Was Einstein a supporter of Creationism?

Surprisingly – at least I was surprised the first time that I saw it – some creationists claim Albert Einstein as one of their supporters. 

They might quote Einstein as saying this:

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

They will also offer this quote:

"The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

Einstein said those things.  But Einstein also said this[1]:

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. …"

So should Albert Einstein be considered to be a supporter of creationism, or not?

The answer, quite obviously, is complicated.

First of all, we should state the obvious.  Einstein was not a philosopher.  Furthermore, while he was a scientist, he was not a biologist who studied evolution.  So, strictly speaking, based solely on his background and experience and other credentials, his opinion should be basically irrelevant.

It would be like asking an auto mechanic what’s wrong with your computer and expecting a relevant answer.

But Einstein was much more than that.  He was a very smart person who gave quite a bit of thought to a lot of different things.  Many people, quite justifiably, consider him to be the smartest person of the 20^th century.  He actually devised the Theory of Relativity, not from observations in a laboratory, but by asking himself philosophical questions such as what would happen if he could somehow jump onto a beam of light.

So despite any apparent missing credentials in his background, surely his opinion on such matters needs to be respected.

The first question we need to discuss, though it doesn’t address the specific quotes given above, was:

Did Einstein believe in evolution?

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, no one has found a quote of Einstein’s stating whether he did – or didn’t – accept biological evolution.

Of course Einstein, being the very intelligent person that we have acknowledged he is, surely knew about evolution.  So do we have any hints regarding his view on that subject?

Indeed we do.

Einstein said some very complimentary things about Charles Darwin. 

Here’s the first quote:

"A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements  recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs."
 - Albert Einstein, Science and Religion (1941)

Note that in this quote Einstein equates Darwin with Galileo.   Anyone who groups Galileo and Darwin together as closely as this is surely not diminishing Darwin.

A second quote is this one:

"I do not believe that a great era of atomic science is to be assured by organising science, in the way large corporations are organised. One can organise to apply a discovery already made, but not to make one. Only a free individual can make a discovery.  There can be a kind of organising by which scientists are assured their freedom and proper conditions of work. Professors of science in American universities, for instance, should be relieved of some of their teaching so as to have time for more research. Can you imagine an organisation of scientists making the discoveries of Charles Darwin?"
 - Albert Einstein, 1945

Here Einstein is arguing that research is important and if scientists are to match the discoveries of Charles Darwin they need more freedom. He would hardly include Darwin in this context to denigrate him.

Clearly Einstein admired Charles Darwin.  By implication he must have believed in evolution.  It would be difficult to imagine him speaking of Darwin in this way otherwise.

So, with that somewhat settled, what were Einstein’s religious views and how did they relate to the evolution / creationism controversy?

Einstein was not raised in a religious family.  They didn’t attend synagogue or practice the kosher rules.  His father was a severe critic of Judaism, calling the Jewish rules “silly superstitions”[2].  Einstein even attended a Catholic school as a child.  According to Einstein’s sister, for a while, when Albert was about 12 years old, he embraced his Jewish heritage.  He was the only one in his family to practice kosher and attend synagogue.  But he started to read science books and realized that the Bible couldn’t be true.  He said later[3]:

“Through the reading of popular science books, I soon reached the conviction that much in the Bible could not be true. “

He didn’t engage in any religious rituals during the rest of his life.  In fact when he left Germany to come to the US and renounced his German citizenship, he classified himself as having “no religious denomination”[4].

Einstein, as an adult, was not religious in any normal sense of the word.  However, despite many attempts, no one was ever able to get him to say whether or not he was an “atheist”.  A Jewish Rabbi in New York sent a telegram asking for a specific ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer.  Instead the rabbi received these words:

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

Einstein often used Spinoza’s name when asked about religion.  So what does it mean to believe in Spinoza’s God?

First of all, we need to understand who Spinoza was.  Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch Jewish Philosopher.  He was actually excommunicated from the Jewish community for his religious views.  Being excommunicated from the Jewish church is a very rare occurrence, much rarer than excommunication from Roman Catholicism.   .  (Spinoza was also condemned by the RCC even though he wasn’t a Catholic.) So you have to believe in some really unconventional things for that to happen.

Fundamentally, Spinoza got in so much trouble because he didn’t trust the Bible[5].  He also argued that if there was a personal God you should be able to see a demonstration of such a God in miracles and other phenomena.  Since we don’t see such things, except anecdotally, there is no reason to believe in such a God.

Spinoza also didn’t believe in free will.  Einstein strongly agreed with Spinoza on that issue.  Einstein said in a private letter that he admired Spinoza because the philosopher “was the first…to deal with the body and soul as one, not two separate things.”

So what was this “god” that Spinoza believed in?

Spinoza defined “God” as an “absolutely infinite substance[6]” or essence.  Certainly not any sort of being.

In summary, it appears to me, that Einstein and Spinoza used “God” as a sort of shorthand view of the natural world.  But it is also a bit more than that.  Einstein in particular felt a sense of “awe” when he viewed the universe.  So to Einstein, “God” was a combination of the natural world itself as well as a sense of reverence for it.

