The Renewed Intelligent Design Contra Darwinism Debate
by James Jacob Prasch
This issue again resurfacing in the USA and elsewhere is not merely one of an anti-Judeo-Christian religious bias, but reflects a gross ignorance in the unscientific approach to science being propagated in the media. This anti-intelligent design crusade has been pursued not only by non scientists such as Ronald Reagan’s son, (a failed ballet dancer who underwent a metamorphosis becoming a self-pronounced expert on world affairs, scientific affairs, and in any other field imaginable because of his paternal surname), and the ACLU (which since its defense of Nazis is neither American, Civil, nor Libertarian) but also by scientists who ought to know better. The central issue from a scientific perspective is not faith (as belief in Darwinism requires faith because it is theory not a fact), but quantitative scientific reality.
Any theory is subject to scientific scrutiny. The fact that recombinant DNA does not trans-mutate across the genus barrier in the natural environment mitigates strongly against Darwinist presupposition. The fact that getting the exact right combination of left and right handed amino acids together right down to the level of atomic co-valence to form a single peptide and then getting the precise combination of peptides together under the precise circumstances bio-chemically to form a poly-peptide, and then getting the precise combination of poly-peptides together under the precise circumstances to synthesize a single protein for which in turn their must be an equally complex co-enzyme , and that will interact chemically with other proteins and enzymes is too complicated a process to be attributed to an astronomical series of chance events.
Protein metabolism is foundational to the biosphere. No probability theorem known to man can account for a random inter-systemic formation.
Information science tells us that codes require a pre-existing body of information and a pre-existing intelligence to write the codes (as with an algorithm or a software program). The triplet code by which DNA is replicated by RNA, and if proven correct, the histone code are mathematically more complicated than anything human cryptologists are at present capable of devising. The issue is not religion versus science or faith contra fact. The issue is good science versus shabby science and fact contra an unproven hypothesis with a lot of holes in it.
The fact is that the ACLU and the proponents of Darwinism are demanding not that faith be kept out the classroom, but that science be kept out of the class room. Moreover, it is not simply in the area of quantitative sciences that the Darwinists and ACLU demand the scientific facts be ignored. Their bias has ramifications for the social sciences.
The last 60 years has seen the ugliest genocide in human history perpetrated in the name of ethnic cleansing. From the dehumanization of Hutu and Tutsi in Ruwanda and Berundi to Imperial Japan’s dehumanizing of their fellow Asians, to the Nazis dehumanizing Jews and Gypsies, to the former Yugoslavia, to Sadam Hussein’s attempted extermination of the Kurds, to Turkey’s attempts to exterminate the Armenians, to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, to the Islamic slaughter of Christians in Darfur and East Timor, each of these and more dehumanized others as inferior. Taken to its natural conclusions, applied Darwinism lends credence to genocide.
When applied anthropologically as Hitler applied it, Darwinism additionally creates a pseudo-scientific basis for racism and the relegation of Blacks to the status of genetic inferiority on the criteria of species survival. The reduced longevity, higher instances of AIDS deaths in Africa, lower level on average academic performance by Blacks, and the failure of post-colonial African countries to economically develop as the Asian post-colonial countries (who won their independence at the same time) did, when viewed from the perspective of a Darwinist worldview all support the genetic inferiority of Black Africans. As one who directs an organization operating orphanages for HIV children in Africa, as a white man, I find this offensive; not because it is racist, but because it is not true scientifically. Only observing the plight of Black people through the prism of Darwinist presupposition leaves us with a mal-defined body of evidence supporting the genetic inferiority of Blacks and other minorities, that have already been postulated by academics such as Jansen and Shockley. In effect, Blacks become phylo-genetically closer to apes than other humans are in a worldview shaped by Darwinist presupposition.
It is moreover contradictory to a Darwinist worldview to save endangered species and preserve their natural habitats. If our view of applied science derives from Darwinism it is regressive to save the whale or the elephant. Survival of the fittest dictates they are becoming extinct because that is the natural order. The fatalism of accepting human suffering as a matter of Karma in a Hindu worldview finds its Western equivalent in Darwinism.
Darwinism is not merely at odds with Judeo-Christian beliefs or creation science, it is at odds with the cause of human rights and of saving the environment.
The essential situation is that with the advances in bio-genetic engineering Darwinism is falling to pieces. Tragically, it will be replaced by something worse – not creationism, but the view that man can control evolution and deify himself.
