S2Focus

(If there are any lurkers/participants on this board who live near Univ. of California, San Diego, you might want to consider attending.)

According to the "Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness" (aka "IDEA") Club web-site, <a href="http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/" target="_blank">http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/</a> , Dr. Wells will giving a lecture at the Price Center (Ballroom B) on the UCSD campus at 7PM, Tuesday Jan 29.

I would imagine that there's a good chance that the house will be packed with religious fundamentalists bussed in from off-campus, so anyone who wants to get a good seat (or *any* seat) should get there early. I know of at least one extremely knowledgeable and talented ID skeptic who will be there, well armed with some pointed questions (of course, there's no guarantee that the event organizers will permit any kind of meaningful Q&A session).

Anyway, whilst perusing the "IDEA" club web-site, I couldn't help but notice the complete *lack* of interaction/dialogue the "IDEA" club has had with local scientific/biotechnology communities.

The IDEA club operates right smack in the middle of one of the largest concentrations of scientific/biotech talent in North America. In addition to UCSD (with its world-class biology/molecular-biology research programs), you have the Scripps Institute just down the hill, and the Salk Institute just up Torrey Pines Road. Furthermore, you have a large science park with all manner of innovative biotechnology corporations right there next to UCSD.

If there were anything in "Intelligent Design" theory worthy of merit, you'd expect that the "IDEA" club would be regularly hosting talks by representatives from UCSD, Scripps, the Salk Insitute, and the local biotechnology community in order to exchange ideas about ID theory and its applications.

But a quick look at the "IDEA" club's speaker/event schedule (see <a href="http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/calendar.shtml)" target="_blank">http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/calendar.shtml)</a> for the past couple of years shows that there's been virtually no interaction between the "IDEA" club and the local scientific/biotech community. I wonder why that might be?

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: S2Focus ]</p>

CodeMason

His book is worthless, and as shockingly bad as any ICR tract. I could refute the whole thing in about 6 minutes. Of course it's rather hard to be on the offensive in the speaker/audience situation, when you're in the audience. Especially if they give you a biased moderator.

S2Focus

Wesley Elsberry and I attended Jonathan Wells' lecture at UCSD last Tuesday.
I was quite impressed with Dr. Wells -- he's slicker than a wet watermelon
seed, and he played the audience like a cheap harmonica. And going up against
him during the Q/A session was rather like standing in a swimming pool and
punching the water.

Wells very cleverly avoided taking any particular stands regarding the age
of the earth, common ancestry, evidence for macro-evolution/speciation, etc.
He often responded to queries by saying that he wouldn't rule these things out,
but that the evidence simply wasn't conclusive to him.

There were some interesting exchanges, though (the material below was taken from some of Wesley's notes
+ a few of my own recollections)...

One exchange revolved around Hox genes. Wells' position was that Hox genes are
so similar across phyla, but the body plans and organs affected by these genes are
so different, that this poses a critical paradox for evolutionists. When the
questioner responded by pointing out the Hox genes function as "switches", turning
on/off "downstream" genes that are much more diversified, Wells replied that there
was no solid evidence to support such a notion. Of course, people familiar with Hox
genes know that this isn't true, but Wells' audience sure didn't. Score more points
(at least in the eyes of the true believers) for Wells.

Wesley tried to pin down Wells by asking him for an ID research "progress report".
About 5 years ago, Wesley attended the 1997 NTSE conference; there he tried to get
ID proponents to state what a theory of intelligent design would look like, and to
derive a testable hypothesis which the ID "researchers" would attempt to verify
by doing empirical research.

So here we are in 2002, with Wesley requesting an update from Dr. Wells. Wells replied
by citing Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box", claiming that the "irreducible
complexity" of biological systems implied intelligent design. Wesley's kicking himself
a bit for not immediately replying to Wells that DBB was published in *1996* and that
he was looking for evidence of progress since *1997*.


So Wells in effect ended up acknowledging that there's been absolutely no progress over
the last 5 years in developing a scientific theory of design -- but he did so in such
a way as to give the audience the opposite impression. It was a masterful performance!


I asked Wells a couple of questions that he deflected quite deftly while implicitly
acknowledging (w/o tipping off most of the audience!) that he and the Discovery
Institute have basically been doing nothing for the past few years. Given that
Wells referred to himself as a scientist in the present tense during his talk, I
first asked him about his most recent empirical scientific research. He responded
by citing papers that he co-authored back in 1996/1997. No matter that it's currently
2002 and the most recent work that Wells could cite is now 5-6 years old. (If Wells
really is a practicing "scientist", he's certainly not a very productive one!) But of
course that was all lost on the audience.


I then mentioned how a friend of mine who works in the biotech industry (developing
bioinformatics software) told me that much of his company's product line relies
heavily on the validity of evolution/common descent. I said that if evolution
is invalid, a lot of biotech investors' money is being wasted "barking up the wrong
tree" and that biotech companies who are seriously investigating potential applications
of ID would have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. I then asked Wells if
the Discovery Insitute or any of its premier ID researchers had been getting any
funding from the biotech industry. Wells acknowledged that the DI had not received
any funding from the biotech industry, but he spun his reply in such a way as to
ensure that this point was lost on the most of the audience.


These ID guys really have a good thing going here. In 5 years, they've accomplished
*none* of the claimed milestones in their ID "research program". They've made absolutely
*zero* progress, in fact! But their "funding agencies" (namely religious organizations)
just don't care! (Talk about money for nothing!) These ID "researchers" just travel the
country (making sure that their winter destinations are nice places like San Diego)
preaching to the choir. Tough questions from skeptics are easily deflected when the
audience consists mostly of "true believers". And as for the skeptics, who cares?
ID proponents don't depend upon skeptics for funding.

hezekiah jones

Good questions. I think Karl Popper first became suspicious of the alleged scientific nature of both Marxism and Freudian theory because they were inherently undefeatable: that is, they could "successfully" explain any and all observations. Sounds a bit like ID to me, which, as you point out, has the added advantage of having accomplished absolutely nothing.