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November 25, 2005
Some Diversity of Thought - A Left-Brained Response to "Right Minded"
Nearly two weeks ago, Mark A. Rose took issue with the Tennessean's editors for their anti position on "Intelligent Design" as a component of science education. Rose took the opportunity to re-post his "five questions" and, as a bonus, added a sixth.
I've read through his five questions several times, and have so far resisted trying to answer them seriously, for mostly they make me chuckle and shake my head. I doubt that's the intended reaction, but I can't help it.
The first problem with his set of queries is the defensive, reactionary posture within which they are framed. In this most recent publication, he blusters, "Okay, so since evolution has all the answers, I'm going to re-post" them. Easy there, fella. No one has said that evolution has all the answers. Tug gently, get those shorts outta your crack, and let's work through these.
Question #1: The big-bang theory typically cited by Darwinists states that all matter in the universe once existed as a single super-sphere which at some point exploded, its fragments coalescing into the stars, planets, and other celestial objects we observe today. If this is true, which random process suspended the laws of conservation of energy and matter by creating that original super-sphere out of nothing?
I agree with the implied premise here, that the "origin of the origin" is one of the least codified tenets in all of science. And why wouldn't it be? There is but little evidence in any form, and no known way to test any theories. The universe is, and we can guess as to what it wasn't before it was, and we'll keep working on getting our guesses cleaner.
Question #2: How did the human race evolve from single-cell organisms, such as amoebae, and become randomly separated into two equally-populated genders which are mutually attracted to each other? Furthermore, how is it that only females are uniquely equipped to bear and nourish offspring?
Um, you skipped a whole lot there in between. Put simply, the female human is equipped to bear and nourish because she is a mammal. It seems that we warm-blooded vertebrate sorts have pretty much ended up this way as an entire group. Other species, though, are different. Fish and other aquatic animals can and do change gender. There are no male whiptail lizards, yet they reproduce (you go, girls). Plants are mostly hermaphroditic. Even among humans, it's tough to say that there are strictly two genders. Chromosomal studies have yielded specimens with XXX, XXY and XYY combinations. Read more in this article. (The most interesting point in the article is that scientists are challenging Darwin's somewhat limited views. See, this is how this works. Knowledge is not sacred. It is merely a collection of best evidence and practices, and future developments can and will render laughable what we "know" today.)
Question #3: Gravity is an invisible, non-magnetic attraction between two physical objects. It's what keeps the Earth in a nearly symmetrical orbit around the sun, and prevents us here on Earth from flying off into space. Please explain how gravity came into being without an intelligent designer.
I'm going to extend the benefit of doubt and not assume that the above was written from as terra-centric and pre-Copernican viewpoint as it seems to have been. Earth? What significance does this speck of dust have in the cosmos? Gravity is without a solid explanation, yes. Nothing proves this more than the fact that we haven't figured out a way to subvert it, so our pitiable launches into space are noisy and cumbersome. Gaps in our understanding are acceptable, though. Science doesn't need ID to come along and magically (so to speak) fill them. Here's one person's set of hypotheses.
Question #4: Which random processes produced the human brain? This complex organ is not only capable of the computer-like functions of logic, memory, and computation, but also such emotions as love, hate, joy, and fear, which artificial intelligence engineers have heretofore been unable to duplicate in laboratories.
What about the dolphin brain? The hummingbird? The honeybee? Careful, your anthro-ego is showing. Are you challenging AI engineers to invent emotion? They just might, you know. Me, I'd rather have my future robotic killers be heartless and calculating. No messy grudge matches and whatnot.
Question #5: If evolution is the fact-laden, open-and-shut, slam-dunk case Darwinists make it out to be, what's the harm in placing it side-by-side with intelligent design? If indeed Darwinism is above reproach, then the facts should easily tilt the scales in its favor.
Again, slow down, buddy. "Open-and-shut"? Try open. WAY open. Slam-dunk? No, we're dribbling down the court, passing back to the guard, exercising real teamwork in making our way to the goal. In fact, to continue the B-ball analogy, you could view it as multiple teams all vying for "scores" but the ultimate winner is the whole human race, due to its increasing expansion of knowledge. The "harm," if you will, in placing science side-by-side with mysticism, or with injecting mysticism into a fact-based discovery process, is that the science is simply ruined. That's not to say that mysticism is inherently ruinous, in and of itself. Not so. There is an historically vetted niche in our human experience for this divinity search. There is also a parallel quest for "facts, data, logic." Keeping them separate will keep each one alive and well. Mixing them will merely mangle both.
Question #6: According to the big-bang theory, our universe -- and therefore our own earth -- was begun in a state of chaos. But now, it is quite orderly. It is so orderly, in fact, that practically all physical processes can be approximated by mathematical equations, such as gravity, centripetal force, and geostrophic wind. But how does chaos give way to order in a natural state? And how did those physical laws get put in place? Were they there at the time of big-bang, or did they "evolove?"
Whew, you added a heavy one. I tend to view order and chaos as each giving way to the other, simultaneously, all the time, in unimaginably varied ways. I don't know the answer. I just don't want my kid's science teacher telling him "the answer is Intelligent Design." Such a response would be, as the Tennessean editorial pointed out, intellectually dishonest. And, I'll add, lazy.
