Someone comes along with a new theory regarding something scientific. It's really more like a hypothesis, but with a proposed way to test it. However, it's not one of those constructive ones that once resolved we can gain further knowledge. In that sense it's sort of only anti. But again, there is a test.
Now, suppose the discipline is a natural science. Take chemistry. The central science. Here is a rather large collection of laws and facts that all fit together nicely, for the most part. They still do research in chemistry. Yeah, I know. We'd rather be doing something else, so kudos to those who serve us. Anyhow...
If confirmed, this hypothesis would disprove a rather important tenet of chemistry, and would significantly alter how people think chemistry works. But it would not offer a path to further knowledge. Not shine a light. Just a brick wall.
What do the chemists say to the arrival of this new hypothesis? Do they dismiss it on the grounds that it will not provide any new insights beyond disproving something? Additionally, do they look at the reasoning behind the posing of the hypothesis? Assume there is some political motive. It might be that the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia happens to dislike redox reactions, just because their ideological leader learned about it from one of his rivals. Or whatever.
No to the first, and no to the second. A hypothesis that can be tested stands on its own. Chemists won't care what can be learned, only that something can be learned. It also completely doesn't matter how it came along. Why would it? "Pfft, the Khmer Rouge has an anti-chemistry agenda, so whatever they say we can't really take seriously." No, we could. It the idea has any merit, it will be taken seriously, no matter what lies ahead and how it came along.
Now suppose that the Khmer Rouge wanted to introduce the hypothesis into chemistry classes. In high school. Could they? Well, hold on a moment. That sort of thing requires some more validity. If chemists everywhere were able to confirm the hypothesis, then eventually the idea would make it into chemistry textbooks. But that's the only proper way. The Khmer Rouge, doing all they can to promote their political cause, should not be able to change what we know about chemistry in any other way than doing chemistry. Lobbying the government, or suing the publisher, or some such would never work. Shouldn't. The Khmer Rouge are free to attempt to fund chemists to apply the idea in the lab, and if these Red Khemists get any results, they can write it up and send it to the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation where it be reviewed by other chemists. And if the reviewers see fit, they will accept it for publication, and the Khmer Theory will gain supporters, and after years of ongoing research and successful laboratory tests, it might get a mention in a new textbook for an advanced college chemistry course, and years later, when no one doubts that Khmer Theory tells us something real about the natural world, then it will be added to a high school chemistry textbook.
On the other hand, should the Khmer Chemistry be the continued laughing stock of chemists worldwide, and only manage to publish half-baked papers in fringe chemistry journals because no one thought the test of the hypothesis really works, then KC will never make it further than a college course on political science.
Get it?
Such a hypothesis with a companion idea to test it has actually come along a few years ago. It's called Intelligent Design (wiki), and the idea is that some systems, components, or features of living organisms are so complex ("irreducibly complex") that they could not have evolved (i.e. originated) via natural causes. And intelligent designer must have been at play. The blood clotting cascade, the bacterial flagellum, the first living organism, and the cell are a few such proposed constructions. Boeing 747s, pocket watches, and mousetraps also figure prominently (wiki).
Should we care what the consequences are if this hypothesis is proven correct? It would overturn our (scientific) understanding of how life evolved and evolves. So we would rather not allow it to be tested? Of course not. Let it be tested by all means.
Does it matter that the people with whom Intelligent Design originated believe in God, or that they believe God created humans as described in the Bible, or that they believe God helps evolution along once in a while? Should we care that if an Intelligent Designer were proved to have had a hand in evolution, that we couldn't really use that knowledge to anything else within biology?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No.
A theory's validity stands on its own. But...
The fact is that Intelligent Design has not been validated. Irreducible complexity has not been shown to exist anywhere in the biological world. No credible peer-reviewed papers have appeared in scientific journals that anyone who isn't married to the theological consequences of Intelligent Design take seriously. That should lay the matter to rest until someone comes up with evidence to the contrary. It's worth the wait, but excuse us if we do not include Intelligent Design in high school textbooks and curricula until that day arrives.
Epilog
Thus I chastise those who refute Intelligent Design with the argument that its proponents are religious, or that they have a non-scientific agenda.
