Touchstone and Intelligent Design

Touchstone is mentioned in professional skeptic Michael Shermer's new book, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. Shermer, a graduate of the Campbell/Stone movement school Pepperdine University in Malibu who once aspired to Christian ministry, now is one of the most hostile critics of Christianity. In the relevant section of this volume, Shermer hopes to show that Intelligent Design is not as theologically neutral as some proponents claim. Shermer writes:

In a feature article in the Christian magazine Touchstone, [William] Dembski was even more direct: 'Intelligent Design is just the Logos theory of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.'

Make no mistake about it. Creationists and their Intelligent Design brethern do not just want equal time, they want all the time they can get.

Comments

[Wonders For Oyarsa]

In the light of these troubling accusations, it would be rather judicious to put this disclaimer on your site.

[Tom G]

I suppose Shermer does not want all the time he (and his brethren) can get?

[Stuart Koehl]

I have no problem with evolution, save that it writes epistemological checks it cannot cash. This seems to be the prevailing difficulty with scientists today: they try to apply scientific method to areas of human existence not amenable to a purely materialist epistemology, and thus fall into the error of making "faith statements" at least as strong, and less defensible, than those made by people of faith.

[James A. Altena]

Very nice succinct statement, Stuart!

[Unapologetic Catholic]

Shermer will continue to score points against Christianity as long as it embraces all forms of creationism, including ID. ID attempts to distance itself from the "smear" of creationism. Let's all agree then that both young earth and old earth creationism are not worthy of serious scientific consideration.

ID claims to be different. Michael Behe, for example, accepts common ancestry of all living things and natural selection as an engine of evolutionary change--the two key principles of evolution. ID, to remain untainted by creationism, readily concedes that evolution explains the vast majority of biological activity on our planet, especially at all levels above the molecular level.

Behe, though, suggests that, at the molecular level, some things are so irreducibly complex they could not have evolved. Let's assume this is true. What percentage of biology is controlled by the concededly valid evolutionary principles and what percentage is irreducibly complex? Is evolution fully satisfactory for 50% 75% or 99% of all of biological activity? Even Behe would concede the percentage is very very high--evolution is overwhelming correct, even under Behe's concept of ID.

Bhehe wrote Darwin’s Black Boxin 1996 and identified five or six (depending how you count) irreducibly complex systems that he claimed could not have evolved. In the intervening years he has not identified any more IC systems. Neither has anybody else. Of those he identified in 1996, most, if not all, have been identified as not irreducibly complex after all. Behe restricts his public arguments to one system, the flagella and concedes that his definition of Irreducible Complexity has functional problems.

Dembski approached the design issue by a probability calculation. Also conceding that regularity and chance describe much of nature, he nevertheless suggested that some events were so extremely unlikely that they could not realistically be accounted for by chance or regularity. He suggested that events whose probability of happening were less than 1 in 10^150 would be treated as "designed." There are a number of problems with Dembski's approach, but the chief one is that neither he nor anybody else has actually performed this calculation any living system. What are the actual odds of evolution of a flagellum? Dembski won't perform the calculation. In fact, he can’t --he doesn’t know how.

ID isn't identifying additional irreducibly complex candidates. Nobody is calculating the odds of evolution of any biological system. ID has no ongoing research program and has proposed none. It does however, have a public relations department that routinely mixes creationists arguments, non-sequiturs and obvious distortions at a level unmatched since Baghdad Bob reported no Americans were in Iraq’s capital. ID is not science at all. There is no controversy to discuss or teach.

With this state of affairs, ID proponents had only three options at the Dover ID trial- Don't show up (Dembski' choice); tell the truth and state that ID is as scientifically valid as astrology (Behe's choice), or, sadly, lie. (The trial judge noticed that this was the choice a of a disappointing numkber of proponents).

Shermer is allowed the opportunity of making the Matthew 7:16 argument against Christianity as a whole by focusing on the dissembling and dishonesty connected with the Christian backing of ID. As long ID is offered as a fruit of a Christian tree, the tree itself is vulnerable to this attack.

[Stuart Koehl]

Again, the problem is not that science and the Christian faith are dichotomous, but rather that extreme proponents of each make epistemologial and teleological claims that cannot be validated; each moves into the sphere that rightly belongs to the other. Thus, evolutionary scientists are not content to present the evidence regarding the evolution of species, but must go beyond to state that these effects are generated by purely "random" mutations. However, there is no way to prove whether the observed mutations are random or not, since science is incapable of "observing" the hand of a Creator who may or may not be there. It thus requires an act of "faith" to assert that life has evolved in the universe through random events, even though the odds against such an outcome are only slightly less (or perhaps more) improbable than the claim that an old man with a white beard who looked like Charleton Heston breathed on the waters and brought forth life.

