Stephen Meyer, young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute macher, has published a pro-intelligent-design piece, “Jefferson’s Support for Intelligent Design,” in today’s Boston Globe. It’s largely an argument from authority, noting that Jefferson imputed the structure of the Universe to design:
“It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.’’
(I’d love to see that quote in context.) The authority argument is combined with the same tired old assertions about how natural selection could never have produced the “digital information” represented by the DNA code:
This discovery has made acute a longstanding scientific mystery that Darwin never addressed or solved: the mystery of how the very first life on earth arose. To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on earth. Yet modern scientists who argue for intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes have failed to explain the origin of the information in cells. Instead, they argue for design because systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes.
DNA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information – whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal – always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source.
Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority. Jefferson said just that, and based his political thinking on it. The evidence for what he presciently called “Nature’s God’’ is stronger than ever.
Is a 6,000-year-old Earth also an “inference from geological data”?
This God-of-the-gaps argument for DNA has been addressed by evolutionists many, many times. See, for example, Dawkins’s most recent books or Ken Miller’s Only a Theory.
It’s amazing, really, that a paper with the gravitas of the Globe would publish such a piece of tripe. First of all, the argument is wrong. Second, it’s not new. Surely someone at the Globe must recognize that the appearance of design does not demonstrate the occurrence of design. Then again, maybe not.
Note: I stand corrected–Stephen Meyer is not a young earth creationist. I was thinking of his Discovery Institute colleague Paul Nelson, whom I debated a while back. My apologies to Mr. Meyer for attributing to him a lunatic idea of his colleague.
A letter from Jefferson to Adams:
Dear Sir, — The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu! jusque à quand’! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Dæmonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a dæmon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knolege of the existance of a god! This gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D’Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existance of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existance of the world, as it is now going on, and may for ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it’s parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it’s composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it’s distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it’s course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis. Some early Christians indeed have believed in the coeternal pre-existence of both the Creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect. That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleto, in these words `Deus ab æterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum. Ab aeterno potuit producere mundum. — Si sol ab aeterno esset, lumen ab aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium. At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaeterna esse. Cujus sententiae est S. Thomas Theologorum primus’ Cardinal Toleta.
Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us that `God is a spirit.’ 4. John 24. but without defining what a spirit is . Down to the 3d. century we know that it was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our gross bodies. So says Origen. `Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’ These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says `appelatio apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita.’ So also Tertullian `quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in sua effigie.’ Tertullian. These two fathers were of the 3d. century. Calvin’s character of this supreme being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words:
[Original Greek]
Which truly translated means `in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made’. Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word . One of it’s legitimate meanings indeed is `a word.’ But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning `reason’, equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,’ the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.
So much for your quotation of Calvin’s `mon dieu! jusqu’a quand’ in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than reluctance. May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation `Well done, good and faithful servants.’
Only if you first rule out the possibility that evolution can do the same thing. Which is the only thing that the IDiots can do, since they’re not really looking for anything in life that design can do that evolution can’t. And why is that? Because they know that there is no such thing, or anyway, that no such thing can be demonstrated.
The fact of the matter is that life almost certainly would require information encoded much as it is in DNA, which means that all Meyer legitimately can infer from the DNA code is that life functions. Life and computers need encoded information, so that functioning life and computers will unquestionably operate from encoded information.
DNA’s is not the sort of code that humans would be particularly expected to produce, especially since it is so redundant for the information encoded by it. The redundancy is readily explained by evolution, not so easily by design (redundancy wouldn’t actually rule out design, however). Co-option of a stop codon to encode pyrrolysine appears to be exactly what evolution would do, while a designer would likely have come up with a more elegant solution (the particulars of pyrrolysine translation are complicated in the way evolution often comes up with a solution).
Of course the important issue of DNA, the fact that it is essentially what is predicted by evolution, a conservative (thus digital-like, not analog) information storage medium, which can yet change sufficiently to allow for evolution, is the issue that Meyer ignores. It just wasn’t convenient, not like begging the question of the origin of the DNA code by conflating it with design was convenient.
It’s as dishonest as the rest of ID, breaking no ground even in mendacity.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
They don’t seem to realize how they retroactively assign anthopomorphic pattern significance to prosaic phenomena. It’s all about tool-maker nostalgia. The arrogance is astounding.
And for the record, I can’t say that I have any real problem with such an op-ed appearing in a paper, not that Dr. Coyne implied otherwise. Had it appeared in either a science or politics section I’d cry foul, because it isn’t even intelligent as politics goes (my god, Jefferson didn’t anticipate the scientific theory of origins that came after his death?), let alone anything that touches properly upon science.