And accordingly I berate those who try to rewrite science textbooks and school curricula by any other means than doing science.
Shame on both of you.
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3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
You know, I'm not an evolutionary biologist (though I AM an undergrad and I wish I'd be someday!), but I'm pretty sure that you can't actually prove irreducible complexity. The term itself is meaningless, it isn't even wrong. You can't prove that something is amazingly complex that it can't be described, that's bloody stupid. The scientific alternative to evolution is not intelligent design, it's "I don't know". Even if evolutionary theory goes completely rebuked, it proves jack diddly.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to prove the existence of a designer of creatures is for a designer to appear and create something infront of our eyes. You know, even if God appeared and did NOT create any new creatures, it'd *still* not prove creationism. Creationism can only be proved by a designer creating. It's technically true for artificial organisms, as far as I'm concerned.
Hi bjorn, long time no see.
ReplyDeleteYou probably don't remember, but I participated in your poll after you and I had an initially heated conversation over some article that we both commented on. We continued our discussion over email and you eventually found out that I wasn't a creationist just because I attacked the "neodarwinians" for the very reasons that you are doing it now.
I see that you've found reason to see that it is the culture war that actually motivates these people. This is the reason that I would never display that big "A" on my blog, even though I am an atheist.
I still believe that this political "debate" is killing viable science, and I am much harder on the side that is supposed to be on the side of science for this reason.
FYI: You'll never get them to admit these points, and they will produce lame rationale that challenges their validity and call it a successful rebuttal. Then they will use groupthink to validate that you are, therefore, a crackpot.
Science has absolutely nothing to do with what motivates any of these people on either side of the debate.
"Thus I chastise those who refute Intelligent Design with the argument that its proponents are religious, or that they have a non-scientific agenda."
ReplyDeleteIf you claim there are proponents of intelligent design who don't believe in it for religious reasons, you are being as dishonest as the lying retards of the Discovery Institute. Everyone knows "intelligent design" are just fancy code words that mean "magically created by a god fairy". Everyone knows intelligent design magic is an idiotic religious belief, and not scientific at all.
After the 1987 Supreme Court decision that banned the childish stupidity of "creation science" from public school science classrooms, the Christian theocrats renamed their magical creation to "intelligent design". In 2005 a federal court made the exact same decision the Supreme Court made in 1987. Magical creation, no matter what it's called (for example, intelligent design) is religion, not science.
I wrote this because of my contempt for the dishonesty of Christian morons, and I ask you to stop repeating their lies.
Oh, by the way, island is a lying stupid asshole. If he's an atheist, then I'm the pope.
ReplyDeleteBobxxx, I have not repeated any lies. I know they have a political agenda. That is exactly why I wrote it like this. I tried to make it clear, though, that it doesn't matter for the science if they really are creationists, or anything else.
ReplyDeleteIsland, long time no see. Note that it really is the ID people who are trying to circumvent scientific discourse (though there may be exceptions among them), while scientists (as opposed to atheists) are just annoyed that the usual route to textbooks and science curricula are being bypassed.
Obsessed undergrad, no you can't prove irreducible complexity. But you can't prove anything! Image that some system, say blood clotting, were to be tested again and again. If every explanation that biologists come up with for it's evolutionary origin fails time after time, for years on end. Eventually the hypothesis that blood clotting could not have evolved would become accepted by more and more scientists.
Further, while the agenda behind ID may or may not be to prove the existence of God, it doesn't do that. All anyone can "prove" is that evolution could not have done it.
Disclaimer: No system in biology has been shown to be irreducibly complex. So far, for all proposed systems (e.g. the ones listed above) it has been demonstrated that they could indeed have evolved by natural, non-designer, processes.
Island, long time no see. Note that it really is the ID people who are trying to circumvent scientific discourse (though there may be exceptions among them), while scientists (as opposed to atheists) are just annoyed that the usual route to textbooks and science curricula are being bypassed.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that simple when the never ending debate produces the reactionary tendency that scientists have to ***automatically*** refute and deny the significance of any and all evidence that creationists present that can mean that we aren't here by accident, simply because it looks too much like god to them to touch with a 10 foot pole.
