Farrell on ID and the conservative press

Point is: I'm agnostic about ID

I hear you.

I'm a big Darwinian fan, and I see no problem with ID as we brush the edges what Darwian evolution can predict (much like Relativity's relationship to Newtonian physics). So I can see ID being true, but still nearly impossible to prove.

But it's very interesting stuff. Especially when we add to the mix all those cool and amazing coincidences physics leaves us with - if any of the fundamental force (strong, weak, electromagnetic, or gravity) constants were changed just a tiny little bit, the universe would be a flat mess. Everything has to be absolutely perfect for our universe to allow life to exist.

In the end, the ability of humans to understand the world is quite limited, so I think your agnostic position is a fair one. The universe seems to be God's knick-knack on the mantlepiece, not existing for any particular reason except that he likes it that way.

Whenever I think about the ID debate and how it makes liberals crazy, I simply smile at their dogmatic nature and think of Chesterton's neat summary of this issue:

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel.

As someone once said, the world has always been more tasty than useful. Any Crunchy Con should agree :-).

Having argued with very smug atheists and agnostics too many times over the years, I under the frustration and irritation. In most instances, given their scientific credentials, they try to avoid actual debate by pontificating about the nonexistence of God. Which they shouldn't be allowed to get away with. However, the people advocating ID are just an embaressment. Science is a methodology, not a collection of facts. Calling something a science makes a claim about how accepted truths within its domain are established and ID does not follow the how. The premise of ID maybe correct; I am obviously a believer. But until it conforms to the methodology of science, it shouldn't be considered a science.

Rod: I am comfortable with the idea of Darwinian evolution, so I don't have anything personally at stake in this argument.

Harvard scientist George Simpson said "Man was a result of a purposeless process that did not have him in mind." Most if not all Darwinists agree with that.

While that formulation does not say anything about a Creator, it sure makes nonsense of Christianity: that God would create the world, but not have Man in mind.

The interesting thing about ID is that it forces one to understand Darwinian evolution better.

I sympathize, having held out for a long time a certain affection for the IDers and a certain disdain for the behavior that ID seems to bring out in its opponents. But that said, there's simply no steak behind the sizzle. ID is cute idea. And hell, maybe it has some validity. And maybe there are unicorns romping around Akron. There's roughly the same amount of evidence for both.

The fact that I think PZ Myers (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/) and his peanut gallery of intellectual vulgarians are snide, childish, unlettered, emotionally unformed, bigoted and wrong doesn't change the fact that ID ain't science.

A great temptation of our age - noticable on both sides of the political spectrum but a particular vice of conservatives - is to see every single issue as a clash of ideologies. There's no conservative position on the density of aluminum, nor a liberal position on the same. But damned if I wouldn't be surprised to open up The Corner one morning to see multiple posts decrying the hegemony of "liberal revisionist metallurgy"

Scott in PA: "While that formulation does not say anything about a Creator, it sure makes nonsense of Christianity: that God would create the world, but not have Man in mind."

This raises an interesting question that should parallel the discussion of the merits of Intelligent Design. What ramifications would there be if it could be shown that not only was ID wrong, but that there was in fact no creator at all? Surely that kind of evidence would shake the foundations of almost every monotheistic and most polytheistic religions to the very core.

How would such a revelation change our world?

The problem with ID is that the universe can never have been designed by Satan, or the god Eddie whose hive daughters' sacred story leapt from its home planet to sweep the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, but only by the Right and True God (of whatever religion is pushing ID).

So why bother? It just makes ye--here and in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud--look of weenie faith.

Well, I think there's two things going on here. The reason anti-ID people are so incensed about ID is the blatant intellectual dishonesty and rampant ideology that's attempting to masquerade as science.

Let's be clear: Intelligent design is by any definition that matters in our society science. It's no more science than astrology.

Imagine if a bunch of astrologers wanted to debate whether astrology is more scientifically accurate than astronomy. Do you think they should be allowed to have that scientific debate? If you do then you are giving astrology a level of scientific credibility that it has not earned.

You can't have a debate about the scientific merits of a theory that isn't scientific. The debate here is whether Intelligent design is science. By no stretch of the imagination could it be considered that. What is incensing people within scientific communities is the assumption that intelligent design is science, when it's no more science than astrology or psychic readings from Miss Cleo.

it is the blatant intellectual dishonesty and rampant ideology that's attempting to masquerade as science.

And do they run the university? No. But boy, I sure don't see liberals complaining about their rampant ideology when it comes to IQ research, and there is a ton of it.

Remember Larry Summers? It's well-known scientific fact that males dominate the left and right sides of the IQ bell curve, so we are not going to see many women who are at the very top (or bottom) of any field.

Yet when Summers merely mentioned this fact, he was persecuted - at a top university! This is an actual case of liberal tampering with science via "rampant ideology". And it happens all the time.

I simply don't see much conservative rule here, so anti-evolution folk don't bug me. But I do see a ton of liberal crushing of science in the name of ideology, and they persecute those who dare tell the truth.

M_David: ""it is the blatant intellectual dishonesty and rampant ideology that's attempting to masquerade as science."

And do they run the university? No. But boy, I sure don't see liberals complaining about their rampant ideology when it comes to IQ research, and there is a ton of it."

But of course this argument presumes that all proponents of ID are conservative, and all opponents are liberal. That is demonstrably not the case.

Likewise your argument presumes that all universities are dominated by liberals, and that all liberals use their positions to advance their idealogies through thuggery. A wonderful straw man, but hardly of merit in this discussion.

It is of note that the article Rod mentions was written by a conservative, and that this conservative author rips folks like you a new one for giving proponents of ID some kind of credibility.

What we are talking about here is the scientific merit of ID. To try to advance your political argument with the kindergarten tactic of "they do it too" merely discredits, once again, the conservative mindset.

I have no idea about how God did it, but I doubt any of this was pure coincidence, and also doubt that millions of year old evidence of pre-existing life past 6000 years ago was "of the devil to trick us" either. God is beyond time and space, so stop limiting Him.

I guess I'm like you in that I don't really have a passion about the whole thing. I mean I'd prefer that in public schools that it stick to science as science has come to its concensus about such things as evolution, etc and just teaching the scientific method. I don't want a science teacher bringing up ID anymore than I want them demeaning a student who might ask a question with a religious overtone. I guess I had good science teachers since when such questions were raised they just asked us "what do you think?" If the student said "God" then that's where the teacher left it. Many of my science teachers were religious themselves and it was not unusual for us students to inquire about their religious life (and they assumed that it was not illegal for them to simply answer the students questions if they were raised, but they were always respectful of all the students in the class and they never purposely brought up religion). As a Hindu I know that there is Vedic Science, too. I often wonder why the debate doesn't include the sciences of other religions. It seems that ID is chiefly a Christian theory, but in the past it seems that other religions also came up with their own sciences. Sure Vedic Science on the issue almost completely agrees with the Darwinian type of evolution, but not all the sciences of other religions do. I think it'd be more fascinating to see people discuss all the many ways in which the various religions throughout the ages developed sciences. Afterall it seems that the first science was connected to religion. It was only later that the two seperated...and I don't think that was such a bad thing, since today we live in such a diverse mixed society that science offers us perspectives free of religious overtones and at the same time still leaves open the individual's ability to keep their religious perspectives.
And I'll agree that it does seem like all the anti-ID people often just seem like people who are angry at Christianity....people who were probably hurt by the church somehow or by Christians and that has effected them. It'd be nice if the anger and hostility would not be a part of those who wish to debate against ID. As a Hindu I'll stick with the Vedic Sciences, but at the same time I still love modern science and so I'm a mixture. I may have a perspective shaped by my religion, but that doesn't mean I demean or think less of modern science. In fact I sometimes find it fascinating how similar some of the theories we have today are with those posed thousands of years ago in India or other places in the world. Some were very close to matching ours and others were not, but it's all still fascinating.
But all this is my own humble opinion. Thanks for sharing.

What one has to try to explain is how an increase in complexities and autonomies, in the evolution of elements in stars, in the evolution of life forms, occur within a matrix of, against a background of, entropic, decomplexing entropic heteronomy.

Why does the film of the collapsing cheerleader pyramid run backwards when it does?

Universe-and-stuff-making-gods explain it.

Neither Darwin, as published, nor Gould, Darwin's Moses, as it were, really addresses this as ultimately other than--entropic--randomness.

Another (though hardly necessarily the only other) explanation, though, is that the universe is inherently capable of actively "making" (a more proper term might be "becoming") itself insofar as increasing complexities and autonomies do obtain--up to and including the most devoutly religious person's most transfixing and transcendent experiences.

How this might work in detail, how this should be identified, and whether or how this should be worshiped, remain further, additional questions.

Neither Darwin, as published, nor Gould, Darwin's Moses, as it were, really addresses this as ultimately other than--entropic--randomness.

