Freethought & Rationalism Archive

pseudobug · 01-26-2002, 08:59 AM

and the underlying strategy behind the "movement, in your opinion, making inroads in "converting" evo/cretin fence-sitters?

I ask this question as a scientist that has recently delved into the issue and the furor surrounding ID. (Yeah, I haven't "gotten out much" and talked to florid ID'ers and have ignored the "pop-sci" and political meddling on the issue for the last decade).

Just from a week of casual reading on the topic of ID, it is easy to see the overwhelming lack of scientific evidence supporting the "theory" of ID. OTOH, the strategic aims of the movement appear to me to be quite sinister and, potentially, very effective considering the target audience and modus operandi of ID leaders.

I know this is likely an old issue with regulars, but I'm curious as to the opinions of other scientists and educated non-scientists interested in evolution.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

theyeti · 01-26-2002, 09:46 AM

The ID movement is making political progress, because that's what it's desgined to do (no pun intended). Scientifically, it's going nowhere, despite that they claim that it's primarily a scientific movement. Try reading the <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/idt/wedge.html" target="_blank">Wedge document</a> if you haven't already. It is very scary, and it shows how their entire aim is ideological -- they would be perfectly happy if all of science were thrown down the drain. (And in case you couldn't tell, their ideology is far right conservatism, the same as other creationists). In their section on "5 year goals", they're well ahead of schedule except when it comes to scientific research and convincing academics. Here's their "plan" for conducting research:

Quote:

(2) Front line research funding at the "pressure points" (e.g., Daul Chien's Chengjiang Cambrian Fossil Find in paleontology, and Doug Axe's research laboratory in molecular biology)

Now, ignoring the obvious fallacy in focusing on issues where our knowledge is weakest, these particular areas have been highly counterproductive for the DI. See this thread on <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/idt/wedge.html" target="_blank">New phylum discovered</a>; the Chengjiang assemblage has been suporting evolution! The DI people made the usual mistake in assuming that evolution was false, and therefore didn't brace themselves for the possibility that further research on the unknowns would keep suporting it.

As for Douglas Axe, I don't know much about him, but molecualr biology as a whole is extremely supportive of evolution. Here's a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=&DB=PubMed" target="_blank">PubMed</a> search on his work. He only has about 5 or so aricles over the past 15 years, at least if this search is correct. I found this one <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/93/11/5590" target="_blank">article</a> quite interesting myself:

Quote:

Active barnase variants with completely random hydrophobic cores.

Axe DD, Foster NW, Fersht AR.

Medical Research Council Unit for Protein Function and Design, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The central structural feature of natural proteins is a tightly packed and highly ordered hydrophobic core. If some measure of exquisite, native-like core packing is necessary for enzymatic function, this would constitute a significant obstacle to the development of novel enzymes, either by design or by natural or experimental evolution. To test the minimum requirements for a core to provide sufficient structural integrity for enzymatic activity, we have produced mutants of the ribonuclease barnase in which 12 of the 13 core residues have together been randomly replaced by hydrophobic alternatives. Using a sensitive biological screen, we find that a strikingly high proportion of these mutants (23%) retain enzymatic activity in vivo. Further substitution at the 13th core position shows that a similar proportion of completely random hydrophobic cores supports enzyme function. Of the active mutants produced, several have no wild-type core residues. These results imply that hydrophobicity is nearly a sufficient criterion for the construction of a functional core and, in conjunction with previous studies, that refinement of a crudely functional core entails more stringent sequence constraints than does the initial attainment of crude core function. Since attainment of crude function is the critical initial step in evolutionary innovation, the relatively scant requirements contributed by the hydrophobic core would greatly reduce the initial hurdle on the evolutionary pathway to novel enzymes. Similarly, experimental development of novel functional proteins might be simplified by limiting core design to mere specification of hydrophobicity and using iterative mutation-selection to optimize core structure.

Well, it doesn't look like things are turning out the way the DI wants them to. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise -- their arguments are extremely bad and the evidence is soundly stacked in favor of evolution. We expect new discoveries to continue to be supportive of it as they have in the past. The DI opperates with the assumption that it must be wrong, and then in an extreme act of hypocrisy, they accuse scientists of accepting it only because of their bias!

