The Double Standard for Intelligent Design and Testability
Many proponents of intelligent design (ID) have argued for design of the cosmos based upon the highly improbable fine-tuning of our universe to permit the existence of advanced forms of life. Skeptics of cosmic-design often cite the possibility that there are infinite universes, or “multiverses,” where our universe just happened to win a cosmic lottery and get the right conditions for life. An infinite number of universes, they argue, reduces the odds that ours just “happened to get it right,” because it shows that some universe was just bound to eventually get the right conditions for life. We wouldn’t be here if ours hadn’t won. They argue this rationale provides the probabilistic resources to overcome a design inference based upon highly improbable cosmic-fine-tuning.
However, a Nature article from 2006 noted that this “multiverse” hypothesis is not testable:
Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have argued that multiple universes could have formed during a period of cosmic inflation that preceded the Big Bang. More recently, string theorists have calculated that there could be 10500 universes, which is more than the number of atoms in our observable Universe. Under these circumstances, it becomes more reasonable to assume that several would turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and zillions of darts to throw at the dart board, Susskind says. “Surely, a large number of them are going to wind up in the target zone.” And of course, we exist in our particular Universe because we couldn’t exist anywhere else. It’s an intriguing idea with just one problem, says Gross: “It’s impossible to disprove.” Because our Universe is, almost by definition, everything we can observe, there are no apparent measurements that would confirm whether we exist within a cosmic landscape of multiple universes, or if ours is the only one. And because we can’t falsify the idea, Gross says, it isn’t science.
(Geoff Brumfiel, “Outrageous Fortune,” Nature, Vol 439:10-12 (January 5, 2006).)
National Academy of Sciences member Leonard Susskind was given print-space–in fact he had a highlighted box-quote–saying that we should not reject the multi-verse hypothesis on the grounds that it isn’t testable. Nature reports:
Susskind, too, finds it “deeply, deeply troubling” that there’s no way to test the principle. But he is not yet ready to rule it out completely. “It would be very foolish to throw away the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science,” he says.
(Geoff Brumfiel, “Outrageous Fortune,” Nature, Vol 439:10-12 (January 5, 2006) (emphasis added).)
Many scientists challenge ID on the grounds that it allegedly is not testable. Plainly, the multiple universe hypothesis isn’t testable. And yet somehow you see prominent physicists like Leonard Susskind arguing that, even if it isn’t testable, “It would be very foolish to throw away the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science.” If an ID proponent made such a claim, you’d never see it printed in Nature.
Regardless of this double-standard, I strongly believe ID is testable (see here and here). In fact, Jonathan Wells humorously comments about the state of Darwinist arguments on this point in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, saying Darwinists criticisms “collaps[e] into a contradiction: ID isn’t science because it isn’t testable, and, besides, it has been tested and proven false.” (pg. 140)
But when critics claim ID isn’t testable, has the scientific community given ID proponents the courtesy given to Dr. Susskind? Can you imagine Nature affirmatively quoting someone like William Dembski or Jonathan Wells saying, “It would be very foolish to throw away the right answer on the basis that it doesn’t conform to some criteria for what is or isn’t science”? If the answer is “no,” then maybe there is a double standard in the journals when it comes to ID and testability. Perhaps untestable theories are acceptable to Nature when they can challenge intelligent design, but are not acceptable when they support design.
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January 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
[...] The Double Standard for Intelligent Design and Testability January 9, 2008 at 11:42 am · Filed under Intelligent Design, Vox Populi Many proponents of intelligent design (ID) have argued for design of the cosmos based upon the highly improbable fine-tuning of our universe to permit the existence of advanced forms of life. Skeptics of cosmic-design often cite the possibility that there are infinite universes, or “multiverses,” where our universe just happened to win a cosmic lottery and get the right conditions for life. An infinite number of universes, they argue, reduces the odds that ours just “happened to get it right,” because it shows that some universe was just bound to eventually get the right conditions for life. We wouldn’t be here if ours hadn’t won. They argue this rationale provides the probabilistic resources to overcome a design inference based upon highly improbable cosmic-fine-tuning. [...]
