How Science Lost Its Mind

Before Darwin, nearly everyone, in every corner of the world, believed in some type of ‘‘intelligent design,” and the majority still do. That is for good reasons. Since the publication of Origin of Species, science has discovered that living things are far more complex and clever than Darwin ever could have imagined. So how did it happen that the majority of our scientists “lost their minds” and are unable to see the design in living things that is so blindingly obvious to the layman?

Remembering Law Professor Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019): The Man Who “Lit the Match” for Intelligent Design

Law Professor Phillip Johnson passed away on November 2, 2019 at the age of 79. I became aware of Professor Johnson in 1991 with the publication of his book, Darwin on Trial. Johnson's book was highly controversial, and changed American culture. In the early 1990s when he wrote this book, it was career suicide for anyone in academia to take a position against Darwinian evolution, and most of the criticisms of Darwin were found in religious circles under the teaching of "Creationism." It took a law professor like Phillip Johnson, who was not part of the field of biology or other natural sciences, to write a scholarly critique of Darwin's theories without the threat of censorship, loss of funding, or losing tenure at a major U.S. University. As a law professor at the prestigious University of California Berkeley, his voice demanded to be heard, as he took a legal approach to examine the evidence of Darwin's theories. Many believe that his foundational book, Darwin on Trial, was the beginning of the modern day "Intelligent Design" movement. Intelligent Design separates itself from "Creationism" as it looks at the scientific evidence in the field of origins, and draws conclusions based on the scientific evidence, without relying on any religious teachings. It concludes that the science points to an intelligent design in nature, and leaves the question of "who" the designer is to religion.

Diarrhea and the Appendix are Signs of Intelligent Design

In my new book, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, I argue that the synergistic action of diarrhea and the appendix provides a strong case for foresight and thus for intelligent design. Jerry Coyne, writing at Why Evolution Is True, has responded. For that I am grateful. See, “ID craziness: Diarrhea and the appendix are signs of intelligent design.” I wish, enthusiastically, to reply. The subject under discussion is so-called vestigial organs, specifically the appendix. For decades we were told that — due to evolution — our body includes organs that have lost their functions and are therefore in the process of being eliminated. Dr. Coyne adds that some of those condemned organs, by accidently finding other functions, may get lucky enough to escape extinction. This is possible, I agree. The “vestigial organs” are taken as strong evidence for evolution and against ID. After all, an intelligent designer would have no use for useless organs. With that I also agree. However, we must let the data speak. When we do, learning more about the physiology of our body, we find that “vestigial organs” have amazing functions after all.

A Young Child’s Intuitive Belief in a Creator/Designer is Only Removed by Indoctrination

Young children perceive intuitively that the world is designed. In 1929, child psychologist Jean Piaget called children “artificialists” who tend to regard everything as “the product of human creation.” Piaget’s claim that young children’s minds are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between human and nonhuman causes was controversial, and subsequent studies have shown that he was wrong. Yet he was right in saying that children start out with the intuition that the natural world was made for a purpose. In 2004, child psychologist Deborah Kelemen suggested that young children are thus “intuitive theists” who are “disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design.” By the time they are adolescents, many children have suppressed their intuition of design. This suppression is largely due to influences from the community, especially from parents and teachers striving to acculturate children to a secular society, often in the name of “scientific literacy.” “Intervention” usually refers to an action taken to help someone give up an abnormal addiction. For these psychologists, however, it means convincing children to give up a normal intuition. Thus education becomes indoctrination.

Is Artificial Intelligence Possible?

Over the past half-century, Artificial Intelligence has been all the rage among computer scientists, and among many other scientists and philosophers and the general public. Can machines think? Is it possible that a computer could have intentions and desires and understanding of its own? Many otherwise well-informed people have taken it for granted that machines are capable of thought, particularly if a substantial level of complexity is reached. Several philosophers and scientists have argued that AI is not possible -- machines will never be capable of thought. They are right to deny the possibility of AI. The arguments against AI are several.

Does Medical Science Need Evolutionary Science?

