Intelligent Design

Someone I correspond with sent me this. It’s a good example of how the design inference has been employed for practical matters. On the subject of stacked stones in the wilderness, here is a little story that may be interesting. In my legal practice my most prominent pro bono case was to seek the first-ever posthumous Presidential pardon, for the first-ever black graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — Lt. Henry Ossian Flipper, class of 1877. He was court-martialled in a racially-motivated prosecution in 1881 and dismissed from the Army. (Pres. Clinton issued the pardon in 1999). After leaving the Army Lt. Flipper became a special agent for the U.S. Department of Justice, as part of a Read More ›

When considering design versus no design in both cosmology and biology, one thing seems strikingly obvious: The default position is backwards.

Concerning cosmology, the fine-tuning of the universe for life would appear to be prima facie evidence for design. One can either choose to believe (at least provisionally) that this is the case, based on some evidence, or one can choose to believe in an infinitude of hypothetical alternate universes, which are in principle undetectable, based on no evidence.
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This morning the New Scientist web site posted an article entitled “Is Dark Energy an Illusion?”  See here:

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11498-is-dark-energy-an-illusion.html

Here is the lead sentence:  “The quickening pace of our universe’s expansion may not be driven by a mysterious force called dark energy after all, but paradoxically, by the collapse of matter in small regions of space.”

This article brought to mind a wonderful debate we had in September about what it means to “know” a scientific theory is true.  I used the standard model of cosmology and especially its reliance on “dark matter” and “dark energy” as a jumping off point for the discussion.  See

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/illusion-of-knowledge-iii/

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-illusion-of-knowldge/

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-illusion-of-knowledge-ii/

In my first post I noted that Professor Mike Disney is skeptical of the standard model, and he says:  “The greatest obstacle to progress in science is the illusion of knowledge, the illusion that we know what’s going on when we really don’t.”

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Here at Uncommon Descent, a longish combox discussion started recently – which spread here after I reposted some of my own comments at the Post-Darwinist – on whether the intelligent design guys would gain or lose credibility if they kicked out the young earth creationists (YECs, the folk who believe that the Bible teaches that the earth was created in 144 hours and therefore it must be true).

My own view is that it is politically astonishingly naive to think that the intelligent design-friendly scientists who accept universal common descent would gain anything by starting a big fight with: Read More ›

Here’s an article on evolving hardware developed by Norwegian scientists. Favorite quote: “Every creature in nature is a product of evolution, and did I mention that creationism is just bull? What the team has done is add evolution to hardware (Norwegian), all hardware that you and I have used so far is made the creationism way, it’s made and can not be changed at runtime through evolution. All changes to existing hardware have to be made through software.” There’s not much detail in this article, but let me venture a guess: when the details come out, we’ll find that intelligent design (which includes evolutionary optimization) outshines unintelligent evolution at every turn. Read More ›

[Event announcement] One hundred years ago on March 9, Indiana passed the world’s first forced sterilization law. Two years later, Washington State enacted a similar measure. Both laws were part of a crusade to breed better humans known as “eugenics.” Promoted by evolutionary biologists in the name of Darwinian natural selection, eugenics led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of Americans against their will, many of whom would not be considered mentally handicapped today. Why did America’s leading scientists and scientific organizations embrace eugenics for so long? Was eugenics a logical application of Darwin’s theory, or a terrible misuse of it? What are the lessons we can learn from eugenics for today’s controversies over science and public policy? In Read More ›

Here’s what’s appearing on Starbucks coffee cups that’s relevant to our concerns: The Way I See It #224 Darwinism’s impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from its baleful social consequences, Darwinism’s connection with eugenics, abortion and racism is a matter of historical record. And the record is not pretty. — Jonathan Wells, Biologist and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. The Way I See It # 220 Evolution as described by Charles Darwin is a scientific theory, abundantly reconfirmed, explaining physical phenomena by physical causes. Intelligent Design is a faith-based initiative in rhetorical Read More ›

