The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

We sometimes hear that the origin of life is a simple question with simple answers.

Couldn't life begin with simple entities like bacteria with few genes, viruses, viroids*, or proteins such as prions** and then gradually build up to complex forms?

Not as far as we know, because all these entities are parasites on more complex life forms. Whatever the answer is, they are not the answer. A life form that devolves into a parasite may indeed survive even though it sacrifices complexity - but only because the much more complex host provides many needed functions.

*viroids - short stretches of RNA that lack a protein coat, known to cause plant diseases
** complex folded proteins

The National Academy of Sciences identifies origin of life as an active research area that will soon yield key answers:

Of course, even if a living cell were to be made in the laboratory, it would not prove that nature followed the same pathway billions of years ago. But it is the job of science to provide plausible natural explanations for natural phenomena. The study of the origin of life is a very active research area in which important progress is being made, although the consensus among scientists is that none of the current hypotheses has thus far been confirmed. The history of science shows that seemingly intractable problems like this one may become amenable to solution later, as a result of advances in theory, instrumentation, or the discovery of new facts.

But the telling phrase is "seemingly intractable problems like this one." "Seemingly" intractable or actually intractable? And in either case, why?

Now, it's fine with me if NAS members solve the problem tomorrow. BUT ... we need to be clear about one thing: It is perfectly possible that they will never solve it, not because it is some kind of forbidden knowledge, but simply because the relevant information is lost. In other words, it could be a cold case file with no new clues.

After all, most NAS members believe in a naturalistic materialist universe, so there is no reason to assume that the information about the origin of life was saved. In their own view, no intelligence created it or took the trouble to save it.

Here is a timeline that gives some idea what to expect from this line of research:

1988 Klaus Dose, Director of the Institute for Biochemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany candidly admitted in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews :

More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present, all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in a stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.

1992 Dr. Werner Arber, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Basel and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 1978, stated:

Although a biologist, I must confess that I do not understand how life came about. . . . I consider that life only starts at the level of a functional cell. The most primitive cell may require at least several hundred different specific biological macro-molecules. How such already quite complex structures may have come together, remains a mystery to me. The possibility of the existence of a Creator, of God, represents to me a satisfactory solution to this problem.

1998 Trends in Ecology and Evolution (March 3) contained a report on a NASA-sponsored workshop called "Evolution: A Molecular Point of View." Many of the big names in origins research were present and a lot of interesting points of view were discussed. The author of the article noted:

Sherwood Chang opened the program with the cautious reminder that any canonical scenario for the stepwise progression toward the origin of life is still a 'convenient fiction.' That is, we have almost no data to support the historical transitions from chemical evolution to prebiotic monomers, polymers, replicating enzymes, and finally cells.

2004 Andy Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard and author of Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Life, was interviewed (May 3) as part of a PBS NOVA program. He is described as a person who has "exhaustively investigated" the origin of life. Here are excerpts from an interview:

NOVA: In a nutshell, what is the process? How does life form?

Knoll: The short answer is we don't really know how life originated on this planet. There have been a variety of experiments that tell us some possible roads, but we remain in substantial ignorance.

NOVA: So at this point we're seeing the origins of life through a glass darkly?

Knoll: If we try to summarize by just saying what, at the end of the day, do we know about the deep history of life on Earth, about its origin, about its formative stages that gave rise to the biology we see around us today, I think we have to admit that we're looking through a glass darkly here. . . .
. . . We don't know how life started on this planet. We don't know exactly when it started, we don't know under what circumstances.

It's a mystery that we're going to chip at from several different directions. . . .

NOVA: Will we ever solve the problem?

Knoll: I don't know. I imagine my grandchildren will still be sitting around saying that it's a great mystery, but that they will understand that mystery at a level that would be incomprehensible to us today.

2005 The July 1 issue of Science included in its top 25 questions facing science "How and where did life on earth arise?"

2005 The article "Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks" in the November 15, 2005 issue of PLOS (Public Library of Science) included:

"But beyond assuming the first cell must have somehow come into existence, how do biologists explain its emergence from the prebiotic world four billion years ago?

