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Origins & Science
- Design (47) : From DNA to a Designer
- Evolution (51) : From Soup to Sioux City
- Philosophy of Science (82) : History and Method
I.L. Cohen on DNA said...
Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities (New York: NW Research Publications, Inc.: 1984), p. 209.
'Survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection.' No matter what
phraseology one generates, the basic fact remains the same: any
physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of
purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or
species do not have the capacity for rearranging them, nor adding to
them. Consequently no leap (saltation) can occur from one species to
another. The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a
meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence: one who
knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now
performing in their laboratories.
Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities (New York: New Research Publications, Inc.), p. 81
To propose and argue that mutations even in tandem with 'natural
selection' are the root-causes for 6,000,000 viable, enormously complex
species, is to mock logic, deny the weight of evidence, and reject the
fundamentals of mathematical probability.
Jonathan Wells (Regnery: Jan, 2002), 338 pages.
The author retraces the reasoning of proponents of evolution from Darwin to the present to show what he sees as their empirically false, and frequently faked conclusions. He contends that these conclusions are presented to the public so many times and in so many ways that they become irrefutable "icons." The information conveyed by these icons is never questioned and is in fact promoted with tax dollars in many contexts. Wells is a postdoctoral biologist (with Ph.D.s from both Yale and the U. of California at Berkeley) who is currently affiliated with the Discovery Institute, Seattle, Washington) ~ Book News, Inc.
From the site: "Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If philosophical and scientific concepts of intelligent design (ID) are valid, we believe they will both inspire, and be reflected in, our art, music, literature and film. Much of the focus of the ID movement to date has been on left-brain activities (logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, focused on parts). We believe there is also a right-brain approach to the issues (more intuitive, focused on the creative process, standing back looking at the whole and not just the parts) that may speak to an even wider audience through the arts. Some people, who might never crack a science book, will grasp ID concepts through image, lyric, or prose."
Phillip E. Johnson, Adapted from Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.
People who only want unbiased, honest science education that sticks to
the evidence are bewildered by the reception they get when they try to
make their case. Their specific points are brushed aside, and they are
dismissed out of hand as religious fanatics. The newspapers report that
"creationists" are once again trying to censor science education
because it offends their religious beliefs. Why is it so hard for
reasoned criticism of biased teaching to get a hearing?
The answer to that question begins with a Jerome Lawrence and Robert E.
Lee play called Inherit the Wind, which was made into a movie in 1960
starring Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly and Frederic March. You can rent the
movie at any video store with a "classics" section, and I urge you to
do so and watch it carefully… The play is a fictionalized treatment of
the "Scopes Trial" of 1925, the legendary courtroom confrontation in
Tennessee over the teaching of evolution. Inherit the Wind is a
masterpiece of propaganda, promoting a stereotype of the public debate
about creation and evolution that gives all virtue and intelligence to
the Darwinists. The play did not create the stereotype, but it
presented it in the form of a powerful story that sticks in the minds
of journalists, scientists and intellectuals generally…
William A. Dembski (InterVarsity Press : October 1, 1999)
God does not play dice with the universe. He plays Scrabble." Part One gives an introduction to design and shows how modernity — science in the last two centuries — has undermined our intuition of this truth. The second and central part of the book examines "the philosophical and scientific basis for intelligent design." The final part shows how "science and theology relate coherently and how intelligent design establishes the crucial link between the two." This suggests that Dembski is not simply rejecting Darwin and naturalism on fundamentalist or biblical grounds. While grounded in faith, he wishes to show how "God's design is accessible to scientific inquiry."
William Dembski, Various Publishers
With yet another volume bearing his name, Debating Design (422 p.), one has to wonder if William Dembski ever sleeps. His recent publications also include Uncommon Descent (366 p.), Signs of Intelligence (224 p.), and The Design Revolution (330 p.). But, especially in light of Antony Flew's recent comments about the force of arguments from Design, his latest project may win an audience his previous works missed. Bearing the weighty imprint of Cambridge University Press and co-edited with Michael Ruse, Debating Design hosts a discussion between leading advocates and critics of Intelligent Design. William, nice work. And get some sleep.
