to exist at all?

The achievement of nonrandom natural selection is to tame chance. By smearing out the luck, breaking down the improbability into a large number of small steps each one somewhat improbable but not ridiculously so natural selection ratchets up the improbability.

As the generations unfold, ratcheting takes the cumulative improbability up to levels that in the absence of the ratcheting would exceed all sensible credence.

Many people dont understand such nonrandom cumulative ratcheting. They think natural selection is a theory of chance, so no wonder they dont believe it! The battle that we biologists face, in our struggle to convince the public and their elected representatives that evolution is a fact, amounts to the battle to convey to them the power of Darwins ratchet the blind watchmaker to propel lineages up the gentle slopes of Mount Improbable.

The misapplied argument from improbability is not the only one deployed by creationists. They are quite fond of gaps, both literal gaps in the fossil record and gaps in their understanding of what Darwinism is all about. In both cases the (lack of) logic in the argument is the same. They allege a gap or deficiency in the Darwinian account. Then, without even inquiring whether intelligent design suffers from the same deficiency, they award victory to the rival theory by default. Such reasoning is no way to do science. But science is precisely not what creation scientists, despite the ambitions of their intelligent-design bullyboys, are doing.

In the case of fossils, as Donald R. Prothero documents in The Fossils Say Yes [see the print issue of Natural History in which this article first appeared], todays biologists are more fortunate than Darwin was in having access to beautiful series of transitional stages: almost cinematic records of evolutionary changes in action. Not all transitions are so attested, of course hence the vaunted gaps. Some small animals just dont fossilize; their phyla are known only from modern specimens: their history is one big gap. The equivalent gaps for any creationist or intelligent-design theory would be the absence of a cinematic record of Gods every move on the morning that he created, for example, the bacterial flagellar motor. Not only is there no such divine videotape: there is a complete absence of evidence of any kind for intelligent design.

Absence of evidence for is not positive evidence against, of course. Positive evidence against evolution could easily be found if it exists. Fishers contemporary and rival J.B.S. Haldane was asked by a Popperian zealot what would falsify evolution. Haldane quipped, Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian. No such fossil has ever been found, of course, despite numerous searches for anachronistic species.

There are other barriers to accepting the truth of Darwinism. Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth. I personally find the idea of cousinship to all living species positively agreeable, but neither my warmth toward it, nor the cringing of a creationist, has the slightest bearing on its truth.

The same could be said of political or moral objections to Darwinism. Tell children they are nothing more than animals and they will behave like animals. I do not for a moment accept that the conclusion follows from the premise. But even if it did, once again, a disagreeable consequence cannot undermine the truth of a premise. Some have said that Hitler founded his political philosophy on Darwinism. This is nonsense: doctrines of racial superiority in no way follow from natural selection, properly understood. Nevertheless, a good case can be made that a society run on Darwinian lines would be a very disagreeable society in which to live. But, yet again, the unpleasantness of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

Huxley, George C. Williams, and other evolutionists have opposed Darwinism as a political and moral doctrine just as passionately as they have advocated its scientific truth. I count myself in that company. Science needs to understand natural selection as a force in nature, the better to oppose it as a normative force in politics. Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: What a book a Devils Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!

In spite of the success and admiration that he earned, and despite his large and loving family, Darwins life was not an especially happy one. Troubled about genetic deterioration in general and the possible effects of inbreeding closer to home, as James Moore documents in Good Breeding [see November issue of Natural History magazine], and tormented by illness and bereavement, as Richard Milners interview with the psychiatrist Ralph Colp Jr. shows in Darwins Shrink, Darwins achievements seem all the more. He even found the time to excel as an experimenter, particularly with plants. David Kohns and Sheila Ann Deans essays (The Miraculous Season and Bee Lines and Worm Burrows [See November issue of Natural History Magazine]) lead me to think that, even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter, albeit an experimenter with the style of a gentlemanly amateur, which might not find favor with modern journal referees.

As for his major theoretical achievements, of course, the details of our understanding have moved on since Darwins time. That was particularly the case during the synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian digital genetics. And beyond the synthesis, as Douglas J. Futuyma explains in On Darwins Shoulders, [see November issue of Natural History Magazine] and Sean B. Carroll details further for the exciting new field of evo-devo in The Origins of Form, Darwinism proves to be a flourishing population of theories, itself undergoing rapid evolutionary change.

In any developing science there are disagreements. But scientists and here is what separates real scientists from the pseudoscientists of the school of intelligent design always know what evidence it would take to change their minds. One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pitys sake, lets stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact.

Why Are Scientists Confident that Complex Biological Systems Evolved Gradually?

By Jason Rosenhouse

Proponents of intelligent design (ID) assert that certain complex biological systems could not emerge from a gradual evolutionary process. They argue instead that such structures are best explained via the deliberate action of an unspecified intelligent designer.

Few scientists endorse this conclusion, and they have good reasons for being skeptical. They understand that the prolonged action of natural selection can be expected to leave traces behind in the structure of modern organisms. And when scientists go looking for those traces they invariably find them in droves.

Recall that natural selection operates by preserving small, favorable variations that occur naturally in any population of organisms. Over time these variations accumulate to the point that large-scale change is the result. This implies that natural selection works by modifying structures already present in the organism. It does not craft new, complex systems from scratch.

