My Summer With Darwin (Part Two)

I love reading; but sometimes I secretly think my true joy comes from collecting books to read.  There is something wonderful about how an interesting-looking book tantalizes you from the shelves, how it catches your eye, how its weight feels in your hands, even how the ink smells; all of these are much more instantly gratifying than the ever more laborious task of actually sitting down and cracking them open.  Like anything worth doing, the idea of a book is often more seductive than the book itself, though the book itself is ultimately infinitely more rewarding than that shadow that beckons from its resting place. That said (I'm sure I will have many commiserators!) I aggregate books exponentially faster than I read them.  They swarm my bookshelves and overflow onto my desk and nightstand; they even find their way (much to my roommates' chagrin, no doubt) onto the coffee table and into the bathroom.

When I regained that itch to delve into the Darwinian marshes this summer, my bibliophilia had the unexpected upside (for which my bank account was eternally grateful) that I had already in my possession many relevant books that I had simply put off: the first two were Francis S. Collins' The Language of God, and Del Ratzsche's The Battle of Beginnings, both fairly brisk entry-level reads.  Collins is notable, of course, for being the head of the Human Genome Project and one of the U.S's foremost geneticists, while also being a strong Christian. Del Ratzsche is a Christian professor of philosophy, and though dated his book is unique in that it attempts to address misunderstandings which arise on all sides.  This is an admirable goal since the shouting matches that occur often seem to fly straight past one another; any book which wants to position the shouters more towards one another has my blessing.  Yet, and this is both perhaps due to (what I see as) the inherent weakness of Creationist arguments, and the fact that Del Ratzsche himself is a theistic-evolutionist, the evolutionist misunderstandings of the Creationist position often come off as trivial, but the reverse is not the case: Creationists misunderstandings of evolution (and so their arguments based on such misunderstandings) are massive and systemic. But c'est la vie.

I found Collin's book to be very similar to Foster's in arguments for evolution (and against ID and Creationism) though much more genteel in its tone.  Both books shared many of the same facts and explanations: how the Creationist complaint about the fossil record containing no transitional forms was untrue when it was penned, and now suffers even higher contrast from the paleontological findings of the last twenty years (more on this in the next post); or how some (ridiculously enough) cite the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (that all closed-energy systems tend toward entropy) against evolution, as just absolute nonsense (again, more on this later); and how many of the ID movements pet-examples of "irreducible complexity" (the bacterial flagellum; the blood-clotting cascade effect; the camera-eye) have in recent literature been given plausible step-wise "Darwinian" reconstructions; so that while they are assuredly complex, they are not so irreducible.

Or again: we contain ARE's (Ancient Repetitive Elements) in our DNA; these arise from so-called "jumping genes," which are transposable elements able to insert themselves at random into the genome.  Roughly forty-five percent of our genomic makeup is littered with these ARE jumping genes (so-called "junk-DNA," though most are uncomfortable with the term, since several purposes have since been found for the supposed junk).  Collins notes that though some may argue that this is just a Designer using similar tools cross-species (or in Foster's words, we identify Rembrandt by his style) in actuality the fact that we share identical AREs with, say, a mouse is telling of common ancestry.  Why?  Because on "landing" into position many of the AREs become truncated and so nonfunctional.  Thus it seems absolutely nonsensical for a Designer to place them in identical position cross-species unless as a feint meant to evoke the hypothesis of evolution.  "Thus unless one is willing to take the position that these decapitated AREs are in their precise positions to confuse and mislead us," writes Collins, "the conclusion of a common ancestor for humans and mice is virtually inescapable." (pp.136-137).  (To say nothing of vestigial and other non-optimal functions; but again--next post).

And tellingly: if we come from monkeys (or much more precisely: have a common ancestor with chimpanzees) there needs to be some sort of explanation as to why our chromosome counts are discrepant.  The human has twenty-three pairs of chromosomes; the chimp has twenty four.  The immediately obvious answer would simply to be: mutation caused a chromosome pair to drop out.  But such choppy simplicity could not work; our chromosomes are too complex with too many functions for an entire pair to simply disappear.  This is not like a bunch of scrap-booking mothers: anything is not possible, no matter the abundance of scissors and tape.  Rather, it was hypothesized that the numerical discrepancy would have had to occur through some sort of chromosomal fusion.  Lo and behold this is exactly what was found.  In our chromosome-2, exactly where predicted, we found the fusion.  Though the specifics will elude us here (unless you are a scientist) it is supposed that Darwin could not have imagined a better confirmation-through-prediction of his theory.

This evidence constitutes the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and one feels that likewise Creationism and ID are thus the Titanic, self assured but about to wreck and kill a lot of people (I'm not exactly sure what that means in my metaphor, but it probably isn't good).

