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The Bait and Switch of "Intelligent Design"
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Post: #1
 
The Bait and Switch of "Intelligent Design": Religion Masquerading as Science
by Keith Lockitch (May 3, 2005)

Summary: "Intelligent Design" is religion masquerading as science.

[www.CapMag.com]

Legal and political battle lines have been drawn across the country over the teaching of "intelligent design"--the view that life is so complex it must be the product of a "higher intelligence." The central issue under debate is whether "intelligent design" is, in fact, a genuine scientific theory or merely a disguised form of religious advocacy--creationism in camouflage.

Proponents of "intelligent design" aggressively market their viewpoint as real science, insisting it is not religiously based. Writes one leading advocate, Michael Behe: "The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself--not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs."

Proponents of "intelligent design" claim that Darwinian evolution is a fundamentally flawed theory--that there are certain complex features of living organisms evolution simply cannot explain, but which can be explained as the handiwork of an "intelligent designer."

Their viewpoint is not religiously based, they insist, because it does not require that the "intelligent designer" be God. "Design," writes another leading proponent, William Dembski, "requires neither magic nor miracles nor a creator."

Indeed, "design" apparently requires surprisingly little of the "designer's" identity: "Inferences to design," contends Behe, "do not require that we have a candidate for the role of designer." According to its advocates, the "designer" responsible for "intelligent design" in biology could be any sort of "creative intelligence" capable of engineering the basic elements of life. Some have even seriously nominated advanced space aliens for the role.

Their premise seems to be that as long as they don't explicitly name the "designer"--as long as they allow that the "designer" could be a naturally existing being, a being accessible to scientific study--that this somehow saves their viewpoint from the charge of being inherently religious in character.

But does it?

Imagine we discovered an alien on Mars with a penchant for bio-engineering. Could such a natural being fulfill the requirements of an "intelligent designer"?

It could not. Such a being would not actually account for the complexity that "design" proponents seek to explain. Any natural being capable of "designing" the complex features of earthly life would, on their premises, require its own "designer." If "design" can be inferred merely from observed complexity, then our purported Martian "designer" would be just another complex being in nature that supposedly cannot be explained without positing another "designer." One does not explain complexity by dreaming up a new complexity as its cause.

By the very nature of its approach, "intelligent design" cannot be satisfied with a "designer" who is part of the natural world. Such a "designer" would not answer the basic question its advocates raise: it would not explain biological complexity as such. The only "designer" that would stop their quest for a "design" explanation of complexity is a "designer" about whom one cannot ask any questions or who cannot be subjected to any kind of scientific study--a "designer" that "transcends" nature and its laws--a "designer" not susceptible of rational explanation--in short: a supernatural "designer."

Its advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, "intelligent design" is inherently a quest for the supernatural. Only one "candidate for the role of designer" need apply. Dembski himself--even while trying to deny this implication--concedes that "if there is design in biology and cosmology, then that design could not be the work of an evolved intelligence." It must, he admits, be that of a "transcendent intelligence" to whom he euphemistically refers as "the big G."

The supposedly nonreligious theory of "intelligent design" is nothing more than a crusade to peddle religion by giving it the veneer of science--to pretend, as one commentator put it, that "faith in God is something that holds up under the microscope."

The insistence of "intelligent design" advocates that they are "agnostic regarding the source of design" is a bait-and-switch. They dangle out the groundless possibility of a "designer" who is susceptible of scientific study--in order to hide their real agenda of promoting faith in the supernatural. Their scientifically accessible "designer" is nothing more than a gateway god--metaphysical marijuana intended to draw students away from natural, scientific explanations and get them hooked on the supernatural.

No matter how fervently its salesmen wish "intelligent design" to be viewed as cutting-edge science, there is no disguising its true character. It is nothing more than a religiously motivated attack on science, and should be rejected as such.

Copyright 2005 Ayn Rand Institute. All rights reserved.


About the Author: Keith Lockitch is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, CA. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

<a href='http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4216' target='_blank'>http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4216</a>
05-11-2005 08:25 AM
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Post: #2
 
I think this is true. ID necessarily concludes in a supernatural being. However, if the author truly understood "objectivism", he wouldn't be troubled by this. Because an objective analysis of the data leads to this conclusion.

Just b/c some folks don't want this to be true, doesn't make it not so. And they are still free to put their faith in such a belief. But, it's fair to insist that they stop imposing their faith on me in the public domain.
05-11-2005 08:43 AM
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<a href='http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=15991' target='_blank'>http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section...ContentID=15991</a>

The full article in case you think I'm taking this out of context.

