Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

The reason most see ID as not science is that is stimulates neither research nor experiments. So, a designer created everything, and this leads us to test...nothing.

A scientific theory is an explanation of nature supported by evidence.

In contrast, consider:
a) The scientific theory of the atom.
b) The scientific theory of cells.
c) The scientific theory of electromagnetism.
d) The scientific theory of evolution.

These have produced:
a) The atomic bomb, nuclear energy
b) Understanding of disease
c) Our modern electronic age
d) Understanding of heredity, DNA, and genetic engineering

What scientific results do you forsee ID producing, Kow?

 

Don't forget Koko, ID would never approve of her:
Koko.org - Koko's World - Sign Language (Series 1)

 

That sounds like Behe's (from the Discovery Institute) "irreducible complexity" to me. Yes, Behe's a scientist, but he's not a very good scientist. However, he IS a very good spokesperson for the Discovery Institute. What is the Discovery Institute anyway? Read their manifesto, known as the Wedge. http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf

Their goal is to "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" and to "affirm the reality of God."

That doesn't sound very scientific to me.

Back to the "irreducible complexity" argument.... It is essentially the oh-this-is-too-complex-so-someone-had-to-have-'designed'-it argument that I hear from religious conservative friends. I like to call it the "giving up" argument, because that's what ID is. It's for those who "would prefer not to peer into the unknown or the unknowable because of fear"... fear that it is "too complex" for us to understand. Who are we to decide what is too complex for nature to have developed without the assistance of a noodly appendage? - oh wait, I forgot, ID is principally backed by Christian conservatives, so I should ask, "Who are we to decide what is too complex for nature to have developed without the assistance of His Holy Hand (Grenade)?"

The amusing thing is, it's not like Behe's being "suppressed." The guy has published books on his beliefs. Behe's published in peer reviewed journals too, but getting a pro-ID paper pushed through is going to be near impossible because he doesn't have a scientific argument to make.

 

I want to know how Santa Claus gets down the chimney. I mean, he's way too fat to fit into that little hole, and his beard's much too white to have been climbing around in all that soot. How do he and his reindeer get up on the roof in the first place? Do they munch all winter on Northern anti-gravity moss? Why don't we hear of any expeditions to find this species? All the researchers have been silenced, that's why! And how does he deliver so many toys in such a short time? Where are all the peer-reviewed studies? It's censorship! What's everybody afraid of?

And the Easter Bunny! Why are there no scientific inquiries about him? I mean, sure, if you feed him enough tin foil, the chocolates are bound to come out pre-wrapped. But there's nothing in any of the science journals about any of this. What good is science if it can't even tell us how bunnies lay eggs? It's suppression! A left wing conspiracy! THEY aren't telling us the truth! This is an outrage!

Edit: My apologies for the obtuseness of this post. I'm fairly certain most people will know I'm just being silly, though that was kinda the point. It's definitely a contrast to the well-reasoned and carefully worded replies from the more scientifically minded.

 

Uh...its so secret...others have used his algorithm to write the program as a java applet (java must be enabled in browser for these to work)

http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~sipper/biomorphs/evolution.java (code)
morphs
Blind Watchmaker Applet

And, as science often does, the Blind Watchmaker concept has had practical applications.
The use of evolutionary algorithms in engineering is not new, and has been applied to the design of everything from airplanes to pharmaceuticals.

 

I think you already know my definition of science, since you have already called it too narrow. However, I think the following from the wikipedia entry for "science" describes my definition pretty well:

"In its more usual restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research."

From Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District: "defense expert Professor Fuller agreed that ID aspires to 'change the ground rules' of science and lead defense expert Professor Behe admitted that his broadened definition of science, which encompasses ID, would also embrace astrology."
The source of that link is here: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District/4:Whether ID Is Science - Wikisource

That's why I can not consider Behe to be a good scientist.

Unlike actual scientific theories, ID starts and ends with a conclusion: we were designed by a higher being. I know you'll try to argue that isn't so, but the modern ID argument essentially came from the Discovery Institute and that is essentially what they're trying to force onto academia. You seem fine with the fact that a conservative think-tank is purposely pushing a religious agenda as science. I , however, am not, especially given how religious institutions have trampled on science for ages. The fact that the current leader of the Catholic Church once said that Galileo Galilei's persecution by Inquisition was justified is an absolutely disturbing example.

Irredicuble complexity does not need to be addressed by scientists. It's already been refuted quite well.

You can always bring up examples of studies where you find evolutionary arguments may be weak or incomplete. Nobody is arguing that the statements are 100% correct. Much of the finer points of evolution get debated between scientists all the time. The point is that, unlike ID, evolutionary research can be proven or disproven, can be refined, and can be tested, and can be observed. If you have a counter-argument against someone's research, you should bring it up, but it should be based in science. Yes, by science, I do refer to the definition that I previously mentioned.

