Why Intelligent Design is true!

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Why Intelligent Design is true!

Today, 06:16 AM   #1 Member   Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 132 Why Intelligent Design is true! http://ift.tt/2k4feak Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry From a speech delivered at Discovery Institute's God & Culture Conference Michael J. Behe Discovery Institute August 10, 1996 Print ArticleA Series of Eyes How do we see? In the 19th century the anatomy of the eye was known in great detail, and its sophisticated features astounded everyone who was familiar with them. Scientists of the time correctly observed that if a person were so unfortunate as to be missing one of the eye's many integrated features, such as the lens, or iris, or ocular muscles, the inevitable result would be a severe loss of vision or outright blindness. So it was concluded that the eye could only function if it were nearly intact. Charles Darwin knew about the eye too. In the Origin of Species, Darwin dealt with many objections to his theory of evolution by natural selection. He discussed the problem of the eye in a section of the book appropriately entitled "Organs of extreme perfection and complication." Somehow, for evolution to be believable, Darwin had to convince the public that complex organs could be formed gradually, in a step-by-step process. He succeeded brilliantly. Cleverly, Darwin didn't try to discover a real pathway that evolution might have used to make the eye. Instead, he pointed to modern animals with different kinds of eyes, ranging from the simple to the complex, and suggested that the evolution of the human eye might have involved similar organs as intermediates. Here is a paraphrase of Darwin's argument. Although humans have complex camera-type eyes, many animals get by with less. Some tiny creatures have just a simple group of pigmented cells, or not much more than a light sensitive spot. That simple arrangement can hardly be said to confer vision, but it can sense light and dark, and so it meets the creature's needs. The light-sensing organ of some starfishes is somewhat more sophisticated. Their eye is located in a depressed region. This allows the animal to sense which direction the light is coming from, since the curvature of the depression blocks off light from some directions. If the curvature becomes more pronounced, the directional sense of the eye improves. But more curvature lessens the amount of light that enters the eye, decreasing its sensitivity. The sensitivity can be increased by placement of gelatinous material in the cavity to act as a lens. Some modern animals have eyes with such crude lenses. Gradual improvements in the lens could then provide an image of increasing sharpness, as the requirements of the animal's environment dictated. Using reasoning like this, Darwin convinced many of his readers that an evolutionary pathway leads from the simplest light sensitive spot to the sophisticated camera-eye of man. But the question remains, how did vision begin? Darwin persuaded much of the world that a modern eye evolved gradually from a simpler structure, but he did not even try to explain where his starting point for the simple light sensitive spot came from. On the contrary, Darwin dismissed the question of the eye's ultimate origin: How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated. He had an excellent reason for declining the question: it was completely beyond nineteenth century science. How the eye works; that is, what happens when a photon of light first hits the retina simply could not be answered at that time. As a matter of fact, no question about the underlying mechanisms of life could be answered. How did animal muscles cause movement? How did photosynthesis work? How was energy extracted from food? How did the body fight infection? No one knew. To Darwin vision was a black box, but today, after the hard, cumulative work of many biochemists, we are approaching answers to the question of sight. Here is a brief overview of the biochemistry of vision. When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in the shape of retinal forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior, making it stick to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into activated rhodopsin, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with activated rhodopsin, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.) GTP-transducin-activated rhodopsin now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to activated rhodopsin and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the ability to chemically cut a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, like a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub. Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision. My explanation is just a sketchy overview of the biochemistry of vision. Ultimately, though, this is what it means to "explain" vision. This is the level of explanation for which biological science must aim. In order to truly understand a function, one must understand in detail every relevant step in the process. The relevant steps in biological processes occur ultimately at the molecular level, so a satisfactory explanation of a biological phenomenon such as vision, or digestion, or immunity must include its molecular explanation. Now that the black box of vision has been opened it is no longer enough for an "evolutionary explanation" of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century, and as popularizers of evolution continue to do today. Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric. Darwin's simple steps are now revealed to be huge leaps between carefully tailored machines. Thus biochemistry offers a Lilliputian challenge to Darwin. Now the black box of the cell has been opened and a Lilliputian world of staggering complexity stands revealed. It must be explained. Irreducible Complexity How can we decide if Darwin's theory can account for the complexity of molecular life? It turns out that Darwin himself set the standard. He acknowledged that: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But what type of biological system could not be formed by "numerous, successive, slight modifications"? Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex. Irreducible complexity is just a fancy phrase I use to mean a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning. Let's consider an everyday example of irreducible complexity: the humble mousetrap. The mousetraps that my family uses consist of a number of parts. There are: 1) a flat wooden platform to act as a base; 2) a metal hammer, which does the actual job of crushing the little mouse; 3) a spring with extended ends to press against the platform and the hammer when the trap is charged; 4) a sensitive catch which releases when slight pressure is applied, and 5) a metal bar which connects to the catch and holds the hammer back when the trap is charged. Now you can't catch a few mice with just a platform, add a spring and catch a few more mice, add a holding bar and catch a few more. All the pieces of the mousetrap have to be in place before you catch any mice. Therefore the mousetrap is irreducibly complex. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on. Demonstration that a system is irreducibly complex is not a proof that there is absolutely no gradual route to its production. Although an irreducibly complex system can't be produced directly, one can't definitively rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous route. However, as the complexity of an interacting system increases, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously. And as the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows. The Cilium Now, are any biochemical systems irreducibly complex? Yes, it turns out that many are. A good example is the cilium. Cilia are hairlike structures on the surfaces of many animal and lower plant cells that can move fluid over the cell's surface or "row" single cells through a fluid. Inhumans, for example, cells lining the respiratory tract each have about 200 cilia that beat in synchrony to sweep mucus towards the throat for elimination. What is the structure of a cilium? A cilium consists of bundle of fibers called an axoneme. An axoneme contains a ring of 9 double "microtubules" surrounding two central single microtubules. Each outer doublet consists of a ring of 13 filaments (subfiber A) fused to an assembly of 10 filaments (subfiber B). The filaments of the microtubules are composedof two proteins called alpha and beta tubulin. The 11 microtubules forming an axoneme are held together by three types of connectors: subfibers A are joined to the central microtubules by radial spokes; adjacent outer doublets are joined by linkers of a highly elastic protein called nexin; and the central microtubules are joined by a connecting bridge. Finally, every subfiber A bears two arms, an inner arm and an outer arm, both containing a protein called dynein. But how does a cilium work? Experiments have shown that ciliary motion results from the chemically-powered "walking" of the dynein arms on one microtubule up a second microtubule so that the two microtubules