You must remember something. The definition of science is:

The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Now, the theory of Intelligent Design, has nothing like this. For the most part, Intelligent design can be explained within 10 minutes of a biology class. And there is certainly no observation, identification, or anything above (except theoretical explanation) involved.

Furthermore, even IF intelligent design is what really happened, it would STILL not fit into the definition of science, which puts it out of science class.

And you cannot say that there must be some kind of miracle for the first thing to be created, mainly because there is a foot long physics equation that tries to explain why we are all here. For the most part, evolution has alot of information backing it up, while intelligent design has none. Due to the lack of warrents on the intelligent design part, it can be said that evolution is the most legit.

I would add to your definition of science by saying that science assumes that all events can be explained by naturalistic laws.

Intelligent design has no direct evidence backing it up but it has plenty on indirect evidence (for example the inability of science to explain the origin of life) . In the end what people believe is determined by what they assume to be true.

I do agree that science and intelligent design are different. The intelligent design movement is getting itself into trouble because its advocates often do not concentrate on chemical evolution and the origin of life. Nevethless, few if any of these advocates deny the evidence that evolution has happened. The difference is evolutionist assume chance and natural selection are responsible for all evolution including the origin of life. ID advocates attempt to test this assumption by modeling the required transitions with statistics. In the ID approach, many evolutionary tranistions are shown to be possible. But others are not…….this is where the design inference is used.

This inference is not science because it violates a fundamental axiom on which science is based, the naturalistic axiom.

So then why would Intelligent Design be taught in the science class, when it doesn’t even agree with the definition of science?

And the indirect evidence, such as your example with the inablilty for science to prove something, just means that science has yet to prove something. Just because math couldn’t prove the monty hall problem at one point, did not mean that it had a 50::50 percent chance. Likewise, just because Science can’t prove everything, does not mean this can be used to support intelligent design.

ID theory should not be taught in biology class. I already have several posts in this blog where I explain why it should not be.

Then where in science would it be applicable?

Physics? Biology is the only field in science where it actually teaches you about life and why it works.

Intelligent design would be applicable in a philosophy, a philosophy of science, a history of science, or a philosophy of religion class. It would be acceptable to talk about intelligent design in any curicula that also talks about axioms and paradigms and how the assumptions that we make influence the paradigms that we accept. I think any curicula that talks about these subjects and avoids intelligent design to be politically correct is incomplete and could even be trying to promote its own agenda of naturalism.

So what is acceptable in science class? What do I want to see happen? I want to see textbooks stop telling students that:

The First “Living Molecule” Was Almost Certainly a Nucleic Acid - page 1104 Molecular Biology of the Gene, 4th ed, 1987.

and then to only discuss the favorable evidence for such a scenario, selectively omitting any evidence that suggests that the hypotheisis is fatally flawed. For the fatal flaws in the above conclussion see chapters 9 and 10 in my book, or better yet refer to the references at the end of these two chapters and go directly to the peer reviewed sceintific literature.

—Sorry this is so late-first time registering and the emailed password was not functioning for some time for whatever reason…

Science has to be observable or theoretically observable and must have the property of reproducibility.

The part that states scientists are “not allowed to consider” should read “make no assumptions about what is never going to be theoretically observable.” This change then makes further detail largely unnecessary because billions of years of unobserved history (the wrong terminology but you know what I mean) is not going to be resolved even in what seems like a long time in human terms. Like it or not science will never be able to fill in all the gaps and will therefore be open to attack by systems that don’t rely on a strict set of standards.

It ultimately comes down to a choice between a richly defined investigation by scientific method, albeit frustrating because that method has existed for just a few hundred years and is trying to explain billions of years of time, and a richly defined belief system, albeit continually evolving just as science does in order to provide more continuity with the observable world. Like or not, science influences religion, otherwise we would still have to cite the flat earth as being at the center of the universe.

