If it could be
demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could
not possibly have been formed by numerous successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break
down.”
–Charles Darwin, “Origins”
If Kansas can be
considered Ground Zero in the debate between Darwinists
vs. Intelligent Design proponents, a recent explosion
rocking the battle zone took place last month at the
University of Kansas in its religious studies
department. A course titled “Special Topics in Religion:
Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious
Mythologies,” was to be offered.
I suspected, despite
the closed-mindedness of the department chairman—Paul
Mirecki—and his approach to relegating ID to
“mythology,” there would have been lively debates in the
classroom.
And had this been the
case, hopefully more light than heat would have been
shed on a debate that simply won’t go away between
Darwinists, who base their theory more on naturalism—a
philosophy—than science, and the proponents of
Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design is a
systematic evaluation of observed biological phenomena
resulting in the logical conclusion that design is
inherent in living systems. The inescapable
implication—and I guess the thing that drives its
critics hysterical—is that design implies A Designer.
Why this never presents a problem when we admire a work
of art by Van Gogh or a musical composition by Claude
Debussy escapes me. But logic and common sense
dissipates when Darwinists are confronted by an
alternate theory to their most hallowed orthodoxy. And
instead of dealing with the substance of the arguments
for ID, they skewer its proponents, labeling them as
“stealth creationists;” a charge that is not altogether
fair.
While many Young Earth
Creationists and Old Earth Creationists support
Intelligent Design as a rational answer to Darwinism,
Intelligent Design itself stands apart from biblical
creationism as a non-religious approach to origins.
William Dembski, one of its chief proponents describes
it as “the study of patterns in nature that are best
explained as the result of intelligence.”
Tom Burr, a retired
biology teacher from Franklin Lakes explains on
his blog:
“Intelligent Design Theory is not the same as Biblical
Creationism. The ID theorists are trying (if the
evolutionists, the press and the general public would
let them) to approach their ideas as pure science. They
are smart people and they know how to separate their
science from their theology… Biblical Creationists, on
the other hand, openly admit to using God’s Word as the
basis of their worldview and as their approach to
science. In their operational (experimental)
science—science in which repeatable experimentation and
falsification are the rule—they operate under the belief
that God created and sustains His universe by laws that
can be discovered by science (thinking God’s thoughts
after Him.) In studying prehistory, however, Biblical
Creationists realize that different rules apply. The
past is not subject to repeatable experimentation.
Evidence (the same evidence that any scientist has
available) must be interpreted according to un-provable
(in the scientific sense) assumptions and philosophical
(religious, if you prefer) presuppositions. This is
where God’s Word must take precedence over purely
naturalistic assumptions and must act as the guidebook
for the interpretation of evidence.”
Access Research Network,
a website that showcases books, papers and articles
written by scientists in support of ID explains,
“Intelligent Design theory—also called design or
the design argument—is the view that nature shows
tangible signs of having been designed by a preexisting
intelligence. It has been around, in one form or
another, since the time of ancient Greece. The most
famous version of the design argument can be found in
the work of theologian William Paley, who in 1802
proposed his ‘watchmaker’ thesis. His reasoning went
like this: ‘In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my
foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came
to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything
I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever. ...
But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it
should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that
place; I should hardly think the answer which I had
before given [would be sufficient]. To the contrary, the
fine coordination of all its parts would force us to
conclude that …the watch must have had a maker: that
there must have existed, at some time, and at some place
or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for
the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who
comprehended its construction, and designed its use.’”
“Paley argued that we
can draw the same conclusion about many natural objects,
such as the eye. Just as a watch’s parts are all
perfectly adapted for the purpose of telling time, the
parts of an eye are all perfectly adapted for the
purpose of seeing. In each case, Paley argued, we
discern the marks of an intelligent designer.”
In order to understand
the crux of the issue, one must first understand that
the debate between Darwinists and the proponents of
Intelligent Design is not about science but a
world-view.
A scientific theory is that which
can be demonstrated in a laboratory by a process
involving an idea or hypothesis followed by
experiments to verify the hypothesis. When sufficient
evidence has been accumulated, a theory can be proposed.
There have been no such
experiments providing the evidence in support of
evolution as a testable, scientific theory.