slide past each other. The protein cross-links between microtubules in a cilium prevent neighboring microtubules from sliding past each other by more than a short distance. These cross-links, therefore, convert the dynein-induced sliding motion to a bending motion of the entire axoneme. Now, let us consider what this implies. What components are needed for a cilium to work? Ciliary motion certainly requires microtubules; otherwise, there would be no strands to slide. Additionally we require a motor, or else the microtubules of the cilium would lie stiff and motionless. Furthermore, we require linkers to tug on neighboring strands, converting the sliding motion into a bending motion, and preventing the structure from falling apart. All of these parts are required to perform one function: ciliary motion. Just as a mousetrap does not work unless all of its constituent parts are present, ciliary motion simply does not exist in the absence of microtubules, connectors, and motors. Therefore, we can conclude that the cilium is irreducibly complex; an enormous monkey wrench thrown into its presumed gradual, Darwinian evolution. Blood Clotting Now let's talk about a different biochemical system of blood clotting. Amusingly, the way in which the blood clotting system works is reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine. The name of Rube Goldberg; the great cartoonist who entertained America with his silly machines, lives on in our culture, but the man himself has pretty much faded from view. Here's a typical example of his humor. In this cartoon Goldberg imagined a system where water from a drain-pipe fills a flask, causing a cork with attached needle to rise and puncture a paper cup containing beer, which sprinkles on a bird. The intoxicated bird falls onto a spring, bounces up to a platform, and pulls a string thinking it's a worm. The string triggers a cannon which frightens a dog. The dog flips over, and his rapid breathing raises and lowers a scratcher over a mosquito bite, causing no embarrassment while talking to a lady. When you think about it for a moment you realize that the Rube Goldberg machine is irreducibly complex. It is a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to break down. If the dog is missing the machine doesn't work; if the needle hasn't been put on the cork, the whole system is useless. It turns out that we all have Rube Goldberg in our blood. Here's a picture of a cell trapped in a clot. The meshwork is formed from a protein called fibrin. But what controls blood clotting? Why does blood clot when you cut yourself, but not at other times when a clot would cause a stroke or heart attack? Here's a diagram of what's called the blood clotting cascade. Let's go through just some of the reactions of clotting. When an animal is cut a protein called Hageman factor sticks to the surface of cells near the wound. Bound Hageman factor is then cleaved by a protein called HMK to yield activated Hageman factor. Immediately the activated Hageman factor converts another protein, called prekallikrein, to its active form, kallikrein. Kallikrein helps HMK speed up the conversion of more Hageman factor to its active form. Activated Hageman factor and HMK then together transform another protein, called PTA, to its active form. Activated PTA in turn, together with the activated form of another protein (discussed below) called convertin, switch a protein called Christmas factor to its active form. Activated Christmas factor, together with antihemophilic factor (which is itself activated by thrombin in a manner similar to that of proaccelerin) changes Stuart factor to its active form. Stuart factor,working with accelerin, converts prothrombin to thrombin. Finally thrombin cuts fibrinogen to give fibrin, which aggregates with other fibrin molecules to form the meshwork clot you saw in the last picture. Blood clotting requires extreme precision. When a pressurized blood circulation system is punctured, a clot must form quickly or the animal will bleed to death. On the other hand, if blood congeals at the wrong time or place, then the clot may block circulation as it does in heart attacks and strokes. Furthermore, a clot has to stop bleeding all along the length of the cut, sealing it completely. Yet blood clotting must be confined to the cut or the entire blood system of the animal might solidify, killing it. Consequently, clotting requires this enormously complex system so that the clot forms only when and only where it is required. Blood clotting is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine. The Professional Literature Other examples of irreducible complexity abound in the cell, including aspects of protein transport, the bacterial flagellum, electron transport, telomeres, photosynthesis, transcription regulation, and much more. Examples of irreducible complexity can be found on virtually every page of a biochemistry textbook. But if these things cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution, how has the scientific community regarded these phenomena of the past forty years? A good place to look for an answer to that question is in the Journal of Molecular Evolution. JME is a journal that was begun specifically to deal with the topic of how evolution occurs on the molecular level. It has high scientific standards, and is edited by prominent figures in the field. In a recent issue of JME there were published eleven articles; of these, all eleven were concerned simply with the comparison of protein or DNA sequences. A sequence comparison is an amino acid-by-amino acid comparison of two different proteins, or a nucleotide-by-nucleotide comparison of two different pieces of DNA, noting the positions at which they are identical or similar, and the places where they are not. Although useful for determining possible lines of descent, which is an interesting question in its own right, comparing sequences cannot show how a complex biochemical system achieved its function; the question that most concerns us here. By way of analogy, the instruction manuals for two different models of computer putout by the same company might have many identical words, sentences, and even paragraphs, suggesting a common ancestry (perhaps the same author wrote both manuals), but comparing the sequences of letters in the instruction manuals will never tell us if a computer can be produced step by step starting from a typewriter. None of the papers discussed detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures. In the past ten years JME has published over a thousand papers. Of these, about one hundred discussed the chemical synthesis of molecules thought to be necessary for the origin of life, about 50 proposed mathematical models to improve sequence analysis, and about 800 were analyses of sequences. There were ZERO papers discussing detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures. This is not a peculiarity of JME. No papers are to be found that discuss detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature, Science, the Journal of Molecular Biology or, to my knowledge, any science journal whatsoever. "Publish or perish" is a proverb that academicians take seriously. If you do not publish your work for the rest of the community to evaluate, then you have no business in academia and, if you don't already have tenure, you will be banished. But the saying can be applied to theories as well. If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon but does not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished. Despite comparing sequences, molecular evolution has never addressed the question of how complex structures came to be. In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish. Detection of Design What's going on? Imagine a room in which a body lies crushed, flat as a pancake. A dozen detectives crawl around, examining the floor with magnifying glasses for any clue to the identity of the perpetrator. In the middle of the room next to the body stands a large, gray elephant. The detectives carefully avoid bumping into the pachyderm's legs as they crawl, and never even glance at it. Over time the detectives get frustrated with their lack of progress but resolutely press on, looking even more closely at the floor. You see, textbooks say detectives must "get their man," so they never consider elephants. There is an elephant in the roomful of scientists who are trying to explain the development of life. The elephant is labeled "intelligent design." To a person who does not feel obliged to restrict his search to unintelligent causes, the straightforward conclusion is that many biochemical systems were designed. They were designed not by the laws of nature, not by chance and necessity. Rather, they were planned. The designer knew what the systems would look like when they were completed; the designer took steps to bring the systems about. Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent activity. The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself, not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day. What is "design"? Design is simply the purposeful arrangement of parts. The scientific question is how we detect design. This can be done in various ways, but design can most easily be inferred for mechanical objects. While walking through a junkyard you might observe separated bolts and screws and bits of plastic and glass, most scattered, some piled on top of each other, some wedged together. Suppose you saw a pile that seemed particularly compact, and when you picked up a bar sticking out of the pile, the whole pile came along with it. When you pushed on the bar it slid smoothly to one side of the pile and pulled an attached chain along with it. The chain in turn yanked a gear which turned three other gears which turned a red-and-white striped rod, spinning it like a barber pole. You quickly conclude that the pile was not a chance accumulation of junk, but was designed, was put together in that order by an intelligent agent, because you see that the components of the system interact with great specificity to do something. It is not only artificial mechanical systems for which design can easily be concluded. Systems made entirely from natural components can also evince design. For example, suppose you are walking with a friend in the woods. All of a sudden your friend is pulled high in the air and left dangling by his foot from a vine attached to a tree branch. After cutting him down you reconstruct the trap. You see that the vine was wrapped around the tree branch, and the end pulled tightly down to the ground. It was securely anchored to the ground by a forked branch. The branch was attached to another vine, hidden by leaves so that, when the trigger-vine was disturbed, it would pull down the forked stick, releasing the spring-vine. The end of the vine formed a loop with a slipknot to grab an appendage and snap it up into the air. Even though the trap was made completely of natural materials you would quickly conclude that it was the product of intelligent design. A Complicated World A word of caution; intelligent design theory has to be seen in context: it does not try to explain everything. We live in a complex world where lots of different things can happen. When deciding how various rocks came to be shaped the way they are a geologist might consider a whole range of factors: rain, wind, the movement of glaciers, the activity of moss and lichens, volcanic action, nuclear explosions, asteroid impact, or the hand of a sculptor. The shape of one rock might have been determined primarily by one mechanism, the shape of another rock by another mechanism. The possibility of a meteor's impact does not mean that volcanos can be ignored; the existence of sculptors does not mean that many rocks are not shaped by weather. Similarly, evolutionary biologists have recognized that a number of factors might have affected the development of life: common descent, natural selection, migration, population size, founder effects (effects that may be due to the limited number of organisms that begin a new species), genetic drift (spread of neutral, nonselective mutations), gene flow (the incorporation of genes into a population from a separate population), linkage (occurrence of two genes on the same chromosome), meiotic drive (the preferential selection during sex cell production of one of the two copies of a gene inherited from an organism's parents), transposition (the transfer of a gene between widely separated species by non-sexual means), and much more. The fact that some biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent does not mean that any of the other factors are not operative, common, or important. Curiouser and Curiouser So as this talk concludes we are left with what many people feel to be a strange conclusion: that life was designed by an intelligent agent. In a way, though, all of the progress of science over the last several hundred years has been a steady march toward the strange. People up until the middle ages lived in a natural world. The stable earth was at the center of things; the sun, moon, and stars circled endlessly to give light by day and night; the same plants and animals had been known since antiquity. Surprises were few. Then it was proposed, absurdly, that the earth itself moved, spinning while it circled the sun. No one could feel the earth spinning; no one could see it. But spin it did. From our modern vantage it's hard to realize what an assault on the senses was perpetrated by Copernicus and Galileo; they said in effect that people could no longer rely on even the evidence of their eyes. Things got steadily worse over the years. With the discovery of fossils it became apparent that the familiar animals of field and forest had not always been on earth; the world had once been inhabited by huge, alien creatures who were now gone. Sometime later Darwin shook the world by arguing that the familiar biota was derived from the bizarre, vanished life over lengths of time incomprehensible to human minds. Einstein told us that space is curved and time is relative. Modern physics says that solid objects are mostly space, that sub atomic particles have no definite position, that the universe had a beginning. Now it's the turn of the fundamental science of life, modern biochemistry, to disturb. The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom. Instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws. But other centuries have had their shocks and there is no reason to suppose that we should escape them. Humanity has endured as the center of the heavens moved from the earth to beyond the sun, as the history of life expanded to encompass long-dead reptiles, as the eternal universe proved mortal. We will endure the opening of Darwin's black box. Michael J. Behe is Associate Professor of Chemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Renewal of Science & Culture.   Today, 06:17 AM   #2 Member   Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 132 http://ift.tt/2k4pije Scientists Prove Again that Life is the Result of Intelligent Design avatar by Moshe Averick Dennis Overbye, Veteran Science Writer, New York Times (Photo: Lars Klove, NY Times) In light of the fact that the New York Times has run another article on the fascinating world of Origin of Life research and the creation of synthetic life, (“It’s Alive! It’s Alive!”� 7/27/2011, Dennis Overbye), it is instructive to point out the sins of omission of which Mr. Overbye – a veteran science writer with more than two decades of experience – is guilty. The two salient points that get lost (read: that go purposely unmentioned) among the informative interviews with researchers and the descriptions of their ingenious attempts to create life in the laboratory are: (A) Although all of the scientists mentioned believe that life came from non-life through an undirected, naturalistic process, none of them have the slightest clue as to how it actually happened, and (B) The obvious and most significant conclusion that can be drawn from all their splendid work in the lab is that the only reasonable explanation for the emergence of life is Intelligent Design! Allow me to elaborate. Mr. Overbye gives us a brief description of the current state of Origin of Life research: “According to modern science, life on Earth originated about 3.8 billion years ago, perhaps in a warm pond, as Darwin speculated, or perhaps in a boiling, bubbling mud bath or a scorching volcanic vent way under the sea. The first inhabitant of this Eden, chemists suspect, was RNA…Scientists cannot prove that this is how life arose on Earth, but they can do the next best thing. They can make their own RNA, and see if they can then breathe life into it.”� JANUARY 20, 2017 11:25 AM0 Israeli Authorities Catch Band of Antiquities Thieves In The Act JNS.org -- Inspectors from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Israeli Border Police apprehended a band of 11 antiquities thieves this week... Since the general public does not have a clear understanding of what is actually going on in the Origin of Life field, let me translate the aforementioned citation into clear, plain language that can be understood by all. “According to modern science, life originated about 3.8 billion years ago…”� – The earliest known life form, before which nothing has ever been found, is a type of bacterium. These have been dated by scientists as being alive on the Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Despite their size being measured in the millionths of a meter, a bacterium is of a level of functional complexity on the order of an F-15 fighter bomber (actually that is understated). Dr. Robert Hazen: “The simplest living cell is intricate beyond imagining…human brains seem ill-suited to grasp such multi-dimensional complexity.”� Dr. Michael Denton: “each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of molecular machinery…far more complicated than any machinery built by man and without parallel in the non-living world.”� Dr. Paul Davies: “[bacteria] have a fine tuning and complexity as yet unmatched by human engineering.”� Perhaps it is best summed up by Ilya Prigogine, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1977: “But let us have no illusions… [we are still] unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms.”� “perhaps in a warm pond, as Darwin speculated, or perhaps in a boiling bubbling mud bath or a scorching volcanic vent way under the sea.”