Intelligent Design, Modern Science

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Intelligent Design, Modern Science Your
Grandchildrens Future

• Will the Bible be relevant in 2050?
• Will Darwinism be relevant in 2050?

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TNPC ID Blog is Up Running

• Go to www.tnpc.org/idblog
• Or navigate there from MinistriesAdult SSID
  Classidblog
• Two entries posted there from class members
  Heather Richard (Thank you members!)
• Use this site to ask questions, make comments
• Send submissions to me at john.dishman_at_comcast.net
  
• PLEASE PASS ROLL UPDATE LAST WEEK

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Some leftover questions

• Tony what about the Big Bang? Dont Darwinists
  still have to explain where stuff that produced
  life in the first place came from galaxies,
  stars, planets, and life itself from inorganic
  matter?
• Jay After debating with Darwinists, they
  eventually say that the probability of evolution
  happening must be ONE, since here we are. How do
  we answer that argument?

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Tonys Question The Big Bang

• The term is used in both cosmology and biology.
• Cosmology About 10-15 billion years ago the
  universeincluding matter, energy and space
  itselfcame into being out of nothing
• Biology Biologys big bang is better known as
  the Cambrian Explosionthe geologically sudden
  appearance of multi-cellular animals in the
  fossil record during the Cambrian period of
  geologic time, about 540 million years ago

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Big Bang Cosmology

• Cosmologist Stephen Hawking (Brief History of
  Time) attempts to do away with a creation event,
  via imaginary time, but fails.
• Goal to know the mind of God
• An aside Hawkings first wife an evangelical
• More on this big bang later

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Cambrian Explosion (biology big bang)

• Major body plans of animals emerge in relatively
  brief geologic time
• Body plans distinct no merging of one into
  another
• Stasis these plans then remain static for the
  rest of time until present

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But there must have been another biological big
bang when life first formed

• Macro-evolution how simple already living things
  evolved into more complex living things (us).
• Origin of Life (OOL) how simple living things
  came into existence from non-living chemicals.

These are two different fields of study, but
related by the need to explain complexity.
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• We will be discussing all these issues in more
  detail later, but note that a key issue has to
  do with where things come from
• Where do the laws of nature, in operation at the
  cosmological big bang come from?
• Where does information contained in every
• living cell come from?

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Which brings us to Jays question

• Isnt the probability of evolution happening
  equal to ONE, since here we are?

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Probability Calculations for OOL

• See link at the ARN site by Stephen Meyer
  www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_origins.htm

• Consider a chain of amino acids making up a
  protein

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• Most proteins are around 300
• amino acids long lets consider
• one only 100 long.
• Since there are 20 amino acids involved
• in making real life proteins, to get a
  specific amino
• at a specific site has a probability of 1/20
• So, for a 100 chain protein, the probability of a
• specific one is (1/20)100 1/10130 10
  with 130
• zeroes after it
• Sauer, at MIT, has shown that certain variances
• increase this probability up to 1 in 1065

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How much time?

• 3x107 sec/year
• Age of universe
• 15 billion years 4.5x1017 sec
• If 100 amino acids come together randomly
  once/sec, then chance of a single specific
  protein being formed over the life of the
  universe is
• 4.5x1017 / 1065 1/1048
• Even if they came together a million times
  faster, still gives only 1 chance in 1042

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In the 1960s, NASA sponsored research to inform
future astronauts how to recognize even the most
rudimentary forms of life on other worlds with
the conclusion that the simplest living thing
would contain at least 124 proteins of 400 amino
acids each, and would possess a functioning
genetic code so the organism would reproduce true
to type.
Within the NAS Workshop (1999) geneticists and
cell biologists reached consensus on the smallest
size likely to be attained by organisms of modern
biochemical complexity. Free-living organisms
require a minimum of 250 to 450 proteins along
with the genes and ribosomes necessary for their
synthesis. www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM/5.3.htm
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Combining these odds

• 1 chance in 1065 to get a single unique 100 amino
  acid chain protein
• But we need at a minimum 250 of them, each with
  around 400 amino acids, to get a the smallest
  living thing
• Homework you calculate the odds of that
  happening in 15 billion years
• Most OOL researchers have abandoned the idea of a
  chance creation of life, and are looking to areas
  such as self-organization of chemicals for new
  ideas

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What is the likelihood that

• That your car will leak out of your garage?
• That the water in six 20 gallon water jars would
  spontaneously turn to excellent wine?
• That a dead person would rise from the dead?
• When these happen, what do we call it?