The evidence, if
we can call it that, is contained in a fossil record
filled with gaps and lacking a single, indisputable,
multi-cellular transition form demonstrating one species
evolving into another. One would conjecture that if
evolution were true, there would have been millions of
years of the fossilized remains of species evolving into
other species. None have been found.
Steven J. Gould, an
ardent evolutionist, admits the evidence does not show
gradual change, but sudden appearance and stability:
Most fossils species appear all at once, fully formed,
and exhibit no directional change throughout their stay
in the rocks.
Neither side claims to
have its own “evidence.” The fossil record is what it
is. It is the interpretation of that evidence—or the
lack thereof—that differentiates the two sides in this
debate.
But the fossil record,
damaging as it is to Darwinism, is only one part of the
debate. An examination of life at the biochemical level
sounds its death knell.
The complexity of
living systems and their components, from the simplest
ones such as the flagellum of a bacteria or the cilium
of a paramecium, to the biochemical intricacies of such
processes as vision, the immune system and the clotting
of blood, coupled with the refinement of the microscope
and x-ray crystallography—none of which Darwin could
rely on when he proposed his theory in the 19th
century—make Darwinism implausible.
Klaus Dose, a prominent
worker in the field of origin-of-life research comments,
“More than 30 years in the field of experimentation on
the origin of life in the fields of chemical and
molecular evolution have led to a better perception of
the immensity of the problem of the origin of life here
on Earth rather than its solution. At present, all
discussions on principal theories and experiments in the
field either end in stalemate or in confession of
ignorance.”
In the book, “Darwin’s
Black Box,” the author, Michael Behe, echoes this
sentiment: “If you search the scientific literature on
evolution and if you focus your search on the question
of how molecular machines—the basis of life—developed,
you find an eerie and complete silence…The question of
how life works was not one that Darwin or his
contemporaries could answer. They knew that eyes were
for seeing but—how exactly do they see? How does blood
clot? How does the body fight disease? The complex
structures were themselves made of smaller components.
What did they look like?”
Behe introduces the
idea of “irreducible complexity,” best understood by his
example of a mousetrap. Composed of five basic elements:
a hammer which impacts and kills the mouse, the spring
which provides the force to drive the hammer, a trigger
upon which the mouse steps, a latch which keeps the trap
from springing closed until the right moment and a
wooden base upon which the whole contraption is
assembled, a mousetrap is irreducibly complex. In order
for it to function, all five of its components must be
present and assembled correctly.
By extending this
notion of irreducible complexity to several biochemical
systems—vision in the human eye, the clotting of human
blood and the immune system—it quickly becomes apparent
that these processes are impossible without all of the
components being present simultaneously.
The question then
becomes: What random natural, process can account for
complex, biochemical systems to come together? Again—the
silence on this issue is deafening.
Writing about the
immune system, the author explains, “Whichever way we
turn, a gradualistic account of the immune system is
blocked by multiple interwoven requirements. As
scientists we yearn to understand how this magnificent
mechanism came to be, but the complexity of the system
dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration.”
Apparently Darwin
himself realized this. Writing in “Origins,” he stated,
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ
existed, which could not possibly have been formed by
numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory
would absolutely break down.”
As it turns out, there will be no debate in
Professor Mirecki’s classroom even though twenty-five
students had signed up for the class. In a follow-up
story, the Associated Press reported Mirecki had sent an
e-mail to members of a student organization in which he
referred to religious conservatives as “fundies” and
said that his course would be a “nice slap in their big
fat face.”
The class was cancelled and Mirecki was
forced to apologize, saying, “I made a mistake in not
leading by example, in this student organization e-mail
forum, the importance of discussing differing viewpoints
in a civil and respectful manner.” The university’s
chancellor, Robert Hemenway said Mirecki's comments were
“repugnant and vile [and] …misrepresent[ed] everything
the university is to stand for.”
None of this comes as a surprise. The debate
between Darwinism and Intelligent Design is almost
always inimical. Instead of addressing both theories in
an atmosphere conducive to learning, Darwinists prefer
to avoid the substance of the issue and instead, resort
to name calling. By denigrating its proponents as
“Bible-thumping, knuckle draggers,” they quash any
open-minded investigation into an alternate theory of
the origin of the species; an approach that is, quite
frankly, hardly intelligent.
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