So when Einstein said that, “Science without religion is lame”, he’s saying that all scientists should feel some sense of reverential respect for the universe that they study.  That’s something that even an ardent atheist might agree with.

But that’s it.  He surely doesn’t believe that scientists should believe in any sort of personal God since he was so clear that he didn’t believe in such a being.

 In summary, we can safely conclude:

1.       Einstein did not trust the Bible as a source of valid information.

2.       Einstein did not believe in any sort of personal God.

3.       Einstein deeply admired Darwin.  That strongly indicates that he believed in evolution.

Conclusion:  Albert Einstein was not a supporter of creationism and almost certainly would have been offended at being called a supporter of such a belief system.

---

[1] Private correspondence from Einstein to philosopher Erik Gutkind, January, 1954.  See http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/word-god-is-product-of-human-weakness.html

[2] Walter Isaacson, “Einstein”, Simon and Shuster, 2007, pp. 14-15.

[3] Ibid, p. 20

[4] Ibid, p. 29

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Spinoza, referenced on April 3, 2012

[6] Ibid.

Sarah Palin’s “Life With Trig”

This is not the sort of topic I typically discuss on this blog.  But I felt compelled to write about this and since this is my blog…

I read Sarah Palin’s article titled “My Life with Trig” in the February 13 issue of Newsweek Magazine with quite a bit of interest.  I have a daughter with Down syndrome.  (She is now 22.)  Additionally I’ve an active coach in the Special Olympics for 14 years.  During those years I’m certain that I’ve worked with more than 100 athletes with mental disabilities, many of those with Down syndrome.  Most relevantly, I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with and sharing experiences with their parents and families.   Ms. Palin says that she has met many others who have children with disabilities.  I don’t doubt that.  But I’m not sure that she has spent an hour or more at, for example, an athletic banquet, talking to those people what it is like to have such a child.  So I believe that I have a better idea than most, possibly including Sarah Palin, regarding what it is like to raise a child with Down syndrome 

My experiences are somewhat different from how Ms. Palin describes hers.

Note that children with disabilities vary from each other much as people without disabilities differ from each other.  So I can’t possibly say that Ms. Palin’s description of life with her son is invalid in any way.  All I can say is that it is different in a number of ways from my own experiences and those of the many other families that I have come into contact with.

First of all, however, I can acknowledge that she’s right when she says that it is frightening when you discover that you have a child with Down syndrome.  While Sarah Palin found out that her child had Down syndrome when she was still pregnant, my wife and I didn’t find out that our child had Down syndrome until shortly after she was born.  It’s difficult to describe your emotions. 

When you first discover that you are going to have a child, you don’t expect it to have disabilities and you’re happy and excited.  Nearly everyone who has ever had a child is familiar with this feeling.  You might initially consider the possibility that this child will be President of the United States.  Or the person who finds a cure for cancer.

But more realistically you fully expect that this new child will grow up, get married and have grandchildren that you get to spoil.  So you have hopes, wishes and desires but also real expectations for this child.

Then, when you discover that the child has a serious disability, the hopes, wishes and desires vanish but even of those reasonable expectations also vanish.

It’s very much like thinking that your child - the one that you expected to have - died.   You grieve for the child that you are not going to have.

Then, when the grieving is done, you deal with the child that you actually do have.

If the child has Down syndrome, what’s that child like and what is life like with that child?  This is something that isn’t talked about much outside of the families that have members with Down syndrome and, in my view; people seem to lack accurate conceptions about what it is like.  Sarah Palin’s article seems to reinforce the clichés of life with such children rather than matching the real world.  Maybe I can help with that.  It turns out to be MUCH better than people expect it to be.

There are often health issues, some serious.  That needs to be mentioned.  My wife and I were lucky in that our daughter didn’t have any.

One of the things that Ms. Palin says that I disagree with is this:

“My family knows that Trig will face struggles that few of us will ever have to endure, including people who can be so cruel to those not deemed ‘perfect’ by society.”

Children and adults with disabilities are, indeed, subject to ridicule.  But so are people without disabilities.  We all hear stories of bullying, especially during teenage years.   But things like Facebook bullying is not something that children with disabilities are likely to experience.

People with disabilities tend to go to school and work around other people with disabilities.  People with disabilities don’t pick on others, whether or not they have disabilities.  Instead they genuinely like each other and genuinely root for each other.  They really do.  One of the most refreshing things about coaching in the Special Olympics is that you see all of the athletes genuinely wanting the others to do well.  They want to do well themselves.  But if their nearest competitor does well it makes just about all of them happy!

My favorite story about the Special Olympics comes from Sports Illustrated rather than my own experiences.  I recall the article quite well.

A 100 yard dash was about to take place in a Special Olympics track event.  For no apparent reason, one of athletes participating in the race looked up to the sky.  The other athletes noticed and they looked up as well.  Then the gun went off to start the race.  The athlete who was first to look up, started to run.  After he had gone about 20 yards he noticed that the others weren’t running.  He stopped, yelled back at the other athletes to say, “Hey guys, the race started!”  The other athletes heard that and started to run.  The first athlete didn’t continue his race until the other athletes caught up to him.

