Over a year ago I decided to contact the Discovery Institute to ask them a very simple question. I wanted to know what scientific data there was to support intelligent design. I had never heard of Casey Luskin before but within a few weeks I received a very polite reply from him ensuring me that there was indeed scientific data to support ID. Naturally, I disagreed with him. Over the next month or two we engaged in an email debate, until Casey withdrew. I thought I would post the whole debate unedited below the fold. I'm sure Casey won't mind...
From: Casey Luskin (cluskin@discovery.org) Sent: 12 March 2008 13:39:14 To: Rhiggs Subject: ID research
Dear Rhiggs,
Hi again -- thanks for your kind reply. I assure you that I don’t ignore arguments. You don’t know me and I am not that kind of person. In fact, I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately, but in the last week over the course of 2 long plane flights I’ve managed to find time to work on replying to you. I’m nearly done with the reply and I hope to finish it on another flight I have later this week. FYI, my reply is already over 5000 words, and it begins by saying, “Greetings after an undesired delay on my part. I appreciate the time you took in your extensive reply. Because you put in so much time, you deserve a reply. I apologize that it took a while to reply--I've been busy a lot over the past couple weeks, including much traveling, and in fact I'm finally getting some free time now that I'm on a flight.” Thanks again -- I hope you will hear from me soon.
"Soon" is 13 months ago. Maybe I'll have to post reminders to him on Paul Nelson Day -- this is becoming expected behavior from that gang of propagandists.
The fossil record shows sharp discontinuity between species, not the gradual transitions that Darwinism inherently predicts. Darwin's theory offers no coherent, evidence-based explanation for the evolution of even a single molecular pathway from primordial components. The origin of the genetic code belies random causation. All codes with which we have experience arise from intelligent agency. Intricate biomolecules such as enzymes are so functionally complex that it's difficult to see how they could arise by random mutations.
3日後にはJerry A. Coyneによる反論が掲載されている。でも、せっかくなので、3つほど、毎度おなじみのMark Isaakの創造論者の主張を紹介しておこう。
Claim CA350: Professional literature is silent on the subject of the evolution of biochemical systems.
専門家の文献は生化学システムの進化について沈黙している。
Source: Behe, Michael J. 1996. Darwin's Black Box, New York: The Free Press, 68, 72, 97, 114, 115-116, 138, 185-186.
Response:
The claim is simply false. Dozens of articles exist on the subjects for which Behe claims the literature is missing. David Ussery, for example, found 107 articles on cilia evolution, 125 on flagella evolution, 27 on the evolution of the entire coagulation system, 130 on the evolution of vesicle transport, and 84 on "molecular evolution of the immune system" (Ussery 1999).
Behe tries to make his claim appear more dramatic by overstating our understanding of the molecular workings of the cell. For example, he says, "Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell" (1996, 232). But our understanding has only just begun. In the years since Behe wrote his book, journals have been filled with thousands of research articles uncovering new information, and much remains to be uncovered. When the complete Escherichia coli genome was sequenced in 1998, the functions of a third of its genes were still completely unknown, and E. coli is much simpler than human cells.
Behe's work on intelligent design theory has produced no publications in scientific literature. In fact, there have been no scientific publications on intelligent design by any of its proponents (Gilchrist 1997).
See for Yourself: You can do a search of biological and medical research yourself at PubMed ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed ). Try keywords such as "flagella" and "evolution".
Claim CB805: Since evolution says organisms came from a common ancestor and since they lived in a continuity of environments, we should see a continuum of organisms. There should be a continuous series of animals between cats and dogs, so that one could not tell where cats left off and dogs began.
Source: Morris, Henry M. 1985. Scientific Creationism. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 70-71.
Response:
The claim might be true if there were no such thing as extinction. But since species do become extinct, intermediates that once existed do not exist today. Since extinction is a one-way street, species can only become less connected over time. This is clear if we look at the fossil record, in which early members of separate groups are much harder to tell apart.