Neither Gould nor Darwin were cosmologists. Darwin never addresses the first cause, nor even the origin of life. All he explains is how species arose. In this area, his reputation is still solid. Yes, he got some stuff wrong, but his main idea has been proven correct time and again. He's one of the very few scientists whose original work is still consulted over a century after his death.

Now, to your question, why do we have laws in this universe that compel phenomena like stars? You're right in that no one has a definitive answer. There are, however, secular alternatives: an infinity of alternative universes, in which this one happens to have favorable physical properties, or a cosmic egg theory, where an infinite series of big bangs and crunches has produced us. Of course, there's also God, but that's just a bridge to fill in a gap in our knowledge.

"Neither Gould nor Darwin were cosmologists. Darwin never addresses the first cause, nor even the origin of life. All he explains is how species arose. In this area, his reputation is still solid. Yes, he got some stuff wrong, but his main idea has been proven correct time and again. He's one of the very few scientists whose original work is still consulted over a century after his death."

No disagreement; I was merely critiquing Darwin/Gould within the context of a more inclusive phenomenon still in need of explanation.

"...an infinite series of big bangs and crunches has produced us."

This seems far more intelligible scientifically, cosmologically to me than The Big Bang ex singularis alone, and, if I'm not mistaken (which I wildly may be), it correlates most closely with the Vedic cosmology Ganapatikamesh was speaking to.

As it was in the beginning that never was, is now, and forever shall be.

Being privileged to be a conscious moment in this--priceless.

Rod, I'm with you - I just can't get myself interested in this whole debate. I study the early Church & the Church Fathers, so I can really live my entire life right now without worrying about such things. All I know is that I am a creationist in the strictest sense of the word "I believe in God, the Father the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen." Beyond that, I leave it to other folks to work it out. If it has any ramifications for patristics, let me know - otherwise, I'll mind my own field, methinks.

"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation"

-- St. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20 [A.D. 408]).

"True, but this narration of ID only really plays well when the underlying assumption is that the creator is the designated hitter for the home team.

But who's the "home team"? I mean, even within little-o orthodox Christianity, you have a wide divergence of belief and practice. The serious ID proponents I've read point out that they're merely showing natural evidence for a creator, and they explicitly state that creeds are a matter of revelation.

Furthermore, without the--what other word for it is there other than coy?--parenthetical assumption of a theological, and dominant, identity of the creator, the bare theory itself becomes little more than one of a radio being necessarily an inexplicable talking box of the gods.

With respect, you couldn't possible be more wrong here. If there is a creator, then there's an inherent purpose in the universe. And if ID proves that (and it doesn't, BTW), then that would vitiate the materialist assumptions that have been increasingly regnant in the West since Hobbes.

All of a sudden, things like science, improving standards of living, and education become secondary, or even tertiary to the concern of finding out what this creator really wants us to do. It becomes the urgent business of all levels of society.

Basically, you're looking at the difference between a place like the U.S., where God is our buddy whom we, at most, say "hi" to on Sunday, and a place like Saudi Arabia, where keeping God happy is both a public and a private priority. The fact is, if the IDers could ever make their case, then it would quite likely turn out that the Saudis, with their beheadings, stonings, Koran memorizing and burkahs, would be closer to the truth than us in the West.

Posted by: Derek Copold | September 18, 2007 12:37 AM"

Yes...and...seY. I think you've merely reiterated the architecture of my points differently, other than

All of a sudden, things like science, improving standards of living, and education become secondary, or even tertiary to the concern of finding out what this creator really wants us to do. It becomes the urgent business of all levels of society.

How this imperative arises from the mere fact of a creator in the absence of anything else really does require more explanation than your mere assertion of it provides.

The difficulty with Intelligent Design is that the Designer is manifestly unintelligent.

There's no difficulty at all unless one presumes "intelligence" as synonomous as "acting smart" or "doing right" etc. The "Intelligent" of Intelligent Design merely refers to "guided by intellect" or "rational".

ID is spin. That's all it is pure and simple. Spin is about using the bricks instead of the building to crush.

It goes something like this, "can we agree that it took a creator to make the universe? Now, can we agree it was my creator?"

I personally see it being all about ego. The deist sees themself as being so special that it took divine power to create them.

>>>
Everything has to be absolutely perfect for our universe to allow life to exist.

Posted by: M_David | September 17, 2007 8:33 PM
>>>

Not exactly - everything has to be absolutely "perfect" for our universe to allow life as we know it to exist.

Change a constant or two and there might have been a universe of macroscopic quark clusters philosophizing on how the Designer made such a "perfect" universe for them.

How this imperative arises from the mere fact of a creator in the absence of anything else really does require more explanation than your mere assertion of it provides.

Because a creator implies a purpose beyond our own existences. Modernism has pushed the pursuit of knowledge of this purpose into the recesses of public life, as we have no real proof of its existence. But if a higher creator were proven as a fact that even secularists had to acknowledge, it would make understanding his purpose a public goal once more. What was once the province of theologians would become of prime importance to scientists. Instead of asking "How did phenomenon X come about?", scientists would be asking "Why did the Creator make phenomenon X come about?" Public policy makers wouldn't debate about what law allows us to sustain society, but about what law God wants. This happens to an extent now, true, but not nearly to the extent you see in other places, like the Muslim World.

John Farrell's posting was really good. I don't read the NRO or the other magazines (or on-line magazines) he mentioned, but I did get the Weekly Standard for about a year. Lots of interesting ideas, but I think the magazine is undermining itself through intellectual dishonesty.

I like the idea of agnosticism myself. As I study the New Testament this year in my "Education for Ministry" class, I think an attitude of agnosticism enables me to keep an open mind, neither too rationalist or too credulous.

I do believe in the Darwinian approach to science, and I do think that Evolutionary Biology and other evolutionary science present a genuine and non-trivial challenge to the religious view of the world. But I don't think lying to ourselves or creating fantasies about how things work (as was done by those who advocate Creationism and ID, IMO) is the solution.

The problem for Christians is that ID places all genesis stories on an equal footing.

If ID is "real" what makes the Christian ID story more true than the Native American or Hindu genesis story?

Or are they all true in some kind of vague, ambiguous way?

Intelligent Design. Is. Not. Science.

Not in any way, shape or form. There has not been a single article supporting ID in any peer-reviewed journal. Evolution, on the other hand, is backed by 150 years of research and has been subjected to peer-review hundreds of thousands of times.

Intelligent design is nothing more than creationism purged of its young-earth roots. Rod has complained in the past about some scientists' reluctance to "debate" ID. My feeling is that these scientists hesitate because it's really a lose-lose proposition. If they agree to a "debate," they give crackpot ideas like ID a soapbox. If they decline, IDers turn around and imply that scientists have something to hide. To me, this is like a metalurgist being forced to debate an alchemist.

If Rod is "agnostic" about ID, fine. But I don't see why his or anyone else's willful ignorance about this subject should force the scientific community to engage with a bunch of charlatans.

Science has already easily destroyed the "theory" behind intelligent design. Here's a good place to see how it was done: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html

"My own limited cursory understanding is that ID may be good philosophy"

To the extent that ID starts with the preestablished concept of a creator --rather than a fill-in-this-blank-concept-as-you-discover-what-your-reasoning-and-discoveries-determine-it-to-be--then reasons backwards, circularly, to reverse engineer the universe to ostensibly prove that it was created by a creator, it is bad philosophy as well.

All you establish with a creator is that a creator created something. Ascribing purpose to it is a secondary, separate step beyond that, which you still have yet to establish.

"Intelligent Design" means something made a conscious decision to design us and the life around us. Now you say this could have no meaning, but the proving of an "intelligent designer" as fact would shift the burden on you to prove that he had no purpose beyond our existence, because it really doesn't make sense on its face. Thus you, too, would be caught up in the debate, as showing this lack of purpose would become a priority.

Point is: I'm agnostic about ID

Proponents of Intelligent design are not the same as young earth creationists.

So you are agnostic on whether the universe and all life on earth was created by an intelligent designer?

I don't mean to be too sharp, but you claim to be a Christian but it does not matter if God created us or we are just the product of random mutations via natural selection?

I think both the atheists and intelligent design crowd are a little more honest in that the whole question comes to if you believe God created us or we are the results of random chance. There really is no room in the middle. I see this as an important issue in the area of faith and the culture wars.

From my observations, the Darwinist atheist crowd is acting in the exact same way religious people acted a century ago. That their "faith" has been shown to be erroneous and that they are now reacting to stop all questions discussions of it which will further weaken its credibility.

The prematurely and unattributed Posted by: | September 18, 2007 11:29 AM above should have read:

""Intelligent Design" means something made a conscious decision to design us and the life around us. Now you say this could have no meaning,..."

Actually, I said nothing of the sort; I only said what you've tried to argue to date remains, by virtue of its failings, impossible to advance.

