Darwin Day Essay II: Intelligent Deception

Yesterday's Darwin Day Essay discussed what evolution is all about. Today I want to revisit the foolishness of those who "oppose" the teaching of evolution, the "Intelligent Deception" lobby.

I originally wrote this as I was reading a biography of Darwin and came to the part where the publication of Origin of the Species has produced a huge religion vs. science debate at an Oxford scientific conference. I am struck by how far we came since then only to see reactionary forces pulling us back towards willful ignorance. From the very beginning, right after the publication of Wallace and Darwin’s twin papers and the publication of Origin of the Species soon after, the evidence for evolution has been carefully put together by excellent scientists providing a clear argument, while those opposed have used spurious evidence, misrepresentation of evidence and reliance on the argument that because evolution threatens their faith, it must be wrong. Since those initial publications, the argument for evolution has merely strengthened with the discovery of DNA and an understanding of mutagenesis, the discovery of many “intermediate species�? as fossils and “precursor organs�? to complex organs like the eye in living organisms. Today, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, though exact details of how it works are still being worked out.

One of the most ironic things about the religion vs. science debate is that many scientists I know are deeply religious whereas many who push for relgion against science know very little about science. I know active researchers who are practicing and believing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists as well as non-believers, agnostics, atheists and people who don't care about religion at all. One friend takes breaks each day to pray to Mecca. Another friend would break off a discussion to daven at the proper times. In short, many scientists see no conflict between science and their beliefs. I suspect those religious reactionaries who DO see such a conflict are less comfortable in their belief than the scientists who are also religious.

This biography of Darwin was already pissing me off, because so many of the issues that SHOULD have been resolved decades ago are still being debated by people who fear science and who feel that reality should conform to their personal belief structure. This anger was, in a humorous way, spurred further by a sarcastic letter in Nature I read recently:

Nature 438, 422 (24 November 2005)

Is the ID debate proof of an intelligent deceiver?

Richard Palmer1

1. Systematics and Evolution Group, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada

Sir;

In the ongoing debate over whether intelligent design (ID) should be taught as a legitimate alternative to evolution in schools ("Expert witness: the scientists who testified against intelligent design" Nature 438, 11; 2005), I suggest that ID could be presented as an alternative so long as it is always accompanied by a third option: intelligent deception.

This hypothesis proposes that the ID movement is motivated by an 'intelligent deceiver'. Individuals who understand how to debate alternative scientific hypotheses would never intentionally promote religious dogma as science. So an intelligent deceiver must be at work, guiding proponents of ID to sow confusion over valid scientific debate.

To exclude intelligent deception from debates over ID versus evolution could be considered hypocritical on both legal and moral grounds. And if proponents of ID reject the hypothesis of intelligent deception, their objections would be most interesting to hear, particularly the ones that dismiss the deceiver without imperilling the designer.

I think Palmer is right. There are those whose fear of doubt and debate is so great that they WILL do their best to mischaracterize both their own opinion, pretending that their faith is scientific, and the opinion of their opponents to try and sway popular opinion. It seems that Intelligent Design proponents argue things that fit NEITHER the evolutionary nor the biblical model. Now those who say evolution is true but put a deity at its origin are one thing. They are taking a reasonable path. But those who push Intelligent Design into our schools are doing something else. They are taking points of faith and trying to teach them as science. Evolution shows that RANDOM mutations lead to variety within a species, and environmental influences and sexual preferences put selective pressures on a species such that some variants are favored, some are neutrally selected, and some are selected against. Isolation of a population can then lead to different selective pressures on different populations within a species leading to divergence into two species. This basic outline is supported by 140+ years of solid evidence from careful scientific study. Creationism and its bastard child intelligent design do not have such a pedigree.

Science is a very specific process of hypothesis, testing and revision of hypothesis. When a hypothesis is tested, that test has to be able to solidly DISPROVE the hypothesis. Otherwise it is not a valid scientific test. A hypothesis is something you do your best to disprove. If your careful testing is unable to disprove the hypothesis, then that hypothesis is supported by your test. As years go by and many scientists submit a given hypothesis to successive rounds of testing in an attempt to disprove it, the hypothesis gets refined and further supported until it has such robust support from so many tests that we call it a "theory." A theory is not something that is proven. Nothing in science can ever be definitively proven. A theory can merely be so thoroughly supported that further hypotheses can be built upon it with confidence and very accurate predictions can be made from it. Often years later new information comes up that requires further refining of the theory, but the basics remain intact.