Environments (and ecological niches) are not really as continuous as the claim pretends. Dogs bring down their prey through long chases, and cats ambush their prey; dogs are made for long-distance running, and cats are made for short sprints with high acceleration from a standing start. These requirements are quite different, and it is hard to achieve both in a single body. Compromises between the two have disadvantages in competition with specialists for either type, and thus natural selection culls them. Intermediates are competitive only so long as specialists are absent; so when specialists evolve, the intermediates are likely to become extinct.
In part, distinctness is an illusion caused by our choice of which groups to give names to. Groups with unclear boundaries tend not to get separate names, or groups in which intermediate forms exist are chopped in half arbitrarily (especially obvious if fossil forms are considered; e.g., the line between dinosaurs and birds is arbitrary, increasingly so as new fossils are discovered).
There are indeed several cases of continua in nature. In many groups, such as some grasses and leafhoppers, different species are very hard to tell apart. At least ten percent of bird species are similar enough to another species to produce fertile hybrids (Weiner 1994, 198-199). The most obvious continua are called ring species, because in the classic case (the herring gull complex) they form a ring around the North Pole. If we start in Western Europe and move west, similar populations, capable of interbreeding, succeed each other geographically. When we have traveled all the way around the world and reach Western Europe again, the final population is different enough that we call it a separate species, and it is incapable of interbreeding with herring gulls, even though they are connected by a continuous chain of interbreeding populations. This is a big problem for creationists. We expect kinds to be easily determined if they were created separately, but there are no such obvious divisions:
They are mistaken, who repeat that the greater part of our species are clearly limited, and that the doubtful species are in a feeble minority. This seemed to be true, so long as a genus was imperfectly known, and its species were founded upon a few specimens, that is to say, were provisional. Just as we come to know them better, intermediate forms flow in, and doubts as to specific limits augment. (de Condolle, quoted in Darwin, 1872, chap. 2)
大半の種の境界が明確で、境界が疑わしい種は少数派だと主張する人々は、間違っている。そのような主張は、知られている属が不完全で、標本が数個しかない場合にのみ正しく、いわば暫定的正しさである。より多くを知れば、中間種が見つかり、種の境界が明確であるという論は疑わしくなる。[de Condolle, Darwin 1872による引用]
Claim CB180: The genetic code is a language in the normal sense of the term, since it assigns meaning to arbitrary symbols. Language is obviously a non-material category of reality; the symbolic information is distinct from matter and energy. Therefore, life is a manifestation of non-material reality.
The genetic code is not a true code; it is more of a cypher. DNA is a sequence of four different bases (denoted A, C, G, and T) along a backbone. When DNA gets translated to protein, triplets of bases (codons) get converted sequentially to the amino acids that make up the protein, with some codons acting as a "stop" marker. The mapping from codon to amino acid is arbitrary (not completely arbitrary, but close enough for purposes of argument). However, that one mapping step -- from 64 possible codons to 20 amino acids and a stop signal -- is the only arbitrariness in the genetic code. The protein itself is a physical object whose function is determined by its physical properties.
Furthermore, DNA gets used for more than making proteins. Much DNA is transcribed directly to functional RNA. Other DNA acts to regulate genetic processes. The physical properties of the DNA and RNA, not any arbitrary meanings, determine how they act.
An essential property of language is that any word can refer to any object. That is not true in genetics. The genetic code which maps codons to proteins could be changed, but doing so would change the meaning of all sequences that code for proteins, and it could not create arbitrary new meanings for all DNA sequences. Genetics is not true language.
The word frequencies of all natural languages follow a power law (Zipf's Law). DNA does not follow this pattern (Tsonis et al. 1997).
自然言語の単語の出現頻度は冪乗則(Zipfの法則)に従っている。しかし、DNAはこのパターンに従っていない[Tsonis et al.1997]。
Language, although symbolic, is still material. For a word to have meaning, the link between the word and its meaning has to be recorded somewhere, usually in people's brains, books, and/or computer memories. Without this material manifestation, language cannot work.
Tsonis, A. A., J. B. Elsner and P. A. Tsonis, 1997. Is DNA a language? Journal of Theoretical Biology 184: 25-29.