On the other side of the leger, biblical literalists must resort to the most outrageous reading of the evidence to come to their conclusion, and their perspective is rightly rejected (since it wasn't even accepted by educated Christians in the Patristic era). At the same time, proponents of intelligent design likewise make epistemological and teleological claims that cannot be sustained based on evidence. Instead of being content to point out the existence of irreducible complexity and the statistical improbability of evolutionary history, and letting go, they must insert the deadly "therefore" clause which puts them on the same slippery slope as the evolutionary materialists.

Science is the handmaiden of theology, not its nemesis. Science presents evidence of the material world; it is the role of theology to give meaning to the evidence, not to cherrypick the evidence to sustain a conclusion already reached. Science by itself is not capable of providing ultimate answers or discerning non-contingent causes; it is entirely dependent on theology to provide meaning to its work. It should therefore not attempt to exalt that work over the insights of theology, or to put that work in opposition to it, but rather should approach the mysteries of the universe with the kind of intellectual humility one ought to expect when confronting a cosmos of such grandeur and beauty.

[Unapologetic Catholic]

I would not paint all evolutionary scientists with the same brush. Evolutionary biologists do not use "random" in the sense suggested, but, in any event, it is true that science in general and evolution particular cannot be used to disprove God.

ID attacks the science offered in support of such proof claims, a strategy that is bound to backfire.

On the other hand, recognizing the science, but attacking the logic of such proof claims, as Mr. Koehl does, has the dual advantages of simplicity and accuracy.

[Kip Watson]

I don't see the need for a conflict between science and Christianity. I was an atheist who came back to God initially from reading in science and mathematics. The more I read in these areas, the more awed I was by the perfection of our universe, with its many mysteries and outrageous coincidences, and sheer implausibility of the dull materialistic explanations (which explain nothing, in fact, but merely assert).

I came to an appreciation of Christian truth the same way. As an open minded science loving guy, I applied the scientific method to it - I tested it, and was astounded, at first, by the depth and subtlety of Christian thought, and then by the genuine feeling of the presence of God and clear evidence of his ongoing handiwork on my life and my soul.

One of the first evidences I found for the truth of Biblical revelation is not that the ancient stories of Genesis etc are literally true, I don't believe they are (although I think their is much historical truth embedded in them), but that they are nevertheless so profoundly spiritually true.

No mythology in the world contains such knowledge (I don't regard Genesis as mythology, it deserves its own category). The myths of even the great cultures are interesting, and there is often some truth in them - but in comparison to the Bible it is always rather shallow and obvious truth, no more than you might expect from the culture that produced them.

How else, but by spiritual revelation, could a primitive, illiterate, nomadic people who could not tell the difference themselves between history and myth, come into possession of knowledge of the human soul that continues to teach and enrich us thousands of years later, knowledge that is multilayered and profound beyond anything a primitive culture has ever produced.

I think among the materialists the hatred of Christianity stems in great part from envy and frustration at this fact. Darwin's theories are a marvellous source of worldly knowledge, they have taught medical researchers a great deal about human physiology and helped to cure many diseases.

But they reveal nothing about who we are. they often claim to, but their revelations are either trite ('the beast in man' yawn) or plainly false. That, with all their technology and intellect, science is still inferior in its deepest philosophy to the ignorant shepherds of the Bronze Age must be galling to those scientific atheists who see themselves as an enlightened elite.

[Daniel C.]

"Make no mistake about it. Creationists and their Intelligent Design brethern do not just want equal time, they want all the time they can get."

Yeah, ... and that's a problem because ... what?

[Daniel C.]

Based on Shermer's whining that those who promote ID "want all the time they can get", I'm left wondering why we even engage this as a science vs. religion debate. It strikes me as just another effort by Secular Fundamentalists to restrict religious expression in the Public Square, which includes the public education system.

[JackONeill]

An intelligent and politely spoken thread. What happened to the trolls? Did they stay up too late last night?

[Gene Godbold]

Dear Unapologetic Catholic,

As a biochemist (and ID agnostic) who has been (trying) to pay attention to Behe's version of ID, I would be delighted in your directing me to the mechanistically detailed refutations of (any) of Behe's supposedly irreducibly complex systems. I was aware of only one--an attempt to describe how the complement system of blood might have evolved--that was almost laughable in its "just so"-ness. Incidentally, I worked on a problem related to one of them in graduate school (lysosomal enzyme sorting) and hadn't realized that such a breakthrough in evolutionary understanding had been realized. (I feel embarrassed.)