This observation is crucial in distinguishing between those systems that could have been crafted by selection and those that could not have been. If we find that a particular organism possesses a complex system made from parts wholly distinct from anything to be found in the organisms closest evolutionary cousins, it will be difficult to explain that system via selection. But if we find that the system appears to be cobbled together from parts that were readily available, then natural selection remains a strong candidate.

Charles Darwin employed this principle in his studies of the complex systems used by orchids to attract pollinating insects. He discovered that these contrivances, as he called them, were indeed fashioned out of modified versions of parts present in closely related flowers. Stephen Jay Gould famously used the pandas thumb to illustrate the same principle. The panda possesses a sixth digit on its front paws that it uses to strip the leaves off of bamboo. This digit is not a true opposable thumb like that possessed by apes and humans. If it were, we would have a strong argument against natural selection in this case, since the pandas closest relatives have nothing like such a thumb. In reality, however, the pandas thumb is cobbled together from alterations in the bones found in the paws of other bears. Since examples like these are ubiquitous in nature we see that natural selection passes its first big test.

This principle extends to the biochemical realm as well. In his book Finding Darwins God, cell biologist Kenneth Miller offers the following thoughts on the structure of the vertebrate blood clotting cascade:

The striking thing about this particular Rube Goldberg machine is how similar most of its parts are. Nearly all of the regulatory molecules belong to a single class of proteincutting enzymes known as serine proteases, and thatis the clue to understanding the systems evolution beginning with organisms that lacked a protein-based clotting system.

From this starting point Miller develops a scenario for the evolution of the modern blood clotting system from simple precursors found in invertebrates. An important step in his scenario involves a series of gene duplications, followed by the divergence of the duplicate copies. This explains why the individual proteins in the clotting systems are so similar. Miller goes on to describe ways of testing his scenario:

If the clotting cascade really evolved the way I have suggested, the clotting enzymes would have to be near-duplicates of a pancreatic enzyme and of each other. As it turns out, they are. Not only is thrombin homologous to trypsin, a pancreatic serine protease, but the six clotting proteasesshare extensive homology as well. This is consistent with the notion that they were formed by gene duplication, just as suggested. But there is more to it than that. We could take one organism-humans for example-and construct a branching tree based on the relative degrees of similarity and difference between each of the clotting proteases. Now, if the gene duplications that produced the clotting cascade occurred long ago in an ancestral vertebrate, we should be able to take any other vertebrate and construct a similar tree in which the relationships between the clotting proteases match the relationships between the human proteases. This is a powerful test for our scheme because it requires that sequences still undiscovered should match a particular pattern. Andit is also a test that evolution passes in one organism after another.

Many other tests and predictions can be imposed on the scheme as wellIf the modern fibrinogen gene really was recruited from a duplicated ancestral gene, one that had nothing to do with blood clotting, then we ought to be able to find a fibrinogen-like gene in an animal that does not possess the vertebrate clotting pathway.

Miller goes on to describe the discovery of such a gene in a sea cucumber, thereby producing another piece of evidence for his proposed scenario.

From this description a second principle emerges. Not only does every complex system studied in detail give the appearance of a Rube Goldberg machine cobbled together from available parts, but also evolutionary scenarios for their formation invariably lead to further testable predictions.

Contrary to the protestations of anti-evolutionists, insight into the evolutionary histories of complex systems seems to come out of laboratories on almost a daily basis. For example, the March 18, 2005 issue of the professional journal Science contained a research article on the evolution of swim bladders in fish. The accompanying commentary described the articles findings as follows:

Scuba divers wear air-filled dive vests to move up and down in the water column. Researchers have now used the fish family tree to piece together how the piscine equivalent, an internal air sac called a swim bladder, evolved a complex capillary network and special hemoglobin molecule to inflate it with oxygen. Moreover, according to the proposal presented by Michael Berenbrink of the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, and his colleagues, these innovations helped fish expand their species diversity. The scenario developed presents a fascinating picture of the evolution and radiation of fish, says Bernd Pelster, an animal physiologist at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Shortly thereafter the March 2005 issue of the journal Genome Research published the results of recent research into the evolution of snake venom. In both cases the scientists applied logic similar to what Miller described, and they were rewarded with success in finding plausible evolutionary scenarios that were consistent with the copious data they had collected. Surely such consistent success in applying the logic of natural selection to modern complex systems counts as evidence in selections favor.

Still, the evidence in these cases is inevitably circumstantial. It could hardly be otherwise considering that the systems whose formation we are trying to explain evolved long ago. With that in mind we might ask whether there is some in principle reason for rejecting natural selection as a plausible explanation. In other words, can we find some theoretical reason why natural selection is fundamentally inadequate to explain complex biological systems?

The main argument made by ID proponents in this regard is based on the idea of irreducible complexity. Michael Behe coined this term in his 1996 book Darwins Black Box. He defined a system to be irreducibly complex if it consisted of several, well-matched parts each of which was essential for the system to function properly. It was his assertion that such a system could not evolve by gradual accretion, because any intermediate structures would have to be nonfunctional. Since there are plenty of biological systems that fit Behes definition, the conclusion is that there are complex biological systems whose formation simply can not be attributed to prolonged selection, regardless of any other evidence.