This kills serious investigations into plausible science like the stuff that James Kay, Eric Schneider, Dorion Sagan and Scott Sampson have endorsed.
And FYI... Assuming that the above is correct, then bypassing "the route to textbooks and science curricula" becomes a necessary evil to counterbalance the above described dogma.
Bobxxx is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, because the loser knows full well that this is my position, and he also knows full-well that I am an atheist, so he lies in the face of the known facts.
Yep, Bobxxx is a perfect example.
Island, my post was sort of a plea to both camps to bury the axe and start over. For everyone to look only at the science.
ReplyDeleteIf IDers would stop influencing school boards directly and all that crap, and instead just do real science, then there would be no problem. Other scientists would then only "attack" them scientifically.
It is NEVER acceptable to bypass the normal route into science textbooks. I seriously fail to see how you can think that would ever be okay in any way. There are no firm examples of irreducible complexity, and yet you think we should teach it in high school?
P.S. For this discussion, I couldn't care less whether you are an atheist or if Bobxxx has contempt for Christian morons. But feel free to continue your discourse here on my modest blog.
It is NEVER acceptable to bypass the normal route into science textbooks. I seriously fail to see how you can think that would ever be okay in any way.
ReplyDeleteIt would be okay if the reactionary tendency of scientists prevents science from making it into the textbooks via the normal route. I thought that I was perfectly clear about this, and I seriously fail to see how you could miss that point.
There are no firm examples of irreducible complexity, and yet you think we should teach it in high school?
No, but there is this, which might be too advanced for high school, but I don't care since I'm only making the point:
Reason number one why Charlie Crist should sign the Evolution Bill:
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=f4af536be6e34501aa356a4a76ef99cf&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3af4af536be6e34501aa356a4a76ef99cfPost%3ae8907753-9663-4ef8-a395-135e9e4872ba&sid=sitelife.tallahassee.com
If I were a science teacher who wanted to challenge the following scientific paper as being prejudiced, (intentional or otherwise), against the most obvious solution to the problem, in order to rationalize random chance as a "causal mechanism", then I, an atheist and a materialist, would likely be branded as an IDist and get canned without protection from the law.
See if you can find the very obvious direction that the scientist is being pointed to by the problem, and then see the absurdly reaching and unobservable direction that he ***chooses*** to take instead:
http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0701023
[Quote]
"Evolution of life on earth was governed, primarily, by natural selection, with major contribution of other evolutionary processes, such as neutral variation, exaptation, and gene duplication. However, for biological evolution to take off, a certain minimal degree of complexity is required such that a replicating genome encodes means for its own replication with sufficient rate and fidelity. In all existing life forms, this is achieved by dedicated proteins, polymerases (replicases), that are produced by the elaborate translation system. However, evolution of the coupled system of replication and translation does not appear possible without ***pre-existing*** efficient replication; hence a chicken-egg type paradox. I argue that the many-worlds-in-one version of the cosmological model of eternal inflation implies that emergence of replication and translation, as well as the major protein folds, by chance alone, as opposed to biological evolution, is a realistic possibility and could provide for the onset of biological evolution."
-Eugene V. Koonin
[End Quote]
Koonin thinks that WHAT is more realistic than the most apparent implication of the evidence!?!
This is only one very small example the kind of willful ignorance that neodarwinians are notoriously sneaky about because they ****over-react**** to wrongly see god in the science, so they won't touch it with a ten foot pole.
The debate has caused them to completely lose all imagination for a non-"intelligent" yet, non-random solution to the problem, and so they avoid the most likely solution like it was the plague.
Koonin bails-out on biological evolution and causality-accountable first principles when he ignores the implication for inherent information content in order to reach to an unproven, unobservable, and entirely speculative cosmological interpretation of quantum theory, so that he can hang desperately onto random chance.
This represents a very clear, (therefore highly suspect), deviation from the scientific method, and teachers should be protected should they decide to challenge it.
And FYI: Bob never enters into a conversation with me, because he knows that I'd eat his lying face off with the facts.
Island: If I were a science teacher who wanted to challenge the following scientific paper as being prejudiced, (intentional or otherwise), against the most obvious solution to the problem, in order to rationalize random chance as a "causal mechanism", then I, an atheist and a materialist, would likely be branded as an IDist and get canned without protection from the law.