Since we don't know how much biology we don't know, doesn't it seem a bit, umm, ambitious to try to specify the percentage for which an evolutionary explanation might be adequate (or not)?

Unless you are familiar with large swaths of molecular biology and looking at new areas, it is not likely that you should expect to discover pathways that might be classed under the "irreducibly complex" rubric. I think I might have seen several, notably the signal transduction cascades of certain immune cells (T and B cell signalling). This, of course, doesn't prove anything, but examples are out there if one is alert for the possibility. In my experience, the vast majority of scientists (close to 100%? :-) are not so alert.

[Nick]

Gene,

My understanding (computer engineer not a biologist) was the same. I'm unaware of any direct attack on Behe's work. There have been several "just so" stories like the one on the mouse trap, but nothing I've read actually addresses Behe's argument.

[Gene Godbold]

Kip,
When you say that:

"Darwin's theories are a marvellous source of worldly knowledge, they have taught medical researchers a great deal about human physiology and helped to cure many diseases."

...are you merely being effusive? What diseases have gotten cured by people logically following Darwin's theory (as opposed to, say, Koch's postulates)? I'd like some specific examples if you know of any--and I'm not (just) being rhetorical. I've spent 17 years in science struggling to see some (non-trivial) discoveries that have largely been due to predictions from Darwin's theories and not some post-facto rationalization. I could show you scores of papers in molecular biology and biochemistry that present the data and then tack on (to the ultimate or penultimate paragraph) a statement along the lines of: "and this is in accord with what evolutionary theory might predict" when there is, in fact, no logical connection between what they have demonstrated and anything related to natural selection acting on random variations at all.

[Unapologetic Catholic]

My goodness, Mr. Godbold is not a very intellectually curious individual!

He does miss my point regarding ID's acceptance of the bulk of evolution. As I pointed out Behe, and those ID proponents not also creationists, contend that evolution is well understood and works in the vast majority of biological systems that we know of today. It is only the exceptional case that it does not. My point was that those exceptions are so few that even under the most optimistic ID analysis, the vast bulk of or current knowledge of biology is accepted as reasonably sound under evolutionary principles. The state of our future knowledge is a completely different issue. The only question is how great is that figure. I suspect the Behe would concede that it is as high as 99% above the cellular level. This of course means that ID is not at all in conflict with evolution but is at best a fine tuning of evolution in the same manner that Einstein fine tuned Newtonian physics.

And that assumes that all five or six of Behe's Irreducibly complex systems and the T and B cell systems are all irreducibly complex ["IC".] ID's actual output is paltry by any standard.

The point of IC is to identify systems that could not have evolved. It is not necessary to demonstrate a "mechanistic " refutation. All that is necessary is to show likely evolutionary pathways. These are particularly convincing when those involve biological systems like the secretory system known to have evolved and show how it is co-opted into a motility system such as the flagella. Nobody has adequately dealt with these refutations: http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Musgrave/essays/flagella.htm (flagella); http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/Evolving_Immunity.html (immune system). When faced with these challenges, Behe revised his definition of IC conceding that that IC systems could have evolved indirectly. Behe's own definition guts the foundation of ID, because if a system could evolve either directly or indirectly, then ID has nothing at all to offer.

I don't know when Mr. Godbold last studied the signal transduction cascades or when he went to graduate school, but there is a enormous amount of literature discussing these cascades and lysosomal ensyme sorting from an evolutionary standpoint. Here are just some: www.pitt.edu/~traub/publications/browse.pdf; www.biochemj.org/bj/imps/pdf/BJ20060033.pdf; www.actabp.pl/pdf/3_2003/691s.pdf; on Lysosomal ensyme sorting. There are thousands more.

Same for signaling: http://www.promega.com/paguide/chap7.htm; http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_signalingimmuneresponse/signalingimmuneresponse.html; http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/1/169. Thousands more.

Nobody suggests these are not understandable form an evolutionary perspective and many of these articles discuss evolutionary development of the systems in question.

If Mr. Godbold actually thinks he has identified any biological system as IC, he has made quite a scientific discovery on the order of discovering a monolith on the moon. I recommend that he contact Dr. Behe to determine if Behe thinks these are IC. I would be fascinated by either a "Yes" or "No" answer, but I predict Behe won't answer unequivocally. Apparently the lure of a Nobel Prize is not enough to spur actual research into ID principles.