� – There is no scientist in the world today that would have the chutzpah to claim that he or she knows how life began. Dr. Stuart Kauffman: “Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the Earth 3.5 billion years ago, is a fool or a knave.”� The enormous, gaping chasm that separates non-living chemicals from the simplest living bacterium is described by renowned biologist Dr. Lynn Margulis: “To go from bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium.”� Every theory mentioned above has nothing to do with Science. All current Origin of Life theories are pure speculation. Speculation, even when it is the product of a brilliant scientific mind, does not magically become Science. None of these theories are supported by anything even remotely resembling any type of conclusive evidence. In fact they are hotly disputed among researchers themselves. Physicist and information theorist H.P. Yockey: “A scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written. The entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception.”� Nobel Laureate, Dr. Werner Arber: “Although a biologist, I must confess that I do not know how life came about…how such already quite complex structures came about is a mystery to me.”� Dr. Christopher McKay: “We do not know how life originated on the Earth.”� Dr. Harold P. Klein: “The simplest bacterium is so damn complicated…that it is almost impossible to imagine how it happened.”� Dr. Ken Nealson (National Academy of Sciences): “Nobody understands the Origin of Life, if they say they do, they are probably trying to fool you.”� Dr. George Whitesides: “Most chemists believe as I do that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules on the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea…on the basis of all the chemistry I know, it seems astonishingly improbable.”� “The first inhabitant of this Eden, chemists suspect, was RNA…”� – Overbye is referring to the highly popular “RNA World”� theory, which hypothesizes that RNA preceded DNA and eventually transformed into DNA based life forms. Despite its popularity it is also a purely speculative theory supported by no plausible evidence. Dr. Gerald Joyce, who is mentioned many times in the N.Y. Times article and is a world renowned proponent of the “RNA World”� theory, candidly wrote the following in April 2010: “The challenge must now be faced with constructing a realistic picture of the RNA World…it must be said that the details remain obscure and are not likely to be known in the near future…the concept of an RNA World has been a milestone in the scientific study of life’s origins. While this concept does not explain how life originated it has helped to guide scientific thinking and has served to focus experimental efforts.”� Nobel Laureate, Dr. Francois Jacob: “It goes without saying that the emergence of this RNA and the transition to a DNA World implies an impressive number of stages, each more improbable than the previous one.”� Dr. Graham Cairns-Smith, after describing the hurdles that must be overcome for the RNA World scenario to take place in a natural setting concludes that, “it is absurd to imagine,”� that such a process could have occurred the prebiotic Earth. Dr. Robert Shapiro: “I’m always running out of metaphors to try and explain what the difficulty is. But suppose you took Scrabble sets, or any word game sets, blocks with letters, containing every language on Earth, and you heap them together, and then you took a scoop and you scooped into that heap, and you flung it out on the lawn there and the letters fell into a line which contained the words, “to be or not to be that is the question,”� that is roughly the odds of an RNA molecule appearing on the earth.”� Dr. Shapiro, at an Origin of Life Initiatives lecture at Harvard University in 2008, declared that, “any abiotically prepared replicator before the start of life is a fantasy.”� “Scientists cannot prove that this is how life arose on Earth, but they can do the next best thing. They can make their own RNA, and see if they can then breathe life into it.”�– These two sentences are the key to a true understanding of the real conclusions that should be drawn from current Origin of Life research. All the amazing breakthroughs that these outstanding scientists have accomplished in their quest to create life in the laboratory have one thing in common: They are only possible under the strictest and most rigorous of laboratory procedures, processes, and protocols, and only under the guidance and direction of the most brilliant scientific minds working with the most advanced equipment available. These procedures and processes did not pop out of thin air; they are themselves built on the collective acquired knowledge and experience of thousands of different researchers and represent, literally, millions of man-hours of intensive labor, contemplation, and analysis. None of them could have conceivably taken place in a prebiotic swamp through undirected processes. No one has summarized it more incisively and succinctly than Dr. Robert Shapiro, a self-proclaimed agnostic who is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at NYU, and a world recognized authority on Origin of Life research. Dr. Shapiro wrote the following in 1999, in anticipation of the creation in the laboratory of “self-sustained RNA evolving systems,”� (which are discussed at length in Overbye’s article): “The media probably will announce it as the demonstration of a crucial step in the origin of life…The concept that the scientists are [actually] illustrating is one of Intelligent Design. No better term can be applied to a quest in which chemists…prepare a living system in the laboratory, using all the ingenuity and technical resources at their disposal.”� In other words, these scientists have made it incontrovertibly clear that all the steps that are necessary for the emergence of life require the conscious and direct involvement of an active, guiding, and highly intelligent force. The very language that Overbye must inescapably use in describing the efforts of these scientists, strikingly illustrates this notion: “researchers are trying to construct life…in a thimbleful of liquid.”� “If you had a second example of life, even if it were synthetic, you might know better. I’m betting we’re just going to make it.”� “The ability to synthesize life will be an event of profound importance, like the invention of agriculture or the invention of metallurgy.”� “George Church and Farren Isaacs of the Harvard Medical School recently reported that they had reprogrammed the genome of an E. coli bacterium.”� “Jack Szostak…embarked on an ambitious project to build an artificial cell”� “At the center of the Joyce lab experiments is a T-shaped piece of RNA…In 2002 Joyce and Natasha Paul, configured it to recognize and glue together a pair of smaller molecules.”� “Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit they are baffled”� (from The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life, Dr. Paul Davies) At the conclusion of his article, Dennis Overbye describes Dr. Gerald Joyce talking about the self-replicating molecules that he has constructed in the lab: “Dr. Joyce’s molecules will never catch up to the biosphere. But someday their genome may surprise their creator…with a trick or a new move in the game of “almost life”� that he has not anticipated. “If it would happen, it would do it for me, I would be happy,”� Dr. Joyce said, adding, “I won’t say it out loud, but it’s alive.”� Perhaps it would be worthwhile for Dr. Joyce and some of his distinguished colleagues like Nobel Prize winners Jack Szostak and Sidney Altman, to take note of the fact that we are already alive and can do some pretty neat tricks…and to realize that just like Gerald Joyce’s primitive, man-made molecular toys, we too have a Creator. Rabbi Moshe Averick is an orthodox rabbi and author of Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist. It is available on Amazon.com and Kindle. Rabbi Averick can be reached via his website at http://ift.tt/2knQrtD   Today, 06:18 AM   #3 Member   Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 132 http://ift.tt/2knENiG Defending Intelligent Design Posted 10.01.07NOVA Phillip Johnson is known as the father of intelligent design. The idea in its current form appeared in the 1980s, and Johnson adopted and developed it after Darwinian evolution came up short, in his view, in explaining how all organisms, including humans, came into being. Johnson taught law for over 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book Darwin on Trial, in which he argues that empirical evidence in support of Darwin's theory is lacking. In this interview, hear why he feels that such evidence is "somewhere between weak and nonexistent," why he feels intelligent design is a testable science, and why he thought the Dover trial was a train wreck waiting to happen. Phillip Johnson "This whole Darwinian story, it seems to me, has been very much oversold," says Phillip Johnson. "It is an imaginative story that has been spun on the basis of very little evidence." Enlarge Photo credit: © NOVA/WGBH Educational Foundation  THE NATURALISM PARADIGM NOVA: What is intelligent