------

In a well-publicized letter in the August/September issue of the magazine Philosophy Now, Professor Flew [who was once called “the world’s most influential atheist,
05-11-2005 11:51 AM
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Post: #4
 
The idea of a designer or supernatural force is mindblowing to many people. I guess I can't blame their hesitancy to believe in something like this.

But I have read that the chances of modern-day humans evolving from a collision course of primodial chemicals is the same as a 747 airplane coming about by a tornado blowing through a junk yard that contained the parts to the airplane. Yes, we are that complex and the odds are that staggering.

To each their own, of course, but I believe in ID. But I also don't care if it's not taught in public schools.

However, there is a distinct difference between saying "We've come about through intelligent design" versus "Some believe we've come about through intelligent design". I surmise that some people, especially the really evangelical atheists (not an oxymoron), would nix both of them. But while one can argue that the first statement is religious dogma, the second statement is factual. There should be nothing wrong with teaching the second statement.
05-11-2005 06:49 PM
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Ok just setting aside the debate between ID and Darwinian evolution for a moment, how do people feel about natural selection and genes? I'm just curious about how IDers (idears?) view this branch. Do you guys think that it's not proven? I'm just talking about Mandel's pea experieents and the like. Genotype, Phenotype stuff. It's been a while since I've read up on this stuff, so just give me your point of view on it.
05-11-2005 10:25 PM
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I believe in cell specialization. It's proven. Cells specialize to to factors such as environment, habitat, etc. I do not believe in evolution. That is, I do NOT believe that we evolved from an ape. Show me an ape skeleton from the Paleolithic era. All you can show me is a neanderthal male. To say we evolved from apes basically says we devolved and then evolved. I.e. Homo-Erectus-Homo-Neanderthalensis-Ape-Homo-Sapian. .....I know I missed a few, but you get the point. A Neanderthal is nothing more, to me at least, than a Homo-Sapian that was specialized to his time in life. The "name" he was given was by scientists in our time. What, they have a time machine?

You wanna teach it, fine. By God, it WILL be voluntary so long as I'M a taxpayer. As Religious beginnings should.
05-11-2005 10:40 PM
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Quote:I do NOT believe that we evolved from an ape. Show me an ape skeleton from the Paleolithic era. All you can show me is a neanderthal male. To say we evolved from apes basically says we devolved and then evolved. I.e. Homo-Erectus-Homo-Neanderthalensis-Ape-Homo-Sapian. .....I know I missed a few, but you get the point. A Neanderthal is nothing more, to me at least, than a Homo-Sapian that was specialized to his time in life.

Ironically, evolutionists believe the same thing
05-11-2005 11:00 PM
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Motown Bronco Wrote:However, there is a distinct difference between saying "We've come about through intelligent design" versus "Some believe we've come about through intelligent design". I surmise that some people, especially the really evangelical atheists (not an oxymoron), would nix both of them. But while one can argue that the first statement is religious dogma, the second statement is factual. There should be nothing wrong with teaching the second statement.
I concur here. If anyone saw the PBS series on this a couple of years ago, it was the dimwit bio teacher from Ft Wayne that got me the most upset. He kept dismissing the students' research on the subject b/c it was ID, and it didn't match his faith. He wouldn't even consider it, and he'd mutter some illogical platitude to "defend" his position. That's not education.
05-12-2005 07:42 AM
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Ok, I've been thinking about this whole "intelligent design" thing, and I have come to the conclusion that as a scientific theory it can not be tied to any religious ideas of origin.

With ID we surmise that we were created by something that we currently do not understnad or know. Thus if ID is actually studied scientifically we work under the assumption that we, as humans, can understand how everything was set in motion and in turn how to create "artificial" life. To do this humans would also have to understand the "intelligent designer" and it's abilities of changing our enviroment. This is blasphemus in western religions as the "intelligent designer" is also the Lord/Yahweh/Allah and thus could not be accepted by religious thought.

On the other hand if we assume that humans could never understand how everything was set in motion and in turn create "artificial" life, then this theory is antiscientific in nature and should just be tossed around in a philosophy class.
05-12-2005 08:02 AM
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Fanatical Wrote:Ok, I've been thinking about this whole "intelligent design" thing, and I have come to the conclusion that as a scientific theory it can not be tied to any religious ideas of origin.