January 9th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Uh …..actually the multiverse theory (string theory) is currently the model used for the very real and tangible quantum computers.
Intelligent design was great until they started trying to work the whole, earth is less than a million years old thing into it.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
“Intelligence,” “Life,” “Irreducibly Complex”…these are all very poorly defined. Not that definitions don’t exist, but that they exist in the same way as defining one’s cancer as being cured. Yes, there’s no doubt that all 100 versions of Nature are political and anti-theist; nonetheless, the thesis that Intelligent Design is falsifiable is as nebulous as Intelligent Design, itself.
Maybe a “continuously functional Darwinian pathway” will be discovered. It does not disprove that God (cutting to the chase) authored life. Nor does the citing of “irreducibly complex” systems falsify evolution. Yes, maybe evolution as it currently is understood. I may not know the details, but at least I know that I do not know. And it certainly is possible, in the oceans of our ignorance, for a “meaningful” or “functional” system to have evolved from “irreducibly complex” components that preceded it.
As for our universe being just the perfect place for us: There is no need whatsoever for any probabilistic resources involving any more than one universe to prove how that happened. No more, say, than for proving how your birthdate and time happened to be the perfect one for starting your existence.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Gosh, I have never heard of any ID theorist claim that the earth is less than a million years old. Could you name one legitimate ID proponent who holds such a view? I certainly do not, and never have. This claim is a red herring advanced by people just don’t like ID on philosophical grounds.
This is also a bogus claim, and one that completely misconstrues the Anthropic Principle — which is itself a well known and well-accepted principle in cosmology. The term “Anthropic Principle” was first coined by the Australian physicist Brandon Carter in the 1970s. The concept was later developed by Tipler and Barrow in their seminal work, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Anthropic Bias is a fact of life, whether you like it or not. The only thing left is to explain it. The Many Worlds Interpretation of the universe is one way of making sense out of it.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
It doesnt have to be testable..
in this case, there are two and more possible explanations for what we exist in.
ALL the explanations are not testable… (a curious thing that every line that might lead to a solid answer, spits out nothing either way)
so it implies that all or none, that no singular argument can be accepted..
whats worse is that before you get to prove all of this and test… you first have to get past the trap of the fact that you cant prove to anyone that you exist…
and there is no logical way to prove that anyone you see around you and such exists.
you could be a singular entity imagining all this…
prove your not.
i think therefore i am.
the only proof is in your own existence because your own ability to self reference.
now… check out the current work on the fact that the unexamined reality doesnt exist. that reality outside the observer, doesnt exist, and its not an effect of an illusion.
this premise WAS testable.
besides that, time may be an illusion… everything has happend and is happned… no way to test that one yet.
as the perception of three dimensions… thats because math allows us to actually be a holographic projection on a two dimensional plane..
most people dont read enough or study enough about the fundemental things that we ARE finding out about the universe… some who bring it up are often decades to almost a century behind..
at the boundaries of what we are testing… things exist in a supposition of states… (i can get into this a lot more complex and such, but lets keep it simple please), they exist as everything and nothing and all in between.
they resolve themselves when an observer forces them to.
schroedingers cat is not just a curiosity or an illusory effect that appears like something else. reality breaks down at the limits, and substantiates upon the actions of an observer.
at our size and such we dont decohere, but at the atomic level, matter does.
to go farther, since many will howl to this as old..
the quantum computer creates such entangled states in which atoms or photons are arranged and manipulated in such a way that they exist in this state in a stable situation… and we are trying to exploit the very computational basis of reality so that when we ‘look’ at the quantum computer the right way, we will see the answer.
and want to hurt your head some more? well what does the universe expand into? and why would one exist if existence doesnt mean anything or happen till thre is such a mind…
technically the resolution of the quantum thing could be instantaneous and resolves back into time from its current decohered state, we as part of that would never be able to percieve it.
