October 08, 2004

Intelligent Design - ID challenges so-called "unexplainables" in evolution, and is making some headway in Ohio schools. But is it valid science?
  • No. Next?
  • "But is it valid science?" No, it is not.
  • Don't like evolution? Come up with a better theory, but please just not one that has as it's central premise: "Shit man, we just don't understand all this crap. Too weird, to hard. Makes my brain hurt. Gotta be God." See, that isn't a theory, it's a cop-out.
  • I wouldn't touch this one for a free weekend at Pismo Beach.
  • You expect me to believe we came from Monkeys? Are you all insane?
  • IDing ID
  • Here's the quick test to determine if something is scientific: Is there any set circumstances that would be able to prove to you that the theory is incorrect? If not, then it's not scientific. The proper term for this is falsifiability. Evolutionary Psychology, for example, is not a scientific branch of study. Evolutionary Psychology is the collection of hypotheses that say that we exibhit certain behavior because it's evolutionarily beneficial to do so. For example, men want to have sex with many women whereas women want a single partner because each helps to ensure the continuation of your genes. In the case of men, it's because the more children you have, the more likely that some of them will survive. However, women prefer monogamy because it ensures that a man will be around to protect the child and provide money, food, etc. The problem is that you can explain just about any behavior in terms of evolutionary psychology. For example, Men would prefer monogamy because it allows them to keep a better eye on their offspring, and ensures that they can provide for them properly. Whereas women prefer multiple partners because it inspired competition between the men, and whichever man can win her affection is obviously more fit for reproduction. Basically, you can't prove it wrong; therefore, it's not science. That's the problem with Creationism under any guise. If you throw in an omnipotent being, especially one with the occasionally ineffable turn of mind, then there's no set of circumstances or proof that could convince you that the theory was wrong. If there were, you could perform the test, watch it fail, then have additional proof for the correctness of your hypothesis. Without it, it's just an explanation. Mind you, just because it's not scientific doesn't mean it's not correct, but science is a good tool for eliminating incorrect hypotheses on a practical and useful level.
  • Just because the word intelligent is in the name doesn't make it so.
  • Intelligent Design: "I can't personally see how this complex thing came about, so God some intelligent designer did it." ID's entire premise is based on a logical flaw. It is untestable, unfalsifiable, and offers no predictive ability. It is religion cloaked as pseudoscience. It is an attempt by fundamentalists to insert religious indoctrination into our science classes and it sickens me that they've gotten this far. It shows the awful state of science education in America that most ordinary people don't see ID for the pseudoscientific crap that it is.
  • .. and the Book says He made us all to be Just Like Him so if WE'RE dumb, then GOD is dumb and maybe even a little ugly on the side... dumb all over a little ugly on the side dumb all over a little ugly on the side...
