Intelligent Design is not creationism

this thread needs more teeth...

 

after 650 pages of new age scientologists and The TrollZZ, these the only teeth the thread needs

 

Scientists Should Keep “Quiet” about Support for Intelligent Design (Part 1)

Posted by Casey Luskin on May 27, 2008

MSNBC’s Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll Argue Scientists Should Keep "Quiet" about Support for Intelligent Design. We’ve known for a long time that MSNBC’s "Cosmic Log" writer Alan Boyle doesn’t like intelligent design, and in his coverage of Expelled, Boyle is no exception to the "checkpoint" pattern described earlier here on ENV. This time, he's got scientists from the academy "checkpoint" to back him up. Thus, he feels confident to attack Expelled as, "creepy … campaign ad, aimed at swiftboating science."

Enter Sean B. Carroll, a prominent biologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Boyle’s big gun who also happens to dislike intelligent design. Boyle quotes Carroll in a one-two punch that essentially states that scientists who support intelligent design should keep quiet about such views in the science classroom. Boyle writes:

Even at the time of 2005's Kitzmiller v. Dover court decision, it was clear that an argument based on academic freedom would be the next frontier for the intelligent-design debate. But the freedom to teach isn't absolute. It's subject to the usual checks and balances of academic institutions, plus the constitutional ban on state establishment of religion - and the idea that the content of a science class should be, well, based on science. That doesn't mean science teachers can't have wacky ideas. Some of the wackiest ideas have been held by the world's greatest scientists - including Isaac Newton, a religious heretic who calculated that the world would end in the year 2060. To Newton's credit, he kept relatively quiet about the wackier claims and pushed ahead with better ideas like calculus, optics and universal gravitation.

Carroll had similar advice for today's biologists: "The biology community will tell you that understanding genetics and evolution is fundamental to being a literate biologist. ... Do you want your kids to be taught by people who are living in the 18th century? I don't think so. They have a right to think these things or believe these things, but they have an obligation to be technically competent."

What’s that again? In case you missed what Boyle just wrote, let me explain what you just saw: First, Boyle praises Newton because he "kept relatively quiet" about his "wacky ideas." Next, Boyle directly inserts intelligent design into the “wacky idea” category. Then Boyle quotes Sean B. Carroll advising present-day biologists to do the same with their “wackier claims,” except in the context of Carroll’s advice, the topic is doubts about evolution. The implication is clear: Boyle and Carroll think that there should be no academic freedom for scientists or educators to speak in favor of intelligent design. In Boyle and Carroll’s world, if you have real doubts about evolution, then like Newton, you should just keep "quiet."

Alan Boyle of course has every right to believe that intelligent design is "wacky," and he has every right to promote that view. But should he advocate restricting the academic freedom of scientists who believe that there is merit to intelligent design—restricting the academic freedom of scientists who publish research and books supporting the theory and then dare to mention it in the classroom? Apparently, Boyle (with the back-up of Sean Carroll) think the answer is "yes," and they should be the arbiter of who gets academic freedom and who doesn’t in the debate over Darwin. As Gerald Schroeder says in Expelled, academic freedom exists, "but not if you’re on the wrong side of the wall"—i.e. there is no academic freedom if you support intelligent design.

In Boyle’s world, academic "freedom” only exists to express disagreement with intelligent design. Is that really freedom?

Continued in part 2

 

Scientists Should Keep “Quiet” about Support for Intelligent Design (Part 2)

Posted by Casey Luskin on May 28, 2008

In Part 1, I explained how Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll unashamedly agree that scientists should keep “quiet” about their support for intelligent design (ID). In this final response, I will discuss how the scientific evidence cited by Boyle does little to demonstrate the power of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. In Alan Boyle’s attack upon Expelled, he uses biologist Sean B. Carroll as his big gun scientist to attack intelligent design, touting Carroll’s book Making of the Fittest. In that book, Carroll argues that “[t]he argument for design by some external intelligence is eviscerated.”

Last year I wrote a response to Carroll showing that many of his arguments are frankly unimpressive. As I recounted at that time, "If the loss of function by turning off genes, and the usage of the same genes to build organs in vastly diverse organisms—a fact cited by design-proponents as supporting common design—are the best facts [Carroll] can muster against design, then it would appear that ID has very little to fear from the discoveries of evo-devo."

Boyle claims that ID proponents are wrong to state that “that no new genetic information can possibly be created.” He purports to refute the claims of ID-proponents through the examples of "insertion" and “duplication”— but the examples he uses actually represent trivial increases in genetic “information,” and are not increases in meaningful genetic information, i.e. they do not generate new specified complexity. Boyle also claims that there can be "beneficial revision of genetic code." Let’s check Boyle’s citation for that claim.