What does the “one assumption used to prove another assumption” statement mean? Can you cite this means of producing theory from one or more examples? I am simply unaware of any major aspect of theory arising from this method so an example would give me someplace to start a self-investigation of this possibility. Other than that, what was lacking from the discussion was the convergent, or non-disproving technologies that have developed since the introduction of the theory of evolution. Succession of anatomy, subsequent fossil discovery, contextual temporal content analysis, cell theory, DNA, genome drift…akin to an overlapping GIS model, the theory has not been refuted scientifically in 150 years no matter how advanced methodology becomes and the one un-repressable aspect of science is that it will gut itself, unassisted, overnight, if the evidence proclaims a theory defunct.

One point that must be understood is that scientific investigation is not undertaken to disprove any creationist design, in fact, evolution itself fits very nicely into a model of theology, but it seems creationism or its more aggressive, attack-only brethren, intelligent design, seeks only to poke holes in science while deftly dodging any outright alternate suggestions. I don’t see how continued attempts to discredit a remarkably different, self-rendering approach to understanding can ever succeed. There’s no gloss in science in the long run–it actually DEPENDS on attempts to discredit theory.

I state here and now I will NEVER ask that a statement about scientific evolution be read aloud before any Sunday service!

Thanks for all the fish, and by the way, in reality it is just the opposite, ID attempts to prove an assumption by an assumption in the flawed relational probability model.

Finch
(I enjoy reading the thoughts and projections (protests?) from the “other” side. It helps me hold my own thoughts to the fire and see if they blister or not:)

So are you say that all attempts by science to use indirect logic are an “assumption in the flawed relational probability model.” If so then we can not be sure that T. Rex is extinct, because scientists believe that T. Rex is extinct based entirely on indirect logic ( nobody has ever seen one alive), or do you apply this label only to indirect logic when it is used to infer design because it is convenient? Have you read the book available on the site’s home page (link at top of the blog) or have you confined your readings to the blog?

I agree that evolution and theology can coexist if one takes the view that God used evolution as a tool to create life (i.e. theistic evolution). But I am not a big fan of theistic evolution because many people when confronted with evolution do not choose this view but rather choose atheism. After all why should someone believe in God if science can explain the origin of the universe, the origin of life and the evolution of life with naturalistic laws? This is of course an individual choice and all people are free to make it.

Nevertheless, I feel that there is a false sense of satisfaction among non-scientists that the origin of life problems are not that difficult and that science will one day understand how life originated and possibly even create it in a lab under plausible prebiotic conditions. The purpose of the book is to summarize the difficulties associated with creating the required useful information and macromolecules- not to justify the design inference. Yes, the book does suggest that the design inference is valid, but very little time is spent on the inference. If I had a chance to write it again, I would leave the design inference out. Not because it is invalid, but because it diverts attention away from the real subject at hand - how in the world did life start?

The goal of this site is to show that when scientists say that life originated as a simple self replicating molecule - they do so despite overwhelming experimenetal evidence to the contrary. They stand by their guns and continue to claim this nonsense - because they have assumed that all events have a naturalistic explanation. Thus their hypothesis must be true, even though their experiments have failed. It is a strange kind of religion where science places all of its faith behind the naturalistic axiom.

And this does not bother me. What bothers me and the reason why a wrote the book in the first place is that the naturalistic axiom is being used as a shield to protect science from all of the holes in current origin of life scenarios. The beauty of intelligent design does not lie with its ability to prove that God exists ( something that it cannot do), but rather with it contrarian view to mainstream science. By tossing the naturalistic axiom, the evidence must be examined in a different light and this often lead to completely different conclussions. For example:

Intelligent Design - > life did not arise in the primoridal soup because the geological, theoretical, and experimental evidence suggest that the soup did not exist.

Evolution -> life is here so the soup must have existed despite the evidence to the contary.

Intelligent design -> life could not arise as a self replicating molecule unless such a molecule could couple its replication to a plentiful energy source and use this energy source to drive it replication. The barriers to such a molecule forming in the primordial soup are insurmountable even given 500 billions years and 500 trillion trillion trillion earth like planets each with their own primordial soup.

Evolution –> life must have arose as a simple self replicating molecule because cells are too complex to arise all at once. Eventhough no experimental evidence supports this hypothesis and a great deal of evidence conflicts with it, the hypothesis must be true because life exists and the naturalistic axiom assures us that the laws of chemistry and physics explain its origin.