Science doesn't mean a thing to them. They are interested in their ideology, and they have chosen to attack science as a way of legitimizing it. Scientists are not being fooled, but unfortunately, the public is. The ID movement is basically one big propaganda machine that spreads misinformation to the ignorant masses in the hope of winning a scientific debate through political means. At least the YECs (who, by the way, the IDists actively court) don't make any false pretense about what they're doing. The ID movement is a scary thing.

theyeti

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: theyeti ]

hezekiah jones · 01-26-2002, 10:08 AM

As usual theyeti is right on the money. ID is clever politics, bad philosophy, and even worse science.

Since the creationists* have been flogged so badly in court, on both establishment and free exercise grounds, they are supposedly redirecting their addle-brained crusade to the "grassroots."

The <a href="http://www.natcenscied.org/" target="_blank">NCSE</a> website is a pretty good resource for tracking their antics.

* This includes IDers. I don't see much difference, except that IDers are better at math.

theyeti · 01-26-2002, 10:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by hezekiahjones:
 This includes IDers. I don't see much difference, except that IDers are better at math.

As far as I can tell, ID is nothing more than "scientific creationism" with the stupider parts removed. Also, the religious part is toned down to circumvent the 1st Ammendment. Their strategies and political goals are identical.

theyeti

Major Billy · 02-03-2002, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pseudobug:
OTOH, the strategic aims of the movement appear to me to be quite sinister and, potentially, very effective considering the target audience and modus operandi of ID leaders.

I was rather worried when the "Intelligent Design" became active. I feared that they would be far more credible than the old "Creation Science" cult ever was at appearing to be scientifically respectable.

Then I read <a href="http://www.reviewevolution.org/press/fromPress_FatuousFilmmaking.php" target="_blank">this article</a> by the chief proponent of ID theory, Michael J. Behe.

I worry less now.

Boshko · 02-03-2002, 05:52 PM

"As far as I can tell, ID is nothing more than "scientific creationism" with the stupider parts removed."
Well, it is a very large change of emphasis. All of Morris' BS, which basically founded modern creationism (ripped off of Price's BS of course) was centered around Flood Geology. Flood Geology seem to be dying and the creationists are moving into biology more, specifically molecular (Behe etc.).
This change is in creationists favor since there are a hell of a lot more fundies with biology degrees than geology degrees since lots of christian colleges have long had biology programs to help their graduates get medical-related jobs. Also just about all of geology is historical science or really closely tied to historical science so trying to get a geology degree tends to make creationists' heads explode with cognitive dissonce to a greater degree than creationists trying to get biology degrees where they can study something like molecular biology were they'll come across a lot less things that directly contradict their idiocy...

lpetrich · 02-03-2002, 06:55 PM

However, here are a few creationist professional geologists; one of them is Andrew Snelling, whose <a href="http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/snelling.htm" target="_blank">sordid story can be found here</a>. One wonders why he does not dump Flood Geology and support Philip Gosse created-appearance creationism.

The IDers are also very cagey about the age of the Earth; they wish to appear to support both young-earthers and old-earthers, it would seem.

The Lone Ranger · 02-03-2002, 07:18 PM

Good grief! Until I read <a href="http://www.reviewevolution.org/press/fromPress_FatuousFilmmaking.php" target="_blank">Major Billy's link</a>, I imagined Behe was merely naive and ignorant. Now I'm thinking that his reasoning borders on the downright idiotic and/or that he's being outright dishonest.

Either way, it's frightening stuff.

His claim that despite the fact that it evolves, the HIV virus is still HIV, and "not a discernibly different virus" is exactly the same argument that YECs make whenever someone demonstrates speciation to them. If someone points out an example of one species of insect evolving into another, the typical YEC response is "Yeah, but it's still an insect -- no new kind has been produced." I actually had some shreds of respect for Behe until I read that.

