Over on Slate, William Saletan has been following the evolution/intelligent design/creationist debate quite closely and rather perceptively. However, I have to find some fault with his latest article, What Matters in Kansas: The Evolution of Creationism. Saletan makes the point that science is slowly winning over the public creationists, who have slowly moved into the camps of the intelligent design debaters, accepting, generally, an earth billions of years old as well as microevolution (mutation and natural selection within species). Saletan sees this as creationist theory on the verge of collapse. Hopefully, he is right. However, I'm not so sure about his other conclusion:
Perversely, evolutionists refuse to facilitate this collapse. They prefer to dismiss ID proponents as dead-end Neanderthals. They complain, legitimately, that Calvert and Harris are trying to expand the definition of science beyond "natural explanations." But have you read the definition Calvert and Harris propose? It would define science as a continuous process of "observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." Abstract creationism can't qualify for such scrutiny. Substantive creationism can't survive it. Or if it can, it should.
It's too bad liberals and scientists don't welcome this test. It's too bad they go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously. It's too bad they think good science consists of believing the right things. In the long view—the evolutionary view—good science consists of using evidence and experiment to find out whether what we thought was right is wrong. If they do that in Kansas, by whatever name, that's all that matters.
The problem is that what the intelligent design theorists are doing isn't science. To pretend that it is, in any fashion, is to capitulate to those who oppose science. Furthermore, can you imagine the misuse of any limited concession? Creationists and ID types all too frequently quote-mine to give the air of authority to their arguments.
Calvert and Harris define science as a continual process of "observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." However, what they don't do is exclude supernatural phenomena from the definition. Without that, the rest is essentially meaningless. You are no longer engaged in trying to create an explanation of natural phenomena, you are seeking to support an ideology. Lysenko, I think, would agree.
Indeed, intelligent design has more in common with Lysenko then it does with creationism.
The science of genetics was denounced as reactionary, bourgeois, idealist and formalist. It was held to be contrary to the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. Its stress on the relative stability of the gene was supposedly a denial of dialectical development as well as an assault on materialism. Its emphasis on internality was thought to be a rejection of the interconnectedness of every aspect of nature. Its notion of the randomness and indirectness of mutation was held to undercut both the determinism of natural processes and man's ability to shape nature in a purposeful way.
The only difference it would appear is that creationists and intelligent design types repudiate evolution as philosophically materialist and denying god, neither of which is true.
Lysenko believed in "observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." It is just that it would all have to concur with the Marxist dialectic. Was Lysenko engaged in science? I think not. In the case of intelligent design, they promote the processes of science, just so long as it accepts supernatural explanations, which I note, isn't science anymore.
In theory, you can have scientific intelligent design theory. Let me know when someone comes up with one. Until then, their "science" is rightly repudiated.
Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. Les Lane on May 11, 2005 05:50 PM writes...
"Logical analyis" is is what John Calvert does, not what most scientists do. "Analysis" is a vastly better description of what scientists do. "Insightful" better describes scientific explanations than "more adequate".
Permalink to Comment2. Robert T Childers on May 11, 2005 07:06 PM writes...
When it comes to the supernatural I think that you delve into an area that is either a) natural processes that haven't been defined and explained, or b) your dealing with wishfull thinking or c) you are walking into philosophy.
There are a lot of aspects about the world and universe that we live in that we still do not understand. And the largest problem that we face in understanding the world around is in asking the right questions and expanding our ability to observe.
There is no such thing as magic. But there is such a thing as unexplained events. There is a maze of information floating out upon the net, yet there are no easy answers. The problem is being able to divide the material up into that which has value and that which is pure imagination. And sometimes even that which is pure imagination can prompt us to discover something that is real.
Man used to think that the world was flat and at the edges there be dragons. Yes it was incorrect but it fired up the minds of those that would later push themselves to discover what were the true facts. And even then the facts that they discovered were only as good as the abilities of the people to observe.
So when it comes to Intellegient Design, the problem is not is Intellegient Design true but rather how to observe in such a way that you can prove one way or the other. With what we have available today there is a large body of information that says it isn't true. But there is also information coming to light that may shed some light on why we have unexplained events. So let your minds be open and continue to strive to understand the world around you. And who knows maybe its the additional dimensions that are orthaganol to the curent 4 that hold the clue. Maybe its something down deep in quantam mechanics that can explain some of the events that led to man devising religeons to try and explain that which he couldn't explain.
Permalink to Comment3. Blair on May 12, 2005 04:53 AM writes...
Interesting comparison between Lysenko and the ID theorists, although unltimately it is a false analogy since Lysenko was a committed atheist and not actually arguing anything like intelligent design.
Permalink to Comment4. Fred Grott on May 12, 2005 06:49 AM writes...
Two points:
1. My Eclogoy professor from Purude always sted that Sicene is a framework in which we cannto dissprove or prove God because God can only be determine to exist or not exist in afiath framework..
2. Sometimes its agued that 5religon brought to the world the thinking frameworks of knowledge but they often froget that non religous factions battled with religon to separate all knwoledge areas from tehlogy sometime ago in past centruies because of Relgions failure to have adequate explanations of natural occurrences and those explanatiosn were needed to improve and expand society..
Permalink to Comment5. SFix on May 12, 2005 12:45 PM writes...
"Interesting comparison between Lysenko and the ID theorists, although unltimately it is a false analogy since Lysenko was a committed atheist and not actually arguing anything like intelligent design."
And yet the comparison is valid because both IDers and Lysenko started with a conclusion that they were unwilling to contradict and worked backwards to "prove" it.
At a conference, I asked well known ID proponent Paul Nelson if he was a scientist first or a Christian first when came to intelligent design. He readily admitted that his faith came first and that no science could contradict his core biblical beliefs. This is the problem with IDers. All of them are hard core Christians who have an inviolable set of anti-scientific of beliefs that no amount of evidence is allowed to contradict. That is similar to Lesenko's problem, evidence was not allowed to contradict his philosophically held position. That isn't science. Science requires that you follow the evidence even if that contradicts your close held beliefs.
Permalink to Comment6. Tim Rutkevich on May 12, 2005 01:17 PM writes...
Lysenko's Intelligent Design? How unfortunate since the view of Lysenko was that: by changing environment the organisms would evolve and become better. He did understand the damage done to evolution by genetics. Evolution is based philosophically on dialectical materialism.
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Albert Einstein
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Permalink to Comment7. DaveScot on May 14, 2005 06:05 AM writes...
Bottom line.
No one has a documented empirical observation, in the field or in the laboratory, of random mutation acted on by natural selection creating a novel cell type, tissue type, organ, or body plan.
Trillions of trillions of rapidly mutating bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics remain bacteria. They do not mutate into any other type of life. Antibiotice resistance is touted as an icon of evolution yet it demonstrates only adaptation within the same form of life.
Twenty thousand years of breeding and selecting dogs for unusual traits has not produced a single trait that is not characteristic of canines. There are big dogs and small dogs, short legs and long legs, short coats and long coats, dark colored and light colored, but that's the extent of it. Nothing more than changes in scale and superficial cosmetics.
We are asked to take it as a matter of faith that the demonstrated ability of mutation/selection to cause variance within the same kind can also create novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans.
Faith is for religion, not science. Darwinian theory is no longer science but dogma in what's become the Church of Darwin.
If only the facts surrounding the origin and diversity of life were taught to high school biology students we wouldn't be having this national debate.
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