Boyle cites to a study which makes the trivial finding that some humans have slightly different biochemical or genetic mechanisms for digesting milk. Interestingly, the article assumes that "Human adults were not designed to digest milk," and therefore "It took a genetic mutation to enable humans to tolerate lactose." But what if human adults originally were designed to digest milk, and the fact that some humans have different biochemical mechanisms for lactose digestion, and that some have lost that ability, simply reflects variations or degeneration upon the original design? This evidence might show that evolution is only good at degenerating or destroying function rather than creating it.

Moreover, there are 2 reasons to understand that this study did not really document the evolution of something "new." Note that the article states "human adults" cannot digest milk. This is because most children can digest milk, and lactose intolerance is typically caused by environmental conditions, i.e. the less milk you drink as you age, the more likely you are to become lactose intolerant. In fact, lactose intolerance takes place when your small intestine does not make enough lactase, an enzyme used to break down lactose in milk. So the difference between a lactose intolerant person and a lactose tolerant person is not the presence of a new enzyme, but the production of more of a pre-existing enzyme.

This study did not actually find evidence of the evolutionary acquisition of a new trait here, but rather found evidence for the prolonging of a pre-existing trait. And all humans produce lactase, so there has been no evolution of a new enzyme. Does this example represent the "evolution" of something impressive or new?

Boyle quotes biologist Sean Carroll asserting that when it comes to the validity of neo-Darwinism, "the ballgame is over." This is a premature calling of the game. According to Boyle, "Evo-devo" has solved all the serious problems in evolutionary biology. (Keep in mind that in his book Making of the Fittest, the best "evo-devo" evidence for evolution that Carroll could muster were trivial examples of loss-of-function, like loss of spots on butterfly wings or loss of eyes on blind cave-fish, or an ID-favorite, the re-usage of the same genes in different organisms!) Nonetheless, Boyle argues that we have seen evolution produce new features: "Scientists are analyzing and comparing the genetic codes for hundreds of species, and the results are shedding new light on long-running posers such as the evolution of the eye or the cousinly relationship between elephants and manatees." The truth that Boyle misses is that, as scientists analyze and compare the genetic codes for more and more species, they are finding that Phylogenetic trees are often in sharp conflict with one another. Again, let's check Boyle’s references.

He cites an article that claims that "scientists knew that elephants are related to modern aquatic creatures such as manatees." This relationship has been claimed on the basis of DNA evidence, where Phylogenetic studies have compared the DNA of elephants and manatees and researchers suggest that they are closely related. But all that such studies have actually found is that elephants and manatees have similar DNA. Since their DNA might be similar due to functional requirements and not inheritance from a common ancestor, there’s no reason to presume that this data necessarily indicates common ancestry. But even if the similarities are derived from a common ancestor, the allegedly clear Phylogenetic relationship between elephants and sea cows seems to be the exception, and not the rule in systematics. De Jong (1998) observed that “the wealth of competing morphological, as well as molecular proposals [of] the prevailing phylogenies of the mammalian orders would reduce [the mammalian tree] to an unresolved bush, the only consistent clade probably being the grouping of elephants and sea cows."

Another severe Phylogenetic conflict is seen in Boyle's reference regarding the "evolution of the eye" which opens by admitting, "While morphological comparisons of eye anatomy and photoreceptor cell types led to the view that animal eyes evolved multiple times independently, the molecular conservation of the pax6 eye-specifying cascade has indicated the contrary - that animal eyes evolved from a common, simple precursor, the proto-eye." In other words, evolutionary scientists were surprised to find that very different types of eyes use the same regulatory genes to control eye growth, because the standard Darwinian phylogeny would never have predicted this. In fact, such unexpected genetic similarity may instead provide strong evidence for common design.

Indeed, some of the very research of Boyle’s big gun, Sean Carroll, also shows that Phylogenetic trees commonly conflict with one another. In 2006, Carroll co-authored a study which acknowledged that "a large fraction of single genes produce phylogenies of poor quality," observing that one study "omitted 35% of single genes from their data matrix, because those genes produced phylogenies at odds with conventional wisdom." Such a selective use of data does not inspire confidence in the methods evolutionary biologists use to construct their phylogenetic trees.

The paper suggests that "certain critical parts of the [tree of life] may be difficult to resolve, regardless of the quantity of conventional data available." The excuse that Phylogenetic trees are difficult to construct because of insufficient data is no longer feasible. The paper even contends that "the recurring discovery of persistently unresolved clades (bushes) should force a re-evaluation of several widely held assumptions of molecular systematics." Carroll of course is a committed neo-Darwinist. One assumption he does not re-evaluate is the assumption of common ancestry.