For what it's worth, for viruses and bacteria, we usually define "species" far more conservatively than we do for "higher" organisms. A 1% genetic difference between two animals, for example, is generally considered to be quite sufficient to establish that they're different species. For bacteria, on the other hand, we generally don't consider them separate species unless the genetic differences between them are something like 20%.

There are already more "species" of bacteria (and viruses) than we can shake a stick at. If we used the same genetic criteria to define bacterial species that we do for animals, we'd "instantly" find ourselves with zillions more species.

If we lowered the bar on bacteria and viruses, a single person infected with a particular bacterial strain could quickly find him/herself infected with quite a lot of different bacterial species, all derived from the original infector.

Cheers,

Michael

Richiyaado · 02-03-2002, 08:10 PM

Hello All,

As a non-scientist who has participated frequently at the ARN forum (though less so currently), I'd have to say that the agenda of the ID movement is certainly succeeding among politicians, policy makers, and among the general public.

Of all the stated goals of the wedge document, it is only in the area of actual science or 'research' where the ID movement has fallen short. As far as I know, there hasn't been any productive research of any kind. On the other hand, with respect to creating popular and political support for the movement, establishing credibility (however tenuous or even specious) within the academic world, and certainly by way of making significant inroads through the courts, I'd say that the wedge strategy is far ahead of schedule.

Considering the fact that the father of the contemporary ID movement, Phillip Johnson, is nothing if not a clever lawyer and skillful rhetorician, none of this should be surprising. My personal opinion is that the many successes of the movement thus far are all merely prologue. The real goal is to find a legal way to get around the 'lemon test' which defeated the last major attempt among creationists to establish a requirement for 'equal time' in public schools (Edwards v. Aguillard). The Louisiana 'Creationism Act' was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because its overtly religious language violated the Establishment Clause. Thus, the ID movement as a whole scrupulously avoids making religious claims, though there's no doubt who the IDer is for its principle proponents (Johnson, Behe, Dembski, Nelson, Plantinga, et al).

Recently, I've noticed that ARN has been attracting more real scientists to its forum. I hope many more will join in, as I think the scientific community can no longer afford to simply write ID off as the pseudoscientific flapdoodle it is. I'd argue that the degree to which mainstream science holds ID to be beneath its notice is the degree to which it is actually playing into the hands of the wedge strategy. It only tends to reinforce a growing public perception that scientists constitute a sort of 'elite priesthood, in control of the production of knowledge'. This is Johnson's oft-repeated mantra and, unfortunately, it's beginning to stick.

I'm editing my post to add that I think it's becoming critical for more scientists, responsible religious leaders, and educators to enter the fray. Much more must be done to expose and publicly challenge the ID movement's agenda at all levels� before school boards and politicians, as well as in the media.

[ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: Richiyaado ]

[ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: Richiyaado ]

The Lone Ranger · 02-03-2002, 09:44 PM

Richiyaado,

You make an excellent point. Far too often, those of us in the scientific community write off creationists (of all stripes) as fringe lunatics and don't pay much attention to their claims. That's one reason why they're so successful with the general public.

In my experience, most working scientists, unless they're forcefully confronted with the evidence, can't bring themselves to believe that there are significant numbers of people out there who are capable of believing anything so absurd.

Unfortunately, the fact that most working scientists tend to ignore the claims of IDers and other creationists as unworthy of serious attention plays right into their hands, since the creationists then claim that the scientists are afraid to engage them in debate.

Also unfortunate is that fact that scientists tend to fare poorly in debates with creationists. Scientists are used to debates where the focus is on the quality of evidence that's available. Nature may be subtle, as someone once said, but she doesn't lie to us. Most scientists who're suckered into debates with creationists simply aren't prepared for the contempt for logic and evidence that the creationists display, nor for the outright dishonesty of the typical creationist debater. As someone (Isaac Asimov, I think), once commented, "a creationist can come up with more lies in an hour than an evolutionist can debunk in a lifetime."

