First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
“Intelligent Design or Evolution”
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore November 13,
2005
Meditation (with
inspiration from Wendell Berry’s poetry)
Breath
Gently sucked into dark red lungs
Red blood cells snatching oxygen
And discarding carbon dioxide
Gently released out nose and mouth.
Staving off extinction for another minute.
How many have relinquished
Breath, in grief or rage,
The victor and the vanquished
Named and unnamed,
All
come to the same end
Famous or indifferently forgotten
A life work praised or undone.
The dust they stirred has hid.
Their faces and their works,
Has settled, and lies still.
Covered with layers of dirt
Becomes the rock of history
Awaiting
discovery.
Did an unseen hand guide that life?
Cause the die to roll one more time to make a seven?
Move the gamma ray just a little to the left
To
miss the cocked cancer gene?
Shift the wind so scented hair becomes irresistible?
And what of the ignoble ends?
The last wooly mammoth felled by stone tipped spears
Baby birds ejected from their nests by English sparrows
Cattails crowded out by Purple Loosestrife
Iraqi children shredded reaching for American candy
The T4 defender penetrated by HIV
Design or Accident?
Who can bear to make that decision?
Lub, dub, lub, dub
In one chamber, out the next
Over and over and over again
Relentless pulse, surging and resting
The rhythm of life, breath of life
Keep moving, keep moving.
Please.
I
had my mind made up on what to say about Intelligent Design until I spoke with
my father on Wednesday night.
You’ve
seen this controversy all over the news.
On one side this week the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to
settle a bitter dispute establishing new standards redefining science so
intelligent design could be taught.
The new standards say
high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also
declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and
that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been
challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
… the board rewrote the
definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for
natural explanations of phenomena.
(associated press)
On
the other side, eight incumbent Dover, Pennsylvania school board members were
swept from office for supporting “teaching the controversy” between intelligent
design and evolution. The election
threw up in the air the landmark federal trial between the school board and
eight families disputing the teaching of intelligent design as
unconstitutional. The school board had
adopted a policy a year ago that requires ninth-graders to hear a prepared
statement about intelligent design before learning about evolution in biology
class.
Dr Michael Behe, Professor of
biochemistry at Lehigh University is right in the middle of this
controversy. Earlier this month, he
spent two days on the witness stand defending his contrarian views supporting
intelligent design. The Dover trial
rivals the Scopes trial in possibly setting the next benchmark on how
evolutionary science will be taught.
Behe
is part of a think tank based in Seattle called the Discovery Institute, that is pushing the
theory of intelligent design. Dr. Behe
found his way to the center of this controversy by publishing a book in 1996
called Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. In the book he argues that the most
convincing evidence for design is not to be found in the stars or the fossils,
but in biochemical systems. Behe uses
examples such as vision, blood-clotting, and cellular transport to demonstrate
that life comprises an astonishing array of chemical machines, made up of
finely calibrated, interdependent parts that defy current naturalistic
explanations. The book fit perfectly
into the long standing resistance of fundamentalists to the teaching of evolution
and inspired them to take up another assault.
This
time, they’ve found some traction in the scientific community.
After
browsing through the pro and con arguments found in a number of rather
technical sources, I found myself pulled first to the pro arguments and then to
the con arguments. Remembering my
mistake of not adequately understanding both sides in my Global Warming sermon
last January, I thought I’d better call my dad, a retired physical chemistry
professor, to get his take on the controversy.
I was sure, his work in biochemistry would help me sort out Behe’s
arguments. Being a scientific humanist,
I knew he could help me get my anti intelligent design arguments sharpened so I
could eviscerate the theory effectively.
Imagine
my surprise when he rose to Dr. Behe’s defense. My father knows Behe personally, has visited with him and quizzed
him on his theories. Behe, he told me,
is no religious fanatic manipulating his science to fit his religious
beliefs. My father has great respect
for the caliber of his research and the power of his mind. So I decided I better have another look at
the theory of intelligent design.
