| By Ben Regenspan - Sep 29th, 2007 at 2:35 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Former game-show host, somewhat unenthusiastic Campus Progress conference promoter, and public intellectual Ben Stein recently came out in favor of intelligent design (or some similar cocktail of science and creationism), narrating a documentary on what he deems the "supression and entrenched discrimination" against creationist ideas in the sciences. Like other proponents of the idea, he attempts to explain its failure to persuade scientists and educators as the product of an unfairly-fought campaign by a handful of Dawkins fans, and not deficiencies in the "theory" itself.
Judging at least from Stein's first blog post, his argument is the typical one. He conveniently ignores the fact that, while the theory of evolution has centuries of empirical support, intelligent design is fundamentally un-provable. Instead, and like many pundits before him, he seeks to reframe the debate by pointing to a few instances of dubious judgment on the part of the scientific mainstream, which, he argues, is actively suppressing a modern-day "Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo" who "would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research":
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.
If this leaves you wondering how scientists have discovered the art of mind-reading without us catching on, I guess you'll just have to see the movie when it comes out in February.
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Am I crazy, or is a stream of semi-plausible crap to sell the gullible public exactly what the creationist crowd needs? They've got to know by now that there's no chance that anyone with a remote understanding of the Scientific Method is going to buy their spiel, so they ought to start just mass producing their crap and surrender any premise of scientific legitimacy in favor of, well, the pretense of legitimacy.
In speculating about evolution, the famous Sir Fred Hoyle once made a calculation. He calculated that the probability of a single cell forming even in the time of 4.6 billion years was 10^39982 to 1. This was checked and supported by mathematician and Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick.
The fallacy is that Hoyle and creationists always assume that for life to form, complex proteins that follow a "modern" sequencing pattern are required for any life to form. Of course a creationist would leave out the possibility of simple, primative proteins that certainly existed when the earth first formed but have evolved out of existance by now. Creationists are also dreadful at math, failing to understand that in any one trial or experiment, an event is unlikely, but with billions of simultaneous trials running at once, the probability becomes an almost certainty.
In that respect, if you were to run the wristwatch in a box experiement an infinate number of times, you'd eventually make a wristwatch.
Calling something a "fallacy" is merely an assertion. Proving an argument invalid is something entirely different.
"Of course a creationist would leave out the possibility of simple, primative proteins that certainly existed when the earth first formed but have evolved out of existance by now."
Well, if they don't exist and there is no evidence that they ever existed, I guess you're still free to believe they existed, but you should be aware that this is a matter of faith on your part, not evidence.
"Creationists are also dreadful at math, failing to understand that in any one trial or experiment, an event is unlikely, but with billions of simultaneous trials running at once, the probability becomes an almost certainty"
I assume someone as apparently knowledgeble about math as yourself knows that 1/10^50 is commonly accepted as the level of absolute impossibility, the odds of a single very small protein (the non-existent ones you talk about)assembling itself is in the range of 1/10^150), let alone complex proteins or a DNA chain.
"if you were to run the wristwatch in a box experiement an infinate number of times, you'd eventually make a wristwatch."
Yeah, sure. Whatever "infinite number of times" means. And of course a forest of pulp trees would eventually form itself into books and spontaneously produce the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Your blind faith in Darwinism is commendable, but my advice to you is don't seek out any sort of career where a questioning mind is required. I'm sure it would make you very uncomfortable.
Just sayin'.
Congratulations, Terry, you just described creationism--er, "Intelligent Design." You're free to believe it all you want, but it's purely a matter of faith, and science deals in actual evidence. As such, creationism is not science. Simple.
"what is the probability of an "intelligent" design existing?
Whether or not "intelligent design' or 'intelligent designer"
is a political surrogate for "god", then ask, did (it)
come from something else or did (it) invent itself before
(it) invented the design or designer.
Sleep on it. A good cure for insomnia.