Science versus Philosophy
Imagine a conflict between two schools of thought regarding the origins of human life, one being a broad narrative account written by men long dead, and the other one looking at the origins of human life through a microscope and using mathematics and biology. Yet an entrenched orthodoxy fights tooth and nail to keep the narrative account in and the science out of the class room, and out of the public square. “It would ruin the children!” they cry. “It is not real science,” they say.
In the context of this essay, science means the reduction of physical phenomena to laws, numbers, and probabilities; especially where they can be ascertained by the scientific method, i.e., the inductive method. Philosophy is more of a narrative account, a story if you will, from deductions from observations and speculations from natural history, of how this or that happened. From that definition, some of the self-proclaimed smart set would be surprised to learn that they are fighting under the wrong flag. For the Intelligent Design (also known as ID) movement is pushing science, while the neo-Darwinists are fighting to keep their narration of un-creation.
What is ID?
Thousands of lines in editorials, front page and otherwise, that have been written and not even one sentence has been spared to simply state what ID is. It is simply this: ID states that the presence of design can, for complex systems, be statistically differentiated from the lack of design when a pattern of data is such that it has a given level of meaning and complexity, and that this has applicability to life origins at the first stages before there was anything subject to natural selection. There is no natural selection prior to there being something to select in the first place. In other words, for nature to select one form of life over antoher, there had to be a form of life, no matter how simple, available to be selected in the first place. Therefore, what is the probability of that first simplist life form coming about by random chance? If the probability is absurdly low, then the alternate hypothesis is that it did not come about by random chance, i.e., design took place. Recent advances in biochemistry and especially in DNA make calculating this probability possible for those brave enough to challenge the entrenched orthodox.
An example of detecting design would be one tuning in a radio at home. One distinguishes sound that results from the random natural effects of the ionosphere and what not from sounds that were designed. To say that one can not distinguish music from background static is to talk nonsense. Radio waves can not evolve themselves thorugh natural selection…they are either made that way or not. Hence it is astoundingly unlikely that sun spots or static from a hair dryer would randomly create radio waves that carried a good example of a Baroque era composition for the harpsicord. This can be reduced to mathematical probability, and if the calculated probability is less than 1 in 1 X 10150 then it is simply impossible1.
The Darwinist un-creation narrative suggests that through natural selection there is a sort of unintended design going on. Note that ID does not say that every life form, nor every change that life has ever gone through, was explicitly designed. But what of the very building blocks of life itself? What of that which had to exist before nature had something to select in the first place? An organizim would have to exist that was capable of reproduction. ID states that to be capable of replication, an organisim would have to have 300 genes. The probability of the successful arrangement of the DNA for a single gene by random chance, assuming that gene material existed as a given, is 1 in 1X10190. That is not the probability of life turning out in one particular way; that is the probability of just one of the many conditions required for the simplest form of life to turn out at all. Darwin may be excused, perhaps, as at time a cell was thought to be nothing but a blob of protoplasm, and his narrative account of un-creation did not bother with hard biological science that hardly existed then. His disciples should know better. They have made a leap of faith into an un-creation mythology that had a 1 in 1X10190 chance of just one elemental aspect of it being possible. But such is the force of wish-fulfilment.
ID does not speculate as to how life was designed, when it was designed, where it was designed, what designed it, or even why it was designed. And that may be part of the confusion: ID does not state that every life form was a one-at-a-time special creation from nothing, rather it states that the first fundamental form of life was designed. For all ID knows, the design could have been self-contained in the “big bang” like a pool shark who can break a rack and send each ball to a designated place. The pool shark is not manually guiding each ball by hand nor defying the laws of physics, but is rather putting physics to very good use and the design of where those balls would end up was carried by the cue ball. For all ID knows, some or even most or even nearly all of what is taken to be evolution could be right, except for the one part about it all being a cosmic accident with lightening bolts creating life out of a Frankenstien’s swamp. Design is quantitatively detectable, and has been detected in the fundamental building blocks of life. That is it. That is all that ID says. It leaves the door open for Christianity, but also leaves it open for Hinduism, Agnosticism, Gnosticism, Mohammedanism, Zoroastrianism, and even Atheism. For it says not that there is a designer, but rather that there was a designer. One could believe that the designer had died. Nietzsche can go on accusing God of being dead and ID will not contradict him, except to agree that there was a god or gods of some sort at one time.
