The Limits of Ignorance 7

Cont'd

Why do I say that there is a secret agenda in the ID advocates in pushing for the teaching of ID in American high schools? Let's look at what they want every high school kid to read in their biology class in the Dover district schools, the subject of the litigation:

"Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's views. The reference book "Of Pandas and People " is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves discussion of the origin of life to individual students and their families".

Imagine what would happen if a high school student were to read such a statement. The following inferences and implications would mostly likely be drawn by them:

1. since this is a statement passed out by the school which they implicitly trust would have their interest in mind, they would think the statement is put out for their benefit ie. for their academic benefit.
2. It emphasizes that Darwin's theory is "just" a theory and not a "fact",  The implication is that it should be accorded much less credibility than a "fact"
3. It points out that it may be a "defective" theory because there are gaps in the theory for which there is no evidence. Since what exactly the "gaps" are is not specified, the "general" impression must be that the gaps must be quite "serious", certainly "serious" enough to merit such special "warning" . This further undermines the "credibility" and "validity" of Darwin's theory.
4. It mentions "Intelligent Design" twice as an "alternative" theory AS IF it enjoys "equal" theoretical status as "Darwin's theory", (they are careful to use the expression "Darwin's theory" and not "Darwinian theory" or "the theory of evolution" or "the evolutionary theory" because "Darwin's theory" can be read both ways. The ambiguity is probably deliberate. By using "Darwin's theory", IF they are challenged about  what they say about the gaps, some of which has since been filled, they can argue that "Darwin's theory" refer to the "original" theory as first proposed by Darwin in the 19th century. Probably because they know that if they were to use an expression like "Darwinian theory", they would have much less justification for making that "bald statement", without any qualifications, that "Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence" in the way they actually did because of the huge amount of subsequent confirmatory evidence discovered by evolutionary scientists since Darwin first proposed his theory, and thus "justifying" the ID advocates' criticism of his theory)
5. Not only do they put Darwin's theory in doubt, they actively "suggest" or "recommend" the students read a book written by ID advocates on the same topic IF they are interested to explore the matter further.
6. Students are reminded to keep an "open" mind on the subject. There is nothing wrong with it as such. But in the context, to keep an "open" mind can mean only that they give both ID and Darwin's theory "equal" time and "equal" attention.

They speak with a forked tongue. This is what George Orwell would describe as "double speak" and what lawyers would call "innuendos". ie. subtle suggestions in the text which are not "explicitly" stated but which in the specific context of the text, people reading them would likely "understand". It was a meticulously planned statement done with a motive which is not "immediately" apparent. It must be intended as a "trap" and a "bait" for the unwary average high school student. This is why I said earlier that their methods are "dishonest" and "devious".

