Evolutionary Biology

Lecture 5: Critique of ‘Intelligent Design’

Here are several Important theories:
Atomic Theory of Matter
Germ Theory of Disease
Theory of Gravitation
Big Bang Theory of the Universe
Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

Which of these cause public controversy?

Why? Write for 2 minutes.
the BIG picture

Is creationism (in whatever form)

scientific?
We live in a material universe  matter and energy

E = mc2

The goal of science is to understand and

explain the material universe.
There are several ways of knowing.
Help me list them…

1. Authority
2. Revelation
3. Logic
4. Science
 Science vs. Religion

Evolution vs. Creationism

Public Acceptance of
Evolution

10% decline in
US since 1985
“Evolution is the taproot which is feeding the oppressive, murderous, and
infidel directions we see gaining acceptance around us”
 Religiosity
• Mississippi (85) • Lebanon (86)*
• Alabama (82) • Iran (83)*
• South Carolina (80) • Zimbabwe (81)
• Tennessee (79) • India (79)
• Louisiana (78) • Iraq (79)*
• Arkansas (78) • Romania (78)
• Georgia (76) • Botswana (77)
• North Carolina (76) • Haiti (76)*
• Okalahoma (75) • Tajikistan (76)
• Kentucky (74) • Georgia (75)*
• Texas (74) • Cyprus (75)
Source: Gallup poll Feb 9, 2009, “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”
* = Current US State Department Travel Warnings
Are Mormons
Creationists?

Write for 3 minutes.

 Are Mormons Creationists?
• Does the LDS Church have a doctrine of
creation?
• Yes
Mormons are Creationists
•
in the same way that we are
Is the LDS doctrine of creation compatible
Born
with that AgainCreationist
of these Christians.
Groups?
• No
 Creationist Doctrine

• Ex nihilo creation
• Specifically rejected by Joseph Smith
• Biblical Literalism
• Literal Interpretation of Time Periods
• Biblical Exclusivity
• Excludes other revelatory sources.
• Excludes scientific investigation.
• Bible as a Comprehensive Source.
• At odds with other revealed scripture (Moses,
Abraham, etc.)
• At odds with D&C 101: 32-34.
 Creationist History
• 1910-1915 : A set of Christian tracts emerged in the US
which took a literalistic interpretation of Genesis (ex nihlo
creation).
• 1920-1968: Evolution banned from public schools
• 1963: Creation Research Society, Institute for Creation
Research
• 1970-1980: “Equal Time”
• 1978-1995 “Balanced treatment”
• 1996: “Evolution as theory”
• 2000: “Intelligent Design”
 PUBLIC ACTS
OF THE
STATE OF TENNESSEE
PASSED BY THE
SIXTY - FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
1925
________
CHAPTER NO. 27
House Bill No. 185
(By Mr. Butler)
AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and
all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public
school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.
Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be
unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the
State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach
any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to
teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act, Shall
be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $
(100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.
Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public
welfare requiring it.
Passed March 13, 1925
W. F. Barry,
Speaker of the House of Representatives
 Scopes “Monkey” Trial
• 1925 Dayton, Tennessee
• “Trial of the Century”
• John Scopes: Football coach
• William Jennings Bryan:
Prosecuting Attorney
• Clarence Darrow: Defense
Attorney
• H. L. Mencken: Reporter
• First Radio Broadcast of a Trial
• Science vs. Fundamentalist
Christianity
 Is Creationism Scientific?
• Descriptive ability?
• All observations are attributable to the “will of God”
• Predictive ability?
• What specific phenomena/observations does
creationism predict?
• Refutability?
• What evidence or observations would be sufficient
for you to reject the “hypothesis” of creationism?
• Productivity
• What new theories or disciplines has creation
research given rise to?
 Is Evolution Scientific?
• Descriptive ability?
• Describes a whole range of data including geologic, biogeographic,
embryological, ecological, genetic, behavioral, and comparative
biological data.
• Predictive ability?
• Genetics and Genomics
• Epidemiology
• Refutability?
• Young earth
• Lack of succession in geological record
• Absence of mutation
• Traits are not heritable
• Lack of competition in the biological world
• Lack of concordance among phylogenetic markers
• Lack of variation in populations
• Lack of hierarchical structure of similarity among organisms
• Productivity?
• A whole bunch!
 Achievements within the Field
• Established that all organisms share a common ancestry
• Developed methods for inferring phylogenetic relationships among
organisms
• Documented the tempo and mode of evolution
• Described patterns of diversification and extinction in the fossil record
• Devised a quantitative theory of fundamental evolutionary processes
• Established that populations are highly genetically variable
• Directly observed and studied the process of evolution
• Clarified the mechanism by which new species arise
• Documented many different forms of natural selection
• Elucidated processes of coevolution of interacting species
• Progress in understanding mechanisms, rates, and causes of evolution at
the molecular level
• Achieved greater understanding of the developmental basis of the
evolution of complex characters
• Elucidated many aspects of human evolution
Imagine you are hired as a ‘hit man’ and your job is
to destroy evolutionary thinking in society.

What would be your strategy?

 The Three Pillars of Creationism

• Scientific
disagreement among scientists

• Religious
common ancestry
natural selection

• Educational
fairness in teaching all sides
What exactly is ‘intelligent
design’?
Today’s Topic: Intelligent Design 101

“Once again, the devil took him to a very high

mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms
of the world in their glory.” – Matthew 4:8

Special Creation “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it
never can be shaken.” Psalms 104:5
Flat Earth
Geocentrists
Young Earth
Young Earth Creationists

Gap Creationists
Day Age Creationists
Old Earth
Progressive Creationists
Intelligent Design ◄
Theistic Evolution
Agnostic Evolutionism
Materialist Evolution
From Eugenie Scott Evolution
National Center for Science Education
“ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN” is an old one.