Einsteinian physics did not disprove Newtonian physics per se. What it did was radically refine it in such a way that Newtonian physics is still usable for most day-to-day purposes, but Einsteinian refinement is necessary under extreme conditions.

Evolution is no less robust a theory than Einstein's theories. Both have been subject to many tests and retests and refined over the years. Both are so well supported that although we can expect further refinements, we can also accept them as basically facts from which we can construct confident views of our world and build new theories that can hopefully give us even deeper understandings of the universe.

Intelligent Design, like Creationism before it, is not a scientific theory. Both ID and Creationism start with a desired conclusion and attempt to mold existing evidence around that conclusion. Any scientist who did that would fail out of grad school. For this reason alone, ID and Creationism do not belong in a science class except as examples of what is NOT science. When you start from a desired conclusion and try to mold evidence to fit that conclusion, you are not engaging in science. You are merely trying to bolster up a belief without seriously questioning it. A true attempt to combine belief and fact starts with the fact and tunes the belief to the fact, not visa versa. Proponents of teaching ID and Creationism as "alternative theories" to evolution are trying to bend facts to fit belief. They are being intellectually dishonest. The leaders of this movement are, in fact, intelligent deceivers because they are trying to play on people's beliefs to gain followers to push their particular agenda. ID is even more dishonest than Creationism because Creationism is at least true to its belief. ID is a bastardization that attempts to wedge just enough creationism into evolution classes that a door can be opened for teaching Creationism in its full form.

I am biased in this debate. I am a scientist and I am, most of the time, agnostic. But I also am Jewish and I also respect people who have faith. Judaism is a religion where doubt and questioning and arguing are not only accepted, but encouraged. This is best illustrated in the format of the Talmud, the collected commentaries of Rabbis on the Torah (first 5 books of the Old Testament). Each page of the Talmud has at its center a single passage from the Torah. Surrounding this passage in a kind of spiral are commentaries, often contradictory, from several famous Rabbis. No resolution is reached between contradictory commentaries. Rather, the contradictions and the controversy they imply are an integral part of the study and thought of religious Jews. Although orthodox Jews are as dogmatic as any orthodox religious group, they are also welcoming of debate and doubt. So even what religious background I have is going to be open to scientific debate and doubt thrown on religious texts. Few Jews would ever suggest taking the bible literally. That is a Christian invention as far as I am aware. Jews would consider it detracting from the beautiful complexity of the bible to suggest that its word is literal rather than a mixture of history, myth, morality play and allegory.

But our society is currently dominated by those whose belief is so weak that they consider ANY doubt, ANY questioning of the literal word of the bible (which bible? Which part of the bible? In which language?) so threatening that they will break laws and smear reputations just to stop people from even mentioning those doubts and questions. This is nothing new. Scientific progress has always threatened those whose belief is so weak that when facts threaten their beliefs they have to take the side of beliefs. When someone insists on belief over fact how is that different than psychosis?