design? Phillip Johnson: I would like to put a basic explanation of the intelligent-design concept as I understand it this way. There are two hypotheses to consider scientifically. One is you need a creative intelligence to do all the creating that has been done in the history of life; the other is you don't, because we can show that unintelligent, purposeless, natural processes are capable of doing and actually did do the whole job. Now, that is what is taught as fact in our textbooks. And to me it's a hypothesis, which needs to be tested by evidence and experiment. If it can't be confirmed by experiment, then you're left with the same two possibilities, and neither one should be said to be something like a scientific fact. Why do you think some people do not accept evolution? I think they see a problem. I don't think it's that they're ignorant. I think that they see that what's being given to them as evolution is less than science in that it hasn't really been proved, and yet it's presented as if it were proved. And on the other hand, it's more than science, in that it contains the whole philosophy behind it, metaphysics as it were. As I understand it from reading your books and critiques, you see "materialism" as a very destructive thing in society. Can you tell me about this? Well, by materialism I don't mean consumerism. I'm not talking about people who are greedy for material things. I'm talking about a philosophical system that explains what is real and what is not. A philosophical materialist believes that everything is, at the bottom, material composition. You start with the fundamental particles that compose matter and energy. Another word for essentially the same thing is naturalism. It's stated a little bit differently. Naturalism says nature is all there is, and nature is made of those particles. (Don't let the distinction between matter and energy confuse you on this, because energy, like matter, is composed of particles according to the naturalistic viewpoint.) Now, naturalism was most flamboyantly stated in the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan, which I remember watching many years ago. Sagan began that series with the pronouncement that the cosmos is all there ever was and all there ever will be. Nature is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be, with nature being these substances that make up the stars and the particles that make up the different kinds of radiation that come from them. But that's all that there is. A philosophy of naturalism or materialism is what generates the Darwinian theory. It's what generates the certainty that only unintelligent natural forces were involved in evolution, which is to say in the creative process that brought our kind into existence as well as all the animals and all the plants. That is all a non-negotiable claim on their part. And why is it a non-negotiable claim? Because if the naturalistic starting point isn't valid—if it isn't completely correct—then something else must have happened. What is that something else? It's something that they don't like that might get a foothold in science itself. Maybe the creator is something more than an imaginary projection of people's minds. Maybe a creator is a necessary part of reality. Are there social consequences to this philosophy of naturalism or materialism that you describe? Yes, absolutely. Now, these consequences may be good or they may be bad. And they are attractive to some people and unattractive to others. For example, the naturalistic viewpoint is praised by those who like it for its tendency to liberate us from religious authority. But what's the negative side? My understanding is you see not the positive side of materialism but the negative side. I'm happy to concede that there is a positive way of looking at something and a negative way of looking at something. The negative side is that the naturalistic viewpoint leaves the way open for a kind of freedom from divine authority, a kind of moral anarchy. GOD OR NATURE Is this a motivation for what you do? It is a motivation, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I was an agnostic from the time I was a junior high school student up until my very late 30s. I had the kind of upbringing that is most likely to produce agnostics, a conventional kind of church-going requirement that never became real to me. I went to Sunday School because in those days mothers thought that was a good thing for their children on Sunday morning, and [on the way my mother] dropped my father off at the golf course. I grew up from that learning that when you got old enough so that your mother couldn't tell you what to do anymore, what you did was you played golf on Sunday morning. So I was an agnostic, and then when I went away to Harvard as a college student, that tendency was very much encouraged. I grew up thinking that to be intelligent or well-educated was to be agnostic and to be liberal in politics. I went through various things in life and found that the agnostic pattern in which I had become socialized was not adequate for me. I became a Christian, and I found a kind of structure for my life that seemed to be a very good thing and to this day has enabled me to get through crises like two strokes. And how did you come to view evolution? One thing that fascinated me about the study of evolution was that it seemed to me to give a window into a very fundamental question that was bothering me: Is God real or imaginary? As I read all of the evolutionary literature written for the general public, I saw that some of the proponents of Darwinian evolution were hard-core atheists like Richard Dawkins, and others were not. Some of them took a view that religion or belief in God is alright if you want that sort of a thing, but they assumed that it was an imaginary thing. I could see that this is why there was so much insistence upon the Darwinian story. Believing in Darwinian evolution doesn't prove that there's no God. What it proves is that there's no need for God's participation to get all the creating done. Now, is that true? I was fascinated with that question of what's fundamentally true. If this Darwinian story is true, then nature does have all the creative power it needs to produce plants and animals and people. But if the story isn't true, if it doesn't fit the evidence, then maybe the creator is something more than an imaginary projection of people's minds. Maybe a creator is a necessary part of reality. That to me was a fascinating issue. It certainly motivated me to think that this was an important subject, not just for biologists or even scientists but for people at large. So it was legitimate for a law professor to address it and for the public to make up their own minds about it rather than to take the word of the experts. That's what makes it important. EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION As we've gone about making this documentary, we've met professors in the natural sciences who'll say, "Let me just show you this mountain of evidence," and they show us fossil after fossil. Are these things not evidence of evolution? They all exist. The question is what are they evidence of? Are they evidence of a mindless and purposeless evolutionary process? It may be that there was a slow development of one kind of thing into something else. But the important question to me is: Could this all occur solely by unintelligent, purposeless, material processes? Can we say that that has been confirmed? The theory of evolution may be true in a sense, but it may require the participation of an intelligent cause. That is the basic intelligent-design proposition—that unintelligent causes by themselves can't do the whole job. That doesn't say that everything was created all at once. So what does intelligent design say about how life was created and how we ended up with the diversity of life we see today? Well, the alternative is not well developed, so I would prefer to say that, as far as I'm concerned, the alternative is we don't really know what happened. But if non-intelligence couldn't do the whole job, then intelligence had to be involved in some way. Then it's a big research job to figure out the consequences of that starting point. How would you go about testing for the existence of a designer? What is the research program? I'd like to start with the first question. It is sometimes said that the hypothesis that there is a designer is untestable. This is false. It is testable, and the test is Darwinian evolution. The claim of the evolutionary biologists is that unintelligent causes did the whole job. If they can prove it, then the counter-hypothesis that you need intelligence has been tested, and it has been shown to be false. But what I concluded after reading the literature was that the claim that unintelligent processes have been shown to be capable of doing all the work of creation, from the simplest creatures to the more complex ones, is unsupported. The evidence for it lies somewhere between very weak and nonexistent. When you try to get proof, you get stories about microevolution. Instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks. But they're not talking about great transformations taking place all at once. They're