" but the proving of an "intelligent designer" as fact would shift the burden on you to prove that he had no purpose beyond our existence, because it really doesn't make sense on its face. Thus you, too, would be caught up in the debate, as showing this lack of purpose would become a priority."

But now you are speaking to something further: the conflation of the mere creator discovered as "fact" (and how do we do that?) you spoke of previously--the mere act of creation by which somehow creates its own self-evident implications of purpose--now into the creator now-already-intelligently-purposed a priori discovered as "fact" (and how do we, further, do that?) "Intelligent Design" means something made a conscious decision to design us and the life around us."

You continue to posit the potential occurrence of an event which you can neither consistently describe nor explain on the basis of the terms you try to employ to do so, then further attempt to claim rather profound derivative consequences of it.

"I think both the atheists and intelligent design crowd are a little more honest in that the whole question comes to if you believe God created us or we are the results of random chance. There really is no room in the middle. [my bold emphasis added] I see this as an important issue in the area of faith and the culture wars."

There is actually quite a lot of room in the middle, but not if the primary desire is to render the issues involved as ammunition in the culture wars.

I do have trouble with the idea of intelligent design when I consider the human knee, which a first-year engineering student equipped only with string, paper clips, and chewing gum could have done a better job on. But I do believe the universe was created. The point of science is not to prove or disprove that point, but to examine HOW it was created and turned out as it did. Intelligent design isn't science, it's a philosophy of science.

"There is actually quite a lot of room in the middle,

The question is were we created or not?

It is a yes/no on/off question."

No, it's actually now a new and different yes/no on/off question, if that's what it is, Lorenz, than your immediately prior yes/no on/off statement--"if you believe God created us or we are the results of random chance"--that I responded to.

Lorenz, I do believe I was created -- by my parents.

It's the odds of existing at all that blow my mind. Considering the possibility that my mother or father might have married someone else, or that a different sperm or egg might have been joined, I can't believe how lucky I am to be here.

We all win the lottery when we are born. Random chance has produced us, and we are here. That should be miracle enough for anybody.

As far as whether God used random chance and natural selection in order to creat the Universe and all that is in it (and me) I am agnostic about that. I simply don't know. I won't say I don't care, because I would love to know. But perhaps we are not meant to?

As far as whether God used random chance and natural selection in order to creat the Universe and all that is in it (and me) I am agnostic about that

Sorry for getting back to you so late. I can't post much because I am busy at work.

What ID attempts to do is show exactly what its name applies, is there evidence that we were created. Just as a modern detective may ask were "did he fall or was he pushed". For reasons that would take me too long to get into right now, I think ID scientists do a good job in proving that there was an intelligent designer.

I would like to add that there are a good many scientists who lean toward ID. In addition there are also scientists who do not support ID but also at the same time reject Darwin's theory of natural selection.

If you are not a Christian you may not want to read further.

Many people here seem to try to follow the liberal oldline protestants in trying to reconcile their religion to Darwinist natural selection. Many people can postulate and argue here and there that there may be a God who uses random chance. However, most people can see right through that in that no one can use random chance any more then you can purposely win a lottery (and in terms of random chance in life origins, the odds are so miniscule to be impossible). If life did begin by random chance then there really is no room for God and you might as well have a good time and sleep in on Sundays. Any attempts to reconcile the two are seen as nothing more then feeble wishful thinking.

That's the position the liberal protestants have put themselves into and that is one of the reasons for their decline.

Why isn't Intelligent Design an issue for Jewish thinkers? Until pretty recently, evolution wasn't a problem for most of us, even the very orthodox, because as far back as Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, we have viewed the biblical creation narrative as figurative. For instance, how long was a "morning and evening" before the sun was created? The rabbinical tradition says it was as long as it needed to be to get everything done that was listed in the account. One Jewish thinker I know points out that the Genesis account actually includes a reference to evolution in telling us that snakes used to have legs and then lost them, which is consistent with the fossil record.

More recently, however, some ultra-orthodox groups have bought into the fundamentalist Christian view of evolution as anti-biblical, and, for instance, object to their children watching Barney on tv because they don't believe in dinosaurs. This is very much a minority view.

"do a good job in proving that there was an intelligent designer."

Of what? Of a particular complexity we cannot otherwise explain like the forces binding constituents of the universe? Of the man-pig hybrids we ourselves, but which to the best of our knowledge only we, not a prior intelligent designer of them, are designing and creating? Of a hypothetical alien life form which, in turn, created the different, specific variant of carbon-based life form represented on our planet?

The problem of ID continues to fail as well as anything other than faith (not that there's anything wrong with that) until one obtains to infinitely, universally inclusive perspective of the hypothetical intelligent designer itself--or its equivalent.

At that point, as at the starting point of the pure faith attempt to prove a pre-defined conclusion, again, why bother?

The basic premise of a "designer", with any modifier one wishes to prefix it with, is unsupportable under the scientific method.

The same holds true for the theory that there is no designer.

Along with that, the large number of those "many scientists who lean toward ID" have no background in biology. Their opinions are not worth the paper their non-biology science degrees are printed on.

That sounds like quite a generalization to me. There is a significant number of scientists with solid biology backgrounds that do support ID. Also to claim that degrees in physics, chemistry, cosmology are ont worth the paper their printed on only reveals how little you see how these fields are all inter-related.

"The same holds true for the theory that there is no designer."

What scientific theory would that be?

The only hypotheses concerning designers at all begin and end (when they end) with the religious, not scientific, concept of a creator

>>>
But if a higher creator were proven as a fact that even secularists had to acknowledge, it would make understanding his purpose a public goal once more. What was once the province of theologians would become of prime importance to scientists. Instead of asking "How did phenomenon X come about?", scientists would be asking "Why did the Creator make phenomenon X come about?"
Public policy makers wouldn't debate about what law allows us to sustain society, but about what law God wants. This happens to an extent now, true, but not nearly to the extent you see in other places, like the Muslim World.
>>>>

That is a lot of stew from not much potato.

As Brad pointed out earlier, if a Creator could be proven (and for the record, I don't believe there is anything in biology that can't be explained by natural selection) there is nothing else that could be said about It.

Just the fact of ID doesn't say if we were created to be the specially beloved Sons of God or if we were created to be the super-cosmic equivalent of a High School Senior's final class project in applied biology.

The same holds true for the theory that there is no designer.

This is another catch-phrase for those who desire to bypass the scientific method. No scientific theory has anything to say about a "designer". Science does not recognize the validity of a negative proof unless all possible direct proofs have been exhausted, and then only with a strong caveat.

I know very well, better than most laymen, the interrelationships between sciences. I also know that there is a default respect for expertise; a physicist will not presume to be the biology peer of a biologist, and vice versa. A cosmologist will not assert that a geologic theory is right or wrong. A concert violinist will not have a valid opinion about the virtuosic use of an accordion. The invalid comparisons go on forever. In each case, any and everyone is entitled to an opinion. That doesn't entitle them to the same respect as the experts.

I have no law degree. In fact, I don't even have a college degree. Yet, for seven years, I offered professional (they paid me for it) advice to CEOs, their accountants and their lawyers concerning that portion of tax law related to pension plans, that being what I spent the previous seven years acquiring an expert knowledge of. If they wanted to do something related to a pension plan, and I told them not to and why, they either listened and complied or they broke the law and suffered the consequences. On the other hand, I never offered to instruct the CEO on how to run his business, the accountant on how to keep financial records, or the lawyer on how to be in compliance with laws governing businesses. I certainly had significant knowledge in those areas, but not to qualify me as an expert.

When you find a way to validly label a physicist as an expert in biology, let me know.

Lorenz: "There is a significant number of scientists with solid biology backgrounds that do support ID."

Give us some names, along with references to peer-reviewed articles.

I need some help understanding people who are religious, who worship God, but still believe in evolution. Are they just avoiding the debate? Evolution is metaphysically atheistic in its essence and practice. There is no place in the projected continuum of evolution where they say, "See that little space. That's where God fits in." Evolution and belief in God are two very basic and opposite ways of explaining how we got here and what it all means. The people who gave us the theory of evolution didn't believe in God at all.

I've read Bergson. He believed in evolution, but thought that in the evolution there was an elan vital (vital force) that drove the creation higher. Is that the Catholic view? Bergson's explanation was cute, and they gave him a Nobel Prize, but is there any evidence of an elan vital within cell physiology? No.

I can understand the ID people and I can understand the evolutionists. What I can't understand are the people who try to fuse evolution and creation. They say, "But God used evolution." I He did then its not evolution any more; its creation. If He didn't intervene and just let everything happen on it own by chance, then He's not a personal God that we need to worry about. Am I wrong?

I post a few times and see my name still referenced after 4 hours?

Sorry but I do have a very busy job during the day and a family in the evening and do not sit all day on internet blogs.

Here is list of a few renowned scientists (not all biologists). I will try and come up with more tonight.