As to evolution's relevance to medicine, it's good that Mr. Godbold brings up Koch's Postulates. Alas, Koch's postulate are not completely reliable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch's_postulates. Why? Because evolution happens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5_%CE%9432.

Evolution is essential to medicine in too many ways to list: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol4/Beej-4-3.htm#Ewald; http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/711; http://www.college.ucla.edu/webproject/micro12/m12webnotes/viralevolution.htm;
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/1/169;
http://www.genome.jp/dbget-bin/www_bget?omim+147280

In short, evolution is essential in understanding genetic disorders, evolution of viruses and bacteria and development of vaccines, and medical experimentation. Would you prefer your next vaccine test subject to be a relatively genetically related chimpanzee or a more distantly related starfish? there's a practical reason why primates are used in medical research. You can't pretend to be oblivious to this.

[Gene Godbold]

I'm undoubtedly intellectually curious in one sense--that of "weird" and "strange" :-). All through my science education--high school, college (chemistry), graduate school (biochemistry/cell biology), and postdoctoral fellowship (infectious diseases and molecular biology), I've been resistant to the party line on macroevolution. I taught aspects of it it to undergraduate and grad students for two years (full time), but I still had my doubts. I don't think I'm resistant to evidence, but maybe I look at the evidence differently. Granting that microevolution is obviously true (we can see it in a lab, we can see it in nature and we intimately understand the molecular processes involved), can these processes be honestly extrapolated to all the variation we see in nature? I just don't know. Some days I think I can see how certain large scale changes might have occurred. Other days, looking at other problems, it doesn't seem that probable. Maybe I just don't have enough imagination (though I've never seemed to lack it in other areas).

The flagellum proposal is interesting, but even the author notes--somewhat whimsically--that there are problems that could only be solved by attempting to actually design the thing from scratch. The biodesign guys at MIT are assembling a toolkit for doing such, but I doubt we're going to be able to test this hypothesis for at least a decade. Of course, even if you do show that it *could* have happened that way, you still don't know if it did (but it does make it less likely that it is irreducibly complex).

It is hard to actually look at "descent with modification" in microorganisms in particular because they are such whores. Most bacteria will pick up "foreign" DNA at the drop of a hat--and integration of large tracts of "foreign" DNA into the genome (and not just existing on episomes in the cytosol) is a frequent occurrence. You need sophisticated algorithms to tease apart the differences and--if enough time has passed since integration--the process of discernment is admittedly hopeless.

The link UC gives related to Darwinian medical education contains a surprisingly tendentious (not to say ludicrous) assertion (when evolution is included, it will give students not only a new perspective on disease, but also an integrating framework on which to hang a million otherwise arbitrary facts. Darwinian medicine could bring intellectual coherence to the chaotic enterprise of medical education), but only contains sociological data regarding medical students beliefs regarding evolution. I can't see how it contributes to UC's argument. (Incidentally, the rate of evolution skeptics is even higher among American physicians.)

Matt Inlay's tract on evolving immunity sets up a number of straw men and makes a large number of assumptions when it isn't simply stating stuff anyone can read in any immunology text. But before I launch into a mechanistic critique, I want to ask UC a question. What part of Inlay's argument did he find most compelling vis a vis Behe? I'm asking you this to see if you even glanced at the explanation, since

1) I have my doubts that you actually read these articles you googled.
2) I have my doubts you even understand the vocabulary to assess whether these objections are valid (or not).

There were thousands of articles on signal transduction before I started graduate school in 1989. There were thousands published between then and when I graduated in 1996 and there have been tens of thousands published since (I even contributed to them). But I'm not going to read all of them, or even all the ones you post, without your showing me that you can actually engage. I spend my working day reading and writing about biochemistry, biomedicine and biotechnology and I'd be happy to address specific examples that you think are compelling (I like the flagellum article, it was short and to the point, but pointing out genetic relatedness isn't the same as demonstrating functionality.)

UC is obviously playing with me on the subject of the HIV co-receptor (the beta chemokine receptor 5/CCR5)--a trivial example of microevolution. And it is clear (and has always been clear, even--I suspect--to Adam) that all creatures have physical similarities with each other. It is the origin of those similarities and the theory set forward to explain those similarities that I wonder about.