If Behe were right, the observation of irreducible complexity would instantly trump whatever circumstantial evidence I could provide in favor of natural selection. But he is not right. Immediately after Behes book hit the stores, scientists took up the thankless task of stating the obvious: irreducible complexity in the present tells us nothing about functional precursors in the past. This has been demonstrated in two ways: (1) by describing general schemes, based solely on known biological processes, whereby an irreducibly complex system could arise gradually (for example, irreducible complexity could result from the reduction in redundancy that occurs when subsequent mutations cause the two copies of a duplicated gene to diverge); (2) by using these schemes to produce scenarios for explaining specific biochemical machines.

In response to these observations ID proponents generally respond that the various schemes referred to in point (1) above are mere guesses, while the scenarios in point two (2) invariably lack sufficient detail to be considered definitive. Both of these objections miss the point. It is the ID proponents who are making sweeping assertions about what is possible and what is not. Scientists are simply offering an in principle response to an in principle argument. And since scientists base their scenarios solely on familiar processes, it is the ID folks who have to explain why irreducible complexity is something people should get worked up over.

ID proponents make other in principle arguments against natural selection, variously based on probability theory or on selections lack of foresight, but all such arguments are completely without merit. The determination that a given system could not have evolved gradually can only be based on a detailed understanding of the structure and function of that system, not on any abstract, armchair reasoning.

There are further lines of evidence we could cite in support of natural selections importance, but they will have to wait for future columns. Let us instead consider a different question: Circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, does ID provide a better explanation than natural selection for complex biological systems?

In considering that possibility we should begin with the observation that ID arguments are always indirect. ID proponents never argue, We observe X. Therefore, ID. Instead they argue, We observe X. X cannot plausibly be explained naturalistically. Therefore, ID. Since we have already seen that prolonged natural selection is capable both in theory and practice of explaining complex systems, the design hypothesis receives a serious blow right from the start.

But there is a graver objection. Design proponents try to present ID as a simple extrapolation from the actions of known intelligent agents. William Dembski expresses the argument this way in his book The Design Revolution:

It is well known that intelligence produces irreducibly complex systems. (For example, humans regularly produce machines that exhibit irreducible complexity.) Intelligence is thus known to be causally adequate to bring about irreducible complexity.

This is rather like claiming that mountains are evidence for the existence of giant moles. After all, molehills are something that moles are known to produce, and what is a mountain if not a giant molehill?

The fact is that the feats performed by the designer in ID are orders of magnitude beyond anything known intelligent agents are capable of. Human beings may possess the highest level of intelligence in the known universe, but we have no idea how to jigger with an organisms genome to bring a blood clotting cascade or a swim bladder into existence. And those are among the simpler things our hypothetical designer is called upon to do. Ask a scientist to create life, manipulate fundamental constants of the universe, or bring whole worlds into being, and he will stare at you helplessly. The fact is, if we were only extrapolating from known causes we would have to conclude that intelligence is fundamentally incapable of accomplishing what is being asked of it.

So the situation is this: On the one had we find that there is no reason in theory why evolution cannot account for complex systems. Furthermore, every one of the numerous complex systems studied in detail has just the structure it ought to have if it originated via known mechanisms. Scientists use this fact to formulate useful hypotheses about the history of these systems, and can claim one explanatory success after another as a result. For scientists the hypothesis that a system evolved by natural selection is the beginning, not the end, of their investigation.

On the other hand we find that ID proponents find it more plausible to invent out of whole cloth a designer capable of performing feats that can only be described as magical. They have not a single explanatory success to their credit, and have given no reason to believe their hypotheses can ever lead to anything useful. For ID proponents the assertion of design is the end of the investigation.

Which explanation do you think scientists should embrace?

----------------------------

Jason Rosenhouse is the author of EvolutionBlog, providing commentary on developments in the endless dispute between evolution and creationism.

1. X looks designed.
2. I cant think of how X was designed naturally.
3. Therefore X was designed supernaturally.

This is the old God of the Gaps argument: wherever there is a gap in scientific knowledge, God is invoked as the causal agent. This is comparable to the Plane problem of Isaac Newtons time: the planets all lie in a plane (the plane of the ecliptic). Newton found this arrangement to be so improbable that he invoked God as an explanation in Principia Mathematica: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. Why dont IDers use this argument any more? Because astronomers have filled that gap with a natural explanation.

A summary of ID in practice:

1. Scientists do not accept ID as science.
2. Therefore ID is not taught in public school science classes.
3. I think ID is science.
4. Therefore I will lobby the government to force teachers to teach ID as science.

This is what I call the God of the Government argument: if you cant convince teachers to teach your idea based on its own merits, ask the government to force teachers to teach it. By analogy, in the early 1990s, I published a series of articles applying chaos and complexity theory to history. It is, of sorts, a theory of history, and I had high hopes that historians would adopt my theory, put it to practice, and perhaps even teach it to their students. They havent. Maybe I didnt communicate my theory very clearly. Maybe my theory is wrong. Should I go to my congressman to complain? Should I lobby school board members to force history teachers to teach my theory of history? See how absurd this sounds?

