ID and Op-ed: Ideologues at the lectern

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: James P. Hogan [mailto:james () jamesphogan com] 
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 11:32 AM
To: dave () farber net
Subject: ID and Op-ed: Ideologues at the lectern

Dave,

Responding to Jim O'Donnell's recent post.

> > I'm trying to get at the logic, if any, that underlies the complaint.
Here's the counterlogic:  if belief in a scientific process of
evolution is a "left" characteristic and creationism or ID is a
"right" characteristic, then as a devotee of the truth, I would like
to see 100% of faculty showing that "left" characteristic.  The
evolution gang happens to be right, no way around it.<<

Before we get too dogmatic over this, let's try to step away from the
religious-political wars that are currently getting all the attention, and
be clear as to what the real issue is. Many scientists, mathematicians,
logicians, philosophers, and others who have no religious axes or persuasion
at all are open-minded toward, and in some cases strongly supportive of, the
possibility of there being an intelligence of some kind at work behind
what's going on. The phrase "ID versus Evolution" that the media repeats all
over the place might describe the extremist form of the debate, but it
creates a false dichotomy.

A more accurate term would be "ID versus Darwinism," i.e. the doctrine of
evolution being purely the result of unguided mechanistic processes driven
by chance in the form of natural selection. While natural selection is
certainly real and has its contribution, there are serious grounds for
questioning the legitimacy of extrapolating far beyond the available data to
credit it with being capable of doing all that it's alleged to in the way
that current theory asserts. Selection can only select from what's available
to be selected from. The more that becomes evident of the complexity of
biological systems, especially the underlying molecular machinery as
revealed in recent decades, the more problematical it becomes for more than
an infinitesimally small  number of the possible trial-and-error
combinations to have formed even in the lifetime of the universe with all
its probabilistic resources devoted to the task--and that's true for just a
simple protein comprising a few hundred amino acids. As with the redesign of
any highly specific and complex mechanism, too many things have to change in
just the right way, all at the same time. Invoking control genes that
orchestrate the turning on and off of the correct combinations of
construction genes merely shifts the question to a different level.

What needs to be recognized is that the confident assertion that a purely
naturalistic explanation _must_ exist, which more research will uncover it
one day, is just as much a declaration of faith in a metaphysical
ideology--that of naturalist materialism as the sufficient and only
reality--as a creationist's faith in the literal interpretation of Genesis.

However else the arguments are disguised, there are ultimately only two
alternatives: Either mindless matter, driven by pure chance and nothing
else, possess innately the ability to organize itself for no reason into
living, thinking beings and the environments necessary to sustain them; or
else "something" organized it.  The dominant ideology of our culture, of
course, subscribes to the former. But to state that the jury is in and we
"know" is premature, to say the least. Until such time as that might change,
there is no valid justification for dismissing the second alternative out of
hand. If happens to be true, no amount of partisan politics or judicial
ruling is going to change it. That's all that the proponents of the broader
ID position are saying.

And if "science" resorts to the semantic evasion of eliminating such
considerations by manipulating its definition, it might be excluding itself
from what could be some of the most important questions confronting us.

        Sincerely,

        James Hogan
        Ireland



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