Is Intelligent Design Simply Creationism for Intellectuals?

The short answer is no but here's why.

In this blog name we have Intelligent Design and Creationism coupled together. I think it would be a good idea to say exactly how these two views differ because they certainly are not the same.

The Creationism I will be talking about is the Jewish/Christian version mostly because this is the most popular form in the US. Although there are many different forms of this version of Creationism they all hold the same views:

• all life was created by the actions of God
• Only God can create new forms of organisms
• the most common theory for the origins of the universe and life are accounted in the Biblical Book of Genesis
• it uses scientific evidence to support scripture

Intelligent Design proponents, on the other hand, have the following statements:

• all life came about through the actions of an intelligent Designer
• the designer does not have to be God although most proponents of ID believe it is
• their main argument for thinking there is a Designer is the complexity found in organisms – the best theory they believe to explain some types of complexity is an intelligent Designer

The main difference between the two seems to be the use of scientific evidence. For ID proponents they claim that they make observations in the world like any other scientist in any other field would and from those observations propose intelligent design as explanation for the observations. Creationists, on the other hand, first look at the holy scripture then turn to scientific findings to support the holy scripture.

It is clear that ID tries to exclude any reference to religious texts or beliefs. Many claim ID is creationism under the guise of science but ID proponents are not trying to prove the validity of the bible’s creation story.

Many also argue that the ID theory is not as scientifically valid as it claims to be. In searching this topic I have yet to find ID presenting empirical evidence for the existence of a Designer. Their main evidence is the complexity of organisms – something so complex could not come to be by chance –  but I wonder if that is a strong enough piece of evidence as it is not something that they have tested. This is where the line between Creationist and ID theorists blur: neither groups have proposed hypotheses that have been tested empirically nor observed repeatedly.

All arguments for their scientific weight aside, ID and Creationism are two different alternatives to evolution and at the moment they seem to be the only major alternative to evolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/creationism_1.shtml

Is There a Growing Divide between Scientists and the Lay Public?

The controversy created by evolution certainly has a foundation in issues of science and faith, but part of the controversy also comes from what seems to be a growing divide between science and the lay community. This divide has not always seemed so large—in the twentieth century, well-publicized innovations ranging from the polio vaccine to the moon landing inspired faith and passion in science. However, in America, excitement about science does not seem to reach the same levels anymore. Here are a few possible reasons why:

1.       An education system that used to be the best in the world declined, possibly leaving American children less enthusiastic about science and math: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-838207.html. To be fair, this decline may be overstated. It is only relative to other countries; on an absolute scale, our system has improved. Over the past twenty years, high school drop-out rates have decreased in America, and higher percentages of students take advanced science and math courses and go to college: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026.pdf, http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-14.pdf, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/elementary_and_secondary_education_completions_and_dropouts.html . Of course, America would still like to be the best in education in the world, as well as reduce disparities between ethnic groups. But these data suggest the system is actually improving.

2.       Although it remains the most prestigious profession, science has slightly fallen in prestige (like most other professions): http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2005-05-23-prestige-usat_x.htm. However, considering that the poll was unscientific and most professions have fallen in prestige, we must take this information with a grain of salt.

3.       Some people (even educated ones) may believe that scientists insert their political agendas into their findings. http://theweek.com/article/index/226338/why-conservatives-increasingly-distrust-science-4-theories. This belief might explain some of the divide. Fundamentalist Christians tend to be political conservatives, and conservatives tend to see economic gain from environmental pollution as a bigger benefit/smaller risk than liberals do (liberal and moderate support remained flat). However, although scientists tend to be liberal, people who believe scientists purposely distort findings underestimate scientific integrity and the scientific consensus on such issues as evolution and global warming. 

4.       Perhaps the most important and likely reason is a problem that has always plagued scientific communication: scientific research is incremental and imperfect, whereas lay people expect cataclysmic, irrefutable facts. http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 Thus, proponents of creationism/intelligent design (ID) not only denounce evolution as having modest findings and conflicting data, but they also tout their “theory” as a large, simple, unified set of assertions. Of course, in science those modest findings accumulate into large ones, and conflicts lead to greater understanding. And the large, simple, and unified assertions from creationism come from un-falsifiable, unscientific ideas.