Is evolutionary theory "critical" to medicine? A poll of doctors from 2006 found that at least 34 percent of U.S. physicians think intelligence played a role in the origin of humans. That's a very significant portion of doctors who support intelligent design. On the flipside, evolutionary science has hindered medical research by promulgating the now-defunct concept of "junk DNA". That's the evolution-based idea that most of the DNA in human cells is useless junk. It's now known that the vast majority of our DNA has function, but evolution discouraged research into "junk DNA." In this regard, with its faulty understanding of "the human person" as being the result of strictly blind physical mechanisms, evolution has obstructed "advances in medicine." Many other examples could be given. For another, evolutionary science has wrongly assumed that many organs are "vestigial" and thus unnecessary or unimportant. Those organs include the appendix, tonsils, coccyx, and thyroid. It's now known that each of those organs plays an important role in human physiology. By presuming nonfunctionality or reduced functionality in these organs, evolutionary science did great medical damage to many patients.

How Natural Selection Cannot Explain Arrival of the Fittest, Only Survival of the Fittest

In 1904, genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries quipped that "natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest." In 2014, Andreas Wagner thinks it can. His new book, reviewed by Mark Pagel in Nature, is titled Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution's Greatest Puzzle. What is that "greatest puzzle"? The ability to work miracles.

When Biologists Think Like Engineers: How the Burgeoning Field of Systems Biology Supports Intelligent Design

Opponents of the intelligent design (ID) approach to biology have sometimes argued that the ID perspective discourages scientific investigation. To the contrary, it can be argued that the most productive new paradigm in systems biology is actually much more compatible with a belief in the intelligent design of life than with a belief in neo-Darwinian evolution. This new paradigm in system biology, which has arisen in the past ten years or so, analyzes living systems in terms of systems engineering concepts such as design, information processing, optimization, and other explicitly teleological concepts. This new paradigm offers a successful, quantitative, predictive theory for biology. Although the main practitioners of the field attribute the presence of such things to the outworking of natural selection, they cannot avoid using design language and design concepts in their research, and a straightforward look at the field indicates it is really a design approach altogether.

Mathematical Proof vs. Scientific Proof: Are They the Same?

Absolute proof is strictly the domain of logicians. In mathematics, for example, once a theorem is proven it is proven for all time and all circumstances. Mathematical proof is absolute. Mathematics, however, is not science. This is a point about which many are confused. Mathematics is a language used by science, but is not itself a science. Mathematical proof and scientific proof are not the same thing at all. Scientific proof is not really proof at all, in the mathematical sense, but is either verification or disproof. Since scientists deal with a universe that is not of their own creation, they cannot prove their laws absolutely as can mathematicians. Although scientists use the term “scientific proof,” what they really mean is that a particular hypothesis has been verified or disproved. They don’t mean “proof” in the mathematical sense.

Intelligent Design vs. Scientism

If you were to come across Mt. Rushmore while hiking through the hills of South Dakota, having no prior knowledge of the structure, which statement is more "scientific" and which one requires a lot of faith? 1. Some intelligent being designed this. 2. Wind and erosion over millions of years created this. If you choose #1 as the statement most "scientific" (with no guessing or conjecture as to who made the design), then you would be labeled as an idiot trying to force your religious beliefs on others by 21st scientists when applying the same scientific reasoning to other things found in nature. If you choose #2, however, starting with the presupposition that #1 cannot be true, you have now created a new belief system from which to develop your theories or origins upon. This new religion, fueled mainly by Darwinism, is Scientism. Scientism is the basis of much of western culture today. It gave us eugenics, for example, and was responsible for the medical tyranny that unfolded in Nazi Germany leading up to World War II. What few people today realize, however, is that the foundations of the religion of Scientism is bringing about medical tyranny in many of the same ways as they unfolded in Nazi Germany, today right here in the United States. If you want to understand #1, however, you need to study Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design (ID) is a branch of science which is constantly under attack today, and labeled as "religion" or something else it is not. ID is quite different from "Creationism." Creationism moves beyond the observation of scientific facts and makes statements as who the Creator is, such as what is written in the Bible (a worthy topic of study in and of itself!) ID does not deal with the "who," but leaves that up to religion. David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute writes about the prejudices against ID by those who have never even studied it: "We Don't Have to Listen to the Evidence Because..."