  • "Monsters! Monsters from the ID!" What everyone said. ID, for the reasons of falsifiability that Sandspider noted*, is not in itself a valid hypothesis or set of hypotheses - it is simply a reaction against another theory**. (Ironically, its very attempts to falsify Darwinian evolution demonstrates why one is valid and the other is not.) The vast majority of ID arguments I've heard are simply based on misunderstandings of evolutionary theory, often staggeringly basic misunderstandings. What Dawkins calls the "argument from incredulity" is wheeled out far too often, the NeoDarwinian synthesis is wilfully misrepresented, and there's a little crank geology and paleontology thrown in for "support". In such debates, something that I wish evolutionists would make more apparent is the algorithmic, innate nature of current evolutionary theory - it is a logical consequence of a very few basic premises, all of which are eminently demonstrable. The only one of these premises which ID attempts to challenge is the length of geological time, and the challenge is half-hearted at best. The question in such debates should not be, "how can evolution have happened?"; rather, it should be, "how could evolution not have happened?" But then, there is a strong argument that these debates should not occur at all, because that is exactly what ID was established to acheive. It doesn't seek to win the arguments, merely to legitimise itself by taking part in them (and in doing so, plant doubt about evolution). It is an intellectually dishonest rearguard action by Creationists, who realised some time ago that they could no longer hope to block the teaching of evolution by convincing educators it was false; so now, they try to create an equally flawed portrayal of the issue as "unresolved". As the Wired article implies, every time such a debate occurs, this is proclaimed as a victory for the ID camp. It is worth noting that Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould - that bickering old couple whose minor arguments were so often cited as proof that "even the scientists can't agree on evolution" - were collaborating on an open letter calling for scientists to not debate the ID brigade, when Gould so tragically died. A scientific argument against an unscientific and dishonest theory is not one that you can win; it is one that your opponent cannot lose. *I would add that, while I broadly share your reservations about the unfortunate field of 'Evolutionary Psychology', it is not an entirely unscientific endeavour. The characteristic of a valid scientific hypothesis that goes hand-in-hand with falsifiability is predictiveness - and some of the more rigorous suggestions of EvPsych are indeed predictive in nature, and as such have at least a limited falsifiability. It's a shame that EvPsych has progressed in the direction it has, because the study of the human mind as an evolved organ is clearly a worthwhile one; indeed, ignoring the mind's biological origins what has held a lot of psychology back for too long. Intelligent Design, it should be noted, is not only unfalsifiable, it is not even predictive in any positive way. **"Hypothesis" and "theory" - not the same thing. The scientific usage of "theory" does not mean "idea we've had that there's no evidence for yet". It means that there's actually a lot of evidence for it. Peter Medawar (a great biologist - with a Popperian view of the scientific method - and one of the first great authors of what we'd now call "popular science") writes superbly on this whole issue. If anybody ever wheels out the "but even scientists admit it's only a theory" line to you - punch them.
  • Intelligent Design is not the same as creatonism. ID isn't even at odds with Darwinism. ID just says that Darwinism doesn't always give a satisfactory answer. ID doesn't require a god, and infact offers other possible explanations. All links provided stay within Wikipedia, in an effort to only use a source that (I believe) most Monkeys trust. I'm not making an argument for ID. I'm just frustrated watching everyone attack strawmen instead of the actual concept. Most ID supporters I've encountered are Evolutionists, using ID as a patch to fill in percieved cracks in Evolutionary Theory.
  • ID may claim not to be at odds with Darwinism or general concepts of evolution, but the full NeoDarwinian Synthesis - which is pretty much what we mean when we speak of "evolution" today - is most definitely incompatible with ID. It is no strawman to suggest that ID is an umbrella term for a disconnected set of almost entirely speculative, unfalsifiable, non-predictive concepts, and it is no strawman to claim that this prevents it from being a valid scientific hypothesis. Nor is it a strawman to suggest that the most high-profile form of ID today - and the one which is most commonly seen in ID v. Evolution debates - is theistic in nature, and that Creationists do use the concept of a "debate" about ID to hinder the teaching of evolution in schools, and enable creationism to be taught via the backdoor. For my part, no ID proponent I have ever met has been anything other than a religious creationist (mostly Islamic, for some reason); no evolutionist I have ever brought the subject up with has ever reacted with anything other than scorn, or amused despair. Just to note, neither of the "other explanations" you mention - abiogenesis and panspermia hypotheses - have any additional explanatory power when considered as part of ID; they merely shift the argument to a different locale. Neither explains where the "I" part of ID comes from.
  • As discussed here.
  • Oh yeah - I love this link - the answer to our debate.
  • I think that ID proponents that have a hard time understanding how anything as complicated as human beings could have come into being on its own, should read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Intelligent Design is creationism in a lab coat. Mr. Knickerbocker, from one of your links: ID states that there has not been sufficient time for evolution to produce the complexity of life as observed even within the timespan available since the Big Bang, and thus the only available mechanism for the creation of life is one that is supernatural. So maybe they are not proposing a literal interpretation of the Bible, but this certainly sounds like a God was necessary to get the ball rolling.
