I had to give this line one more go to show how completely inane it really is.

It depends, of course, on what one means by “increased genetic information”. There are several different things that might be meant by this; since you didn’t see fit to specify what you meant, I’ll have to guess.

1. Increase of genetic material. Mutations that do this have been directly observed. (Lynch and Conery, “The evolutionary fate and consequences of duplicate genes”, Science 290; Pennisi, “Twinned genes live life in the fast lane”, Science 290; Brown, Todd, and Rosenzweig, “Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment”, Molecular Biology and Evolution 15; Ohta, “Evolution by gene duplication revisited: differentiation of regulatory elements versus proteins”, Genetica 118; Alves, Coelho, and Collares-Pereira, “Evolution in action through hybridisation and polyploidy in an Iberian freshwater fish: a genetic review”, Genetica 111; and Hughes and Friedman, “Parallel evolution by gene duplication in the genomes of two unicellular fungi”, Genome Research 13)

2. Increase of genetic variety within a population. Mutations that do this have been directly observed. (Lenski, “Evolution in experimental populations of bacteria”, Population Genetics of Bacteria, Society for General Microbiology, Symposium 52; Lenski, Rose, Simpson, and Tadler, 1991, “Long-term experimental evolution in Escherichia coli. I. Adaptation and divergence during 2,000 generations”, American Naturalist 138)

3. Brand-new genetic material. Mutations that do this have been directly observed. (Park, Lin, Walsh, “Gain of D-alanyl-D-lactate or D-lactyl-D-alanine synthetase activities in three active-site mutants of the Escherichia coli D-alanyl-D-alanine ligase B”, Biochemistry 35; Knox, Moews, and Frere, “Molecular evolution of bacterial beta-lactam resistance”, Chemistry and Biology 3)

4. Brand-new abilities, genetically created and regulated. Mutations that do this have been directly observed. (Prijambada, Negoro, Yomo, and Urabe, “Emergence of nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO through experimental evolution”, Applied and Environmental Microbiology 61)

These mechanisms are all that is necessary to drive evolution — and we know they happen because we’ve watched them happen.

With that in mind, it’s a little ridiculous to maintain that “mutations cannot increase genetic information” was ever a law of science. If you mean to propose it as a law, you must show what you mean by “increased genetic information”, and show that it doesn’t happen (or, at least, that we’ve never seen it). For your larger point to stand, you must show that your requirement for “increased genetic information” is a process that must occur if evolution is going to give rise to the diversity of species that we witness.

In addition, it might be worth noting the following points:

* Gene duplication followed by point mutation, one of the simplest (and probably most common) ways for new “genetic information” to be created, has been directly observed to do so. Go to PubMed and do a search for “gene duplication”. You’ll be there for a while; as I write this, it produces nearly 14,000 hits.

* Shannon-Weaver information theory predicts that random noise will increase information content. That’s not a trivial thing. Evolution depends on increased content, some of which is eliminated because it is non-adaptive. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to the genome of an organism.

* There are models in many different fields of engineering and technology that require random mutation and a selection process in order to become more adaptive and more complex. Would you like examples?

From an intellectual standpoint, I’ve never seen anything more than a hunch backed up with rationalizations that sound scientific and technical, but which are quickly demonstrated in light of directly-observed phenomena to be flawed and facile.

From an emotional standpoint, it’s much more, of course. There are strong elements of faith tied in; people are given ideas that seem to be consistent with their faith, and that these rationalizations are “real” science. Of course, the only way they can make it look that way is to grossly misrepresent what logic is, what science is, what evolution is, and in some cases, even what truth is. As a crowning touch, many of them tie belief in things like Intelligent Design to be absolutely critical to the faith — claiming that belief in evolution is equivalent to disbelief in Christ or the Bible, for example, and that this is indicative of someone compromised at best and Hell-bound at worst.

For example, Phillip Johnson, the founder and leader of the Intelligent Design movement, equates theistic evolution with atheism because of its acceptance of evolution. (This is really bizarre if you think about it. The belief that there is a God, and that He steered evolution, is somehow the same as the belief that there is no God. But with this “reasoning”, he has condemned most of Christianity. I’m not, strictly speaking, a theistic evolutionist — I agree in some places, disagree in others — but I find the line of thinking reprehensible.)