They should, though, allow an intelligent rebuttal on the op-ed page, as well as publishing the many intelligent rebuttals it will receive. Well-written, if stupid (what else?), letters in favor should be published as well, while the usual mindless cut-and-paste of creationist tripe should be kept to a minimum.
IOW, if they want to stimulate an intelligent discussion, they should follow through, letting every recycled “argument” from Stephen to be exposed as the mindrot that it is.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Let me restate one sentence:
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Playing the “authority” card is fun! Look:
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.”
(from the SAME letter.)
So Jefferson was one of the many “kinds” of creationist. Big deal. I would love to hear Meyer explain how that lends scientific credibility to ID.
At least they’re not pretending that ID isn’t religious any more.
They’re trying to claim that it is religious, and still science, based on their own anthropocentric confusions and Jefferson’s authority.
From a propaganda and (probably more importantly) fund-raising standpoint, it may be good enough. But it appears that they’ve pretty much given up trying to win in the courts, and so have given up the lie that ID isn’t religiously motivated.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Thomas Jefferson, a Deist who cut up the Bible to remove all the supernatural stuff, who coined the phrase “separation of church and state,” and who died in 1826, 33 years before Darwin published his book. I would almost feel sorry for the IDiots, if only they weren’t so dishonest.
Wait, how can you be citing favorably to Ken Miller’s book? I’ve been told over at The Intersection that you don’t think he should be allowed to speak on the subject! And nobody there would misrepresent your position on anything — that would be uncivil
I think you’re being facetious. Right?
I cringe whenever I hear the DNA is like a program. There is so much “Garbage In” that natural selection can barely approach even a small percentage of the “garbage out.”
Other than that, what Glen said.
Yes, my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek.
I could have understood if they put that article on the same page as the astrology nonsense or along with other book reviews, but it certainly did not belong on the editorial page this morning. I had to force myself to read the entire thing.
If Jerry had bothered to read Steve Meyer’s book, Signature in the Cell, he would know that Steve is not a young earth creationist.
Apparently the Globe’s tagline should be: All The News That Jerry Coyne Thinks Is Fit For You
I guess it’s RIP for freedom of the press, ideas, speech, and all those other antiquated ideas.
Based on forensic analysis, the signature in the DNA appears to be that of Diana of Ephesus. It is unfortunate that Dr. Meyer completed his magnum opus in lieu of this egregious oversight.
So you want me to read a book by someone who writes an article with these great leap of nonlogic.
Computer software programs are written by intelligent humans.
DNA is kind of like a computer software program only way more complicated.
Therefore, DNA code was written by a way more intelligent being than a human.
Analogies don’t count as statements of fact, do they?
Will the book reveal the “designer” in the suspenseful last chapter? Col. Mustard with the knife in the drawing room?
On what basis is the false claim being made that Stephen Meyer is a “young earth creationist”? Last time I spoke with Dr. Meyer about geology (which happened to be on Monday), we discussed our agreement that the earth is billion of years old. I’ve read lots of Meyer’s work, and he always accepts and endorses the conventional geological timescale. Here are 2 quick examples:
– In Signature in the Cell, Meyer writes: “Yockey notes that ‘the technology of information theory and coding theory has been in place in biology for 3.85 billion years’ or from the time that life first originated on earth” (pg. 17), showing clearly that Meyer accepts that life appeared on earth about 3.85 billion years ago.
– In his article in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Meyer writes: “The ‘Cambrian explosion’ refers to the geologically sudden appearance of many new animal body plans about 530 million years ago. At this time, at least nineteen, and perhaps as many as thirty-five phyla of forty total (Meyer et al. 2003), made their first appearance on earth within a narrow five- to ten-million-year window of geologic time (Bowring et al. 1993, 1998a:1, 1998b:40; Kerr 1993; Monastersky 1993; Aris-Brosou & Yang 2003).”
Many more examples could be given, but it seems pretty clear that Dr. Meyer fully accepts the geological timescale. I’m sure Dr. Coyne’s comment was just a mistake, so I presume a correction is forthcoming.
Critics ought to read Meyer’s book before critiquing it: not only is it an interesting read but one could save much time by avoiding inaccurate criticisms!
Casey,
I thought Dr. Meyer was an advocate of CST (complex specified time)? Time being gently guided by God’s non-corporeal index finger.
WIN!
But it’s NOT God! It’s some vague Unspecified Designer…
*That* makes it scientific!
…and it’s not his index finger…
Sorry about the double-posting, but I posted in the wrong place before:
Why? Is Meyer actually discussing anything honestly, unlike everything that we’ve read thus far from ID?
What possible excuse could you have for telling us to read such a piece of nonsense?