With ID we surmise that we were created by something that we currently do not understnad or know.
Stop here. I'm not sure this is true. ID comes in w/ no presupposition as to who/what the Designer is, but I don't believe it's postulated that we can never know. On the contrary, I believe most ID people would say that the creation does lead to some understanding of the creator. But that latter study may not be the perfect fit for the scientific classroom, and may move to another department. However, the main argument is this: looking objectively and exclusively at the scientific evidence, the best conclusion is intellegent design. Apparently Flew agrees as well.
05-12-2005 09:11 AM
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Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:Ok just setting aside the debate between ID and Darwinian evolution for a moment, how do people feel about natural selection and genes? I'm just curious about how IDers (idears?) view this branch. Do you guys think that it's not proven? I'm just talking about Mandel's pea experieents and the like. Genotype, Phenotype stuff. It's been a while since I've read up on this stuff, so just give me your point of view on it.
I tend to put more interest in the gene side of things, b/c that's where the real "mechanism" is going to be. And this is key to a scientific theory...the mechanism. Plus Lamarck's early work really took the wind out of the sails for natural selection... it's a shame that work is so misrepresented in Bio texts (and misunderstood by biologists).

Nevertheless, this article is an interesting read
<a href='http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/history/modevdev.shtml' target='_blank'>http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/hist.../modevdev.shtml</a>

and presents some of the ideas on this very subject. However, the true consequences of the experimental data are subject to interpretation. And understand, this is why there is some merit in the criticism that evolution is just a "theory". Yes, theory means many things in science, but in this case the definition of "conjecture" or "speculation" is indeed accurate.

BTW, it's interesting to read articles like this
<a href='http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Origin%20of%20Life/CHEMay21-01Monastersky.html' target='_blank'>http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Origin%20of...onastersky.html</a>

and realize how poorly developed this field really is. It is obviously not presented like that in HS or college textbooks. But the reality is that there is no "one" evolutionary theory, and that the competing, mutually-exclusive ideas cannot all be true.
05-12-2005 09:25 AM
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Post: #12
 
Hmmm, I might be reading you wrong, DrT, but let me see if I got this right. You think Natural Selection is a fallacy?

Now maybe the terminology is not always clear here, but I've always differentiated between Darwinian Evolution and Natural Selection.

Again, this isn't my area of expertise, so bear with me a bit. For sake of argument, evolution is the process of a fish turning into a dog over many eons. now I've always understood Natural Selection as a tool of evolution. Basically you have two fish, one is brown and the other is a bright red. Natural Selection says that the birght red fish is more likely to be eaten and not reproduce, thus not passing on its genetic material. So the brown fish has been selected to live. If the stream suddenly becomes rich in Iron, now the Red fish are more likely to survive and they will become predominant. Anyway that's my idea of what natual selection is. Is there a better word to describe this that I'm missing here?

Then there is Sexual Selection, which fish has better traits to be a more desirable mate. In this case if a red fish survies long enough to mate it is the more likely choice because it is easier for a potential mate to find.

OK, I don't remember back to Lamark from Biology class in HS 10 years ago, but glancing over his stuff online seems to fall more in line with what I've understood to be some of the more well understood ideas about genetics.

I defintely agree with you that all the sides of this argument are way too overzealous, and misunderstood. Nobody is going to give ground in this fight. Isn't it a logial fallacy to make hypotheses that cannot be proven wrong? I think I see that happenning on both sides of the debate.
05-12-2005 11:23 AM
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Post: #13
 
Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:Hmmm, I might be reading you wrong, DrT, but let me see if I got this right. You think Natural Selection is a fallacy?
No, I think natural selection is provable...but it's not evolution.

I understand with you, that it is supposed to be a tool of evolution; however it doesn't really work. That's because there is no good mechanism for natural selection to influence change of species.

You can get changes in the population distributions...but fish stay fish, dogs stay dogs, and this never explains how you get from fish to dogs.

The mechanism has to be genetic.

Now I understand a bit more what Gould's idea was: it's not always the gene affecting traits that gets changed, but it may be the gene that controls when the other gene gets expressed.
And that's interesting. But, is it evolution? Do rats grow wings to make bats? Do fish grow lungs to live on land? Once again, the experimental evidence is sparse to support the theory. Maybe it will come together eventually, but isn't the onus to prove the point on the one who suggests the theory? Isn't a real skeptic supposed to demand proof? Why is the answer, "Evolution is true! we'll get proof later!"? That's not science.

This theory also does nothing to the irreducible complexity argument, which perisists at many levels (from cell to organ to system)
05-12-2005 01:50 PM
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I'm willing to bet that this argument doesn't get solved in our lifetime. I tend to be skeptical and after we had a little debate earlier (a couple of months ago?), I looked a little closer at a subject I wasn't really all that familiar with. There are definitly a lot of holes in all the different ideas about how evolutions works.