Sorry to hear you came under attack by a Christian conservative; I mean evil evolutionist…I must admit I am only a casual observer of the book and only recently came to realize some of the finer distinctions being made by I-D. The overriding negative (from my perspective of course) view on all the supposed invalid inferences of science is very apparent though. Ultimately I don’t see a purpose in the book though (other than political) without some sound reasoning for what may actually have happened in the development, or, creation of life and from what I have understood so far, you really can’t go there without emulating a creationist view for all intent and purpose. I don’t know the finer points of the trial in Dove, PA but it seems an impartial body, given the evidence, judged it so as well.

What use or sense is there in “tossing” the natural axiom as you say, though yes, I would say there are a very few who do use it as a shield, when the alternate has no foundation other than affirmation unless one is satisfied with affirmation? As I understand it, because the origin of life as described under the natural axiom is not possible, it means evolution must be thoroughly discredited as well because it depends on that method of origin. I’m sure you’ve heard/seen the argument that science itself would discredit evolution if it could and I’m beginning to understand that the response would probably be that it doesn’t because it only operates within the naturalistic axiom—which is a good response because there’s a line there that can’t be crossed with what the natural axiom is all about—scientific inquiry.

The overwhelming problem then as I see it for I-D is that the theory of evolution is only getting stronger as the decades roll on and science becomes more precise, and while I-D has to discredit evolution by definition (at least where the origin of life is concerned), science does not have to prove biological origin of life. Granted, it would come as quite the shock if somehow theistic evolution is revealed, but it would nonetheless be independent of the process.

To me personally, either way, its not a problem. If I-D really wants to set the scientific world into nonplus mode it needs to take a step further back and inquire as to the origin of space and matter itself but I suspect that would not provide the political leverage that is being sought. It would however put both sides on an equal basis.

I’m a dairy farmer by the way, and I could tell you some tales about genetic selection, let me tell you! Artificial yes, but sudden, real and extraordinary nonetheless.

Finch

I think it is important to make a distiction between intelligent design and the intelligent design movement. They are not the same.

The intelligent design movement has several political agendas and these differ by organization. Some want intelligent design taught in public school biology classes and others like the Discovery institute do not. Many members of the intelligent design movement are young earth creationists and as such reject all evolutionary processes - the Dover trial made this clear. The school board in this trial was very deceitful in that they tried to hide their religious beliefs to win their case. The judge admonished them for this deceit. The young earth membership in the design movement will fade quickly if all courts keep intelligent design out of schools.

Others like myself believe evolution is a very powerful process and that it can and has created many remarkable creatures. Furthermore, we believe that there is no need to invoke design for many evolutionary processes as naturalistic laws fully explain such transitions. I differ from many other ID advocates, in that I only believe that the design inference is valid for chemical evolution and the evolution of the very first genes and proteins. I think life was given the ability to evolve and it does so, thus constant interference by the designer is unnecessary. I firmly buy the argument that a watch that runs by itself without constant intervention from the watchmaker is a better watch.

With such a wide difference of views all under the design hat, it is not suprising that the design movement is misunderstood. It can stand for just about anything - it just depends who you talk to.

The disturbing trend that I have come to recognize is that many do not recognize the limitations of modern science. Because science assumes that everything has a naturalistic explanation it must reach certain conclusions - whether they are true or not. For example, science must conclude that the primordial soup existed somewhere in the universe despite the experimental evidence to the contrary. Scientists will freely concede that they do not have an answer for us today, but they firmly believe that they will find one in the future. This belief is again rooted in the naturalistic axiom.

So I take issue with two practices that are very common:

1 - Claiming something is true and indoctrinating students into the belief that it is true, despite the fact that no researcher believes that it is true. How is this done? It starts with simple statements like “Life may have originated at underwater hydrothermal vents.” This simple statement will be backed with some weak supporting evidence like these vents are plentiful and provide a rich source of energy and possibly even a reduced carbon source like methane.” And here is the kicker, biology books ommit these extra bits of information -> macromolecules like DNA and proteins will not condense to form polymers in the presence of water. How does one exclude water at a deep undersea vent? It is an important detail.

