http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Am_KvU1lyVWBPbWdSSK16P8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080905033254AACHBs4
Above is the question, below is my answer in full.
They are scientific theories thus many aspects of the theories are facts and the theories themselves are based on facts. The theory of evolution, for instance, is based on the fact of evolution. Evolution is simply defined as descent with modification. This basically means that every succeeding generation will not be a perfect genetic carbon copy of the preceding generation. These modifications can be neutral, beneficial or detrimental. The neutral modifications will have no noticeable effect or a bad or good effect depending on how the environment changes and only if the environment changes. Beneficial modifications will have a positive effect even if the environment stays the same. Detrimental mutations have a negative effect even if the environment stays the same.
Positive mutations are more likely to be selected for by natural selection because they will confer a survival advantage on the organism with the mutation making it more likely that the individual will survive and reproduce. When that individual reproduces it will pass on its beneficial mutation to its offspring. The theory of evolution suggests, with evidence, that eventually as these mutations accumulate new species can emerge even differentiating into new genuses and families, etc. You should try reading Darwin's The Origin of Species.
The evidence of this comes from fields that were already existent durring Darwin's lifetime and fields that were not yet existent durring Darwin's lifetime. There's paleontology. The fossil record confirms the evolution of, just to name a few examples, amphibians and reptiles from fish, the evolution of mammals from reptiles, the evolution of birds from reptiles, and the evolution of aquatic mammals from land mammals. It even shows a clear evolutionary pathway for specific species such as horses, elephants, pigs, humans, etc. The evolutionary theoy is also confirmed by genetics. A prediction of the theory of evolution for genetics would be that if the theory were correct you would expect to see a direct correlation between how closely related two species are and how similar their genomes are. This is exactly what we do, in fact, see. This is also only two examples of the evidence for evolution, there is much much more. I gave links.
Likewise the big bang is based on observations of the real world, for instance the fact that the universe is expanding. This is observed in the redshift of galaxies. Before this theory scientists believed that the universe was eternal and static, this model is known as the steady state model. Of course Einstein's theory of general relativity was the final nail in the coffin of the steady state model, even though there are still defenders of this now dead model. If gravity works the way that Einstein described, and countless experiments have confirmed that it does at least above the quantum scale, then there would have to be some special voodoo at work in the universe to keep the universe from collapsing in on itself. Of course if the universe is still expanding outward because of the force of what was initially thought of as a big bang that would explain why the universe isn't collapsing in on itself, in other words why all the galaxies aren't blue shifted. There's another reason why the theory of relativity marks the death of the steady state model, though, which Einstein himself advocated. Einstein's equations, taking the observed universe into account, when run backwards 13.7 billion years, gives us a big crunch. This would be the big bang in reverse. The interesting thing is that Einstein developed his equations with the assumption that the universe was eternal and static, he absolutely hated the idea that there could have been a beginning to the universe. But despite that his equations clearly show that the universe had a beginning which is referred to as the big bang.
Of course at the end of relativity's big crunch is a singularity. Because relativity assumes spacetime is continuous it crunches the universe down to infinite density, at which point the equations break down creating a singularity, which would be the equivilent of division by 0. The singularity is really just the point where the math becomes undefined. The common belief among cosmologists is that if we are going to understand the big bang we are going to need a quantum theory of gravity. One that brings quantum mechanics and relativity together.
One candidate is Loop Quantum Gravity, and you may be interested to hear that Loop Quantum Gravity predicts a model that changes the big bang to the big bounce. The mathematics of the theory only assumes the existence of spacetime atoms, which makes space not continuous and allows the math to be defined down to and before the moment of the big bang, allowing us to be able to understand what happened. Loop Quantum Gravity is still incomplete, but it's current state of readiness suggests that at extreme density (albiet finite density) the gravitational force changed from a weak attractive force to a very strong repulsive force causing rapid spacetime expansion as predicted by the inflationary model of the big bang. I'll provide a link to the article about the big bounce from scientific american as well.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_01http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.htmlhttp://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htmhttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=big-bang-or-big-bounce
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
A very brief history of time
To answer this question in great detail would be long but I'll try to keep it brief. As far as the matter and energy that comprises the visible universe it has, as far as anyone knows, always existed. It is infinitely older than this universe. What that means about the universe before the big bang we do not know, the big bang itself destroyed all information about the universe before it. At least as far as we know, perhaps when we have a quantum theory of gravity we will be able to find out more, but currently we don't yet have such a theory, we have some good candidates for such a theory but they are still far too incomplete.