Unlike science, the court of public opinion is a democracy, and some scientists may fear this democracy has turned more and more against them. But reasons 1 and 2 (above) seem weak and overstated by the media (I actually believed they were huge reasons for distrust of science before I wrote this post). Reason 3 may show that the growing political divide in America has included science in the fray. Finally, the most important reason, reason 4, is not news. The incremental and imperfect nature of science has always been difficult to communicate. But what is encouraging is that scientists can manage this issue.

Scientists can easily communicate why evolution is important—its broad impact in every aspect of biology has vastly improved our understanding of biochemistry, ecology, and medicine. Evolution helps us understand fundamental questions about our existence, questions everyone (not just scientists) has. And evolution is just utterly fascinating. The beauty and diversity of nature, especially the varied phenotypes of plants and animals, astound us from when we are young children. 

In conclusion, science and scientists still command great respect in America (though there is always room for improvement). But, as always, lay people also demand scientists to be great communicators and to explain science in an easy-to-understand way. Although various polls provide different numbers on how many Americans believe in evolution, at least one (conducted by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) suggests that 61% of Americans would rather hear about evolution from a scientist than from a judge or a celebrity.

http://science.drvinson.net/polls

http://www.livescience.com/4787-survey-61-percent-agree-evolution.html  

Friends: Evolution vs Intelligent Design

So I can't get the video to embed here, but there's an episode of Friends in which Phoebe and Ross debate the merits of evolution versus creationism. The clips of their fight can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXr2kF0zEgI.

What's most interesting about their debate is not their arguments and the facts they use to back them up, but the point Phoebe makes at the end (ignoring when she goes back on it of course). Regardless of our own opinions, we should all admit that there's the chance we're wrong. Science is always evolving as new information is discovered. So while you might be quite sure you're right, don't be afraid to acknowledge other options. At the very least, don't shoot them down without listening to someone else's argument.

~Katelyn

Are Evolution and Religion Mutually Exclusive?

Well, that cartoon pretty much sums it up.  Whether you believe in evolution or not, believe in a higher power or not, at this point we’re all human beings, and we all wonder about the world around us.  Fortunately, that means we have been able to start to understand some mysteries of the life from pathogens to the life cycle of stars, and we’ve managed to create wonderful things such as air conditioning and smart phones.  However, with a world of over 7 billion people, there are many sides to every issue, and as of late evolution has been very salient.  Here, we will explore 4 sides of a very common issue here in The States.  Are religion and evolution compatible?  

First we’ll take the fundamentalist Christian view:

This view says that evolution is false because the book of Genesis in the Bible says that God created the world in 7 days.  You can read this creation story here. Evolution takes more than 7 days, so it cannot be true.  This perspective takes the creation story literally and asserts that evolution is not true.  Another reason that this view promotes is that evolution is false because we are made in God’s image, and He put us here as we are; we did not “evolve from apes” as many put it. 

Where do we hear this the most?  In politics!  This is an article from National Public Radio that sums up the controversy quite well.  The article is from 2005, but well written.  The same debates are still active today.   Basically, there are groups of people who believe that the biblical creation story should be taught in the classroom as an alternative to evolution.  Others say that either evolution and belief can coexist, or that whatever you believe, the creation story is not science and shouldn’t be taught in schools, especially with the separation between church and state.  Take what side you will on that point, but I will now take a moment to clear up an incorrect understanding of scientific theory that has spawned a lot of controversy lately, and mistakenly fueled arguments to keep evolution out of the classroom.

Some argue that since evolution is a theory and not a fact, it should not be taught in schools.  However, this stems from the common understanding of “theory” which generally means that it’s not quite as proven as a fact.  In the scientific use of theory, it is simply the pattern by which a fact is explained.  The parties that argue against evolution in the classroom have other things to say, but this particular argument is off base.  See here for more information about distinguishing between scientific fact and theory.

Now we’ll move onto the more liberal Christian view:

This view states that God made the world, but we weren’t around at the time, and He’s powerful enough to do it however he pleases.  Evolution is a well-substatiated theory, and it shows the complexity of God’s creation even more.  Under this view, evolutionists could be Christians and visa versa.

Francis Collins, most widely known for his work on completing the Human Genome Project and now for his appointment by President Obama to the director of the National Institute of Health, is a Christian who believes in evolution.  He founded an organization called Biologos that explores evolution in light of the Christian God and teachings.