Even
though conservative Christians have rallied to his side, Behe and the
intelligent design folks are not trying to defend Creationism at all. Behe was raised Catholic, learned about
evolution in school from Catholic nuns who explained it this way: If God wants to work through evolution, we
don’t have a problem with it. It wasn’t
until he was exposed to scientific critiques of evolution as a tenured
professor that his interest was stimulated in intelligent design.
Discovery
Institute fellows Stephen Meyer and Michael Newton Keas point out that
evolution and the theories of evolution are fundamentally different
things. They identify five of six
working definitions of evolution with which they find general agreement. The mechanism of mutation and natural
selection has overwhelming evidence and support. Philomena, Andy and I visited the Museum of Natural History in
Washington DC this past summer. We saw
display after display of animal, bird and fish skeletons. Seeing the similarities in bone structure
and coming to the conclusion they had a common ancestor seems intuitively
obvious. Analyzing similarities between
DNA sequences pretty much rests the case.
The
dispute in intelligent design isn’t with the reality of evolution. It is about the mechanism of evolution. Meyer and Keas dispute the sixth definition
of evolution called the “blind
watchmaker theory.”
The “Blind watchmaker” thesis: states that all organisms have
descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent,
purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random
variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random
variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms,
are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living
organisms…
As George Gaylord Simpson [asserted] in his classic 1967 book, The
Meaning of Evolution: “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural
process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned.”
I
guess that would make us God’s unplanned children. Good that God wasn’t using birth control.
Now
we are at the central concern being contested.
Behe questions whether the incredibly complicated processes that allow
our eyes to accept a photon and turn it into information for our brain, that
make our blood clot and permit the cilia in our lungs to move could have
happened only through random variations and mutations. Behe argues these biochemical processes
demonstrate irreducible complexity.
He proposes that they did not evolve randomly but through a process
guided by some intelligence.
It
is very important as we introduce this idea of intelligence that we understand
what the intelligent design folks mean when they use that
term. The DO NOT claim the source of
this intelligent design must be a “divine being” or a “higher
power” or an “all powerful force.” All
they are proposing is that they believe they can demonstrate intelligence
rather than unguided and random variations and mutations drove certain
evolutionary processes.
The
vast majority of the scientific community rejects this argument. They reject that it is even science at
all. In a lecture recently heard on
WAMC, well-known science professor and
writer Dr. Edward O. Wilson, described intelligent design as a default argument
followed by a non sequitur. He went on
to say that a default argument has a reserve conclusion, when a problem isn’t
solved or our understanding is incomplete.
The non sequitur is inserting a deus ex machina conclusion. Default arguments are not
science but, at best, a stimulus to do more science. He argued the default argument is a
dangerous entrée for religious conservatives.
Science is accelerating in its ability to answer these questions at an
amazing rate. He compared science’s
ability to destroy arguments for intelligent design to resembling blowing up
balloons in a carnival.
Some on the intelligent design side
have complained that their ideas are not getting a fair hearing. They aren’t getting funding for their
research; that there is a conspiracy to suppress their ideas. Wilson rejects this argument as without
merit. Young scientists like nothing
better than to overthrow the ideas of their elders. These triumphs are the gold and silver of a scientific career. Science is honed to be open to new ideas
driven by discovery. When the evidence is persuasive, science moves
forward. Default arguments followed by
non sequiturs devoid of positive evidence just do not persuade them.
But,
still, the broad scientific community could be wrong when they reject a
theory. I personally am still rooting
for a breakthrough in cold fusion, another discredited theory.
Because
we do have legitimate scientists with published research arguing for
intelligent design, there is controversy.
The argument brought to school boards is, “teach the controversy.”
I
want to get to the religious question here.
Is there an underlying faith statement hidden in the presentation of
evolution? With a scientifically based,
alternative theory of evolution open to intelligent design, can science claim
to be completely free of faith in its arguments?