The big bang, contrary to popular belief, was not an explosion, it was a sudden and rapid expansion of space-time. As the universe became less dense it also became less hot, allowing the four fundamental forces of electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces to separate (possibly) and for the formation of the two lightest atomic nuclei, Hydrogen and Helium. These formed around 100,000 years after the big bang. Gravity is actually the weakest force in the universe which we can easily confirm by dropping something from just about any height. The electromagnetic force is what keeps things from passing through each other and no matter how high something seems to fall from it never falls with enough force to break the electromagnetic force, but the electromagnetic force is more than strong enough to counteract gravity, just put two torus shaped magnets around a pole with the same poles toward each other and you will see one magnet levitate.
when the universe cooled off further hydrogen and helium nuclei started attracting electrons and making atoms. After further cooling gravity could begin to assert itself and the hydrogen and helium clouds started to collapse into stars, the galaxies we see are most likely the result of the universe in what appears to our current mathematical models to be a singularity, the point before the big bang when the entire universe was extremely dense, was "clumpy" it wasn't a smooth or perfect sphere, when it expanded the clumps just expanded too and now make up the galaxies.
So after the hydrogen and helium started collapsing into stars in those areas where things were clumpiest in the young universe, we know that stars work by nuclear fusion, they are so massive and dense that hydrogen in their cores is converted into helium, releasing energy in the form of photons, which is why our sun glows so bright. But when you fuse two hydrogen atoms you get a helium atom. Deep within a stars core there is also enough pressure and energy to fuse heavier atoms, in fact every element can be fused deep within the core of the most massive stars. The larger the star the shorter the lifespan, this is because more massive stars tend to burn hotter and so they tend to burn themselves out faster. These stars are also more likely to supernova. These supernovae would eject large amounts of heavier elements into the universe to be used in the formation of the next generations of stars. Our sun is a third or fourth generation star, it is only about 4.5 billion years old. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Our solar system's accretion disk also had a lot of heavier elements in it which while the disk was spinning was flung out to the outter edges of the disk as tends to happen, the majority of the matter was still concentrated in the center and formed into the sun, the planets solidified from the material that was imperfectly distributed along the outskirts.
There was, of course a lot of debris in the early solar system shortly after the earth formed, and an almost Mars sized celestial body impacted the earth around 4 billion years ago while the earth was still molten enough to reform after the collision which resulted in a chunk of the earth flying off and forming the moon. Meanwhile Jupiter and Saturn are working hard to attract as much inner slar system debris as possible but there is still a lot in the inner solar system which hits the earth as meteorites. Actually occasionally even to this day Jupiter and Saturn will accidentally fling something into the inner solar system, but for the most part their massive gravitational fields tend to attract meteors from the inner solar system to them.
Water is the most abundant chemical in the universe as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and water is the simplest compound. Because of the nature of how objects collapse into planets and stars the earth acquires it's rotation. The denser elements will tend toward the center so we have a dense nickel iron core which is seperated into an inner and outter core, the inner core is hot and liquid due to the amount of pressure above it, seems paradoxical but that's how it is. The inner core rotates at a different rate than the outter core working like a dynamo and generating a massive megnetic field. It also, along with the molten mantle, helps to drive plate techtonics. Another source of energy that helps to drive plate techtonics is radiation from the decay of radioactive materials.
Meteorites and comets impacting the young earth's surface brought with them water and many of the biochemicals necessary for life. This was proven when scientists analyzed the crater of a meteorite to see what the meteor was made of and found many of the amino acids and nucleotides found in all life on earth. Then there is the even more recent analysis of the deep impact probe that crashed into a meteor in space and a spectrum analysis of the debris that flew off confirmed that the meteor did indeed have amino acids and nucleotides on it.
The early earth's atmosphere was supplied by the young planets geological processes, volcanoes and other processes that spewed lots of toxic gases into the atmosphere...toxic to us, that is. The early atmosphere had very little O2 and O3 in it and as a result the amonia and methane and hydrogen that did make up the majority of the early atmosphere couldn't bind to a lot of oxygen and become stable. The introduction of energy from the sun and from sources like lightning resulted in more of the biochemical compounds necessary for life forming. At this point our understanding is less certain about what followed. What we do know is that self replicating polypeptide chains form easily when the necessary amino acids are present. DNA and more simply RNA is a great way to streamline the process. Cells can exist without DNA or RNA but they would not have inheritable material in them. The DNA or RNA allows for inheritable material being introduced into cells which would be mutually beneficial to the DNA which is kept together and safe in the cell and to the cell which can now reproduce itself. How specifically all of this happened is the subject of an ongoing research subject called abiogenesis, though, and I don't know all of the current theories.