I used to write an occasional column for the local newspaper. Naturally, I would occasionally write on the subject of evolution. On such occasions, the paper would be flooded for weeks afterward with outraged letters by the local Fundamentalists -- on one occasion, a letter-writer made a very public threat on my life. All of this nastiness was despite the fact that I constantly bent over backwards to be respectful of religious beliefs and never responded to the Fundamentalists' venom in kind.

Anyway, I got a telephone call from a local Christian high school one day. The headmaster invited me to come give a talk to "one of their classes" on the subject of evolution. I told him that I was not interested in debating the merits of creationism vs. evolution. He assured me that they simply wanted me to give a lecture on the subject of evolution to one of their classes. I repeated my statement that I wasn't interested in debate, and in return, he repeated his assurance that they only wanted me to give a lecture to one of their classes. So, I agreed.

When I arrived, I was shown into an auditorium where the entire student body was waiting -- every one of them holding a Bible. At the front of the room, standing at a lectern, was the headmaster of the school, who immediately announced to the students that "Here he is, an actual evolutionist scientist, here to debate with us on the subject of evolution vs. creation."

Needless to say, I was appalled that they had lied to me (twice) and deliberately set me up. Still, I kept my temper and gave a presentation. I gave them an overview of modern evolutionary theory, and listed some of the evidence that supports the fact that evolution occurs, and the theories to explain it. For his "rebuttal", the headmaster simply claimed that "belief" in evolution is based on faith, and that there is no actual evidence to support that belief. (In other words, he called me a liar.) I was completely stunned by his "reasoning", and didn't have the guts to call him a liar to his face, as I should have, nor to tell the class how he had lied to me in order to get me there in the first place.

It was abundantly clear that the students considered his rebuttal of my case to be complete and utterly convincing. I thought about it briefly, but decided that, rather than make enemies by calling him a liar (since it was clear that the poor brainwashed sheep would never have believed me), I should remain as nice, polite, and pleasant as possible. At the very least, I hoped that the students would remember that I had been polite and respectful toward them at all times, even though I clearly didn't share their beliefs. Hopefully, the next time their teachers try to tell them that all "evilutionists" are terrible people, they'll remember that the one they've had personal contact with was actually quite nice. Maybe it'll get them to think at least a little.

***

What really disgusts me is to hear such people insist that "evilution" leads to immoral behavior, when they're perfectly willing to lie and deceive in order to promote their beliefs.

--Michael

01-26-2002, 08:59 AM	#1
pseudobug Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: land of confusion Posts: 178	Is modern Intelligent Design "theory"... and the underlying strategy behind the "movement, in your opinion, making inroads in "converting" evo/cretin fence-sitters? I ask this question as a scientist that has recently delved into the issue and the furor surrounding ID. (Yeah, I haven't "gotten out much" and talked to florid ID'ers and have ignored the "pop-sci" and political meddling on the issue for the last decade). Just from a week of casual reading on the topic of ID, it is easy to see the overwhelming lack of scientific evidence supporting the "theory" of ID. OTOH, the strategic aims of the movement appear to me to be quite sinister and, potentially, very effective considering the target audience and modus operandi of ID leaders. I know this is likely an old issue with regulars, but I'm curious as to the opinions of other scientists and educated non-scientists interested in evolution. Thanks in advance for any replies.