From: The Woodstock of Evolution
 

Three proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) present their views of design in the natural world. Each view is immediately followed by a response from a proponent of evolution (EVO). The report, printed in its entirety, opens with an introduction by Natural History magazine and concludes with an overview of the ID movement:

www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html
 

Looking for God at Berkeley

Originally published by SF Weekly June 20, 2001

A provocative theory called "intelligent design" claims evolution is hogwash.
But it's not the usual religious zealots leading the latest attack on Darwin.
It's scientists and professors at Cal.
By Mark Athitakis

In a crumbling UC Berkeley research lab, Jed Macosko is looking for
God. Macosko is a molecular biology researcher who holds chemistry
degrees from Cal and MIT. As a Christian, he believes that God is
everywhere. As a scientist, he thinks that God might live in
bacteria.

Macosko's research peers deep into E. coli, a bacterium best
known for the virulent strain that has caused fast-food restaurant
panics, though it's normally harmless (it's swimming in your intestines
right now). It's a seductive subject for a biochemist: The inner life
of E. coli -- indeed, any microscopic organism -- is a sophisticated
dance of proteins and amino acids interlocking and working together.
Many molecular biologists find it utterly dazzling that something so
small yet so amazingly complex could have evolved in nature.

But Macosko's interpretation makes a radical break from the
overwhelming majority of his colleagues: He believes that the work
going on inside those bacteria isn't just amazingly complex -- it's so
incredibly complex that it couldn't conceivably have formed through
evolution. The only reasonable explanation, he says, is that these
systems and their processes were deliberately created by an
"intelligent designer."

Macosko, a young, genial, and well-spoken scientist who has co-authored
a handful of published scientific papers, calls that designer God,
though he says you could call it anything you're comfortable with. If
you like, he says, call it space aliens. He is inspired by what he
claims is growing evidence that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution --
the very bedrock of biology -- has collapsed on the molecular level,
and his career as a scientist and his research at UC Berkeley are
geared toward supporting that theory. Looking at the E. coli bacterium,
he says, "your natural assumption is that there must be another
intelligence out there, whether it's an alien life form or some deity
or something from outside our universe, or from a higher dimension that
we can't observe."

The mainstream scientific community's response to that kind of
statement ranges from howls of laughter to raw fury. Yet Macosko is not
alone in his beliefs, and the proponents of "intelligent design" theory
have gradually coalesced into a bona fide movement. Until recently,
attacks on evolution have usually come from the pulpit. For decades,
"creation science" tried to debunk Darwin by using the Bible to explain
the origins of life. An oxymoron by definition, creation science was
easily dismissed by the scientific world. Intelligent design theory,
however, uses science itself to undercut evolution, and many of its
adherents are scholars from leading universities like UC Berkeley. Cal,
in fact, has produced several vocal proponents of intelligent design.
Besides Macosko, they include a former criminal law professor who has
become the self-acknowledged leader of the intelligent design movement,
and another Berkeley scientist who is getting attention for a book that
calls for a freeze on government funding of evolution research and
warning labels on biology textbooks.

With those kinds of credentials, intelligent design has gathered steam
in a way that creation science never did. Its arguments have begun to
creep into public school board meetings. The Oakland-based National
Center for Science Education, which polices attempts to insert religion
into school curricula, has seen the largest flare-up of legislation in
its 20-year history, much of it thanks to the efforts of intelligent
design promoters.

In the minds of most scientists, however, intelligent design is simply
a more insidious way of packaging creation science; intelligent design
theory, they argue, is little more than the latest twist in an ongoing
attempt to wedge religion into public schools, and besides, it's not
much of a theory at all. It's just bad science, they say, which makes
specious, deceptive, and unprovable claims about the nature of the
universe.

Indeed, intelligent design theories are fascinating at first glance --
who wouldn't want to at least hear out a scientific proof for God? --
but they would be more intriguing if they weren't premised on so much
wishful thinking. Intelligent design boosters, above all else, merely
have a righteous beef with Darwinists and a supposition -- a faith, you
might say -- that a designer of some sort created certain parts of
nature. Their scientific arguments would be more respectable if they
weren't befriending creation science proponents, exploiting scientific
loopholes by appealing to the general public instead of submitting
their research for peer review, or pointing to areas of science where
the research is incomplete or contradictory as proof of Darwin's
imminent collapse.

Macosko disagrees, though he sympathizes with the scientists who are so
resistant to his ideas. Darwin's theory of evolution, after all,
evicted God from the laboratory; it built a wall dividing scientific
truth and spiritual truth. Tearing down that wall, Macosko says, will
require enlisting both the masses and the scientists in ivory towers
like Cal. "The problem with [Darwin] is that it's so entrenched in our
culture," he says. "Newtonian physics never made policy, but Darwinism
has made policy. So there's got to be two fights: one at the grass
roots, one academic. And I think both fights have to go on at the same
time."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intelligent design theory is, in fact, a whole bundle of theories and
arguments. From molecular biology comes an argument that organic
processes like the ones Macosko studies are too fundamentally complex
for evolution to explain them; from statistics, a claim that
probability theory can show whether an organism has had enough time to
evolve; from philosophy, a rhetorical study suggesting that Darwinism
isn't science so much as a closed-minded materialist viewpoint that
needs rethinking. The common thread is an incendiary claim: People are
being misled -- or outright lied to -- about the theory of evolution's
power to explain the whole of nature, and that room needs to be made
for something that is, if not the hand of God, then outside of our
accepted notions of scientific evidence.