The fact is that from Watson and Crick onward, the earlier views of evolution were debunked, and evolutionary theory has been consistently inconsistent with itself, and the earliest “ontogeny is the recapitulation of phylogeny” propositions of Le Marc were debunked prior to that. After generations of Darwinism, ontogentic development cannot be explained by Darwinism in any provable way, and now life science itself is moving on, leaving Darwinism consigned to the same ash heap of history to which superstition is confined. Even many scientist who are not Judeo-christian in matters of personal faith are beginning to chuckle at Darwin the way other Darwinians chuckle at Le Marc.
Marxist Dialectics was based on Darwinism. Karl Marx thought that as capitalism evolved from feudalism so communism would evolve along Hegalian lines from capitalism. Only Marx was debunked by history. Communism did not begin in England, the first capitalist country as Marx predicted based on a Darwinist worldview, but in Russia, Europe’s last feudal country where it never should have been viable according to the Darwinist worldview.
Higher critical theology developed out of Darwinist worldview. Liberal scholars argued that the biblical texts evolved through a series of redactions. Yet, the Dead Sea scrolls undermines their Darwinist presupposition. Higher criticism is dying a death with no market for its worthless product because liberal churches and denominations are justly declining in number and in attendance, so they are turning to biased left wing political causes to try and remain socially relevant in their thinking.
As the Soviet Empire collapsed, the silly old men in the Kremlin continued to propound the same old failed Marxist Hegalian Dialectic rooted in social Darwinism. As liberal churches continue to decline, the Jesus Seminar and other such silly people continue to try and prop up their discredited presuppositions. When a silly old “has been” is faced with the hard irrefutable fact that they foolishly based their lives on a fallacy, they continue to insist that a loyalty to their discredited presuppositions be maintained because the alternative is obvious, despite the hard evidence to the contrary.
The actual reason for the demise of Social Darwinism and Theological Darwinism however is the scientific demise of the Darwinism that underlies it. So now, the old Darwinist scientists and self-appointed social engineers of the ACLU and the failing educational establishment are engaging in the same hopeless game as the old kingpins of Sovietism and of higher criticism. They are trying to sustain a status quo that is scientifically unsustainable. The fact is that there is no proof for genotypic macro -evolution, only for a micro evolution affecting phenotypic mutation. The DNA of lobster cannot become the DNA of a zebra after a billion generations of interim stages. There are simply too many gaps in the fossil record and DNA cannot in the natural environment be shown to transmutate between species.
The other factor in the evolution debate is that the state school and Roman Catholic school systems are falling apart (since John Paul II, the Roman Catholic churchy accepts Darwinism). Widespread pedophilia and protection of sex criminal clergy has damaged the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church and bought into question the safety of its schools. More fundamentally however, both the state funded and Roman Catholic schools were designed to produce automatons of the old technocracy; conditioning people to work in the disappearing factory culture once the bell rang. Generations of Pavlov’s dogs were churned out for the manufacturing economy that no longer exists.
This is the basic reason for the whitewashed drop-out rate and breakdown of the school system. Such schools can no longer be a workable way to prepare people for the new economy. More work is for instance done at home via computer and is outsourced to cottage industries. Hence, there must be a growth in home schooling to accommodate the future direction of the economy. This will not change for the sake of the National Educators Association or the National Union of Teachers, who have a vested interest in impeding progress for the sake of preserving their tenure and clout.
Home schooling curriculums teach both intelligent design and evolution, hence opposition from the teachers unions is to be expected. Teachers unions and school systems are not fighting simply for Darwinism, they are fighting as an increasingly obsolete institution for a future place in an education system that itself has evolved beyond the domain of their outdated and increasingly inept capacity to prepare students for what the future job market requires. State schools are not under-funded, they are rather the over-funded dinosaurs from an age gone past and good money is being thrown after bad. Most jobs will be in the home, so most education should therefore be in the home and in small faith-based private schools functioning beyond the control of the educational establishment and teachers unions with their outmoded Darwinist presuppositions and worldview, and their dangerous potential to subvert the moral and faith oriented values of parents.
It is time to get real. The actual issues are not purely scientific, because if they were decided on the basis of pure scientific fact and merit, designed creation would be taught along side of evolution because information science demands it, and Darwinism would be challenged because genetic science demands it.
The actual issues are rather political, where those interests with a biased, self-aggrandizing agenda cannot allow the pure facts of science to dictate what science and how science should be taught.
If these biased self-serving agenda driven interests in the ACLU, the teachers unions, and their friends in the biased left wing media cannot win on the basis of academic and scientific merit, they will in the tradition of the Scope’s case, resort as usual to Judicial fascism, where the facts can be redefined juridically rather than scientifically, and where public opinion and legislative authority can be usurped by anti-democratic judicio-facist judges who legislate from the bench.