Even though Dawkins never released the source code, apparently he did describe his algorithm well enough for other people to write programs to do the same thing: The Weasel Applet

I think this debate is no longer about whether or not ID is science or whether or not there's some suppression taking place, though. I think it's a question of whether or not you are OK with the Discovery Institute, an organization founded by conservative bureacrats that has a manifesto that explicitely says that it wants to promote pro-Christian concepts as science. Are you OK the fact that they're not only promoting ID, but also fabricated the concept of a controversy? Are you OK with the fact that ID is just a fancy name for creationism that was conjured up to make it sound less religious in the hope of getting it into high school curriculum? Are you OK with the idea that if ID were successfully promoted in schools, that the US educational system would fall farther behind comparison to everybody else's for the sake of a Christian agenda? Are you really OK with this, or are you just trolling?

 

Perhaps you should go first, since yours is so bizzare with regards to falsifiability.

Something that is not falsifiable is not scientific. Actually, come to think of it, ID may make a falsifiable prediction. The main tenet is that genetic change/evolution is guided by a supernatural "designer" and not randomness. So one could then suppose that then if one were to take a group of bacteria, say, and watch them undergo some genetic change, such as gaining the ability to synthesize an amino acid that is deficient in their petrie dish agar, that the genetic change that allows the new synthesis should be the same every time. Why design something twice?

This has already been done by biologists in the form of Ames tests, and the mutations seen show no evidence of a designer.

Actually, the straw man argument of "irreducible complexity" is the ultimate surrender. It basically says "well, we don't know how we got from A to Z, and can't, with our present knowledge, fathom why anyone would want to linger at spots B through Y within natural laws, so therefore it must be too complex for us to ever know and something supernatural must have happened." Sort of like "well, I see you gassed up in London and arrived here in Toronto, but I can't fathom why anyone would pass through Guelph, and I haven't found any hard evidence that you passed through Guelph, so I'm going to throw my hands up in the air and give up on explaining the whole matter and say that the FSM picked you up with His Noodly Appendage and carried you from one spot to another."

Biology has made progress towards explaining and reducing some of the "irreducibly complex" developments. The challenge set by creationists used to be "what good is half an eye?" Then scientists pointed out examples in nature of eyes without lenses, down to the value of even just a single light-sensitive cell. There may be more steps in-between, and we may never elucidate or find evidence for every single one, but there does not appear to be a systematic problem of explaining the generation of complexity with the current theory.

To start with, sickle-cell is a lovely example of natural selection at work. Here you have a generally deleterious condition: malformed, suboptimal blood cells. However, under the right set of circumstances (presence of malaria), sickle-cell becomes advantageous. It becomes more common in the gene pool in regions where malaria is present, and remains a very rare genetic disease where malaria is not present -- where it is strictly deleterious. In fact, it directly disproves your assertion that each incremental change would have to be of benefit. It's a deleterious mutation that, under the right conditions, was selected for. Due to random chance and the numbers game that happens with large populations and long time scales, even what may at first be deleterious mutations can hang around long enough for natural selection to act.

It's the combination of random change, large numbers, and natural selection that makes evolution such a beautiful and powerful process. Despite the general public's perception, mutations are not that rare, don't depend on radiation or chemicals, and are not so universally deleterious. You probably have something like 1-200 mutations in your genes from what your parents started with to hand down to you (if I've got the numbers right; that could change by a few factors of 10 one way or the other, especially if you start to consider "junk DNA").

A friend not so long around sent around a chain email:
"What is 1 in a million?" it asked. "In Canada, there are 33 individuals who would be 1 in a million. In China and India, there are over two thousand people who are 1-in-a-million. Think about that." It was supposed to be eye-opening, to awe you with what can happen with rare events in large populations.

Large populations and long timescales can "hide" big concepts such as evolution from everyday experience, and the lack of relation to everyday experience is part of what can cause some people to not accept it. So let's do a quick thought experiment: let's take those 33 1-in-a-million Canadians, who came to be exceptional 1-in-a-million individuals purely through random chance. To match them, there would be 33 1-in-a-million losers. Let's say that through natural selection, the exceptional individuals make two copies of themselves that are equally exceptional, the 1-in-a-million losers all have just one child per couple, and the rest of our Canadians reproduce just enough to replace themselves. So in the next generation, we've got 66 exceptional Canadians who were born to exceptional Canadians, as well as another 33 one-in-a-million individuals who arose due to random chance from the general population, for 99 total. Even though the "1-in-a-million losers" had "bad" mutations and were selected against by natural selection, they still number 50. Next generation: 231 exceptional Canadians, 33 million regular Canadians, and 58 "losers". Carry this on and in just about 300 short years (which is next to nothing on the timescales we're talking about with evolution and species change) and you'd have a whole city full of individuals that would have been considered "1-in-a-million" at the turn of the millennium now. Follow this kind of exponential growth, and in less than 500 years nearly every Canadian would have evolved into a 1-in-a-million person. We'd even have stabilized at 66 individuals with the "1-in-a-million loser" mutation in each generation. These individuals add to the variability which can be selected against: if selection pressures change (e.g.: sickle-cell and malaria), then these individuals may become the forefathers of the next generation. Likewise, as long as the mutation is only "a little bad", they are present to experience subsequent mutations for the "one step back, two steps forward" situations.