tests on such were done with photons from solar sources far away and entangled… when the observer changes the system, the situation has to resolve extraneously to time… when the entangled photons go through the slit experiment you get a wave pattern on the target… the target can see both wave and particle patterns so its neutral… however sample the situation with something that detects photons as particles, and the wave pattern (an interference pattern) decoheres and what hits are particles…
there are other wierd things…
however the bottom line is that there will be no proof either way…
which is why religions are the providence of refines faith…
take it which way you want, but in order to assert either, and not have both exist in a supposition of states in your mind, you must make a leap of faith.
either the leap of faith is to god… OR the leap of faith is towards not god
neither will win out.
for one is a product of thought… which may be more than just mechanical given that there is a quantum nature to reality and unlike desktop machines the proteins and other things can access that area. roger penrose made some interesting arguments this way.
want the truth. its all correct and its all wrong.
its all in a supposition of states till something makes it concrete.
now make the distinction between thoughts as a model of the world not a true perception of the world. any person that has done extensive drawings in still life will tell you that what you see is not what is there. till you start to draw and compare what you think you see with what you actually are seeing, you wont realize it.
your eyes actually dont see an image… they see a quantity of images that contain information and the eye preprocesses it and sends it to the brain. what it sends to the brain is not images. maps of edges… movements from left to right. movement from right to left… and other things.
so you dont see like a camera… you believe you do… but you dont.. you percieve what you actually do see as a camera would…
anyone that has ever been hallucinating and remembers or used mind benders, or schizophrenic and so on… might be able to point out that you confidence in reality is an illusion… since the delusional person is just as confident that there is a pink elephant next to you. the poor dear cant mentally test his or her way out of that box…
you CAN think your way out of depression… you CANT think your way out of a thought process disorder.
so to tell you the total truth…
everything is freakier than EITHER camp really wants to know.
there are quite a few physicists and others that believe in some god just because of how it is, and such… and there are others that conclude the opposite… few make a living attacking the other group… as both groups realize that there is no argument where the only thing either side has is faith.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
“Could you name one legitimate ID proponent who holds such a view?”
This was based on my first webs earch when ID first started making news…..I have always been of the mind that creationism and evolution in no way conflicted and I was hoping to find similar thoughts in ID. Then the first 3 ID sites I visited after digging into them I started to find where they try to fit the view of the universe according to biblical time lines (cant remember the exact number of years from creation to present but its less than million years) When I saw that I blew them off as having a religious agenda completely unrelated to science.
I will see if I can find those sites again…..
Which brings up another point…..if you find folks that are behind ID as sponsored by Jerry Falwell….Those kinds of people DESTROY the credibility of ID.
I will continue searching to see if I can find the relevant links
January 9th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Apart from that…..Scientific research with no agenda for either ID or anti-creationism evolution….just pure observation and fact finding……this is the scientific method……not trying to further one agenda or another.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Multiple Universes. The physicist’s version of the philosopher’s ITATWD. (Its Turtles all the way down).
If nothing else, the arguement between moden physics/cosmology and ID is an essential expression of human exploration. It drives the search for and the examination of reality. We look outside with our senses, augmented by our technology, for part of the story and description, and inside through out sensibility and attention to the shadows cast by internal architecture of the human mind/soul.
We draw maps and approximate. Our skill is as yet child-like, like the early navigators. The satellite photo shows the crudity of the various approximations over the centuries and races of explorers. (Interesting to see the huge advance in cartography that was spearheaded by Capt. Cook).
One day we will have amassed enough data and tried enough ways of seeing and understanding to devise a practical and reasonably accurate understanding of life, the Universe and everything. It will take a long time (illusory time has its uses). It is unlikely to contain turtles in every nook and cranny.
We are the instrument.
Not the instrument maker.
Meanwhile, for the average chap and chapess in the street, we are faced with the problem of our means of understanding. We are our own teachers.
Mike Alder, Dr, Uni of Western Australia puts it thus.
“If you can read this, thank a teacher (Amf. in this case, yourselves). And if you can’t understand much, they (Amf. we) have been taking money under false pretences. They’ve ensured that most intelligent people haven’t the faintest idea about the most important and exciting ideas of our times and are reduced to brainless bimbos when it comes to core elements of our magnificent and wonderful civilisation. The Maxwell Equations describe electricity, magnetism and their interaction, and have had an enormous impact on all of our lives. And hardly any of the people who imagine themselves to be educated can state them. That is sad. It also has the potential for disaster.”
