Clayton Cramer on ID:
Look, being persecuted and retaliated against isn't proof that Intelligent Design is correct, but the evolutionary establishment's foaming at the mouth suggests that ID has hit a nerve that "Creation science" never did. That's because Intelligent Design has a few proponents who are legitimate scientists, working in the fields of biochemistry and microbiology--and some of its criticisms are very powerful.
"... some of its criticisms are very powerful". That's all I've been saying. You fundamentally can't answer the question of origins scientifically. It's an historical question. However, the range of scientific disciplines can be queried for what they have to say about the subject. Evolution's proponents look for what they'd consider evidence of some species having their origin in the mutations of other species, while ID's proponents look for what they'd consider evidence for an intelligence having to be behind what we see in biology and other areas of science.
It's obviously going to be a judgement call of what you'd accept as evidence one way or the other, and that judgement will be determined by your prior philosophical commitments. If you have a prior commitment to a naturalistic explanation of our origins, you'll buy into evolution. If you don't, you might be willing to accept a supernatural explanation of our origins. But the important point to understand is that the ID scientists and the evolutionary scientists are on the exact same plane as far as evidence is concerned.
For instance, if the fossil record clearly showed very gradual changes in species over time from the simplest organisms to, say, humans, that'd be pretty compelling evidence that there was such an evolution. But, that's not what we find in the fossil record. On the other hand, if Behe is correct that certain structures we find in biology truly are irreducibly complex, that's pretty compelling evidence that they had to have been designed.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
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The incomplete fossil record argument is not a very valid criticism.
I would like to point out that the mechanism of evolution by the nature of its operation produces structures that seem irreducibly complex to our minds. The biology of living organisms is full of examples of horrible complexity and inefficiency.
One could view the complexity as an argument against ID. What engineer worth his salt makes things more complex than need be?