The Intelligent Design Controversy
Yes, I am tackling this subject. At its heart, the arguments of both sides are not very sophisticated, but the issue is muddied by lack of decent explanation and strong convictions that it may take years before it is clear. I aim to clarify the matter somewhat.
The premise of Intelligent Design is that evolution cannot explain certain natural phenomena, with the conclusion being that an intelligence had a hand in the design of life. It's not a bad argument, so far as these things go, because while it relies on the lack of scientific evidence explaining those phenomena, it does not exclude evidence being found. It's not science, though, as that requires evidence and falsifiability. Finally, it's easily resolved: it's false. There are no phenomena that seemingly defy evolution that scientists have not resolved.
Evolution has mountains of evidence supporting its operation since the earliest life we have found. Claims saying that the fossil record does not exist, that carbon and other dating techniques are false, or that we have never come across new species coming into existence are wrong. The evidence disproves such claims- there's no scientific conspiracy trying to cover it up, or anything remotely like that. There are areas where the specific operation of evolution is not well understood, due to gaps in the fossil record or that the area has not been fully investigated, but there is no evidence contradicting evolution. Supporters of intelligent design jumped on the concept of irreducible complexity, which postulates that certain biological mechanisms do not work if a single piece is missing, but all the examples presented for this hypothesis have been shown to be false. That yeah, actually, look that bacterium has a simpler version of that mechanism.
One thing that evolution does not explain, and does not claim to explain, is the origin of life. Scientists have a hypothesis for the origin of life, but obviously the environmental conditions of the early earth, given millions of years (about a billion in total) with which to work, make it hard to test any hypothesis. The current line of thinking is that organic molecules were spontaneously synthesized (shown experimentally,) including possibly RNA as a carrier of information, that replication and synthesis of enzymes occurred (also shown experimentally), and that membranes formed. In combination, given a huge time period to work with, membrane-enclosed replication with DNA and protein synthesis, i.e. life, could be possible. However, a lack of evidence for this hypothesis does not mean that life was engineered intelligently. Maybe a hole to another universe formed, accidentally spilling some life into ours. That's about as likely as an external creator.
The question that remains in my mind is- why are we having this debate? There's no evidence that evolution doesn't work- if some were found, and scientists were genuinely stumped, then this debate would have a valid reason. But there is none. So no, intelligent design should not be taught in classrooms, and it should not claim to disprove evolution. Believe in a creator if you will- you will not be contradicting science until you start to make claims that the Earth is carried on the back of a turtle, that two homo sapiens are the ancestors of every human alive, or that evolution is false. You will have to resolve such quandaries yourself, along with quandary that the universe is terribly unkind to life, and that nature also fucks us up a lot.
2 comments:
Interesting thoughts. Good stuff. We're having the debate on inteligent design because it's the guise fundamentalists have chosen to get religion into schools: unable to insert purely Christian dogma into the curriculum, intelligent design is a non-denominational alternative. I for one support teaching intelligent design, just not in a science class. I'd love to see a religion course in all schools, that studies all the world's major religions and faiths, and given time, the smaller, crack-pot ones too. Like it or not, faith is and has been one the major human motivations throughout history, and I don't think you can fully appreciate what we've done and why without understanding the underlying religious impulses. I myself am an agnostic of long and good standing, but, judging by some of your posts, I think you'll agree that the questions of who we are and where we come from are some of the most important we could ask, and lively debate from all points of view is worthwhile in and of itself.
Personally, I don't have a strong spiritual connection to anything. My philosophy is similar to many scientists in that while the universe is complex enough for there to be many possibilities like a creator, nothing metaphysical can be known with any certainty. But I respect that there are many people who have strong religious convictions, and that religion guides and has for millennia guided human actions. And we need to know where we are coming from to see where we are going.
I posted a longer explanation of my philosophy in early October (the link's too long to write here.) As an agnostic of long and good standing, you may find it interesting.
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