For the above average people (who, I acknowledge, write and contribute here) replete with store-bought and home made education, who search for the meaning and means of life itself, complete with spirit and Place, and chew fat, you (we) are faced with complexities of theory far beyond those explored by Maxwell and a civilisation that depends on fifty good minds at most, we live in interesting times!
Even Cook’s map of Nova Scotia doesn’t show trees and bacteria.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
“Anthropic Bias is a fact of life… The only thing left is to explain it.”
By all means, explain it. Posit strings and loops and any cardinality of multiverses you wish. Then season to taste with a variety of non-classical logics. I’m pretty sure God’s not waiting at the apex of the Tower of Babel to pin a ribbon on the first man to write an existence proof.
So if the digits were off in the 10th decimal, you mean life wouldn’t exist? Ergo, God did it? OK, I’ll buy into it to an extent. It’s almost as convincing as the awesome grandeur of my own consciousness and my son’s return smile. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t expect Nature to conclude the argument, “I am conscious, therefore God exists,” with a “QED”
As a sidenote, I’m curious: For those who believe evolution to be wholly inadequate as our modern creation myth, how exactly does ID do the job?
January 9th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Casey started his article with “Many proponents of intelligent design…”
…or “cdesign proponentsists, ” as one (in)famous “textbook” put it. (Google the term if you’re unfamiliar with the story. It tells a lot about what intelligent design creationism really is.)
Casey then makes the unsubstatiated exaggeration “Skeptics of cosmic-design often cite the possibility that there are infinite universes…” “Often?” That is a distinctly minority opinion, and is not “often cited” at all. Got a citation for that claim, Casey?
January 10th, 2008 at 10:32 am
I have no problem admitting that I don’t really know the answer. The only thing I know for sure is that our current understanding of cosmology and evolutionary biology is inadequate to explain the problem.
In my view — as Leonard Susskind said in the Nature article — the scientific method as currently defined is not adequate to explain the universe at a macro level. When people like Paul Burnett insist on the basis of the Scientific Method that ID cannot have played any role in Creation, they are in effect insisting that the universe must conform to a human institution.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Mike LaSalle made up a quote: “When people like Paul Burnett insist on the basis of the Scientific Method that ID cannot have played any role in Creation…”
As a matter of personal policy, I would never say anything like that. Can you show me the quote where I said that? Or are you just “Lying For Jesus”™ again?
My basic contention is that science has a much better chance of being able to provide an explanation for Creation than any Bronze-Age creation mythology – whether or not it is dressed up in a lab coat or a shabby tuxedo. Has intelligent design creationism come up with anything better than “Lo – a miracle!”?
January 10th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
My comments were not meant to cause offense, and if you took it that way I do apologize.
But, okay, Paul. If it’s not the Scientific Method that makes ID so unpalatable to you, then what is it exactly?
You mentioned that you are an ordained minister. Do you object to ID on religious grounds? Also, could you tell me the name of the church in which you have been ordained?
And BTW — since you keep bringing up “Bronze-Age creation mythology”, I personally think an argument can be made that — like Christianity — Greek myths also provide a good explanation for the creation of the universe.
I’m not an expert on Greek mythology, but I get the basic idea: Chaos represented the initial condition of the universe. Eros — the spark of life — was the offspring of Chaos. (In Christian terms, Eros can be identified with the Holy Spirit IMO. In modern cosmological terms, Eros is the Big Bang. In any case, Eros is conceptually identified with the First Cause (Protogonus).) Once Causes were introduced into the cosmos, a whole series of elemental gods could be born: land (Gaia), the underworld (Tartarus), darkness (Erebos) and night (Nyx). These god/elements then recombined to form another generation of god/elements — day, brightness, oceans, mountains, and so on.
