Darwin’s Failed Predictions (1 and 2)
[Editor's Note: This article shows slides 1 and 2 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring "Darwin's Failed Predictions," a response to PBS-NOVA's online materials for their "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" documentary.]
PBS confidently instructs us that “evolution happens.” But should that matter? Even Darwin’s scientific critics agree that evolution happens. PBS is introducing equivocation into the discussion by failing to clearly define “evolution.”
Some use “evolution” to refer to something as simple as minor changes within individual species that occur over short periods of time (Evolution #1). Others use the same word to mean something much more far-reaching, such as claiming that all living organisms are descended from a single common ancestor (Evolution #2), or that natural selection has the power to produce all of life’s complexity (Evolution #3). Used one way, “evolution” isn’t controversial at all (i.e. Evolution #1); used another way, it’s hotly debated (i.e. Evolution #2 or Evolution #3). Used equivocally, “evolution” is too imprecise to be useful in a scientific discussion.
When you see the word “evolution,” you should ask yourself, “Which of the three definitions is being used?”
Critics of neo-Darwinism today usually take issue with Evolution #2 or Evolution #3. But the discussion gets confusing when a Darwinist takes evidence for Evolution #1 and tries to make it look like it supports Evolution #2 or Evolution #3. Proponents of Darwinism, including PBS, commonly pull this “Evolution” Bait-and-Switch, using evidence for small-scale changes, such as changes in the sizes of bird beaks (Evolution #1) and then over-extrapolating from such modest evidence to claim that it proves Darwin’s grander claims (Evolution #2 or Evolution #3).
No one doubts that Darwin was a gifted scientist who made careful observations of the natural world. The same could be said for Sir Isaac Newton, an early proponent of intelligent design whose ideas inspired both modern physics and modern science as a whole.
Yet despite the long-lasting success of Newton’s ideas, technological advancements in the early 20th century overturned Newtonian physics and replaced them with Einstein’s theories. If history is to be our guide, science must always be open to following the evidence where it leads, even if that means challenging orthodoxy.
PBS urges viewers to believe that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Such a statement reverses the scientific process by putting conclusions ahead of empirical observations of nature. PBS also quotes evolutionary paleontologist Niles Eldredge, stating, “Nothing that we have learned in the intervening 175 years has contravened Darwin’s basic description of how natural selection works,” and asserting that the data “unequivocally” support Darwin’s view. Such dogmatic statements fly in the face of the scientific spirit, which opposes dogmatic attachments to theories and promises to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.
In 1998, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences printed a guide to teaching evolution that included an essay by the eminent evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, which stated: “One of the most characteristic features of science is this openness to challenge. The willingness to abandon a currently accepted belief when a new, better one is proposed is an important demarcation between science and religious dogma.” (Ernst Mayr, “The Concerns of Science” in National Academy of Sciences, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, page 43 (National Academy Press, 1998).) PBS may claim that evolution is open to scrutiny, but the authoritarian and one-sided treatment of the subject in “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” shows that they treat it more like a religious dogma than a science.
Were PBS to promote the tentative, skeptical mindset that underlies all good science, their online materials would have stated, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of the data.”
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January 1st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
ID is creationism in drag. It’s not science. There is not a shred of proof of creationism, but there are wearhouses, museums, univerities full of pysical evidence as well as exhaustive peer reviewed scientific research to establish evolution as fact. Get over it already. You are embarrassing yourself.
January 1st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
[...] Darwin’s Failed Predictions (1 and 2) January 1, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science & Religion, Vox Populi [Editor’s Note: This article shows slides 1 and 2 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] [...]
January 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
” . . .scientific spirit, which opposes dogmatic attachments to theories and promises to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.” Tasty irony. Intelligent design, thy very name is dogmatism.