On this site, Tim Keller, a renowned apologist and preacher at Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC, wrote an article about common obstacles that people have in reconciling Christian faith with evolution.  I will only talk about one of the points to be concise, but he delineates 4 major obstacles here.  Keller addresses Biblical authority and essentially argues against the 7 day creation model.  In fact, he states that the creation story in Genesis was never meant to be taken literally.   As with anything, when studying a passage well, you must look at it in context.  According to Keller, the creation story contains elements of poetry and hallmarks of “exalted prose narrative” common in Jewish tradition, which was expected to be taken as a lyrical version of a story instead of fact. 

In my view, why would God tell an ancient Mesopotamian shepherd such as Abraham about Mendelian genetics, linkage disequilibrium, or phylogenetic trees when society didn’t have the knowledge base to understand those things?  That’s not what the purpose of telling ancient peoples the creation story was.  The purpose of the retelling was to say that God made the world. 

Moving forward, we come to the evolutionist, atheist point of view.

The most well known evolutionist and atheist in the world, if I may make the declaration, is Richard Dawkins.  His organization, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, states as its mission “to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.”  Obviously, if religion is superstition to Dawkins and connected to such things as intolerance, he will not be of the mindset that evolution and any type of religion are compatible.  Dawkins is an ethologist, evolutionary biologist, best-selling author, and proponent of “militant atheism” to overcome religion, as stated in his mission. 

He promotes that evolution is not only a scientific theory, but also a world view.  In his book The Magic of Reality, about which he gave a talk at Rice University in 2011, he mentioned that he regards the Christian creation story the same as any other ancient creation myth.  In essence, that Christianity should be regarded no different than religions that worshiped Greek and Romans gods and goddesses, which western society now largely considers being false.

To my surprise, I stumbled across The God Delusion, perhaps Dawkins’ most well-known book, on the web here.  In this book, as you may imagine, Dawkins claims that belief in a god is a…delusion!  There are a lot of good arguments in this book, but I’ll focus on one that addresses what I mentioned that Keller said.  Keller claims that the creation story, taken in context of ancient Jewish poetry techniques, is true and should be believed.  Dawkins, on the other hand, sees this debate about what is and isn’t to be taken literally in the Bible as that “we pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols or allegories”  (p. 238). 

The Atheist that sees religion and evolution as compatible…

No such luck!  Atheism directly contradicts believing that a higher power exists, so I was not surprised when I couldn’t find an atheist that believed that evolution can be compatible with belief in a higher power.

However, I did find someone who was an agnostic and saw agnosticism and evolution as compatible.  That person is Charles Darwin.  Through his studies on evolution and tragic life events such as the death of his daughter, Darwin is generally recognized as being an agnostic.  In a letter to John Fordyce in 1879, Darwin describes his beliefs as this:  “In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” (Found from this site). If Darwin believed in some higher power, then perhaps so can modern day agnostics.

With this, I’ll leave you to examine your own beliefs.  I also acknowledge that the above entry does not even scrape the surface of the variety of beliefs that exist today on these subjects, and am sorry that I could not explore them all or go into depth on any one belief.  I hope that reading this may help you start finding out what stance you take on this issue.  Good luck!

An Interview with an ID advocate

http://www.ucg.org/science/evolution-vs-intelligent-design-debate/

This is an interview from 2009 (I think) with a professor at UC Berkeley and his beliefs regarding evolution. He seems to be fairly opposed to evolution, and I’ll summarize some of his arguments here. He also provides a pretty interesting view on what he thinks of the ID vs Evolution debate going on now.

He starts off by stating that many people do not have a problem with the small-scale idea of evolution (such as change over time, or smaller changes within a species), but he says that what a lot of people have a problem with is Darwinism, which states that evolution is the mechanism by which all life came about. As he puts it, ID says that some features (but not necessarily all) of living creatures are explained better by an intelligent cause than by unguided natural processes. Evolution on the other hand, states that all features of living creatures are brought about by unguided natural processes, which is why there is an irreconcilable conflict between the two ideas.

He goes on to dismiss one of evolution’s strongest pieces of evidence, the existence of a tremendous amount of DNA in our genomes. He states that recent discoveries have indicated that this junk DNA is not necessarily useless. He doesn’t elaborate on this, but I do remember reading somewhere a while back (and I apologize for not having a source for this), that a lot of DNA that doesn’t code for proteins still plays a non-transcriptional role in affecting our bodies’ processes, for example: affecting methylation sites and interactions with histones to determine how DNA folds up into chromosomes.