Veering From Evolution Fired teacher explains his presentation By Christopher Stollar / The Bulletin Published: March 25. 2007 5:00AM PST On Wednesday, March 14, eight days into a new job teaching biology at Sisters High School, Kris Helphinstine showed a class of freshman and sophomore students pictures of naked corpses, a Nazi swastika and Charles Darwin in a PowerPoint presentation. “What do these pictures have in common?” the 27-year-old part-time teacher asked the 30 students. They listened as Helphinstine gave a roughly hourlong presentation, explaining how the Third Reich perverted evolution and eugenics to slaughter Jews and Gypsies in death camps to protect the “superior race.” Read the rest of the article at the link above. Watch the KTVZ NewsChannel Read More ›

Granville Sewell asked me to post this: “The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe” A Preview of W.E.Loennig’s Part II By Granville Sewell Darwin’s story of how the giraffe got its long neck is perhaps the most popular and widely-told story of evolution. It is popular because it seems plausible: giraffes with slightly longer necks enjoyed a slight selective advantage in reaching the higher leaves of trees, and so over the ages these slight neck elongations accumulated, resulting in the modern giraffe. In fact, I used the giraffe story myself in my Mathematical Intelligencer article (at www.discovery.org/csc) as an example of purely quantitative change, that natural selection possibly could explain, as opposed to the origins of new organs and new systems Read More ›

Not long ago an anthropologist resigned in ‘dating disaster’. Now we learn world famous paleoantrhopologist Leakey Manipulated His Apelike “Skull 1470” to Look Human . Dr. Leakey produced a reconstruction that could not have existed in real life…. let’s see if Leakey will recant. Let’s see if the textbook publishers will fix the mistake. His Skull 1470 raised quite a stir at the time and gained Leakey international fame. Now, it comes out that Leakey’s personal bias dictated how he put the puzzle pieces of bone together. How much does this go on in the dubious practice of paleoanthropology? What other instances are out there right now with built-in bias? Here it is 25 years after the discovery before the Read More ›

Respected doctor and professor of neurosurgery Michael Egnor reports in Darwin, Mendel, Watson and Crick, and Al Gore: Darwin’s theory impeded the recognition of Mendel’s discovery for a third of a century, and Darwin’s assertion that random variation was the raw material for biological complexity was of no help in decoding the genetic language of DNA. The single incontrovertible Darwinian contribution to the field of medical genetics was eugenics, which is the Darwinian theory that humans can be bred for social and character traits, like animals. The field of medical genetics is still recovering from eugenics, which was Darwin’s only gift to medicine. More

The recent dustup surrounding the SMU design conference highlighted a rhetorical tactic that has become fashionable in the anti-ID herd.  This tactic is to smear IDists with the “denier” tag, as if mere denial is self-evidently bad.  Herewith, a reflection on famous deniers in history from another forum in which I participate (used with permission): I think that there may be some fodder in the current “witch hunt” attitude towards “deniers” for us to use. Consider the following example:   There were a couple of doctors who were “stress deniers” in that they denied that stress caused peptic ulcers. They had the audacity to suggest that ulcers were caused by a bacterial infection. As a result, they were marginalized and Read More ›

Rarely does the public catch a glimpse of how Darwinists actually behave toward colleagues who disagree with their view of biological origins. Thus, as a public service, I’m presenting here a correspondence, initiated by Darwinists and unsolicited by our side, that provides readers of this blog with such a glimpse. Briefly, a Johns Hopkins biologist named David Levin sent an unsolicited and wonderfully insulting letter to Michael Behe (the entire letter is given toward the bottom of this post). Levin also attached a pdf of a Nature article (see the very bottom of this post). As it is, Levin copied Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins, and the usual suspects. Ken Miller, thinking that Levin had a slam-dunk against ID, then suggested to Levin that he also send me what he had sent Behe (presumably to crush my spirits). Here, then, is the exchange. To trace the chronology, you’ll need to start from the bottom and work your way up. I post Mike Behe’s response to Levin with Mike’s permission. After Behe’s response and my second response to Levin, we never heard from him again.