January 1st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
If one is to argue that dogmatism exists, one has to demonstrate it, show it, give evidence. Holding an educated opinion with some vigour isn’t dogmatism. Both sides are active in debate and forts are being erected, as to be expected. Ernst Mayr may well, in other quotations, accept that overturning the wisdom of the day is usually a hard fight with a lot of noise and girding of loins.
Evolution, as a concept, does not preclude a Prime Mover. If I build an engine to power my car, descriptions of the mechanics and physics and manufacturing process may well give little focus on me, the inventor. One might well hear phrases such as “the pistions do this, the mixture of petrol and air do that when ignited by the spark plug”, and omit saying, “‘the pistons invented by Amfortas the Almighty do this, the mixture of petrol and air organised by our Omnipotent Amfortas do that when ignited by the spark plug He designed in His Great Wisdom”. Indeed, such analysis might even omit the fact that the vehicle was designed to carry Me at all and focus instead on My passengers’ comfort.
Once, long ago, in another age, someone wrote all about the ‘beginning’, and Big G got a lot of good press. Mr Darwin, much later, did a bit of reverse engineering thinking and described some of the possible mechanics. The writers of old were not very mechanically inclined and hadn’t learned much at school, but they held the Inventor in some awe.
January 1st, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Casey Luskin lied “…Sir Isaac Newton, an early proponent of intelligent design …”
The actual quote from Newton was not in support of intelligent design creationism as we know and love it today, but rather in support of a long-since-discredited creationist idea about God controlling the movement of the planets. In a letter to the Reverend Dr. Richard Bentley in 1692, Newton wrote: “To your second query I answer that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone but were impressed by an intelligent agent.”
No astronomers of today support this of, course, just as essentially no actual biologists of today accept the similarly ludicrous claims of intelligent design creationism. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling to put this concept into perspective.)
It’s disappointing but not particularly surprising that Casey would bring up this obviously theistic citation in support of the purportedly non-theistic (at least in public) intelligent design variant of creationism.
January 2nd, 2008 at 1:40 am
The whole “micro/macro evolution” thing is in itself an illusion. After all, what is a “macro” thing but a conglomeration of many “micro” things? If a species undergoes a thousand “micro” evolutionary adaptations, does it not constitute a “macro” change? What about a million “micro” changes?
The continental plates drift “micro” distances each year, yet over millions of years their collisions erect “marco” mountain ranges. We can measure the gradual drifting of tectonic plates, just as we can observe gradual changes in organisms, but we cannot witness the development of a new mountain range or a totally new animal; the process much too slow.
We can infer from the geological evidence that plate tectonics gives rise to new mountains over time. In just the same way, we can infer from biological and paleontological evidence that evolution gives rise to new animals over time.
January 2nd, 2008 at 7:04 am
“If one is to argue that dogmatism exists, one has to demonstrate it, show it, give evidence. ” No problem. Would IDers be just as happy with Brahma or Innani or Raven or Ahura Mazda? Need one even bother to frame the question, but for the sake of form? Would their claims of immanence and mystery withstand even a minute of examination without revealing irritable, meddlesome old Jehovah?
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:11 am
Palinurus, fancy yourself maybe the “Tim Powers” of MND no?
Some ID’ers may be happy with the golden tea cup…the one that orbits just this side of planet Notgalotus, but that’s beside the point. I’m unclear as to whether you are on about ID or its adherents. And then, though credibility is admissible so to speak, is it crucial the IDers be proven of open mind…as per your narrow definition of that? Interesting that.
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
“I’m unclear as to whether you are on about ID or its adherents.” Both, of course. If you can find any useful way the separate them for the purposes of this discussion, perhaps I’ll reconsider. Without adherents, ID would be dead as Zeus, and my point is that there is only a fragment of one religion, only a subset of one philosophical tradition pushing this particular flavor of the idea. Almost all creation myths are a sort of ID. This, of course, only speaks to its origins. The fact that it is also arrant rubbish is quite a different line of argument. I’ve never read Tim Powers, though a quick Wiki makes him look interesting. Quote of the day: “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” -Saul Bellow