http://www.talkdesign.org/cs/

This web site, a sub-site of TalkOrigins.org, is a response to the "Intelligent Design" movement of creationism. It is dedicated to:

Assessing the claims of the Intelligent Design movement from the perspective of mainstream science
Addressing the wider political, cultural, philosophical, moral, religious, and educational issues that have inspired the ID movement
Providing an archive of materials that critically examine the scientific claims of the ID movement.

http://ncseweb.org/creationism/general/intelligent-design-not-accepted-by-most-scientists

"Intelligent Design" Not Accepted by Most Scientists
August 12th, 2002 general Intelligent Design Creationism
Reprinted with permission from School Board News, Aug. 13, 2002. Copyright 2002. National School Boards Association. All rights reserved.

by Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch

This spring, a subcommittee of the Ohio Board of Education charged with supervising the preparation of the state's science education standards was petitioned by a citizens' group to include "intelligent design" (ID) along with evolution. As ID becomes better known, other state and local school boards might face similar requests.


What is ID, and does it have a legitimate place in the high school science curriculum?


ID parallels but is not identical to creation science, the view that there is scientific evidence to support the Genesis account of the creation of the earth and of life.

ID and creation science share the belief that the mainstream scientific discipline of evolution is largely incorrect. Both involve an intervening deity, but ID is more vague about what happened and when.

Indeed, ID proponents are tactically silent on an alternative to common descent. Teachers exhorted to teach ID, then, are left with little to teach other than "evolution didn't happen."

An ID high school textbook, Of Pandas and People, mentions "creationism" only once, but this text is recognized by teachers and scientists as being very similar in content to creation science. Since Pandas was published in 1986, the two major innovations in ID have been Michael Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity," presented in Darwin's Black Box in 1996, and William Dembski's "design inference," presented in Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology in 1999.

Dembski contends that he has developed an algorithm — an "explanatory filter" — that can distinguish the products of "intelligent design" from the workings of natural law and chance. Behe proposes that there are certain biochemical structures that, being "irreducibly complex," cannot have arisen through unguided natural processes.

Neither Dembski's design inference nor Behe's irreducible complexity has fared well in the scholarly world, however.

A search of scientific databases, such as PubMed or SciSearch, reveals that scholars have not applied the concept of irreducible complexity or the design inference in researching scientific problems.

ID has been called an "argument from ignorance," as it relies upon a lack of knowledge for its conclusion: Lacking a natural explanation, we assume intelligent cause.

Most scientists would reply that unexplained is not unexplainable, and that "we don't know yet" is a more appropriate response than invoking a cause outside of science.

A third important book of the ID movement is Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution, published in 2000, which claims that biology textbooks promote fraudulent and inaccurate science. Although the reviews of Wells' book by scientists have unanimously regarded it as dishonest and devoid of scientific or educational value, it is being widely circulated among creationists and cited at school board meetings around the country.

ID also includes a "cultural renewal" component, which focuses on ideological and religious rather than scholarly goals.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) serves as an institutional home for virtually all of the prominent ID proponents, including Dembski, Behe, and Wells. The goals of the CRSC, as stated by the Discovery Institute's director Bruce Chapman, are explicitly religious: to promote Christian theism and to defeat philosophical materialism.

The sectarian orientation of the ID movement cannot be ignored in decisions about whether to include ID in the curriculum.

Courts repeatedly have held that the public school classroom must be religiously neutral and that schools must not advocate religious views. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in the public schools is unconstitutional.

ID proponents may argue that a neutral-sounding "intelligence" is responsible for design, but it is clear from the "cultural renewal" aspect of ID that a deity — in particular, God as He is conceived of by certain conservative Christians — is envisioned as the agent of design. While schools can take no position on this view as religion, it cannot be regarded as science.

Thus, school board members and administrators would be ill-advised to include ID in the public school science curriculum. If the scholarly aspect of ID becomes established — if ID truly becomes incorporated into the scientific mainstream — then, and only then, should school boards consider whether to add it to the curriculum.

Until that day, proposals to introduce ID into curricula should be met with polite but firm explanations that there is as yet no scientific evidence in favor of ID, that ID supporters are wrong to allege that evolution is intrinsically antireligious, and that the sectarian orientation of ID renders it unsuitable for constitutional reasons.

And school board members should be aware that introducing ID into the curriculum is likely to lead to strong opposition — up to and including lawsuits — from those, including parents, teachers, scientists, and clergy, who do not want science education to be compromised.

Evolution is Not the Whole Story

s the bankruptcy of creation "science" becomes increasingly recognized, a new catch phrase, intelligent design, has been adopted by those who persist in their attempts to inject creationism into the science curriculum (see, for example, Of Pandas and People, Davis 1993; Matsumura 1995 and Cole 1995 report on attempts to introduce Pandas into schools). Intelligent design is a more subtle term than creation science, one that has far broader implications than the genesis of life on a minor planet in the corner of a minor galaxy. The argument that the material universe resulted from conscious action outside itself can sound convincing, even to those who accept biological evolution as established fact. Many who agree that biblical creation is not an appropriate part of the science curriculum, because it is not science, may not object to including material that argues with greater sophistication that the universe as a whole shows evidence for design.