— William Dembski

— Michael Behe
Professor of Biology, Lehigh University

— Stephen Meyer

— Charles H. Townes
Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the laser

—Arno Penzias
Nobel Prize winner; discovered Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
establishing the Big Bang theory

—Robert Jastrow
Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies,
Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory

— Gerald Schroeder
Nuclear Physcist

— Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Former Professor of the History of Science and Philosophy, Tehran University, Iran;
Visiting Professor at Harvard University;
University Professor of Islamic Studies, The George Washington University;
Best-known Islamic scholar on the relationship of science and religion
and author of numerous books in this area including Science and Civilization in Islam.

Eshel Ben Jacob
MAguy Glass Chair of Physics of Complex Systems, Tel Aviv University

Bergson received a Nobel Prize for his interpretation of evolution?

Here is list of a few renowned scientists (not all biologists). I will try and come up with more tonight.
...

But Lorenz, how many are named Steve?

Wow, that list of ID scietitsts is patyhetic.

William Dembski Discovery Institute hack, zero peer reviewed Intelligent Design articles, cannot calculate the complex specified information content of a single biological organism.

Michael Behe Discovery Isntitute hack,zero perr reviewed intelligent design articles, concededs he cannt define "Irreducible complexity" fails to find irreducible complexity in more than a handful of biological systems. Concedes that evolution is mostly right: Concedees both common descent and common ancestry

Stephen Meyer Discoveyr Institute hack. One peer reviewed paper with no research and intelignet design analysis but does attack evolutionary theory,

Charles H. Townes Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the laser and not a bilogist and no evidence that he supports bological intelligent design and no evidence that he quesitns evolution. He does support a form of comsological anthromorhpic priciple.

—Arno Penzias Nobel Prize winner; discovered Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation establishing the Big Bang theory and no evidence that he supports Intelligent Design. Lorenz, please stop usignthe Discovyer Institute as a source. They're, uh, often "inaccurate."

—Robert Jastrow
Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies,
Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Not an ID supporter

His quote, taken out of context by the DI, "the curtain drawn over the mystery of creation will never be raised by human efforts, at least in the foreseeable future"[1] due to "the circumstances of the big bang-the fiery holocaust that destroyed the record of the past". He says nothign about biology.

— Gerald Schroeder Nuclear Physcist zero peer reviewed papers on intelligent design. non biologist, obsessed with proving the scietific veraicty of the Torah-- a flake.

— Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr non scietist, no peer reviewed articles, no more qualified than a name pulled out of the phone book.

Here's the challenge:

Name just one:

1. biologist

2. Not connected with the Discovery Institute

3. Who has published any peer reviewed paper that supports any aspect of intelligent design.

People are misusing the term intelligent design to think that everything is frozen by that one act of creation and that there's no evolution, no changes. It's totally illogical in my view.

I've never read any evolutionary article that made any allowances for God. None whatsoever!

How many evolutionary journal articles have you read?

BTW, I've never read a gravitational article that made any allowances for God either, or faeries, goblins, or witches either.

I was referring to when the evolution writers stop talking about methodology and data and start talking about what the data mean...

That must be a new category in journal articles, all the ones I have read go abstract, methods, data, analysis, I'll have to look for that new metaphysics sections, sounds juicy!

There was one several years ago by William Demski(sic). The referees and the Journal editor were fired as a result.

Names of those fired, the journal, and the title of the paper please.

That's certainly one interpretation...

reddopto
I was referring to when the evolution writers stop talking about methodology and data and start talking about what the data mean, which is when they expand their frame of reference from scientific induction to philosophical metaphysics. What does it mean? The metaphysics of evolution is materialism.

'evolution writers', whoever they are, do not do that. A philosophy or people who follow it has nothing to with a scientific theory.

Now, there are scientific theories you should consider before inventing a philosophy from scratch, for example, you may wish to look at 'game theory' before figuring out how people 'should' interact with each other. Or 'information theory'. Or, heck, you may wish to look at evolution.

Or you can operate totally without knowledge of those things. A bit riskier, but philosophy is not science and doesn't need any scientific theories at all. 'Be excellent to each other.' doesn't require any premise besides itself.

But, sadly, that has no bearing at all on science. Scientific theories are totally independent of philosophy, even if there's a philosophy that relies on them. Any philosophy that wants to talk about science is free to do so, although almost all of them misuse it.

Ironically, the best example of this misuse is..'a science', specifically, alchemy.

The very first real scientists in the 1600s started thinking that science said something about philosophy and ended up a lot of complete gibberish as 'alchemy' and derailed scientific knowledge for almost 100 years.

Since then, scientists have been very careful to stay away from asserting philosophical implications of their works, because they learned their lesson.

If you're reading philosophy that says it's 'supported by science', you're not reading science or a scientist. You're reading someone who's read a scientific theory they liked and decided to use it in their philosophy.

"The metaphysics of evolution is materialism."

Nooooo, although "materialism", like "atheist" and "liberal" remain generally handy and usefully opaque stinky albatrosses to hang around the necks of opponents instead of simply calling them "infidels".

The "metaphysics of evolution" of 'metaphysicists' who still cling to Cartesian dualism is certainly likely to be materialistic. The "metaphysics of evolution" of those that reject that historical split of spirit from matter as an arbitrarily a priori and bogus, strictly opportunistic political compromise with the Catholic Church at that time following Galileo and who cheerfully embrace the unfettered possibility of an immanently numinous universe instead is certainly not.

However, the distinction remains moot to those who find beliefs outside Cartesian dualistically materialist Abrahamic monotheism spiritually and theistically irrelevant.

"Atheistic", especially in the pejorative sense intended by many users, has no valid use in science. Science ignores deity, offers no opinion about deity (as opposed to scientists who are also human beings and are given to having opinions about many things), and rejects the notion of deity as having any value in the scientific method.

A more appropriate term is one I will offer here: adeistic.

A- a prefix that serves to negate the morpheme to which it is attached, such as amoral, apolitical, etc. This derives from Greek.

Adeistic is the rational rejection of the notion of deity. It can, but is not required, to include an emotional rejection, or any sort of denial of the existence of deity.

In my more sarcastic moments, I like to describe intelligent design by using the following cartoon: http://store.aip.org/sps/shop.do?cID=5&pID=27

ID cannot exist without acceptance of the notion of deity. Attempts to call it the "intelligent designer" instead are exercises in sophistry.

Thanks, John, but I really must ask: do you read all of my posts? ;-D

I usually try to wait for others to post a few times, to avoid multiple posts close together, but there is a point here that bears being emphasized.

1) The scientific method is the best method humans have devised to explain the material universe. It is not, nor has it ever been, capable of explaining in any sense or from any direction the spiritual universe.

2) Scientists are humans. They have feelings, opinions, agendas and pathological behaviors. As in any bureaucracy or hierarchy, the world of scientists includes people who rise to the top and proceed to abuse their positions and everyone within reach.

Do, please, criticize corruption where you find it. Don't, please, buy the fabricated corruption of people whose only claim to injury is the thwarting of their own agendas. The Meyer case is a very good example. It holds the spotlight as an example of thwarted agendas (Meyer's and Sternberg's). There are countless examples of editors whose personal interests were threatened by a paper or article and quashed it. This was not one of those cases.

Ooops...a thousand pardons; wrong thread. This post and mine immediately above this should be deleted.

Evolution is very similar, as it turns out: we know a lot about the history of what happened from the standpoint of macro observation, but virtually nothing about the actual mechanisms which made it happen.

Thank you professor...I'm assuming you are a prof of evolutionary biology to make such a grand sweeping claim about the substance of evolutionary science. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Zippy, you are of course entitled to your opinion, and I welcome you as an obviously intelligent and knowledgeable person to these proceedings... but you made a null statement.

...we know a lot about the history of what happened from the standpoint of macro observation, but virtually nothing about the actual mechanisms which made it happen.

There are two logical constructs in your statement; their juxtapostion indicates that you intend them to also be logically connected.

"[W]e know a lot..." is a null statement. Compared to what? According to whose standards? We know a lot about quantum physics, but to this date cannot measure a particle other than by inference. We know enough to proceed with research.

The same goes for "...[we know] virutally nothing about..."

You offer an opinion that cannot be logically rebutted because it lacks any relevant or rational context. The only valid answer to it is: what did you say?

We know more about the mechanics of evolution than ever before. We continue to learn more. Put that in your comparison, and make your assertion: do we know enough about them to formulate a theory, or not? Be prepared to debunk decades of research, observation, testing and refinement. Be sure to include how the breakthroughs in DNA fail to contribute anything to the mix.

There are scientists who are fervent in their support for Darwinian evolution as the foundation of modern evolution theory. Science has determined that modern evolution theory is currently the best explanation we have for origin of species and changes in species over time. Please try to maintain a distinction between the two.

Compared to what?