I can speak first-hand to the problems this sort of teaching engenders. It drives away people within the Church who manage to be exposed to infinitesimal bits of actual fact. It drives away people from outside the Church who happen to know a few facts of their own before hearing these post-hoc rationalizations from a Christian. It gives Christians a bad understanding about how science works, and cripples their ability to think critically when confronted with new ideas. It allows Christians who know enough to know better to rationalize “lying for Jesus”. And so, so much more.

I had a strong desire to be a young-Earth creationist teacher when I was young. My mistake was trying to find out what we really observe, hoping to find new evidences and new arguments; even if one believes the rhetoric completely, one doesn’t have to hear very much before noticing that there’s a cerain amount of repetition of the same ideas. Far from making my confidence in young-Earth creationism stronger and stronger, I found the teachings I had been given and which I believed more and more thoroughly undermined by undeniable fact.

I was one step away from leaving Christianity altogether for many years. I’d have been content to hear one bit of positive evidence in favor of creationism (not just arguments against evolution, which I had come to find that creationism grossly misunderstood anyway) — one argument that did not hinge on a glaring logical fallacy. After all, if it was true what I’d been taught — that without a creation taking place in the way I had been taught, concepts like sin and redemption were meaningless — then it really seemed like Christianity could be nothing more than a self-contained, somewhat self-consistent delusion.

Many Christians I sought counsel from encouraged me to “just believe”; some handed me more flawed arguments, which gave me hope for a few brief moments while I chased them down, and even more despair as they proved to be every bit as shaky as the rest. Maybe I owe these people a debt; maybe they kept me busy, for example, and that kept me from running away when it seemed like there was no other way to maintain intellectual honesty. It wasn’t until I had some deep conversations and Bible study with a very patient physicist, though, that I began to see that it was possible to struggle to understand the facts and one’s faith; it finally crystallized that “just believing” in what you’ve been taught when confronted with facts that seem to contradict it is not a solution, and that some elements of faith are meant to be difficult if one is honestly attempting to progress in one’s pilgrimage. It also gave me a desire to try to keep others I know from having to face the years of aimless solitude I experienced, and to try to explain facts that would keep Christians with a real desire to spread the gospel from alienating others who know better with the flawed arguments I knew so well.

Sorry for the info dump there. I do tend to blather on.

Of course, there are legitimate criticisms of evolutionary theory. But they must be evidence-based criticisms. Countless people devote their entire careers to research and unconvering phenomena that criticize evolution, and these serve to refine our understanding. To say that it’s borne out of some kind of “intellectual scizophrenia” or “put[ting] aside scientific law” is simply ignorant. When researchers challenge whether or not this organism, that trait, or the other appendage could have arisen through evolutionary processes, the thing to do is not to throw up your hands and declare evolution invalid! The thing to do is more research. See what really is going on — gather evidence to determine the real mechanism behind things. Something that seems to contradict our understanding is not the end — it’s the beginning.

Thomas Kuhn, in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, likens theory to a dam. Observations, experiments, and discoveries that are inconsistent with the theory are like water building up and exerting pressure on the dam. The water mounts to a certain, critical point, and the dam gives way, usually prompting the proposal of a new theory. ID advocates are claiming that the dam has burst, when in point of fact, there is no water behind the dam at all.

For example, I mentioned E. coli‘s flagellum. ID advocates continue to mention it as something that couldn’t have arisen gradually. Unfortunately, it’s been explained for a good, long while. The “water” has been drained for years. But rather than trying to redo the research, or dig deeper to see if the claims to have found an evolutionary basis for the flagellum hold water (ha!), they continue to repeat the same old lines as if nothing had happened. Sadly, this is a common pattern: ID poses a difficulty; science answers it; ID advocates stop listening because their ideology doesn’t allow it. (It’s not universal, though. To his credit, Behe has completely abandoned the notion of “Darwin’s Black Box” in light of directly-observable evidence, and even accepts notions like common descent and descent with modification; one has to dig pretty deep to see where Behe and evolution diverge, and his shift in position has even caused Dawkins to characterize him as “a man who has given up”.)