Obviously these are not LITERAL events. These are analogs — human narratives that offer representative explanations for the actual state of things. In my opinion, virtually all religions offer humanly valid interpretations of the cosmos — including stacks of turtles or the flying spaghetti monster. But like the institution of science, they offer symbols of reality, not reality itself.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I agree wholeheartedly that bronze-age mythology (and older, if you wish) are integral with the shiny new stuff as an explanation of what is. And an expose of search-and-replacing words shouldn’t embarrass ID proponents in the least. I accept Casey’s explanation. God creates as He chooses, and it is to the detriment of those who find the word “Creator” more offensive than “Big Bang.”
Nonethless, I’m sure God is more subtle in his doings than simply making the fossil record in a day. No one here has said this, but I get the impression from many ID proponents that this is the explanation and that evolution plays only the tiniest of roles. Maybe I’m not hearing them correctly.
January 10th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
No, jj. A lot us of don’t believe in macro-evolution at all. We have been offered no more than poor circumstantial evidence that one species became another. After thousands of years (at least thousands) of mankind “interfering” with canine “evolution, any dog can be bred with any wolf (size problems notwithstanding). Surely there should be some change by now.
And the Galapagos Islands are an even better example. Yes, each of the different islands have slightly different versions of a lot of species, but they are still the same species. The flat-nose turtles can breed with their longer-nosed “cousins” on the other islands. It’s no different than one island being populated with tall people, and another being populated with pygmies. They’re still people, no matter how many millenia they’ve been separated.
And just for your info, I believe the Earth is very, very old. Don’t try to saddle me with some fifteenth century Catholic priests’ theory that the Earth is six thousand years old. The hard science (i.e. real science) of geology is very very good (because they rely on actual observation, and don’t make up stuff that require blind faith). Leave the faith stuff to spiritual matters.
January 10th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
There was another excellent podcast at idthefuture.com.
This fellow is actually trying to put speciation to the test using e coli bacteria. So far, no luck. Very interesting stuff indeed.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Mike LaSalle said: “Okay, Paul. If it’s not the Scientific Method that makes ID so unpalatable to you, then what is it exactly?”
I deduced evolution and natural selection when I was 11 or 12 years old, having visited zoos in Frankfurt (Germany), St. Louis and Brookfield (a Chicago suburb) and seen okapis (did you know okapis’ tongues are so long they can lick their ears?) and kudus reaching up to forage in trees, and then seeing giraffes, with their longer necks doing the same thing more successfully. It made sense to me then that animals might evolve longer necks (or other characteristics) and become a different animal. Luckily I also had no problems with accepting the concept of the millions or billions of years it might take for this process, as I had also “discovered” astronomy and the distances and times involved.
Now the Young Earth Creationists (YECs) want to take all this away, and compress everything into not just the 6,012 years since Creation in 4004 BC, but really only the 4,356 years since Noah’s Flood in 2348 BC and the sudden repopulation of a radically different earth after Noah’s flood. There just isn’t time for the speciation involved, or the transportation difficulties involved, for it to be anything other than a miracle. The YECs don’t want kids’ education to bother with biology or astronomy or any other science, because everything is miracles, not susceptible to human understanding.
A few years ago, there was an estimate of 480,000 scientists in the United States, and it’s no stretch to say there have probably been a million scientists around the planet since the terms “science” and “scientist” took on their current meaning. The collaborative efforts of these million scientists, with the self-correcting system of peer-review of findings in the various journals, have pretty much agreed on what our species today knows about evolution and biology and astronomy and geology and paleontology and physics and mathematics and every other science. That system makes sense to me as providing a pretty good understanding of the way things work.
When I compare the findings of all the sciences to the Bronze Age creation myths enshrined in Genesis, it’s easy to see which is a grand fairy tale and which is based on reality as agreed upon by experts. That’s what is so “unpalatable” to me – so many people supporting an unsupportable myth, which was good enough for wandering Bronze Age nomads who had no possible way of understanding biology or astronomy or geology or paleontology or physics or mathematics or any other science. We’ve grown up – why do we still need to fight over the children’s fairy tale of creation that was good enough then when we know better now?