I think that story illustrates how well people with disabilities work together.

In that same context, one of the advantages of Down syndrome – and this will surprise many people – is that the syndrome is fairly common and is accompanied by physical characteristics that most people can recognize.

How is this a good thing?

When people recognize Down syndrome in your child, they will lower expectations of your child’s capabilities.  In fact they tend to lower the expectations below what your child is probably capable of.  In the case of our daughter, and others with Down syndrome, people tend to be impressed with how much they can do rather than on things on which they fall short.  As just one example, people are impressed when they see that our daughter can tie her own shoes.  She’s capable of a lot more than that, but it gives you an idea of the sorts of things that will impress people who can recognize Down syndrome – which is most people – but have very low expectations.  One woman was surprised to see our daughter simply take off her own shoes when we visited her house.  The expectations can be that low.

In contrast, I know a number of children my daughter’s age who are equally disabled but have no outward signs of their disability.  The parents of these children have told me on more than one occasion that they are constantly reminded of their child’s disability when they see the reaction of other people when the child does something consistent with their disability but inconsistent with their appearance.

Another thing that Ms. Palin talks about that is not really a part of my experience, nor the other parents that I have talked to, is when she explains how her “husband …spends many sleepless nights with this restless little one”.  My experience is quite the contrary.  I have never known a child who goes to sleep faster, and sleeps more soundly and longer than our daughter.

Here’s a true story: when our daughter was about ten I could tell that our daughter was in a talkative mood, so I laid down with her to help her get to sleep – much as Todd Palin apparently does.  I sang these words from the well-known children’s song, “Rockabye baby on the tree top.  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.  When the bow breaks the cradle will fall.  Down will come baby, cradle and all…”

When I started the song, my daughter was talking.

After I got that far into the song – probably no more than ten seconds later – she was not just sleeping, she was snoring.

I often envy how quickly my daughter is able to fall asleep and how soundly she is able to sleep.  I’m probably like most adults in that there are some nights that I lie in bed thinking of what happened that day or what will be happening the next day or the day after that.  My daughter doesn’t have such worries, thoughts or concerns.  So she sleeps like a log every night.  Unless my wife or I have a reason to wake her up in the morning (for example, to get her ready for school) it is rare for her not to sleep soundly for ten consecutive hours.  Many times have I wished that I could do that.

Another very positive characteristic of our daughter and, from my conversations those of others with disabilities, is that they never lie.  That would be never.  That’s no exaggeration.  She might tell me something that is wrong because she is mistaken – she may think that it is Wednesday when it’s actually Thursday, for example.  (Even that sort of thing is rarer than most people might expect.)  But I can literally not think of a single time that she has told me a deliberate untruth.

But the single most refreshing thing about our daughter – and most people with Down syndrome – is how happy they are.  Our daughter isn’t happy 100% of the time.  But 95% of the time is a good, reasonable estimate.  On those rare occasions that she has difficultly falling asleep, I can hear her laughing through the bedroom door as she lies in bed. 

She also likes everyone.  She doesn’t just say that she likes them.  She genuinely does.  There are many reasons for that.  People like her.  They don’t feel that they have to compete with her.  While there is occasionally a bit of awkwardness in the relationship in the beginning – and our daughter is genuinely shy when she first meets someone – people quickly recognize that it is almost impossible for our daughter to feel any malice towards them so they respond in the same way.

Finally you find yourself changing in ways that match your child’s example.  If you spend enough time around someone who is nearly always happy, you find yourself being happier more often.  If you spend enough time around someone who never tells a deliberate lie, you find yourself lying less often.  If you spend enough time around someone who genuinely likes everyone else, you find yourself liking a higher percentage of people.  If you spend enough time around someone who doesn’t experience stress, you find yourself experiencing stress somewhat less.

Obviously I don’t think that everyone should have mental disabilities.  But I genuinely feel that every family that has a member with mental disabilities is a better family because of that.

I think that Ms. Palin would agree with this.  But I got the feeling she felt her family was better off because of the sacrifices they found themselves willing to make.  I think that the rewards are different.  I think that the family is better off because of the lessons that you learn from your child with disabilities.

One of the hypothetical questions that parents with children who have Down syndrome occasionally ask themselves is: “if there was some magical pill that your child could take that would remove their extra chromosome thereby making them ‘normal’, would you have them take it?”

Initially, soon after our daughter was born, the answer would have been undoubtedly ‘Yes’.  But now, quite honestly, the answer is ‘No’.  We’re very happy with her exactly the way she is and would feel that there was be a hole in our lives if she was any different.

To emphasize that point, I can point to two people who have changed professions – one more than the other – simply because they enjoyed being around our daughter so much.

One of them was a high school classmate of my wife.  This classmate had a degree in education and was teaching in Junior High School.  She didn’t find it very fulfilling.  It was difficult and frustrating to battle the raging hormones in her adolescent students.  But after spending time with our daughter at various outings, etc. she decided to go back to college and got a Master’s degree in Special Education.  She’s now teaching children with special needs and finds that to be much more rewarding and, frankly, more fun than teaching children without disabilities.