It's a hard thing to be on the fence about. To agree with intelligent
design is, in a way, to renounce our idea of "evidence"; it means
saying the holes in Darwin's theories are so enormous that God or space
aliens or creatures from the fifth dimension need to be there to fill
in the gaps. To disagree with it is to potentially miss the boat on
what might be the greatest sea change in scientific thinking since
Copernicus said the Earth revolved around the sun. So what is causing
highly educated people to embrace such a radical view? What evidence
could inspire Jed Macosko to buck the scientific establishment and risk
his reputation?

The answer to those questions starts at Stanley Hall, which sits on the
far eastern reaches of the UC Berkeley campus. Macosko works on the
third floor, as one of a quiet hive of 10 researchers in the department
of molecular and cell biology. Even if his views are unpopular, he does
get to voice them there: On a small bulletin board just outside the
lab's door, Macosko has thumbtacked some recent news articles about
intelligent design theory.

Macosko and his colleagues are studying how genetic material -- RNA,
DNA, enzymes, and proteins -- goes about its business. Throughout the
spacious lab, expensive and intricate measuring equipment is mounted on
cinder blocks, which are then hung from the ceiling on thick, taut
bungee cords. It gives the place a bit of a clumsy, toolshed kind of
feel, though it's meant to prevent even the slightest movements during
the slightest seismic activity. Macosko's office is hardly an office at
all, just a corner of a conference room he's staked out for himself
with enough space for his computer and shelves of books that seem
dangerously on the verge of collapse. It's here that Macosko pulls out
a sheet of paper and patiently tries to explain exactly why he sees God
when he stares at E. coli.

Macosko is investigating a process that ought to be familiar to anybody
who was taking notes in high school biology class. For those who were
passing notes instead, here's the painless recap: DNA, the
double-stranded molecule that carries genetic information and makes up
chromosomes, reproduces when RNA makes copy of a DNA strand. In this
way, cells make proteins that help the cell do any number of things,
including reproduce, or they make proteins that are essential to the
life of the organism.

This process begins with an enzyme called RNA polymerase, the focus of
Macosko's work. It's this enzyme that splits the DNA strands in two: a
template strand and a coding strand. RNA uses that coding strand to
transcribe information in the DNA to make a variety of "gene products"
supporting the organism -- including more RNA polymerase. Even if
that's calling up ugly memories of biology pop quizzes, take away this
much: A complex system of molecules is doing very specific things in
very specific places at very specific times at very specific rates.

Understanding that process better is the goal of Macosko's research
group. However, apart from the group's official goal -- and contrary to
his colleagues -- Macosko believes this system to be what he calls
"irreducibly complex." Irreducible complexity, a term first coined by
Lehigh University biochemist Michael J. Behe, is based on two
principles. First, an irreducibly complex system must have each
component working in order to function; take away one part and the
whole system collapses. Second, in an irreducibly complex system, each
component can't have a useful function outside of the one for which it
is being used.

Behe's favorite metaphor for explaining this is a mousetrap. Take one
part away from a mousetrap -- its spring, hammer, catch, or platform --
and it becomes useless. Logically, a mousetrap had to be created by a
human engineer. Likewise, Behe argues that certain biological systems
are made of component parts that had to have been created, all at once,
by an intelligent designer; Darwin's theory of evolution may work fine
to account for the variation in species of plants and animals, but
irreducible complexity argues that it begins to collapse in molecular
biochemistry.

In the case of Macosko's research, the theory of irreducible complexity
says that even the slightest change in the composition of RNA
polymerase and its course of action in the cell would make the whole
system nonfunctional; furthermore, the arrangement of amino acids in
the system is so complex that they could not have evolved. "This RNA
polymerase has to make RNA copies that are close enough to the DNA so
that information is passed along, and that it can do a useful
function," Macosko says. "It has to be fast enough; there are all sorts
of design constraints." The very structure of RNA polymerase
exemplifies this, he says. It's a complex arrangement of six chains of
different amino acids -- over a thousand per chain. If you change the
structure or remove even a few of the amino acids, he says, the
enzyme's function collapses -- and that, he argues, leaves room for the
possibility of God's hand structuring the process.

Research into RNA polymerase is perfectly legitimate science; indeed,
Brown University professor Kenneth M. Miller calls it "cool stuff." But
while Miller stresses that he cannot speak specifically on Macosko's
interpretation of the E. coli research (which is unpublished), he is
very familiar with claims of irreducible complexity, and he has serious
problems with the theory. The most glaring one, Miller says, is that
irreducible complexity has not been presented to the scientific
community through established channels. Behe's theory was first
published not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal like Nature or The
Journal of Molecular Evolution, but instead as a general-interest book,
Darwin's Black Box. Behe and other promoters of intelligent design
theory, Miller says, "avoid the scientific community like the plague.
Instead, what they have tried to do is make an end run around the
process of scientific review."