This wouldn’t be so bad in itself if ID didn’t skirt responsibility for not doing the research by putting the case to the public, who for the most part haven’t been following and have no interest in the discussion or the facts surrounding it. They also get a decent amount of mileage out of arguing from incredulity, which goes a long way with the public, rather than presenting legitimate fact. Science, of course, is not run or determined by popular vote.

It also does no good to accuse science of a materialistic mindset. It should be obvious that science is trying to develop an objective understanding of the natural Universe, something that everyone can test. If a purely natural phenomenon were not responsible for what we see, those tests would fail. Abandoning the legitimacy of empirical understanding abandons the unique benefits that a systematic attempt to discover the Universe’s workings can bring us (and has!).

Where it is possible to find empirical understanding, it behooves us to do so; and we don’t know what’s possible until and unless we investigate. The very fact that a solid empirical explanation exists ought to be telling. But Intelligent Design would have us stop examining altogether, assuming we can’t find a rational answer before we even look. Some investigations may justify searching for answers outside the natural realm; but the flagellum, and countless other asked-and-answered “evidences” endlessly repeated by the ID crowd, aren’t among them.

This should present some problems for Intelligent Design to answer. If it can’t answer them, it shouldn’t be attempting to force or coerce an unsuspecting public into embracing its poorly-thought-out stance, and it shouldn’t be trying to place itself on equal footing with honest inquiry. (One especially shouldn’t be trying to tie it into the truth or falsehood of one’s faith.)

Paul: In order for strict materialistic evolution to work—i.e. no God, no how (which is what purely naturalistic science requires by definition)—

Er, no. Strictly speaking, science doesn’t deny God — it’s agnostic about God. It can’t say anything about supernatural stuff unless it affects things in the Universe in a way we can test, so it doesn’t. The distinction is important.

Paul: standard observable laws of science must be conveniently “put aside.”

Or, one would hope, common misconceptions and oversimplifications of scientific principles must be abandoned.

Paul: Old favorites like “life only comes from life,”

To be pedantic, science disagrees with the notion of spontaneous generation — the idea that bacteria, maggots, snakes, and mice can appear fully-formed from nonliving materials like rotting meat or dirty rags. There is no law that says that very primitive life cannot come from increasingly complex organic chemical interactions. (Strictly speaking, spontaneous generation is a form of creationism.)

It’s also the case that where life comes from is not under the purview of evolution. Evolution merely describes what happens to life once it’s here.

Paul: “order does not arise from chaos,”

Which order? Which chaos? Crystals are much more ordered than the materials they are formed from. Snowflakes are much more organized than the jumbly water molecules that make them up. Adults are much more organized than gametes or zygotes. Can you be more specific?

Paul: and “mutations cannot increase genetic information”[2] are not addressed when it comes to Original “science.”

Well, this one isn’t addressed because it’s patently false. Mutations can and do increase genetic information (assuming that by “genetic information” you’re referring to the types and amounts of proteins produced by DNA, as well as their expression in structures). I can give you some directly-observed examples if you like — I have before on this site — but it might be good enough to remember some general principles so that you can refrain from making this mistake again.

First of all, for any given mutation you can name, there is a corresponding mutation that undoes it. If it is possible to “decrease” genetic information, then it is possible to “increase” genetic information.

An easy example of how “increased” genetic information is possible is from gene duplication followed by point mutation. I can give you other ways genetic information is “increased” if you like. I can also give you references to experiments where they have been directly observed.

The idea that “mutations cannot increase genetic information” was never advocated by science (it’s nothing more than a straw man argument); it relies on ill-defined terms like “genetic information”; and it flatly denies what we’ve actually watched happen. It doesn’t help you make your case to repeat misrepresentations.

Paul: These laws are only allowed to come into effect AFTER the evolutionary mechanism (whatever that may be) has been put into action.

Nope. Natural selection, the mechanism that drives evolution, was proposed long before we even knew what genes were, never mind “increased genetic information”.

Paul: Even then they don’t fit with observational science, and this is what ID adherents want to have answered.

