One scientist's take on Intelligent Design arguments

I may have gotten off to a bad foot with DarkSyde. That tends to happen when you call people stupid (living up to my pseudonym yesterday, I guess). I think there's an important point here, so I'll try again (hopefully more persuasive and less snide). To preface this post, yes, I'm a scientist and work with DNA everyday, no, I'm not an evolutionary biologist, who would presumably be an expert on ID issues.

My issue with Intelligent Design theorists (henceforth IDers) is not their underlying claim that some superior being designed life. I encourage people to believe what they will there, and don't have a horse in that race. What concerns me abut IDers is their pet theory requires them to attempt to refute scientifically characterized phenomena with scientific misrepresentations. It bothers me that they try to discredit valid results obtained by the scientific method with philosphical hand-waving arguments devoid of scientific merit. The process and methodolgy of their argument is scientifically unsound, and worse: if such arguments are permitted to count as science without following the scientific method, then all science suffers a loss of credibility. Already we're at the point where people latch onto any excuse to replace scientific judgements with what they want to believe (try this one). Science needs to stick to its objective and pre-defined standards.

The particular claim in question yesterday, that mutations cannot add function is a difficult hypothesis to prove scientifically (difficult to show there is no mutation that adds functionality). However it is easy to disprove (one must only find a single mutation that adds functionality). And we've disproved it, repeatedly. Not in a hypothetical maner, but in concrete empirical reality. That's proof. If someone argues that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, I don't argue back that the moon cannot be made of cheese because it would have been eaten by space hamptsers, I march the person down to the Smithsonian and show them the rocks we lifted off the moon. If someone argues that genetic information cannot be added through mutation and selection, I march them down to a lab that has created novel proteins and explain how they did it through a mutation and selection process called "directed evolution". Concrete scentific evidence.

What I wouldn't do, is reduce the debate to a thought-experiment. Because that's not how you find scientific reality. Also that reduction implicitly denigrates the scientific merit of actual experiments.

My objection to ID is not that their premise is wrong. It's that none of their claims are scientifically proven, some of their claims are scientifically disproven, their methods are not scientifically valid, and frankly most IDers don't have the background to truly comprehend what they're discussing. Viral integration, homologous recombination, alternate splicing, and reintegration of pseudogenes all add genetic information where none was before. Unfortunately the majority of scientists aren't interested in explaining these phenomenon to the ID crowd (beacuase they're too occupied to argue with the uninformed).

So my question to those who would argue against ID talking points, is if you're going to provide a counter-example, then why not illustrate how we've already accomplished that which IDers claim is impossible? Wouldn't that be better than conceeding how much we supposedly don't know and participating in a pseudo-science defense that itself amounts to a bastardization of scientific methods?

I'll agree with DarkSyde's point that scientific validity is not always enough to persuade the courts or society. That's why Galileo died in prison and witches were burned at the stake. But unlike popular societal beliefs, scientific facts are based on natural laws and tend to stand the test of time. That's why Galileo ultimately got a Papal pardon and the garden variety heretic did not. So maybe scientific fact is insufficient in the political battle being waged, but when science is already on your side there's no excuse to actively diminish it in the course of your argument. I would hope we could at least agree on that.