The following article is a reply to the Sunday Times Writer, Bryan Appleyard’s article in The Sunday Times – Review (28 Aug 05) in which he has supported the Intelligent Design creationist movement.
Bryan Appleyard: George Bush and the meaning of life The theory of ‘intelligent design’ supported by the president shouldn’t infuriate the Darwinists — it makes sense
(B.A) Ever since Darwin, the Christian West has been at war with itself. At the extreme edges of this conflict are militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, the hot gospeller of neo-Darwinism who believes evolution has solved the mystery of our existence, and American Christian fundamentalists who insist that not only was Darwin wrong, but also that the whole story told in the Bible is literally true.
(Reply) Here B.A is giving the impression that the main opponents of creationism are atheists & fanatical ones at that. In fact, creationism (in ALL its forms) is universally rejected by the scientific community, regardless of whether its members are atheist, agnostic or religious. In short, B.A should cut this crap about the extreme edges & at least make an effort to report the actual facts.
(Reply) Secondly, we do not have a problem with militant atheists taking control of our schools – the real problem is with the militant fundamentalists doing so. However, instead of highlighting the dangers of this, B.A has instead decided to assist these fundamentalists by spreading their lies & propaganda for them. As if religious extremists are not causing enough problems for everyone, The Times & B.A for some strange reason feel impelled to help them create even more.
(Reply) It is a common creationist tactic to equate a belief in evolution with atheism, so they can portray their opponents as godless atheists. B.A seems to be doing exactly the same thing.
(Reply) Not so long ago, G.W. Bush berated Putin for allegedly infringing democracy in Russia by suppressing freedom of the press (1). G.W. Bush was alleging that the Russian government controlled what Russians read. Yet is this any different to the situation in countries like Britain & America where very rich individuals & religious organisations can buy up the press & fill our newspapers with garbage like B.A’s article – is that what democracy is really supposed to be about?
(B.A) Somewhere in between these two extremes are, I hope, the rest of us.
(Reply) As Richard Dawkins has recently pointed out, (2) just because there are two opposing viewpoints, does not mean that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Sometimes one side is simply wrong. Besides, if you disagree with the ToE, you should be able to explain why using precise scientific language & terms; rather than going on & on about militant atheists etc.
(B.A) This usually cold war has now entered a very hot phase. The militant atheists have been enraged by the fact that President George W Bush has said “intelligent design” is as likely an explanation as evolution. Meanwhile, intelligent design (ID) is being studied and developed in some respected universities.
(Reply) Yet again, BA has repeated the lie that anyone opposing IDC is a militant atheist. Now he has compounded this with further distortions. Firstly, G.W. Bush did NOT say that ID is likely an explanation as evolution but only that both sides of the issue should be taught. His opponents have simply pointed out that as there is no such thing as a, “theory of intelligent design”, then you cannot teach something that never existed in the first place.
(Reply) Therefore, if there is no such thing as a theory of ID, then how can it possibly be studied & developed in respected universities? Well, I do not think that it possibly can be. Some of its more prominent supporters work in universities & promote it there; but that is hardly the same thing as studying or developing it. Just to make sure, I asked American anti-creationist (with over 20 years experience) Lenny Flank for his is opinion on the subject (3):
(Reply - LF) “So the answer is, no, not only is there no biology department in any
legitimate university anywhere in the United States that does any
work at all whatsoever in support of ID "theory", but the departments
where two of the most prominent IDers work have specifically and
unequivocally REJECTED any notion of ID as science.
(Reply - LF) Whoever made the statement you refer to is either utterly pig-
ignorant, or a deliberate liar.”
(B.A) The truth of what is going on here is complex yet vital. The average newspaper reader and television viewer in Britain has, thus far, had no chance of understanding why. The BBC, for instance, presents anything but the strictest neo-Darwinian orthodoxy as clear evidence of insanity.