—– Original Message —–
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:36:44 -0600
To: “David E. Levin”
From: “William A. Dembski”
Subject: Re: Fw: Evolution of a biochemical pathway by gene duplication and specialization
Cc: richard.dawkins AT zoo.ox.ac.uk, robison AT nucleus.harvard, aorr AT mail.rochester, rdoolittle AT ucsd, Kenneth_Miller AT Brown, lziska AT asrr.arsusda, Lisa West , Behe

Dear Dr. Levin,

I receive many unsolicited emails asking me to comment on how the theory of intelligent design deals with this or that objection to it. You are asking me to respond to an informal letter that you wrote to Michael Behe sketching out some worries you have about his notion of irreducible complexity. Let me suggest you write up your thoughts in a formal article and submit them to a peer-reviewed publication. Once it’s accepted, I’ll be happy to look at it more closely and offer comment. As it is, Michael Behe was gracious enough to send you some comment on your letter (I’ve pasted his comments below for continuity), though he appears much less impressed with your work than you are.

In your note to me below you write: “you seem incapable or unwilling to discuss the data or the inescapable conclusion that emerges from them.” Actually I’m quite willing. If you would like me to speak at your campus on the topic of intelligent design and address your data, I can put you in touch with my speakers bureau.

Best wishes,
Bill Dembski

—– Original Message —–
At 09:26 AM 2/22/2007, David E. Levin wrote:

Dr. Dembski,

You seem to have missed the point of my letter to Behe. It was not to bring to his attention the Kellis et al. paper. That was merely the starting point, the prerequisite understanding from which my work followed. It did not escape my notice that you had nothing whatever to say about my demonstration of how a real biochemical pathway has evolved to a more complex state. Perhaps all the biochemistry and genetics is beyond you.

Still, your criticism of the Kellis et al. paper was telling. Lets see, you asserted that it is now three years old, as though its age as some bearing on the validity of its conclusions. You clued into the phrases computational algorithm and statistical analysis as though such things invalidate any conclusions the authors might derive. These guys sequenced and assembled the genome of a species and aligned its eight chromosomes with the 16 chromosomes of another species. Yes, they used computers and statistics to assist them in their analysis. Its a 10 megabase eukaryotic genome! You sort of need computers and statistics to crunch all that information.

Whats important here is to look at the remarkable picture that emerges from this work. A species ancestral to the bakers’ yeast underwent a whole-genome duplication, followed by loss of most of the duplicated genes. This is how bakers’ yeast arrived at current genomic organization. As I said before, there is no other way to interpret these data. But you seem incapable or unwilling to discuss the data or the inescapable conclusion that emerges from them. I am taken aback by the extreme level of intellectual dishonesty that pervades the intelligent design circle. Your tactic is always to deflect and misdirect. Never mind the data, its old, or it uses statistics, or it presupposes common descent. Why are you so afraid of the data? Its as though you creationists have closed your eyes, covered your ears with your hands and are muttering to yourselves My mind is made up, dont confuse me with facts.

As for your assertion that nonteleological evolutionary mechanisms are not sufficient to drive the evolutionary process, I have provided an excellent example of precisely how this happens. Deal with it!

David E. Levin, Ph. D.
Professor
Dept. of Biochem. & Molec. Biol.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N. Wolfe St.
Baltimore, MD 21205

Ph. (410) 955-snip
fax (410) 955-snip

—– Original Message —–
At 01:26 PM 2/22/2007, Michael Behe wrote:

Hello, Professor Levin, nice to meet you. Well, I see that even though you work in Baltimore, you’ve managed to avoid acquiring any Southern charm. Most folks consider it rude to send insulting, unsolicited mail to people you’ve never met, even if you don’t like their views. I hope at least you are polite toward people who agree with you.