In thinking what I am thinking, I have the support of Kenneth R Miller, the expert called on behalf of the Plaintiff in the Dover case, who says in respect of this statement and other points made by the ID advocates at the trial:
(1)  it calls special attention to just one scientific theory, the theory of evolution. The effect of citing evolution, and only evolution, in this way has the obvious effect of suggesting to students that the scientific support for evolution is weak, and that students should hold this particular theory up for special scrutiny. In reality, evolutionary theory enjoys the same status as other well-tested explanations in science and there is no rational basis for suggesting that it and it alone, should be mentioned in the context of doubt and skepticism that pervades this statement from the Dover Board.
(2) The Board's statement telling students that "The theory is not a fact" is clearly designed to mislead students about evolution. The Board's emphasis that evolution is not a fact might be appropriate if they had pointed out instead that no scientific theory is a fact, and that all scientific theories continue to be tested in light of new  scientific discoveries....The important point to be made is that scientific theories don't ever become facts; rather, scientific theories explain facts....The Board's language clearly has the effect of promoting student misunderstanding as to the nature and validity of scientific theories.
(3) ID theory argues that an unnamed "designer" must have been responsible for much of the process, although it presents no evidence for the actions of such a "designer". This means that "ID" is an entirely negative concept, since the case of "design" is made entirely by assembling a selection of arguments that call the validity of evolutionary mechanisms into question.
(4) ID advocates often cite the complexity of living cells as a reason to invoke the hypothesis of design. While this may seem to account for any unexplained problem in biology, it does so only by abandoning the scientific method and making "design" the solution to every such problem. An explanation of this sort, which can explain any conceivable evidence, in fact explains nothing. Since the "design" explanation is not testable, it falls outside the realm of science and places it in the realm of theology, where non-natural explanations are an accepted part of the explanatory landscape. Theological explanations may be correct, of course, (as when I believe that a loving God hears my prayers and acts in my life to answer them) but they cannot be tested by the methods of science and therefore they are not science."
(5) "Irreducible complexity"  is defined by its author, Michael Behe, as follows: "...a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute  to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (DBB 39)...An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional...Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually, it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on". Speech Discovery Institute's God and Culture Conference, Seattle, WA Aug. 10 1996) The scientific literature contains counter examples to any assertion that evolution cannot explain biochemical complexity (Kenneth R Miller Finding Darwin's God 1999 147)
(5) ID advocates relies heavily on the work of another of its advocates William Dembski in his recent book No Free Lunch  2002, using information theory and mathematics to show that life is the result of intelligent design and asserts that living organisms contains what he calls "complex specified information" (CSI") and further that the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection cannot produce CSI and that therefore any instance of CSI in a living organism must be the result of intelligent design and living organisms are chockful of CSI. He says that Behe's "irreducible complexity" is a "special case of "specified complexity". But in fact, Demski's calculations show that "he assumes what he is trying to prove"!  At one place in his book, even Behe admits as much: "we may not know enough to determine all the relevant chance hypotheses" upon which his probability calculations are based and even if we think we know the relevant chance hypothesis, we may later discover that we missed a crucial one. "In the one case, a design inference could not even get going; in the other, it would be mistaken". ( No Free Lunch 123 n 80). What Demski is telling us is that in order to "detect" design in a biological object, one must first come to the conclusion that the object could not have been produced by any "relevant chance hypotheses" (meaning evolution). Then and only then, are Demski's calculations brought into play. "Stated more bluntly, what this really means is that the "method" first involves assuming the absence of an evolutionary pathway leading to the object, followed by a calculation "proving" the impossibility of spontaneous assembly. This faulty a priori reasoning is exactly the sort of logic upon which the new "science" of ID has been constructed" and Demski's arguments have been repeatedly criticized on this issue and on many others. (H A Orr "The Return of Intelligent Design" Nature Bosteon Review 27 Summer 2002; B Charlesworth "Evolution by Design" Nature 418 2002 129 and K Padian "Waiting for the Watchmaker" Science 295 2002 2373-4)
(6) Of People and Pandas  the recommended text which pretends to be an open, objective examination of the pros and cons of evolutionary biology, is nothing of the sort. It is instead, " a collection of half truths, distortions, and outright falsehoods that attempt to misrepresent biology and mislead students as to the scientific status of evolutionary biology". Miller then cites a few examples of such misrepresentations and falsehood in respect of the fossil records and the age of the earth about which not a single word is said and there is nothing about the scientific techniques used by geologists to determine the age of the rocks and fossils.It says, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abrupt through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact--fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings etc. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appear in the rock record with their distinct features intact, rather than gradually developing" (Of People and Pandas 1993 99-100)("Pandas") but in fact the fossil records show the gradual appearance of a wide variety of physical adaptations eg. the vertebrate limb, the earliest known fish were quite different from those we find today including jaws, paired limbs and bony internal skeletons and there is strong evidence that land vertebrates evolved from lobe-finned fish eg. acanthostega gunnari which though clearly a land-dwelling animal, retained an unmistakable sign of aquatic ancestry: internal gills so that  it could breathe under water, just like a fish and could also breathe on land, using lungs, a true "transitional form". Pandas implies that fossils like these have never been discovered.  In 1997, another fossilised fin was discovered by Edward B Daescheler and Neil Shubin containing 8 well-formed digits, just like the digits of Acathostega ie. the limbs of land vertebrates did not appear suddenly as if designed but began to appear gradually, in the ancestors of land vertebrates, as if they evolved. (Fish with Fingers   Nature 391 1997).  In addition, Pandas fail to address the issue of why some species are extinct at all. But evolution theory provides a simple explanation for it: extinction is a major evolutionary mechanism. Miller concludes that Pandas was " a document that contrived not to teach, but to mislead: it misstates evolutionary theory, skims over the enormous wealth of fossil records and ignores the sophistication of radiometric dating"

