ID claims don't hold up
Dr. John Wise and Dr. Pia Vogel, Contributing Writers
Issue date: 4/26/07 Section: Opinion
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ID is the idea that the origin of living things requires the intervention of an outside intelligence.
Jonathon Wells, a Discovery Institute fellow, Philipp Johnson and other ID and creationism proponents have asserted that there is no evidence of transitional intermediates between species in the fossil record and have inferred from this that a creator must have intervened. Their assertion is blatantly and unequivocally false. It's rock for goodness' sake. It's hard to ignore tons of rock with whale-like tetrapods, tetrapod-like whales, reptile-like birds, bird-like reptiles, fish with arm bones, and the many other transitional forms found in them over and over again without losing credibility.
Let's name just a few. The terrestrial tetrapod to modern whale transitional series includes Synonyx, Pakecetus, Ambulocetus, Remingtonocetus, Rhodocetus, Basilosaurus, Durodon and Mysticetus before arriving at the modern toothed whales, Odontoceti. The dinosaur-to-bird series includes Troodontidae, Archeopteryx, Confusiusornis, Enantiornithes, Ichthyornis, and Hesperornis before arriving at Aves, the modern birds. There are many more examples of transitional intermediates.
Our favorites are the fish-to-amphibian-tetrapod transitions. These were particularly embarrassing for Philipp Johnson, who used the absence of the then-not-yet-discovered intermediates between fish and amphibians as evidence that no such intermediates ever existed. This led him to write that a creator was responsible. Unfortunately for Philipp Johnson, several such intermediates have since been found. The absence of evidence, it should be pointed out, is never evidence for anything. Dinosaurs with feathers. Birds with teeth. Fish with fingers. This real scientific evidence is tangible. It is as hard as stone. One cannot credibly deny its existence. ID fails on this claim.
What about Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity"? This is the cornerstone, the poster-child of ID. The repeated failures of the claimed "irreducible complexity of biochemical systems" have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature again and again, but we'd be happy to reiterate.
Jonathon Wells, a Discovery Institute fellow, Philipp Johnson and other ID and creationism proponents have asserted that there is no evidence of transitional intermediates between species in the fossil record and have inferred from this that a creator must have intervened. Their assertion is blatantly and unequivocally false. It's rock for goodness' sake. It's hard to ignore tons of rock with whale-like tetrapods, tetrapod-like whales, reptile-like birds, bird-like reptiles, fish with arm bones, and the many other transitional forms found in them over and over again without losing credibility.
Let's name just a few. The terrestrial tetrapod to modern whale transitional series includes Synonyx, Pakecetus, Ambulocetus, Remingtonocetus, Rhodocetus, Basilosaurus, Durodon and Mysticetus before arriving at the modern toothed whales, Odontoceti. The dinosaur-to-bird series includes Troodontidae, Archeopteryx, Confusiusornis, Enantiornithes, Ichthyornis, and Hesperornis before arriving at Aves, the modern birds. There are many more examples of transitional intermediates.
Our favorites are the fish-to-amphibian-tetrapod transitions. These were particularly embarrassing for Philipp Johnson, who used the absence of the then-not-yet-discovered intermediates between fish and amphibians as evidence that no such intermediates ever existed. This led him to write that a creator was responsible. Unfortunately for Philipp Johnson, several such intermediates have since been found. The absence of evidence, it should be pointed out, is never evidence for anything. Dinosaurs with feathers. Birds with teeth. Fish with fingers. This real scientific evidence is tangible. It is as hard as stone. One cannot credibly deny its existence. ID fails on this claim.
What about Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity"? This is the cornerstone, the poster-child of ID. The repeated failures of the claimed "irreducible complexity of biochemical systems" have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature again and again, but we'd be happy to reiterate.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 10
Reed Hanson
posted 4/26/07 @ 1:04 AM CST
Thank you to Dr Wise and Dr Vogel for their interesting article on ID and Darwinian theory...
However, I must ask a few questions:
First, if the flagellum can still function with only 10 of its 50 parts, this still does not disprove irreducible complexity. (Continued…)
Desertphile
posted 4/26/07 @ 3:06 PM CST
If "the origin of living things requires the intervention of an outside intelligence," then there is either no such thing as life or intelligence does not require life: two hypothesies that are so unlikely as to be considered absurd. (Continued…)
Graham Luks
posted 4/27/07 @ 6:32 PM CST
Boy, Reed Hanson sure took a drubbing. Does this mean SMU is a seething hotbed of evolutionists ?
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