TRoutMac's blog

In a recent discussion aboard this site, a respondent (presumably a Darwinist) argued that the theory of evolution is not the theory of the origin of life.

This is very funny, actually. In various discussions I've had with Darwinists on forums such as this one in recent years, I do encounter a certain amount of controversy over whether or not Darwinism is a theory about the origin of life. And since I'm an ID proponent, it should be obvious that to the extent that Darwinism is a theory about the origin of life, I reject it completely. Naturally, that means I'm not going to argue with a Darwinist who "comes clean" by telling me how Darwinism cannot explain the origin of life. To me, that's a "no-brainer."

I wrote the following in June or so of last year regarding these science standards cases. Seems appropriate to post it now. It presents quite a dilemma for Darwinists…

Recently, the state of South Carolina joined Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Kansas and New Mexico by approving statewide science standards which require a critical analysis of evolution in science classrooms. In these five states the standard-issue Darwinian evolution will still be taught, but with an interesting twist which ought to raise some eyebrows… the scientific weaknesses of Darwinian theory will also be disclosed.

Supporters of Intelligent Design necessarily place themselves in opposition to methodological naturalism, (as it applies to origin-of-life questions) but far from relying on "supernatural" causes, this opposition to naturalism merely enables one to objectively weigh the evidence and make rational conclusions based on that evidence. Naturalism actually stacks the deck and only allows evidence for one possible explanation for life to be explored. That's hardly science, and it's hardly objective.

All possible philosophies of science aside, there are two possible explanations for the origin of life: Either life arose as the result of purely unguided, unintelligent processes which rely on chance and/or necessity, or life was designed by some other entity which may or may not be directly observable to us. There are many variations on each of these themes, but all possibilities fall within these two broad categories. There are no other options.

I've seen a number of different attempts by Darwinists to wriggle free of the powerful grip of irreducible complexity and all of them strike me as being so impotent and desperate, it's really quite funny. These guys are grabbin' for anything.

One particularly hilarious "rebuttal" of IC was by John McDonald. The poor guy must have spent hours creating these cute little animations (http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html) in order to show that a mousetrap can be designed which has fewer than five parts. These animations show his various design concepts and how they might work. Trouble is, McDonald has only managed to make Behe's case for him. What McDonald unwittingly demonstrates is that regardless of how many parts a particular mousetrap might have, it must be DESIGNED that way. That was Behe's argument all along. The whole point to "Darwin's Black Box" is that complex biochemical systems must have been designed. In the process of creating these designs, McDonald has betrayed his own argument. Not to mention the fact that we don't even know whether his simpler designs effective at trapping mice. In fact, McDonald admits that the simpler traps are NOT very effective. Again, if this was a living organism, how did it survive when it couldn't reliably trap mice?

The objections to the theory of Intelligent Design (ID) are wide-ranging, but they all have at least one common thread: Contradiction. That is, every argument offered by critics of ID ultimately lands them in the midst of astonishing contradictions. And as they attempt to wiggle free of the incongruity, they frequently end up making very good arguments in favor of ID.

For example, critics of ID love to claim that there's nothing scientific about the theory of ID. However, to claim that ID isn't scientific, the ID critic has to ignore the fact that scientists have been invoking intelligent design for centuries as they have discovered, investigated and analyzed messages carved in stone and other ancient artifacts around the world. Of course, intelligent humans were credited for these particular phenomena, but even before that conclusion was reached, an inference to intelligent authorship WAS made. The point is, either invoking intelligent causes is scientifically valid, or it's not. Scientists know better than to suggest that the Rosetta Stone was formed by natural, unintelligent causes. That is to say, scientists know that instructions arise from mind and not blind, unintelligent processes. And yet when some scientists look at DNA—a molecule which carries instructions for building a living organism and is sometimes referred to as "The Rosetta Stone of Life"—many scientists feel quite comfortable restricting themselves to invoking only blind, unintelligent processes.

Stephen Hawking once told a story about a scientist who was giving a public lecture on astronomy. As the scientist described what we know about the structure of the solar system, a woman at the back of the room spoke up and said, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist asked the woman what the tortoise was standing on, and the woman's reply was, "Another tortoise,” and when asked what that tortoise was standing on, she made the startling claim that “It's turtles all the way down!"

Of course, we all know that from a scientific standpoint, the idea that Earth is perched atop a stack of large turtles is laughable. We've seen the Earth from space and it most definitely is a sphere, and no one has seen these turtles. We recognize that this myth fails to explain where the turtles came from. The circular reasoning is so obvious that we wonder how any sane person could overlook it.

Critics of Intelligent Design often argue against ID by citing what they perceive to be a deficiency in the design of some organism. But I wonder: Are apparent design flaws in biological systems really a threat to the theory of Intelligent Design?

In a Seattle Town Hall debate which took place earlier this year, University of Washington professor Peter Ward encapsulated the classic “design flaw” argument rather well when he said, "If that designer is so damned good, why is it that 99% of all species ever produced are extinct? I mean, that's really crappy design! Why is it that I'm turning an old age so fast? I mean, that's crappy design, too!"

An old high school friend of mine, and a skeptic of ID, recently challenged me to explain, from an Intelligent Design viewpoint, why men have nipples. He believed that the fact that men have nipples was a powerful argument against Intelligent Design. But a little refresher course on embryonic development together with a basic understanding of the manufacturing strategies employed by known intelligent designers reveals that nipples on men is an excellent way to argue FOR Intelligent Design.

Every embryo starts its development as a female by default, which means every embryo is equipped with nipples from the start, whether male or female. Then, at the right time during development, and if the egg was fertilized by a sperm carrying the Y chromosome, the development changes direction and groups of cells that would have become ovaries, for example, instead become testicles, etc. But in that case, the nipples remain simply because they're already there. Males have nipples because they were females FIRST.