Intelligent Design Creationists and their Evolution and Global Warming Denialism

The Discovery Institute is the intellectual home of the Intelligent Design movement. Intelligent Design proponents have long claimed that modern evolutionary theory is flawed. Despite huge amounts of evidence supporting modern evolutionary theory, ID proponents say that some thing such as DNA, the bacterial flagellum, and the blood clotting system are best explained as being the product of an intelligent designer.

Mainstream scientists generally dismiss these as "arguments from ignorance". I can see no way that DNA, the bacterial flagellum, or the blood clotting system could have come about by natural means, therefore a designer must have done it. This argument shows more about the ID proponents lack of imagination than it does about the plausibility of evolution by natural means.

Amongst ID proponents, mathematician and philosopher, Williams Dembski, is held in high esteem. For instance, University of Texas philosopher Robert Koons has called Dembski "the Issac Newton of Information Theory". Being likened to Issac Newton is high praise indeed. The reason for the esteem is that he claims to have made a POSITIVE case for the likelihood of design ... not by showing that design itself is likely, but by showing that naturalistic evolutionary means are impossible.

Take the case for DNA, for example. According to Dembski, DNA contains information analogous to that of a computer program. He says that a computer program is always the product of an intelligent designer, so by extension so is DNA. Mainstream scientists point out that (1) the argument assumes the conclusion. Just because DNA shares some properties that if left vaguely defined can be likened to a human-produced intelligently designed computer program doesn't make it an intelligently designed computer program. There is no reason to reject a naturalistic origin even if the arguments premises were true. And (2) the arguments premises aren't true anyway. There are computer programs that evolved using self-modifying genetic algorithms (analogous to the process of natural selection) that solve certain problems more efficiently than do human generated programs. Thus, information does not necessarily have to be generated by an intelligent agent.

Of course, Dembski denies this. He says that humans had to design the genetic algorithms so therefore they too are products of intelligent design. It is hard to see arguments of this type as anything more than science denialism. The point of the argument was not that genetic algorithms were not set up by humans. The point was that the INFORMATION needed to solve the problem was not set up by humans. That information arose from a process of trial-and-error similar to that of natural selection. The program modified its own code. If the modification did a better job of solving the problem than previous programs did then it was allowed to "live on" and "mutate" until one of its offspring programs beat it. That is where the INFORMATION arose from. It was not a product of conscious design. It evolved by trial and error. If it can do that then Dembski is wrong in his assertion that information ALWAYS arises from intelligent design.

Recently Dembski has shown that he doesn't just limit his denialism to modern evolutionary theory. Here he uses it concerning global warming to sarcastically denigrate science with his "principle of methodological counterintuitiveness". Unfortunately for Dembski, what it shows is that he doesn't have a clue about science in general, and more specifically if this is what ID's "Issac Newton" has to contribute, then ID really is likely to be the joke mainstream scientists have made it out to be, and it deserves no place at any scientific table.

To place the problem in context, Dembski published a diatribe against Obama's science advisor, John Holdren. He takes Holdren to task for his past writings on the problem of overpopulation (he did argue in 1977 that overpopulation was going to be a very severe problem), his supposed support of eugenics (this is bogus), and his present support of anthropogenic global warming (this is true).

In his diatribe, he stated ... "Ironically, at that same time in the 1970s [that Holdren was writing his book on overpopulation], scientists were concerned not that the earth was warming but that it was cooling. The scare back then was global cooling!"

This is a repeat of a claim made famous by George Will. that has been thoroughly debunked, and not surprisingly Dembski was called on it.