The Creationism/ID/Evolution "debate" is not a scientific debate. The scientific debate was over long ago, settled in favor of evolution, and has moved on to bigger and better things like determining whether evolution has been continuous or punctuated, whether the evolution of the universe is best described by a point-particle or a string theory, etc. To paraphrase a comment from a Daily Kos reader, the literal interpretation of the bible on which Creationism is based has been long ago disproved by extremely clear data that shows that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, rather than the some 10,000 years old that a literal interpretation of Genesis would require. The age of the universe has been shown, but other means, to be even older. The physics used to determine these ages is the same physics that was used to create the atom bomb, airplanes, TV, computers and rocket ships. If our estimates of the age of the universe, predicted by modern physics, are wrong, then it would be impossible for us to have atom bombs or the computers we are using now. Fossil evidence is one strong source of evidence for evolution. We can indeed follow the evolution of species through the fossil record, though with gaps here and there. Evolution has been observed on a small scale using fast reproducing organisms like bacteria or fish that get isolated in separate lakes as a region becomes more arid. Finally, studying the DNA of living organisms gives us good clues to evolution and strongly bolsters the data from fossils and direct observation. The DNA evidence for evolutionary relationships among species uses the same techniques and makes the same basic assumptions as DNA fingerprinting--the closer the relationship between two DNA samples (usually in comparison with a third sample) the more of a match will be observed. DNA fingerprinting in criminology and paternity cases compares DNA from two individuals. Mapping human migrations compares the DNA of two human populations, usually in reference to a third population. Evolutionary relationships are determined by comparing the DNA of two species to a more distant out species. In essence the three techniques are based on the observation that DNA fingerprints more closely match the more related two samples are. To deny the evidence is valid in the evolutionary argument calls into question the validity of DNA fingerprinting. Yet many who oppose evolution based on “faith�? are perfectly happy to put someone to death based on “DNA evidence,�? not realizing the contradiction between these two views.

The scientific debate is over and evolution is as accepted a scientific theory as any theory in scientific history. But our society has backtracked and is now having a renewed debate NOT about science, but about the role of science in society. The debate is not about evolution, which is scientific fact as much as anything is, but is about how society values religion versus science and whether society should favor fact over belief when deciding what to teach in schools.

This debate should not be happening in America. America was founded by students of the Enlightenment, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The very people who wrote our Constitution—the basis for our government—were students of science and often engaged in scientific experimentation. They were not religious fundamentalists, by and large, and in fact wanted to avoid the religious dogmas that dominated Europe. Our Founding Fathers had many flaws (racism and sexism, to name but two), but they very clearly saw that religion was a matter of PERSONAL belief and the less that society and religion mixed the better off both would be. Science was seen as a SOCIETAL matter, which the government should encourage in every possible way. Thomas Jefferson funded the Louis and Clark expedition specifically as a scientific endeavor as well as an exploration of new territory. Our Founding Fathers would be horrified by the attempts by the Bush administration to act as the intelligent deceiver, putting belief over fact.

But the Bush Administration and large segments of the Republican Party are indeed playing the intelligent deceiver, deceiving America to get their way. Evolution isn't even their main front, but it is a way in which they can rally people against science. Republicans wrap themselves in Christianity and declare Crusades. In the process they subjugate fact to belief. They suppress scientific evidence showing that global warming is upon us here and now in their belief that what is good for big oil companies is good for America. They suppress evidence that world fisheries are declining in their belief that deregulation of fisheries is a good thing. They suppress evidence for the harmful effects of mercury and arsenic on children in their belief that deregulation of environmental standards is a good thing. They suppress facts about the Iraq War in their belief that it is a Crusade that will make America strong.

Anytime someone puts belief over fact they are someday going to get hit hard in the face by the facts that they ignored. Global warming will hurt America (probably already is!). When fisheries die out, entire industries fail as was seen on the California coast when the sardine (?) canneries collapsed when the fish populations evaporated. America is probably already facing the consequences of industrial poisons in our environment with cancer rates going up and male fertility declining. And, the Iraq war is dragging down America's economy, International reputation and our soldiers who we are sending over there to fight for Bush's beliefs.

America CANNOT be guided by belief over fact. That is not how America was founded. It is a violation of the secular, rational plan that the Founding Fathers had when they wrote the Constitution. It is impractical and intellectually dishonest to, as the Bush administration and the Republican Party have been doing, try and deceive the entire world to push an agenda of faith, whether that faith is in neocon ideology or Christian fundamentalism. Our nation, built to be a place where all religions and beliefs are allowed, was never intended to favor ANY belief over common sense facts.

I call upon Americans to reject the reactionary anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party for a revival of science, common sense and an emphasis on facts. For those who are interested in more on these issues, the Union of Concerned Scientists addresses all of these issues, from evolution to environment to energy issues. The National Center for Science Education and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State focuses on keeping America the secular, rationalist nation that the Founding Fathers intended it to be. Please join in the fight against the Intelligent Deceivers.

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