Ha! The questions that ID wants answered don’t even match observations in our Universe. They even have to make stuff up — like the “no increased genetic information” “law” — in order to try to give their platform more weight. When they’re not doing that, they’re oversimplifying principles to the point of outright distortion (“order from chaos”, “life from non-life”) so that they don’t even relate to the Universe we life in (never mind address what evolution is about).

Paul: Without a belief in a transcendent, omnipotent, omni-present and omniscient God, irrationality becomes rational. Disorder becomes order.

That’s quite a statement. How do you figure?

Paul: Why should today’s experiment turn out the same results as yesterday’s?

Because there is a way the Universe behaves regardless of what you or I happen to think or believe about it. Science is merely a systematic attempt to figure out what the way it behaves is.

Paul: The only “failure of education” is that evolution has been running unopposed for over 30 years in the public school system in America, and it still hasn’t been able to convince almost half of the population that Genesis is only an enchanting myth for the children on Sunday morning.

The truth or falsehood of a scientific theory is not dependent upon who accepts it. Besides, evolution is not concerned with lowering Genesis to the level of “an enchanting myth”; showing that an interpretation of Genesis is inconsistent with direct observation is not the same thing as attacking Genesis itself. (That’s your argument — that the truth of Genesis depends on the truth of your interpretation of it.)

Paul: But, without a Designer, grace, morals, rights, righteousness and responsibility are irrelevant and absurd.

Not necessarily. When organisms live socially — as humans do — natural selection should favor behavior that allows individuals to get along with one another. Studies have shown that altruism is a benefit to social species; I can give you citations if you like. There are also issues like “kin selection” (keeping the genes of those close to you alive betters the chance that genes like yours will survive).

Basically, though, this boils down to an argument from incredulity. Not knowing an explanation does not mean that no explanation exists.

Paul: They are machinations of a materialistic mind that can’t live with the social consequences of its intellectual dogma. This is the ultimate case of intellectual schizophrenia.

Can ID ever address what science is talking about instead of inventing stances for its philosophical opponents and then knocking them down?

Can ID ever sound like it has any scientific legitimacy without grossly distorting science itself?

Can ID ever provide a testable theory, the bare minimum needed to call itself a science, even after decades of trumpeting itself and the imminent death of evolution?

Will the United States ever adopt the metric system?

Tune in next week!

I am one of those people. I am very uncomfortable with pseudoscience and anti-intellectualism being taught as truth.
“Although its approach is not without its own difficulties, ID’s major strength has been in asking the difficult questions that Darwinists have been willing to ignore for the last 150 years.”

Could you provide examples of some of those ‘difficult’ questions? I would be happy to show you some of the research that may answer some of the questions for you.

“In order for strict materialistic evolution to work—i.e. no God, no how (which is what purely naturalistic science requires by definition)”

This is a common misconception. The basic theories of science do not exclude god so much as they attempt to explain the apparent laws of nature without explicitly referring to a God.

“standard observable laws of science must be conveniently “put aside.”

That’s not true. Be specific and I will explain why.

“Old favorites like “life only comes from life,”
That’s true, but I don’t think you fully understand what it means.
“order does not arise from chaos,”
There is no such rule.
“and “mutations cannot increase genetic information”[2]”

This statement is also untrue, and it doesn’t even make any sense.

“are not addressed when it comes to Original “science.”
These particular “questions” are not addressed because we already know the answers.

“These laws are only allowed to come into effect AFTER the evolutionary mechanism (whatever that may be) has been put into action.”

That’s why we can call it Science. These laws are based on things that we can observe. There is no supernatural agent required for a theory regarding random genetic variation AND natural selection to describe the biodervsity we see today.

“Why should today’s experiment turn out the same results as yesterday’s? There is no rational basis for believing this …”

For the simple reason that it ‘does.’ We can test and observe this. We don’t have to invent a supernatural explanation.