In his most recent post Dembski decided to do his homework. He went to Wikipedia to find out if indeed the claim had been challenged. Dembski quotes this passage from Wikipedia:

So what conclusion does Dembski draw from this? Does he look at it and say, "OK, I was wrong. I apologize." No ... instead he looks at the last phrase in that quote. He says that there was a slight downward trend in temperatures between 1940s and early 1970s. Isn't that evidence for global cooling? Intuitively it should be. But since the scientists didn't think that they must have come up with a counterintuitive explanation. This is Dembski's sarcastic "principle of methodological counterintuitiveness". According to Dembski it is part of the methodology of science to make counterintuitive deductions. What purpose does it serve? Dembski mentions two things ... (1) it "allows scientists to line their pockets with our tax money" by claiming things that reasonable people would not expect, and (2) the more counterintuitive a theory is the more prestige it gives to the theory's originator. And not surprisingly Dembski sees evolutionary theory as being the most counterintuitive.

First of all science is only counterintuitive to someone who is ignorant of the totality of the evidence ... as is Dembski. If one were to look back in history to the 1940s and the beginning of the cooling trend one might note that there was another event happening at the time that was occupying peoples thoughts and resources -- World War II. Oil and gas resources were being diverted for military use. That meant that domestic energy needs needed to be supplemented. One source of energy that was abundant in the United States was coal. Coal-powered electricity generating plants sprang up and coal consumption increased dramatically. Much of the coal used in these plants contained high levels of sulfur. When the coal was burned it created sulfur aerosols that were air pollutants. Sulfur aerosols are very good at reflecting the sun's rays back into space. Hence less sunlight reaches the surface. If less sunlight reaches the earth, the earth will be cooling. Intuitive -- right?

After World War II the coal powered electricity generating plants were kept in operation. However, in the 1950s and early 1960s we noticed a problem. Trees in old-growth forests were dying. So were fish in pristine lakes. Why? The reason was that as the sulfur aerosols were washed from the atmosphere, they combined with rain water to form sulfuric acid. In other words, we had a problem with acid rain. Low sulfur coals were used and coal generating power plants were taken offline. When did this happen? In the early 1970s! Which the observant person will note is coincident with the end of the the cooling period. No more sulfur aerosols, no more acid rain -- intuitive right? Also no more sulfur aerosols no more sunlight being reflected back into space, no more cooling -- intuitive right?

So the reason that scientists do not think that the 1940s through 1970s cooling period is evidence of global cooling is because we have a much better explanation for it ... an explanation that tells us why it began and ended when it did, and we have the evidence in the concurrent restoration of those pristine forests and the return to normal of the pH of those pristine lakes. Nothing in the theory that period of cooling was caused by sulfur aerosols is the least bit counter intuitive. Furthermore, nothing in that theory contradicts anthropogenic global warming with respect to now. In fact some people are advocating the intentional introduction of sulfur aerosols to fight global warming. How to do that without creating the same problem with acid rain has not been answered and so most scientists reject it as a viable alternative.

How about modern evolutionary theory, is it really counterintuitive or does Dembski have a poor understanding of it? One might think that with most of his working hours devoted to attacking the theory he would be familiar with it. But evidently not. Charles Darwin published On the Origins of Species in 1859 in which he painstakingly presented evidence for his theory of "descent with modification". Prior to that scientists generally believed in the fixity of species. That is, they believed that each species was specially created by an act of God. Within a very short time, scientists came to accept Charles Darwin's ideas. By looking at the evidence, it became intuitively obvious that over time species MUST transmutate.

The examples that Dembski uses as counterintuitive are (1) the fossil record's "huge scarcity of transitional forms", and (2) "Cells exhibit[ing] nano-engineering of a degree that far surpasses our best technology". Let's look at both of those.

The fossil record's supposed lack of transitional forms is a creationist canard. Indeed, Dembski even quote-mines Stephen Jay Gould exactly as young-earth creationist wackaloons have done for years.