One of our sons is doing the same thing.  The difference is that he has a degree in finance, not education, and is actually working as the CFO for a small company.  He grew up with his sister and obviously knows her very well and has spent many, many hours with her.  Like my wife’s classmate, he’s decided it would be more rewarding and more fun to teach children with disabilities – people like his sister – than to continue to work with Excel spreadsheets.  Like my wife’s classmate, he is getting his Master’s Degree in Special Education and is scheduled to graduate this coming May.  He is making a more significant career change than my wife’s classmate.  But he is looking forward to it very much.

So why would we want our daughter to be any different since her personality has inspired two different people to change professions to be around people like her?

I can’t think of any reason at all…

Evolution and Consensus among Scientists

Here’s a fact: a very large percentage – arguably something approaching 99% - of professional scientists strongly support evolution.

Of course that doesn’t prove that evolution is a fact.  After all, science isn’t done by counting heads and history tells us that the scientific consensus can be wrong.  But it does, by itself, falsify some of the more frequent claims made by creationists.

For one thing, creationists say things like, “Evolution is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics”.  But that sort of thing is utterly impossible to reconcile with such strong support of evolution by scientists.

Scientists really understand thermodynamics.   They really, really do.  Some of the scientific supporters of evolution actually teach thermodynamics at the collegiate level.  So how could scientists possibly so strongly support evolution if, in fact, it violated one or more of these fundamental scientific principles?  Wouldn’t they necessarily notice?  Making such a claim isn’t even rational.

Similarly, I’ve seen creationists say, ”There is NO evidence supporting evolution.” But how can that be true if so many scientists support evolution?

Scientists work in a profession that depends on evidence.  You wouldn’t get 50% - much less 90+% - support in the scientific community if there was no evidence.  I’m sure that it reassuring for one creationist to tell that to another, but it isn’t a rational argument.

There are other claims made by creationists that are similarly falsified by the mere fact of the strong consensus of scientists supporting evolution.

Possibly the most significant fact creationists have to deal with in the face of this strong scientific consensus is the fact that it guarantees that creationism will NEVER gain that consensus.  That’s because, that while the scientific consensus changes on things, it never goes backward.  The views of individual scientists will change and even go backwards.  But the views of the majority of scientists never go backwards.

Consider gravity.  The first “scientific” ideas about gravity came from Aristotle.  The Aristotelian explanation of gravity is that all bodies move toward their natural place.  Then, centuries later, Newton proposed that masses attract each other and even provided the mathematics to support it.  That became the strong scientific consensus.  Then Einstein proposed that mass actually curves space and slightly altered the math.  

That’s the current consensus.

It’s possible now that string theory will alter the scientific consensus regarding gravity yet again.

But if the consensus of the scientific community changes, it will NEVER go backwards.  In terms of gravity it’s possible that it will move onto something like string theory, but it will NEVER return to Newton’s ideas and certainly not to Aristotle’s.

History tells us that is always the case.  Once the scientific consensus changes, it never goes backwards.

Centuries ago the scientific consensus was Biblical creationism.  It has now changed to favor evolution.  It is conceivable that it will move onto something else.

But it will NEVER go back to favor Biblical creationism. 

Is Intelligent Life with Superior Technologies inherently unstable?

We’ve never made contact with other intelligent life forms on other planets within other solar systems that possess sufficient technologies to communicate over long distances. Many ID advocates argue that’s because conditions on Earth are unique in the universe and no such other life forms exist. With an estimated 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 other planets in the universe such “uniqueness” seems very unlikely. Other factors are undoubtedly the immense distances between stars, the possibility that an alien species may have different technologies and communicate in ways that we don’t understand yet, etc.


Of course in order to communicate with another form of intelligent life both sides of the conversation need to have adequate technologies. If some intelligent life sent us messages as recently as two centuries ago no one would have had a sufficient technology to even receive them, much less interpret them.

Another factor that isn’t discussed much is the possibility that any civilizations with sufficient technologies to communicate over interstellar distances are inherently unstable. In other words, once such technologies are understood and implemented, something inherently happens to that society so that it destroys itself or loses that technology within a few centuries. Note that I am not suggesting that “intelligent life” itself is necessarily unstable. Instead I am suggesting that the use of advanced technologies may be unstable. It’s possible that an organism such as a dolphin could evolve significant intelligence but be unable to use new technologies simply because they lack opposable thumbs.

The most obvious possibility for instability is a nuclear conflict. If you have sufficient technologies to send radio signals, it is quite possible that you are close to understanding how to create and use nuclear weapons. It could be argued that we were very lucky here on Earth. It is unlikely that Adolf Hitler would have had any qualms about using nuclear weapons if he would have had them and he missed having that technology by just a few years.

But there are many other possibilities. Maybe strong technologies result in destruction of the environment of a planet within a short time (i.e. a few centuries). Life could then diminish to the point that mere existence becomes more important than trying to communicate with life on other planets. In his book “Collapse”, Jared Diamond demonstrates that environmental damage has been a significant factor in all societies on Earth that have collapsed such as on Easter Island, Mayans, etc. Of course those specific collapses didn’t involve the use of modern technologies. But it is very likely that such technologies could increase the rate of environmental damage.

