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The warning of Star Trek IV has been heeded. (page down to April 21).
posted by Eric at 2:01 PM

 
This article from the Washington Times shows again how the Intelligent Design movement is getting scientific credibility it doesn't deserve.

"There are almost 400 scientists who have signed a statement of dissent from Darwinism," says Stephen Meyer, a representative of the Discovery Institute. 400 scientists. Wow. AAAS says 1,000,000 people read Science, the AAAS journal. So 400 out of the million people who follow the most prestigious peer-reviewed science publication in the world support a dissent from Darwinism. And furthermore, what does "dissent from Darwinism" mean? Here's the statement:

I am skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.

If you're a scientist and you aren't skeptical of a theory and wanting examination of the evidence, then you have no business doing science. Science is all about challenging the establishment and refuting evidence. But there you are--evidence. What evidence has the Intelligent Design movement provided that even suggests that it is likely that an intelligent designer has been active in the progress of life on the Earth? None. I'm sorry, guys, but criticisms and "isn't it possible" statements don't constitute a scientific proposition. You may think you have a theory that offers a susbstantial refutation of random mutation and natural selection, but until you show an experiment or author a peer-reviewed paper that leads directly to the support of the proposition of intelligent design, you've got nothing but an "intellectual movement" which Meyer says Intelligent Design is.

Consider:

"I am skeptical of claims for the ability of the Big Bang to account for the creation of the universe. Careful examination of the evidence for the Big Bang should be encouraged."

There are lots of physicists who do this while accepting the hot Big Bang theory.

or...

"I am skeptical of claims for the ability of Coca-Cola to taste better than Pepsi. Careful examination of the evidence for Coca-Cola tasting better than Pepsi should be encouraged."

Who would debate this? When you ask people to endorse a weak ideological statement like this, of course you will get people to sign it. Most probably have an agenda. If the statement is so empty, then why didn't more sign it? Because it's empty.

You want us to teach the controversy? Fine. The controversy is that you keep saying that your criticisms and imaginings add up to a serious challenge to the 100+ years of actual scientific data, publications, and debate that time and time again has come back to support Darwinism in some form. I'm happy to stand up in front of my science classes and show them the volume of evidence supporting evolution and the lack of volume of evidence supporting intelligent design.

Science doesn't care about your philosophy or ideology. Show me an experiment. Show me an argument that leads to the convincing conclusion that an intelligent designer is at work in making the eye, the flagellum, or one of the other "irreducibly complex" structures that Behe writes about.

One more point. Let's follow the logic of an intelligent design hypothesis. Let's even concede that an intelligent designer was at work. I see two possibilities: aliens or God as the IDer. Otherwise, life evolved naturally. So let's say that it wasn't God (since the DI denies that ID is about getting God back in biology). Then it must be aliens. Those aliens came from somewhere. How did they come to be? I hope you can see the problem. There has to be a prime mover in this theory, and that, to me, is the 800 pound gorilla of ID.

Or is "complexity" a property of the universe that allows for systems to intelligently organize themselves? If that's the argument, then we're talking about removing the "random" statement from evolution and replacing it with another word, like "directed". That's another argument altogether, but then it's really just a refinement of Darwinism, not a trashing of it.
posted by Eric at 9:48 AM

 
Better like your tax cuts, because we are eating our seed corn. The Christian Science Monitor highlightsbasic science research cuts as a means of balancing the terribly out-of-balanced budget. This is a slippery slope: we can't compete with other parts of the world on labor costs, so the only advantage we have outside of the military is maintaining a technological edge. This is the important lesson from Civilization. The other important lesson is that alliances don't work--eventually your allies will turn on you, so crush everyone. But since that's not likely to become US foreign policy, let's make sure that we keep our scientific skills.
posted by Eric at 1:10 PM