“Earth is not a planet, it's a project — a laboratory for intelligent design students.”
By supporting the teaching of ID (intelligent design) in schools, George Bush made a monkey of himself trying to prove he’s not one. Bush cited a recent poll that almost half of Americans believe God created humans fully formed less than 10,000 years ago. I think they were the half who voted for him.
So, what’s all the hubbub about? Well, some people believe that biological structures are too complex to have been created by natural selection and so must have been “designed.” These people have changed from calling their position creationism and now use the term intelligent design. Not to put too fine a point on it, but doesn’t that mean their argument has evolved?
An example of the “irreducible complexity” IDers cite is the clotting blood mechanism, involving 20 interacting proteins which cannot be broken down into smaller functioning units, and so could not have been created by natural selection. By that reasoning a Three Stooges comedy bit would have to be considered intelligent design, a conclusion with which my mother, among others, would take issue.
ID is not a science but a belief system wearing technical jargon short pants and supported by papers that aren’t published in peer-reviewed journals (though they are pew-reviewed). The ID argument is simplistic. I don’t know how my iPod works, but that doesn’t mean God designed it. I know, for a fact, that Steve Jobs did.
Nor is intelligent design a politically viable position. Kansas recently voted to include ID in their school curriculum. All the school board members got canned in the next election. It was either that or refund their statehood.
Intelligent designists sometimes make fun of evolutionists, saying, “You mean to tell me you believe your great-granddaddy was a monkey?” They use words like “granddaddy” because a lot of them are from the south. When you’re afraid that if you believed in evolution, even for a second, you’d start scratching your armpits in public places … well, it interferes with your thinking process.
The “monkey ancestor” fear is unclear on the concept. Evolution doesn’t say humans are descended from monkeys. It says that way back, even before the remote control, there was a hairy, scrawny species that later evolved into monkeys while another branch took razors to their backs and evolved into humans.
There are no two things that are not part of a larger context, providing you step back far enough from the problem. Taking the two seemingly irreconcilable positions of evolution and intelligent design and stepping back — way back — it’s clear to me both sides are right: Earth is not a planet, it's a project — a laboratory for intelligent design students.
Look at the facts: earth is a mishmash of species, 99% of which no longer exist. That says to me, someone’s practicing. If planets can be a seedbed, a huge Petri dish for the creation of life, then somewhere there has to be a place to practice. Apparently, we’re it!
Our bodies hardly resemble fine machines designed by a supremely intelligent Creator. (NOTE: there are publishing conventions for what words start with caps, but I always capitalize “Creator”, just in case). If human design is so intelligent why do men have nipples and children go through the terrible twos? Why do men have aching backs and women a narrow birth canal? And who made a man’s mouth too small to hold his wisdom teeth? As a species, we have more than sufficient grounds for a class-action lawsuit.
The newborn of most species drop from the womb running. Humans have to protect, feed, and teach their progeny until they get married and their spouses can take over — though some sons do live at home forever because it’s easier than bringing their laundry over every week. For subscribers to creationism, I have just three words: duck-billed platypus
Continuing investigation of the recently mapped human genome shows that only 3% of DNA works. The rest of the genes are called “junk DNA,” leftovers from failed design experiments. Not only are the designers not that intelligent, they’re not very good at cleaning up after themselves.
I credit creationists with how they’ve evolved their strategy to meet the challenge. Why they’ve convinced the president of the United States that separation of church and state just means they cannot be in the same building on Sundays.
I think a clergyman friend put it best when he said, “The strongest argument against intelligent design is that humans are having this discussion.”
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Comments: 50
I once got into a heated debate with a person here on gather about the imperfection of "creation". This person was convinced that creation is perfect. She'd have none of my "junk DNA" arguments, free-radicals, genetic disease, vestigial structures, etc, etc. God, wanted that junk DNA there and that appendix and cystic fibrosis, probably to make it more interesting and challenging for the enemy to sort out - you know, scientists - who have an anti-religion agenda, apparently. Trying to unravel the perfection of creation. I told her, I'd be ashamed to be such an imperfect, "all-knowing" being. She didn't like me much...
Let's take another tack, instead of saying Man created God because he needed an explanation, let's just theorize that the big bang also created God, and when he was a few billion years old he got hold of a handgun and it accidentally started life evolving on Earth. Sort of the Big Bang created a lot of little bangs, and that's how nine year old girls keep their hair out of their mouths.
Speaking of intelligent design, have you seen Dolly Parton?
Tom- are you talking about 20 amino acids?
Vivian, you have a point there.
Tom, didn't know the latest on "irreducible complexity," but I am aware of the discussion about the eye. Your are certainly correct there.
Jaime, great. Certainly is an excellent title (actually, could be a book about at least 20 topics I can think of off the top of my head).
That's a great quote from your son.
Zola, thanks. There is a link in one of the comments on your article to a piece about "irreducible complexity."
But, to answer your question ["You are pointing out that ID is a theory just as Creationism is aren't you?"]:
1] For the purposes of the "evolution versus a creation-based alternative" discussion, I consider Creationism and ID essentially the same. ID simply avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer.
