Community Commentary -- David L. Rector
Gertrude Stein said, “The trouble with Oakland is there’s no there
there.” The same could be said for intelligent design, the hodgepodge of
objections to the theory of natural selection that Wendy Leece wants to
foist on Newport-Mesa biology classes (“Leece continues the intelligent
design crusade,” Jan. 14).
The intelligent design “theory” contains neither a theory of
intelligence nor a theory of design. Rather it is an attempt to present
phenomena in the evolution of life on Earth that proponents say could not
have been accounted for by natural selection and would therefore (it is
claimed) have required skyhooks -- interventions by outside forces (gods
or super-intelligent aliens), seeding by cosmic dust or comets or other
mechanisms we have not discovered. The theory as it exists today makes no
predictions and is untestable; it is not science.
Intelligent design theorists are resurrecting the old “Argument from
Design” of William Paley (“Natural Theology,” 1802). Consider the human
eye, a marvelously complicated and performant organ; surely it must have
been designed specifically for its task. Well, as a project in
Engineering 101, the eye rates a C- at best. The blood vessels that
nourish the retina are in front of the retina, and so is all the wiring,
requiring a hole for the optic nerve right in the middle of the retina.
All this degrades the performance of the eye and requires elaborate
muscular and neural kludges to make the illusion of a continuous field of
vision. Engineering idiocy.
With natural selection, all these kludges make perfect sense. Natural
selection is opportunistic, has no fixed purposes and works with whatever
is available; nothing is planned (see diagram and discussion at o7
biomed.brown.edu/Faculty/M/Miller/TR/Lifes-Design.htmlf7 ).
I have never understood the problem some people have accepting
evolution. When I was 10, I looked at my grandfather’s male workhorse one
day; the imposing equipment the horse had was so like in structure to the
small equipment I had that the thought of family resemblance occurred to
me spontaneously. I knew instantly the horse and I were cousins. I
belonged to a Christian family. The Bible said God created the horse and
God created me; it didn’t say how.
If God wanted to use some system involving common descent, that was
his business. I think the problem is some people want God to look like
themselves -- only bigger. They visualize God as a great wizard who waves
a magic wand like Harry Potter, no matter that the Bible and the Koran
tell them that God is immaterial and wasn’t like a man at all.
When I read Darwin, the mechanism of evolution was as obvious as the
fact. With what we now know of the mechanisms of genetics, evolution by
natural selection must happen; it cannot be stopped. It is God’s R&D;
laboratory, ever striving to invent a better mouse -- or bacterium or
human being.
Natural selection is a well-posed scientific theory that makes
detailed, easily testable, practical predictions. Consequently, the
theory has been rigorously tested in great detail in the last 140 years.
For instance, detailed studies have been done on birds in the wild --
such as Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches.
Rapidly reproducing organisms have been studied in the wild and in the
laboratory, and new forms of microorganisms have been born before the
eyes of microbiologists. Several creative mechanisms besides the simple
ones known to Darwin, none involving design, have been discovered.
Natural selection is now one of the most thoroughly tested theories in
science. Biology and medicine couldn’t be done without it. Wasting
students’ time on pseudoscience is absurd.
To read further: for design, see Michael Behe, “Darwin’s Black Box,”
(see review: o7 biomed.brown.edu/Faculty/M/Miller/Behe.htmlf7 );
against design, see Richard Dawkins, “The Blind Watchmaker.” A Web site
with many links for and against is
www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/box/behe.htm, and
www.world-of-dawkins.com is great for evolution in general.
* DAVID L. RECTOR is an associate professor of mathematics at UC
Irvine and lives in Costa Mesa.
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