A few weeks ago, I used Intelligent Design theory to demonstrate the weakness of Global Warming theory. In the comments on that post, Steven has presented an impassioned, albeit flawed, defense of ID. Since the post is a couple of weeks old, I decided to move my response up here.
First of all Rich, you don’t have the information to assume that ID proponents such as Dr Behe and myself are incorrect. To suggest that you KNOW we are in error is not at all truthful.
Actually, I do. One of the core principles of scientific research is that all aspects of our world result from natural, mechanical processes. As soon as you step away from that principle, you've left science behind and entered philosophy. The only way for ID to be considered science is to prove that life could not have occurred without divine intervention. The burden is on IDers to prove that life couldn't have evolved and they haven't come close to meeting that burden. As long as natural, mechanistic explanations can be found for the development of life, then the leap to ID is simply not justified. The fact that all of the explanations haven't been found in no way means that they won't.
Additionally, if you make the assumption that life was designed, where does that get you as far as science is concerned? What new knowledge comes from it? What experiments can you perform that would have any scientific meaning? The answer, of course, is none. Once you invoke a Designer as your answer, it becomes the answer to every question.
For these two reasons, ID is not science. Period.
Scientists would like to believe that Humans are the pinnacle of the Universal Food chain (not just terrestrial.)
This is simply not true. No biologist I know believes that there even is a top of the food chain, much less that man is at the top of it. In fact, many of the ones I've talked to can reel off several better candidates for top-of-the-heap honors, nearly all of them bacteria. Single celled organisms totally changed the atmosphere of the planet, a feat that dwarfs building the pyramids. And let‘s not forget that those single cell organisms will dine on our remains at the end of the day. The food chain is a cycle, not a ladder.
This leaves PLENTY of time for another culture to have evolved so to speak, beyond our imagination. But I can easly imagine that terraforming is their means of gardening, and perhaps even replicating.
Ah. Somebody has been reading their Francis Crick. There's a problem with the idea that life on Earth was seeded by some incredible advanced and ancient culture; it fails to answer the question of how life evolved, merely pushes it back one more generation. Put simply, how did that incredibly advanced and ancient culture (IAAA)come to be? An even more IAAA culture? Ok, where did they come from?
You know, it really helps when your answer actually answers the question you're asking. Panspermy doesn't.
As for survival of the fittest providing the mechanism for natural selection. How can anyone with half a mind believe that?” If survival were the only criteria, blue algae is doing quite nicely. Why change at all????
There are two critical errors in this one short statement and it's worth taking a bit of time to address them both.
First of all, to answer the question "Why change at all?" organisms do not change in order to survive; they survive because they change. (Thanks, Mrs. J!) You're putting the cart before the horse. Change occurs whether it brings a survival advantage or not; it occurs because of random mutations caused by multiple factors including transcription errors, cosmic radiation, etc. Change due to mutation is inevitable, regardless of whether it enhances or detracts the organisms ability to survive.
Second, "survival of the fittest" has been junked for decades now, and for the reason Steven suggests. It doesn't explain the thousands and thousands of species that make up the biosphere. As a simple example, if survival of the fittest were the only organizing principle, then the giraffe and zebra never would have evolved from their common ancestor. And looked at this way, it's clear that "survival of the fittest" suffers the same flaw as Steven's question of "Why change at all?" As we know now, the answer is that change is constant.
Biologists today favor natural selection as the mechanism of Darwin's evolutionary model, and that is quite a different beast altogether. Natural selection states that as organisms change, those changes may enhance that organism's ability to survive, which increases the probability that those changes will be passed on to the organism's offspring because the organism has a better chance of surviving long enough to reproduce and pass the changes on. Simultaneously, changes that reduce an organisms ability to survive are going to be less likely to get passed on to the organisms offspring, and will not spread through the population. Reproductive isolation limits the spread of positive change, creating drift between different populations, eventually resulting in the formation of two separate species. Note that neither species changed in order to improve their survival; instead, certain members of the original population reaped an advantage because of the change. Also note that while evolution is examined in terms of species, natural selection occurs at the individual organism level.