Another alternative I’ve heard of is that eventually technologies become so fascinating in and of themselves that interactions between the living things become secondary in importance and the intelligent species stop reproducing. I think that there are signs that such things could happen.

I have a nephew who spends basically all of his free time playing video games. (Yes, I have mentioned my observation to his parents. Fortunately I can report that he now has a girlfriend and spends less time on these games.) A while ago I saw on a local news channel a video of two teenagers sitting a couple of feet away from each other on a park bench texting on their cell phones. There isn’t anything remarkable about that except for the fact that they were texting each other! Many people spend large parts of their free time on the Internet now. Others consistently find something on their 200+ cable channels to watch.

Such people are still a relatively small percentage of the overall population, but all of those technologies are also relatively recent. Video games have been with us for just a few decades. How addictive will they be a century from now? What will you be able to do on the Internet in 50 years? It is likely that in just a couple of decades you will be able to watch any movie ever made “on-demand” in high definition, 3-D on very large television screens. How compelling will that be for many people?

In fact, what new technologies will be available in the 22nd century that we can’t even imagine in 2011? There may even be some that offer sexual satisfaction in ways that we can’t imagine now.

If humans stop interacting with other humans, they don’t reproduce. Eventually the society ceases to exist.

Then, of course, there are other possible technologies that are unstable which humans haven’t experienced yet because our technology is still a bit limited. Some have suggested that it may be possible to create a significantly large black hole on Earth. Such a thing would destroy life here. We don’t know how to do that but maybe it is indeed possible.

With all of those risks (and maybe more that we are not aware of), it is quite possible that it is rare to find an intelligent civilization that lasts for more than, say, 3-4 centuries. So if intelligent life exists on any other planet we will need to be looking at that planet during the relatively very small window of time that radio signals coming from that planet may contain signs of intelligence.

Intelligent Design and ‘The Face on Mars’

As we all know, Intelligent Design advocates – led by people like William Dembski – insist that there are scientific and even mathematical techniques that can be used to identify things that are “intelligently designed”. They have focused their attention on issues relating to the biodiversity of life, primarily evolution and abiogenesis. But if their claims are true then there would be a number of other applications for their techniques.


For example, there is the rock formation called ‘The face on Mars’.

One of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976 revealed a rock formation that resembles a human face. The image resides on a mesa in the portion of Mars called “Cydonia” which lies in the planet's northern hemisphere. You can see pictures and a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars) .

As Wikipedia says, “Some commentators, most notably Richard C. Hoagland, believe the ‘Face’ to be evidence of a long-lost Martian civilization along with other features they believe are present, such as apparent pyramids, which they argue are part of a ruined city.”

Once the image was presented the focus was clearly on whether or not this face is “intelligently designed”. So clearly this “Face of Mars” would seem to present an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the techniques advocated by Dembski and others.

In fact, as you study the details, the ideal features of the match become more and more apparent.

First, the discussion is about whether or not carved faces in rocks are intelligently designed. We know that this is a perfect example of where ID techniques can be used because of the words of William Dembski himself!

At http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.08.Encyc_of_Relig.htm Dembski says:

“Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? To see what’s at stake, consider Mount Rushmore. The evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design is direct—eyewitnesses saw the sculptor Gutzon Borglum spend the better part of his life designing and building this structure. But what if there were no direct evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design? What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now?

“In that case, what about this rock formation would provide convincing circumstantial evidence that it was due to a designing intelligence and not merely to wind and erosion? Designed objects like Mount Rushmore exhibit characteristic features or patterns that point to an intelligence. Such features or patterns constitute signs of intelligence. Proponents of intelligent design, known as design theorists, purport to study such signs formally, rigorously, and scientifically. Intelligent design may therefore be defined as the science that studies signs of intelligence. “

Mount Rushmore, of course, consists of “intelligently designed” carved faces in rocks.

The “Face on Mars” is – at least potentially – is an “intelligently designed” carved face in a rock.

It would seem that we have a perfect fit!

Second, this “face” was very controversial. On September 8, 2000, an online poll produced the following results: 37 percent said it was made by aliens, 31 percent thought it was a natural geographical feature, and 32 percent answered that they thought there was not enough data to decide either way. It would be difficult to construct a set of statistics showing more indecision (and therefore more controversy) among the general public.

Third, the timing was nearly perfect. In 1998 – a mere two years before the poll mentioned above – William Dembski published his book titled "The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities". That book discussed ideas such as "specified complexity" that could be used as a tool to identify ID.

Fourth, Intelligent Design claims have been called religious. This has been true throughout the ID debate. Most significantly the Dover, PA, court decision stated, in part, that ID “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

But the face on Mars has no religious connotations at all. As mentioned on Wikipedia, even those who think that the face is intelligently designed say that some sort of Martian civilization – rather than some “god” or “God” - created it. So by examining the “Face on Mars” with their techniques ID advocates could clearly show that their claims are NOT only based solely on religion.