"The short answer is that they can't, yet."

Actually, scientists would be better to put their faith in intelligent design if they want to solve origin of life mysteries, because then they might reasonably believe that someone left them clues - in much the same way that Arthur Conan Doyle always left clues for his great detective Sherlock Holmes to find. But it's okay with me if they don't. I have other stories to cover. Most of the world's problems can be addressed without knowing the origin of life anyway.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Window on ID: Why ID isn’t ‘religious’

Many critics of ID flatly state that the notion of a creator or creative force behind the origin and development of life is a strictly ‘religious’ concept. Well, it’s not, and there are many facets to ID theory that underscore this. One of those facets is the inability of ID theory to identify who or what the creative agency behind life on this planet might be. This isn’t a denial or side-stepping of the issue – it’s a legitimate acknowledgement of the limitations of the theory. After all, science can’t directly speak about supernatural agencies or entities (although it can investigate evidence that may have been formed from a supernatural source). From a strictly scientific perspective, ID theory simply cannot speak about who the creator is.

What this means is that if you believe in Intelligent Design, you are free to fill in the blank about who or what you think the designer or creative intelligence might be.

In fact, ID architects like Behe and Dembski even refer to a latin term for this “you fill in the blank” approach that you should know about – it’s called “Hypothesis non fingo”.

The phrase appears to have been first coined by Newton in his book in mathematical physics – Principia Mathematica, and means "I feign (to assert as if true) no hypotheses". This is the actual passage from Principia containing this famous remark:

“But hitherto I have not yet been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.”

What this means is that ID can’t provide a scientifically based observation or comment about who the designer might be.

Simply put – according to key ID architects – ID theory does not seek to be "creationism in a tuxedo", does not seek to "sneak religion into the science classroom", and in fact explicitly refuses to identify who the Candidate for Creation might be.

Newton. Principia (1687); F. Cajori (ed.) Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of natural philosophy and his system of the world; translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Evolutionary psychology—the theory that human nature can best be understood by trying to guess the survival strategies that benefited human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago (and are now governed by our genes)—burst on the scene in the 1990s. after the controversial failures of similar trends in psychology, Social Darwinism and sociobiology.

Evolutionary psychology is an effort to bring social sciences into line with a current interpretation of Darwinian evolution favored by, for example, Richard Dawkins , by reducing the complex vagaries and choices of current human behaviour to simple formulas based on comparisons with primate apes and speculations about human prehistory based on chance findings from genome maps.

Evolutionary psychologists claim to be able to explain altruism, crime, economics, emotions, infidelity, laughter, law, literature, obesity, religion, war, why the United States does not go to war against Canada (which has almost no military presence),
sexual orientation, why people do or don't vote conservative, what women currently find attractive, why children dislike vegetables, and so forth.

And this is hardly an exhaustive list. Indeed, no exhaustive list would be possible, because anyone can interpret any current social situation (a gruesome baby-killing, a demand to legalize polygamy, current US-Canada relations) in the light of what supposedly happened in prehistoric times and then make up a story about how the behavior arose.

Such enterprises always take as a starting point the values of the individual storyteller. Unfortunately, most of the evo psycho stories I have read assume that a rather vulgar value system is the key to success in life—which does raise certain moral issues that parents and teachers should be aware of.

Evolutionary biologists have at times scornfully critiqued these "just-so" stories:

For example, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has commented,

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture. The latest deadweight dragging us closer to phrenology is "evolutionary psychology," or the science formerly known as sociobiology, which studies the evolutionary roots of human behavior. There is nothing inherently wrong with this enterprise, and it has proposed some intriguing theories, particularly about the evolution of language. The problem is that evolutionary psychology suffers from the scientific equivalent of megalomania. Most of its adherents are convinced that virtually every human action or feeling, including depression, homosexuality, religion, and consciousness, was put directly into our brains by natural selection. In this view, evolution becomes the key--the only key-- that can unlock our humanity." (Coyne, Jerry A. [Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago], "The fairy tales of evolutionary psychology." Review of "A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion," by Randy Thornhill & Craig T. Palmer, MIT Press, 2000. The New Republic, March 4, 2000.).