talking about something happening very gradually over a huge amount of time. Why couldn't that be the case? Well, why couldn't it? Often when one asks for a demonstration of the evolutionary changes that Darwinians claim, the answer that they always give is, "Well, it's done very gradually" and "This takes an enormous amount of time, millions of years, whereas we only live to be 100 if we're very long-lived, so it is quite impossible for the evolutionary change to occur in our time limits. That's why we don't see it." My logical reaction to that is that's perfectly accurate if you assume that the evolutionary change of this enormous amount actually occurs. Then you can give a satisfactory explanation for why we don't see it. But there is another possible explanation for why we don't see it. The other possibility is that it doesn't happen. I think maybe that's what the truth is. If it doesn't happen, then where do you go from there? Well, if it doesn't happen, something else must have happened. The problem became clear to me as I read further and further that the one thing that evolutionary biologists are absolutely determined to support is their starting premise that all of the changes that brought about all of the different species and kinds of life on Earth happened by purely natural causes like random mutation and natural selection. So while there can be arguments over the details, there can be no argument or discussion over the fundamental principle that only natural—which is to say unintelligent—causes were involved. The reason why that premise of natural causes has to be so inviolate and so ferociously defended is that what if something other than purely natural causes was involved? What would it be? Well, the most obvious answer to that question is it would be God. And they regard this possibility with horror, because it seems to unseat all of their science. It seems to take them back to the beginning or to the Dark Ages, as they would tend to say. You get God in there and that's the end of science, they think, so that can't be. But I wondered, maybe it could be. I viewed myself as much more unprejudiced in that matter. I was willing to believe in a biological creation by Darwinian mechanism if it could actually be proved. But if it couldn't be proved, I thought it was quite legitimate to think of something else. BEYOND SCIENCE Do they really regard it with horror, or are they just saying, "This is something that is beyond what science can address?" At that point I would say if we can't consider the other possibility then let's not consider it. That's alright with me. But that doesn't mean that we know what did happen. This whole Darwinian story, it seems to me, has been very much oversold. And everybody is told that it's absolutely certain and certainly true, and because it's called science it has been proved again and again by absolutely unquestionable procedures. But this is not true. It is an imaginative story that has been spun on the basis of very little evidence. Many scientists ask, "How do I go about testing intelligent design?" And if I understand correctly, you were saying that the test of intelligent design is whether something can be explained by evolutionary theory. But scientists say that's just a negative argument. That doesn't prove anything about intelligent design. How would you respond? My business was actually making negative arguments. I looked at the grand story of evolution, the story that is important, the one that catches the imagination of the world and stirs controversy. This is the story that there's no need for a creator or a designer because the whole job can be done by unintelligent material processes. We know that that's absolutely true, such that any dissent from it should be treated as akin to madness. That's what I was looking at. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families. Now, at this point the absolute certainty, the dogmatic insistence with which the Darwinists told their story, began to have a boomerang effect. Because it alerted me to the possibility that something is wrong here. If these folks can't even recognize that this isn't that convincing a story, then there's something wrong with their thinking. That was the starting point for my book Darwin on Trial. I thought, This is not something we should trust as a creation story for all of life, because instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks or the color of peppered moths in a species. This is a totally different story. It's quite inadequate for the purpose, I thought. And I think the world should understand this. ON COMMON ANCESTRY How do you explain our genetic relatedness with chimpanzees? There is a relatedness. But what does it mean? Say we have almost 99 percent of our genes in common with chimpanzees. We also have at least 25 percent of our genes in common with bananas. There are these commonalities that exist throughout life. Do they point to a common evolutionary process or a common creator? That is the question for interpretation. The genes are going to win when people ask me about that great degree of similarity between human genes and chimpanzee genes. I answer that genes must not be anywhere near as important as we have been led to believe. If there were that great a commonality between chimps and humans, it ought to be relatively easy to breed chimps and come up with a human being, or by genetic engineering to change a chimp into a human. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families. So the real question to me that needs to be explained is the enormous difference between chimps and human beings. That's what evolutionary science needs to explain and can't explain. Isn't the most likely explanation that there is common ancestry? It might be because of common ancestry. That is definitely a possibility to be considered. I'm just not insistent that common ancestry is true. It's a possibility. Is there some other explanation for genetic relatedness besides common ancestry? That's a possibility that has to be considered also, that there's a commonality not only between chimps and humans, but among all life. It's a common biochemistry. And thus this might be pointing to a single evolutionary process, or it might be pointing to the responsibility of a single creator. EVIDENCE FOR ID What is the evidence for intelligent design? What if the Darwinian mechanism doesn't have the creative power claimed for it? Then something else has to be true. It's two sides of the same coin as I look at it, and that's why I've always devoted my energies to making the skeptical case about Darwinism. Others have evidence of a positive nature—irreducible complexity and complex specified information are part of that. To understand the positive evidence I think we have to realize that Darwin was writing a long time ago. He didn't understand anything about complex specified information or the irreducible complexity of the cell. In Darwin's day it was thought that cells were simply globs of a kind of jelly-like substance, a protoplasm. So it didn't seem to be very difficult to imagine how you could get a blob of some substance like mud at the bottom of a prehistoric pond, lake, or ocean. But since Darwin's day an enormous amount has been learned about the cell. This is why my colleague Michael Behe's famous book is titled Darwin's Black Box. The point there is that to Darwin the cell was a black box. It did something, but you didn't know how it did it. So the cell was a black box in Darwin's day, and now it's been opened. Thanks to the work of biochemists and molecular biologists since that time, we know that the cell is so enormously complex that it makes a spaceship or a supercomputer look rather low-tech in comparison. So I think the cell is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all for the Darwinists to get over. How do you get the first cell? It's not just that if they get the cell then everything else will be easy. But it was thought in Darwin's day that the cell was no problem at all. The only problems came after that. How do you get from cells to complex animals and then to apes, and from apes to human beings? That's the story that he told. Now, I don't think that story will hold water when you look for proof rather than just accept it as an inevitable, logical consequence of a naturalistic philosophy that you're starting out with. IS IT SCIENCE? Is intelligent design a science? I think so. To answer that question I need to go back to the point that I see the scientific question as one of choosing between two hypotheses. One is that you needed intelligence to do the creating that had to be done in the history of life, and the other is that you didn't need it. Then the scientific approach is to decide between these two hypotheses on the basis of evidence and logic. That's what I want to see done. That's why it is a scientific question. If evolution by natural selection is a scientific doctrine, then the critique of that doctrine, and even of the fundamental assumption on which it's based, is a legitimate part of science as well. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid. Isn't intelligent design just a newer version of creationism? When people ask me whether this is creationism relabeled, one thing that always occurs to me is that the real creationist organizations are highly critical of intelligent design, because they say it doesn't do the job that is the very essence of creationism. It doesn't defend the Bible from the very first verse. It doesn't defend the Bible at all, and it doesn't even defend Christianity. It's saying that there's an intelligence, but the intelligence could be natural as well as supernatural. And that if you assume it's supernatural, what the God is—well, we have nothing to say about what kind of God it is. It isn't limited to one particular kind of religion, to Christianity or to a particular kind of Christianity. If you want, it can be the Muslim god. But if it's a supernatural cause, isn't that outside the realm of science? It's true that supernatural causes are a subject outside of science. But intelligent versus unintelligent causes is a subject very much within science. For example, forensic scientists and pathologists regularly determine whether a death was due to natural causes or intelligent causes. If somebody dies of a purported heart failure, and then they do an autopsy on the body and find signs of arsenic poisoning, they say this was not a death by natural causes; it was a poisoning. That is perfectly legitimate as a scientific inquiry. Now, if the intelligent cause turns out to be supernatural, that's a determination that is outside of science. But that you need intelligence is not a determination that's outside of science. It's the regular business of science, like deciding whether a drawing on a cave wall is a painting by prehistoric cavemen or a product of natural erosion and chemistry in the wall. Are evolution and religious beliefs compatible? Well, to a large extent it depends on what you mean by evolution. When I speak to audiences about this, I like to say that even the Darwinian theory of evolution is valid up to a point. The problem with the theory of evolution is not that it's altogether wrong, but that it's correct only in a very limited and relatively trivial sphere rather than as the grand creation story that it is made out to be. It's a good theory for how finch beaks vary in size or how disease-causing microorganisms become resistant to antibiotic medicines. So it's valid within that limited sphere, and that may be important. That's interesting in itself. Scientists are largely interested in details, whereas I'm a different kind of person. I'm interested in the big picture. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid, although some kind of a theory might be valid. It also depends on what you mean by religious belief. Most of the evolutionary scientists will say, "We're not opposed to religious belief so long as you understand that that's what it is—it's religious belief. When you talk about God, for example, that's something that exists in the human imagination. It's something we study in the department of anthropology or psychology, where we talk about the beliefs that various kinds of people hold. Religious belief is one of those kinds of beliefs. In the university, we don't talk about it in the departments where we are considering what really happened. The beliefs may be important; they may even be beneficial. It's just that they don't reflect reality. They only reflect what's going on in people's heads." That's the metaphysics of religion and science that is taken for granted in the universities. This is something that may change. One of the things that's so controversial and so hated about the concept of intelligent causes in biology is that it threatens this division of things into naturalism, which deals with how things really are and is called science, and religious belief, which [in their view] is about make-believe in people's heads out of fairy tales and the like. What would it take to convince you of the theory of evolution by natural selection? That the theory that is out there today is actually true? I would want to see evidence that the mechanism of random mutation and differential reproduction—that some organisms do more reproducing than others—that this had real creative power. It seems to me that besides the lack of physical or experimental evidence, just logically one would expect that random mutations would never build up biological information. They would tend to tear it down, even if it was already in existence. Random changes scramble information. They don't increase it or produce it. If you have a word on the Scrabble board, and you take the letters and scramble them, you don't get a better word. You get no word at all; you get nonsense. I see every reason to think that that's what happens with mutations in the cellular machinery. A THEORY IN CRISIS? Is evolution a theory in crisis, as some people say? I think it is a theory in crisis, but that requires some explanation. The authorities of the evolutionary scientific community would say, "We're not in crisis because we're as determined as ever. We still have a solid phalanx of belief. Yes, we get individual dissenters, but they are quickly closed off and marginalized. They tend to lose their research funds, be considered no longer real scientists anymore." So the community maintains its authority. The crisis that they have to recognize is that they have failed to convince the public. They assumed that by this time they would have marginalized all the opposition and the public would be convinced. After all, they now had virtual control of the educational machinery from primary school on up through the Ph.D. level to do that. Plus all those documentaries on television and in the movies where the orthodoxy is put forward. I foresee the day when Darwinian evolution will be taught in courses on British intellectual history, and biology will have moved on. It's understood that if you want to be about science, you have to be supportive of this theory. So that's been going on all these years, and yet the people are not convinced. Why is this? The mandarins of science, the high priests at the university level, will tell you it's because the people are ignorant and prejudiced. Is that so? That's one of the questions I examined when I first took up the story. Are the people ignorant and prejudiced, or are they seeing something that the experts might have missed? See, it's a wonderful thing being an expert. As an expert, you know a lot that other people don't know. But also in the course of all your expert training, you pick up a worldview and a set of prejudices that you then become completely dependent on in order to continue to be an expert. I decided that what is happening here is that the public has seen something that the experts don't understand. The public has seen that what they are getting from the evolutionary biologists is, on the one hand, less than science. It is over-enthusiastic claims of great accomplishments that are not supported by real, observational, and experimental evidence. In that sense, it's less than science. On the other hand, it's much more than science, because it's a cultural philosophy, a worldview that probably belongs in a philosophy course rather than in a science course. I foresee the day when Darwinian evolution will be taught at universities in courses on British intellectual history, and biology will have moved on. I see it as something like alchemy. It's a precursor to real science. The alchemists must have squealed like crazy when people said you can't really change lead into gold. But it was true that you can't transform lead into gold by a chemical means. So when the alchemic ambitions were given up, then alchemy was able to change into the real science of chemistry. I see that happening as well. I think that biological science will change. It won't vanish. It will just be based on reality and on genuine scientific testing. That's what I see in the future. That's the crisis. THE DOVER "TRAIN WRECK" What did you think about the Dover case? The Dover case, unfortunately, was a train wreck waiting to happen. The problem was basically that we got too much publicity, and people pick that up. You get these people out in the country who are disturbed that something is being presented and taught dogmatically to their children as true. They think that a much more balanced approach should be taken, and they're frustrated that they can't get these schools to do that. They naively believe that their school board has the authority to do what they think ought to be done. So they go to the school board to present something and in fact give the votes to put it over. What they don't understand is that they are moving into a legal minefield. The theory of evolution is ferociously protected by secularist organizations, with some backing from the courts. So the worst possible construction is going to be put on whatever they do. Very capable lawyers are going to come in to try to make fools out of them and to put every obstacle in the way of changing the dogmatic way in which evolution is presented in some of these schools. So then they hear this term intelligent design and they say, "Well, okay. If we pick up that language and do it that way, then maybe we can do this. Our school board will do that, and we can accomplish what we