02-03-2002, 08:10 PM	#9
Richiyaado Regular Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: New Orleans Posts: 172	Hello All, As a non-scientist who has participated frequently at the ARN forum (though less so currently), I'd have to say that the agenda of the ID movement is certainly succeeding among politicians, policy makers, and among the general public. Of all the stated goals of the wedge document, it is only in the area of actual science or 'research' where the ID movement has fallen short. As far as I know, there hasn't been any productive research of any kind. On the other hand, with respect to creating popular and political support for the movement, establishing credibility (however tenuous or even specious) within the academic world, and certainly by way of making significant inroads through the courts, I'd say that the wedge strategy is far ahead of schedule. Considering the fact that the father of the contemporary ID movement, Phillip Johnson, is nothing if not a clever lawyer and skillful rhetorician, none of this should be surprising. My personal opinion is that the many successes of the movement thus far are all merely prologue. The real goal is to find a legal way to get around the 'lemon test' which defeated the last major attempt among creationists to establish a requirement for 'equal time' in public schools (Edwards v. Aguillard). The Louisiana 'Creationism Act' was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because its overtly religious language violated the Establishment Clause. Thus, the ID movement as a whole scrupulously avoids making religious claims, though there's no doubt who the IDer is for its principle proponents (Johnson, Behe, Dembski, Nelson, Plantinga, et al). Recently, I've noticed that ARN has been attracting more real scientists to its forum. I hope many more will join in, as I think the scientific community can no longer afford to simply write ID off as the pseudoscientific flapdoodle it is. I'd argue that the degree to which mainstream science holds ID to be beneath its notice is the degree to which it is actually playing into the hands of the wedge strategy. It only tends to reinforce a growing public perception that scientists constitute a sort of 'elite priesthood, in control of the production of knowledge'. This is Johnson's oft-repeated mantra and, unfortunately, it's beginning to stick. I'm editing my post to add that I think it's becoming critical for more scientists, responsible religious leaders, and educators to enter the fray. Much more must be done to expose and publicly challenge the ID movement's agenda at all levels� before school boards and politicians, as well as in the media. [ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: Richiyaado ] [ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: Richiyaado ]</p>

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01-26-2002, 10:08 AM	#3
hezekiah jones Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: WI Posts: 4,357	As usual theyeti is right on the money. ID is clever politics, bad philosophy, and even worse science. Since the creationists* have been flogged so badly in court, on both establishment and free exercise grounds, they are supposedly redirecting their addle-brained crusade to the "grassroots." The <a href="http://www.natcenscied.org/" target="_blank">NCSE</a> website is a pretty good resource for tracking their antics. * This includes IDers. I don't see much difference, except that IDers are better at math.

02-03-2002, 05:52 PM	#6
Boshko Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Wesleyan University Posts: 361	"As far as I can tell, ID is nothing more than "scientific creationism" with the stupider parts removed." Well, it is a very large change of emphasis. All of Morris' BS, which basically founded modern creationism (ripped off of Price's BS of course) was centered around Flood Geology. Flood Geology seem to be dying and the creationists are moving into biology more, specifically molecular (Behe etc.). This change is in creationists favor since there are a hell of a lot more fundies with biology degrees than geology degrees since lots of christian colleges have long had biology programs to help their graduates get medical-related jobs. Also just about all of geology is historical science or really closely tied to historical science so trying to get a geology degree tends to make creationists' heads explode with cognitive dissonce to a greater degree than creationists trying to get biology degrees where they can study something like molecular biology were they'll come across a lot less things that directly contradict their idiocy...

02-03-2002, 06:55 PM	#7
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	However, here are a few creationist professional geologists; one of them is Andrew Snelling, whose <a href="http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/snelling.htm" target="_blank">sordid story can be found here</a>. One wonders why he does not dump Flood Geology and support Philip Gosse created-appearance creationism. The IDers are also very cagey about the age of the Earth; they wish to appear to support both young-earthers and old-earthers, it would seem.

02-03-2002, 07:18 PM	#8
The Lone Ranger Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Eastern U.S. Posts: 1,230	Good grief! Until I read <a href="http://www.reviewevolution.org/press/fromPress_FatuousFilmmaking.php" target="_blank">Major Billy's link</a>, I imagined Behe was merely naive and ignorant. Now I'm thinking that his reasoning borders on the downright idiotic and/or that he's being outright dishonest. Either way, it's frightening stuff. His claim that despite the fact that it evolves, the HIV virus is still HIV, and "not a discernibly different virus" is exactly the same argument that YECs make whenever someone demonstrates speciation to them. If someone points out an example of one species of insect evolving into another, the typical YEC response is "Yeah, but it's still an insect -- no new kind has been produced." I actually had some shreds of respect for Behe until I read that. For what it's worth, for viruses and bacteria, we usually define "species" far more conservatively than we do for "higher" organisms. A 1% genetic difference between two animals, for example, is generally considered to be quite sufficient to establish that they're different species. For bacteria, on the other hand, we generally don't consider them separate species unless the genetic differences between them are something like 20%. There are already more "species" of bacteria (and viruses) than we can shake a stick at. If we used the same genetic criteria to define bacterial species that we do for animals, we'd "instantly" find ourselves with zillions more species. If we lowered the bar on bacteria and viruses, a single person infected with a particular bacterial strain could quickly find him/herself infected with quite a lot of different bacterial species, all derived from the original infector. Cheers, Michael