I can show quite easily that the central premise of his book is not an honest depiction of evolution or of design. I have read the preview of Meyer’s piece of dissembling misdirection, and was appalled (but not at all surprised) by this from page 12:
I commented on one blog:
More at:
http://www.forward.com/articles/109086/
Since, like with all dishonest ID “discussions” so far, Meyer is confusing the results of two very different processes, which have very different effects, at the core of his “arguments,” it’s pretty fair to say that it is a thoroughly mendacious book.
No point, by the way Casey, in “forgiving me,” since that’s your way of condeming people for showing up your frequent cock-ups and dissembling declarations.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
It’s fascinating how often creationists and ID-proponents forget that science is a non-prophet enterprise.
Why? Is Meyer actually discussing anything honestly, unlike everything that we’ve read thus far from ID?
What possible excuse could you have for telling us to read such a piece of nonsense?
I can show quite easily that the central premise of his book is not an honest depiction of evolution or of design. I have read the preview of Meyer’s piece of dissembling misdirection, and was appalled (but not at all surprised) by this from page 12:
I commented on one blog:
More at:
http://www.forward.com/articles/109086/
Since, like with all dishonest ID “discussions” so far, Meyer is confusing the results of two very different processes, which have very different effects, at the core of his “arguments,” it’s pretty fair to say that it is a thoroughly mendacious book.
No point, by the way Casey, in “forgiving me,” since that’s your way of condeming people for showing up your frequent cock-ups and dissembling declarations.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
That’s disgusting – claiming that a long dead patriot supports (present tense) “intelligent design”. What assholes. Jefferson was a very remarkable man and one known to admit when he was wrong; it’s demeaning to insinuate that such a person would support IDiocy if he were alive today. So – anyone want to dredge up all the wonderful things Jefferson said and wrote about religion and ask the Globe to publish that?
Not to mention, we can make other arguments from long-dead authority that “prove” that Ra is the king of the gods. Or Zeus. Come to think of it, argument from the dead (what do we call that – ‘argumentum ad mortes’?) can also prove events such as virgin births. Why are IDiots so stupid? Why do newspapers waste time and ink on those morons?
I can make an argument from a recently dead “authority” (L. Ron Hubbard) that Luskin’s and Meyer’s delusions are due to Thetan infestation.
Of course I prefer more recent authorities such as Bruce Hood who show very clearly how humans have evolved self aggrandizing supernatural beliefs to help them feel “in control” of that which they don’t understand.
“Note: I stand corrected–Stephen Meyer is not a young earth creationist. I was thinking of his Discovery Institute colleague Paul Nelson, whom I debated a while back. My apologies to Mr. Meyer for attributing to him a lunatic idea of his colleague.”
Yes, Casey, you got a back-handed apology for Mr. Meyer. Which is more than I’ve seen any DI fellow produce for misrepresentations of evolutionary biologists, despite direct refutation by said biologists.
To wit: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/
At first I thought the “what would Jefferson do” argument was so absurd, I just shrugged. Then I started puzzling about it because the reasoning was just too ridiculous. Perhaps we may be seeing the begining of an “evolution is anti-american” notion. Look at the last sentence: “Our nation’s existence, with its guarantee to protect each person’s “inalienable rights,’’ may be counted among the fruits of Jefferson’s belief in intelligent design.”
Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.
Ignoring the argumentum ad populum at the end, one has to wonder if Jefferson, by all accounts an intelligent and rational man, might have changed his mind if anyone had presented him with naturalistic explanations for these phenomena. If perhaps, someone had presented him with a theory for how new species might emerge from old ones…
David Klinghoffer has written an attack piece against Dr. Coyne. I won’t bother responding here and now, as it’s the usual bunch of misdirection, nonsense, and lack of civility that you get from the DI and its hacks.
Here it is
For what it’s worth, I ran across this and found it very amusing. There seems to be a little bit of a challenge issued from a fellow at the discovery institute, perhaps directed towards scientists, to challenge them on Meyer’s new book. But they don’t seem too eager to follow through with the challenge. It can be found at the blog site:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/kingdomofpriests/2009/07/a-challenge-to-intelligent-design-bashing-regulars-on-this-blog.htm
Sorry, where did Dr. Meyers write “a 6,000 year old earth” in his op-ed?
Listen, why not debate him in a public forum on your pet idea of evolution-by-amazing-improbable-endless-accident, and on his idea of irreducible-complexity-pointing-to-an-intelligent-agent?
I’d pay five dollars to see it. Otherwise, how do we know that the title of your blog is any more than a bird puffing up its neck sack prior to mating (that is, just a show, before you run out of steam)?
Whoops, just caught this:
“a paper with the gravitas of the Globe”
Sorry? Have you ever actually read that dog trainer?
Best of luck…