2] If you are using the word "theory" to describe an hypothesis or opinion, then I would consider Creationism a theory.
If you define a "theory" as it is used in science —a logical explanation or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena — then I would not consider Creationism a theory. (I believe it's the definition of the word "theory" that causes a lot of the disagreements on this topic.)
In my own opinion, intelligent design and evolution can walk hand in hand without doing major damage to your neural pathways if one accepts that God created a set of physical laws that would lead to, when the time was right, the creation of proteins, DNA etc. and that these building blocks of life would evolve into a rich and marvelous tapestry culminating in man - a species, if you want, in the image of God.
Some people feel that millions of years of proven evolution fights their need to insist (because of the bible) that earth/life were formed in only thousands of years — and can't accept those "thousands of years" as meaning "for example."
10,000 years to a man in 100 B.C. WAS almost an eternity. What if he would have written "millions of years" but that was beyond the comprehension of most of his audience (someone might check if at, say, 100 B.C., there even was a word for "millions.")
Wouldn't it be a hoot — if the man who wrote the chapter on Genesis, when interviewed, said, "Sure it was millions of years but we don't have a word for that yet. Anyway, millions, thousands, who's gonna care. Either way it took a lot of time."
John... I DO hope you're going to submit this to one of the scientific publications (CA Acad. of Sci., Smithsonian, Sci. American, etc.)! This is just the kind of commentary they LOVE for their "back pages"!
I had a "world mythologies" teacher once in college who had been "born again" in his youth and then travelled to the Mediterranean area to research the Bible (which, at the time, he thought was practically the ONLY book in the world that was "true").
He became fluent in ancient languages (Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic (sp?), etc.) and found that the interpretors who had originally translated the texts of the actual documents from which much of the Bible was derived made SO MANY mistakes in their translations, that he was forced to rethink his entire "world view" and virtually drop-out of the "New Christian Movement" altogether... He was a GREAT guy and a fantastic teacher!
be carefull what you wish for. I would love to openly discuss the flaws in creationism with my students.
The idea of random natural and sexual selection is not sufficient to explain the perfection of a bird's wing. I would think the flightless dodo is more the result of random mutation and sexual selection than the hawk.
At least in my opinion, we need to look for the role of intelligence in evolution, but not supernatural intelligence. We need to look at the minds and will of animals themselves.
I doubt that humans are the only form of life graced with self-awareness. I would be more comfortable knowing that almost every form of life has a desire to become something better. I would be more confident in our knowledge of the mechanics of evolution if we were to acknowledge that life strives to evolve into a model of perfection.
IMHO, the notion of god is nothing less than our evolutionary desire. It is the model of what we are evolving ourselves into.
As for "junk DNA" be a little careful there. The science on this matter is extremely young and we are finding daily that what we thought was junk -- is not.
"If you believe, no proof is needed; if you don't believe, no proof will do." Absolutely true. The piece is written at the altar of humor not religion or evolution. I've gone into the subject in comments to honor the positions of those commenting.
What a great Republican/monkey quote!
I'm intrigued with "the model of what we are evolving ourselves into." I'll think about that more.
Re: "junk DNA," the nice thing about humor is you don't have to know what you're taking about. In this case, I used it because I'd heard it and it sounded funny for this piece. It is going to be fascinating as the DNA mechanisms are discovered.
That's not true at all. No credible evolutionist claims that evolution strives for perfection. First of all the concept of evolution striving for anything is misguided and teleological thinking. Evolution accomplishes one of two things, death or survival.
"The idea of random natural and sexual selection is not sufficient to explain the perfection of a bird's wing. I would think the flightless dodo is more the result of random mutation and sexual selection than the hawk."
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that some species are the result of random mutation and others are the result of the ability to "will" new advantageous characteristics into existence?
Intelligent Designer on Crack addresses the fallacy of seeing perfection in a natural world.
One, I agree, "Evolution accomplishes one of two things, death or survival." Traits are selected in that increase survival. I'm not thinking of "striving" as a conscious act, though Greg may have a different take on that.
Wait, I'll visit the article mentioned in your comment.
Okay, I'm back and I'm not talking anymore. If I did, I'd be digging myself a hole, an area where I do have some expertise [see The Manly Art of Digging Holes ]
I do humor. It's clear from your article you know a lot more about the biology side of this than I do. Almost all of it, and your comments afterwards, seem to make sense to me - but then I'm still waiting for the $1.25 the tooth fairy owes me so I'm probably not the best of judges.
Thanks for the pointer to your article. Now I know more than I did when I woke up. (Every day isn't like that.)
Creation recites a magical process of creating life as a golem, a magical creature used for specific purposes of the creator, lacking a mind and only able to serve.
Evolution is a perfect process we are still learning about, and likely will for the rest of the existance of humanity.
If one does believe in God, then to believe that creation is a use , used to give a temporary understandings. While Evolution is the truth, it is why humans have a brain to understand and learn. The beauty of evolution is that it allows life to modify and adjust to new and changing environments.
Good thoughts here on this article.
I am careful about the word "will" in this context because of its magical connotations. What I am saying is that animals make decisions and alter their behavior. These choices are then reflected in their "evolution".