I can foresee proponents of intelligent design campaigning for science lessons to include statements of the sort we often read today in books and the popular press, that modern physics and cosmology have uncovered evidence for intelligence in the structure of the universe and this intelligence seems to act with us in mind (Rolston III, 1986; Wright, 1992; Begley, 1994). In fact, science has done no such thing. Just as we must continue to educate parents and teachers on the facts of evolution, we must also inform them that science has by no means confirmed the traditional belief in a created universe with humanity at its center.

Indeed, if anything science indicates quite the opposite. Astronomical observations continue to demonstrate that the earth is no more significant than a single grain of sand on a vast beach. While a created, human-centered universe can probably never be ruled out, nothing in our current understanding of cosmology and physics requires it. Furthermore, we are beginning to understand the possible physical mechanisms for the appearance of matter from nothing, and for organization without design.

Evolutionists have successfully refuted the usual argument for design that is grounded on the intricacy of biological life. They have convincingly demonstrated, to any rational person, that complexity sufficient for life could readily have emerged naturally in the primeval chemical stew. However, the processes of biological evolution on earth still depended on the pre-existence, billions of years ago, of the particles and "laws" of physics.

For example, consider the calculation by astronomer Fred Hoyle, often referred to by creationists, that the odds against DNA assembling by chance are 1040,000 to one (Hoyle, 1981). This is true, but highly misleading. DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics.

Without the laws of physics as we know them, life on earth as we know it would not have evolved in the short span of six billion years. The nuclear force was needed to bind protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms; electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together; and gravity was needed to keep the resulting ingredients for life stuck to the surface of the earth.

These forces must have been in operation within seconds of the start of the big bang, 10-15 billion years ago, to allow for the formation of protons and neutrons out of quarks and their storage in stable hydrogen and deuterium atoms. Free neutrons disintegrate in minutes. To be able to hang around for billions of years so that they could later join with protons in making chemical elements in stars, neutrons had to be bound in deuterons and other light nuclei where energetics prevented their decay.

Gravity was needed to gather atoms together into stars and to compress stellar cores, raising the core temperatures to tens of millions of degrees. These high temperatures made nuclear reactions possible, and over billions of years the elements of the chemical periodic table were synthesized as the by-product.

When the nuclear fuel in the more massive, faster-burning stars was spent, the laws of physics called for them to explode as supernovae, sending into space the elements manufactured in their cores. In space, gravity could gather these elements into planets circling the smaller, longer-lived stars. Finally, after about ten billion years, the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other elements on a small planet attached to a small, stable star could begin the process of evolution toward the complex structures we call life.

In recent years, creationist theologians, and even a few physicists, have heavily promoted what they claim is a remarkable fine-tuning of the basic laws and constants of physics, without which life as we know it would never have developed (Barrow, 1986; Rolston III). If the universe had appeared with slight variations in the strengths of the fundamental forces or the masses of elementary particles, that universe would be pure hydrogen at one extreme, or pure helium at the other. Neither would have allowed for the eventual production of heavy elements, such as carbon, necessary for life.

Similarly, if gravity had not been many orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism, stars would not have lived long enough to produce the elements of life. Long before they could fabricate heavy chemical elements, stars would have collapsed. Only the fact that the gravitational force was forty orders of magnitude weaker prevented this from happening.

In a calculation similar to Hoyle's, mathematician Roger Penrose has estimated that the probability of a universe with our particular set of physical properties is one part in 1010123 (Penrose 1989: 343). However, neither Penrose nor anyone else can say how many of the other possible universes formed with different properties could still have lead to some form of life. If it is half, then the probability for life is fifty percent.

Ignoring this absent link in their chain of logic, promoters of intelligent design put forward the so-called anthropic coincidences as evidence for a universe that was created with humans in mind. I have heard Christian philosopher William Lane Craig make this claim in a debate on the existence of God. In the same debate, Craig contended that the great age of the universe, which dwarfs human history, is in fact a sign of God's plan for humanity because billions of years were needed to allow life to evolve. (Craig evidently accepts evolution). You would have thought God could be a lot more efficient. And Craig did not rationalize why humanity rather than cockroaches was the goal God had in mind.

So as you see, we have a lot more explaining to do after we explain how life developed on earth by natural processes. Even if life evolved naturally on earth with no outside interference, the existence of stars and planets, quarks and electrons, and the very laws of physics themselves can be presented as evidence for intelligent design to the universe. Furthermore, given the egocentrism that seems to characterize the human race, convincing people that the universe was designed with them in mind is as easy as convincing a child that candy is good for him.

Perhaps the universe was created for the sole purpose of producing you and me. I have no objection to discussing the possibility, as long as the discussion is critical, rational, and objective. The most common argument that is still given by believers when they are asked to present scientific evidence for a creator is: "How can all of this (gesturing to the world around us) have happened by chance?" As we have seen, the most brilliant exposition of the case for evolution will not answer this question, because it still presumes the pre-existence of laws of physics and values of physical constants that had to be delicately balanced for human (and cockroach) life to evolve.