Randomness on its own doesn't do much for evolution and species change. Mutations, on the individual level, are generally neutral or deleterious. But if you get enough individuals together over enough time, the odds of having a beneficial mutation become reasonable. And on top of all this you have natural selection which lets you keep the adaptive mutations in higher proportion than the maladaptive ones. Given enough time, and enough individuals in a population, and enough variance, then natural selection can work wonders in terms of species adaptation.

As to your last comment about reverse mutations: it happens, but it is exceptionally rare, along the lines of the rareness of the mutation that happened in the first place. Furthermore, if it's not selected for, it doesn't matter; the versions of the mutation that were beneficial will carry on. It's not a stretch at all.

 

I can't help giggling with glee at the awesome power of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

There is an update to the story. As is common with Fox after causing the initial uproar.

FOXNews.com - Hurricane Expert Says His Global Warming Views Haven't Affected University's Support - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

"We're still putting the forecast out," he said. "CSU continues to support me. I'm in the same office I've been for 41 years now and I hope to stay here some more years and keep working as I always have."

 

It's also worth saying that this is very much comparing Apples to Oranges. The anti-global warming people are a fringe part of the scientific community, but they are doing science. They make predictions about what's going to happen and, in a world where climate models are so uncertain, they say things that are consistent with (at least some of) the data we have. The point is, it's possible that they will be proved wrong and I'm sure that all of them will admit that as a possibility.

IANACS ("I am not a climate scientist"), but the arguments that we're causing some warming of the planet are pretty convincing. However, the anti global warming people may be right. Both sides make predictions and, as new data comes out, one side will be proved right and one side will be proved wrong (or, more likely, both sides will be proven wrong and the truth will be somewhere else).

I believe that there is some value in these scientists that have interpretations of the science outside the mainstream. In my own field (Astronomy) there are a few different examples of people holding non-mainstream views where it was definitely beneficial to science (e.g. Halton Arp for quasars and Allan Sandage for the Hubble Constant). Even if they don't end up being right, they force the folks who support the more "mainstream" views to make their arguments iron-clad.

Compare that to the Intelligent Design folks. They start with what they thing the answer is. Then, they look for data that supports that answer. They don't propose any testable theories and they just aim at poking holes in the current scientific paradigm. Does Darwinian Natural Selection completely explain how life evolved on Earth? Absolutely not. It's not a "complete" theory yet. However, it is remarkably good at explaining a lot of what we observe about how life came to be. The trick that the IDers do is set up a false dichotomy: they point out a problem with Natural Selection and then say, "See! Darwin couldn't explain this! It must be Intelligent Design!" Just because Darwinian Natural Selection is incomplete (or wrong) doesn't mean Intelligent Design is right.

 

Originally Posted by Wildkow
Yet another instance of suppression. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong I can't believe that every single one of the posters on this board are not outraged by this censorship and coercion. Yet not one peep from this board about Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Inquiry etc etc. Pitiful.

Wildkow


It couldn't be that you are just wrong, wrong, wrong, could it?

Where was the suppression, no one was being censored, its all about costs and accuracy, Grey used to be pretty good at Hurricane forecasts, but his forecasts aren't that great any more, so to justify costs, they want more accuracy by keeping one of his graduate students on staff. Plus, I'm sure if Grey had been let go, he would still do alright financially with speaking engagements and requests from other colleges.

 

It seems you've switched subjects, wildkow. Does this mean you're conceding defeat on the intelligent design issue?

 

He's just trying to avoid answering the question of whether he's OK with the fact that ID is a poltical, religious, and non-scientific agenda from the Discovery Institute or if he's just trolling.

With regards to Dr. Gray, a couple of things should be noted: he's an emeritus professor so he's essentially retired. They let him keep an office mostly out of respect and to keep him happy. He also hasn't been the main author of the hurricane predictions since 2006. He takes the college's actions personally because his attacks on other scientists is usually such. From Storm subsides between William Gray, Colorado State | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle : "My only conversation with Dick Johnson, which followed a rather nasty series of jabs from Gray, suggested that Bill should be persuaded to lay off the personal and stay scientific." A lot of scientists have a hard time taking Gray seriously because he's arguments are usually littered with silly name calling, such as calling them "medicine men".

It is extremely ironic that wildkow brings up climate change as an example of scientific suppression because there actually is suppression going on, but not in the way he alleges; the Bush administration clearly has been censoring reports from NASA and the EPA on climate change. James Hansen has said, "In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public."

The censorship hasn't been coming from other scientists, but from White House officials like Philip A. Cooney, a former oil-industry lobbyist, and George C. Deutsch III, a former Bush campaign official, who had was forced to resign after people found out that he never graduated Texas A&M, despite claiming so on his resume.

 

The issue with introducing a designer to resolve the "irreducible complexity" problem is that it just relocates the problem.

The next question to ask is, "What created the creator?" All the irreducible complexity arguments also apply to the designer, too. You either end up with an infinite regression of creators (some religions do this, though not most Christian sects), or you end up breaking the premise behind the irreducible complexity argument.