Once the first organism did come about with inheritable material, though, then it was a simple matter of natural selection. The first organisms would have just consumed amino acids and most likely repriduced asexually possibly getting genetic material from other organisms like themselves that they ate. Mutations happen from transcription errors or radiation. In more complex organisms entire sections of DNA may be added or deleted. Whole chromosomes may be duplicated or sometimes two chromosomes may be fused into one. Natural selection simply means that nature will determine which organisms survive and which do not. Those organisms which are unfit to compete in a given environment are less likely to survive to reproduce. Like bacteria in a petre dish, if you introduce penecillin, those bacteria with no genetic resistance will die and are less likely to reproduce, while those which are resistant are more likely to survive to reproduce. Over time random mutations will improve resistance until the bacteria are completely immune.
Over time these small changes accumulate and a new species emerges. Given more time more information will be added to the genome and even more complex structures will emerge. I could go into greater detail but this is long enough.
The big bang, contrary to popular belief, was not an explosion, it was a sudden and rapid expansion of space-time. As the universe became less dense it also became less hot, allowing the four fundamental forces of electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces to separate (possibly) and for the formation of the two lightest atomic nuclei, Hydrogen and Helium. These formed around 100,000 years after the big bang. Gravity is actually the weakest force in the universe which we can easily confirm by dropping something from just about any height. The electromagnetic force is what keeps things from passing through each other and no matter how high something seems to fall from it never falls with enough force to break the electromagnetic force, but the electromagnetic force is more than strong enough to counteract gravity, just put two torus shaped magnets around a pole with the same poles toward each other and you will see one magnet levitate.
when the universe cooled off further hydrogen and helium nuclei started attracting electrons and making atoms. After further cooling gravity could begin to assert itself and the hydrogen and helium clouds started to collapse into stars, the galaxies we see are most likely the result of the universe in what appears to our current mathematical models to be a singularity, the point before the big bang when the entire universe was extremely dense, was "clumpy" it wasn't a smooth or perfect sphere, when it expanded the clumps just expanded too and now make up the galaxies.
So after the hydrogen and helium started collapsing into stars in those areas where things were clumpiest in the young universe, we know that stars work by nuclear fusion, they are so massive and dense that hydrogen in their cores is converted into helium, releasing energy in the form of photons, which is why our sun glows so bright. But when you fuse two hydrogen atoms you get a helium atom. Deep within a stars core there is also enough pressure and energy to fuse heavier atoms, in fact every element can be fused deep within the core of the most massive stars. The larger the star the shorter the lifespan, this is because more massive stars tend to burn hotter and so they tend to burn themselves out faster. These stars are also more likely to supernova. These supernovae would eject large amounts of heavier elements into the universe to be used in the formation of the next generations of stars. Our sun is a third or fourth generation star, it is only about 4.5 billion years old. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Our solar system's accretion disk also had a lot of heavier elements in it which while the disk was spinning was flung out to the outter edges of the disk as tends to happen, the majority of the matter was still concentrated in the center and formed into the sun, the planets solidified from the material that was imperfectly distributed along the outskirts.
There was, of course a lot of debris in the early solar system shortly after the earth formed, and an almost Mars sized celestial body impacted the earth around 4 billion years ago while the earth was still molten enough to reform after the collision which resulted in a chunk of the earth flying off and forming the moon. Meanwhile Jupiter and Saturn are working hard to attract as much inner slar system debris as possible but there is still a lot in the inner solar system which hits the earth as meteorites. Actually occasionally even to this day Jupiter and Saturn will accidentally fling something into the inner solar system, but for the most part their massive gravitational fields tend to attract meteors from the inner solar system to them.
Water is the most abundant chemical in the universe as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and water is the simplest compound. Because of the nature of how objects collapse into planets and stars the earth acquires it's rotation. The denser elements will tend toward the center so we have a dense nickel iron core which is seperated into an inner and outter core, the inner core is hot and liquid due to the amount of pressure above it, seems paradoxical but that's how it is. The inner core rotates at a different rate than the outter core working like a dynamo and generating a massive megnetic field. It also, along with the molten mantle, helps to drive plate techtonics. Another source of energy that helps to drive plate techtonics is radiation from the decay of radioactive materials.