Not "compared to" anything at all. We know a number of things objectively. E.g., we know that dinosaurs walked the earth, and we know that hundreds of millions of years before that there were nothing but prokaryotes. What we have absolutely no idea about is how specifically the latter changed into the former. It isn't that we have it mostly worked out with just technical details to fill in. It is that we have absolutely no data-founded idea at all. We don't even know how individual organs or tissued came about, or multicellular structures generally. Not the faintest.

We know a lot about quantum physics, but to this date cannot measure a particle other than by inference.

Biological evolution and QM are not even remotely comparable. The third link I posted above explains why.

I take your point about the shrillness of some evolutionists though: that is, it really is a reflection of their personal insecurities as opposed to necessarily implying anything about the state of the science per se.

Sorry for double-posting; I have the stupids this morning. I should have written,

"No offense to any reading, but it seems to me that naturalistic evolution only poses significant problems to biblical literalists.

It is that we have absolutely no data-founded idea at all. We don't even know how individual organs or tissued came about, or multicellular structures generally. Not the faintest.

Dozens (perhaps hundreds) of scientists, having collectively spent hundreds (if not thousands) of years in research and analysis, are reading your words and wondering if they've wasted their lives.

For a split second; then, they'll go back to the reality of evolution research.

I respectfully challenge you to produce scientific documentation to support your assertion. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I tend to reject anything coming from the Discovery Institute.

...are reading your words and wondering if they've wasted their lives.

The global warming guys are probably thinking the same thing. Well, probably not, because the fact that a lot of energy has been spent simply must mean that we have The Answer. Nevermind things like this.

I respectfully challenge you to produce scientific documentation to support your assertion.

I already linked to three posts explaining my view. Let's say we start with a preexisting functional protein (nevermind how it came about as existing in a living cell with all of the machinery necessary for translation, etc -- just assume it for the sake of argument). Do you - does anyone - have a proposal for how a protein with a stable native state can evolve, through random changes to its sequence, into a protein having a different stable native state with a different tertiary structure? Let alone any notion of how that process (once we've figured out what it is) can result in a protein that actually has a useful function? Let alone how this can give rise to multicellular structures? Let alone how that can further give rise to differentiated organs or tissues?

Didn't think so.

(Hint: we don't know how proteins fold at all, though we have some qualitative thermodynamic conjectures. Random polypeptide chains don't fold into stable native states at all though: and polypeptide chains that don't have a stable native state under physiological conditions are toxic.)

What is ludicrous is that ideological evolutionists have been pretending for more than a century that we know how this stuff works, that we have the prokaryote-to-mammal causal chain mostly worked out and that only technical details remain. And that is just nonsense on stilts. Although (again) we have a pretty good idea of what happened - the fossils show in terms of time-sequence snapshots what kinds of creatures lived when - we don't have the faintest idea how as a causal matter all that came about.

So the combination of long stretches of time, wide variations in large numbers in a very large population, interactions with a changing environment that influences which variations survive to reproduce, and evidence in the fossil record are not enough to describe the process you dismiss...

No. None of that has any bearing whatsoever on where fundamentally new proteins, multicellular structures, tissues, organs, and therefore new species come from. Appealing to long periods of time doesn't help without an actual process: that is basically just saying "eventually, anything can happen". Well, yeah, it is possible in principle for a prokaryote to pop into existence in its entiriety ex nihilo in the primordial soup through quantum mechanical fluctuation. It is after all a part of the phase space of all possible physical reality. But the only kind of reason anyone would postulate such a thing is an ideological reason, not a scientific reason founded in empirical data and formal physical laws.

...is not the same thing as saying past research has taught us nothing.

Indeed. I hope nothing I have posted implies that we have learned nothing, which would be obviously false. What we don't have the faintest clue about is specifically what causal processes made prokaryote-world change into (e.g.) dinosaur-world. I think, if anything, we've at this point falsified the idea that random changes to the genome coupled with natural selection was an important part of the process. (That isn't to say that mutation+selection plays no role at all: just that to the extent it plays a role it is a trivial one).

Zippy, Paul, with much respect, your latest posts lead me to conclude that you do not, in fact, understand the scientific theories of evolution.

There is no "theory of evolution" as a causal explanation of origins, Franklin. The so-called theory of evolution is simply a body of empirical facts viewed through an ideological lens as an historical story.

And with all due respect, I don't think it is tenable to claim that I don't understand evolution: I think in reality that you don't understand my position, though I did attempt to explain it rather carefully above. I'm not an ID guy or a garden-variety creationist. The "beneficial variation" bit in the Darwinian schema requires causal explanation in order to treat what goes by the name "evolutionary theory" as a causal explanation (as opposed to just a recording of observed facts).

Yes, beneficial variation has happened. Yes, unicellular life forms disappeared, dinosaurs appeared, etc. Yes, homologous structures of a very wide variety exist presently in nature; but even when it comes to that the notion that homology implies common ancestry is itself merely assumed (though it is a much more reasonable assumption than just about any of the other stock darwinian assumptions).

Nobody has any idea how or why prokaryote-world became dinosaur-world at the level of morphological and functional change. There are any number of motivating reasons why people might pretend that we do and adopt some particular story, but none of those reasons are rooted in empirical fact or mathematical formalism.

Zippy,

I withdraw my "don't understand" comment with apology. I believe it's fair to say that we stand on either side of the line dividing the "prevailing wisdom" that is the mainstream "best explanation available" posited by science from those who see reasons to dispute that label.

I say tomato, you say V-8. We are still looking at the same vegetables. I do believe I understand your position; I just don't agree with it.

Branes and m-theory offer a possibly plausible path to design. I see much work needed to advance design to the standards of scientific methodology. I am happy to leave it at that, if you are. If nothing else, I see PDBs post as an excellent way to describe the common ground.

Franklin: I think you need to clarify terms. What do you mean by "evolution"? What do you mean by a scientific theory of evolution? Neo-Darwinism is a much better descriptor in these types of interactions. No one's denying change over time. What I am unconvinced of is that impersonal forces are sufficient to explain these (rather modest) changes that we see in the fossil record. Evidence is mounting that RM and NS are barely powerful enough to merely keep genetic information from degrading let alone actually creating novel structures (check out Sanford's book on genetic entropy, for example). This is the direction the evidence is pointing. (Hey, if the evidence pointed to impersonal forces being creative, I'd be all there.) Further, I am unconvinced there were gradual changes at the level of body plans - as neo-Darwinism dictates (catch that phrase - dictates. Neo-Darwinism is largely a rationalistic enterprise looking for empirical support - not a passionless research project making inferences to the best explanation. When it comes to Neo-Darwinism, rationalism trumps empiricism.). Once again, the evidence here is squarely on the side of the skeptic. The meta-narrative of Neo-darwinism is crumbling. Plain and simple.

Maybe I don't know the scientific theory of evolution. I won't contest that I do, but I do think I know something about how scientific theories work in general - or at least I went to school a long time to learn about it - and for some bizarre reason the powers that be have given me permission to teach it to college students. Of course that doesn't mean I'm right - it just means that I should at least know something about how science works.

For me, the fulcrum is the designer. I assert that it is a supernatural agent.

I tend to think that the term "supernatural" is employed in these kinds of discussions in order to short-circuit thought and shut down certain lines of inquiry. That way certain evidence can be ruled out of bounds a priori, which is rather convenient for the philosophical materialist but tends to avoid the question of what is, you know, objectively true.

I am more amenable to the notion (though still somewhat sceptical of it, since it seems to be adopted merely as an assumption with no attempt at justifying its coherence as an assumption) that once we get beyond efficient causes we have definitively exited the domain of what can properly be called "empirical science". But even there the further assumption seems to be that evidence of design-as-cause cannot show up in efficient causes -- yet another of those dubious and unsupported assumptions, assumptions usually made by people who appear to have little notion that they are making them.

Franklin: thanks for your thoughtful response. Let me try to address your concerns about letting the supernatural in. Several points I'll try to make. One, I believe you can draw conceptual distinctions between natural vs. supernatural causes on the one hand and intelligent vs. unintelligent causes on the other. Too often this distinction is conflated. Let's leave the term supernatural off to the side right now. I submit that we allow for intelligent causes in scientific analysis when it fits easily within our worldview. But, we arbitrarily, I would suggest, eliminate it when it doesn't fit within our worldview - or our personally adopted definition of what science should be able to investigate. Why can the archeologist infer intelligence versus randomness when looking at an artifact and still call it science? Because the inference to an actor is not problematic to their worldview or definition of science. But what if - as a hypothetical - mind does actually precede matter in terms of creation. What if things were designed by an intelligence of some sort? Why should it be impossible for science to at least find evidence that would point us in that direction? (Notice I did not say "prove" God or tell us something concete about the supernatural - this, I agree, is too much to ask of empiricism.) To say that science would not be able to detect this activity, I think, is groundless. On what basis should we presuppose that science could not detect this? Or to say that this intelligence would not allow itself to be detected seems to me to be a theological statement, not a scientific one - and one that I find no basis for. So science has been hijacked by a suspicious theology (we know God would create in such a way that his work would not be detected - that's an awfully strong theological statement). Or some might say that a greater God would create in such a way that creation would naturally unfold over time. Ok - that's fine, but that's not a scientific statement - that's a theological statement. Dubious theology or naturalism seem to be the only things stopping us moving from looking at the evidence and inferring design. I just think it's time we let science speak - follow the data. Let's have a "no holds barred" search for truth on this matter. And that means at least being open to the fact that nature may be pointing beyond itself. If we eliminate that option at the beginning of our search out of theological or philosophical preference, then we have done a tremendous disservice to real science. Science itself, I am convinced, does not disallow inferences to design (we infer agency all the time in many, many sciences). Do we need to develop rigorous methods to avoid false positives; absolutely - but that is a matter for methodologists to deal with - we don't need to rescue science by imposing philosophical strictures on it. Let it do it's job.