From evolutionary biologist Gabriel Dover,

This problem of just-so story telling is not some minor irritation to do with the perennial problem of giraffes, dismissable as some naive caricature of what you really proposed in your theory of evolution. The problem runs much deeper and wider, embracing many new disciplines of evolutionary psychology, Darwinian medicine, linguistics, biological ethics and sociobiology. Here quite vulgar explanations are offered, based on the crudest applications of selection theory, of why we humans are the way we are. There seems no aspect of our psychological make-up that does not receive its supposed evolutionary explanation from the sorts of things our selfish genes forced us to do 200,000 to 500,000 years ago. ... Not only is there the embarrassing spectacle of psychologists, philosophers and linguists rushing down the road of selfish genetic determinism, but we are also shackled with their self-imposed justification in giving 'scientific' respectability to complex behavioural phenomena in humans which we simply do not so far have the scientific tools and methodologies to investigate. There is a naivety about genetic determinism in both evolution and development that signifies intellectual laziness at best and shameless ignorance at worst when confronted with issues of massive complexity.

(From Gabriel Dover,[Professor of Genetics, University of Leicester], Dear Mr Darwin: Letters on the Evolution of Life and Human Nature, [1999], University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 2000, reprint, p.45).

Also, from social scientist Donald G. MacRae,

A peculiarity of Darwinism, both in biology and in other fields, is that it explains too much. It is very hard to imagine a condition of things which could not be explained in terms of natural selection. If the state of various elements at a given moment is such and such then these elements have displayed their survival value under the existing circumstances, and that is that. Natural selection explains why things are as they are: It does not enable us, in general, to say how they will change and vary. It is in a sense rather a historical than a predictive principle and, as is well known, it is rather a necessary than a sufficient principle for modern biology. In consequence its results when applied to social affairs were often rather odd. ( Donald G. Macrae, [Reader in Sociology, University of London], "Darwinism and the Social Sciences," in S. A. Barnett, ed., A Century of Darwin, [1958], Mercury Books: London, 1962, p.304).

In the absence of documentation, no one knows what happened in human prehistory or how those happenings affect the current human population, if they do. That's precisely why it is called "prehistory." The evolutionary psychologist can cherrypick whatever thesis he wants about the origin of human behavior, certain that no rigorous test can conclusively tie his thesis to actual events in prehistory. Some book-length critiques of this approach are beginning to be available.

Now and then, the fog lifts, and we see something from prehistory that is truly remarkable, like the cave paintings of Lascaux or the Willendorf Venus. But what do they mean? We interpret them according to who we are, not according to what they are, and a variety of interpretations is possible. No written record has survived to tell us what their creators really thought about what they were doing.

Another serious practical problem for evolutionary psychology is that the number of common human ancestors may actually be quite small. For example, recent research identifies four women as recent common ancestors of 3.5 million Ashkenazi Jews (2000 mya).

Why is this a problem? Because evolutionary psychology is, in general, group psychology. If the basic evolutionary psychology thesis were sound, a group would respond to a given issue (selective baby-killing, polygamy) by making choices that affects the group's survival and reproduction. This response is alleged to be encoded in our genes, turning up later in our thoughts.

But if only a few human beings are actually ancestors, only a few unique and unpredictable individual responses matter. It is no use theorizing about how early humans in general might have reacted if the individual who chooses to go against the group becomes the ancestor. And we don't even know, for mosst purposes, whether a decision that went against the group played any role in that individual's becoming an ancestor.

Who knows how those four Jewish women felt about the persecution of Jews, for example? The only thing we can say for certain is that they did not see it as a reason to refuse to have children. Similarly, the only thing we can safely say about our early human ancestors is that their challenges and troubles did not dissuade them from raising families. Who can effectively postdict any other critical details in the absence of a historical record?

(postdict = explaining what happened after the fact, the usual procedure of evolutionary psychology; the opposite of predict).

