[Phys-L] Re: ID defenders [Response to R. McDermott, Part II]

[hhaskell at MINDSPRING.COM (Hugh Haskell)]

And Here is the rest of it, part II:

> They believe
> them to be logically formulated on the basis of what they observe.  That
> they have not employed the scientific method may irk us, but MOST of what
> people believe is not based on the scientific method, and SOME of what
> "science" believes (at the edges of our "understanding") is out and out
> guesswork.  Why pretend otherwise?

Nobody is pretending otherwise. The issue is not that scientists
guess about things, but that the guesses are testable, and that when
they are found to be wrong, they are abandoned.

Of course, this is a complex process. Seldom can a decision be made
based on a single experiment. Sometimes it isn't the theory or
hypothesis that is wrong, but the experiment. sometimes the
experiment was improperly done, or the prediction the experiment was
to test was an incorrect extrapolation of the underlying theory. When
a theory is well-established it often takes a whole series of
experiments to cause it to be overturned, and often the old theory
will undergo many internal modifications before it is realized that
it has become too unwieldy to by useful.

> As to the second part of what you wrote
> (falsity of "evolution"), evolution as a PROCESS cannot be disputed.

True. But as I pointed out above, many young-earth creationists (this
doesn't include the ID-types, for the most part) do dispute evolution
as a process.

> It is
> the extrapolation of  facts into an untestable hypothesis that is in
> dispute.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. If it is to the origin
of life itself, then I would say that that is, by consensus, beyond
the scope of biological evolution. Scientists are seeking the answer
to the question of how life came about, but no one has yet come up
with any definitive answers. Many have speculated on possible ways it
could have happened, but no one is claiming that they have the
indisputable answer. So far all anyone has is some rather vague
possibilities, which need to be subjects to some rigorous
experimental testing, much of which may still be technologically
beyond our capability, or may depend upon knowledge of the early
conditions on earth that we do not know well enough.

If it is to the origins of different species, then I think the
evidence is pretty well in. It may not be the completely defined
continuum that those opposed to evolution insist upon, and it is
unlikely that it ever will be that complete, but we keep finding the
intermediate stages between species, even among living species, and
so far, we have not found any fossils or remains or even still
existing species that cannot be fitted nicely into the patterns that
have been constructed, that is, we don't find evidence for species
with no connections to earlier varieties. All DNA looks pretty much
alike--it is made up of the same basic building blocks, all the coils
rotate in the same sense, the connections are the same--only certain
bases connect to certain others--and the means of replication is the
same in all species. When one looks at living matter at the cell
level and below, the similarities are striking--much more so than the
differences. While this doesn't rule out other possibilities, it
certainly strongly suggests a common origin.

In what other areas might you think that untestable hypotheses have
been made by scientists?

> That people, on both sides, so cavalierly toss around the term
> "evolution" to mean something other than the PROCESS of evolution is the
> crux of the problem, imo.

Quite possibly, but in my experience, those doing that are not the
students of evolution but those opposed to it, who continually try to
make evolution into something it is not and never was intended to be.

>   > As to the issue of oogenesis, that is a red herring raised only by
> >   the creationists.
>
> Can't you see that instead of being a "red herring", this distinction is
> fundamental to the dispute?!

I disagree. As I have stated many times here and elsewhere, evolution
is not about the origin of life, only about the mechanism of its
change.

>   > Evolution does not and never has even addressed the
> >   issue of the origin of life. That is an as yet unsolved question
>
> Then why do science teachers, lecturers, etc routinely do exactly that?

Did you leave out "scientists," by accident, or was that because
scientists are not the ones making those claims?

> "The universe began with the 'Big Bang'", right?

That seems to be the current scientific consensus, which most
mainstream religions seems to have come to terms with.

>   And "ALL life on Earth
> evolved from simple, single-celled organisms in a primordial pool that
> originally contained "organic" material".

As mentioned above, this is still an open question, although it is in
the nature of science to seek a naturalistic answer to this question.
To do otherwise is to deny the purpose of science itself (it is
within the power of society to do just that if it so chooses, but it
seems to me that to do so would be pretty foolish, as it would kill
the goose that continues to lay golden eggs by the dozen).