want to accomplish." They know then they're going to get sued, that they're a threat. So they get a lawyer. Unfortunately, the lawyer is not giving them good counsel. He's egging them on, saying, "We'll have a great battle here and we'll win." It's sort of like the dream that people had in the North in the Civil War in the early stages. If we could just have a big battle, then we'd win it and this war would be over, and that's all that we need to do. Just get into one big battle and win it all at once. That's what the lawyer is telling them. So they go ahead, thinking that they're riding a winner, and they create a train wreck. That's what happened there. As for the judge and the opinion, the problem is that the judge didn't just decide the local case in front of him. He decided that he wanted to become a national figure by deciding the whole question of evolution and creation for the country in one opinion. So he wrote an opinion as big and broad as a starry sky, saying that the notion of intelligence, that one of these two hypotheses, was not eligible for consideration because it was religion and hence by definition not science. So any attempt in that direction was unconstitutional. He is being rewarded for that opinion with all the accolades that the mandarins of science have at their disposal. DRIVING A WEDGE Let's turn to your other work. Can you tell me what the "wedge strategy" is? I'm glad for an opportunity to explain the wedge strategy, because I conceived it. I know it can be made to sound like something sinister and conspiratorial. But the wedge strategy as I have explained it is quite simple and innocent. We need somebody who can get a debate started, and then we need people who have the expertise to answer the questions that come up as the debate gets started. When you use a wedge to split a log, you start with the sharp edge of the wedge and then you gradually push that in until you get the thicker edge to go in, and that's what's actually splits the log. I thought of it this way with Darwinism. I thought my job is to be the sharp edge, to use my academic credentials and legal abilities to get some hearing for the proposition that there really is something fundamentally wrong with the Darwinian story. It's not just a problem of detail, but rather a fundamental problem that the mechanism has no creative power. But I can't answer all the questions that arise. So we need other people to form the thick edge of the wedge to take on the questions that do require a scientific expertise. Like a professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, and a mathematician and philosopher of science, William Demsky. They have to take up other questions that arise and do some of the job that I'm not well-equipped to do after I've got things going with my arguments from logic and evidence. That's what the wedge is. Is the Wedge Document your work? Did you write it? I did not, but I did write a book called The Wedge of Truth. And so in that sense, just as I'm in a sense the father of the intelligent-design movement, I'm the father of the wedge concept. In the sense in which I have explained it, that it is a matter of my particular kind of logical arguing expertise at the beginning, to be supplemented and eventually replaced by [the expertise of] people with greater scientific knowledge and competence. This is more than anything my faith: that given an even chance, the truth will win. What's the strategy from here? Where does the wedge go from here? At my rather advanced age I don't claim to take the leadership position in the same sense that I did years ago. It's largely going to depend on other people. In fact, what I am largely doing now is making contacts with people in the educational world. I hope we don't ever get another public schools case here for a very long time. If one comes up, I want to stay away from it. But I think that the place where the kind of controversies I'm addressing belong is in the universities. That's where I want to take them. And they are being taken there. The professors are finding that these issues come up in their classes, and students think highly of the positions that I've been arguing, or many of them do. I am in touch constantly with young scholars, including people in Ph.D. programs in biology, who see that there is something wrong with the Darwinian theory and would like to do something about it when they can. They like to talk with me because they don't want to get involved in the traditional creationist movement. They see that as going too far away from the current scientific orthodoxy. I think they want to do what I set out to do when I first crafted the intelligent-design movement—to come out with a position that was not so enormously different from current orthodoxy that it couldn't be discussed but was different enough that it was really upsetting. In the end, I think I came up with something that was even more upsetting than I thought it was going to be. People will be the professors of biology in the next generation, the opinion writers, the producers of television programs, and the editorial writers at newspapers. I have a commission to deal in education and not in litigation. We have a group that we call informally the "second wedge," which consists of literary people and writers and artists who discuss the issues of design, of intelligent causes in the history of life, and whether the naturalistic orthodoxy is as solidly based in evidence as it claims to be. This, I think, may bear great fruit in the future in our culture. The Darwinists may have the federal district judges, or some of them, on their side. But the people are skeptical of what they hear from authority figures, including judges, anyway. I think the goal in the future is to change the intellectual face of the culture so that it isn't the way it was when I first went to college, when we were all taught that to be intelligent implies that you're agnostic. Now, the universities are still that way by and large. But they aren't that way at the undergraduate level or even the graduate student level. Much is changing, and I'm trying to be a part of that. AN EDIFICE THREATENED? Is there anything else you would like to add? I could go back to the question of the definition of science. That is perhaps more crucial than anything else. I have a view of science that is now disputed by secularist organizations and also by the most powerful organizations of science. I don't think they speak for science. I think they speak for an ideology that is widely held among contemporary scientists. This is the ideology of naturalism. And that is basically a religious position: The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. That isn't something that is established by data or tested by experiment. It's a fundamentally religious position or an ideology that has grown into science. The opinion of powerful people associated with scientific organizations has become central to its definition. And so they see the whole edifice as being threatened if that definition is called into question. But I would call it into question. I would say that the proper definition of science is that it is a question of what follows from data and experimental testing. If you cannot test by experiment the claim that natural selection has the kind of immense creative power necessary to produce human beings or even biological cells, then to say that this mechanism can do these wonders is an unscientific statement. It's a statement of personal belief, a statement of philosophy, not a statement of science. What is at stake? Well, prestige is not for me. I'm going to be 67 this year, and by the time further developments happen, I expect to have passed on from this world. Things that excited me years ago will no longer be of any concern to me. So that's not it. I think that the world will change, and I think that in these open debates, the truth will eventually win out. This is more than anything my faith: that given an even chance, the truth will win. If the evolutionary story is the truth, it will eventually win out as its partisans have been predicting that it would all along. It will hold not merely the societies of experts, but it will convince the public. I think that the reason it hasn't been able to convince the public is that it's not the truth. The public will gradually come to understand things better and better. The educational process will get better. We'll start with the truth, and the truth will prevail, whatever it is. And what is your view of the truth? My view of the truth is that there is a creator. I don't know how long the creator took, but I think there was a process of creation, and the evolution that has occurred has occurred within the boundaries originally set. That would be my belief as of now. I tend to think that that will prevail, because I think it's the truth. But if it's not the truth, it won't prevail, and it shouldn't.   Important Forum Advisory Note This forum is moderated by volunteer moderators who will react only to members' feedback on posts. Moderators are not employees or representatives of HWZ. Forum members and moderators are responsible for their own posts. Please refer to our Terms of Service for more information.