John Brockman, ed. (Random House, Inc.: 2006), 272 pages.
Writer and editor Brockman (What We Believe but Cannot Prove), who publishes the online magazine Edge, has assembled sixteen short essays by prominent scientists on current thinking about evolution. A few of the contributors, such as Jerry A. Coyne and Daniel C. Dennett, use close readings of Intelligent Design (ID) advocates' claims to argue that ID is a political or ideological movement without scientific legitimacy. These arguments are concise and persuasive, if sometimes familiar; strong evidence and wide acceptance in the scientific community have made evolution central to biology and related branches. The most fresh and interesting essays essentially ignore ID to explore aspects of evolutionary biology, including paleontologist Tim D. White considering evidence for Homo sapiens' evolution, psychologist Steven Pinker on the compatibility of evolution and ethics, and geologist Scott D. Sampson proposing primary science education that links evolution and ecology. As a whole, this sampler makes a powerful cross-discipline case for teaching evolution as an accepted biological consensus-as opposed to "teaching the debate"-and offers glimpses into how the science behind the theory continues to evolve in a range of fields. ~ Publishers Weekly
Barry Arrington's "ID is Not an Argument from Ignorance" at Uncommon Descent (April 11, 2011).
Still the most common criticism of Intelligent Design is perhaps the "god-of-the-gaps" rejoinder, that it is an argument from ignorance. Barry Arrington offers a twofold rebuttal. First, ID is an abductive form of argument, an inference to the best explanation based on three defensible premises. 1) Living things display irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. 2) Material forces have never been shown to produce either of these characteristics in a living system. 3) Intelligent agents routinely produce irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information. Intelligent design, therefore, is, in his view, a justified abductive inference. Secondly, he argues that ID's critique of Darwinism rests not on an absence of evidence but rather the evidence of absence. When there is a justified expectation that evidence should be forthcoming for a claim, the absence of evidence is in fact telling. In the case of Darwinism, Arrington concludes that in spite of a legion of well-funded scientists searching tirelessly for 150 years, the effort to find evidence for undirected material forces producing irreducible complexity and functionally specified complex information has "failed utterly".
J.P. Moreland in The Christian Research Journal (Fall 1993).
From space travel to organ transplants, one of the most important influences shaping the modern world is science. Amazingly, people who lived during the Civil War had more in common with Abraham than with us. If Christians are going to speak to that world and interact with it responsibly, they must interact with science. The question is, how are we to understand the relationship between science and Christianity? At a dinner party I was introduced to a professor of physics. On learning that I was a philosopher and theologian, he informed me of the irrational nature of my fields, contending that science had removed the need to believe in God.
John Hare in Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective (Eerdmans: 2004), pp. 187-203.
I am going to talk about the question of whether we can find an
evolutionary basis for human morality. I am not a scientist, but a
philosopher. So I am not going to try to pass judgment on the theory of
evolution itself, as it applies to human beings. I do not regard
philosophers as professionally competent either to pass a positive or
negative judgment on the theory, except insofar as there are
philosophical commitments embodied in it. However, I do regard myself
as having made some progress in understanding human morality. In
particular, I have been interested in and have written about the gap
between the demands of morality on us and our natural capacities to
meet those demands. This gap presents the problem of how we can be held
accountable or responsible for a standard we are not equipped to meet
either by innate capacity or natural development. So I want to ask the
conditional question: if we assume that the theory of evolution as it
applies to human beings is correct, does this help us answer the
questions of whether we can be morally good and why we should be
morally good? The first question, whether we can be morally good, is
the question raised by the moral gap between the demands of morality
and our natural capacities. It is only after answering this first
question, “yes, we can be morally good,” that the second question
arises of why we should be morally good, for we can only be held
accountable or responsible for standards that we are able to reach. The
burden of my presentation will be that we do not get an answer to these
two questions from the theory of evolution. I am not arguing here that
the theory is false, but that even if it is true, it doesn’t give us an
answer. I will be looking at a number of recent attempts to provide
such an answer from the theory, but I will claim that all of them fail.