02-03-2002, 09:44 PM	#10
The Lone Ranger Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Eastern U.S. Posts: 1,230	Richiyaado, You make an excellent point. Far too often, those of us in the scientific community write off creationists (of all stripes) as fringe lunatics and don't pay much attention to their claims. That's one reason why they're so successful with the general public. In my experience, most working scientists, unless they're forcefully confronted with the evidence, can't bring themselves to believe that there are significant numbers of people out there who are capable of believing anything so absurd. Unfortunately, the fact that most working scientists tend to ignore the claims of IDers and other creationists as unworthy of serious attention plays right into their hands, since the creationists then claim that the scientists are afraid to engage them in debate. Also unfortunate is that fact that scientists tend to fare poorly in debates with creationists. Scientists are used to debates where the focus is on the quality of evidence that's available. Nature may be subtle, as someone once said, but she doesn't lie to us. Most scientists who're suckered into debates with creationists simply aren't prepared for the contempt for logic and evidence that the creationists display, nor for the outright dishonesty of the typical creationist debater. As someone (Isaac Asimov, I think), once commented, "a creationist can come up with more lies in an hour than an evolutionist can debunk in a lifetime." I used to write an occasional column for the local newspaper. Naturally, I would occasionally write on the subject of evolution. On such occasions, the paper would be flooded for weeks afterward with outraged letters by the local Fundamentalists -- on one occasion, a letter-writer made a very public threat on my life. All of this nastiness was despite the fact that I constantly bent over backwards to be respectful of religious beliefs and never responded to the Fundamentalists' venom in kind. Anyway, I got a telephone call from a local Christian high school one day. The headmaster invited me to come give a talk to "one of their classes" on the subject of evolution. I told him that I was not interested in debating the merits of creationism vs. evolution. He assured me that they simply wanted me to give a lecture on the subject of evolution to one of their classes. I repeated my statement that I wasn't interested in debate, and in return, he repeated his assurance that they only wanted me to give a lecture to one of their classes. So, I agreed. When I arrived, I was shown into an auditorium where the entire student body was waiting -- every one of them holding a Bible. At the front of the room, standing at a lectern, was the headmaster of the school, who immediately announced to the students that "Here he is, an actual evolutionist scientist, here to debate with us on the subject of evolution vs. creation." Needless to say, I was appalled that they had lied to me (twice) and deliberately set me up. Still, I kept my temper and gave a presentation. I gave them an overview of modern evolutionary theory, and listed some of the evidence that supports the fact that evolution occurs, and the theories to explain it. For his "rebuttal", the headmaster simply claimed that "belief" in evolution is based on faith, and that there is no actual evidence to support that belief. (In other words, he called me a liar.) I was completely stunned by his "reasoning", and didn't have the guts to call him a liar to his face, as I should have, nor to tell the class how he had lied to me in order to get me there in the first place. It was abundantly clear that the students considered his rebuttal of my case to be complete and utterly convincing. I thought about it briefly, but decided that, rather than make enemies by calling him a liar (since it was clear that the poor brainwashed sheep would never have believed me), I should remain as nice, polite, and pleasant as possible. At the very least, I hoped that the students would remember that I had been polite and respectful toward them at all times, even though I clearly didn't share their beliefs. Hopefully, the next time their teachers try to tell them that all "evilutionists" are terrible people, they'll remember that the one they've had personal contact with was actually quite nice. Maybe it'll get them to think at least a little. *** What really disgusts me is to hear such people insist that "evilution" leads to immoral behavior, when they're perfectly willing to lie and deceive in order to promote their beliefs. --Michael

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