  • Panspermia usually (not always) is the "Aliens did it" excuse, instead of the "God did it" excuse. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is a Intelligent Design story of directed panspermia explaining the origins of Earth. So is the short story What Can You Say About Chocolate-Covered Manhole-Covers? by Larry Niven best sci-fi short story ever, second to nightfall. Star Trek heavily relies on directed panspermia to explain the entire universe. Asimov's Foundation series takes place in a universe designed by a robotic intelligence. Other's have used time travellers as the I in ID. 2001 is another ID story. Science Fiction often uses directed panspermia to explain the universe, and many scifi geeks secretly like to entertain the possiblity (that "Aliens did it"). Half the ID supporters I know are of the scifi geek brand. The other half are the extremely liberal, extremely atheist, university professors I've had at both UH and HPU. I haven't had ID discussions with every one of my professors, but 4 or 5 that have had these discussions were liberal atheist. Oh, and one liberal christian who was pro-evolution, despite his religious convictions. I don't believe I've encountered a believer of Abiogenesis, or even a defender of it. But it is another way out of "God did it" ID, and that's why I offered it. I haven't ever had a bible-hugger discuss ID with me, but I suppose that could be because most bible-huggers I've known haven't been terribly educated. (I'm not bashing here, the same description could be used to describe most of my family members, if not all) OH, and none of these who supported ID seemed to be believers in it, just open to the possibility of ID (mainly in the form of Irreducible Complexity) as a patch for Evo Theory. I find this stance more palpable than either of the adamant "Evolutionism/Creationism is the perfect, exact, and only possible answer!!" vibes that both of the other groups put off.
  • Oh God. I don't have the time, dammit! I have to answer that humungazoid post from Nostrildamus first! And it's the weekend! I have a life! I need to be slacking off at work to deal with this stuff!
  • Alright Decani, that was an outright lie. Admit it.
  • i am trying very hard not to just spend the next seventeen hours of my life crafting a 30 page essay that would kill monkeyfilter's poor little metaphilter engine explaining in great detail just how wrong ID is. instead, i'll just say that george bush and various televangelists would probably be extremely happy to see ID taught in the schools. that gives you a small idea of how wrong it is without crashing the server. now if you'll excuse me i need to go curl up in the fetal position my bed, clutch my copy of "on the origin of species" to my chest, and pull some ernst mayr and e.o. wilson up over my eyes and try not to cry that in the year 2004 people in america are still so obstinately blind to the truth. if you really want to read the 17 hours worth of work, look here (on mefi, same thread topic) from a few days back... i've dumped similar bits here but as something about mofi isn't working correctly today i can't seem to link to them in any way that will actually allow them to be read.
  • The whole point of ID is that it's creationism without Jeebus. This means it's easier to persuade school boards that ID is a magical Kuhnian paradigm shift and that the Darwinians are really quaking in their boots at the thought of this sudden change in scientific knowledge. Alas, the evidence says no. Once you let the dust settle and you've brushed off the sugar coating, it's the same old crap that Henry Morris, Duane Gish and that ridiculous Kent Hovind (he believes in dragons! How adorable!) have been serving up since well, smeg only knows when. Fortunately, we've got their number (okay, the last one's rather self-congratulatory, but whatever).
  • and try not to cry that in the year 2004 people in america are still so obstinately blind to the truth. ID makes baby Jesus Frogs cry.
  • Ah, Duane Gish....takes me back to Philosophy I.....grrrrrrr.
  • Poor Frogs. Come here and let me stroke your warty little head. Someone get him a glass of water, please. As I see it, the burning question is Will the asshats and fucktards continue to evolve?
  • Sorry, not much patience in my old age for this kinda bullshit.
  • you go GramMa! and now, I shall endeavor to read the thread I've posted in.