I fear I have not done a good job of laying out my thoughts - it's been a long day and I must get back to some family time before the kids are down.

Here's another.

I don't have any background in biophyics o biochemistry, but it does seem to me that there are researcher out there working on different models.

Sorry for the previous long post.

In simplified terms, the lattice models in those papers are to evolution what cataloging all possible permutations of the game Monopoly is to global economic development over the last two centuries. Except that the difference in complexity in the Monopoly case is far smaller, by orders of magnitude.

Paul,

I seem to have some time of my own right now.

I can stipulate and agree to much of what you propose. In the end, distinctions is what drives any exploration; science is a perfect example of that.

Why can the archeologist infer intelligence versus randomness when looking at an artifact and still call it science? Because the inference to an actor is not problematic to their worldview or definition of science.

However, I would ask you to define your terms with a bit more precision. This may seem like nitpicking to you (it does to me), but it also feels important right now.

Archeology is a broad science discipline. It covers Egyptian mummies and dinosaurs. I think you might want to use, in your point above, anthropology instead.

The distinction is important. Dinosaurs had (okay, arguably) no intelligent agent while they were alive. Any insistence on such an agent whilst examining their remains and speculating on their lives is an active detriment to that examination. An anthropologist examining the artifacts in a burial site would be remiss in avoiding the concept of an intelligent agent, because one immediately presents itself: the living humans who brought that site into being, by whatever means.

ID posits a non-human intelligent agent. I submit that this statement is not arguable. Questions concerning the nature of that agent can (and, I suppose, must) be put aside for the moment because they are not answerable. A detriment to the whole debate concerning ID is that some insist on labelling the agent "God"; in a Christo-centric culture like the US, this is just begging for trouble, in my never humble opinion.

This leads me to the distinctions surrounding my use of the term "supernatural". I intend its usage in its specific meaning: above and beyond natural. It is, I insist, an appropriate label for the designer. The simplest justification for that is the reasonable and obvious logical step from including a designer in the debate, and that is the results of the design. If one wishes to argue that, somehow, the designer is not supernatural, then I would have to respond that the "intelligent" component would also have to be abandoned. One of the arguments is the evidence of intelligence in the existence of organic life. The entire concept becomes circular, let alone the reasoning behind it.

As a statement of sympathy, I must confess my own very strong belief in the supernatural. I've had a long list of experiences, corroborated by witnesses and direct participants with me, that cannot be explained (yet!!) by science. I have no recourse: either I declare myself (and others) insane, or I find some other accomodation. I'll let you be the judge concerning which path I've chosen. ;-D

Anyway, my rejection of the supernatural -- with adjustments to the usage of that term as you deem necessary -- is one of integrity, not anti-belief. Science insists on limits, I respect those limits and I see the overwhelming benefits derived from them. In the meantime, I can tell you stories that will have you sleeping with the light on for weeks. I can tell you other stories that will have you in breaking-heart tears. No joke, any of that. But even while telling the stories, I will insist on separating them from science, and further insist on many grains of salt being used by the audience.

Apropos of what Franklin points out above, the adherence to methodological naturalism is something that the medieval schoolmen themselves were not only not opposed to--they seem to have articulated first. My quote from Buridan in my original post is one I like to keep in mind always:

(from his Quaestiones super quattuor libris de caelo et mundo), “In natural philosophy one should consider processes and causal relationships as if they always came about in some natural fashion; therefore, God is no less the cause of this world and of its order, than if this world were eternal.”

I've never been a big fan of the argument from design, ID or no ID. I think Newman put it well --and he was writing contra Paley, not so much thinking of Darwin, when he exposed its limitations.

The argument from Order, however, (Thomas's 5th argument) I think is quite something else and it is free of the burden of finding a design inference. I think that even if (when) eventually scientists do fill in those blanks Zippy thoughtfully pointed out, and no design inference is established, it will not pose an issue for the argument from order. The fact of the world's intelligibility to me points far more strongly to an intelligence behind the program than imputed design.

My fear is the insistence on hitching our wagon to ID is that it will mean one long retreat after another as science continues to make headway.

For what it's worth.

ID posits a non-human intelligent agent. I submit that this statement is not arguable.

Well, there are many statements which are not arguable in the same sense as the most rarified scientific and mathematical statements are arguable. I'm in the camp that doesn't believe that the demarcation problem has been solved (In fact I think it probablky cannot be in principle), and I don't think that that lack of solution can be dismissed as practically irrelevant (particularly when we get to foundational matters: e.g. I don't consider the Bohm-Bohr division in quantum mechanics to be irrelevant, and I don't consider the demarcation problem to be irrelevant to the distinctions between them). This makes me a scientific realist: that is, I think when we engage in scientific discovery we are discovering things that are true. So when someone naively states that the content of science can be delimited by verifying it against the use of the scientific method in its production, I frankly conclude to myself that climbing the mountain of misunderstanding (resting on an underlying positivism on the part of the science-is-scientific-methodology postulate) on that point is probably impossible, at least in on-line venues. The philosophy of science is more like religion than it is like the discipline of its purview in terms of peoples' willfully unreflective commitments.

Speaking strictly from the standpoint of the integrity of scientific inquiry (and leaving aside sociological issues including the perception of science by the populace writ large, who has which religious axe to grind, etc) I think ID is and has been a positive prophylactic influence.

That is, many of us are now acutely aware of the fact that there is absolutely no explanation within neodarwinism - none at all, and never has been - of where beneficial variation of a sort that is capable of being the engine of evolution comes from, and we are acutely aware of the fact that selection from randomly produced variation is, given the actual structures of how life works, merely to beg the question in the face of mountains of falsifying evidence. I think this development within science is good for science, and is resisted (when it is resisted) for reasons distinct from evaluation of its objective merits as a conclusion.

David,
But - even if my prediction is not true - even if as we learn more we are able to show how a system like the visual system can come about through the action of purely blind and impersonal forces, God is not rendered obsolete.

I understand. However, I don't know any darwinian scientists, including Richard Dawkins, who claim that what happens in evolution at the genetic level is 'purely blind'. I've heard them say 'undirected' but that is not the same thing as purely blind or purely chaotic. This is where Cardinal Schonborn fell off the boat.

? You see, this type of logic only makes sense when you've decided ahead of time what you're going to find. If we really want to find truth, shouldn't we try as hard as we can to give every conceivable possiblity a shot at showing itself to be true from the start? If we eliminate certain options at the get-go, we do a tremendous disservice to the concept of empirical investigation.

For purposes of empirical investigation, it seems to me you have to decide ahead of time what the limits of your search are, just to get any kind of program off the ground. I appreciate what you're saying, but had Buridan not made his delimitation, he would not, for example, have come up with his impetus theory (the precursor of Newton's law). He would have been content to accept the notion that the planets persist in their orbits because they're constantly pushed by intelligent agents.

For that matter, how is any young research group going to tackle Zippy's challenge without defining some rigid parameters just to make even a head start.

Zippy

Ah, gotcha. I agree. I think that postulate is similar to Bohr's postulate of ontological randomness though (which not a few people, including Einstein, saw as inherantly unscientific or anti-scientific): IOW, I don't see merely postulating such a thing as inherently unscientific or anti-scientific.

It's not. I mean, I don't grab a paperback book and asked a scientist to explain how this absurd violation of entropy can exist. We don't need to come up with crazy theories about trees being ground into pulp by river currents, because the most logical answer is 'A person made it'.

However, the idea that evolution cannot happen without meddling by an intelligent entity (Or entities.) then raises the question 'Where did they come from?'.

And the only answer that appears to present itself is, ipso facto, some sort of supernatural entity, an entity that operates outside the laws of natural as we know them.

Whether that's Jehovah or Q from Star Trek is not important, what is important that somehow the 'evolution cannot happen without meddling by intelligent creatures' rule does not apply to them. (Or, if it does, it doesn't apply to whoever made them, and so on.)