[xebra]

Very good site! aTWaZMy6
http://software-xebra.ls1fun.com/distributor-form-software-xebra.html

[Unapologetic Catholic]

Mr. Godbold missed my points, intentionally or not. Mr. Godbold breezily claimed that evolution had nothing to offer medicine that was not already performed by Koch’s principles. In my response, I simply point out that Koch’s principles work imperfectly, unless you apply the evolutionary principles so devalued by Mr. Godbold—then they work much better. The reference deftly and simply demonstrates why the breezy assertion was untrue. My reference to the HIV co-receptor was only a specific example of the use of evolution in medicine that Mr. Godbold so boldly denies. Here’s a quote from the article: “The third postulate does not always happen, as Koch himself discovered and stated in regard to both tuberculosis and cholera (Koch, 1884). Indeed, we see this today with diseases such as HIV, where CCR5 Δ32 deletion individuals seem to be resistant to infection with HIV.” I am not the one playing with Mr. Goldbold. He denied that evolution is an important consideration in medicine. I’m afraid he’s playing with himself, here and not fooling anybody.

Mr. Godbold attempts to turn this discussion into a contest to see who can figuratively urinate further up the wall by challenging my reading comprehension of the scientific and technical articles. I decline to participate in the contest. Imlay’s article—all of it—demonstrates how various immune systems evolved in living biological organisms that developed over hundreds of missions of years. Again, that’s not the only article discussing the issue at length. If Mr. Godbold rejects evolution’s impact on immune systems he is a minority of one. My reading comprehension has no bearing on the fact that he is a lonely minority in this scientific discussion.

Similarly, I listed only those transport system articles that explicitly rely on evolutionary principles--yes, I read and chose them for that purpose. I didn’t list all of them. Mr. Godbold shrugs claiming there are thousands of such articles. Amazingly, none of mine, or Mr. Godbold’s thousands, express the puzzlement that Mr. Godbold expresses. His lack of curiosity as to why he, alone, is so puzzled by the inevolvability of the transport system is telling. The intellectually honest response to my references would have been to suggest several references discussing the inability of such systems to evolve. Instead, Mr. Godbold suggests I can’t comprehend these articles. Intellectual honesty threshold noted.

He shows his true colors by doubting macroevolution. This is not an argument made by serious ID proponents. It is an argument made by creationists. The argument being made is that God created separate "kinds" of plants and animals. Creationists argue there may have been minor evolutionary adaptations but there is no common ancestry and no "macroevolution" whatever that is. So, do you think that cats and dogs are separate kinds? Or do they share a common ancestor? How about whales and hippopotamuses? Separate or common ancestor? Again Mr. Godbold is amazingly incurious.

No serious biological scientist, not even Michael Behe, shares Mr. Godbold’s doubts or lack of curiosity. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ (I have read the entire article but not at one sitting. It takes hours to read all the links, but the evidence is overwhelming that Mr. Godbold is dead wrong when he suggests there is some lack of evidence for macroevolution.)

All Mr. Godbold need to tell us is how long ago was the earth created. If it was less than 100,000 years ago he’s a young earth creationist. If he thinks it was longer than that, then he’s an old earth creationist.

But what’s in a name? Is there something bad abount being a creationist? ID proponents think so--they constantly complain they are being "smeared" by the name (even though they make the same arguments--a fact nicely demonstrated by Mr. Godbold). The reason is that creationism is bad science and everybody knows that.

It's also bad theology. This brings us full circle to the source of Mr. Shermer’s atheism. He found out that the creationism that he was taught as a fact in Sunday school was not true. Worse, the status of science had been knowingly misrepresented to him by his religious instructors. If you wish your children to follow Mr. Shermer’s path, then continue with the creationism and the rejection of solid science. Your children will swell the ranks of agnostics and atheists when they grow older.

Sad.

[Contemplato]

Excellent point regarding the lack of curiousity on the part of creationists. I have found I.D. people to be more interesting--and interested--as biologists and scientists, though there is the same general distrust that God might be at work in what are merely operationally random phenomena for we, the observers.

Most creationists I know are lawyers and engineers. Not surprising given either the notion of evidence, in the case of the former, and pragmatic problem solving with general distain for open-ended questions, in the case of the latter. Forgive me if this borders on an ad hominem argument. It is not intended to be so, but rather a recognition of how training may influence a significant number (but certainly not all) of the practitioners of an art to think a certain way. That being likely, certain problems may not lend themselves to proper analysis on the terms of their training.

I also appreciate Unapologetic Catholic's mention of the matter of "from their own kinds" in Genesis. As a Catholic and evolutionary scientist, I always considered it a given that this aspect the Biblical account demonstrated a rather nice agreement with gradual speciation events. Gradual in the non-technical sense that bifurcating populations descend from ancestors that were not identical to the progeny, but were of a close "kind," as in kindred, as in kin.