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

In the aftermath of the Kitzmiller decison in Dover, PA last December, many states and school boards are deciding whether they should move forward (and how) on this issue.

While some School Boards might seem a bit jumpy about it, I'll just put it out there that there are some competent legal minds who are ready and willing to jump into the fray and provide Pro Bono assistance in the right situation. This is a good thing for school boards that are concerned with any potential legal exposure they might have - consultation with informed legal counsel should be contemplated BEFORE moving forward on any curriculum recommendations about ID. While the media and opponents of ID are celebrating their alleged victory in Pennsylvania, I say they need to put the cork back in the bottle because the Dover case was just a trial run.

The opinion in Kitzmiller also has several serious flaws, not the least of which is that it charges ID is 'religious' but fails to define exactly what 'religious' is much less spell out precisely how ID is religious. Other school boards should not take the Kitzmiller ruling as a stop-sign for moving forward with plans to "teach the controversy" in public schools, but a learning experience.

The Kitzmiller decision was just the first round of what promises to be a string of continued tussles with school boards and our courts. As I scan the horizon of ID activity in the coming year, I see many school boards taking a closer look at states that facilitate I.D. instruction with the most success (like Kansas). What school boards need most is a bullet-proof way of introducing the concept of ID, and what teachers need most of all is a curriculum that will survive the test in our courts. On top of all this, it helps to have legal counsel that is familiar with the key issues related to ID. Good planning for this is the key, and I see a lot of this going on as I write.

Those are the immediate challenges ahead for ID in our schools, and if managed properly, one can only hope that there will be some positive results instead of the wild ineptitude demonstrated in the Kitzmiller opinion. The Kitzmiller opinion is being widely heralded as a great ruling, but in fact, is more likely a lesson about how NOT to write a decision.

There are signs that ID is beginning to heat up more than ever across the nation. It has captured the attention of our academic, scientific, and political leaders as never before. More and more people are taking the opportunity to mention ID in keynote addresses.

For example...

Near the end of his State of the Commonwealth speach on January 9th, 2006, Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher commented that Kentucky school districts have the freedom to teach intelligent design if they wish.

"And I encourage them to do so," he said.

And to underscore how seriously some academic institutions are taking ID, there is little to compare with the State of the University address given by Hunter Rawlings II of Cornell University on October 21, 2005. His entire address was devoted to ID.

Be sure to check out both the text and the video here

I've recently begun to develop a response to the Kitzmiller decision, and I've laid out what I think the segments of my response will look like. I'll be adding segments as I complete the drafts. Your comments are welcomed. The first serious segment is on the False Duality Argument, which postulates that the notion of two main ideas (creation and evolution) are contrived by Creationists and IDers, and are therefore "False". You can review my remarks about how I think it played out at:

http://www.kevs-korner.com/CREVO

Or, you can just punch in "false duality" in Google, and it should come up on page one or pretty close to it.

In short, I found the Kitzmiller decision to be one of the most poorly formulated of any court decison related to ID concerns I have read in quite a long time - and I've been studying this debate for over 30 years now. I have never come right out and said that I thought a court opinion was shoddy, lousy, and not worth the paper it was written on, but, that's exactly what I think of the Kitzmiller decision. Here are my summary thoughts, which my ongoing remarks will support in the days to come.

"Many things become evident from a reading of the Kitzmiller opinion, but this much is clear: it is literally laced with scores of innuendos and tainted interpretations about ID and the value of the Dover Board’s disclaimer. The Kitzmiller court also frequently accepts testimony from Defendants expert witnesses that supports the views of the Plaintiffs in key places, while rejecting or ignoring valid testimony from the Defendants expert witnesses to create a blended caricature of the ID position which is full of inaccuracies, assumptions, and half-truths. The Court then takes the resulting caricature of ID it has created, holds it up as fully accurate, and uses it to show why it fails the establishment clause tests. I cannot think of a more unfair, unjust,
and abusive use of judicial prerogative than this. And to top it all off, the Kitzmiller court has the audacity to claim that it was the Dover School Board and ID advocates who have been on the ‘attack’ against science."