Yes, Gould said that, but it doesn't mean what Dembski is implying it does. You might think that he should know that. After all, Gould also said:

Gould along with Nils Eldredge proposed his theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain a finding commonly noted amongst paleontologists. When excavating fossil beds what one often sees are fossils of a species that remain unchanged through several bedding planes, then from one bedding plane to the next change to a similar form which will then remain unchanged for several bedding planes before being replaced over the space of a single bedding plane into a new but similar form. Thus in this example we have three very similar species, one would certainly be right to say that the second was transitional between the first and third. But what Gould was saying as the "trade secret" is that one rarely finds a fossil that is intermediate between the first and the second or between the second and the third. Why not? Gould's idea was that for most of a species lifetime there is no noticeable evolution -- this is what Gould called "stasis". However, things can change and selection pressure can cause a rapid evolution of one species into another. This would take place over a space of time shorter than a single bedding planes. Within fossil beds, bedding planes typically encompass periods of time lasting tens to hundreds of thousand of years. This means that fossils from those individuals who lived during that time of rapid evolution would be very rare compared to the individuals from the species in stasis.

In any case, here is a notable picture of a particularly relevant fossil transition -- humans from ape-like ancestors:

The skull labelled "A" is a modern chimpanzee skull. The skull labelled "N" is modern human skull. The ones in between (B through M) are arranged by their fossil dating. Ask yourself the following questions:

(1) Where in this progression do ape skulls end and human skulls begin?
(2) What criteria did you use to come up with your answer?
(3) If you cannot come up with an answer for 1 and 2, then why is this not INTUITIVELY OBVIOUS that this is an excellent example of transitional forms?

Concerning Dembski's "nanotechnology" claim, let's look at ID's favorite example -- the bacterial flagellum.

This is an electron micrograph of the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is composed of a large number of proteins that are arranged in such a way that it acts like a rotary motor turning around within the membrane of the bacterium. This rotary motion causes the bacteria to move. What ID proponents would have you believe is that not only does it act LIKE a rotary motor, it IS a rotary motor carrying all the hallmarks of design.

This is something that they proudly point to and say that such a complicated and elegant piece of machinery could never have evolved. But in science when we see something that seems inexplicable, we like to look at it more closely and see if we can indeed explain it. Evolutionary biologists have long accepted that such a structure could never evolve in one fell swoop. If it did evolve then it had to evolve piecemeal. It had to evolve from other structures that became co-opted to work LIKE a rotary motor. We then ask the question, "Does this look like what happened?"

The answer is now pretty much in. The answer is YES!! The first big break in the story involved the finding that the proteins used to make the flagellum rotate, are very similar to the proteins of a simpler structure found in other bacteria ... a type 3 secretory system (TTSS). TTSSs do not cause bacteria to move. Instead what they do is pump out chemicals from inside the bacterium to the outside of the bacterium. When doing that it just so happens that the TTSS rotates within the membrane of the bacterium just like the motor component of the flagellum. It also seems that the TTSS is itself derived from proteins used to make ATP (ATP synthase), the chemical used to power biochemical pathways. So one could say that the TTSS is a transitional form between ATP synthase and the bacterial flagellum.

Since then nearly all the proteins found in the bacterial flagella have been found to be homologous with other proteins which do a variety of simpler functions. This chart is a few years old and is not as updated as it could be but it shows many of the homologies that have now been found among these proteins.

This shows exactly what you would expect if the bacterial flagellum evolved as modern evolutionary theory says it must. There is no reason for it to be this way under an intelligent design paradigm. Of course, ID proponents argue that under an ID paradigm it COULD have been that way. Which is true I suppose since under an ID paradigm nothing can possibly be ruled out. The designer COULD have made the flagellum any way he wanted. But under an evolutionary paradigm it could have ONLY been one way ... the way it happened to turn out to be.

Thus, both evolution and global warming are counterintuitive ONLY when one doesn't know the evidence behind them. Once one becomes aware of the evidence, then they are anything but counterintuitive. All science is that way. Dembski should know that, or at least be able to figure it out. But he isn't. Why not? Because Dembski is simply denying the facts. Somehow I doubt if Issac Newton would have worked that way.