One could take the next step and, assuming that a design was for a purpose—and that is an assumption (for a design could just be idle play or maybe it was some other species that was the whole point to all this)—theorize on what that purpose could be. One could look for meaning, not with a microscope, but rather bylooking at human nature and try to determine for what end human nature was untended. However, that is in the realm of philosophy, and is not part of ID. Science can determine if something was designed or if it was an accident, but it can not really determine what the designer had in mind when it was designed. An scientist may determine that a fragment of pottery is from a pot as opposed to a random bit of dry clay, but what that pot was meant to hold or do can only come from archiologists speculating as to the use of the pot. It may very likely be for one purpose or another, but as obvious as that purpose may be it falls short of scientific rigor.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Desinger?
So what is the fear of ID? The issue is that if life was made on purpose, it is reasonable to conclude that life is for a purpose as per the designer. One may reject that purpose or claim it to be unknowable, but regardless of that, nature is not all that ever was, and possibly not all that is, and probably not all that ever will be. The fear is that materialism would fall. Strange that when Darwin showed up it was claimed that he was no threat to religion, but when Darwin is shown the door his absence is claimed to be an endorsement of religion…what peculiar neutrality. When ID was proven scientific, the definition of science was suddenly changed to mean only that which supports the a priori metaphysical assumption of materialism. Why would scientists sell out science for materialistic philosophy? What made some of them trade in their microscopes and statistics books for the sacred codex of Darwin’s ramblings on pigeon breading?
The Curious Case of the Amateur Psychological
Anti-Merologist
One must be puzzled why the neo-Darwin apologist Stephen Gould was driven to defend the bizarre proposition that inequalities between people can not be measured (i.e., his book The Mismeasure of Man). Why should an evolution evangelist take up the hobby of condemning psychological measurements (e.g., IQ tests) and sociology studies (e.g., the Bell Curve) instead of going on digs for the missing link fossils or joining the community theatre’s production of Inherit the Wind? Perhaps because, contrary to Hollywood’s deafening silence on this point, in the real courtroom in Dayton the real William Jennings Bryan pointed out that the real biology text book in question not only suggested evolution, but suggested eugenics as well and suggested it as a natural outcome of evolution. And why should the text have not? If there is a creator of some sort, then that creator may have made all equal and may have also endowed upon them certain unalienable rights, whereas if people are uncreated material then there is no innate equality and there is no supreme being to endow rights on anyone. As G. K. Chesterton said, if we evolved we did not evolve equally, and indeed, equal evolution is an oxymoron. Only when organisms are unequal can progress be made. And what could be more progressive than progress? Evolution and equality are mutually exclusive. Rather than face up to the direct connection between materialism and eugenics, Mr. Gould made the laughable assertion that eugenics is impossible due to his (astounding!) discovery that humans can not be measured at all. In other words, if there is no metric with which to apply eugenics, then eugenics is not possible, and then one need not fear materialism being a patron of the evil eugenics.
Why was Mr. Gould driven to such a mission that no one, except those grasping for plausible deniability, could possibly take seriously? If people have dignity it is as a birth right by virtue of their very existence, not because they are a collection of so many pounds of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus atoms—that would give them no more dignity than is due a sack of fertilizer. Mere animation, life itself? A cockroach has that. The ability to feel pain? A lab rat can feel pain. The ability to think, as Rene Descartes suggested? Does not the ability to think come in degrees? If one is because they think, are they not more if they think more? Equality for all before the law, dignity, and natural rights are nothing than nice but indefensible sentiments unless all were all given equality and rights by something with the authority to give such things; something that stands above all.
To Be a God!
The usual definition of eugenics is to further the progress of the human race through selective breeding. This is a very pregnant definition. The whole concept of a species progressing, especially through breeding, draws inspiration from human evolution, i.e., humans are simply animals still undergoing evolution and so humans can be produced as a horse breeder produces horses for various purposes, be it as race horses or beasts of burden.
Eugenics’s manifestation in the early days was selective breeding, and especially the sterilization of undesirables. This did not last long, as sex was later turned on full blast as an effective means to an end, the end being to drive people away from God and into a culture of vice. A culture of vice2 that resumed the slaughter of infants, after infanticide had been abolished in Western Civilization nearly 1,500 years earlier3, to allow the wanton pursuit of sex to go on unabated. But the premise of eugenics is simply that the smart, the experts, the vanguard if you will, should redesign the less-smart…not even, and here is the catch, for their own good but for the progress of the future human race. The point to this new neo-eugenics is not the physical perfection of the race human, but is the perfection of human behavior and belief.
