13 May 2005

Evolution, ID, and relevant comparisons

A blog site called RedStateRabble, displays a poster, critical of Intelligent Design. The poster is divided into two columns. In the column labelled INTELLIGENT DESIGN we find nothing. But in the column labelled SCIENCE we find:

*Absolute Zero -- William Thomson Kelvin
*Anesthetic -- Crawford Long
*Anthrax vaccine -- Louis Pasteur
*Atomic theory -- John Dalton
*Australopithecus -- Raymond Dart
*Bacteria -- Anton van Leeuwenhoek
*Benzine wing -- Friedrich Kekule
*Beta Rays -- Ernest Rutherford
*Big bang -- Ralph Alpher; George Gamow
*Blood groups -- Karl Landsteiner
*Continental drift -- Alfred Wegener
*Cosmic Radiation -- Victor Hess
*Dinosaur fossil (first) -- Mary Ann Mantell
*DNA doulbe helix -- Francis Crick; James Watson
*Doppler effect -- Christian Doppler
*Earth magnetic pole -- Gerardus Mercator
*Eclipse Prediction -- Thales of Miletus
*Electromagnetic Induction -- Michael Faraday
*Electron -- J.J. Thomson
Evolution -- Charles Darwin
*Fallopian tubes -- Gabriello Fallopius
*Geometry -- Euclid
*Germ theory -- Louis Pasteur
*Gravity laws -- Isaac Newton
*Homo erectus -- Marie Dubois
*Hormones -- Willian Bayliss; ernest Startling
*Hubble's law -- Edwin Hubble
*Insulin isolation -- Frederick Banting; Charles Best
*Irrational numbers -- Hipparcos
*Jupiter's satellites -- Galileo
*Krypton -- William Ramsay; Morris Travers
*Light polarization -- Christiaan Huygens
*"Lucy" hominid -- Donald Johanson
*Mendel's law -- Gregor Mendel
*Motion laws -- Isaac Newton
Natural selection -- Charles Darwin
*Neptune -- Johann Galle
*Nerve impulses -- Luigi Galvani
*Neutron -- James Chadwick
*Nitrogen -- Daniel Rutherford
*Nuclear atom concept -- Enest Rutherford
*Nuclear fission -- Otto Hahn; Fritz Strassman
*Ohm's law -- Georg Ohm
*Oxygen -- Joseph Priestly
*Ozone layer -- Charles Fabry
*Penicillin -- Alexander Fleming
*Periodic table of elements -- Dmitri Mendeleyev
*Planets orbiting sun -- Copernicus
*Polio vaccine -- Jonas Salk
*Proton -- Ernest Rutherford
*Quantum electrodynamics -- Richard Feynman
*Quark -- Murray Gell Mann?; George Zweig?
*Quasar -- Maaden Schmidt
*Rabies vaccine -- Louis Pasteur
*Radio waves -- Heinrich Hertz
*Relativity -- Albert Einstein
*Saturn's satellites -- Christiaan Huygens
*Smallpox innoculation -- Edward Jenner
*Sunspots -- Galileo; Christoph Scheiner
*Superconductivity -- Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
*Transformer -- Michael Faraday
*Tuberculosis -- Albert Calmette Camille Guérin
*Uranus -- William Herschel
*Virus (first identified) -- Martinus Beijerink?
*Vitamim C -- Charles Glen King?; Albert Szent Gyorg?
*Wave mechanics -- Enwin Schrödinger
*X-rays -- Wilhelm Röentgen

Because the issue, with respect to Intelligent Design, is (arguably!) limited to origins, I have placed an asterisk (*) beside those discoveries which are irrelevant to the question. I mean, really, Lord Kelvin would surely have discovered absolute zero if the universe, and all the life within it, had been created, instead of having evolved. The same goes for atomic theory: God created matter; this cannot in any way invalidate the claim that the things we see are comprised of smaller things that we cannot see. Surely Michael Faraday's development of the transformer would have happened on creationist presuppositions. Relativity certainly does not depend upon evolution for its truth. Neither does superconductivity! (Give me a close, personal break.)

To assert that "intelligent design" has made no discoveries, while "science" has is to obfuscate the issue. If "intelligent design" is a hypothesis, or even a theory, about origins (and it really isn't, in its entirety), then it ought to be compared not with every other theory in the entire domain of scientific endeavor, but rather only with another hypothesis or theory about origins. So the thing to do would be to compare the discoveries of "evolution" with those of "intelligent design".

In my first philosophy class I learned that comparisons must be between relevantly similar points. Lumping every other so-called discovery with evolution, calling that lumping-together "science" and then comparing that lumping-together with a hypothesis or theory competing with evolution--and only with evolution, we should point out--is to engage in persuasive definition. After all, given that creationists and ID adherents have a problem with one and only one scientific theory, it is illegitimate to create the impression that they are anti-science.

One theory. You disagree with one theory. That makes you anti-science. Methinks they protest too much.

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James Frank Solís
Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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