| Subject: I think I've figured it out... |
Author:
Duane
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Date Posted: 09/28/04 8:11am
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "Yes I am." on 09/26/04 9:03pm
Wade:
Our discussion has been nagging at me for a while now, and after reading your post,
and trying to figure out how to respond, I just realized why.
What really triggered my realization was our last exchange - I kept asking
questions about the designer, and you kept trying to rationalize to me why you
couldn't answer them.
You said, 18 times, in your last post, that "science can't answer questions about
the designer (not yet, but then again, maybe never)."
And I realized that you were right - science can't answer anything about the
designer, but it also can't answer anything about our ultimate origins. I mean,
maybe someday it'll be able to, but not now, and maybe even not ever.
So I wondered, "Why do I seem to think that ID theory supporters have to answer
these unanswerable questions, or else their theory is crap?"
I thought, "Am I being unfair? I mean, I KNOW that we can't know anything about
the designer. I've been yanking Wade's chain by demanding that he talk about the
designer, while knowing that he couldn't, because we just simply can't know!"
And then I realized that you were right, Wade - ID theory can't say anything about
the designer, because the existence and identity of the designer really IS outside
the realm of science.
And it was then that I realized what it was about ID theory that made it seem
different from other mainstream scientific theories.
To explain, let me walk you through my train of thought...
A theory in the natural sciences is introduced when some new phenomenon or set of
phenomena are observed that either contradict an existing theory's explanation, in
which case that theory is replaced, or that tells us something new, allowing us to
add an explanatory theory where there wasn't one before.
A classic example of the replacement of an existing theory by a new one is (of
course) the origins of the theory of biological evolution, which replaced the then
"cutting-edge science" of Creationism.
A more recent example is our current redefinition of the central dogma of genetics
(we've found that all that "junk" DNA actually seems to serve an extremely
important purpose in generating the complexity of current living organisms -
interestingly, this new discovery and resulting theory provides a very clear
explanation of how eukaryotes differ from, and also evolved from, prokaryotes,
among a number of other observations and predictions that support evolutionary
theory and our current, mainstream theories about the origins of life on Earth...)
The common thing in new theories that are introduced in the natural sciences is
that they are the result of a something we'd never seen before (a NEW discovery,
like the participation of "junk DNA" transcripts in regulatory systems), or an
opportunity to observe something we knew existed but in a completely new or
different way (i.e., the Galapagos Islands, the electron microscope, etc.).
Without these, we would have no reason to radically change our theories.
I tried to fit Intelligent Design theory into this model, and to do so, I started
to look for publications in peer-reviewed journals that provided evidence in
support of ID theory. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is considered to be
the gold standard by which scientific research is judged. After all - scientists
ARE damn good at their jobs.
I began by looking for publications by the "designer" of intelligent design,
Michael Behe.
I tried to find research journal articles written by Michael Behe where he presents
evidence of design, or at least lays some evidentiary foundation for his theory.
Guess what, folks? They don't exist. Michael Behe has published in peer-reviewed
scientific journals, but only research that has nothing to do with ID.
I did manage to find nine different articles he'd written in several different
peer-reviewed journals that DID have to do with ID. They were all editorials, and
5 of the 9 were written in defense of his book. I didn't find ONE SINGLE RESEARCH
PAPER by Michael Behe that had the least bit of anything to do with ID.
OK, so fine. I looked for other articles that had to do with ID. I searched the
web, I searched the holdings of every university library in the MidWest, I searched
almost everywhere. I finally stumbled across ONE (yes, ONE) article written by a
dude called Stephen Meyer, published in an extremely obscure journal (Proceedings
of the Biological Society of Washington - The circulations director at my school (
whose job it is to know EVERY publication there is) said he'd never heard of it,
and that he'd need "some time" to see if he could track it down.)
Now, the way an ID supporter would tell it, ID has been around for a while, and it
has a significant base of support among scientists. So how come I could only find
ONE article about it published in a very obscure journal? You'd think that if the
idea has some merit, there'd at least be... oh, I don't know... TWO articles?
By the way, I guess I'm going to pre-emptively address the response I'll probably
get about what I just wrote.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRE-EMPTIVE REBUTTAL:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which is more likely?
a) The scientists who support Intelligent Design have made a landmark,
revolutionary discovery (or discoveries) that clearly support the theory that life
was designed by an Intelligent Designer, and the scientific community, as a whole,
have banded together in an extremely effective and pervasive conspiracy to prevent
ANY word of this amazing discovery from leaking out, and hope to forever quash this
looming scientific coup. (note that this also assumes that the scientists involved
in this conspiracy must be able to intellectually repress their commitment to the
truth in deference to their own Machiavellian designs)
or
b) The scientists who support Intelligent Design have made no new discoveries at
all that support the theory that life was designed by an Intelligent Designer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
END PRE-EMPTIVE REBUTTAL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK - so the bottom line is that I couldn't find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that ID scientists had made some big discovery that supported their theory.
So I decided to get it straight from the horse's mouth, and look at Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box to see if he, himself, demonstrated some new discovery that might have prompted the creation of Intelligent Design theory.
Behe is a biochemist, which (I thought) is rather fortunate, because I happen to have a degree in biochemistry. So I figured I'd be able to accurately evaulate his discovery (or discoveries).
But I was dismayed to discover that he hadn't observed some new phenomena that supported ID theory. His argument consisted completely of a re-interpretation of well-known, commonly observed phenomena.
Well, that's OK, I thought. Maybe his interpretation is right. I mean, his statement of ID theory certainly didn't directly contradict anything we know to be true. In fact, he concedes that a lot of things that evolutionary theory says ARE true!
So I was at a loss as to why ID theory was created:
It wasn't created because we discovered anything new that supports it.
It wasn't created because it explains any natural phenomena better than evolutionary theory. (the only thing it does is to offer an untestable hypothesis for things we can't yet explain)
It doesn't allow us to make any testable predictions we couldn't make already with evolutionary theory.
All it is is an alternate, possible explanation for existing observed phenomena - that we already have a perfectly good explanation for!!!
So I was left with only one choice - go to the roots of each theory. Look at the assumptions each makes, and see if maybe ID theory wuld come out on top in this comparison - if it did, then there'd be at least ONE reason for it to exist.
But ID theory requires every assumption about nature and ultimate origins that evolutionary theory does - I mean, it concedes that most of evolutionary theory is true!!!
On top of that, it also includes the assumption of a designer - something evolutionary theory DOESN'T have to assume to explain observable phenomena. So ID theory fails here, too, because we, as scientists, all things being equal, would choose a theory with less assumptions. (Less assumptions means fewer scientifically untestable things).
So my realization was the following:
In every possible aspect that you might use to evaluate a scienfitic theory, Intelligent Design theory is inferior to the current existing theory, biological evolution. No one rationally would have ever introduced Intelligent Design theory as a "competing" theory to bioligical evolution.
So I must assume that since I've eliminated every possible scientific reason that Intelligent Design theory would have been created for, that it must have been created for an irrational purpose.
Duane
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