But more essentially, Miller says, the claims of irreducible complexity
have been proven wrong -- it is provable that complex molecular systems
evolve according to Darwin's theories, and there is research showing
that this is indeed the case. Scientific research papers have been
published describing how complex molecular systems have evolved, and
other papers have been written showing how the enzymes and proteins
that work in complex systems can also have useful functions independent
of them. The only conclusion Miller can draw is that intelligent design
is little more than creation science revisited. "Intelligent design
theory sounds quite different from scientific creationism, because it
doesn't use a Creator or mention a Creation," he says. "It just
mentions an intelligent designer, but it's the same wolf in new sheep's
clothing."

Macosko doesn't agree that the papers present definitive proof for
evolution on the molecular level, particularly in the organisms he is
studying; he says the papers' authors are playing a game of "what if"
with the evidence, and that irreducible complexity makes for a better
explanation for the data. Even if it means saying that "natural
phenomena can be caused by things that are not natural," as he puts it.

That sort of supposition is entirely off the radar of empirical
science, and Dr. Carlos Bustamante, who heads the laboratory Macosko
works in, is quick to separate his lab's work from Macosko's
interpretation of it. Bustamante emphasizes that the research there has
nothing to do with intelligent design concepts, and that Macosko's
interpretation of the research is solely his own.

Macosko knows he is isolated in his beliefs, but he says his
disagreement is not a complete rejection of Darwin. "Darwin was a
visionary," he says. "There were people who wanted to chalk things up
just to design without putting in the work to do it. Darwin proposed an
alternative that, if it were allowed to reside side by side with the
design hypothesis, would've really borne a lot of fruit. What I reject
is that evolution is enough to do all the creating that we see. And in
rejecting that, I reject what the people who follow Darwin stand for."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eugenie Scott can't help but laugh a little when she considers her
fate; it's the 21st century, and she still has to deal with religious
groups infiltrating public policy. Since 1987, Scott has run the
nonprofit National Center for Science Education, which was launched in
1981 with a simple, uncontroversial mission: to encourage dialogue
between university scholars and high school science teachers. As a
sideline, it was also supposed to debunk the creation science camp, but
that was a simple enough matter. That's why the center has its general,
all-encompassing name -- not something like "The National Center for
Bashing Creationism," as Scott jokingly puts it.

Scott still keeps tabs on old-fashioned creation science, but these
days it's the back-and-forth on intelligent design that fills the
center: Getting into Scott's windowless office means maneuvering around
chairs stacked with textbooks and the latest articles both for and
against intelligent design. On one wall she's taped a list of states
with pending legislation that supports teaching some form of
creationism in schools. In terms of legislation, she says, this year is
already the busiest ever for the center. "Since the beginning of the
year, creation science bills have been in six or seven state
legislatures, which is phenomenal," she says. "We haven't had that kind
of outburst ever." Some of that activity, she says, might be attributed
to the George W. Bush administration; during the presidential campaign,
Bush said children "ought to be exposed to different theories about how
the world started," and Scott argues that statements like that "have
had a very strong indirect encouraging effect. It's led a lot of
people, I suspect, to think, "We've got friends in high places.'"

Scott says intelligent design-inspired legislation, too, is on the
upswing, and she anticipates seeing much more of it in the future. The
process has already started; a bill in Michigan, for example, proposes
that intelligent design be taught alongside evolution, and that "a
public school official shall not censor or prohibit the teaching of the
design hypothesis." Legislation like that is inspired by the latest
argument working Scott's nerves: a claim that biology textbooks are so
wrong and so deceptive in their support of evolution that they need
warning labels, like packs of cigarettes.

The claim comes from one of the most popular intelligent design books
around, Icons of Evolution. It was written by Jonathan Wells, a
biologist who went to UC Berkeley specifically to smash Darwin's
theories -- because the Rev. Sun Myung Moon told him to.

Wells' background in the Unification Church had been common knowledge
in academic circles for about a year, but this spring the scientific
establishment officially made something of it. In the April 12 edition
of the science journal Nature, University of Chicago geneticist Jerry
Coyne opened his review of Wells' book by quoting from an essay Wells
wrote titled "Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D." There, Wells
wrote that "Father [Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced
me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism," and that he
went to UC Berkeley in 1989 to earn the credentials to better
legitimize his beliefs. Wells doesn't mention this inspiration anywhere
in Icons, producing a book Coyne waggishly dismisses as "a polemic
intelligently designed to please Father Moon."

"I think it's irrelevant," Wells says of his church background,
speaking from his home outside Seattle, where he is a fellow at the
Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, an
intelligent design think tank. Wells dismisses the Nature review as an
ad hominem attack, and argues that he is on solid academic footing. His
claim is that much of the proof for Darwin's theories isn't proof at
all -- merely folklore passed down from generation to generation to
support the primacy of evolutionary scientists.

