a theory's fatal flaw
Over the last ten years just about every science journal and qualified academic levied weighty charges against creationism and its recent incarnation, Intelligent Design. ID is not the same thing as creationism, its not religious, its supporters say indignantly. The fact that there’s only one Designer whose origins are not named or investigated, that it requires no experiments or adherence to the scientific method and posits that all life on Earth is so complex that it needs a nigh omnipotent being to bring it into existence by forces best left unquestioned, are just random coincidence.
But out of all the criticism the ID received, one has been oddly absent as many debaters started getting bogged down in the minutia of what bacteria evolved what cilia and why. The real flaw of ID is in its very origins. It aims to disprove evolution by tying it with something it never tries to explain. Evolution deals with living things changing over many eons. It has nothing to do with creation. It assumes the moment of creation already happened. Creationism and ID are trying to explain away evolution in the same way one would try to disprove the existence of airplanes by disputing how the Earths atmosphere formed to allow for flight.
In the words of a wise man: “swing and a miss.”
FOUL BALL!!!
http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0701023
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.
Not that I support ID, but ducking their questions is just as big of a copout on science as Koonin’s solution to the problem is.
Well said.
Indeed. I don’t believe you can divorce naturalistic evolution from abiogenesis. Some IDists actually do this, but I really don’t see the point.
Looks like I have time for an actual reply.
I am actually more accepting of creationism than intelligent design because at least creationism knows what it is. It is a religious belief and it realizes it, for the most part at least. Intelligent design is all the more dangerous because it bills itself as a scientific theory. Even worse, it’s supporters actually believe this.
I have no problem with a religious theory of creation. There is no scientific theory that even attempts to take the place of God. It’s the fact that intelligent design ignores the scientific method and scientific evidence while calling itself a science that is the problem. I have no problem as long as religion differentiates between science and religion and understands scientific theory for what it is: a reasoned and evidenced explanation for a specific process.
Evolution doesn’t even attempt to disprove God or creation. It simply describes a process. It doesn’t ask what created the universe, what started it all. I really don’t think many creationists/neo-creationists realize this. I think your airplane/atmosphere does a good job at illustrating the difference.
Island,
No one is ducking ID questions here. Your quote is indeed correct and current systems of gene replication require previous incarnations and scientists are closing in on how they could appear. But again, evolution doesn’t try to explain how life came about. It doesn’t care where the genome came from, its only concern is that will happen to that genome over millions of years and what new creatures it will build. Creationists want evolution to do more than it was designed to do and what’s being handled by geneticists working on investigating the genesis of life on Earth. That who they should be asking, not evolutionary biologists.
You guys think that Kooning was talking about abiogenesis? I don’t.
thecountryshrink said:
I dont believe you can divorce naturalistic evolution from abiogenesis.
Separate from my previous point, I agree with this, and so does Richard Dawkins, actually:
http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_6.html
I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection.
I believe that the whole universe works by this mechanism:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2006-02/msg0073320.html
Because the anthropic principle a *perpetually inherent* thermodynamic energy conservation law that enables the universe to periodically leap/bang to higher orders of the same basic configuration, (just like we did, and by the exact same mechanism), in order to preserve causality, the arrow of time, and the second law of thermodynamics… indefinitely… … …