Is Biological Life the Product of Intelligent Design?

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lol, look what I started, almost brings a tear to my eye.

[John21]

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Honestly. You need to do one of two things...accept what people who immerse themselves in the subject tell you, or take it upon yourself to learn about the subject.

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I'm trying to do the former, my problem is I run into a great deal of conflict and opposing ideas. For example, the last subject I was trying to understand was symbiosis and I ran into this problem:

From wiki:
Lynn Margulis received her Ph.D. in 1963 from UC Berkeley. In 1966, as a young faculty member at Boston University, she wrote a theoretical paper entitled The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells.[2] The paper however was "rejected by about fifteen scientific journals," Margulis recalled.[3] It was finally accepted by The Journal of Theoretical Biology and is considered today a landmark in modern endosymbiotic theory. Although it draws heavily on symbiosis ideas first put forward in the mid-19th century scientists as well as the early 20th century work of Merezhkovsky (1905) and Wallin (1920), Margulis's endosymbiotic theory formulation is the first to rely on direct microbiological observations (as opposed to paleontological or zoological observations which were previously the norm for new works in evolutionary biology). The paper was initially heavily rejected, as symbiosis theories had been dismissed by mainstream biology at the time. Weathering constant criticism of her ideas for decades, Margulis is famous for her tenacity in pushing her theory forward, despite the opposition she faced at the time.

Richard Dawkins had this to say about her and her theory:
"I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it."

Then she has this to say about neo-Darwinism:
"…history will ultimately judge the theory as "a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology." She also believes that proponents of the standard theory "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin… Neo-Darwinism, which insists on (the slow accrual of mutations), is a complete funk."


Now I know with absolute certainty that I will never have an understanding of evolution at their level, and I'm fairly certain no one on this forum does either. So exactly how am I to make sense of the debate?

BTW: here's a link to a somewhat lengthy interview with her, where she discusses her theory, reaction of the scientific community to an opposing or controversial theory along with commentary and rebuttals from Dawkins, Dennett, and other prominent figures.
LINK

intro:
I work in evolutionary biology, but with cells and microorganisms. Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Richard Lewontin, Niles Eldredge, and Stephen Jay Gould all come out of the zoological tradition, which suggests to me that, in the words of our colleague Simon Robson, they deal with a data set some three billion years out of date. Eldredge and Gould and their many colleagues tend to codify an incredible ignorance of where the real action is in evolution, as they limit the domain of interest to animals — including, of course, people. All very interesting, but animals are very tardy on the evolutionary scene, and they give us little real insight into the major sources of evolution's creativity.

[Skidoo]

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With that helpful clarification, I'll return to the first statement and ask you for an example of a phenomenon you can imagine that would defy modeling as described.

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Um,

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A phenomenon such as nonphysical, arbitrarily instigated time travel thus COULD NOT be modeled in a way that fits the conditions of science as it's actually practiced and philosophized.

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Wait a minute. So any phenomenon that can't be reconciled with "the conditions of science as it's actually practiced and philosophized" is therefore supernatural? Thus the Compton effect was a supernatural phenomenon in 1880? That's the implication of your statement.

[CallMeIshmael]

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Okay, one more reply....

*** You are ignoring this user ***

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they always say history repeats itself

[luckyme]

The Margulis experience is a great example of how science is supposed to work. Some new thinking, held off by accepted theory, vindicated as it gets fit into a model that holds it.

Margulis' idea panned out, lots don't.

The trap to avoid is to think - Margulis was right when they thought she was wrong. They think she's wrong again. Therefore she is right.

luckyme

[hellbender]

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lol, look what I started, almost brings a tear to my eye.

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Heh, sorry for the hijack. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] But I'm quite happy you started this thread. Skidoo's and NotReady's replies have really opened my eyes to better apologetic lines to take vs. ID'ers.

After some further research and consideration, maybe I'll start another thread on the topic. But for now, off to keep butting heads with Skidoo via PM, meh.

[vhawk01]

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lol, look what I started, almost brings a tear to my eye.