Meteorites and comets impacting the young earth's surface brought with them water and many of the biochemicals necessary for life. This was proven when scientists analyzed the crater of a meteorite to see what the meteor was made of and found many of the amino acids and nucleotides found in all life on earth. Then there is the even more recent analysis of the deep impact probe that crashed into a meteor in space and a spectrum analysis of the debris that flew off confirmed that the meteor did indeed have amino acids and nucleotides on it.
The early earth's atmosphere was supplied by the young planets geological processes, volcanoes and other processes that spewed lots of toxic gases into the atmosphere...toxic to us, that is. The early atmosphere had very little O2 and O3 in it and as a result the amonia and methane and hydrogen that did make up the majority of the early atmosphere couldn't bind to a lot of oxygen and become stable. The introduction of energy from the sun and from sources like lightning resulted in more of the biochemical compounds necessary for life forming. At this point our understanding is less certain about what followed. What we do know is that self replicating polypeptide chains form easily when the necessary amino acids are present. DNA and more simply RNA is a great way to streamline the process. Cells can exist without DNA or RNA but they would not have inheritable material in them. The DNA or RNA allows for inheritable material being introduced into cells which would be mutually beneficial to the DNA which is kept together and safe in the cell and to the cell which can now reproduce itself. How specifically all of this happened is the subject of an ongoing research subject called abiogenesis, though, and I don't know all of the current theories.
Once the first organism did come about with inheritable material, though, then it was a simple matter of natural selection. The first organisms would have just consumed amino acids and most likely repriduced asexually possibly getting genetic material from other organisms like themselves that they ate. Mutations happen from transcription errors or radiation. In more complex organisms entire sections of DNA may be added or deleted. Whole chromosomes may be duplicated or sometimes two chromosomes may be fused into one. Natural selection simply means that nature will determine which organisms survive and which do not. Those organisms which are unfit to compete in a given environment are less likely to survive to reproduce. Like bacteria in a petre dish, if you introduce penecillin, those bacteria with no genetic resistance will die and are less likely to reproduce, while those which are resistant are more likely to survive to reproduce. Over time random mutations will improve resistance until the bacteria are completely immune.
Over time these small changes accumulate and a new species emerges. Given more time more information will be added to the genome and even more complex structures will emerge. I could go into greater detail but this is long enough.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Expelled
I finally got to watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed last night. I have to tell you, the movie is aptly titled. But not for the reasons the creators of the film thought. The film opens up, after the initial credits, with Ben Stein sitting in his dressing room very thoughtfully going over a speech he is about to deliver, while it cuts away periodically to some quote mined phrases from some scientists who support evolution.
Dawkins: "the battle over Evolution is just one skirmish in a much larger war."
Dennett: "Science simply makes no use of the hypothesis of God."
PZ Myers: "Ask yourself what has Intelligent Design given us? Nothing."
"We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory."
"They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time."
With all due respect to Dawkins I have to agree with what David Berlinski says later in the documentary. Dawkins does not appear to have the philosophical background to really back up his comments about religion which is what this quotation was certainly about. In Dawkin's opinion, as he confirms later in this film, Intelligent Design vs Evolution is really just a skirmish in the larger war of Religion vs Atheism. This is not an opinion that many scientists agree with. It's also not an opinion that I agree with. Of course the idea that Intelligent Design is a watered down version of creationism is not without foundation. Ben Stein himself confirms what he and the Discovery Institute spend the entire documentary trying to deny towards the end when he concludes "If the Intelligent Design people are right, God isn't hidden. We may even be able to encounter God through science."
Dennet's quotation is accurate, it is true that science makes no use of the hypothesis of God, and with good reason. Falsifiability is important to any scientific hypothesis. Due to the nature of the subjects being investigated by science it is impossible to prove anything correct directly, the only means of proving a scientific theory correct is to try to prove it wrong. Thus all scientific theories or hypotheses need to be falsifiable. How do you falsify the hypothesis of God? The very nature of the concept makes the concept impossible to disprove. The reason this is important is because it's also impossible to prove, thus the concept could be wrong, but its specific conceptualization makes it impossible to disprove. Thus we could waste an infinite amount of time pursuing this line of inquiry with no results if we ignore falsifiability and never have any reason to think we could be wrong. If science did not limit itself to those questions which can be falsified science would never make any progress. Scientists would find themselves bogged down with inquiries they could neither prove nor disprove. Yes science is today bogged down by inquiries it cannot prove, which is why it is essential that science be able to disprove them in order to eliminate those lines of inquiry that will never be productive. The quotation by Dennett here is intended to imply that there's no reason why science doesn't make use of the hypothesis of God. I hope that I've done a good job of dispelling that impression.
