Via That’s News To Me!
We see creationists trying to sell what isn’t science as science but confusing concepts to such a degree that they can then weasel out of any sort of actual discussion of what they are suggesting.
Case in point, John Bambenek asks why there are no classes in intelligent design
What’s hysterical is that John never defines what intelligent design is–and for good reason. ID Advocates all adhere to their different pet theories–most of which are incompatible with each other.
A specific example is Michael Behe who if you corner argues that common descent is beyond question and he’s essentially arguing for different mechanisms beyond mutation, genetic transfer, drift and selection, but he never questions that common descent is accurate.
Bambanek never actually argues what he is for in his article only this amorphous concept of ID without even identifying where that class should exist.
The bamboozlement begins with:
In the intelligent design debate, we can clearly see that the University fails to live up to the ideal. Intelligent design is disregarded as “religious nonsense” and banned from the classroom with all the zealotry one would expect to find at a book burning. The charge? Challenging established orthodoxies.
This is a broad claim for which it’s hard to understand what he is discussing–in what field should intelligent design be taught? What specifically should be taught? Even at the Discovery Institute you have a wide variety of ID variants with the only common theme being that evolution can’t be true. Even if it were true there were significant problems with evolutionary theory, that doesn’t mean ID is true. You can falsify one theory in science without providing evidence for another. It is only when you conduct a test that provides confirming evidence for one theory that would fit a falsification of the other theory at the same time.
Bambanek never addresses this issue instead whining about how orthodoxy is bad. Orthodoxy has little to do with why ID is a joke. Common descent is supported by an incredible body of evidence. To argue for some sort of alternative, the alternative would have to explain that evidence better than evolution and not be falsified itself. Again, there is no discussion of how this amorphous theory of ID does such a thing.
By denying intelligent design any space in the academy (at times with less than ethical means), they have declared that there are forbidden questions that may not be asked. The placement of restrictions on the question of how life began is the same behavior that fundamentalists visited upon science leading up to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
This is quite a claim. What supports it? What question is forbidden? The utter lack of specifics is a nice rhetorical trick, but it doesn’t actually address what is not being considered because of the broad conspiracy poor Bambanek seems to be facing down.
Not content with simply ridiculing it out of the realm of inquiry, some have brought the force of law to bear with the ACLU. It is interesting to see the so-called defenders of liberty suggest that in order to protect freedom, free inquiry cannot be allowed. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. You know the drill.
The drill is the scientific method. If you are introducing a concept into the science curriculum, it needs to be evidence based and based on findings of science. Declaring that an idea is unfairly discriminated against would mean that the idea explains the evidence just as well and it hasn’t been falsified. The problem ID faces when introduced into classrooms is that it’s not science–something Bambanek apparently agrees with leaving the question of why would it be in a science classroom.
The foes of intelligent design like to throw out the charge that it is not scientific. If by scientific you mean “capable of being confirmed or disproved by observation or experiment” then you would be correct. But you would also be stating that evolution as a theory of creation is not scientific.
Evolution as a biological force is easily observed. Evolution as a theory of creation, however, is completely flaccid. The primordial soup theory is novel and interesting but, at best, it is a theory that fits the facts.
The primordial soup, presumably referring to abiogenesis is not a part of evolution. Evolution is about a change in alleles over time. It assumes life exists–a trivial assumption. How life got here is the realm of other theories so referring to abiogenesis as evolution demonstrates why Bambanek has no business talking about the subject. Evolution isn’t a theory of creation. Only creationists have those. Scientists deal with theories of nature and how it acts and no one theory covers everything.
If Bambanek wants to offer a competing theory to the different abiogenesis theories he is free to do so, but simply saying they aren’t demonstrated doesn’t mean ID is correct, it means there isn’t enough evidence to determine which, if any, theory is correct. ID would have to be a theory that explains the evidence at least as well as abiogenesis and not be falsified. That’s requires a positive statement of testable hypotheses concerning ID.
We have never seen life come from non-life. There is a strong metaphysical case to be made for that being the way it played out, but it’s firmly in the realm of metaphysics, not science.It has never been observed or tested and cannot be. We have never seen life come from non-life. There is a strong metaphysical case to be made for that being the way it played out, but it’s firmly in the realm of metaphysics, not science.
This is simply bullshit. The point of abiogenesis experiments–none of which he appears familiar with since he’s confusing it with biological evolution, is to simulate the conditions on Earth about 4.5 billion years ago and then see given specific catalysts if the building blocks of life are formed through natural processes. That’s called an experiment.
The problem of asserting ID here is all that it says is something caused it to happen. And….how, did that happen? What evidence supports that theory? How is it falsifiable?
They argue that evolution is scientifically complete and therefore, by exclusion, eliminates intelligent design. The irony is that while they use this argument, science itself doesn’t believe that it has all the facts on evolution. With the discovery of tiktaalik roseae – essentially a fish with feet – last week, scientists lavished accolades on finding one of the “missing links.”
Here’s a hint when you are going to try and discuss an issue–know what the hell the arguments actually are on the other side and address those, not those arguments taking place between imaginary people that exist solely in your head.
No one argues that our understanding of biological evolution is complete. It is far more advanced then our understanding of gravity though. The basic point to be made of why evolution is widely accepted as the best explanation of how life changes on Earth is that it is a complete scientific theory that fits the evidence. See the link above to the evidence for common descent and the mutiple nested hierarchies and then attempt to explain how ID explains those and does it more parsimoniously than does evolution.
That we don’t know specific species does not negate the evidence of multiple nested hierarchies in morphology, genetics and cladistics that are independent of each other, but have very high degrees of correlation.
These are basic points of the theory of which Bambanek does not even seem to have a minimal understanding.
The two camps can be summarized as “man is made in the image and likeness of God” and “God is made in the image and likeness of man.”
Instead of trying to search out the truth free of presuppositions, science chooses arguments and theories that make the assumption that God must not exist. Anything challenging that assumption is labeled heresy and discarded, quite unscientifically. That’s why theories that aliens brought life to Earth are O.K. while intelligent design is not.
Bullshit. There is no assumption in evolution that God does not exist. Evolution does not exist God though it does falsify some particularly narrow and fundamentalist interpretations of Genesis as well as other claims made usually by fundamentalist strains in other faiths.
I’m not sure where the idea that aliens bringing life to Earth is widely accepted or taught in science classes. Perhaps John could cite where that occurs. It’s true, the Raelians don’t get as much attention, but neither does the crazy preachers in the quad.
s there a class on intelligent design at the University? (I couldn’t find one). If not, why not?
First question: In what department would it belong?
Second question: What would the substance be?
Third question: What would such a sylllabus include?
Classes aren’t taught because a bunch of people have a wild hair up their ass. They are taught to convey accumulated knowledge. For there to have been an accumulated knowledge of intelligent design the concept would have be defined to actually fit within some field. Given Bambanek doesn’t even identify which strain of ID he thinks should be taught, it’s hard to know where such a class would fit or what would be taught.
UPDATE: Running from the Thought Police and Narciblog also have posts on the column
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