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Heh, sorry for the hijack. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] But I'm quite happy you started this thread. Skidoo's and NotReady's replies have really opened my eyes to better apologetic lines to take vs. ID'ers.

After some further research and consideration, maybe I'll start another thread on the topic. But for now, off to keep butting heads with Skidoo via PM, meh.

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Ok, thats it, I demand some biographical information. Only as much as you want, of course, but I'm curious as to what you do for a living.

[arahant]

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The Margulis experience is a great example of how science is supposed to work. Some new thinking, held off by accepted theory, vindicated as it gets fit into a model that holds it.

Margulis' idea panned out, lots don't.

The trap to avoid is to think - Margulis was right when they thought she was wrong. They think she's wrong again. Therefore she is right.

luckyme

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John -
I was going to write my own long response, but gave up. I'll just 'QFT' this.

Evolution in outline is obvious. Sorry.
I know you'd like new big animals every 5 years, but I think if you consider the length of recorded history, you'll see why this is unlikely.

[NotReady]

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Maybe I should have been more specific, because I am leery of traps.


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Well I certainly don't want to trap you so I'll lay it out up front. I mentioned in another post that science can't even say that gravity exists without a designer. The overall simple idea is that unless you can explain everything you haven't fully explained anything. Whatever Dawkins showed about his arbitrary lifeform can't exclude the necessity for a designer. If he says it does he has departed science. When you flip a coin you can't say with scientific certainty that God wasn't involved in the result. My beef with Dawkinism and others like that is simply their assumption, often unstated, that the universe is undesigned, operates independently of God and their assertion that this is a scientific position. It isn't.

[John21]

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The Margulis experience is a great example of how science is supposed to work. Some new thinking, held off by accepted theory, vindicated as it gets fit into a model that holds it.

Margulis' idea panned out, lots don't.

The trap to avoid is to think - Margulis was right when they thought she was wrong. They think she's wrong again. Therefore she is right.

luckyme

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John -
I was going to write my own long response, but gave up. I'll just 'QFT' this.

Evolution in outline is obvious. Sorry.
I know you'd like new big animals every 5 years, but I think if you consider the length of recorded history, you'll see why this is unlikely.

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I can go along with what luckyme said, I agree. My point wasn't to validate one idea over another as much to ask the question of how a less informed person can claim as fact or truth what well-respected, up-to-date, peer-reviewed scientists can't come to agreement on.

I really don't see anyone on the thread challenging the general idea of evolution, it's how it happened that's coming into question. And I feel until a definitive answer is reached, from a philosophical perspective, even intelligent design can't be completely dismissed. Although science can, philosophy can't.

And as far as traps to fall into, I think that goes both ways. Personally, I believe science will eventually be able to answer the questions being asked about evolution, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the answer will be scientific. I think this is the issue Skidoo is trying to bring up, "how do we know with certainty that science can answer every question posed to it?" The answer is we don't.

Now someone like hellbender would say that science makes no such assertions or claims to be able to answer questions of a non-naturalistic nature, but that's really a half-truth. While science doesn't make the claim, scientists do all the time. I was watching a lecture by Stephen Hawking the other day, and he concluded it by saying that he believed we would be able to unify GR and QT resulting in our ability to give a scientific, non-supernatural explanation in regards to the origin of the universe. To me, as he stated, it's a "belief," not fact, and I'm sure he chose his words well. Something several of the more prominent neo-Darwinist's aren't as prone to do.

So when someone makes the claim that science can find an answer, what we're really talking about is a particular person's belief, not science, and I feel it's open to the scrutiny of any belief.

Personally, I feel science and the scientific method has proven itself nearly beyond all doubt. But philosophy demands we don't claim certainty from inductive reasoning. I'm sure all scientists would agree with that on principle, but oftentimes whether through the tone of their presentation or the intolerance of seemingly bizarre theories, it doesn't come across that way.

As I understand it Intelligent Design is not scientific and should be rejected by science. But it should be rejected solely as not being scientific as the way science is defined, not as being untrue or impossible. Science can't make the latter claim and still remain science.