Some phenomena are too complex to be explained by

anything except by design.

Natural Theology

William Paley Watch maker example

Natural Theology: or, Evidences of
the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity, Collected from the
Appearances of Nature (1802)
Charles Darwin, writing in The Origin
of the Species said, "If it can be
demonstrated that any complex organ
existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous
successive, slight modifications, my
theory would absolutely break down.
But I can find no such case."
Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe William Dembski
Biochemist at Lehigh University Southern Seminary in Louisville

Wrote book called Darwin’s Black Box Wrote book called The Design
Revolution
The Discovery Institute
http://www.discovery.org/

Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

Name
change

Center for Science and Culture

They claim to be championing a new

scientific theory and that the ‘purpose’
is only to advance science
Leaked Wedge Document: "defeat [scientific] materialism"
represented by evolution, "reverse the stifling materialist
world view and replace it with a science consonant with
Christian and theistic convictions"
 The Three Pillars of Creationism

• Scientific
disagreement among scientists

• Religious
common ancestry
natural selection

• Educational
fairness in teaching all sides
Argument:

God’s is perfect therefore his creations must be

perfect.
Argument:

Natural selection cannot explain the diversity of

life on earth. Natural selection is wasteful
process. Many individuals fail to survive or
reproduce.
This is not consistent with a benevolent God.
Argument:

Many biological systems (and other natural

systems) are too complex to be explained by
natural processes.

Examples: the eye, the bacterial flagellum,

chemical pathways, etc.
Several taxa: flatworms
shrimps, crabs
abalone

octopus
 What danger
exists in a ‘God
of the Gaps’
argument?

Gene cooption in the crystalline proteins of animal eyes.

Evolution by natural selection often uses already developed parts.
Argument:

Evolutionary biology is experiencing a scientific

crisis. There is disagreement in the ranks of
scientists about the validity of natural selection,
the process of evolution, etc.

Example: gradual evolution versus punctuated

equilibrium.
Argument:

Because organisms progress from simpler to

more complex forms, evolution violates the 2nd
Law of Thermodynamics.

Law: Natural processes move toward a greater

state of disorder.
Argument:

The odds of life evolving are too remote to have

occurred by chance.

Dembski’s probability argument.

Argument:

Evolution is only a theory. Intelligent design is a

competing theory. Both ought to be taught. This
is only fair.
President Bush on ‘Intelligent Design’
August 2nd 2005

Both sides ought to be properly taught. .

. so people can understand what the
debate is about," he said, according to
an official transcript of the session.
Bush added: "Part of education is to
expose people to different schools of
thought. . . . You're asking me whether
or not people ought to be exposed to
different ideas, and the answer is yes."
 2004 Dover Trial

• Dover, Pennsylvania
• Days of testimony with Behe, Dempski and other
ID’ers
• Testimony by scientists
• The judge ruled (a Bush appointee) that ID was
simply repackaged creationism; “Breathtaking
Inanity”
• Not science.
• The Missing Link: "cdesign proponentsists"
Evolution of Intelligent Design
(with transitional forms)
creationists
creationists
cdesign proponentsists
cdesign proponenentsists
design proponents
Which Creationism
should be taught?
 Creation Stories
 God arose from the depths of the ocean, created dry land, and
then created all creatures on the hill in Heliopolis at the center of
the Universe (Egypt)
 God made sky and earth by splitting the powers of evil in half,
and then produced humans for purposes of worship
(Mesopotamia)
 God created the world in four distinct periods, each separated
by a flood (Yucatan)
 God created the earth and its creatures from mud gathered in
the webbed feet of ducks who swam on a primeval ocean
(American Crow Indians)
 Creation Stories
 God, a female, divided the sky from the sea, and produced a
serpent with whom she copulated. She then laid a giant egg out of
which came the earth, its creatures, and all the heavenly bodies, as
well as the subsidiary powers to rule these various entities (Greece)
 God created himself from a golden egg, and from the various parts
of his body everything was born. After a time life is destroyed, and
everything begins again (India).
 God was a woman who produced twins – the sun and the moon.
During the various eclipses, the twins came together to create the
various gods and spirit of earth and sky that rule over humans
(Benin, Africa)
 Creation Stories
 The universe was originally created in the shape of a
hen’s egg, out of which God emerged and chiseled
its main physical features. After 18,000 years God
died and the remainder of the world was derived from
his body; the dome of the sky from his skull, rocks
from his bones, soil from his flesh, rain from his
sweat, plant life from his hair, and humans from his
fleas (China)
Class Exercise:
With your neighbor discuss and write one exam
question related to any of the three class learning
objectives. Pass to Scott.

1. Describe the development of evolutionary thought.

2. Describe the nature of the emerging debate on ID, and explain
why religious and scientific views need not be mutually exclusive.
3. List and describe evidence for evolution and its required
corollaries.
 Take Home Points
 Creationism is not science
 Intelligent Design is creationism
 Creation is part of LDS Theology, but we are not
creationists
 Let’s move on.
 Creation Creed

“Since nothing in the world has been created since the

end of the creation period, everything must then have
been created by means of processes which are no longer
in operation and which we therefore cannot study by any
of the means of science. We are limited exclusively to
divine revelation as to the date of creation, the duration of
creation, the method of creation, and every other question
concerning creation.”
Henry Morris (Creation Research Institute)