To make his case, Wells critiques 10 examples of evolution that are
commonly found in biology textbooks. For example, he attacks the
supposed evolution of Galpagos finches that Darwin studied, arguing
that their changes are grossly overstated. Peppered moths, which
gradually changed color as the Industrial Revolution increased air
pollution in England, are often cited as a case of natural selection;
Wells argues there were flaws in the methods and conclusions of
experiments that attributed the change to natural selection, and he
reveals that the pictures often seen in biology textbooks, showing how
the moths' new coloring helped them blend into the background on tree
trunks, were staged. He scrutinized drawings of limbs and the
development of embryos among different species of vertebrates, which
supposedly argued for shared ancestry; instead, Wells found them to be
deceptive, exaggerated, or simply wrong.

But most damning, to Wells' mind, is that evolutionary biologists have
known about these problems for years, and yet errors persist in making
their way into textbooks. Why? None dare call it conspiracy, but Wells
argues that scientists are desperate to maintain their authority, even
if it comes at the expense of truth. As he writes in Icons, "dogmatic
Darwinists have exploited their evocative power to a degree that would
make demagogues and advertising executives blush."

Ironically, the evolutionary research Wells did at Berkeley -- where
his focus was on frog embryos -- gave him the tools to make his claims.
"[Wells] got a lot of the ammo [for Icons] from his courses at Cal,"
says Eugenie Scott, who points out that the rigors of scientific study
at Berkeley -- or any respectable university -- mean dissecting
arguments and looking for holes. Wells' flaw, Scott argues, is that he
found a few cases where evolutionary research is incomplete and then
overreacted, interpolating a thoroughgoing conspiracy to remove God (or
an "intelligent designer") from the discussion. "You're supposed to
learn how to take apart a theory, to understand how it functions,"
Scott says, "but you're not supposed to throw out the baby with the
bath water."

Icons of Evolution also illustrates how the standard God vs. evolution
debate is becoming more nuanced. Time was, criticism of evolution by
religious groups was easily dismissed as Christian proselytizing. Any
attempts to remove Darwin from the classroom, therefore, could be
countered on constitutional grounds. But because writings on
intelligent design tend to avoid any specific mention of God, and
because its proponents use science and not the Bible to make their
claims, it becomes harder to use the constitutional argument. It has
also become easier for the intelligent design camp to dismiss any
accusation of religious bias as beside the point, or an ad hominem
attack.

"I'm not surprised at how much of the attack has been directed at me
personally, though I would of course prefer that the debate center on
the evidence," says Wells. "But I'm a veteran of controversy. I love it."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phillip Johnson doesn't look or act like much of a revolutionary. His
home, like a lot of houses in the North Berkeley flats, is all but
swamped with greenery -- trees and tall flowers that make it difficult
to figure who rightfully owns what part of what yard. There's a
paternalistic tone to his words -- he comes off as patient in his
explanations and charming in his delivery; between the comfy sweater,
the distinguished gray hair, and the Berkeley degree, he's sober,
genial, and far apart from any Bible-thumping hysterics. It all works
to his advantage when he goes so far as to say that the debate over
Wells' religious background is yet another example of the "intellectual
bankruptcy" of the mainstream scientific community.

"This exposes the bias and lack of professionalism of the Darwinian
side," he huffs. "This is what they have to rely on: claims of power,
ad hominems, and personal attacks. That's not a really confident
intellectual position. It's like a criminal saying, "This prosecutor is
a member of the Unification Church! I should be acquitted!'"

Johnson is the rhetorical godhead of the intelligent design movement;
he's been pushing its concepts since before they even had a name.
Recently, after more than a decade of writing and speaking on the
subject, it has become his full-time job. Earlier this year, Johnson
retired from Berkeley after 33 years of teaching criminal law, a
concession to the fact that he is now spending a third of his time on
the road speaking against evolution. On the road, a lot of people in
the audience find it odd that such a vocally right-wing speaker is a
Berkeley product, though Johnson himself doesn't see it as so unusual.
Just look at Jonathan Wells. "It's a tribute that somebody like
Jonathan Wells would want to get his second Ph.D. here, even though his
views were not those of the department," he says. "He felt like this
was a place to learn the things he had to know to even challenge the
things that they believe in. That's a very high compliment. I think I'm
something of a goodwill ambassador for the university. Berkeley's a
very vibrant place with a lot of different things. I'm just one of the
different things."

Johnson made his name by taking a chisel to what he calls "the Inherit
the Wind stereotype" -- the image of evolution critics as blinkered and
ignorant fundamentalists. In 1991, Johnson published Darwin on Trial,
which attacked evolution not with the hammer of God but with the calm
rationality of a legal scholar studying the philosophies upon which
scientists construct their theories. His own view, quickly embraced by
intelligent design boosters, was that Darwinism was only one philosophy
-- materialism -- among many that could be used to look at the
universe.

Johnson wasn't dissuaded by the small detail that he was a legal
scholar, not a scientist; after all, lawyers and scientists are both
supposed to study evidence and make claims. So Darwin on Trial
confidently charged into the evolution debate. "Darwin could not point
to impressive examples of natural selection," Johnson wrote, and
neither have thousands of scientists hence; oft-cited examples of
natural selection like fruit flies and Galpagos finches, Johnson said,
are just "convincing circumstantial evidence." Johnson was looking for
direct evidence that natural selection had produced a new species or a
new organ, and he found citations of slight changes in color, beak
size, or species population unsatisfactory.