(Reply) The truth is that a bunch of fundamentalist Christians (some disguised in the white coats of scientific respectability) are trying to force their absurd religious views onto other peoples children. That is the real, TRUTH, not that you will ever learn anything about that from B.A, who ironically, has written a pro-creationist article in one of the UK’s best selling newspapers. No wonder then that the average newspaper reader in this country hasn’t a clue what is going on with regard the fundamentalists – because the only thing they ever get to read from our so so-called, “free press” is fundamentalist propaganda.
(Reply) Anyone following these issues in the UK will know that local reporting of the concerns surrounding the issue of creationism (in the areas where schools are being taken over creationists) is virtually non-existent. At the same time, they are keen to report all the positive aspects for the creationists. In other words, local papers print stories that are highly biased towards creationism.
(Reply) Even the national papers are not that much better & anyone without an interest in scientific issues would be forgiven for believing that IDC represents a serious alternative to evolution. Which is ludicrous; there is no serious alternative to the ToE & no controversy (amongst scientists) about its correctness.
(Reply) At best, you can expect a bland statement of the opposing views, which creates a false impression. As most people lack a firm grasp of the issues, they therefore assume that the opposing arguments are of equal merit when in fact, they are not.
(Reply) At worst, readers will be exposed to the hard-core creationism of the likes of Peter Hitchens & Melanie Phillips from the Daily Mail who regularly feed the British public creationist propaganda on this subject. For example, only recently The Mail on Sunday wrote a double page spread with the title, “Did Darwin get it Wrong After All?” Although superficially detailing, “both sides of the argument”, it was still mainly biased towards a creationist perspective.
(Reply) For example, in a big banner running down the page, it is stated: “American scientists have come up with an amazing new theory – known as Intelligent Design – which may rewrite our ideas about the origins of Man. It could even bring God back into the picture”. Well that is funny, because for years now scientists have been asking the ID movement to explain this so-called theory of intelligent design. To date they have not received a reply; because as previously pointed out, there is simply, no such theory. Of course, none of this is explained to the readers of the Mail on Sunday who are being feed on a diet of creationist lies & do not even realise it.
(Reply) As for the BBC, I have gone back over recent stories reported by them on this issue. In no cases can I find evidence that they do anything other than report the opposing viewpoints (with the danger this entails explained above). They most certainly do not label anyone disagreeing with, “anything but the strictest neo-Darwinian orthodoxy”, as displaying evidence of insanity & such an assertion is utter rubbish. No, it is hard to see B.A’s comments as anything other than a complaint against the BBC for having the audacity to put forward the undisputedly held, majority view of the scientific community.
(B.A) Knots need to be unpicked. First, the world is purposefully designed. Sharks have teeth to capture their prey and trees have leaves to capture sunlight. In the absence of any competing hypothesis, it is rational to assume that an intelligence, God perhaps, is at work.
(Reply) It was Paley, who originated, “argument from design” nearly 200 years ago, only to have it blown clean out of the water roughly 50 years later by Darwin. That was 150 years ago & nothing has changed to make anyone even consider reverting again. Unless you want to count the fact that The Discovery Institute is being paid a lot of money to fund a massive marketing campaign suggesting otherwise, but that is hardly science is it. And it certainly isn’t news either, because B.A & The Times will not tell you about it.
(B.A) Enter Darwin. He said that, once a stable replicative process is established in nature, then errors will occur. A few beneficial errors will render replicators — organisms — better adapted and, therefore, better able to reproduce. Over billions of years, this simple process will lead to the variety of life we see around us today. Note that Darwin did not say how this system works nor how it began. He had no idea.
(B.A) Since then, we have begun to understand how evolution works. DNA is the replicator at the heart of the system and errors in the transcription of this molecule result in mutations, most of which are harmful but some of which are beneficial. The combination of Darwinism and molecular biology has created the orthodoxy known as neo-Darwinism.
(B.A) None of which has — or should have — the slightest consequence for religious belief. Indeed, to a Taoist, Hindu or Buddhist, Darwinism must appear irrelevant, trivial or obvious. Even a Christian shouldn’t really be bothered. Of course, Darwinism shows the Bible is not literally accurate if only because it requires the earth to be billions rather than thousands of years old — but treating biblical stories as metaphors, not literal truths, is a commonplace of Christian theology.
