September 6th, 2005

This is response to Michael Wiggins' opinion "In defense of intelligent design" in the August 31st Salina Journal.

Teach the Controversy?

President Bush may want to be known as "The Education President", but his track record with the federally unfunded No Child Left Behind Act is but one example of why that is a role he won't be able to play. The President is also not a scientist and his statement regarding Intelligent Design reflects his time as a politician.

From the New York Times, Dr. John Marburger III, Presidential Science Advisor, stated in response to Bush's comments that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." It is unfortunate that the President's Science Advisor's words don't carry as much weight in this area, but he is not a politician, just a scientist. That is the first problem with this supposed controversy between Evolution and Intelligent Design.

The greater scientific community does not have any issue with Intelligent Design, it just isn't based on science, so it's not considered relevant. Debates in a scientific arena are made by publishing papers for review and conducting experiments to demonstrate how a theory works. The experiments must also be able to be replicated by repeat experiments. This type of work has not yet been done by Intelligent Design advocates. Intelligent design is at this time an anti-evolution concept, trying to claim that Evolution does not explain certain observations. Intelligent Design cannot stand on its own as a theory, it must use Evolution to make its claims. There are too many questions asked that couldn't be answered by anyone, such as who the designer is and if we can actually test this intelligent force to determine what is the purpose of the design.

Scientific theories are also not proven by conducting public hearings and ignoring the recommendations of the group of educators/scientists whose assigned duty was to draft the proposed standards for students in Kansas. Now we may have science standards that say a supernatural cause (non-testable) can lead to a natural outcome (testable). Is that acceptable science? This leads to a problem of how can you "teach the controversy" when no scientific controversy exists? You do this by taking the issue to the media, where that level of scrutiny is not required.

The "dirty little secret" of genetics and cellular mechanics, one of many new fields of science since Darwin's time has been public knowledge for quite some time. Scientists at several times in history have thought that they have discovered all that is possible in a particular area of science. This would be a good representation of the fact that you are dealing with human beings who think their work is done or they are at the pinnacle of scientific knowledge. But newer discoveries, such as those in the areas of genetics, DNA and molecular biology and new technologies such as the electron microscope and computer technology allow us to look even deeper into the inner workings of our world and lead to new discoveries.

If something is discovered that is not presently explained by the Theory of Evolution, there would be work done, such as the previously mentioned papers and experiments to show how this could be explained. For example, when a newly discovered part of the planet, the deep oceans near volcanic vents for example were first observed and new species discovered. Do these discoveries break the Theory of Evolution? No, the discoveries merely add to its' scope and complexity over time.

Being able to view biology on a more detailed scale, breaking things down to the genetic level for example, should have destroyed Darwin's theory if it wasn't on the right track. However, these new discoveries have only strengthened the Theory of Evolution and allowed it to show more detail in how things work, which is what science should strive to do.

Scientific circles don't have much fear (or terror) about the concept of irreducible complexity or even use it in their discussions, this is a term coined by Intelligent Design advocates. As Michael Behe, who supports Intelligent Design and is the author of "Darwin's Black Box" has stated "An irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. (p. 39)" Does such a thing exist? So far none have been found. The idea of something being "Irreducibly Complex" also ignores the idea that everything is made of smaller things, such as when we look at the area of quantum mechanics. Design signifies a purpose and that only means something if we consider this the final stage and its true purpose is known. Could anyone truly be able to determine if the designing is complete?

I'm not sure what research Michael Wiggins has done to establish that no scientific explanation of blood clotting has been presented, but it is not too hard to find. Ken Miller, who wrote "Finding Darwin's God" in 1999, states "In short, none of the points raised by (Michael) Behe are adequate to explain why the vertebrate clotting system could not have evolved. Furthermore, as Doolittle's work has shown clearly, the hypothesis of evolution makes testable predictions with respect to the DNA sequences of clotting proteins, and these predictions have turned out to be correct time and time again."

Michael Wiggins states that "Einstein's relativity is now the state-of-the-art in physics." Actually I would think that Quantum mechanics is more "state-of-the-art" than Einstein's theories, but this just reflects the change over time in how the world can now be examined at a more fundamental level. Science and related theories will reflect this new information. Each scientist's work is used to help develop the next level of understanding.

I'm cannot find any of the scientific observations mentioned by Michael Wiggins to not be explained by the Theory of Evolution. Evolution does not present itself as an inflexible theory, stating that certain changes can't happen a certain way or that it has to be a linear, constant process. We are talking about thousands or millions of years of development in some cases and in that time there is a lot of opportunity for adaptations to occur.

Religion and Science both have a role to play in our lives, Science can't tell if you have a soul or prove/disprove the existence of a deity, or when life is considered to begin, for example. Just because science does not discuss the concept of religion does not mean it takes an atheistic view of religion, it just isn't considered, because it can't be tested. Religion deals with the concept of belief and which does not, by definition require any evidence. If your feel that your belief is threatened or re-defined by things that science discovers or states in a theory, then you have a problem with your belief, not with science. This would be the second problem with this supposed debate, a lot of time is spent trying to create a conflict where none exists, people need to understand the basic terminology of the words before they proceed with these claims.

Scientific theories are much different in that they need to be proven, they just should not be something to simply be believed. Treating a scientific fact as a belief or a religious belief as a scientific fact does not do justice to the role that they play in our society. All science has limits, that is something already known to anyone who has understands the definition of a scientific theory. Anyone who wishes to waste time putting a sticker on a textbook with the statement that "Evolution is Only a Theory" is re-stating the obvious and perhaps needs to spend more time understanding basic definitions of belief and theory.

Max Vandament