  • This month's National Geographic has the following question on the cover: "Was Darwin wrong?" Then they answer inside with "NO", and spend a dozen pages explaining the theory in very basic terms. Even as a geneticist, the refresher was nice. Now we just need to mass mail this issue to the red states. I'm certainly going to leave my copy in Salt Lake City when I go later this year.
  • Here's an excerpt. I hope they put the whole thing online.
  • jb - that link is hysterical!
  • Pennsylvania School District Mandates Teaching of Intelligent Design. Aaaaaand scene. How about the theory of Unitelligent Design? That is, there IS a creator, but He really fucked it up? Hey, anybody else hear thunder?
  • He created me, didn't he? And fire ants!
  • /Unintelligent You see? It's my STUPID mind! STUPID! STUPID!!!
  • How does Intelligent Design explain all the dead ends in evolution? Maybe the "Intelligent Designer" was learning as it went along? And, who was the Intelligent Designer? Couldn't the Intelligent Designer have come up with several answers to problems that could be foreseen with a little analysis? A truly Intelligent Designer could have made evolution much faster. Even it if was learning in the early stages, did it really need monotremes, or Kangaroos? Or, was it just too overwhelmed by data to pay much attention to the southern hemisphere? And, why so many ape/hominid species? If I were intelligent and a designer, I think I've come to some survival ideas much faster by the time the apes appeared. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the diversity of life on this planet is evidence of a more random design than ID explains. On the other hand, I'm not inclined to go read all their justifications, so maybe I'm missing someting really important?
  • Perhaps they should replace Intelligent Design with Quirky Design. That could explain the extinct aquatic sloths.
  • I am totally behind an amendment to get QD taught in schools. Teacher: "And just look at the platypus! Isn't that the living end? I mean, reeeeeaaaaallly--the cat's pyjamas. Dontcha think?"
  • Hyuk hyuk! Hey I know! Let's electorate us up some gay-hatin' 'publicans! They kin fix it!
  • dear cobb county school board: evolution is a fact, repeatedly proven in experiments both natural and staged in laboratories. natural selection is a theory, explaining the most accepted mechanism that explains the evolution we observe. please, if you're going to put warning stickers in your books, try very hard to understand the difference between a fact and a theory. 'cause even that little bit makes you look like fucktards, and fucktards shouldn't be in charge of a school. what ever happened to the good ol' days, when parents who didn't like that "evil-lution" in the schools would just take the poor bastards home and learn them their letters from the bible? good lord, folks, accept the facts or get the hell out of the public sector; don't water down the educational system for the rational people.
  • Gravity: just a theory. Relativity: just a theory. Come on folks, do we really need to go through all this? Oh yeah, I guess we do. :(
  • ...try very hard to understand the difference between a fact and a theory ...and once they're done with that, maybe they could even move on to the difference between "theory" and "hypothesis". Which is what I think they actually meant to write on the stickers. Gits.
  • which one is objective and which one is subjective again? whoops.
  • That's worthy of a front page post, imo. Thanks, Tenacious.
  • That's coooool. Seriously cool. Cheers, TenaciousP! SlightAnthroPedantFilter: I'm not really sure it's a 'hominid', as some of the people in the article say. Perhaps by the new definition of the word, it might be. But it's pushing even that definition a bit, to say the least. Hmmm. Maybe. Unconvinced. It's a great missing link of sorts, fossils being so scarce between 15 and 5 mya, but it's worth remembering that the last common ancestor of both humans and chimps was in the region of 5 to 7 mya. Now that would be a sweet missing link to find. *crosses fingers* Last time I said it would be cool to find something, this happened, then this happened...
  • on a slightly different tack, the godsquad, the ID people and the panspermists (to coin a phrase) all seem to want/need/allude to a higher court of appeal ... ie god/aliens/the other intelligence can not only buttress a moral tack taken by 'the chosen' ... but as a species we're also off the hook because there's always the chance that daddy will turn up and make it all better ... further, wouldn't ID imply a move *towards* something? whereas evolution is just a move. interesting site incidentally ...