Concerning the quote by PZ Myers, it's a valid question, what has Intelligent Design given us? What predictions does Intelligent Design make? How is Intelligent Design applied to increase our standard of living? The theory of Evolution is behind countless advances in medical science. Contrary to Michael Egnor's post responding to the Alliance for Science essay contest that apparently really bothered him, evolution is taught in medical schools, for example in just about every course with the word "comparitive" in it.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/03/egnorance_combo_arrogance.html
And the as yet unknown scientist who said "We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory." Again the viewer is supposed to get an inaccurate impression from this statement. You're supposed to assume that the reason we cannot accept this is because scientists don't want us to. The reality is that we can't accept it because the "theory" or more accurately assertion or conjecture of Intelligent Design is not scientific. It's foundational assumption is that there is an intelligent designer, which is unfalsifiable. They may argue that this is the conclusion, but that would be false. We can put it another way, the foundational assumption is that there is design in nature, this implicitly assumes a designer. Thus their fundamental assumption is, implicitly, that there is an intelligent designer. Let's briefly explore this further. If a scientist were to approach the subject of intelligent design with no preexisting assumptions how would he proceed? Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to try to find evidence of design in nature. This seems to be what Intelligent Design proponents say they are doing. How do we go about finding evidence for design in nature, though? The way the Intelligent Design proponents do this is by making assumptions. They point to complexity and argue that complexity implies design. This could be true and it's easy to support the assertion with anecdotal evidence, such as a car engine or a watch, we know these are designed and we know these are complex. However We also know something about the process of designing a car and a watch, and we also know who designs cars or watches, generally. We have potentially first hand knowledge of the people responsible for these designs, and this in no way proves that complexity cannot be the process of complex and undirected processes. One could argue that this is the case even in human design, since the human thought is a complex undirected process. Human interaction even more so and most designs were joint projects or the process of improvement upon existing designs. One could even argue for a form of selection being responsible for the modern designs in the marketplaces, of watches, cars, anything. But that is not my intention here. The Intelligent Design advocates have to prove now that complexity is only possible if something is designed. How do they do that? Well so far they don't do that. In fact Intelligent Design advocates do nothing to try to convince scientists to take them seriously. They write books for the lay person, and lobby politicians to try to get schools to force them to be taken seriously. But they don't try to get the scientific community to take them seriously by doing real science. They don't generate testable hypothesis, they don't publish peer reviewed articles, they don't contribute anything that can be applied to do anything that might, for instance, improve our standard of living. I am aware of the Discovery Institute's list of peer reviewed articles on Intelligent Design if the list still exists. The articles in that list were either not about Intelligent Design, or not peer reviewed. Michael Behe's book, for instance, Darwin's Black Box, was not peer reviewed. Stephen C Meyer's article on the Cambrian Explosion that was published by Richard von Sternberg in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was not peer reviewed, if it had been peer reviewed it would not have been published, it was substandard work, but most importantly it was about the Cambrian Explosion (and more specifically bioinformatics, which is the origin of the higher phyla), which is not the topic of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. That publication deals with Systematics which is the study of Taxonomy.
