[extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Supernatural Ideas Do Not Fit With Science

[Terry W. Colvin]

Source: The Clarion-Ledger - Reno, Nevada, USA

http://tinyurl.com/dntok

December 11, 2005


Con: Supernatural Ideas Do Not Fit With Science
By John Davis
Special to The Clarion-Ledger

The intelligent design movement aims to bring supernatural 
explanations into science. But supernatural forces would be 
beyond the ability of scientists to control, repeat and predict. 
ID seeks nothing less than to undo the 400 years since Galileo 
developed science's methods.

Consider the consequences: Do we want "supernatural science" in 
NASA or the Centers for Disease Control?

High school classrooms are the battleground now and it could 
happen. As part of embracing ID, the Kansas school board has 
specifically mandated that natural explanations may not be 
necessary in science classes! Similar language was drafted by 
Phillip Johnson, adviser to the ID think-tank the Discovery 
Institute, for the 2001 "No Child Left Behind" bill. It was 
removed, but ID is marching on.

The vehicle for advancing intelligent design is the crusade to 
get creationism into the schools. According to the movement's 
"wedge" manifesto, the real goal is breathtakingly greater — to 
overthrow "materialistic science" altogether!

ID creation scientists are different from those seeking proofs 
of a literal Genesis. It is a tenet of the ID movement that the 
designer could be in a UFO. The ID designer could be any deity 
or a committee. Hence, the Raelian "flying saucer" sect and 
Myung Moon's Unification Church support ID, along with some 
conservative Christians. We cannot know if the ID designer only 
worked in the past or is still at it. Nor can we know what the 
designer does. Therefore, ID can't be tested by the methods of 
science. ID is not a research program.

"Supernatural science" doesn't work. "The designer did it" tells 
us nothing about, say, bacterial resistance to antibiotics or 
the record of life on earth. Invoking the designer will even 
prevent asking answerable questions.

First enunciated by a clergyman in 1803, ID is really just two 
assertions: The complexity of life is improbable and at some 
level, the components of living things had to be made all at 
once in order to work. But after-the-fact probabilities are like 
telling the lottery winner it didn't happen because the odds of 
winning were too small. Proteins are specific and complex, but 
viruses and bacteria, under selection pressure, have fabricated 
new proteins acting against drugs found nowhere in nature. The 
development of integrated biochemical systems like that involved 
in blood clotting is explicable through gene duplication from 
simpler systems.

Promoters of ID have shifted the question of why it should be 
taught to an argument about fairness. Controversies within 
science abound, but ID isn't science. Fringe ideas face hurdles 
in gaining acceptance and entry into textbooks. Unconventional 
ideas like continental drift can become mainstream, but only 
after thorough testing by the methods of science.

Intelligent design seeks to short circuit this process with PR 
and political friends. A science teacher would have a hard time 
explaining to confused students how to make the scientific 
method work with supernatural forces, but ID could be taught in 
a course on "new age" religions.

An unknowable designer who does unknowable things is not useful 
to either faith or science.


John Davis of Jackson is a research entomologist and retired 
science educator. E-mail: zygo at jam.rr.com.


[Thanks to Stuart Miller of http://www.uforeview.net for the lead]



-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


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