Oct 04 2009
Biological Evolution or Diabolic Design?
A strong theory will allow a person to make testable predictions. It also has strong explanatory power.
For example, equipped with evolutionary theory, you might predict that exposed to the environmental pressure of, say, a terrain increasingly replete with sharp stones, species with padded paws (canines, felines) would develop tougher pads over the course of many generations. You could also explain how the tougher pads would come to be. Namely, genetic variation among offspring (thanks to the reproductive dance of DNA) and differing rates of survival and reproduction among offspring (natural selection), etc.
Equipped with the . . . theory(?) . . . of Intelligent Design, on the other hand, you can predict . . . what? Besides being able to bogusly explain everything with an overt or implied “Gawd done it,” what can you really explain?
Another example could be drawn from recent research into prion disease:
Evolutionary Origins Of Prion Disease Gene Uncovered
A University of Toronto-led team has uncovered the evolutionary ancestry of the prion gene, which may reveal new understandings of how the prion protein causes diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as “mad cow disease.”
Equipped with the Intelligent Design hypothesis (calling a spade a spade) what are we to make of mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease? How are we to explain the existence of transmissible diseases caused by misfolded proteins triggering other proteins to misfold, resulting in degeneration and a truly horrible death? That the Intelligent Designer has a mean streak?
Meanwhile, genes, genetics and the biological sciences go together so well, so effectively, that you almost have to wonder if believers in ID have contracted a mis-folded idea that has resulting in another type of brain degeneration.
It seems to me that science is ultimately utilitarian. If casting stones or dowsing where reliable tools for acquiring information and working in the world, science would not reject them. The same goes for religious concepts and practices. The bias is not a priori, built into the scientific method itself. You might say it has been been acquired through intellectual selection. What works is embraced and persists. What doesn’t gets rejected.
That science progressively abandons religion is not a reflection of scientific prejudice but of the real-world value of religion. [Put one and one together here.]