Then finally the last quote I also don't know who to attribute it to, "They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time." This quote also is true. Intelligent Design advocates do willfully refuse to accept that evolution is a much better argument. They base their entire argument on flawed assumptions about complexity and design and negative attacks against evolution, essentially god-of-the-gaps arguments. But also a lot of straw man arguments, showing a lack of understanding of the theory they claim is so flawed. In reality if the theory of evolution actually said what they claim it says no one would believe it, but this is primarily what I meant when I said Intelligent Design advocates are not trying to convince the scientific community. Their goal is to convince people who don't understand evolution, people who will actually be inclined to believe their inaccurate characterizations of evolutionary arguments. And most importantly people who will not take the time to objectively research the assertions they make. Afterall why would they lie? Of course that question begs the question that they are lying, a sufficient reason to research all claims is to recognize that although these people claim to be experts they can still be mistaken. Take for instance Michael Egnor, again, he is a neurosurgeon. That's an impressive qualification, of course, so people are inclined to think he knows what he's talking about. Why? How does neurosurgeon qualify him to comment on evolution? William Dembski is a mathematician, that's impressive isn't it? But once again how does that qualify him to comment on evolution? Michael Behe is a molecular biologist, so he is somewhat more qualified to comment on evolution, but why can't he be wrong? Yes he studied the field, but did he understand it? How well did he have to understand it to be sufficiently good as a molecular biologist to be hired as a professor? How often do people ask these questions when a supposed expert gives them their opinion about a subject? In my experience not very often. Pointing at Behe and saying, "He's amolecular biologist and he doesn't believe in evolution" would be like pointing at Einstein and saying "He's a very brilliant physicist and he doesn't believe in quantum mechanics or the Big Bang." That's true, but so what? Einstein was still wrong, his own theory of relativity predicts the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics is a branch of science that relies on nothing unfalsifiable, makes predictions, and is applicable to improve our standard of living. Everyone reading this blog can thank quantum mechanics for that. The transitors that make your computer possible would not be possible without quantum mechanics. Thus if Einstein could be wrong about things so closely related to his own work, why can't Behe?
This has gotten long so I will conclude this post here will just the analysis of the opening quotations. I'll continue this analysis of the logic and accuracy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in my next post.
Dawkins: "the battle over Evolution is just one skirmish in a much larger war."
Dennett: "Science simply makes no use of the hypothesis of God."
PZ Myers: "Ask yourself what has Intelligent Design given us? Nothing."
"We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory."
"They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time."
With all due respect to Dawkins I have to agree with what David Berlinski says later in the documentary. Dawkins does not appear to have the philosophical background to really back up his comments about religion which is what this quotation was certainly about. In Dawkin's opinion, as he confirms later in this film, Intelligent Design vs Evolution is really just a skirmish in the larger war of Religion vs Atheism. This is not an opinion that many scientists agree with. It's also not an opinion that I agree with. Of course the idea that Intelligent Design is a watered down version of creationism is not without foundation. Ben Stein himself confirms what he and the Discovery Institute spend the entire documentary trying to deny towards the end when he concludes "If the Intelligent Design people are right, God isn't hidden. We may even be able to encounter God through science."
Dennet's quotation is accurate, it is true that science makes no use of the hypothesis of God, and with good reason. Falsifiability is important to any scientific hypothesis. Due to the nature of the subjects being investigated by science it is impossible to prove anything correct directly, the only means of proving a scientific theory correct is to try to prove it wrong. Thus all scientific theories or hypotheses need to be falsifiable. How do you falsify the hypothesis of God? The very nature of the concept makes the concept impossible to disprove. The reason this is important is because it's also impossible to prove, thus the concept could be wrong, but its specific conceptualization makes it impossible to disprove. Thus we could waste an infinite amount of time pursuing this line of inquiry with no results if we ignore falsifiability and never have any reason to think we could be wrong. If science did not limit itself to those questions which can be falsified science would never make any progress. Scientists would find themselves bogged down with inquiries they could neither prove nor disprove. Yes science is today bogged down by inquiries it cannot prove, which is why it is essential that science be able to disprove them in order to eliminate those lines of inquiry that will never be productive. The quotation by Dennett here is intended to imply that there's no reason why science doesn't make use of the hypothesis of God. I hope that I've done a good job of dispelling that impression.