And intelligent design creationism just hides the creator God of Genesis behind the curtain, and tries very hard to convince its proponents (”cdesign proponentsists”) to stop mentioning Noah’s Flood and Adam and Eve in public. I’ve read Phillip Johnson and the Wedge Document and, like Judge Jones, I can easily see where intelligent design creationism is coming from, in spite of the documented lies and deliberate deceptions of its proponents. Like Judge Jones, I “…have concluded that intelligent design is not science, and moreover that intelligent design cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”
Mike also asked: “You mentioned that you are an ordained minister. Do you object to ID on religious grounds?”
Absolutely. Excising all mention of the Creator from His Creation, as I have mentioned previously in my responses to other MND articles, is both blasphemy and heresy. Like Peter denying Jesus, intelligent design creationists deny God (publicly, at least). (This is even worse in many parts of the Moslem world, where intelligent design creationism will never catch on, because the punishments for denying Allah’s role in Creation are sure and swift…and final.)
January 12th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
The cognitive dissonance must be awful.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
The point that everyone always misses thanks to the debate is that the so-named, “appearance of design”* indicates that the missing and expected “dynamical cosmological structure principle” is biocentrically oriented in nature.
This resoves the problem,”makes the landscape, (and god), go away”… from first principles, the way that sceince is supposed to work.
But nobody believes the evidence enough to look at the most apparent implication of the direct observation.
http://www.answers.com/topic/copernican-principle
*note* “appearance of design”
-Susskind, Davies, Weinburg, Dawkins, etc…
Most, who aren’t simply ‘theoretically arrogant’ are simply afraid to look… so the missing dynamcial structure principle will remain missing until hell freezes over, since it is as obvious as one plus one.
I guess that everybody will stay happily in a culture war all the while that “hell” is cooling-off, so goes the long-term status quo, abeit more technical as the years wander by.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
[...] the multiverse theory is science even though it too is untestable? This is nothing more than a double standard. Nature [...]
January 12th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Squiggy said: “The cognitive dissonance must be awful.”
Not at all – it can even be rather interesting. Thanks for your concern, but it’s not a problem for me.
Or were you perhaps thinking of intelligent design creationists such as Wells, Dembski, Behe et al? They’ve gone through the doctoral mill, mouthing things they don’t believe to gain credibility in one world, but then viewed as apostates by the world of actual science and viewed with suspicion by their fellow believers because of their contamination. (Sorta like Japanese who live in the Occident too long, and then are not accepted when they come back home.)
And here’s some good news: The Union of Concerned Scientists (started in 1969 at MIT) has just published “A Statement on Science, Evolution, and Intelligent Design” – http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/statement-on-id.html (the Introduction is at
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/intelligent-design.html ) – you might find it interesting reading.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Casey sure has a short memory. Nature *has* previously published an article about intelligent design, by the same author and under the same rubric News Feature: G. Brumfiel, “Intelligent design: Who has designs on your students’ minds?” Nature 434, 1062-1065 (28 April 2005). doi:10.1038/4341062a. (You can read it for free at Sal Cordova’s website smartaxes.com.) That article quotes Michael Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, Sal Cordova, Caroline Crocker and *Casey Luskin himself*. What double standard are you talking about, Casey?
January 14th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Did you hear? Lucy died.
She fell off the “ancestral” tree. Poor Lucy. One day she’s the “mother of all humanity”, and the next day, she’s a dead gorilla.
Oh, and those 500-million-year-old jellyfish they found in Canada? Exactly the same as modern-day jellyfish. Down to the internal organs.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Squiggy, do you have website citations for those “news” items? Or are you just making things up again? (And citatations from Answers In Genesis don’t count – http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i4/fossils.asp )
January 14th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Not sure about Lucy, but I did hear about the jellyfish find:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030211210.htm
However life emerged and developed on this planet, something is missing from the Darwinian explanation. What’s the big deal? Why can’t the institution of science just admit there’s a problem with the “random mutation” model, and then try to offer up a few possible theories to explain it? What’s up with all of this scientific orthodoxy?