Carroll attempts to reconcile the genetic data with common descent by postulating rapid phases of evolution where there was insufficient time for enough differences in the DNA of different lineages to accumulate to allow modern biologists to resolve the evolutionary relationships. This becomes an exercise in neo-Darwinism explaining away the data. Perhaps the inability to construct robust phylogenetic trees using molecular data simply stems from the fact that neo-Darwinian common descent is wrong.

In the end, Boyle’s evidence for neo-Darwinism might be seen from a different angle—as evidence for intelligent design. Unfortunately, as I discussed in part 1, Boyle does not believe that scientists should not have the academic freedom to think such thoughts because they are too "wacky."

 

So tell me, what would you gain from proving intelligent design or creationism? Would it significantly change your day-to-day life? Is there some prize or reward if you do figure it out? Will our lives change?

 

Victory in Louisiana: Governor Jindal Signs Historic Science Education Act On Evolution and Education

Robert Crowther

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, ensuring the state’s teachers their right to teach the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution. The bill enjoyed surprisingly overwhelming support from lawmakers. It was passed unanimously by the Louisiana state senate, and pased the state House by a vote of 93-4.

Here are some key facts about the new law.

Teachers are still required to teach according to state and local science standards. But under the law, a school district could permit a teacher to present additional scientific evidence, analysis, and critiques regarding topics already in the approved curriculum.

Teachers are still required to follow the standard curriculum, and school districts would still need to authorize what teachers are doing in order for the law to come into operation. Moreover, any teaching or supplemental instructional materials would have to be consistent with the prohibition of the promotion of religion in Section 1D of the bill. Finally, any inappropriate instructional materials could be disallowed under the bill by the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.


Upon the request of a local school board, the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will be required to "allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." Assistance from the State Board in this area now will "include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied."


Teachers will be permitted to "use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner." But teachers using supplemental resources must first "teach the material presented in the standard textbook supplied by the school system," and the State Board of Education reserves the right to veto any inappropriate supplemental materials.


The law is needed for two reasons. First, around the country, science teachers are being harassed, intimidated, and sometimes fired for trying to present scientific evidence critical of Darwinian theory along with the evidence that supports it. Second, many school administrators and teachers are fearful or confused about what is legally allowed when teaching about controversial scientific issues like evolution. The Louisiana Science Education Act clarifies what teachers may be allowed to do.


The law will not allow for inclusion of religion. Section 1D of the law clearly states that the law "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion."

 

If you can prove that this design is insane, then yes, it would significantly change your day-to-day experience of it. The reward is simply Reality, which abides in timelessness. Intelligent design? Indeed, it runs exactly as it was set up. But it is not set up in your best interest. It answers a question for you. Figure out what the question was, and you will find the answer.

Jesus

 

just playing the devil's advocate... what if it were not, designed? would it still be insane would you say?

how u been jeez?

 

Thanks for asking. I've been real!

Yes it would still be insane, but you would have no power to change your day-to-day experience of it, let alone let it go entirely so that it passes away and disappears as the unreality that it was. The insanity persists as long as there is a wish for it among the participants. Salvation will not dismantle it without the cooperation of the participants. There is really only one participant anyway, which I will call the "prodigal Son". The world manifests his beliefs and the thought system(s) built on them. Essentially we are talking about a kind of sorcery, in which the one insane becomes the many insane, each a sorcerer. The power of each sorcerer has not diminished, rather, power is used to mask power. I told you it was insane! This gives the appearance that it may or may not be designed, causing confusion as to its source/cause. It's cause must forever be hidden if it is to survive. In reality, it is impossible that anything happen by accident to the Son of God. Both the Son of God and his wiley antithesis - the prodigal Son - are too keen to accept anything less, except by design. Time will end when the wish for insanity is unplugged. Till then, it's designer insanity.

The design becomes apparent only as you "get" that everything in this world is an antithesis of Reality which attempts to import substitutes of Reality into the expressions of its opposite. So it is wheat and tares. Neither the wheat nor the tares are Real, but side by side, the whole field is indistinquishable from Reality for those standing on the edge of it. For example, it may be called "real estate". In this way, Reality is utterly replaced with another...at least for the mind that wished/believed it could be. Meanwhile, everything is fine back at Ranch Reality. So true is the design to this formula that it could well-nigh be digitized. Indeed, tech mimics the computeresque nature of this unnatural world. Pre-recorded, its maker is long gone. It's DVD plays for those still interested in the strange.

Jesus

 

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things. By Dr. Francis Collins
Special to CNN Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html