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• It's a MIRACLE

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Yet, when something even much less probable than
any of these happens namely, life on earth,
we call it

• evolution

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The Case for Darwinism

• What is it about Darwinism that makes some
  scientists so sure that it is correct?
• First, observe that even the ID community agrees
  with the fact of evolution at least as it
  occurs within a single species
• Resistance to antibiotics
• Cycling of bird beak sizes in Galapagos

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The Case for Darwinism-2

• However, ID supporters say that extrapolation
  from evolution within a species to
  macro-evolution from single celled entity to
  man, is not warranted
• Why do Darwinist feel that macro-evolution is
  true?

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Fundamental ConceptNatural Selection

• In a population of living things, there will be a
  variation of characteristics
• Some of these will improve reproductive success
• These characteristics are naturally selected,
  i.e., are favored because they enhance the
  further production of offspring
• Dog breeders use this process to produce new
  varieties of dogs in this case it is artificial
  selection

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Analysis by Phillip Johnson

• Prominent law professor at UC Berkeley
• Recognized as the leader of the ID movement
• Wrote Darwin on Trial after reading Dawkins
  Blind Watchmaker while on sabbatical

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Darwinism as a Tautology

• Tautology An empty or vacuous statement composed
  of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it
  logically true whether the simpler statements are
  factually true or false for example, the
  statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will
  not rain tomorrow.
• Survival of the Fittest means that the
  individuals which produced the most offspring
  must have been the ones who produced the most
  offspring.
• I.e., fitness is strictly limited to success in
  reproduction

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Karl Popper, Philosopher

• Darwinism is not really a scientific theory
  because natural selection is an all purpose
  explanation that can account for anything, and
  therefore explains nothing.

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Example The Peacock

• Which better explains the existence of the
  peacock natural selection or design?

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Peacock Natural Selection

• The males plumage is favored by natural
  selection because it attracts the most favorable
  females.
• Never mind that it also makes the male more
  vulnerable to predators because of its bulkiness

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Johnsons Rejoinder

• Why would natural selection, which supposedly
  formed all birds from lowly predecessors, produce
  a species whose females lust for males with
  life-threatening decorations? The peahen should
  have developed a preference for males with sharp
  talons mighty wings.

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Evolutionist Futuyma

• Do the creation scientists really suppose their
  Creator saw fit to create a bird that couldnt
  reproduce without six feet of bulky feathers that
  make it easy prey for leopards?

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Johnsons Response

• It seems to me that a peacock a peahen are just
  the kind of creatures a whimsical creator might
  favor, but an uncaring mechanical process like
  natural selection would never permit to develop.

Remember the ostrich In Job
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Johnsons Conclusion

• With the weaknesses so noted, why do scientists
  hold on to Darwinism?
• The National Academy of Scientists told the
  Supreme Court that the most basic characteristic
  of science is a reliance upon naturalistic
  explanations, as opposed to supernatural means
  inaccessible to human understanding. In the
  latter, unacceptable category contemporary
  scientists place not only God but also any
  non-material vital force that supposedly drives
  evolution in the direction of greater complexity,
  consciousness, or whatever.

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Johnson Continued....

• If science is to have any explanation for
  biological complexity at all it has to make do
  with what is left when the unacceptable has been
  excluded. Natural selection is the best of the
  remaining alternatives, probably the only
  alternative.
• But.what is science?

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Towards a definition of Science

• Jack Collins, professor at Covenant Seminary
• Phillip Johnson
• Thomas Kuhn
• Paradigm shifts
• Pearcey Thaxton
• The Soul of Science

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Collins Science Faith Friend or Foes?

• A science is a discipline in which one studies
  features of the world around us, and tries to
  describe his observations systematically and
  critically
• There are sciences, not Science!
• Science tends to be a power word
• Connotes unquestionable authority
• Leads to fuzzy thinking

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Johnson Darwin on Trial

• In the Arkansas case finding creation-science was
  unconstitutional, Judge Overton defined 5
  essentials of science
• It is guided by natural law
• It has to be explanatory by reference to natural
  law
• It is testable against the empirical world
• Its conclusions are tentativethat is not
  necessarily the final word
• It is falsifiable

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How do Overton Collins Compare?