Fifth, the potential significance of this discovery could hardly be more significant. If, in fact, this rock really is intelligently designed, it would be, without any real debate, the most significant archaeological discovery in human history. We would have disputable evidence that some form of civilization lived on Mars or that some other alien civilization visited there and created this face.

So, all of the pieces come together here. I can’t imagine that anyone could construct, even in their imagination, a better opportunity for ID advocates to show the value of their hypotheses.

With such a significant opportunity presented to them, surely a number of papers were published in the ID literature on this subject.

Right?

Alas! No ID advocates seemed to pay any attention whatsoever to the “Face on Mars”. The Discovery Institute, for example, has no articles at all about “Cydonia” – the location of the “Face”.

What can we conclude from this?

It’s simple. ID really is religious and ID really has no intellectual, scientific or mathematical validity.

Sorry, ID advocates.

More Evidence that ID is NOT scientific

The post below that I am responding to is from a confirmed advocate of Intelligent Design. In fact he is SUCH a strong advocate of ID that he basically considers it to be inerrant. He’s never questioned a single claim ever made by any members of the Discovery Institute.

> In brief (and in the words of design theorist Stephen C.

> Meyer), "the theory of intelligent design holds that there

> are telltale features of living systems and the universe

> that are best explained by an intelligent cause - that is,

> by the conscious choice of an intelligent agent - rather

> than by an undirected process."


> With respect to the biological world, the science of

> intelligent design is committed to the following

> propositions (elucidated by design theorist William Dembski

> in "The Design Revolution" and paraphrased here by me):

Here we begin a list of things that supposedly show that ID is both true and scientific.
It is, in fact, neither.
One thing that we need to look at is how specific the claims of ID advocates are. One of the requirements of a truly scientific hypothesis is that it must be specific. If it is not specific, then it is not really testable.
I’ve had creationists tell me that God must have created nature because much of it is so “beautiful”.
But what does that even mean? How do you specifically and objectively define “beauty”? So clearly that is a non-scientific argument. (As a matter of fact, we probably evolved to develop a sense of beauty based on how the natural world looks. Regardless of how flowers looked, we would probably consider them to be beautiful because that’s how they look and we’ve grown accustomed to that look.)
The examples given below include many that strongly demonstrate how this requirement is not followed.
Evolution makes MANY very specific claims. An obvious example is the one that has come close to being a cliché:
Evolution would be falsified if a mammalian fossil was found in pre-Cambrian rock.
Note how specific that is, both in the type of fossil as well as in the age of the rock.
ID can't come close to matching any such thing. That's how we know that it is CERTAINLY not science and almost certainly untrue. (ID cannot be falsified.)
Also, of course, ID is competing against Darwinian evolution. So if ID is making some sort of claim or prediction, that claim must be something different from what Darwinian evolution would claim or predict. Otherwise there is no reason to discard evolutionary hypotheses in order to adopt ID.
Finally, a scientific hypothesis must make some claim about what we will find (or can guarantee something that we won’t find) in the future. If all it does is look at evidence retroactively then it is not science. Our understanding of cosmology allows us to understand what caused eclipses in the past. But it also predicts future eclipses. Similarly evolution looks at things that happened in the past, but then it applies its theories to that evidence and makes specific predictions about the future. ID can’t do that.
> 1) Specified complexity is a reliable indicator of

> intelligent design. (Note: Design theorists develop the

> concept of specified complexity in several ways, such as

> complex specified information, irreducible complexity,

> functional complexity, etc.)
Ironically, lack of specificity noted.
How "complex" does it have to be?
How "specified" does it have to be?
An ID advocate would point out that many words have been written describing “specified complexity”. But those many words don’t really apply. William Dembski has written many of them and he specifies in his “Explanatory Filter” that if an event occurs with a probability of less than 10-150 power then it is necessarily the result of design. The problem is that none of those calculations seem to apply when a specific genetic feature is found. No one ever seems to calculate the specific odds of that feature evolving or not. They simply point to it and insist that it must be the result of Intelligent Design.
Can anyone identify some specific species or family of animals that would exhibit this characteristic? Can someone say, for example, that some genetic feature will be found to be “irreducibly complex” before it is studied?
Of course not.
What specific genetic characteristic will exhibit this feature?
No ID advocate can say.
Darwinian evolution can make very specific predictions. Darwinian evolution didn't specifically predict DNA. But once DNA was discovered and sequenced, evolution could make very specific predictions about what will be found in specific samples of DNA in the future. Example: No primate will have a working GULO gene. If we find additional specimens of the so-called 'Hobbit' (Homo floresiensis) on islands in SE Asia and are able to sequence their DNA, as was done for Neanderthals, evolution says with certainty that it will not have a working GULO gene.
That's the sort of specific claim – involving a specific gene in a specific type of organism - which evolution can make. Clearly ID falls far short of making any such specific prediction. That's one of the many reasons why ID is totally useless.
Effectively this "prediction" [cough, cough] can be summarized like this:
In the future ID advocates will continue to use the God-of-the-Gaps argument.
To that extent, the prediction is guaranteed to come true.
Putting it another way, all this is saying in essence is that all living things will have intricate DNA that "does stuff". Genes "do stuff". In that sense this is also something that Darwinian evolution would predict.
**IF** some organism had a very non-intricate genome (say a few thousand base-pairs) that would falsify Darwinian evolution.
So Darwinian evolution also predicts that living things would have intricate DNA with genes.
Note that there is even reasonable to expect an Intelligent Designer would create genomes lacking intricacy. Often the most elegant designs are the simplest ones. A procedure in a computer program taking, say, three lines is often considered to be a "better" design than one that takes, say, ten lines. So there is no reason for intricacy to be a necessary consequence of Intelligent Design. Obviously this is a feature of living things that ID advocates are trying to embrace that doesn’t really support their claims.
Oh-for-one.
> 2) Many biological systems and subsystems exhibit