As Miller, an evolutionary expert, frankly admits, 'there is a great deal that we do not know about the origin of life on this planet," but he adds, "that does not mean that science is obliged to pretend that it knows nothing or to engage in a kind of scientific relativism, pretending that all speculations about the origin of our species are equally correct."

I really have a great deal of sympathy for the ID advocates in their desperate attempt to hold on to their faith in the light of the advances of modern science but unfortunately, they have been barking up the wrong tree! I understand that many of my Christian friends still subscribe to some form of belief in ID. That is why I am writing this blog. To me, ID is simply a "no go" area, a scientific and religious "dead end", not worth bothering about, a bit like "flat earth" beliefs in the age of the Renaissance, after it was discovered that the earth is not the centre of the universe as it was then taught by the Holy Catholic Church. Christianity may involve certain "beliefs" about how this world came about, some kind of "dogma"  which by definition need not be completely supported by logic because it is something "metaphysical", something which "transcends" purely human reasoning, something which in the final analysis is based upon our subjective personal "experience" of what we believe to be an entity called "God"  as he has been portrayed by the pastors and priests and other "true believers" rather than scientifically testable "objective" material "facts". Such metaphysical speculation and "creation myths" have precious little to do with what true Christianity is all about: how we should live as true "human" beings in this "vale of tears", and for Christians, "as Christians", modeling their lives on the life of the Christ of their faith, and not the Jesus of human history. It may help if Christians were to look upon Jesus Christ as a "model human being" and if they were to concentrate their efforts on "practising" their faith and make it a" living faith" in concrete acts of tolerance, understanding, openness, humility and charity preached by that exemplar of all that is most noble in man, viz. Jesus, whom they worship, instead of treating the "dogmas" of their faith as if they were some kind of "scientific" propositions to be argued and debated and intellectually defended. with the tools of secular logic or the tools of scientific logic The Bible is not a book of "natural science", nor a book of human history, although it has certain statements which "may" be read as such. There is no "compulsion" to so read the Bible. The Bible was written as a "teaching tool" about the "Christian" message of love and the hope of "human" salvation from what they regard as human "sins", which in ordinary non-religious human language simply means the "wrongs" we do to other human beings, to ourselves and to the universe. Why are they so adamant that their God should have his finger in every pie?

I understand that there is another campaign by right wing Christians in Hong Kong to solicit support to oppose the efforts by some of our legislators to make new laws to give more rights to people with different sexual orientations, something which I think would be within their human rights.  They incite fear into the hearts of the ordinary people by spreading alarmist claims that once we allow equal rights to the "gays" and "lesbians", our one-man-one woman family will break down. My immediate response is:  if such families could so easily break down, does that not say something about the worth of "preserving" and "keeping" them? If not, why don't we live and let live? Will the gays and lesbians cause any harm to them? If so, in what ways? Why can't they allow those who hold different sexual preferences to live the way they want, just like everybody else and enjoy citizen rights just like everybody else? I suggest that their energies for "doing good" to their "neighbor" (in Jesus' admonition to "love thy neighbor" but not narrowly defined) could be better spent by helping those whose sexual orientation are unlike themselves to integrate into our society socially and economically, by making it easier for them to live a bit more like an "ordinary" human being in a complex modern metropolis in the same way that we should allow people of different ages, races, religious beliefs etc to live amongst us. After all, Jesus always welcomed and treated kindly the "outsiders", the minority, the social sub-groups, the "underdogs", so to speak, the people living at the margins of Jewish society of his day: the widows, the lepers, the Samaritans (second class Jews from abroad), tax collectors, the fishermen etc. even whores!

(To be Cont'd)