  • Bill Gates's foundation -- is supporting the creationists. You'd think that, having gotten rich from selling Windows, always claiming it as intelligently designed, he'd know better, but no. www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa008&articleID=0009973A-D518-10FA-89FB83414B7F0000&pageNumber=3&catID=2 QUOTE "... it disturbs me when someone like Bill Gates, whose philanthropy I otherwise admire, helps finance one of the major promoters of intelligent design by giving money to a largely conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. Yes, they got a recent grant from the Gates Foundation. It's true that the almost $10-million grant, which is the second they received from Gates, doesn't support intelligent design, but it does add credibility to a group whose goals and activities are, based on my experiences with them, intellectually suspect. During the science standards debate in Ohio, institute operatives constantly tried to suggest that there was controversy about evolution where there wasn't and framed the debate in terms of a fairness issue, which it isn't. [Editors' note: Amy Low, a media relations officer representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says that the foundation "has decided not to respond to Dr. Krauss's comments."]..." END QUOTE
  • Next on the agenda, we'll be arguing for equal time for the viewpoint that 2+2 actually equals 5. After all, there are two sides to every story.
  • But...as any fule kno, 2 + 2 = 3.98! Unless its socks, in which in almost no time the sum of two pairs shall equal 3 and no more.
  • Ugh.. Opus ran a crappy pro-ID strip in the same Sunday comics. Good thing that isn't available online.
  • I'd argue that ID proponents are themselves proof that evolution doesn't exist.
  • I'd argue that ID proponents are themselves proof that evolution doesn't exist. Not at all! Evolution kind of breaks down once things get good. Our survival instinct doesn't drive our decisions on who to fuck anymore, because we don't have to breed exclusively with the strong, smart people to ensure the survival of our genes. We can have kids with whoever we want, and our kids will be fine because it just isn't that hard anymore. You don't have to worry about them not being able to outrun sabertooth tigers and stuff like that.
  • I disagree, smallish bear. Evolution isn't necessarily a smooth process of optimizing genes over millenia. It can just as readily be a rapid removal of large segments of a population that do not have a trait necessary to survive a catastrophic change in environment - i.e. 'punctuated equillibrium' evolution. An argument could easily be made (and has been, in Jared Diamond's excellent Collapse) that the human population is getting so large and pervasive (i.e. no virgin land to utilize) that it will cease to be sustainable as the Earth's resources are used at a rate faster than they are replenished. And by 'cease to be sustainable', I mean massive dieoff or slow decline of quality of life, or both. The sort of thing that puts selective pressure on a population.
  • You guys kind of ruined the joke, I think.
  • "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said. . . . The controversy also divided the community and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the November 8 school board election.
  • I saw that article and said yay. But the statement issued by the school board only made them look dumb. If a scientific theory is "just a theory", then we should be teaching alternatives to gravity, photosynthesis, electricity to go with the unprovable alternatives to evolutionary theory.
  • From a similar article: Jones decried the "breathtaking inanity" of the Dover policy and accused several board members of lying to conceal their true motive, which he said was to promote religion. You tell 'em judge!!
  • Britons unconvinced on evolution Shut your gob, you tit!
  • *cover ears to protect from sound of richard dawkins's head exploding*
  • Damn. Is it time for the bloody revolution yet?
  • Help I'm loseing the arguement!
  • Like Zorro!
  • Justify your loss of the agrument however you please.
  • "Teachers at his facility are forbidden to use the “e-word” with the kids. They are permitted to use the word “adaptation” but only to refer to a current characteristic of organism, not as a product of evolutionary change via natural selection. They cannot even use the term “natural selection”. Bob fears, and I agree with him, that not being able to use evolutionary terms and ideas to answer his students’ questions will lead to reinforcement of their misconceptions." Arkansas.