Epigenetics and Disease: Thinking Outside the Box

Intelligent design gets a bad rap because it is not in line with the supposed scientific consensus that unguided evolutionary processes account for the existence of all of the life that we see today. But there are unanswered questions regarding the origin of the complexity of biological systems and the information content in DNA (both within the genome and the epigenome), as Stephen Meyer has shown in Darwin's Doubt and Signature in the Cell. Science, indeed, should be about exploring uncharted territories from varying, even unpopular, perspectives rather than confining ourselves to research that has been blessed by convention. The old paradigm focused on the sequence of the coding portion of DNA to find genetic factors for disease. However, when the old paradigm cannot answer questions, it is time to think outside the box.

Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

Charles Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. In what is known today as the “Cambrian explosion,” 530 million years ago many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life—a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found, but also because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal.

More Light Is Cast on Epigenetics and Design

The study of epigenetics -- codes and systems "above" genetics -- has accelerated in recent years. Scientists now recognize a multitude of players implicated in regulating genes. These players include proteins, RNA molecules, and chemical "tags" that DNA translation machinery recognizes. Some recent papers elucidate a few of the many ways epigenetic factors interact with the genome. While evolutionists scramble to deal with the unprecedented complexity, intelligent design is not surprised by it. Design thinking propelled the discovery of functions for what evolutionists considered useless leftovers of a haphazard process, as the reports quoted in this article show. The lesson is clear: intelligent design is in the best position to promote scientific discovery, and to deliver the understanding sought by science.

No, Scientists in Darwin’s Day Did Not Grasp the Complexity of the Cell; Not Even Close

A strong case can be made that the cell has turned out to be a lot more complicated than Darwin or his contemporaries imagined. Not only did they vastly underestimate the complexity of the cell, but it's probably vastly more complex even than we imagine today.

Could Bacterial Flagella Solve Global Environmental and Energy Issues?

The brain of a small fruit fly uses energy in the micro-watts for complex flight control and visual information processing to find and fly to food. I don't think a supercomputer could yet simulate what the fruit fly brain does even while using megawatts of energy. The difference of over ten orders of magnitude and the level of energy used is an indication of just how incredible biological systems are. It even exists in bacteria. The flagellar motor and protein export apparatus use proton motive force, or mechanisms that utilize the flow of protons at extremely small energy, close to the thermal noise level.

Eyes Work Without Connection to Brain – Demonstrates Plasticity Problem for Darwinism

Eyes Work Without Connection to Brain: Ectopic Eyes Function Without Natural Connection to Brain
ScienceDaily

Excerpts:

For the first time, scientists have shown that transplanted eyes located far outside the head in a vertebrate animal model can confer vision without a direct neural connection to the brain. Biologists at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences used a […]

ATP Synthase: A Marvelous Molecular Machine Designed in all Living Cells

Evolution News and Views

Excerpts:

Everything we do is driven by energy, whether it’s eating a meal, going out for a jog, fighting a cold, or even the seemingly passive task of growing out our hair. The energy currency used by our cells to perform these and many other functions is adenosine triphosphate (ATP), considered by […]

The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism

More than a half century ago, famed writer C.S. Lewis warned about how science (a good thing) could be twisted in order to attack religion, undermine ethics, and limit human freedom. In this documentary “The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism,” leading scholars explore Lewis’s prophetic warnings about the abuse of […]

Why There Have to Be “Pesky” Bugs

by David Klinghoffer
Evolution News and  Views

On weekday mornings I wait with our 5-year-old twins at the bus stop for kindergarten where a couple of neighbor boys wait for the same bus. The other kids are older, the sons of a pastor and his wife who live a few houses down from us. One morning last […]

The Useless Appendix and Other Darwinian Myths

by Casey Luskin
Evolution News and Views
At the Center for Science & Culture’s Facebook page, a commenter asks how we would respond to a graphic that is making the Internet rounds, humorously imagining a dialogue between God and an angel. It’s a conversation about “intelligent design,” with the angel playing the role of the skeptic and […]