なお、記事の終わりの方に至るも、既出品の項目列挙のみなMichael Egnorである：
I still consider religious explanations for biology to be unscientific at best, dogma at worst. But I understand now that Darwinism itself is a religious creed that masquerades as science. Darwin's theory of biological origins is atheism's creation myth, and atheists defend their dogma with religious fervor.
Most Darwinists involved in the public debate today have one, and only one goal: To stifle free debate on this subject and thereby discourage you, the public, from scrutinizing the scientific evidence for yourself.
If you do that, it doesn't really matter whether you ultimately agree with me on intelligent design, because you'll agree with me on something more important: academic freedom and freedom of speech in the debate over evolution.
6800ワード[Counted by PZ Myers]の長い文章を、おなじみUniversity of Minnesota, Morrisの生物学のPZ Myersの準教授があっさりまとめた：
You really only need two pieces of information. 1) His opening paragraph:
必要な情報は2つだけ。1) Luskinの最初のパラグラフ：
Most Darwinists involved in the public debate today have one, and only one goal: To stifle free debate on this subject and thereby discourage you, the public, from scrutinizing the scientific evidence for yourself.
とわびしいもの。合計で81本。最高潮な2002年でも23本である。そして、2005年を最後に発行は途絶えた。発行されていた10年間で、投稿者は59名で、うち2回以上投稿したのは15名。1位はDr. William Dembskiの8本、2位はDr. Jonathan Wellsの3本である。また、University of IdahoのScott Minnich準教授はDiscovery Instituteのフェローとして助成金を受け取っているはずだが、まったく寄稿していない。
ちなみに、本来の生物学の研究では、David Usseryが1999年に調べた時点で、繊毛の進化について107本、鞭毛の進化について125本、血液凝固系の進化について27本、小胞輸送の進化について130本、免疫系の分子進化について84本の論文があった。このような研究状況について、インテリジェントデザイン理論家Dr. Michael Beheは2005年に「複雑な生化学器官の出現について厳密かつ詳細に書かれた論文は皆無だ」と評し:
No, they certainly do not. My answer, or my argument is that the literature has no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection and these articles do not address that.
Three years later, the creationists are still trying to salvage irreducible complexity. This generally involves a bait-and-switch game. Today, for example, the Discovery Institute tells us that the evidence of dolphins does not touch the argument for irreducible complexity. See, what you have here are two different irreducibly complex systems, with one that just happens to have an extra part. Just think about bicycles...
Bicycles have two wheels. Unicycles, having only one wheel, are missing an obvious component found on bicycles. Does this imply that you can remove one wheel from a bicycle and it will still function? Of course not. Try removing a wheel from a bike and you’ll quickly see that it requires two wheels to function. The fact that a unicycle lacks certain components of a bicycle does not mean that the bicycle is therefore not irreducibly complex.
... let me point you to Abercrombie Fitch’s discovery on YouTube. (What’s with these commenter handles these days, you may wonder? Don’t ask me.) Behold:
It is not my purpose here to point out all of the philosophical flaws in Behe's argument; this has been done thoroughly in many of the resources collected on John Catalano's excellent web page. Instead, I wish to point out that the mousetrap that Behe uses as an analogy CAN be reduced in complexity and still function as a mousetrap. ここでは、Beheの論の哲学的誤りのすべてを指摘しようとは思わない。その代わりに、私はBeheがアナロジーに使うネズミ捕りが、分解してもネズミ捕りとして機能することを示す。
The mousetrap illustrates one of the fundamental flaws in the intelligent design argument: the fact that one person can't imagine something doesn't mean it is impossible, it may just mean that the person has a limited imagination. ネズミ捕りは、インテリジェントデザイン論の本質的誤りを示してみせるものだ。すなわち、それがイメージできないという事実は、それが不可能だと意味せず、想像力の欠如を意味するだけだと。 ...
KENNETH R. MILLER: As an example of what irreducible complexity means, advocates of intelligent design like to point to a very common machine: the mousetrap. And the mousetrap is composed of five parts. It has a base plate, the catch, a spring, a little hammer that actually does the dirty work, and a bait holder.