Genetic mutation? Don't make him laugh. Pure speculation, he said -- he
wanted proof of an eye or a wing evolving, and couldn't find it. Why?
Because scientists don't have it. Fossil records? A messy business --
scientists fight over the meaning and place of each fossil they find,
and the gaps in this so-called record are so wide that it's hard to
make a "story" out of it without entering into pure speculation. The
origin of life in the primordial soup? Unprovable, and even the
experiments that claimed to do so were debunked long ago. As a lawyer,
Johnson knew it was hard to build a case around circumstantial
evidence, and yet he saw the scientific community as working with
nothing but.

Johnson's arguments were presented so soberly that he almost
single-handedly reopened the evolution debate in academic circles.
Scientific American and Nature felt compelled to review the book
seriously, after ignoring decades' worth of standard creation science
literature. To date his book has sold about 180,000 copies. "It's hard
to overestimate the importance of Darwin on Trial," says Eugenie Scott.
"Here was an anti-evolution book by a professor of law at UC Berkeley.
This was man-bites-dog. When [young-earth creationist] Henry Morris
writes, nobody cares ... but a lot of people flocked to [Johnson's]
banner."

Johnson has formed his ideas into what he calls the "Wedge strategy."
The Wedge strives to place intelligent design on the public policy
table in two ways. First, it forces out the radical fundamentalist
young-earthers who threaten to discredit the movement. Second and more
important, it strives to promote the design thesis to the communities,
scholars, and legislators who might be receptive to hearing it.

It's working. The Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of
Science and Culture has over $1 million available to finance writing,
research, and lectures by the likes of Johnson and Wells. As a result,
intelligent design has played a strong supporting role in challenges to
school boards in West Virginia, Louisiana, Michigan, Kansas, and
elsewhere; last month a student in Pennsylvania challenged his local
school board's curriculum by citing Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution.
In May, a group including Johnson, Michael Behe, and others affiliated
with the Discovery Institute held a lecture on Capitol Hill attended by
a handful of congresspeople. And last week, the Senate passed its
education bill, which included a resolution stating that "Where
biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students to
understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy,
and prepare them to be informed participants in public discussions."
It's not binding law, but for Johnson, who preaches "teach the
controversy," it's a victory.

But Johnson argues that forcing intelligent design theory into public
schools is not his goal. "We definitely aren't looking for some
legislation to support our views, or anything like that," he says. "I
want to be very cautious about anything I say about the public
interest, because obviously what our adversaries would like to say is,
"These people want to impose their views through the law.' No. That's
what they do. We're against that in principle, and we don't need that."

For the most part, however, Johnson says he has focused on academia; if
the ivory tower can be convinced, he argues, what he believes to be the
truth can trickle down from there. "I'm ambivalent toward even the best
legislative efforts right now," he says. "Most of them are just bills
that don't pass."

Johnson is under no delusion that winning over the minds of
evolutionary scientists will be quick or easy -- after all, they're
what he calls "prisoners of a mental strongbox" -- but he is seeing
steady progress toward a time when God will exist side by side with
Darwin. "My semifacetious prediction is that in 2059 there will be the
bicentennial [of Darwin's Origin of Species], and the theme will be
"How did we ever let this happen?'" With that he lets out a hearty,
confident laugh.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Criticizing Johnson's ideas has been easy for the scientific
establishment. Sure there's debate over how evolution occurs, which
Johnson points out. But his conclusion -- that these debates open the
question as to whether it occurs -- is both presumptuous and
ill-researched in the minds of scientists. But it allows Johnson to
argue that evolutionary scientists are in a panic to prop up Darwin to
support their authority over nature. That's foolishness, says Brown
University's Kenneth Miller. Scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and
Niles Eldridge found flaws with Darwin but were in no way ostracized
for it -- they simply backed up their claims with research. The
intelligent design community, he says, could do the same thing, except
for a simple problem: No intelligent design researcher has come up with
a scientific way to test for the existence of God.

"A lot of people were upset by [Gould's and Eldridge's claims], but
nonetheless [the two researchers] made their reputations on criticizing
Darwin," says Miller. "Can you criticize Darwin and live? Of course.
The question is, why should one expect that the scientific community
would not be critical of ideas that have no scientific support?" Miller
and the overwhelming majority of scientists maintain that evolution
provides the only legitimate explanation for biological change;
theories like intelligent design look for supernatural explanations,
and there's no test for such a thing. Only suppositions. Faith.

Intelligent design believers certainly have faith, not only in their
theory but in their eventual vindication. "It happens to be a belief of
mine that [intelligent design] is a sure winner once it's on the
table," says Phillip Johnson. "The metaphor I use is that the train has
left the station and it's on the logical tracks. It's going to the
terminus, even if it may take a long time to get there."

Which means Eugenie Scott won't be changing jobs anytime soon. "I joke
that every nonprofit director has a goal of eliminating the problem the
nonprofit was created to address -- your goal is to put yourself out of
business," Scott says. "But damn ... I have a feeling that I'm going to
be stuck in this business for a while."

www.sfweekly.com/issues/2001-06-20/feature.html/page1.html


Originally published by SF Weekly June 20, 2001
2001 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.