What do you think about intelligent design? Me, mostly I don't think about it.
Many friends of mine, people whose judgment I respect, are passionate supporters of it. I'm moved too by the few debates and discussions I've listened to on the radio about it: the pro-ID side almost always comes across as more reasonable, usually because the anti-ID spokesmen are so ranty about the Christianists taking over the universe that they come off as lacking confidence in their case. In our editorial board meeting a few years back with people arguing both sides of ID -- we met separately -- I was disappointed by the anti-ID side's sneering contempt for their opponents. It actually undermined their cause, because generally speaking, they made it seem like the rest of us were idiots for daring to ask questions. More recently, the anti-ID mob tried to shut down a public presentation at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas -- as if there was something so dangerous about ID that it couldn't even be spoken about at a meeting after class hours on a university campus.
So my personal sympathies are with the ID crowd. But that's not the same thing as saying I agree with them. To be sure, I believe in God, and that He created all life. It doesn't much matter to me how He did it. I am comfortable with the idea of Darwinian evolution, so I don't have anything personally at stake in this argument. At least I don't feel any personal stakes. I have a stack of books on my shelf that I've been meaning to get into to learn more about the controversy, but my intellectual curiosity simply doesn't run toward this issue. I find that I'm more engaged in trying to make sure the ID advocates get a fair hearing, because I don't like the way those opposed to them try to shout them down instead of engaging and attempting to rebut them.
Point is: I'm agnostic about ID, and I don't know if I'll ever take the time to learn enough about it to decide one way or another. I admit that I haven't given either side enough thought to draw firm conclusions.
John Farrell is a science-minded conservative who is not at all agnostic. He opposes ID, and in this fiery post today, he tears into conservative journals and journalists who have, in his view, given unmerited aid and comfort to ID backers. He argues that opinion journals of the Right are embracing ID because of its ideological merits, and rejecting Darwinism for the same bad-faith reason -- and that what he sees as an ideological abuse of science is helping to undermine conservatism itself. Good points, and I hope that pro-ID conservatives can come up with some good answers.. In particular, I'd love to know how the guys at Touchstone, which has been a big supporter of ID, respond to Farrell's post.
N.B., can we please keep the commentary in the comboxes below more focused on bringing light to this issue, and not heat?
UPDATE: Jim Kushiner of Touchstone weighs in on the question.
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Zippy,
A hypothetical class in the philosophy of science in, say, 10th grade but as a prerequisite to biology:
1) Describe the scientific method, the reasons for its various rules and components, and provide an overview of its use and abuse over the last 200 years.
2) Describe how the most innovative scientists have shown how the scientific method is limited and how it can thwart discovery and exploration.
3) Describe the various methods and attempts to remedy what was discussed in #2.
4) Explain the benefits and detriments of the notion that science can never be 100% right, and give examples from the grandest set of theories (Einstein provides some, my favorite plate tectonics can be used) down to the simplest of phenomena (Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics).
5) Conclude with why the scientific method's most important aspect is consistency, and why undisciplined attempts to bypass any aspect of SM should be rejected.
The biology teacher introduces evolution as the current, best set of explanations for -- then list the things it explains -- and that there is a continuing effort to address the problems and shortcomings in evolution theory.
I believe you can work out where such things as ID will fit into that. As a discussion point, what do you think of this hypothetication*?
* Yes, there is no such word. I'm carrying on my mother's tradition of creating words that look like they at least should exist, but don't. ;-D
Franklin: I guess I'd be happy if every time evolution was taught it came with the specific, clear, loud disclaimer that we have absolutely no idea if-or-how single-celled creatures evolved into plants and animals, or if-or-how how plants and animals evolved into other plants and animals. Because as a matter of fact we don't have any idea.
This could be followed by the observation that some philosophies allow for only deterministic laws as explanations, some allow for deterministic laws and random chance, and still others allow for deterministic laws, random chance, and intentional design. This observation could conclude with the additional factual observation that empirical science cannot at present adjudicate between these philosophies, but that in other disciplines (e.g. physics) there have been surprising cases where empirical science was ultimately able to rule out at least certian versions of those philosophies.
I'm not holding my breath though.
I'm not holding my breath though.
Yeah, neither am I.
Hello Zippy.
You wrote: "Right. And on the source(s) of beneficial variation capable of acting as the engine of evolutionary change from prokaryote to dinosaur, the level of detail offered by evolutionary theory since, well, ever, is "none"."
That 'absolute' claim again... "never"... "none". 'Some' or 'few' would be a far more accurate description.*
We are reasonably certain that gene duplication, recombination, horizontal transfer, point variations, deletions, insertions and etc. contributed to variation. This can be examined with comparative genomics and we do find signatures of these mechanisms in protein and chromosomal sequences. But yes, there is no *practical* way, short of using Prof. Peabody's Way-Back machine of reconstructing most of the past steps. Some aspects of history will always elude us (Case in point - Science will never discover what I ate on June 5th, 1988. I don't remember and the evidence is long gone).
So, we certainly can't rule out Invisible Pink Unicorns. The God of the gaps lives.
Zippy: "Oh, and I am quite aware of Lynn Margulis' interesting theories about acquiring genomes from other organisms. Acquiring genomes, though, isn't the same thing as producing them."
The notion that the chloroplast and mitochondrion arose from bacterial endosymbionts precedes Margulis. She also posits other symbiotic events that are at this point highly speculative but the bacterial origins of the plastids and mitochondria are strongly supported by the sequence data (Any debate was pretty much over by the early 1990's). There many good reviews one could find from the mid 1990s.
And I disagree about horizontal transfer not being a source of chromosomal variation: The uptake of foreign DNA is a demonstrated mechanism which adds content to genomes. E. coli seems to have sampled about three megabases of foreign sequences since its divergence from S. enterica. In the 'wild' strains of E.coli chromosome lengths vary by up to a megabase (20% of the average genome) and are speckled with horizontally-acquired sequences.
In the cases of acquiring plastids and mitochrondria, these events certainly added a new capabilities to eukaryotes. Where would a Dinosaur be without mitochondria? What vascular plants would it eat if chloroplasts didn't provide light-harvested mechanisms for the plants? Certainly, not all or even most the details are likely to be reconstructed, but a few have and more are likely to be found.
Aside: From the perspective of enzymology and structural protein biochemical variation, the eukaryotes and particularly the metazoans are rather 'boring' compared to the prokayrotes and archaebacteria. Metazoans display a fairly common, core set of biochemical capabilities. A lot of what most people associate with large changes in animal shapes are not produced through the acquisition of new protein folds or structures but instead through regulatory changes (structural 'tweaks' rather than wholesale reinvention). Most changes appear as modifications on a theme.
*Whoa, I read ahead. Zippy, did you really say that evolutionary theory provides no examples or descriptions of how new proteins or species might arise? That's odd because there are many theories as to how new species arise and some have been tested in the field. Additionally, new species and certainly new proteins have been found. At the simplest level, chimeric proteins are known (some have even been exploited as tools in biochemical and molecular biology research) and there is even the case of a nylonase that arose from a gene fusion event. Someone who has seriously looked for examples cannot conclude that none exist.
And I disagree about horizontal transfer not being a source of chromosomal variation.
You are disagreeing with something I haven't claimed.
The uptake of foreign DNA is a demonstrated mechanism which adds content to genomes.
It takes already existing content from one genome and adds it to a different genome. "Adds content" is equivocal. Moving tires from one car to another doesn't explain how tires come about.
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