Concerning the quote by PZ Myers, it's a valid question, what has Intelligent Design given us? What predictions does Intelligent Design make? How is Intelligent Design applied to increase our standard of living? The theory of Evolution is behind countless advances in medical science. Contrary to Michael Egnor's post responding to the Alliance for Science essay contest that apparently really bothered him, evolution is taught in medical schools, for example in just about every course with the word "comparitive" in it.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/03/egnorance_combo_arrogance.html
And the as yet unknown scientist who said "We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory." Again the viewer is supposed to get an inaccurate impression from this statement. You're supposed to assume that the reason we cannot accept this is because scientists don't want us to. The reality is that we can't accept it because the "theory" or more accurately assertion or conjecture of Intelligent Design is not scientific. It's foundational assumption is that there is an intelligent designer, which is unfalsifiable. They may argue that this is the conclusion, but that would be false. We can put it another way, the foundational assumption is that there is design in nature, this implicitly assumes a designer. Thus their fundamental assumption is, implicitly, that there is an intelligent designer. Let's briefly explore this further. If a scientist were to approach the subject of intelligent design with no preexisting assumptions how would he proceed? Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to try to find evidence of design in nature. This seems to be what Intelligent Design proponents say they are doing. How do we go about finding evidence for design in nature, though? The way the Intelligent Design proponents do this is by making assumptions. They point to complexity and argue that complexity implies design. This could be true and it's easy to support the assertion with anecdotal evidence, such as a car engine or a watch, we know these are designed and we know these are complex. However We also know something about the process of designing a car and a watch, and we also know who designs cars or watches, generally. We have potentially first hand knowledge of the people responsible for these designs, and this in no way proves that complexity cannot be the process of complex and undirected processes. One could argue that this is the case even in human design, since the human thought is a complex undirected process. Human interaction even more so and most designs were joint projects or the process of improvement upon existing designs. One could even argue for a form of selection being responsible for the modern designs in the marketplaces, of watches, cars, anything. But that is not my intention here. The Intelligent Design advocates have to prove now that complexity is only possible if something is designed. How do they do that? Well so far they don't do that. In fact Intelligent Design advocates do nothing to try to convince scientists to take them seriously. They write books for the lay person, and lobby politicians to try to get schools to force them to be taken seriously. But they don't try to get the scientific community to take them seriously by doing real science. They don't generate testable hypothesis, they don't publish peer reviewed articles, they don't contribute anything that can be applied to do anything that might, for instance, improve our standard of living. I am aware of the Discovery Institute's list of peer reviewed articles on Intelligent Design if the list still exists. The articles in that list were either not about Intelligent Design, or not peer reviewed. Michael Behe's book, for instance, Darwin's Black Box, was not peer reviewed. Stephen C Meyer's article on the Cambrian Explosion that was published by Richard von Sternberg in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was not peer reviewed, if it had been peer reviewed it would not have been published, it was substandard work, but most importantly it was about the Cambrian Explosion (and more specifically bioinformatics, which is the origin of the higher phyla), which is not the topic of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. That publication deals with Systematics which is the study of Taxonomy.
Then finally the last quote I also don't know who to attribute it to, "They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time." This quote also is true. Intelligent Design advocates do willfully refuse to accept that evolution is a much better argument. They base their entire argument on flawed assumptions about complexity and design and negative attacks against evolution, essentially god-of-the-gaps arguments. But also a lot of straw man arguments, showing a lack of understanding of the theory they claim is so flawed. In reality if the theory of evolution actually said what they claim it says no one would believe it, but this is primarily what I meant when I said Intelligent Design advocates are not trying to convince the scientific community. Their goal is to convince people who don't understand evolution, people who will actually be inclined to believe their inaccurate characterizations of evolutionary arguments. And most importantly people who will not take the time to objectively research the assertions they make. Afterall why would they lie? Of course that question begs the question that they are lying, a sufficient reason to research all claims is to recognize that although these people claim to be experts they can still be mistaken. Take for instance Michael Egnor, again, he is a neurosurgeon. That's an impressive qualification, of course, so people are inclined to think he knows what he's talking about. Why? How does neurosurgeon qualify him to comment on evolution? William Dembski is a mathematician, that's impressive isn't it? But once again how does that qualify him to comment on evolution? Michael Behe is a molecular biologist, so he is somewhat more qualified to comment on evolution, but why can't he be wrong? Yes he studied the field, but did he understand it? How well did he have to understand it to be sufficiently good as a molecular biologist to be hired as a professor? How often do people ask these questions when a supposed expert gives them their opinion about a subject? In my experience not very often. Pointing at Behe and saying, "He's amolecular biologist and he doesn't believe in evolution" would be like pointing at Einstein and saying "He's a very brilliant physicist and he doesn't believe in quantum mechanics or the Big Bang." That's true, but so what? Einstein was still wrong, his own theory of relativity predicts the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics is a branch of science that relies on nothing unfalsifiable, makes predictions, and is applicable to improve our standard of living. Everyone reading this blog can thank quantum mechanics for that. The transitors that make your computer possible would not be possible without quantum mechanics. Thus if Einstein could be wrong about things so closely related to his own work, why can't Behe?
This has gotten long so I will conclude this post here will just the analysis of the opening quotations. I'll continue this analysis of the logic and accuracy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in my next post.
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