Thanks for sending me the brief report on your work. Clearly you are excited about it, so I hope you don’t mind that I find it unimpressive even if your interpretation of events is correct. Here’s how I see your scenario: Roughly a hundred million years ago the ancestor of S. cerevisiae had a well-regulated, multicomponent pathway, including a prodigy protein, Mpk1, that had several activities. That complex pathway is taken by you for granted, as an unexplained starting point. Then the genome duplicated. In one of the duplicated copies of the prodigy protein a point mutation caused it to lose one of its pre-existing abilities. In the other copy of the prodigy protein, although it hasn’t happened yet in nature, you have in your own lab demonstrated that, by golly, a simple mutation can cause the other pre-existing ability to be lost too. I’m afraid I find all of that unsurprising. It has been known for quite a long time that mutations can inactivate protein functions.

The single gain of function in your whole story is the new binding site for Rlm1. That, however, is a comparably modest change; since the consensus binding sequence for MADS-box proteins is about ten nucleotides, with considerable redundancy, such a sequence would be expected to occur by chance perhaps every ten kilobases or so, and either to have been present in some segment of the population at the time of the genome duplication, or to be produced by point mutation very shortly thereafter. Such sites are thought to be gained and lost continually. At the very best then, assuming that modern Mpk1 eventually does lose the ability to activate SBF, according to your own scenario we are left with yeast that does pretty much the same thing with two very similar pathways that its ancestor did with one. And that meager (potential) result required enormous evolutionary resources: a hundred million years, whole genome duplication, and huge numbers of yeast likely many orders of magnitude more than the numbers of a vertebrate species that would be available in a similar span of time.

Frankly, I’m puzzled why that is supposed to be an example of the power of Darwinian processes. Id be happy to cite it myself as an illustration of genome drift within tight limits set by severe constraints. The trivial changes the scenario involves would be expected to have been available in the yeast population a very short time after the initial genome duplication event. Yet here we are twiddling our thumbs, tens of millions of years later, still waiting for the scenario to complete itself. This suggests to me that your scenario is overlooking many complicating factors, such straightforward issues as whether genome duplications or gain/loss of regulatory binding sites or loss of protein function even in a duplicated copy are deleterious, and whether there are useful functions close by existing functions. Such questions plague any simplistic Darwinian scenario, including the ones you cite that were proposed for the blood clotting cascade, but it seems few people are willing to take the difficulties seriously.

I wish you well with your work, Professor Levin. But please don’t write to me again unless you can restrain your childish sneers.

Sincerely,

Mike Behe

P.S. – I apologize for bothering all the people who were copied by Professor Levin on his original email.

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When people examine a new idea for the first time, they often approach it from a basis of older, assumed ideas which cause confusion. They can’t really evaluate the new idea properly until the source of confusion has been identified.

In discussing the intelligent design controversy with people, I sometimes hear the following comment:

If scientists conclude that something is designed, then they are just taking the easy way out, and they won’t be able to find out anything more about it.

The comment – actually, more often a passionate outburst – come at such an oblique angle that it requires a bit of unpacking – all the more so because it is frequently followed up by other, similar ones. On rare occasions, time is permitted for a thoughtful response, so here’s one: Read More ›

The following exchange is from the newsletter CCNet 66/2007 – 27 March 2007: Christopher Morbey: Dear Professor Dyson: Thanks for taking time to answer questions! I’m wondering if you have an opinion regarding the new interest in “intelligent design” as an independent mode of explaining an event. Typically, pervading opinion demands that events occur only by chance and/or necessity. What strikes me as strange is that many scientists are so willing to discard ideas that may offer help to overcome significant difficulties in evolution hypotheses. Instead, they tend to make alarmist comments that ID is merely a creationist ploy, that Darwinian claims should be assumptions, not conclusions. Global warming skeptics point to fundamental temperature and CO2 data, then ask pertinent Read More ›