I do have one big question though, who's directly saying that a rat grows wings and becomes a bat? I don't think it's that simple. Can you send a link of an article that seems to try to defend this? Or is this just one of Darwin's ideas? It just sounds very strawman-ish...
05-12-2005 02:35 PM
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Natural selection is evolution. Evolution isn't a bad word; it's just been hi-jacked by a group of radical anti-religious zealots who think that there is no way there is a power that is greater and/or more intelligent than they are. Don't discount evolution just because it's been redefined. Take the term back.
05-12-2005 02:59 PM
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Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:I'm willing to bet that this argument doesn't get solved in our lifetime. I tend to be skeptical and after we had a little debate earlier (a couple of months ago?), I looked a little closer at a subject I wasn't really all that familiar with. There are definitly a lot of holes in all the different ideas about how evolutions works.

I do have one big question though, who's directly saying that a rat grows wings and becomes a bat? I don't think it's that simple. Can you send a link of an article that seems to try to defend this? Or is this just one of Darwin's ideas? It just sounds very strawman-ish...
Specialization has a lot to do with physical features, I.e. webbed toes, etc. I'm not sure about a rat-->bat though. As far as rat into bat, that is an entirely different species, much like ape-->human. Specialization would be a rat's cells evolving so that it can survive extremely arid climates or extremely swampy climates. Cell specialization can also be seen between the races of humans. (This is biology people, it's not racist).
05-12-2005 03:03 PM
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RebelKev Wrote:Natural selection is evolution. Evolution isn't a bad word; it's just been hi-jacked by a group of radical anti-religious zealots who think that there is no way there is a power that is greater and/or more intelligent than they are. Don't discount evolution just because it's been redefined. Take the term back.
Excuse the possible ignorance as I'm like B_R and this isn't my area, but wouldn't natural selection actually be closer to adaptation? Certain traits survive because they are better suited (adapted) for a certain environment?

The world 'evolution' involves a change of some sort. In the example of the red fish and white fish, there is no change in the species.

Am I wrong?
05-12-2005 03:13 PM
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RebelKev Wrote:Natural selection is evolution. Evolution isn't a bad word; it's just been hi-jacked by a group of radical anti-religious zealots who think that there is no way there is a power that is greater and/or more intelligent than they are. Don't discount evolution just because it's been redefined. Take the term back.
Yeah I think that may be where some of the problem is. When I say Natural Selection I mean one thing (as described above) I don't mean formation of new species; I don't claim to know how that works.

My question is then, is there a better word to use that won't confuse people? When I say NS, I don't want people to think of formation of new species, I want them to think of what I've always know NS to be. I just think I might be using the wrong words or phrases when there are better ones out there.

Quote:The world 'evolution' involves a change of some sort. In the example of the red fish and white fish, there is no change in the species.


When I use the word evolution I mean a change into a new species. In the case of the same species of fish that are found in a variety of colors, I think I would say fish adapt to their surroundings. This does not creat a new speicies, however. At least not im my example. :D
05-12-2005 03:44 PM
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Adaptation would be more akin to acclimation. When I was talking about cells in rats in arid climates, I was talking more about their ability to retain water.
05-12-2005 03:45 PM
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Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:
RebelKev Wrote:Natural selection is evolution. Evolution isn't a bad word; it's just been hi-jacked by a group of radical anti-religious zealots who think that there is no way there is a power that is greater and/or more intelligent than they are. Don't discount evolution just because it's been redefined. Take the term back.
Yeah I think that may be where some of the problem is. When I say Natural Selection I mean one thing (as described above) I don't mean formation of new species; I don't claim to know how that works.

My question is then, is there a better word to use that won't confuse people? When I say NS, I don't want people to think of formation of new species, I want them to think of what I've always know NS to be. I just think I might be using the wrong words or phrases when there are better ones out there.
Actually, you guys have hit prcisely on one of the major issues:

What exactly is 'evolution'?

It's one of the first issues that Johnson deals with in "Darwin on Trial" and he comes back to it in some other works.

Evolution means *many* different things when taught in a classroom, and it is that very issue that allows me to say that the way the current theory is taught is a huge problem. It is NOT science. It's not good education either! It is a smoke and mirrors routing that leaves most students scratching their head, and muttering, "I guess it's true, b/c they had a few examples. I'm just not smart enough to understand the whole thing."

That is my first and biggest concern.

It is worth noting however, that concern often gets twisted into, "You're a fundamentalist so you're anti-science and stupid." And I can show you a newspaper column (responding to me) from a BG bio prof that says that very thing in his first 2 paragraphs.

Yes, I also have concerns that most elements of evolutionary theory are poor science...but note how difficult it is to pin down clear definitions of those elements and how they play a role in the overall theory.

Once again, obfuscation and tautology are not elements of a sound scientific theory.
05-13-2005 07:50 AM
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