So, yes, scientists are willing to accept the actions intelligent agents in science, although admittedly to mostly ignore them. But not one that requires someone who operates outside of the rules of the universe, especially when it only requires that because other people have randomly asserted that what happened couldn't happen naturally.

It's sorta like someone drops a water-balloon from a clocktower, and some people start asserting that it must have been a gremlin because there's no way for anyone to get up there. Scientists are pretty certain there is a way up there, and, if there isn't a way up there, how'd the gremlin get there?! Also, many of them don't believe in gremlins.

But not one that requires someone who operates outside of the rules of the universe, ...

I think that is begging the question though, because precisely what is at issue in ID (an issue on which I take no specific position by the way) is intelligence manifesting itself as an efficient cause, that is, as part of the rules of the universe. When Einstein said "God does not play dice" he was making a similar argument w.r.t. ontological randomness as a metaphysical cause; but at least he was just openly stamping his feet in the face of the claim not begging the question.

Einstein also had the integrity to come up with gedankenexperiments (e.g. EPR) to attempt to prove that God doesn't play dice. He was at least making an argument: an argument that by the way is still unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. It turns out that you simply have to accept either God playing dice or "spooky action at a distance" if QM is right; and QM really, really seems to be right (see Bell's Theorem and Alain Aspect's experiments).

I expect that when it comes to design in biology you may also have to pick your metaphysical poison. But at least in Einstein's day the various players had the inegrity to argue on the merits rather than simply assert dogma and burn heretics, as is the practice today when it comes to ID.

John Farrell said:

"I appreciate what you're saying, but had Buridan not made his delimitation, he would not, for example, have come up with his impetus theory (the precursor of Newton's law). He would have been content to accept the notion that the planets persist in their orbits because they're constantly pushed by intelligent agents."

I think this is very, very presumptious. Are you suggesting that only if Buridan assumes God's creative actions cannot be detected and/or that nature has always been a closed system of material causes would he be curious enough to explore how the planets stay in their orbit? Pardon me, but this sounds like a rather extravagent statement to make.

Dawkins likes to play word games - Darwinism is, at rock bottom, driven by nonteleological blind forces - randomness is one force and law is the other. Mutations are random, death is lawful (natural selection). Darwin put these two together and thought he could make a case for eliminating design. But no system employing random and lawful forces has been shown to be able to generate information-bearing systems that in any way approach the type of information systems that are required for even the simplist form of life. Sure natural selection is not random - yeah, it's non random death. But that is still a blind and impersonal process (and furthermore, differential death rates have never created anything, have they? no novel structures come about because one little fellow with a shorter snout doesn't live as long and reproduce as much as another little fellow with a longer snout, do they? It may explain why longer snouts make up more of the population down the road now that they do now, but does it explain how the larger snout got there to being with - or what about novel structures; does non-random death in any way help us understand the origin of novel structures? Where does this novelty come from? Darwinism posits mutations - but are these directed? Not according to Darwinism - they are strictly random). Chance and law does not equal information. Dembski and others have forcefully argued this point.

I'd like to politely ask believers in the creative power of nondirected forces to stop relying on rhetoric and imagined "light-sensitive spots" and so forth and actually show us skeptics the beef - so to speak. Look at Behe's malaria example (in EoE) - we're talking about two co-occurring mutations (if I understand his example properly). Look how inefficient and impotent mutation is at getting us to this very simple change. And the more we learn about the nature of biological life (and how information heavy it is and how interdependent and irreducibly complex it is), the bigger the whole becomes that undirected forces need to get themselves out of. The picture is not getting better for Neodarwinists - it's getting worse.

[Which author, Behe or Dawkins, uses actual data and which has us imagine light-sensitive spots and monkeys typing on an infinite set of keyboards? This should give us some indication as to which one is staying close to the data and which one is coming at this issue from a rationalistic perspective (that is one that already knows the end point before the investigation starts)?]

finally, if we decide ahead of time we're not going to entertain inferences to design, then let's let the public know that our version of science has been restrained strictly within the bounds of naturalism - I mean let's just put that out there, shouldn't we? Why act like this is some sort of raw unadulterated search for truth. It isn't - it's a search for the best naturalistic answer. Furthermore, since naturalism makes very clear theological statements, let's recognize it as a form of religion and make sure we do not have viewpoint discrimination when it comes to funding of research projects - let's make government research dollars available to credible projects that are looking at design hypotheses as well.

Zippy

I think that is begging the question though, because precisely what is at issue in ID (an issue on which I take no specific position by the way) is intelligence manifesting itself as an efficient cause, that is, as part of the rules of the universe. When Einstein said "God does not play dice" he was making a similar argument w.r.t. ontological randomness as a metaphysical cause; but at least he was just openly stamping his feet in the face of the claim not begging the question.

Actually, that's a damn good example of why scientists don't work with philosophy.

Einstein had, despite all this genius at overturning existing scientific notions, his own, a philosophical one that randomness does not exist. Relativity, despite all the weirdness, is basically Newtonic. Every effect has a cause, all causes have known effects, etc. you could in theory predict the future if you knew everything. (1)

Einstein also had the integrity to come up with gedankenexperiments (e.g. EPR) to attempt to prove that God doesn't play dice. He was at least making an argument: an argument that by the way is still unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. It turns out that you simply have to accept either God playing dice or "spooky action at a distance" if QM is right; and QM really, really seems to be right (see Bell's Theorem and Alain Aspect's experiments).

Sorta, but not really. Almost no scientist today accepts the idea that QM is just a...shadow on the cave wall, which is what he was trying to prove. He asserted that everyone is determined in advance, and we just measured it. EPR was an attempt to prove that either QM requires that or FTL communications, but, at this point, it's pretty clear that QM requires FTL communication.

But, basically in the end, Einstein lost. There are no hidden variables, there is no value before measurement. Only one quantum interpretation claims this, Bohm's, dating from over 50 years ago, and it doesn't appear to allow quantum field theory, which has been pretty well proven.

Well, technically, 'many worlds' says everything secretly has a value before measurement, but it manages that not by hidden variables but by placing you in one universe or another, which happens randomly, so that's not a big help in the anti-randomness category. :)

I expect that when it comes to design in biology you may also have to pick your metaphysical poison. But at least in Einstein's day the various players had the inegrity to argue on the merits rather than simply assert dogma and burn heretics, as is the practice today when it comes to ID.

Einstein wasn't arguing on merits. He was arguing from a philosophical viewpoint that the universe was clockwork, which admittedly had been the viewpoint of science for literally hundreds of years, so a bit of inertia was understandable, even for him.

But it was a philosophical argument nevertheless, and it was wrong.

1) At this point, they hadn't figured out chaos theory, so thought if mostly knew everything, you mostly could predict the future, whereas, of course, now chaos theory says that even if the universe was completely deterministic, you'd literally have to measure every single thing to predict anything, because unknown stuff like a photon showing up from a nearby star could rapidly spiral the calculations instead meaninglessness.

Zippy, if you look at science as a process instead of a set of boundaries (something I catch myself doing), you will find that it has room for both philosophy and its absence.

The forest is not just trees. It is bushes, and clearings, and sometimes an unexpected animal or two.

http://madfedor.livejournal.com/16641.html

As one travels, one sees differences. Not all species of trees coexist together, and their absence in a clearing is not the same as denying their existence.

Franklin, aka Mad Fedor.

;-)

Paul writes (well, this was a few days ago): "Dubious theology or naturalism seem to be the only things stopping us moving from looking at the evidence and inferring design."

Actually, I think it's mostly the lack of good ideas from IDers at this point, a pretty solid track record for solving problems without invoking "intelligent" or supernatural causes, and a seemingly reasonable and scientifically accessible set of alternative explanations that leads many to look elsewhere. There are plenty of religiously-minded scientists who are definitely not predisposed against the idea of God intervening in the world. They just don't accept that ID hypotheses have much to offer. ID is largely a negative argument at this point.

The problem of where beneficial novelty comes from has never been solved by evolutionary theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

In searching for source material to rebut your statement, I found many references to the Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene. The wiki article is interesting in itself. As always, I am not using Wikipedia as a source, but as a stepping stone to source.

I also offer my personal take on the question. Grains of salt handy? ;-)

Admittedly begging the chicken/egg dilemma, I don't see beneficial novelty as an active process, but as a passive one. Novelty appears not as a reaction to changing conditions related to survival, but become noticed in conjunction with those changes.

The genetic trait in question, in other words, is already present. It remains in the background or insignificant because it has no survival value positive or negative. A changing condition will change that trait's profile, as it were, and bring it to prominence through the "usual" mechanisms of selection and procreation.

For its amusement value as well, I offer an example of this in the words of someone else:

http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/molecular-evolution/1996-October/004932.html

Zippy: "The problem of where beneficial novelty comes from has never been solved by evolutionary theory. How does "never" translate into a track record?"