Put another way, the mechanism of "sexual selection" presupposes a basis upon which to select a mate. One of the things that have always entertained me is the tendency of birds and even whales to change their songs.
A couple of years ago, two humpback bulls swam from Western Australia to the east coast of the continent. Scientists were keen to observe the effect this would have, since the two colonies had different songs. To everyone's surprise the entire colony of the east adopted the song of the two western bulls. It was a cultural revolution of whale songs.
My point is this, these whales use song to make their sexual choices, but the choices are based on the fashion of the moment, not evolutionary goal --- sort of like humans.
I am not arguing for creationism in a biblical sense, but I am suggesting that we give the intelligence, and perhaps the whim of animal culture more credit.
I think you misunderstood my point. I pointed out that many species have perfected extremely sophisticated attributes like the wing, or the skin of a shark. This is a perfection of product; it does not suggest that all of nature is perfect. Nature screws up all the time, and in many instances, the screw ups have no evolutionary cost.
In short, the existence of imperfections does not negate the fact that perfections (plural) exist.
perfect means something that is complete or excellent beyond improvment.that is exactly what dan r's dr. brown meant when he said:" First ID according to Dr. Brown, one of the co-founders od ID; is that evolution has gone through all modifcations possible, so that there is no longer any evolution. Thus shows how shallow ID actually is."
please, someone give one example of perfection in the natural world. something that cant be improved on. something that doesnt break, get infected, get disease,get eaten, starve, freeze to death,die of thirst,or something that can run,fly,swim,or dig as fast as it wants,has 0% infant mortality,or live forever.
Being well adapted to a particular environment is one thing but the concept of perfection in the natural world is meaningless.
The definition of the word "perfect" is, according to Webster:
Using this definition as a guide, one could easily qualify the wing of a hawk as "being entirely without fault or defect " and "satisfying all requirements".
I have done enough engineering, thirty years, to know that one can always improve on a system that is entirely without fault or defect and that satisfies all requirements.
The species that we know as intelligent design originates from a lack of intellectual flexibility. I would hate to think that those oppose ID are just as rigid as those who advance it, and their opposition is little more than an effort to replace one fundamentalism with another.
This often seems to be the case in education and academia where it is fashionable to howl against the Christian fundamentalists while imposing a politically correct fundamentalism that is even more injurious to inquiry than the old. I would point to the adventures of Lawrence Summers and Robert Putman at Harvard for evidence of this phenomenon.
Then I had a better thought.
I went to bed, tossing upward a quick prayer that Greg would respond.
And I wake up and there it is!]
I am never going to curse, talk to wild women or drink devil water again.
call me a politically correct fundamentalist if you want(i guess) but i dont think the wings of these hawks satisfied the requirements of not breaking
I am a little confused by your zeal. I am not sure why you would suppose that birds have a requirement for their wings to survive collision with a car. The working definition of perfection here is: the act of bringing to final form, not "to make indestructible".
I find it deliciously ironic that one would be so literal in this context given that the topic, intelligent design, is a false science that derives from biblical literalism.
The bible is a great work of literature that says much about the human spirit. It is, in many ways, the cultural DNA of western civilization. One should look upon it with equal degrees of skepticism and admiration just as one should look upon much of science with equal measures of skepticism and admiration.
As for creationists, I personally wish them no harm. I would be just as sad to see them banished from our institutions as I would to see the extinction of coyotes from the woods near my home. Christian fundamentalists can be a pain in the ass, as can progressive fundamentalists, and the coyotes from time to time, eat household pets but when dealing with all these creatures I remind myself that appreciation of nature is tolerance of all things, even the things that threaten us.
you changed the definition AGAIN!?!?! thats not the definition that webster provided us.
sorry im confusing you with my zeal.i guess nobody is perfect.
Man created God about 10,000 years ago as a need to focus blame.
By the way there is nothing that is in reality 'prefect' out there in the plant and animal world, as all living things still die.
But there I go again, Digging Holes
There are several variations and definitions for the word perfect. I believe my use of the word perfection was of sufficient clarity to make syntactical debate unnecessary.
I am rather stunned, given the point I was making, that the discussion would degenerate into "literalist interpretation". I always associated that form of literalism with the kind of raw-boned fundamentalism one would find in the bible-belt rather than in more the progressive environment of Gather. I guess this only goes to show that "people is people".
None the less, from Webster.com
"to bring to final form" is once again classic teleological thinking and once again does not fit the modern model of evolution(unless your the pope).sorry
i will concede that if hardy and weinbergs 7 conditions are met, that will be the "final form".good luck with that however.
btw john, your welcome for the points!
btw, has anyone looked into the hardy weinberg refrence(dont laugh at my spelling, i need a dictionary!) they were two guys that came up with a mathmatical model for measuring the rate of evolution and the conditions that need to occur for evolution to stop and an organisms "final form" to exist. the conditions were things like: no gene flow, no random mutation, no sexual selection, no small local populations etc. basically conditions that could never exist in the natural world.
I'm a humorist and though many of the math symbols were weird, they couldn't be classified as funny. I couldn't even see any examples of symbol copulation in the math, which one would expect given the topic.
Thanks for this link.