• Similarities
• OBERVABLE
• FALSIFIABLE (CRITCAL THINKING)
• Differences
• NATURAL IS A LOADED TERM (OVERTON)
• COLLINS WOULD ALLOW SUPERNATURAL

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Johnsons critique

• Naturalism is not something about which
  Darwinists can afford to be tentative, because
  their science is based on it
• Quote Man is the result of a purposeless and
  natural process that did not have him in mind.
  George Gaylord Simpson, prominent Darwinist
• Thus, the judge bought into this definition of
  science which automatically rules out a Designer
  or Creator. (Does this sound familiar, circa
  2005?)

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Johnsons Critique-2

• Last 3 points of judges definition appear to be
  sound empiricismfocus on data
• However, the data, i.e., the fossil record is
  incompatible with Darwins predictions
• Rather than gradual changes in intermediate
  fossils, we have the Cambrian Explosion
• Thus, naturalism, not empiricism is the real
  value for the Darwinist definition of science,
  otherwise they would limit their claim to
  micro-evolution.

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Johnsons Critique-3

• Defenders of naturalism must enforce rules of
  procedure for science that preclude opposing
  points of view. With that accomplished, the next
  critical step is to treat science as equivalent
  to truth and non-science as equivalent to
  fantasy. As long as scientific naturalists make
  the rules, critics who demand positive evidence
  for Darwinism need not be taken seriously. They
  do not understand how science works.
• Read C. S. Lewis That Hideous Strength as a
  fictional example

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• 223 612 CTRL PLUS REMOVE FINGERS
• 1023

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Johnsons use of Kuhn

• Thomas Kuhn-science historian author of The
  Structure of Scientific Revolutions
• Paradigm, a collection of beliefs shared by
  scientists, a set of agreements about how
  problems are to be understood. According to Kuhn,
  paradigms are essential to scientific inquiry,
  for "no natural history can be interpreted in the
  absence of at least some implicit body of
  intertwined theoretical and methodological belief
  that permits selection, evaluation, and
  criticism.
• Normal research is directed to the articulation
  of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm
  already supplies

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Paradigm Shift

• Crises are triggered when scientists discover
  counter-instances as anomalies in fit between the
  existing theory and nature. All crises are
  resolved in one of three ways. Normal science can
  prove capable of handing the crisis-provoking
  problem, in which case all returns to "normal."
  Alternatively, the problem resists and is
  labeled, but it is perceived as resulting from
  the field's failure to possess the necessary
  tools with which to solve it, and so scientists
  set it aside for a future generation with more
  developed tools. In a few cases, a new candidate
  for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its
  acceptance ensues. A paradigm shift occurs if
  the new triumphs over the old.

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Paradigm Shift Examples

• Heliocentric vs geocentric view of earth-sun
  system in astronomy (Copernicus)
• Quantum mechanics replaces classical mechanics in
  physics (Bohr, Planck, Schrodinger, etc)
• Spontaneous generation replaced by microorganisms
  in biology (Pasteur)
• Existence of ether (as medium of light
  propagation) eliminated by Michelson-Morley

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Is ID an impending paradigm shift?

• May require an old generation of scientific
  elites (e.g., members of the National Academy of
  Scientists) to literally die off before a new
  generation more ID friendly replaces them.
• ID researchers must follow the data wherever it
  leads, even if it means academic persecution
  (Dean Kenyon)

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Conclusion

• The deck is stacked against ID because of the
  unscientific definition of science in common
  use
• By unscientific I mean that science should
  follow the data wherever it leads, even when it
  violates the current theories of science
• Given this legal/scientific climate ID will have
  significant challenges in making headway
• ID can advance if/when it is able to make
  predictions, and offer better explanations of
  biological systems than Darwinism does

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Pearcey Thaxton Trends

• Historicism-the belief that there is no
  trans-historical truth and that all knowledge is
  caught up in a continual process of historical
  change.
• A tendency to deny the possibility of objective
  facts apart from ideology
• Pragmatic realism-practicing scientists blithely
  ignorant of the first trend and assuming facts
  have objective meaning
• But within the current paradigm of naturalistic
  reductionism

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The Past Informs the Future

• In past centuries prominent scientists, such as
  Isaac Newton, viewed their work as an outgrowth
  of the Christian faith, not a contradiction to
  it.
• Is the naturalistic materialism that dominates
  Western thought a blip in history which will be
  someday be replaced by a return to an
  understanding of the created universe by Christ
  as the Intelligent Designer?
• In the meantime how should Christians address
  these issues?

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The Words

• In the beginning was the Word (John 11) special
  revelation
• In the beginning was the program, the word
  encoded in the DNA, by the Word
• general revelation