(Reply) If you are a Christian who believes in theistic evolution, then this is true. However, this view only began to be accepted after Darwin formulated ToE. Before then, most Christians naturally believed that God created man as described in the Bible. Even today, many Christians continue to adhere to this ancient belief. For this group of people, i.e. the creationists, Darwinism most clearly does have consequences, as it is in direct conflict with their beliefs.
(Reply) Besides many biblical literalists accept the idea of an old Earth although it does not change one little bit, their antagonism to evolution, as it renders the concept of supernatural creationism superfluous & untenable. This is true regardless of how creationists are classified. YE, OE or ID – in this respect they are all the same.
(B.A) Darwinism did not, as we are sometimes told, “explain life”. What the theory explains is what happens once life, or at least replication, gets going. Darwin did not know how replication began and, contrary to what you may think, neither do we.
(Reply) As it is not (& never has been) necessary to understand abiogenesis (the study of how life first started) in order to understand ToE, this point is irrelevant. Moreover, the degree of ignorance has been exaggerated & as far as I am aware, the field of abiogenesis is thriving with many competing hypothesis.
(Reply) As scientists have never claimed that the ToE explains how life begun, it is hardly their fault if the lay public thinks otherwise. Perhaps the answer is to spend more time teaching children about evolution at school.
(B.A) At the back of your mind is the idea that a lightning flash triggered a replicative system in the primordial soup, and suddenly the show was on the road. You may also be dimly aware of the Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 in which soup was created in the lab and bombarded with lightning. Amino acids appeared. Bingo! Nope. Amino acids, the chemicals that make proteins, are thermodynamically speaking easy.
(B.A) In fact, we now know that the odds against a stable replicative system establishing itself in the soup by chance are overwhelming. We absolutely do not know what started life and it remains the most staggeringly weird and improbable development.
(Reply) Only two paragraphs ago we were informed that no one understood how replication began. If this is the case, then how exactly has he arrived at this conclusion? Because if an event is not understood, it does not logically follow that it cannot be explained eventually by known physical laws or will by default, involve supernatural processes.
(Reply) Also, just because scientists cannot say exactly how life began does not mean they do not have some good ideas of the principles involved.
(Reply) It is a standard creationist tactic to attempt to undermine evolution by confusing it with abiogenesis & B.A appears to have been reading too much of their literature.
(B.A) Neo-Darwinians must, reluctantly, accept this.
(Reply) Given that they already know this & it represents not the slightest problem to the ToE, this statement is disingenuous & totally irrelevant.
(B.A) But the slightest suggestion that the orthodoxy is, in any way, incomplete is treated with contempt.
(Reply) Nonsense, as explained above, ignorance of abiogenesis does not translate into a problem for ToE but that does not stop people like B.A repeating the same erroneous argument, over & over again.
(B.A) In fact, the orthodoxy is incomplete, and even among the ranks of strict Darwinians there are profound disputes about the mechanism of evolution. The late Stephen Jay Gould, for example, regarded the gene-centred orthodoxy as wrong-headed.
(Reply) It is misleading to equate controversy about issues within evolution with uncertainty about evolutions standing as a theory. Amongst scientists, it is no more contentious or doubted than other mainstream theories such as relativity or quantum mechanics. However that does not stop people like B.A & the creationists from claiming otherwise, regardless of how often their claims are debunked.
(B.A) It is in this context that ID should be understood. Mainstream ID contradicts the fundamentalists’ faith in the chronology of the Bible since it accepts the billions of years necessary for the development of life at its present levels of complexity.
(Reply) Old Earth creationists also accept an ancient Universe, yet both they & IDC are still very hostile to the ToE – and for the same reason. Because contrary to good scientific practice, they have a conclusion and anything deemed by them to be contradicting it, such as the ToE just better get out of the way.
(B.A) My problem with ID is its name. “Intelligent” design? Nothing in the many questions that have been asked of neo-Darwinism necessarily points to an intelligence behind the development of life. Rather, the argument is simply that natural selection may not be the only force at work.