He then makes the argument (which I think is a bit silly), that the Origin of Species is filled with so many theological references that it too should not be taught in schools.

He goes on to talk about a lot of mistakes Darwin had when he first proposed the theory of natural selection, which frankly makes complete sense given how little information about genetics he had access to. Doesn’t make much sense to criticize Darwin for not applying scientific knowledge to his theory if that knowledge wouldn’t be available for decades to come.

He ends by saying that the high similarity between Chimpanzee and Human DNA actually serves as evidence against evolution. He says this because evolution is based around heritable changes in DNA, and if human and chimp DNA is so similar (98% similarity), how can we account for the tremendous amount of morphological differences between the two species.

Overall I can’t say I agree with him, but he does bring up some interesting points, and it is important to listen to both sides of the debate and not just the side you support.

We shouldn't mix politics and science in education

This image depicts that politics and science just don't mix

Anti-evolution activism is becoming more and more apparent in states across the U.S. Last week, Tennessee and Oklahoma General assemblies both created bills which had anti-evolution overtones in them. In Tennessee, they passed a bill (SB 893) which states that teachers can't get in trouble for pointing out weaknesses in scientific theories such as evolution and global warming. The bill also requires that school officials help teachers in finding "effective ways to present science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies." The Oklahoma bill goes even further than that, stating that biological evolution is scientifically controversial. The bills have not yet become laws in their states but they are similar to Louisiana's Science Education Act of 2008, which allows local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories (with an emphasis on evolution and global warming). Many other states, such as Missouri and New Hampshire, have considered bills which hinder science education in public schools. 

It used to be common that people who didn't believe in Darwinism and evolution made it illegal to teach it in schools. But nowadays, with the mounting empirical evidence, it has been allowed and teaching intelligent design has been limited to only being taught in history, philosophy, and theological curriculums. But now, opponents to Darwinisms have evolved, much like life itself and they are coming up with new "adaptations" to overcome their obstacles-the bills mentioned above. They are masking their defense as "academic freedom" in these bills. But these bills don't encourage correct scientific evidence-based debate, they just create controversy. 

Supporters of these bills believe that they will encourage students to challenge current scientific thought and allow for teachers to answer the student's questions regardless of their own beliefs. But is this really necessary? It seems to me that these bills are only forcing politics into classrooms and making the students more confused on a subject that is already complex and multi-faceted. Also, wasn't this issue settled decades ago? Do we really need to go back to the Scopes trial? Why are we moving backwards on this issue? The longer that we continue to bicker over these laws, the worse off the students will be. I think its important that both sides come to an agreement soon, for the sake of education. 

- Rachael Morris

DNA Reveals Lost Sweet Tooth of Cats

Poor kitties (and other carnivorous mammals). It turns out that evolution has taken away their ability to taste sweets! 

When it comes to the evolution vs. intelligent design debate, there are many studies that have been shown to support the fact that evolution has occurred. 
 
A recent study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center suggests that after humans diverged from our ancestors, many mammals lost some of their tasting ability. In this study, they analyzed DNA from 12 species of carnivorous mammals and found that seven of them had completely nonfunctional versions of the genes that allow us to taste and appreciate sweets. So whenever you try to slip your cat some sweets, don't even bother because they can't even enjoy them!

This is cute. But kitties can't taste sweetness =[

This concept of loss of function in animals was discussed in Darwins Origin of Species. In the book, Darwin talked about loss of vision observed in animals that live in darkness, which is the case in termites. He emphasized that evolution is not a particular strategy for improvement but rather it's more of living animals adapting to survival in their environments, and traits that are no longer necessary can be lost. It makes sense that carnivorous mammals have lost their ability to taste sweets because you don't need to be able to taste sweets when you're not eating plants (sweetness helps distinguish between toxic and nutritious plants).

To the dog-owners reading this, don't fret. Dogs can still taste sweets. But it's probably only a matter of time before evolution knocks that trait out. Until then, companies will continue to pump starch and sweets into their dog foods to keep you, and your dog, coming back for more.

This dog loves his sweets!

So clearly this study supports the fact that evolution has occurred...and so the support for evolution goes on...

Read the article here: Major taste loss in carnivorous mammals

-Rachael Morris