My personal favorite, and the one that initially caused me to question evolution concerns liposomes. Biology text books will state that phospholipids will form vesicles similar to cells membranes when they are mixed together. But then they ommit the details - the concentrations necessary for such a vesicle to form are not plausible under prebiotic conditions given the extreme difficulty of abiotic lipid synthesis.

I don’t like this practice. It is almost like scientists are afraid to mention the problems because if they do so they will give creationists something that they can use. Fortunately, this practice is confined to textbooks. The primary scientific literature written by the guys who are actually researching the problems has been criticizing origin of life theories for about twenty years now. See references at the end of chapter 9 and 10.

2- My other concern is more fundamental and is built into science itself. That is once something is observed to have happened whether in the lab or in the fossils it is assumed that it was possible for it to happen. This is of course just a different way of stating that scence relies on the naturalistic axiom.

So lets take a protein like G3PD (page 225 in my book) . It exists so science assumes it must have evolved and because it evolved it must have been possible for it to evolve. The protein exists in just about everything that is alive so it stands reasonable that it was one of the first proteins to evolve. So far so good.

Yet when we look at the amino acids and compare this protein in bacteria and man we see that they are almost identical. This protein hasn’t changed much in 3.6 billion years. Many other proteins follow this same pattern.

The above observation is not a problem for science. The protein exists, the naturalistic axiom tells us that it evolved, we don’t need to investigate the path or the probability of its evolution. The protein exists so therefore it was possible for it to evolve. I don’t like this!!! Granted this is science but I still don’t have to agree with the philosophy. In my opinion, the naturalistic axiom here is being used as a crutch. It is shielding science from what could be a real problem with evolutionary theory. It is preventing progress in origin of life research.

Enter intelligent design -> what if we ignore the naturalistic axiom for a little while and test the probability of this protein evolving. What will it show us. Chapter 14 in my book does this. The conclussion is that it is not possible for this protein to evolve.

Could chapter 14 be wrong? Could I have overlooked something? Sure. But at least I looked and tried to model the probabilities. This is a step that science does not an will not take. It hides behind the naturalistic axiom and washes its hands of the problem entirely. I don’t like it, but it is science.

Finally, realize that if I designer exists science by definition can never find him. It assumes that he does not interact with this world in any form or fashion that we as humans can observe. I see this as a weakness not a strength. Thus, I prefer intelligent design.

Alright, so now I separate the political movement from the mix and accept your acceptance for that which cannot be refuted (or at least is very difficult to do so) in the evolutionary context—I’m beginning to wonder just how many people there might be following this seemingly strict interpretation of Intelligent Design, especially pertaining to the depth of the biological considerations.

I know just enough about biological processes to get myself in trouble (and not be able to get out) so I think I’ll be accurate but not as specific as I might otherwise intend at a point or two. Following the argument back to one molecule being present and essential in all life (ATP) but that same molecule is unable to spontaneously exist so it couldn’t have evolved. If we accept that at face value for the moment then life behind that moment of the first existence of ATP is at best a mystery. What line of logic would lead to the supposition of I-D over evolution…only the supposed fact that ATP (as a representative molecule) could not have evolved? My logic leads me to think then that I-D in this form can rise no further than the level of “preference” for it over evolution at that “transition” point, and by far the weaker of the two because there isn’t a line of logic I can even begin to propose since evolution is so predominant AFTER that point.

I’m on the other side of that preference of course, employing some of Occam’s Razor. Since we know how successful the introduction of ATP to life was, such that it is omnipresent, what precludes molecules of precedence, singularly formed and self-supportive for the duration required to carry out similar, though not nearly as successful function as that of the ATP molecule? Its not hard to imagine a mutation and an interaction leading to the formation of ATP then at some point—since we can identify other forces of evolution so readily (which you’ve allowed into the conversation), and especially if the symbiotic relationship of mitocondria is true. Also, in mammals at least, there is a molecule that is utilized for energy before ATP is; because its required or more readily available or utilized initially.

By no means whatsoever would I be convinced that ATP production was required before life could emerge—only that it was extremely successful in the propagation of life once it did. I make this assumption merely using simple, linear deductive reasoning.