Going back to my example of the zebra and the giraffe, in a population of their common ancestor, some had a mutation that gave them a longer neck. Others had a mutation that gave them stripes. Both of these changes produced a survival advantage, (greater access to food and better camouflage), therefore both mutations had a higher probability of being passed on through offspring. This simple example demonstrates how a random process, mutation, can produce a highly structured result, and how that result can be so mindbogglingly diverse. And all without the need for an external designer.
As for “selected for”. ………This tired phrase has yet to have any definition or meaning…selected by what?”???…
“Selected for” is short hand for the process of natural selection. It does not apply that anyone or anything is doing the selection, but that the selection occurs through the action of natural forces, hence, “natural selection.”
Unless you speak from the paradigm of ID, there is surely no mechanism for selecting the proper order of amino acids to make the first protein.
Actually, there is. Lab experiments reproducing the conditions on earth prior to the emergence of life, (CO2 atmosphere, high temperature, lots of water, volcanic activity, electrical storms, etc) have produced all 20 amino acids with no design action required. The laws of chemistry are all that is needed, which leads me to a very important point. In the extreme conditions that existed prior to the origin of life, it is possible that other organizing principles were in operation. Just as Einsteinian physics supplanted Newtonian physics without invalidating it, so too may chaos theory, self-organizing systems, and complexity theory expand the reach of Neo-Darwinism in explaining the origins of life.
Steven’s question also contains another error in perception, that the first protein had a “right” order. At that point in time, any order was the right order simply because it represented order out of chaos, demonstrating the principle of self organization arising naturally. Once that is established, then ID is no longer needed.
Your alternate explanation of irreducible complexity is quite puzzling. Please understand that life makes far too many unbelievable choices too fast to employ this strategy. When a molecular machine doesn’t work out its not stored in the (Cell’s) garage, the organism dies.
Which is why men have nipples, and humans have vestigial tails, and an appendix, right?
The existence of these anatomical irrelevancies illustrate that extra parts do not automatically mean a broken machine. That kind of absolutism isn't seen very often in nature for the very reason that broken machines do in fact die. But the inclusion of junk biochemical chains doesn't automatically mean that the process won't function. Instead, we see mutations that weaken the organism’s ability to survive, like sickle cell anemia. Redundant complexity means that biochemical machines start out functioning, but inefficiently, as they are nearly random collections of biochemical processes. However, as mutation occurs, and unnecessary pieces are dropped, the biochemical machine functions more efficiently. Higher efficiency gives a survival advantage, and is more likely to be passed along. This process of refinement will eventually result in an irreducibly complex biochemical machine that operates at maximum efficiency. Interestingly enough, we have a very good example of this kind of junk redundant complexity that, according to Steven, should not happen. We have literally hundreds of thousands of amino acids tied up in junk DNA in our own genome. And we're still here.
Apparently redundancy is not automatically fatal as Steven would have us believe.
The theory of evolution has NOTHING to do with bio engineering (WHICH FYI, IS ID BY DEFINITION.) Turning genes on and off, spicing, and reverse engineering don’t require or employ an origin theory at all
There's another very common misconception buried in this paragraph, that evolution is an origin of life theory. It isn't. Never claimed to be. It was and is a description of how life evolved once it existed. There have been attempts to apply evolutionary theory to the origin of life, with greater and lesser degrees of success, but as I mentioned earlier, there are indications that other organizing principles may have been operative, along with natural selection. So Steven is right, biotech does not require an origin theory, but his point is irrelevant since evolution is not an origin theory. However, considering that genetics and evolution are inextricably tied together, to say that evolutionary theory has nothing to do with bio engineering is extremely naïve.
And there really is nothing more to say on the issue. Intelligent Design is simply not science, because as soon as you propose the existence of an agent outside the naturalistic universe, whether it be divine or an IAAA civilization, you’ve left science behind.
Posted by Rich at January 3, 2006 10:27 PM | TrackBack