Some are not so bold in their ignorance as Dr. Hauptman and are trying to place the blame elsewhere:
Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth – and humans with it – was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn’t a triumph of faith. It’s a failure of education.
The only “failure of education” is that evolution has been running unopposed for over 30 years in the public school system in America, and it still hasn’t been able to convince almost half of the population that Genesis is only an enchanting myth for the children on Sunday morning. This is a “failure” all right, but it’s their own doing, not the Church’s. The Church has a hard enough time trying to convince couples to honor their marriage vows, much less what to believe about Genesis and creation/evolution. But Klinkenborg is not quite finished exercising his nonsense. He concludes his editorial this way:
The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness —a responsibility—in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.
He’s gonna have his materialism and his religion, too. But, without a Designer, grace, morals, rights, righteousness and responsibility are irrelevant and absurd. They are machinations of a materialistic mind that can’t live with the social consequences of its intellectual dogma. This is the ultimate case of intellectual schizophrenia.

That’s a fair point. ID advocates have been quite careful to avoid explicitly quoting Scripture while attempting to corroborate their cause. However, there can be little doubt that Intelligent Design is motivated by a desire to find a Universe consistent with their understanding of their Creator than attempting to find out the way the Universe really is.

(The entire basis of the movement seems to belie this; its entire message is borne out of looking at the Universe with a desire to prove specific methods of creation — namely, supernatural ones — rather than looking out at the Universe and attempting to find, based on the evidence we see, which methods suggest themselves.)

Design theory is ambiguously defined. Usually, when we talk about finding design, we’re talking about finding out evidence that someone purposely arranged something, but that concept is nowhere in Intelligent Design. Dembski, for example, defined design in terms of what it is not, making the entire idea an argument from incredulity (see above); he never defined what design is, so that we can determine when we have evidence for it. You have to be able to define the parameters of what you’re looking for, or else you’re just waving your hands — and that ain’t science. In order to demonstrate design, there must be some mention of the agent and the purpose in order to lend a testable structure to the idea; not only has that not come from the ID movement, some have said that it’s impossible to do so (No Free Lunch, page 313). This is not design in any sense that science is accustomed to talking about it; and it sure isn’t evidence, since even if it’s true, it demonstrates nothing.

Things that are defined yield results contrary to common sense. For example, a spider web meets the standards of “specified complexity”, so we can conclude that spiders are intelligent. Or, if not the spider, then the spider’s designer, or the spider’s designer’s designer, or someone even higher up the chain. Dembski has tried to back out of this by inventing new terms: “apparent specified complexity” and “actual specified complexity”, and 0only the latter indicates design. But there is no way, in principle, to tell which one a brand-new thing you’re looking at happens to be; and if an explanation is to hold any scientific weight, you must be able to know when you’re looking at an instance of one versus the other. (Imagine if I said that there are emeralds and there are bemeralds, and emeralds are valuable whereas bemeralds are useless, but you can’t tell the difference just by looking or by testing them. Why would you have any reason to think that my ideas hold any descriptive power or scientific weight?)

Intelligent Design wasn’t even intended to be about science anyway. Philip Johnson, the founder and leader of the movement, said that it’s about religion and philosophy, not science. So teach it in school, sure, but not in the science classes.

One can even point out that it’s difficult to separate the movement from a particular religious viewpoint. They may not quote Scripture outright, but you still run into ideas like, “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” (Dembski, “Signs of intelligence: A primer on the discernment iof intelligent design”, Touchstone, Jul/Aug 1999). Many materials are published by InterVarsity Press, which includes in its mission statement, “InterVarsity Press serves those in the university, the church and the world by publishing resources that equip and encourage people to follow Jesus as Savior and Lord in all of life”. I may share a common faith with these people, but I can’t pretend that they’re not trying to figure out how they can get natural phenomena to appear to reflect their interpretation of Scripture, rather than trying to understand the way the Universe really is to try to make sure they’re not getting the wrong idea.

Mike S: The inner workings of cells working like little factories for example.

What, specifically, do you mean by that?

Mike S: It is more likely that these are a result of a brilliant design than they are a product of “blind, purposeless, chance occurrences over time”

How do you assess this probability? What makes you think that natural selection is “purposeless”, or that it is driven by chance?

Mike S: But that’s all I have to say about it.

I hope not! You seem to have some intelligent ideas to share, and we’ve only just gotten started. Would you consider sticking around?