The mousetrap will not work if any one of these five parts are taken away. That's absolutely true. But remember the key notion of irreducible complexity, and that is that this whole machine is completely useless until all the parts are in place. Well, that, that turns out not to be true.
And I'll give you an example. What I have right here is a mousetrap from which I've removed two of the five parts. I still have the base plate, the spring, and the hammer. Now you can't catch any mice with this, so it's not a very good mousetrap. But it turns out that, despite the missing parts, it makes a perfectly good, if somewhat inelegant, tie clip.
And when we look at the favorite examples for irreducible complexity, and the bacterial flagellum is a perfect example, we find the molecular equivalent of my tie clip, which is we see parts of the machine missing -- two, three, four, maybe even 20 -- parts, but still fulfilling a perfectly good purpose that could be favored by evolution. And that's why the irreducible complexity argument falls apart.
Today marks the third anniversary of Judge John Jones' attempt to ban science classroom discussions of intelligent design in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. In the three years since Jones' decision was announced, it has not worn well. Judge Jones' supposedly devastating critique of intelligent design turned out to be cut and pasted (factual errors and all) from a document written by lawyers working with the ACLU. Law professors (including some who oppose intelligent design) have skewered Jones' embarrassing judicial opinion as poorly argued and unpersuasive. And many of the alleged factual claims on which Judge Jones based his opinion have been refuted. In the meantime, public interest in intelligent design has continued to grow, as has support for academic freedom to question Darwinism (no doubt encouraged by this year’s theatrical documentary Expelled). Darwinists, alas, have yet to learn the futility of trying to win scientific debates by court orders and intimidation. No matter -- although Darwinists may not believe in free speech and debate, the vast majority of Americans do.
今日は、Kitzmiller v. Dover裁判において、John Jones判事が理科の授業でインテリジェントデザインを論じることを禁じようとしてから、3年目である。Jones判事の判決から3年だが、それは長持ちしなかった。John Jones判事の破壊的批判は、ACLUとともに働く弁護士によって書かれた文書から事実の誤りを含めてカット＆ペーストしたものであることが明らかになった。インテリジェントデザインに批判的な者を含む法学教授たちは、John Jones判事の貧弱な議論と説得力のなさに痛撃した。そして、John Jones判事の意見の基礎となった多くの事実の主張は論破された。一方、インテリジェントデザインに対する一般人の関心は成長し続け、ダーウィニズムに疑問を呈する学問の自由を支持した。今年の劇場ドキュメンタリーExpelledによって促進されたことは疑いない。ダーウィニストたちは、裁判所の命令と脅迫によって、科学的議論に勝とうとする無益さを学んでいない。ダーウィニストたちは信じていないかもしれないが、大多数の米国人は玄論と議論の自由を信じている。
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID [intelligent design] would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child [p. 24]
A significant aspect of the IDM [intelligent design movement] is that despite Defendants’ protestations to the contrary, it describes ID as a religious argument. In that vein, the writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity. [p.26]
Throughout the trial and in various submissions to the Court, Defendants vigorously argue that the reading of the statement is not “teaching” ID but instead is merely “making students aware of it.” In fact, one consistency among the Dover School Board members’ testimony, which was marked by selective memories and outright lies under oath, as will be discussed in more detail below, is that they did not think they needed to be knowledgeable about ID because it was not being taught to the students. We disagree. [footnote 7 on p. 46]
After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.[p. 64]
The one textbook [Pandas] to which the Dover ID Policy directs students contains outdated concepts and flawed science, as recognized by even the defense experts in this case. [pp.86-87]
この裁判の被告側の専門家も認めた通り、Dover学区のインテリジェントデザイン方針が生徒たちに指示した、ひとつの教科書(Of Pandas and People)は、時代遅れの概念と誤った科学を含んでいた。
ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID. [p. 89]
Accordingly, we find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause. [p. 132]
The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom. [pp.136-7]