Some are fond of pointing out how dangerous it is for one to believe themselves to be given divine permission to do this or that, especially to do this or that to other people. But to turn religion, especially that of the Western world, into something bad, or to find permission to do anything but good unto others, requires exquisite mental gymnastics. One who is under divine orders to love their neighbors as themselves, and is told that each human is priceless and was made in the image of that which is to be worshipped, must act in spite of, not because of, that religion. The Ten Commandments have four rules of what one is to do regarding God, and six rules regarding what one must not do or do regarding other people. The Ten Commandments, in a way, can be regarded as a bill of rights: the right not to be murdered, the right not to have a false witness testify against oneself, and the right of property. In the end, a creator above all can put a limit on what one created being can do to another, i.e., enumerate natural rights, and that is really what most religions do4. Equals can argue over what their common superior says or means, but they are equals in the end.
Oh, by the way, to be Your God too
To further the human race is to look for a heaven on Earth, not for a Heaven above. This heaven is not to be provided by a god, but is a do-it-yourself, or really a do-it-to-others, proposition. Without absolute law from a higher law giver, then a very special expert must be the one even to say what progress is, and what ethics can be employed to pursue that progress. As the premise is that the human race is on the wrong track, what the human race says means nothing to them. The experts, a new priesthood of PhD’s, MD’s, and JD’s, must save the little people from democracy. Instead of humans being made in the image of god, the elite humans declare themselves gods and set out to remake the other humans in their image. Or at least what they think that image should be. When a materialist expert is the god, and their vision of heaven is to be wrought on earth, Heaven help us all. For our value is only the value that the expert thinks we may serve in the creation of that heaven. We are but raw materials to be changed, rearranged, or destroyed according to their vision. The only right is the right of the experts to do as they please. The few may be utterly destroyed for the good of the many, be it in the name of “social justice,” or “for the children.” For that matter, the many can be destroyed as well, if only for a far off utopia of a just society.
Not all materialists are motivated out of the desire to be megalomaniacs, but the mere thought that “I am better than you, and therefore I shall use you as I see fit for my dream of a just society or whatever kind of future society I like” is as deadly as it is seductive. In the beginning, the tools of the trade include a legal system which only the experts can use, vast propaganda machines such that nearly all news outlets are in collusion with the experts, and the micro-management of every day activity in business and in personal property. In the end, the tools of the trade are gulags, genocides, secret police, Doctors who kill rather than heal, organ harvesting from those who do not measure up, senseless medical experiments on humans that are really little more than desecrations and sacrifices, and compulsory political indoctrination. And the wrath of the gods, at the impertinence of mere people to reject the new vision of heaven, is horrible.
That is not to say that materialism is incorrect because the result of it is misery for the masses who are terrorized by the expert gods, but rather it is to point out the reason for the tenacity to which some, the experts and would be lords of the masses, try to enforce materialism as a state religion, even to the point of forcing it to be taught in public schools. This is why some so-called scientists reject real science in favor of a narrative un-creation myth of impossible odds. Isaac Newton, arguably the greatest scientist of all time, said that he was in awe of God’s creation; but why be a mere scientist in awe of God when one can be a god in awe of themselves?
Notes:
1The literature may be searched for explanations for
this threshold of where chance leaves the realm of the possible, but a simple example
suffices:
The chance of buying a winning power ball lottery ticket is 1 in
100,000,000. The chance of the first organism
being randomly brought into existence, biochemically speaking was:
Compared to even a single cell organism ever happening by random
chance, the power ball lottery is a sure thing. Talk
about a leap of faith.
2 Robert R. Reilly’s essay of this title is a
classic.
3 From the time of Moses up into the early Christian
era, the demon Moloch was worshiped through infant sacrifices. Archeology in temples in what used to be Carthage
has confirmed this. The premise was that by
worshiping Moloch, one would be financially blessed…and today trips to the
abortuariums are supposed to prevent poverty. Like
all deals with the demons, the demon did not long keep his side of the bargin: Carthage
was utterly destroyed by the Romans, and today the social security program in America is
approaching bankruptcy due to an insufficient birth rate.
The birth rate in Western Europe is so low, that there may not be a Western
Europe much longer. Besides demonic
sacrifices, the Romans (and some societies today, most notably communist China) valued
male sons and would habitually choose to abandon to the elements any surplus female
infants. In ancient Rome there were three
males for every two females adults. That the
Christian Church kept thousands and thousands of female infants from being tossed out like
trash in early times will surely come to a surprise to those who see the Church as the
mother of all oppressors.
4
C.S. Lewis’s short book The Abolition of Man has an excellent chapter concerning this. Very similar natural rights, if one wants to call them that, exist in Jewish (and therefore Christian), Buddhist, and Hindu texts. Lewis’s point was that God wrote natural law in the hearts of everyone. However, without a divine author, such natural rights have no standing. Otherwise they are vistigial appendages to be shed, if needed, for the betterment of the human race.