> specified complexity.
Vague, and ironically "unspecified" assertion noted.
How "specified" is it?
How much "complexity" is needed?
“Complexity” (as synonymous with “intricacy) is not a necessary sign of Intelligent Design. If you compare a telephone pole to a typical oak tree, the oak tree is many orders of magnitude more intricate. But it is the telephone pole that is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-two.
> 3) Undirected material mechanisms do not suffice to

> explain specified complexity in the biological world.
TRUE!
Surprised?
But Darwinian evolution is FAR from "undirected". It has a very powerful directional force called "natural selection". ID advocates should learn something about it. A Victorian gentleman named Charles Darwin wrote a few books about that subject. Before Darwin people made the very same argument that is being made here. After Darwin those same people recognized the existence of such a "directed" force – natural selection.
So this is also a prediction made by Darwinian evolution. So it doesn't count as an argument in favor of ID.
Oh-for-three.
> 4) Intelligent design is the best explanation for

> biological systems and subsystems exhibiting specified

> complexity. (Note that ID doesn't concern itself with

> speciation, which is the central concern of Darwinian

> evolutionary theory.)
Wrong and wrong.
Intelligent design actually explains exactly NOTHING in the natural world. That's true of any "God of the Gaps" type of argument - which is all that ID is. Secondly, even the phrase "specified complexity" is totally meaningless because it is inconsistent to the point of being contradictory.
Oh-for-four.
> To flesh out those propositions and give them

> scientific rigor, ID theorists use these tools:

> probability theory, recursion theory, stochastic

> process theory, information theory, bioinformatics,

> biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology,

> microbiology, genetics, computer science,

> paleontology, Dembski's explanatory filter, abductive

> and inductive reasoning, and philosophy of science

> (to name only the tools that readily come to mind).
Wow. That's a LONG list.
Strange indeed that NONE of it supports ID and ALL of it supports biological evolution instead. Most obviously the “Philosophy of Science” doesn’t support ID! That philosophy says that scientific hypotheses must make specific predictions that can imply tests that could potentially falsify them. As we see here, there are no such specific predictions and, therefore, no such tests.
I don't see here a single example of how any of those things support ID in any way that evolutionary theories aren't also supported.
Oh-for-five.
> ID also makes a number of testable predictions, such as:
> 1) Natural structures will be found that contain many

> parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a

> specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
Define "many". Is that ten? Is it 100? How about 1000?
Define "intricate". Exactly how many components are needed to meet this claim?
Define "specific".
Obviously this is complete non-scientific nonsense. There isn't a single word here that has, very ironically, any "specificity". Anything so vaguely defined can be matched by anything in nature.
We KNOW that "specified complexity" is intellectual and scientific nonsense. We also KNOW that "intricacy" says absolutely NOTHING about whether or not something is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-six.
> 2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information

> will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without

> similar precursors.
Define "large".
Define "novel".
Define "information".
Also note that this claim doesn't demonstrate why this is necessarily a prediction of ID. Humans are intelligent designers. Their designs often change gradually over time. Look at a series of pictures of the Chevrolet Corvette for each model year from its inception until now. Automobiles are obviously intelligently designed. Yet these designs change gradually over time. So in what possible way are sudden design changes a necessary requirement of ID?
In fact, just about everything that humans have designed has changed gradually over time. Computer designs have changed gradually over time. Airplane designs have changed gradually over time. Even the human design of things like golf clubs has changed gradually over time. Gradual change over time is a much more common sign of intelligent design than not, at least if we look at humans designs.
At best, what we are talking about here are the imperfections in the fossil record and not evidence for or against ID or evolution. Clearly this is just another very obvious example of the "God-of-the-Gaps" argument - which is the sum total of ALL ID theories.
Oh-for-seven.
> 3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and

> other functional parts will be re-used in different and

> unrelated organisms.