There are several alternatives to the primordial pool hypothesis, and
we are not very close to resolving that issue, as far as I know. It
does seem clear that the newly formed earth came without life, and it
arose by some means at some later time. Whether it originated by
natural means at some time after the earth was formed, or whether is
migrated in from space, either by some form of "panspermia" or was
delivered by visitors from an advanced civilization on another
planet, or by some other means not yet discovered, or by some
"magical" means of which we will remain forever unknowing we cannot
say.

> How many times have you read or
> been told essentially that?  Did you hear any qualifications?  I know that I
> never did, and neither did my children when they were in school.

I cannot speak in defense of the ignorant or the fools from any camp
who believe that science has all the answers, and/or once they
discover something it remains the truth forever. What I can say is
that I know of very few who can claim to be scientists who make the
claims you attribute to others, and I personally know none who do so.
One doesn't have to look very hard to find school science texts that
contain large doses of misinformation and misrepresentation of what
science is. Frequently those books are written by people who are not
scientists (often they are flacks who are employees of the
publishers, who then bribe some scientist or other to put their name
on the cover as the author, without ever reading what they will be
credited with). What this tells me is that we need to be skeptical of
what we are told, not just by those with whom we disagree, but by
scientists and other who are supposed to know whereof they speak.

Having said that, I would also suggest that perhaps you, your
children, or their teachers were not paying close enough attention to
what was actually being said. I have found that when I read some
grandiose claim (usually as part of the dust jacket blurbs on some
book being heavily promoted by the publisher), that what the author
of the underlying work is really saying is heavily qualified by what
is not known or only imperfectly known. In other words, it is not the
scientists who are making these claims, but their hangers-on and
those who would profit from the misrepresentation of what the
scientists have actually said.

It is also possible for scientists to be wrong--frequently. I'm not
claiming no scientist has ever made a claim that  they shouldn't
have, or that they later wish they hadn't, because that happens
frequently. It is more likely, though, that the inflated claims are
made by those who interpret what the scientists have written--the
reporters, the editors, the non-scientist popularizers of science,
and those who would undermine the very structure of science.

> It is that
> kind of carelessness that has led to this confrontation between Christians
> and those who wish to use science as a club to "debunk" religion, with
> reasonable people, on both sides, caught in the middle.  This antagonism is
> absolutely avoidable if we refuse to allow science to be improperly applied,
> and are careful in what we state and how we state it.

It would also be impossible if the readers looked upon what they were
reading with a reasonable skepticism and demanded evidence before
they fell into any belief system.

>   > It (evolution) only considers the explanation and
> >   implications of the observed fact that living forms change with time.
> >   I don't see how anyone can dispute that observation, and the ID folks
> >   don't.
>
> Correct.  Most do not dispute what is obviously true.  So let's all put that
> up on the shelf since we all agree, and concentrate on where the points of
> contention actually lie.
>
> >   Their claim is that at least some of those changes occur by
> >   means that evolution cannot account for
>
> Well, I can't say I'm up on all the prevailing arguments, but I have to
> confess that I've NEVER heard that argument.  What you're saying is that
> there is an ADDITIONAL argument that GOD is actively interferring in an
> ongoing way (and so, presumeably is the Devil)?  I would have to think that
> this is limited to an even smaller fraction of the Christian community than
> the strict literalists!

That is precisely what Michael Behe does in his book "Darwin's Black
Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution." In that book Behe (a
professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University) argues that certain
characteristics of some cells (flagella that they use for propulsion)
are "too complex" to have been formed by evolution, and therefore
could only have arisen "by design." This has led to the hypothesis,
put forth by Behe and William Dembsky, of "irreducible complexity,"
in which they claim that any feature that falls within their
definition of irreducibly complex could not have arisen by the
mechanism of evolution and thus is evidence for a "designer," who
they refuse to identify, but which is normally inferred to be the
Christian God by those who adopt this hypothesis.

So yes, what I am saying that that the proponents of ID *are* making
the argument that God (or more appropriately, the "Designer") is
actively interfering in an ongoing way with the process of evolution.

So maybe you have not kept up with what the ID proponents are
actually saying. Perhaps you should pick up Behe's book (available on
Amazon), or look at the high school biology text that the Discovery
Institute is pushing, "Of Pandas and People," and see just what they
are doing, and why scientists everywhere should be concerned about
this. And then I suggest that you visit the web site of the National
Center for Science Education <http://www.natcenscied.org> to get more
information about just what the ID people are up to and why we all
need to be worried.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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