ID
This is some Intelligent Design (ID) stuff for your perusal:
- This is an interview with Michael Behe on Janet Parshall's radio show. It is only one segment long, so it's an easy listen. Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, got things going ten years ago. In it he criticizes Darwinian theory by looking into what for Darwin was a "black box" into which he could not see--the cell and sub-cellular structures.
Behe proposed that these structures are "irreducibly complex," that is, they cannot be broken down into simpler parts or they would cease to function. His simple example is the mouse trap. To alter or remove part of a mouse trap leaves something that won't catch mice. Likewise, he says, to alter or remove part of these tiny structures (machines, really) within the cell leaves something that does not function. And if this is so, then the "explanation" that these structures evolved bit by bit under the "direction" of nothing but chance is not an explanation of anything. What is astounding is that in the past decade there has yet to be a serious challenge to Behe's claim. Oh, there's been enough hot air to fly a zeppelin air force, but nothing in the way of experimentation to definitively destroy Behe's claim. Here is Behe's response to the latest attempt in Science magazine.
- This is an article from the student newspaper at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Lehigh is where Michael Behe teaches. The article is about a talk given by Eugenie Scott, executive director of National Center of Science Education. There are a couple of good quotes in here. The first, which is highlighted in the article itself is, "Believers just make all of their conclusions based on the fact that evolution doesn’t cut it." What is funny about this is that she essentially admits the problems with Darwinian theory ("evolution doesn't cut it"), but she doesn't like it that "believers" bother to point it out! Of course, all the supporters of ID are not "believers" like she means (backwoods, fundamentalist Jesus-freak hicks), but neither are they "believers" like Eugenie is in Darwinian dogma. The real money quote is this one, and I don't think it needs more comment than a simple, "Duh!" "The problem with teaching intelligent design with evolution is that it undermines the theory of natural selection," Scott said.
- These are a couple of blogs about ID and evolution from the Discovery Institute. Very interesting!
- And the following is from the Icons of Evolution website. You are probably familiar with many of these because they were in the textbooks we grew up with:
When asked to list the evidence for Darwinian evolution, most people--including most biologists--give the same set of examples, because all of them learned biology from the same few textbooks. The most common examples are:* a laboratory flask containing a simulation of the earth's primitive atmosphere, in which electric sparks produce the chemical building-blocks of living cells;
* the evolutionary tree of life, reconstructed from a large and growing body of fossil and molecular evidence;
* similar bone structures in a bat's wing, a porpoise's flipper, a horse's leg, and a human hand that indicate their evolutionary origin in a common ancestor;
* pictures of similarities in early embryos showing that amphibians, reptiles, birds and human beings are all descended from a fish-like animal;
* Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird with teeth in its jaws and claws on its wings, the missing link between ancient reptiles and modern birds;
* peppered moths on tree trunks, showing how camouflage and predatory birds produced the most famous example of evolution by natural selection;
* Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands, thirteen separate species that diverged from one when natural selection produced differences in their beaks, and that inspired Darwin to formulate his theory of evolution;
* fruit flies with an extra pair of wings, showing that genetic mutations can provide the raw materials for evolution;
* a branching-tree pattern of horse fossils that refutes the old-fashioned idea that evolution was directed; and
* drawings of ape-like creatures evolving into humans, showing that we are just animals and that our existence is merely a by-product of purposeless natural causes.
These examples are so frequently used as evidence for Darwin's theory that most of them have been called "icons" of evolution. Yet all of them, in one way or another, misrepresent the truth.
- Finally, here's a link where you can, if you like, view a list of over 500 scientists (probably all backwoods, fundamentalist Jesus-freak hicks) who have signed a statement which reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
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