January 14th, 2008 at 11:08 am
It isn’t “scientific orthodoxy”… it’s reactionary ideological dogma, and it leads to some of the most absurd theoretical extensions that you could possibly imagine, which are made in an attempt to “explain-away” the evidence, rather than to look for some non-random causality-responsible solution.
Like this pathetic excuse for science:
http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0701023
January 14th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Or are you just making things up again?
Care to give an example of me “making things up again”? Or are you just “making that up”?
I hate to do this to you but here it is:
Gorilla-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles suggests Au. afarensis link to robust australopiths
Yoel Rak, Avishag Ginzburg, and Eli Geffen
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, April 17 2007, 104: 6568-6572, doi 10.1073/pnas.0606454104
Abstract: Mandibular ramus morphology on a recently discovered specimen of Australopithecus afarensis closely matches that of gorillas. This finding was unexpected given that chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans. Because modern humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and many other primates share a ramal morphology that differs from that of gorillas, the gorilla anatomy must represent a unique condition, and its appearance in fossil hominins must represent an independently derived morphology. This particular morphology appears also in Australopithecus robustus. The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Au. afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor. The ramal anatomy of the earlier Ardipithecus ramidus is virtually that of a chimpanzee, corroborating the proposed phylogenetic scenario.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Oops. This got cut off:
The presence of this morphology in both Australopithecus robustus and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans has “cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor.” Like a baton passed from runner to runner, the distinctive bone does the job of “eliminating the possibility that Lucy and her kind are Man’s direct ancestors.”
So what can be said about Lucy? “The specimen was only 1.1 meters tall, estimated to weigh 29 kilograms and look somewhat like a common chimpanzee.” Also, “the structure of Lucy’s mandibular ramus closely matches that of gorillas”, which was an unexpected find, because this does not fit the previous cladistic analyses of chimps, gorillas and humans.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Squiggy provided more information on an article hypothesizing “Lucy” may not be a Homo sapiens ancestor (the actual article is at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1871826 ).
Thanks – I was not aware of this.
You should never “hate to do this” because this is the way science works: Somebody raises a hypothesis up the flagpole and somebody else comes up with more information and shoots it down. That’s life.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Paul, that’s exactly what Mike and I have been saying this whole time. As Mike said (sort of) Darwinian evolution has so many holes in it, it’s way past viability. And I doubt you’ll believe me, but I used to believe totally in it. I argued vehemently for it.
I don’t understand why so many “evolution scientists” absolutely lose their minds when something contradicts their beliefs (and until something is established as fact it is a belief). Maybe they’ve got a huge stake in God not existing? Don’t believe in Heaven, but still a little afraid of Hell? I don’t know. But it’s not very open-minded of them.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Squiggy said,
I don’t understand why so many “evolution scientists” absolutely lose their minds when something contradicts their beliefs (and until something is established as fact it is a belief). Maybe they’ve got a huge stake in God not existing? Don’t believe in Heaven, but still a little afraid of Hell? I don’t know. But it’s not very open-minded of them.
Maybe this will help you to understand in terms of your observation as it has been noted by cosmologists, and as it applies to cosmological ID:
Brandon Carter formalized the anthropic principle as, “a reaction against conscious and subconscious – anticentrist dogma”, that he called, “exagerated subserviance to the Copernican Principle”, which leads to absurdities by ideologically predispositioned scientists.
He was talking about counter-reactionism among scientists against old historical beliefs about geocentrism that causes them to automatically dismiss any relevance to features of the universe that also permit our existence, and this leads to equally absurd Copernican-(like) cosmological extensions, which do not agree with observation.
Carter’s example was as follows:
Unfortunately, there has been a strong and not always subconscious tendency to extend this to a most questionable dogma to the effect that our situation cannot be privileged in any sense. This dogma (which in its most extreme form led to the “perfect cosmological principle” on which the steady state theory was based) is clearly untenable, as was pointed out by Dicke (Nature 192, 440, 1961).
-Brandon Carter
It’s the same absurdly warped ideological slant, but by a different group of dogmatica “scientists”, in this case.