This self-assurance of ID is indeed strong, and I have to admit difficult for a layman like myself to assess.  At face value the evidence for evolution is utterly massive; a theory demonstrated in a masterstroke of ingenuity and scientific rigor, cross-confirmed through numerous independently conceived experiments and published,  repeatable research.  But the absolute opposition remains. Rhetoricians and psychologists will here understand my consternation with a wink and a nod: the self-assurance of an opponent is often harder to swallow than any counter-evidence.  Consider the paradox: Kenneth Miller (a renowned Catholic biologist who teaches at Brown) in two fantastic books Finding Darwin's God and Only A Theory recounts both his support for evolution, and, interestingly enough, his experience being called upon to rebut ID theory in the American court system.  Fate apparently was hankering for a Scope's trial redux, and in 2004 the science department at a Dover area high-school decided to choose new biology textbooks--and selected one written by Miller himself and his friend Joseph Levine.  The trouble began when members of Dover's board of education thought the book was laced with Darwinism from beginning to end.  As a counter-balance the board also purchased two classroom sets (60 per class for a total of 120) of an ID-produced book, Of Pandas and People. What followed was an uproar regarding the nature of scientific education amongst the people of Dover, as a group of eleven parents filed a lawsuit alleging the Dover Board of Education had violated its constitutional rights;  the Pandas of Dover were apparently not equally available for comment.

Kitzmiller v. Dover as the case is now called, alleged that by bringing ID textbooks into the school, the Board had essentially established a religion in violation of the First Amendment (This is perhaps unfair.  Regardless of its scientific merit, if one recalls Heidegger's slam of onto-theology it also applies here: one cannot dance or worship before the "god" of ID.  Among its many faults, one must also claim, I think, that ID sucks as a religion).  The absolutely fascinating details of this case must be passed over for another time, except for one.  At a point in the trial Michael Behe of Darwin's Black Box fame (whom, I must add, I once read religiously) was called to the stand.  With what I admit can only be described with slightly vindictive glee (though I can hardly blame him) Miller notes that only four months before the trial ID proponent William Dembski had fantasized of a day when Evolutionists would receive subpoenas and "be deposed and interrogated at length" about their views.  Yet when a trial came, Dembski claimed schedule conflict and didn't show, leaving Behe high and dry (by an ironic twist of fate I would presume Dembski would claim chance caused the situation to evolve as it did; while his unimpressed and impatient evolutionary opponents would claim it was actually by design).

Behe spent three days as a witness, attempting to salvage irreducible complexity as the biochemical equivalent of the Holy Grail.  It did not go well.  One of the lawyers in cross-examination noted that Behe's attempted expanded definition of science was in fact so broad that it would also theoretically allow astrology to fall under its bloated girth.  This was not merely a cheap shot at ID: Behe himself accepted the claim in the courtroom.  At one point Miller records, with great effect upon the presiding Judge Jones, the lawyer representing Miller, one by one, laid peer-reviewed monographs and journals upon the witness stand in front of Behe, asking if this evidence was enough to demonstrate step-wise Darwinian evolution could account for Behe's specific claims of irreducibly complex systems of the immune system, the blood-clot cascade, and the bacterial flagellum.  In fact each piece was an argument of just that nature: what Behe in his book claimed could never be accounted for in a natural-selection schema in fact was being accounted for.  As the evidence literally piled up before him, Behe, already not a man of great stature, had to peer around the pile to answer the lawyer: no, these do not answer the question.  Dodging the evidence has never been so painfully literal.

In fact interestingly enough Kenneth Miller presented evidence for common ancestry based on the the recent discovery of our chromosome-2 being the fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes corresponding to Chimpanzee chromosome-13, among other pieces of evidence.  To his astonishment, though he had prepared at length to defend these views in the cross-examination, he was literally asked no questions and received no counter statements regarding this specific evidence.  Essentially his entire corpus of arguments was looked on in silence.  As it goes, of course, arguments from silence are never strong; but some silences are loud indeed.  Judge Jones was not impressed, and ruled that the evidence presented by Miller was more than a sufficient refutation of irreducible complexity (if one is interested the entirety of the Judge's lengthy but fairly readable final decision is readily available for viewing).  As irreducible complexity (IC) is only a negative argument, even the most modest step-wise argument could dismantle it.  Any intermediate system, once demonstrated, would implode the IC argument.  Jones went on to state that Behe's cavalier rejection of an entire body of research constituted an "unreasonable burden of proof" for evolution.  And this was not the only added insult to injury for ID.

One of the most oft-repeated mantras of ID is that it is "not creationism."  Much like Lewis Carroll's Bellman in The Hunting of the Snark, "what I tell you three times is true," is not lost upon the methods of ID spokesmen.  This is not merely for the sake of intellectual respectability.  In 1987 the Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard identified by a 7-2 vote that Creation Science should be identified as religious doctrine.  This was a bad precedent in a case arguing that ID violated the First Amendment for the same reasons. Much to be expected the ID proponents claimed as a counter that they were something other than creationism.  Yet the veneer wears thin and gives way to my own adage: anything I say thirty times probably can't hold its own weight, which is why I'm repeating it so much.  Also, here's some candy.  Shh.  Sleep now.

