Intelligent Design and an unnecessary feud

April 28, 12:23 AMHartford Conservative ExaminerJohn Talleos

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    Ben Stein, the economist/actor/writer, whatever, made a documentary last year called Expelled which was about a rift within the scientific community between those who study Intelligent Design and Darwinism.   Here's the rift:  Intelligent Design is a study where life along with the universe itself could infer the existence of an intelligent source as a designer.  There was almost next to nothing in the documentary about the ID field itself only that people who broached the subject in certain universities and institutions were fired.  The movie goes on about freedom and that scientists's (at least the "Darwinists") were practicing censorship by not considering a possibility that everything is from an intelligent source.  Stein show's a lot of footage of Nazi Germany, some information about the early eugenics movement juxtaposed with American flags, D.C monuments.  By the way there was little said on the science of Darwinism either, which like ID, discussion was about the study and the people in it and not so much of it.

   If Intelligent Design has a legitimate claim to science, that it is shut out of universities and institutions could be a problem but in the long run (providing that it is a science) has nothing to worry about.  At some time legitimate theories or at least a working hypothesis ought to come out of it and if not unintended discoveries.  The problem it has is it's viewed as a back door devise for "creationists" to get into the science game which congers up religion, school prayer etc etc.  It doesn't help when creationists do use it to beat over the head of Darwinism.  It is not the opposite of Darwinism although it is used that way by some and because of that association viewed in a negative light.

   Some things need to be straightened out here.  First is the false dichotomy of Darwinism and Intelligent Design.   The charges against evolution or natural selection from one end or the disregard into the inquiry of design by the other are not only unnecessary but counter to science itself.   There are theories of evolution that are valid "but they are just theories" right, and so is the electron particle, just a theory.   On the other hand ID is a young study and if scientists feel threatened by it they shouldn't because it is either going to give them fascinating information into physics or it will fail on its own accord, its science not sociology, oops, did I say that?

  Out of this feud comes other distortions.  In science there is something called abiogenesis which is essentially the study of how life first originated.  It is made up of a collection of hypotheses all of which are interesting but difficult in formulating a working theory into how DNA was first created.  The problem with DNA is you need DNA to get it.  The question becomes how did the first DNA appear?  That's when it gets tricky.  The" NA" in DNA is nucleic acid and what that does is move proteins here and there to form cells which keep dividing to form living organisms.  No one knows where nucleic acid came from or how it comes to possess such an enormous blueprint to form and control the building blocks of life.  How amino acids come into existence and then proteins is not a problem but how does this thing come into play to tell it all what to do?  How does a simple collection molecules suddenly start manipulating nature in a way to form life and where does it get the information to do it right out of the blue?   On this question people are lining up behind tenuous theories and giving them more importance then they deserve only to demonstrate that opposing viewpoints are wrong.  On Youtube there are trendy-hip videos that use one of the abiogenesis hypotheses (RNA world hypothesis)  to "prove" there is no God  then there are the "debunker's of abiogenisis" who deconstruct the argument  in order to show  Darwinist a thing or two. The game here is to "prove" something by showing what an idiot the other guy is.  Us conservatives do it all the time with liberals, it's fun, they make our job easy because, well, their liberals; but this is beneath the discipline of science.