(Reply) If that is the case then, why don’t they just say that – why do they insist on denigrating evolutionary theory instead. Why don’t ID’s supporters come up with some proof to support their assertions; rather than running around screaming & shouting about how hard done by they are. In fact, if that is all they have to say, then why even talk about intelligent design in the first place?
(Reply) Actually, intelligent design appears to be nothing more than scientific creationism with its biblical balls cut off to make it more socially & constitutionally (in America – In this country we have Blair, who just does what he feels like) acceptable.
(B.A) Life may, for example, have started and be sustained by an innate drive towards complexity within the laws of physics. This would explain why life began so soon, a few hundred million years, after the formation of earth.
(Reply) Yes, but existing known physical processes as found in for instance, physics, chemistry & evolution seem more than adequate to explain how life began, even if the exact details are unknown. However, the fact that these details are unknown, does not by default bolster alternative explanations for which there is absolutely no evidence.
(B.A) Of course, some adherents to ID are driven by a need to establish religious rather than scientific truth.
(Reply) Given that the ID movement was founded by creationists, is funded mainly by creationists, staffed & supported by creationists, uses many of the same arguments & tactics as creationists, has the same hostility to science as creationists, has the same hostility to, atheism as creationists, uses the same rhetoric as creationists, tell the same lies as creationists & want to get at school kids, just like the creationists; then I tend to think that, “some” seems to be just a bit of an understatement.
(B.A) But neo-Darwinism has also in many cases abandoned proper scientific inquiry. Instead of testing the theory against the world, its most passionate advocates test the world against the theory. And neo-Darwinians are constantly, and often wrongly, trying to elevate their insights into a dogmatic system.
(Reply) That sounds like something copied & pasted from some creationist diatribe, rather than a reasoned scientific opinion. However, even if you accepted this statement to be true, how does the misuse of evolutionary theory invalidate that theory or give credence to IDC?
(B.A) The co-decipherer of DNA, Francis Crick, for example, once defined the “central dogma” of molecular biology as the one-way flow of information from gene to organism. This central “dogma” would stop evolution in its tracks — information has to flow back to the DNA from the organism, most obviously by its death, to tell the DNA it got something wrong.
(Reply) I am at complete loss to understand how an explanation for the process by which the DNA carries out its function (4) should detract from other aspects of evolutionary theory.
(B.A) Furthermore, the claims of neo-Darwinism have been expanding. In the form of evolutionary psychology it now claims to be able to explain human behaviour in spite of the fact that a key aspect of human behaviour is that it has stopped the processes of evolution, by, for example, using contraception and keeping handicapped people alive.
(Reply) Of course it will expand, as it is human nature to try to find different uses for materials & ideas. A chemical first developed for the plastics industry, might turn up in paints, foodstuffs or explosives. However, no matter how well or how badly evolutionary principles are applied in other fields, it is completely irrelevant to their soundness in their original one.
(B.A) Darwinism is a potent and, within certain limitations, unarguable theory. But the one truth that we can take from the work of that greatest of all naturalists is that humans are dependent on a system bigger than themselves and which, in all probability, they can never hope fully to understand.
(Reply) Pure conjecture, the ToE has nothing whatsoever to say about a bigger system, especially a supernatural one. Moreover, scientific advances (be it in geology, astronomy etc, or evolution) have tended to make supernatural explanations of physical events increasingly less plausible.
(Reply) In fact, given the complexity & versatility of existing physical laws & their known ability to shape physical matter into the myriad forms we see around us, then it is hard to see why it is necessary to tag on some mysterious undefined function, which seems to add nothing new in the way of increased explanatory ability.
(Reply) Of course, there is still much to learn, but trying to explain every gap in our knowledge by invoking an intelligent designer (be it the natural or the supernatural variety) is an act of desperate futility.
(1) http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/15015_summit.html
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html
(3) (Full reply at:) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation/message/78282
(4) Here is a typical explanation of The Central Dogma of Biology
http://web.mit.edu/esgbio/www/dogma/dogma.html