  • Yes, this is a problem out in the country schools and smaller towns. There's no way to enforce school policy without posting observers in all the classrooms, I'm afraid, so a lot of the schools have been pulling shit like this. They'd never get away with it in more liberal urban centers like Little Rock or Fayetteville, but out in the country, their version of Jesus is setting unofficial education standards.
  • Which, by the way, is only one reason why missustool and I don't live in the country, though we love to visit it as often as we can.
  • I hear that. The Bible Belt's a Bitch Baby.
  • Nice interview with Shermer, there Hom. I like that bit about science being a verb.
  • I knew it long before this. Let's roll it all back, folks.
  • Oh c'mon. One guy swaying millions with unprovable assertions based on whim and centuries of political infighting over texts based on whim and centuries of political infighting? What's not to love? It's not like a history of bloodshed and conflict have followed in their wake.
  • Yeah, new Pope sucks way more than old Pope, but at least the Moslems are going to do their best to kill him soon, and then we can get on with the anti-Pope. (This one was prophesied to not be long for this earth, of course that seems to be self-fulfilling and not mystical)
  • Yes, but if you scratch the new Pope, you will see he is a silicon-based lifeform, foreign to our DNA-centric understanding. If you pull his finger, all the sand comes out.
  • Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!
  • ) for Mord! Fine timing there!
  • ?!?!?
  • I'm moving to Iceland and renaming myself njork.
  • I'm moving to Iceland and getting a tattoo that says "Bjorn to Rock".
  • Njork is actually my real name.
  • It's up to you, Njork Njork. Super-awesome Viking Samuri Voltron, homuncumulus!
  • An Odious Mixture Tee hee.
  • Young Earth creationism is a religious doctrine which teaches that the Earth and life on Earth were created by a direct action of God relatively recently (about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). It is generally held by those Christians and Jews who believe that the ancient Hebrew text of Genesis is a literal account of historical events, that evidence for a strictly factual interpretation of the text is present in the world today, and that scientific evidence does not support Darwinian evolution or geological uniformitarianism. Many of its adherents are active in the development of Creation Science, a creationist endeavor that holds that the events associated with supernatural creation can be evidenced and modeled through an interpretation of the scientific method. There is no support for a "young Earth" theory in professional science journals or among professional science organizations[1], which Young Earth Creationists claim is often due to discrimination and censorship. Feh.
  • ARGH!!!!!! I can't stop wanting to tear my hair out!!
  • If there were such a thing as Intelligent Design, there would be no Bush.
  • I'd love to see the demographics on their sample.
  • I'd love to see the demographics on their sample. That's disgusting!
  • MonkeyFilter: I'd love to see the demographics on their sample. For you, Pete.
  • I don't understand Stein anymore. Dude gives all appearances of being at least noticeably intelligent, had a respectable career, hasn't ever given appearances of being a fundie, claims in fact to be a student of Buddhism, and yet he debases himself publicly like this. Granted, it's not as bad as when he called Abu Ghraib a bunch of fraternity hazing, but he's pretty much destroyed any credibility he had with anyone with a remotely critical mind. I hope the paycheck's worth it.
  • Good work, Ben. Hope the whoring pays well enough to be worth being shrouded in fail.
  • And shall we debate the "strengths and weaknesses" of plate tectonics, as well?
  • I love the SCIENCE! ones. If I had $25 lying around and fewer than 1,000 T-shirts pouring our of my closet, I'd have me one of these.
  • Roger Ebert: Win Ben Stein's mind
  • wow... that's a good one!
  • I need to say this: if your religion is dependent upon a god placing a false fossil record to mislead smart people, you are following and PRAISING a god who is a total asshole. Me, I'm totally opting in for Hell, because it's where most of the smart, interesting, NON-asshole people will be. Also, there was that thing that came up a few years ago about the Body Count of Biblical God vs. The Biblical Devil... God offed over 2 million humans while the Devil is only tagged for 10. Not quite matching the death toll of the 20th Century's top despots, but hey, there were a lot less people back then.
  • Less than 2 million on Earth before The Flood? *What's next?*