ReplyDeleteIf a science teacher just felt like challenging something, but is afraid of the reactions, then that's just sad. Try to change the laws, I would say.
For the science, it really doesn't matter that the teacher is afraid of being branded. There is only one way to get material into science textbooks, and that's the way I have described above. If the present pool of scientists are ALL reactionary, then that is indeed unfortunate, but it is still a consensus among the scientists that must decide what is good theory. Instead you suggest that a scared teacher should just go ahead and rewrite the textbook? What kind of precedence would that make for?
As for your example of an irreducible complex system: our present understanding of the origin of life is limited, but there are some good ideas out there. That Koonin chooses to phrase his comment about the current state of affairs in the way that makes it possible to conclude that we will never know, that is his business. Or, that you choose not to believe (on faith) that these things can happen by chance, then that's your business. Go ahead and convince somebody.
Jesus Christ!... you miss the freaking point that it doesn't matter if I believe that these things can happen by chance as long as there are empirically evidenced plausibilities, (like the one that I exampled by Kay, et.al...) indicating that the unidentified first principles are not random in nature.
ReplyDeleteI don't have to "convince" a damned soul for this to be recognized, rather than "auto-denied" as long as there is are empirically evidenced possibilities that there is reason to believe that this is true, then it should not be up to anybody to convince anybody for it to be considered as plausible science, rather than to abandon first principles as a FIRST response, which absolutely is what proponents of evolutionary theory commonly do when it involves evidence that appears to support the creationists position.
You missed the point because your plea to "both" sides, is conditionally biased to one side, because you wrongly assume that creationists don't have any valid points.
Just like Georges Lemaître had an agenda when he discovered the big bang because he thought that it was proof for the literal interpretation of Genesis, IDists do also present evidence that causes our best physicists to make statements that leave IDists in the stronger position, since their theories are not EVEN close to being testable:
Leonard Susskind very clearly expressed rationale for these observations in his interview with New Scientist concerning his recent book, The Cosmic Landscape: String theory and the illusion of intelligent design.
Amanda Gefter of New Scientist asked him:
If we do not accept the landscape idea are we stuck with intelligent design?
[The "Landscape" is Lenny's highly speculative string-theory version of the unobservable and untestable multiverse. Without a proven final theory, it is no better than hype, in other words.]
Leonard Susskind:
I doubt that physicists will see it that way. If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics.
You have made statements that indicate that you only believe that IDist hold up crap, but I could put Lenny on the witness stand and make him prove that you are the one who is full of crap assuming that you you continue to maintain your posturing that IDists have no points... misinterpreted though they many be... like Georges Lemaître.
Island: I don't have to "convince" a damned soul for this to be recognized.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that you do have convince someone if you want to change school textbooks. That was my original point. If you think that you don't have to convince anybody before you can change textbooks and curricula, then I dare say you are detached from reality.
Island, creationism is a non-theory. It provides no mechanism, all it does is deny that the prevailing theory is accurate. If you want to revise the current theory, then you need to provide a new, more acurate mechanism, or at least show that the current theory doens't work. Creationism doesn't do either of these. If you think BO is dismissing valid creationist poins, please provide links to scientific papers supporting said points.
ReplyDeleteIsland, you and your sources are missing another fairly obvious point. You are presenting evidence that, if accepted, might cast some measure of doubt upon evolutionary theory. It does NOT, however, provide any support for Intelligent Design - to assume that it does is a false dichotomy.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the doubt cast by your comments is a "chicken/egg" question - but that same argument applies equally to the Intelligent Design concept. Let's assume for the sake of argument that "evolution of the coupled system of replication and translation does not appear possible without pre-existing efficient replication; hence a chicken-egg type paradox." Well, if an Intelligent Designer created that "pre-exisiting efficient replication," then we are left trying to explain how that Intelligent Designer came about. The choices are limited - a natural being of some sort, which then must have developed WITHOUT a Designer (and if that being could have, then why couldn't we?); or a supernatural being of some sort...in short, God.
This is why most scientists see ID as religiously-based - the arguments only support ID if we assume that the Designer is God...and that is a circular argument.