The central idea of Intelligent Design theory is that design is empirically detectable, just as the detectability of design in man-made objects is straightforward, non-controversial, and often intuitive; see design detection. With respect to the origin and development of cosmological and biological systems, Intelligent Design theory holds that the same principles provide a logical inference of design in nature. That is, without necessarily "proving" actual intelligent design in nature, the observable material evidence provides a reasonable basis from which to infer design, and such an inference supports a legitimate scientific hypothesis of intelligent design. As such, Intelligent Design theory is a scientific disagreement with the core claim of materialistic theories of evolution such as chemical and Darwinian evolution [1] that the design exhibited in our universe is merely apparent design, i.e., unintelligent design caused by unguided, purposeless, natural forces of physics and chemistry alone.[2]
In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection -- how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, archeology, forensic sciences, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).[3] An inference that certain cosmological and biological features of the natural world may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.[4]
Intelligent Design theory, like all theories of origins, is scientifically and religiously controversial. All theories of origins are scientifically controversial because they often amount to subjective historical narratives that seek to explain unobserved and unobservable singular past events that occurred many years ago and that cannot be adequately tested in the laboratory. They are religiously controversial because all religions, including non-theistic religions, depend on a particular origins narrative. Intelligent Design proponents believe institutions of science, including government agencies, public schools and universities, should strive for objectivity and academic freedom in facilitating origins teaching and research. Objectivity in the evaluation and interpretation of material evidence ensures that all evidence-based explanations for natural phenomena can be considered fairly on their respective merits, regardless of their ultimate metaphysical or religious implications. Institutions of science should promote objectivity and academic freedom, especially where minority viewpoints challenge scientific orthodoxy.

DON'T take our starry skies for granted. If you were unlucky enough to be living in some other universe, you might have nothing to stare at but black holes.

At least, that's the view of a new study that examines the nature of other universes that might support life and suggests that our cosmic habitat is nothing special after all - wondrously starry skies apart.

The idea that certain aspects of our universe make it uniquely suited to life has never been properly tested, says Fred Adams of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "You hear people say our universe is fine-tuned for life, that stars are rare and couldn't form if certain things were different," he says. "The truth is, no one has done the calculations." Adams has now rectified that situation and found that it is not unusual for stars to form that can support life.

Claims of fine-tuning have generally been based on what happens when you vary a single characteristic of the universe, say the strength of gravity, while holding all others constant. That, says Adams, is too artificial a scenario to tell you anything about whether there are other universes that can support life. "The right way to do the problem is to start from scratch," he says. "You have to turn all the knobs and find out what happens."

To do this, Adams started with a simple definition of a star: a massive body held together by its own gravity that is stable, long-lived and generates energy through nuclear processes. Just three constants are involved in the formation of such stars. One is the gravitational constant. The second is alpha, the fine structure constant that determines the strength of interactions between radiation and matter. The third is a composite of constants that determines the reaction rates of nuclear processes.

Adams selected a range of possible values for each of these constants, then put them into a computer model that created a multitude of universes, or a virtual "multiverse". Each universe within the multiverse used different values for the three constants and was subject to slightly different laws of physics.

About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy-generating stars. "You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form," Adams says, suggesting that stars can exist in universes in which at least some fundamental constants are wildly different than in our universe.

And though some universes were filled with things we might not usually think of as stars - radiating black holes or bodies formed of dark matter - they all gave out enough energy to power some form of life, and lasted long enough for life to evolve.

That may not necessarily be life as we know it, however. Since the simulations didn't rely on the stars producing carbon, Adams points out that very different life forms to ours might be better suited to some of the universes. Because life depends on chemistry, and chemistry depends on alpha, varying alpha changes the nature of life. "You have no idea what life would be like in a universe with different constants," Adams says.

Adams reckons his results, which will be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, suggest that the "specialness" of our universe could well be an illusion. And this is only the very beginning of what can be probed to undermine the idea that our universe is fine-tuned for life. There are plenty more constants and processes that can be tinkered with, he says.

Adams's approach is "extremely interesting", says Michael Murphy of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. "I've long had a suspicion that this talk of fine-tuning needs constant questioning and re-examination," he says. "It's sometimes hard to recognise that living somewhere else in a different way might be just as easy."

Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena is also impressed, and intrigued by the idea of unusual life forms that, say, feed off black holes. "I don't know what it would look like or how it would work, but black holes radiate, just like stars do. Why couldn't you have life arise in the 'atmosphere' of a gently radiating black hole?" he wonders.

How could a god set the constants of the universe; dream on!
A Physics Professor, University of Hawaii, develops and makes available over the Internet a computer program which reveals the results of changes in the key constants in physics. A wide range of numbers would suffice to produce a universe where life could develop. Thus there is no need for a god to set the constants of physics so as to make conditions suitable for life in to develop; it could develop in any of a number of possible universes!!!