Many
biology texts make assertions like, “evolution works without plan or purpose.
(Miller and Levine)” Or “the living world is constantly evolving without any
goals . . . evolutionary change is not directed. (Purvis, Orians and Heller)”
And, most devastatingly put: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to
the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or
spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.(Futuyma).”
These
explanations of evolution have much larger metaphysical implications. The blind watchmaker thesis replaces God
with an unintelligent substitute. This
really gets to the core of the dispute.
Meyer and Keas argue, if this neo-Darwinism is true then:
For
both these reasons, the blind watchmaker theory of evolution taught in public schools
is not religiously or metaphysically neutral.
It takes the side of materialistic origin theories that violate deeply
held beliefs of some theistic students.
I
hope you are getting a better sense of the arguments here that allows you to
take this controversy more seriously.
The evidence for irreducible complexity solvable only by intelligent
design that Behe presents is way beyond the scope of my high school biology
training. The arguments and counter
arguments are fascinating. Behe reasons
looking at these biochemical processes is like looking at a mousetrap. None of us would have any doubt that a
mousetrap showed evidence of intelligent design. It wouldn’t work without individual parts arranged in a unique
way to catch a mouse. But what about a
Venus Fly Trap? Isn’t it arranged in a
similarly complex way to catch a fly?
The Venus Fly Trap shows clear evidence of evolving to accomplish its
purpose.
What
frustrates me about these arguments is they don’t deal with what I think is the
best argument against the blind watchmaker theory. The latest research I found is beginning to
show that information as well as DNA can be passed from a parent cell to a
daughter cell. More than just DNA is
transferred in the process of replication.
Proteins that have been switched on or off are also transferred to the
daughter cell. With this information
exchange, a daughter cell can learn something from its parent.
Survival
of the fittest of any species favors intelligence. Randomly driven or not, increase in brain size suggests the
mechanisms of evolution select for the development of intelligence. I wonder if the reason evolution seems to
favor the development of intelligence is because intelligence operates from the
microscopic level all the way up to the macroscopic level. No one can doubt that intelligence equips us
better for survival than ignorance.
That may also be true at the level of molecular biology.
Focusing
on intelligence still leaves open the question of design. Evidence of intelligence does not
necessarily mean some entity wanted to design it that way. It could be that intelligence is a
fundamental property of existence along with matter and energy. There are other directions to go with
intelligent design besides Divine Plan.
As
we talked about this, my father pointed out that I couldn’t prove my ideas any
better than Dr. Behe could prove his.
All of us have some foundation of faith on which our beliefs rest. Scientific truth is just one area of human
knowledge bounded by what we can know by repeatable experimentation. The blind watchmaker theory of evolution may
sit outside the area of repeatable experimentation … for now. I personally don’t mind exposing our students
to this controversy as long as they also understand the preponderance of
evidence on each side.
We
all love controversy. I’m sure Darwin
didn’t have very answer to understanding the evolutionary process. If exposing students to this controversy
helps stimulate interest and learning, all the better. The question of intelligence in the process
of evolution is worthy of a science class.
But any exploration into the non sequitur design proposition belongs in
philosophy and literature classes. The division
preserves the separation of church and state without stifling the pursuit of
knowledge and learning.
Whether design or accident, I’m deeply grateful to wake
up every day in the middle of what has evolved on this planet and be a part of
it all. I hope you are too.
Benediction
I
found this computer generated poem on the Internet:
So
is it not with me as with that Muse
Stirr’d
by a painted beauty to his verse
Who
heaven itself for ornament doth use
And
every fair with his fair doth rehearse
Could there be some unseen hand in its construction?
Or could there be intelligent design in its selection by the reader who
remarked:
Oh my god, the thousand monkeys made a remarkable breakthrough!
Mystery, mystery, life is a riddle and a mystery.
I’m glad we were able to share the mystery of life’s complexity together
Intelligently
this morning.
Copyright
© 2005 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All
rights reserved.