The assumptions based on assumptions, or improbability (impossibility) at key points such as that are still my main criticism but as we both knew from the first letter of the first word of my first comment, a convergence of outlook was not going to happen. That was a SAFE assumption! I have to go back to riding a bicycle as fast and as hard as I can now. What were my odds of striking a raccoon dead center at more than thirty miles an hour while on my bike? Six billion to one because I’m one of six billion people right? Of course not, MUCH better than that because I was on my bike, on a country road, in an area habituated by raccoon, at dusk, going faster than 30 mph (downhill), next to a corn field…heck, I just convinced myself I’m lucky not to hit one every time I go for a ride!

So there you have it, the best I can do by analogy and logic to convey that your assumptions are even more concerning than those supposedly given to science. As I said before, science is self-cannibalistic and as such, I trust that more in the long run and the problem I see with other people not accepting that is they expect that “long” run to occur within their lifetime and discernible past. Science gives no such comfort.

Finch

Finch,

It is not just ATP that is required for life. ATP is an energy source. Life could have evolved the ability to use the energy from some other molecule - like hydrogen first. Nevertheless, because ATP contains adenine, using ATP for energy gives life a fairly simple way to add adenine to a growing RNA chain and power the reaction at the same time. Thus, it is highly likely that the first living thing (supposedly an RNA molecule) used and required ATP to replicate.

At some point in life’s evolution (or creation), it had to take the form of life as we know it today. This has led most scientists to suggest that the first form of life was a self replicating RNA molecule. I am very skeptical of this idea for reasons that I outline in chapters 13 and 14. But for simplicity, I sumarize here:

For a self replicating RNA molecule, ATP, GTP, CTP and UTP all become critical chemicals. To add adenine to a growing RNA chain, life uses ATP today. The high energy bonds in ATP are broken and the energy so released powers the addition of adenine to the growing chain. To add a uracil, life needs UTP. The breaking of these high energy bonds drives replication and perhaps more importantly since the desired base is part of the high energy molecule, this method is perhaps the simplest system that one can imagine that looks something like life today. This realization lead scientists to the idea of a self replicating RNA molecule.

So how is RNA created today? RNA polymerase, a very complex protein enzyme, replicates the DNA template. Cells also need a method to create ATP, CTP, GTP and UTP. Plus, a method a create ribose, uracil, cytosine, adenine, and guanine. These secondary chemical pathways are all driven by the hydrolysis of ATP in life today. Creating adenine requires 11 separate enzymes today. Life creates ribose during photosynthesis.

Certainly, the simplest form of life might be simpler than it is today, but it would still be constrained by the second law of thermodynamics. This presents two problems: 1) since the chemicals mentioned above like adenine, cytosine and ribose would be absent from the soup ( see chapter 9 in the book) the simplest form of life has to be able to make these. 2) This simplest form of life must also be able to couple its own replication to a plentiful energy source like ATP. It stands to reason that the first life did use ATP as an energy source, because even if it chose to use something else it still needs adenine to add adenine to the growing RNA chain.

The difference between intelligent design and science boils down to one assumption. Intelligent design assumes that the above challenges will not be solved by science. Science assumes that they will. The graph that I show in the preface of the book makes this difference clear. As time passes and the problems associated with the origin of life remain unsolved, intelligent design becomes stronger and the naturalistic axiom becomes weaker.

Science has had about a century to solve this problem. But to be fair, I would say that science was only capable of solving it for about the last 60 years. The disturbing aspect of this particular problem is that science is diverging from the answer as it learns more about the challenges. Today, the idea of a self replicating RNA molecules still persists only because science does not have a better hypothesis. Numerous experiments have shown the hypothesis false ( see Joyce, Orgel and Shapiro references in chapter 9 of the book), yet it still lives.

In the end, it is a matter of personal taste. The assumptions that we make up front determine our world view or paradigm. I see no way around this.

I use to believe in the naturalistic axiom and as such I accepted self replicating RNA molecules and the primordial soup. I did not re-evaluate my initial assumptions until I read Thaxton’s book - The Mystery of Life’s Origin. Unfortunately, it is out of print, but I would highly recommend it. Thaxton was a bit smarter than I was in that he never makes the design inference, he just outlines the problems and lets the reader make the jump. If I could do it over, I would have followed his lead and avoided the politics.