Quoting Gary Telles on Intelligent Design

I just had to rescue this from the obscurity of the Pharynguloid comment stream of “Egnor Responds, Falls Flat on Face,” responding to the “Evolution Wars Visit ‘Eye on Science’” article:

ID [Intelligent Design] is COMPLETELY irrelevant to biological science. Unless you care to elucidate that elusive, testable, falsifiable “Theory” of ID…. (crickets chirping).
~Gary

Answering Michael Egnor on Intelligent Design

After finding my way from Pharyngula to the Time magazine online site and Michael D. Lemonick’s “Eye on Science” column, I had to put in my two cents’ worth:

Perhaps we should take one step back and look at one of the rhetorical bases of the Intelligent Design argument. Someone mentioned it early on, but we’ve forgotten it. It’s based on a logical fallacy called False Dichotomy, in this case “If Evolution is false then Intelligent Design must be true.” That would apply only if there were two explanations in the universe. But Lamarckianism has already been mentioned as a third explanation. The gist of scientific argument to ID is therefore, “Put up or shut up.” That is, come up with an explanation for ID that does not appeal to the supernatural (which is outside of scientific testing) or quit picking at our rigorous and heavily tested explanation.

Other rhetorical tricks abound. An honest discourse would have ID pay great attention to the definitions and methods of proving evolution and respond to them. Instead, we get straw man parodies that are then “refuted” by assertion. Example: “‘Darwinists’ tell the age of rocks by fossils and the age of fossils by rocks, so it’s all circular.” My 20-year-old (ancient) invertebrate biology text,* in discussing foraminifera (tiny marine forms with hard shells for you IDers), mentions that there there were 40,000 described species, of which 90% were known only as fossils. Yes, that means 36,000 fossil species of foraminifera. They live in the water, die, and sink to the bottom, where they comprise part of the ooze and become part of any sediementary rock that forms from the ooze. Their evolutionary changes through millions of years have been studied and mapped against other evidence to put date ranges to the different forms. Once that has been done, the fossils themselves can be used to date other rocks directly. This information is of great practical value because it is used, among other things, in looking for oil deposits. There is no circularity about it. Scientists in the field are understandably annoyed by the “it’s just circular” argument. A surgeon would be annoyed to hear, “How can you claim to help anyone? You’re just poking into their head with sticks.” It took over 100 years of research just to get the geology of Europe sorted out as to causes of features and ages of the various strata. The geology of deep time took longer and more effort. People who believe in evidence-based science or evidence-based medicine don’t like to see it dismissed as fraud or faith. Get it, Dr. Egnor?

*”Living Invertebrates,” Vicki Pearse, John Pearse, Ralph Buchsbaum, Mildred Buchsbaum, M. K. Waltrip, 1987.

Intelligent Design explained

The cat did it.

Other forms of evolution

Evolution is a scientific fact. The great pressure to find a scientific explanation (a.k.a. “theory”) came from the overwhelming evidence that it had occurred. It is researched as a historical fact and undisputably it happened. Its mechanisms are studied both from historical evidence and by experimentation as well as vigorous debates about its mechanisms. In fact, it couldn’t NOT happen unless every animal reproduced itself exactly in the exact same conditions that it grew up in. Other things evolve by other methods.

Languages and words evolve with cultural selection instead of natural, and invention or crossing with other languages instead of mutation. Linguists track the EVOLUTION of language through history. We all know that French, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish (as well as some less common languages) developed from Latin. In some language collisions, new hybrids appear and become established. (They are called creoles.) English itself is a sort of hybrid of AngloSaxon overlaid with French and then with German. In the short term, some words find favour and are kept. Old words fall out of use or change their meaning. New words are needed for new inventions. No one claims that it didn’t happen or that we can’t say “skyscraper” because it wasn’t used in the bible.

Products evolve as well. Instead of energy in the form of sunlight or prey, they gather money. Those that don’t attract enough money are no longer produced. Those that do, flourish and develop into more and different products. Anyone contemplating the change from a functional horse-drawn carriage to a functional car with the shape of a carriage to a streamlined roadster notices the similarity to organic evolution. They also notice, if they are paying attention, that the vehicle was functional at all points of its development. People in the 1920s didn’t look at new cars and say, “No thanks, I’ll wait for a Corvette.”

In both of these other kinds of evolution, more new forms are invented than survive. Branch and prune, branch and prune is the usual way of all kinds of evolution. When a new product comes on the scene, many companies jump in with their version. They compete for the public’s money. And at some point there is a “shakeout” when the losers drop out of the business or are swallowed up by their competitors and cease to function independently. Some fads bloom and die out (hula hoops); some are widely adopted for the long term (telephones); some settle into a specialized niche (teddy-bear stores). Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Perhaps one of the reasons that the idea of evolution is so powerful and persuasive in our culture is that we can see it happening all around us.