One side can be wrong

The Guardian has an excellent article on the clash between those who demand that Intelligent Design theory be taught in science classes alongside evolution, and those who say that it belongs elsewhere because it’s simply not science.

If ID really were a scientific theory, positive evidence for it, gathered through research, would fill peer-reviewed scientific journals. This doesn’t happen. It isn’t that editors refuse to publish ID research. There simply isn’t any ID research to publish. Its advocates bypass normal scientific due process by appealing directly to the non-scientific public and – with great shrewdness – to the government officials they elect.
The argument the ID advocates put, such as it is, is always of the same character. Never do they offer positive evidence in favour of intelligent design. All we ever get is a list of alleged deficiencies in evolution. We are told of “gaps” in the fossil record. Or organs are stated, by fiat and without supporting evidence, to be “irreducibly complex”: too complex to have evolved by natural selection.
In all cases there is a hidden (actually they scarcely even bother to hide it) “default” assumption that if Theory A has some difficulty in explaining Phenomenon X, we must automatically prefer Theory B without even asking whether Theory B (creationism in this case) is any better at explaining it. Note how unbalanced this is, and how it gives the lie to the apparent reasonableness of “let’s teach both sides”. One side is required to produce evidence, every step of the way. The other side is never required to produce one iota of evidence, but is deemed to have won automatically, the moment the first side encounters a difficulty – the sort of difficulty that all sciences encounter every day, and go to work to solve, with relish.

(_Thanks to Infinite Wisdom, Absolute Stupidity for the tip._)

pax et bonum

Article posted at 3:39pm on 02 September 2005
Category: Faith, Science, Struggling

I’m not a Creationist, but the statement that “There simply isn’t any ID research to publish” strikes me as simply not true.

graham () (URL)
7:34pm on 04 September 2005

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there seems to be no positive research at all being done by the ID proponents. Everything they publish is a negative attack on evolution (supposed gaps or examples of “irreducible complexity” – none of which is anything of the sort) rather than an attempt to support their own particular theory.
For example, ID makes some specific predictions – particularly, there should be few (if any) examples of stupid design. However, there have been no attempts to address the many, many known examples of stupid design (such as the human eye, which places nerve fibres and blood vessels in front of the light-sensitive cells of the retina – unlike the octopus eye, which sensibly keeps these out of the way behind the retina). I’d genuinely welcome any sign of the ID proponents doing actual science, because it would allow us to engage with any scientific issues produced. However, all we ever seem to get is polemic.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
09:16am on 06 September 2005