Define "routinely".  Should we see it 90% of the time?  How about 50%?
Define "convergence". How closely do two genetic traits in two different organisms have to be in order to make them "convergent"?
Moreover, the natural world consists of MANY examples of places where such convergence would make complete sense to an "intelligent designer" but, instead, NO such convergence exists.
Using the example I often point to: fish and cephalopods (squids and octopi) have different eye "designs". Yet they live in precisely the same environment. This would seem to be a PERFECT opportunity for routine "convergence".
Right?
Alas. Fish have the same eye design as all other vertebrates. Cephalopods (squids and octopi) have a different eye design.
This would seem to represent a perfect opportunity for ID to make a specific prediction. It could predict that all organisms living in the ocean would have a “convergent” eye design. That would be actually testable and could make ID something like science. But, of course, ID can’t make specific predictions. That’s why ID is totally useless as well as not scientific.
Evolution has an explanation for these non-convergent designs. Eyesight provides very strong adaptive advantages for any organism capable of movement. I don’t even need to explain those advantages. So that once something such as a light-sensitive spot appears on an organism that, at least, allows night to be distinguished from day, it is easy to see how changes improving that spot’s ability to “see” would be strongly influenced by natural selection. But we would expect to see different “designs” if they were the result of different random genetic changes influenced by natural selection. That's precisely what we see.
ID has NO explanation.
Another example of non-convergent “designs” where we might expect them: cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) are comparable in size to sharks and they also move through precisely the same environment – the water in the oceans.
This would appear to be another perfect example of an opportunity for convergence in the design of their tails.
Alas. The tails of cetaceans move vertically. The tails of fish, including sharks, move horizontally. They are different, non-convergent "designs".
Why?
Evolution has an explanation. The tails of cetaceans evolved from the back legs of land animals. If you put your legs together it is obvious that they move more easily up-and-down than they do from side-to-side. That’s true for all mammals. So the proposed evolution of cetaceans from land mammals makes perfect sense in the context of the way that cetacean tails move.
ID, obviously has no explanation.
Convergence --> NO support for ID.
Oh-for-eight.
> 4) Much so-called "junk DNA" will turn out to perform

> valuable functions.
Define "much".
ID advocates can’t do so. This may be the single most egregious example of ID advocates lacking any specificity in their predictions.
If an ID advocate had said "most" instead of "much" then we would have an implied number - 51%. But "much"? What does that mean? How do we measure that? If 1% of “junk DNA” is found to be useful, that would mean that some 30 MILLION base pairs now have a function. You could argue that is “much”. But it would still leave well over 90% without a use. That would argue that our hypothesized 1% isn’t “much” at all. So, ID advocates are simply making a rhetorical argument rather than a scientific one.
Furthermore, how long do we have to wait? What if a century from now we haven't found "much" (whatever that means) functional junk DNA. What will happen? Clearly ID advocates will simply say that we have to wait longer.
Evwn evolutionists predict that SOME "junk DNA" will turn out to perform valuable functions. In fact it is the mainstream scientists - those who accept evolution – that are discovering these functions.
It is NOT the ID "scientists" [cough, cough] doing that sort of research.
So the difference between ID and evolution here is the difference between the definitions of the word "much" and "some".
Oh-for-nine.
> The above predictions are taken from:
> http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/becbd98b35e8e07260d4e8e92784cbb/b/miscdocs/thepositivecasefordesign_v3.pdf

Clearly that web site is nothing but non-scientific nonsense.

Borders

Intelligent Design advocates often say that “intricacy” is one of the indications that something was designed rather than the result of naturalistic processes. For example, one of the leading ID promoters and a fellow at the Discovery Institute, Casey Luskin, said this[1]:

"Intelligent agents think with an 'end goal in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in INTRICATE patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information)..." [emphasis added]

In fact, intricacy says nothing at all about whether or not something is intelligently designed. As a matter of fact, intricacy often indicates a natural process rather than something that is intelligently designed.

I’ve given other examples before, but one interesting example is the shape of the borders of the states of the United States.

One of the most easily recognizable states is California. A silhouette is shown below.

Note that the western border is very intricate while the northern border (and most of the eastern border) is not intricate at all. They are straight lines.

Does that tell us anything?

Of course it does!

The intricate borders are those that interface with natural barriers or borders – an ocean, a river, a stream, etc. The borders that lack intricacy are “intelligently designed”! At some point in history human beings got together and decided on where those borders were to be located. They then drew the border with the least intricate line possible – a straight line.

Of course most of us are very familiar with the map of California and know that the Pacific Ocean is to the west. That naturalistic cause forms the intricate western border of the state. The intricate portion of the south-eastern border is the result of another naturalistic cause – the Colorado River.

In fact this rule-of-thumb seems to apply to all borders, including international borders. The border between the Western United States and Western Canada is a straight, horizontal line lacking any intricacy. Obviously that portion of the border was “Intelligently Designed”. In contrast the border between the Eastern United States and Eastern Canada is very intricate. Obviously that border is the result of naturalistic forces – the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.

So as a general rule, when looking at international and state borders, we see:

1. Where it is intricate, it is the result of natural forces.
2. Where it lacks intricacy, it is the result of “Intelligent Design”.

There are many other similar examples.

Of course Intelligent Designers DO create complex things as well. Super-computers and the Space Shuttle are obvious examples.

Therefore, the only rational conclusion is that the amount of intricacy in something has nothing whatsoever to do with determining whether or not it is Intelligently Designed.

---

[1] http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=986, referenced on May 25, 2010