This part of the trial happened like the bad opening joke of a stand-up comic: funny thing happened to me on the way over.  But a funny thing did happen on the way to the trial.  Of Pandas and People was the textbook meant to counteract Miller and Levine's biology textbook supposedly rank Darwinism; it was the match that set off the fire of the whole trial.  As a representative work of ID it should of course have a pedigree lightyears beyond Creationism, right?  The punchline is: unfortunately not. Lawyers for the parent plaintiffs subpoenaed the book's publisher to obtain copies of earlier drafts.  Copying one work is plagiarism; but copying many works is scholarship.  So the saying goes.  Unfortunately Of Pandas and People is only copying one work, so it is the former.  Take these two sentences for example.  The first from Of Pandas and People: "Intelligent design means that the various forms of life begin abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already in tact--fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc"  Got it?  Ok now read the earlier version called Biology and Origins: "Creation means that various forms of life begin abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator, with their distinctive features already intact--fish with fins, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc."

Woops.  Nor was this isolated to a few phrases here and there.

Fig. 1

Dr. Barbara Forrest demonstrated during the trial that this was no accident, or gradual editorial mishap (whatever that might mean).  These changes were sudden and severe.  And in fact happened in 1987 as luck would have it, right after the time Edwards v. Aguillard was ratified (see fig. 1 to the left, one of many charts Forrest presented at the original trial).   One can envision a day or two, a few months after the court decision, when word-processors went white-hot with find-and-replace algorithms swapping "Creator" with "intelligent-designer" and all similar cognates.  And boom.  Congratulations you've got yourselves another, "different" book.  The irony here being that the evolutionists proponents, in discovering these sudden changes, had in one sense proved themselves more effective at detecting and demonstrating purposeful design than ID was at the trial.

This is deception of a grand and feeble sort.  Feeble in that, as Miller chides, "Didn't they learn anything from the Nixon administration?  I mean if you are going to do something like that, burn the evidence!"  And the grandness of the deception is reflected in some of the statements made by Judge Jones, who was shocked at the underhanded nature of this process.  Jones observed that he found it remarkable that people who would courageously and unabashedly champion their faith publicly would stoop to such silent duplicity in order to make it into the education curriculum.  Sober words for Christians of all stripes who would like to avoid similar hypocrisy.  Obviously the whole book-swap was bad form.  This is not, it seems to me, characteristic of ID behavior at large (though Forrest's charts demonstrate a frequency that is troubling enough).  Both Philip Johnson, Dembski, Behe, and others appear to be very genuine in their beliefs, and very heartfelt in their attempts to prove their positions.  And they and others are also extremely intelligent.  And of course in denying ID as a Christian I suppose I have to be very specific in what it is I am denying.  Part of the success of ID I think lay in the ambiguity of the title "Intelligent Design" itself.  Those who believe in the Judeo-Christian God as I do would of course have a bit of intrinsic draw to such a title; and on the converse the denial of Intelligent Design not surprisingly elicits charges of either impiety or athiest materialism.  I deny ID but fancy myself as not particularly impious (or, any more so than the average sinner) and I am not an atheist.  As a Christian, of course I believe that God is the Creator, and of course I believe that God made biological systems.  In fact I believe that God is intimately involved in every aspect of the universe.  The question boils down to what these all mean.  What I do deny is the supposed mechanism of Irreducible Complexity, or that the inability of evolution to explain the development of some biological phenomena (yet) does not constitute positive evidence for design.  Or perhaps to just state it in a broader manner: I do not believe ID is science.  It is perhaps theology, and it is perhaps philosophy.  But it is not and can not be a science.  Which is why I agree with Kenneth Miller's ultimate assessment.

"A strong and self-confident religious belief cannot forever pin its hopes on the desperate supposition that an entire branch of science is dramatically wrong, thereby to teeter always on the brink of logical destruction." (Finding Darwin's God, 258-259).

And though I will talk more about this in the next post, just in case you think this is just the opinion of a man who is a scientist primarily and not a trained theologian, I offer, for example, the opinion of renowned historian and theologian Etienne Gilson:

But even supposing that we are not mistaken about these wonders—and mistakes of this kind will happen at times—they never introduce  us to anything better than a kind of chief engineer of the universe whose power, as astonishing to us as our own is to a savage, remains, nevertheless, within the human order…It is useless, therefore, to press this question, and we must pass to [a] second.  Just as the [Thomistic] proof [of God] from movement does not consider God as the Central Generating Station for the energies of nature, so neither does the proof from finality consider Him as the Chief Engineer of the whole vast enterprise.  The precise question is this: if there is order, what is the cause of the being of this order?  The celebrated example of the watch-maker misses the point, unless we leave the plane of making for the plane of creating.  Just as when we observe an artificial arrangement, we infer the existence of an artificer as the sole conceivable sufficient reason of the arrangement, so also when we observe over and over, an order between things, we infer the existence of a supreme orderer.  But what we have to consider in this orderer is not so much the ingenuity displayed in this work, the precise nature  too often, perhaps always, escapes us, but the causality whereby He confers being on order…He is first with respect to the being of the universe, prior to that being, and consequently also outside it.  That, to speak precisely, is why we ought to say that Christian philosophy essentially excludes all merely physical proofs of the existence of God, and admits only physico-metaphysical proofs, that is to say proofs suspended from Being as being.

--Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) pp.78-80.