I'll address that on two levels:
I had written ...a pretty solid track record for solving problems without invoking "intelligent" or supernatural causes ...

1) Although it might not have been clear, I was referencing the overall track record of scientific enquiry and not just evolutionary theories in particular. Science does has a much more successful record of describing the operation of the physical world. In contrast, the track record of using deities or Invisible Pink Unicorns as explain natural phenomena has been pretty dismal. This doesn't mean that scientific research will or even can explain everything, I only suggest that it has done a comparatively better job so far, given the alternatives. We still don't completely understand lightning, but explanations the suggest roles for "Thor" or "Zeus", just aren't generating much interest anymore.

2) Regarding evolutionary theories and biology in general... How does "never" translate into a track record?
I think one would actively try not to find examples to claim that.
What about sources like gene duplication, recombination and other forms of mutational variation? I'll grant that evolutionary theories haven't solved all questions about the development of life on earth and has barely scratched the surface of exact details, but after having taken courses in biochemistry would one really want to stand by the claim of *never*? Seriously?

So, one can't pull out a textbook on bacterial genetics and find any examples of suppressor mutations? Can one claim "no novelty" at all? No cases of compensatory mutations or altered functionality in the literature? No modifications of active sites to alter substrate specificity and allow survival on alternate nutrients or in the presence of growth inhibitors? No changes in the timing or spatial expression of genes that allow and organism to better survive in a particular environment? No examples of gene fusions or exon swapping? What of the polyketide synthases? Does rearrangement of their subunits *never* result in some beneficial novelty? (Aside: I hope this conversation doesn't go down the "Lee Spetner" route).

Furthermore, can one look at the sequence and structural similarities of protein family members with very different roles and not have some inkling that they are related by variational steps? No possible hint from seeing pseudogenes take on regulatory roles in gene expression? It's all hard to ignore.

In an earlier post, Zippy said:
"Do you - does anyone - have a proposal for how a protein with a stable native state can evolve, through random changes to its sequence, into a protein having a different stable native state with a different tertiary structure?"

That is a good question. Modeling protein fold evolution is technically very difficult, as you describe in a later response. It even remains difficult to model folding of existing proteins, although we are getting better at understanding some of the rules. Add to these modeling difficulties the case that many (most?) proteins do not operate alone but exist in complexes and are often processed in other complexes. It is hard to imagine how to precisely retrace steps. Overall a difficult, technical question but it is not clear that it's a "show stopper" for evolutionary processes. Difficult to model certainly, but do we know that the transition between folded structures is an impossible barrier to evolutionary development? Nope.

I know there is work at trying to establish when particular protein families of folds may have arisen. That is tough work, owing to the great age of most structural families (i.e. a lot of the 'signal' revealing ancestry has decayed) but a good area to research to address the question. At least phylogenetic models may reveal where to look.

*********************
Is ID ever going to progress beyond a negative argument about whether natural mechanisms may eventually be discovered? Let's take the case of protein folding simulations. It was determined that polypeptide following a random search toward a natively folded state would take far longer than what was actually observed. In fact, biochemists remain uncertain of the exact paths by which many proteins fold. On what basis are biochemists justified in pursuing additional models that relied on non-intelligent explanations for protein folding, as opposed to "balancing" their research with explanations that invoke the active guidance of an intelligent agent? Why does evolution and not physics, earth sciences, astronomy, neurobiology or even basic biochemistry warrant this special scrutiny?

zippy writes: "His [Dawkins'] software simulations are (as I mentioned above) the same sort of thing as the mechanism used by the author of The Bible Code to extract secret messages about real things which have occurred from the text of the Bible."

Dawkins has a couple, popular software simulations: "Weasel" and "Biomorphs". I think Zippy refers to the former.

While both employ search criteria against a fixed target, I believe their mechanisms are quote different. Dawkins' "weasel simulation" was a demonstration of *mutation* and cumulative selection that iteratively alters a sequence and returns those sequences which best match a target.

The "Bible Code" uses equidistant letter sequence searches against a dictionary of target words or phrases. It does not employ cumulative iterations, just pure searches. If the Bible Code algorithm was like Dawkins Weasel simulation, it would mutate the source text.

I agree that Dawkins is a windbag on theological matters.

Is ID ever going to progress beyond a negative argument about whether natural mechanisms may eventually be discovered?

(Where "natural" is presupposed to mean "rules of chance and necessaity alone").

That is a good question. My position, remember, is not that I agree with ID, but that ID as a philosophical vector is good for science -qua- science, much as Einstein's philosophical claim "God does not play dice" was good for science.

Zippy: "My position, remember, is not that I agree with ID, but that ID as a philosophical vector is good for science -qua- science, much as Einstein's philosophical claim "God does not play dice" was good for science."

First, with respect to ID, I think science has "been there, done that" with natural theology (circa 1650-1800). There were obvious problems with the approach even then. And as I've mentioned previously, there are plenty of religious scientists who are not philosophically opposed to the possibility of intelligent intervention.

Second, I don't think it's on the same level at all with Einstein's statement. At this stage, ID is simply a skeptical position that drives nothing along. Skepticism already exists within the research fields for each specific evolutionary hypothesis -- The debates are pretty clear in the journals. The hunch that "God doesn't play dice" only had relevance to the extent that it produced a distinguishable hypothesis in a *specific* and narrow research question. In contrast, saying that Invisible Pink Unicorns were involved in early life has as much scientific impact as ID. At least if one presumed space aliens altered human DNA (ala "2001: A Space Oddysey") we might a least hope to find radioactive scorch marks or peculiar obelisks somewhere. Positive differentiation is one of the keys to a successful "paradigm". ID has not achieved this.

Zippy: "Evolution sets out to explain how precambrian prokaryotes became dinosaurs and human beings."

Explanations are developed at different levels of detail. Not all levels of detail will always be accessible. For example, the notion of common descent with variation, a core concept of evolution, helps us understand the relationships between past and present organisms. In conjunction with known modes of inheritance and in some cases, it allows us to make predictions of features we may later find. For example, we may not know the exact steps in the acquisition of the mitochondria or chloroplasts by eukaryotes but it seems pretty clear that they were derived from free-living bacteria (probably an alpha-proteobacteria in the case of mitochondria). Furthermore, knowledge of selective forces and biochemical mechanisms help explain the reduction and migration of these organelles' genomes to the eukaryotic chromosomes. We've even found lineages where the migration of some genes appear to be in a transitional state. Contrast this to IDs utility in explaining the origins of those organelles...

Sorry, Zippy. That was an unintended ad hominem by me, and it was out of line regardless of intent.

The relevant text:

The genetic trait in question, in other words, is already present.

Then evolution hasn't explained what generated it in the first place, has it?

The mechanics of conception explains it. You know, when one gamete combines with another, and their genetic material mix/merge/pair off (whatever the right term is) to form the offspring organism.

Evolution describes the process in large populations where the expectation is that the various possible combinations of genes from conception will manifest in a predictable fashion.

It would help if you avoided using the strawman catch-phrases like "how precambrian prokaryotes became dinosaurs and human beings." They didn't. The phrasing precludes the millions of years spanning such "drastic" developments, and implies a false comparison. I do not ascribe any of that to you personally, and the sarcasm of my reply was knee-jerk. I'll try to avoid that from now on.

However, as others have pointed out with much better technicalese than I'll ever know, evolution does not explain what you think it explains, at least not from the way you phrase the question.

However, people shouldn't be promoting a philosophy with zero evidence over a science, and attempting to assert it's a science.

So... the Einstein versus Bohr/Bohm controversy over ontological randomness and "spooky action at a distance" didn't become "science" until the Aspect experiments empirically confirmed which was right more than fifty years later?

I think the whole "ID isn't science but neodarwinism is" mantra is obvious tommyrot. "Evolutionary theory," despite a century of concerted effort on the part of darwinists, has absolutely no testable theory which explains the origins of new proteins, new cell types, new tissues, new organs, new body plans, and therefore new species. None. Zip. Zero. Nada.

When the public is given the impression that it does - especially when the public is given the impression that this has been solved for a century or more with just technical details to work out - that is a lie. All that evolutionary theory has on the origin of species - despite, and quite unlike ID, the vast quantity of man hours and mental effort devoted to research on the subject over an entire century - is an a priori philosophy. If ID isn't scientific, then neither is evolution.

My own position is that both are philosophical positions that attempt to explain the existing data. If a philosophical position that attempts to explain the existing data isn't science, then neither is science.

In any case, this effort to control the definition of science as methodological verification (that is, the "scientific method"), and tell everyone whose thinking process doesn't as a work in process immediately and obviously fit the definition to shut up, is (transparently) a form of positivism that ought to have gone the way of the dinosaur in the nineteenth century. But ideas that feed on ignorance have tremendously high survival value among human beings, I'm afraid.

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.

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.