Signature

A little over a year ago philosopher of science Stephen Meyer came out with a book that has completely reoriented the Darwinism/ID debate. The book was titled Signature in the Cell and it presented a massive amount of evidence in favor of the proposition that living cells, even the most primitive, contain massive amounts of information. It further argued that information is not a feature of blind random processes such as those which are believed to have produced the first living things.

Touchstone magazine has an article on Meyer's book which, inter alia, says this:

Signature in the Cell has been the subject of intense controversy, mostly in what is known as the blogosphere, meaning electronic publications on the Internet. In a way, the attacks are only to be expected, because another thing we know from our uniform experience is that Darwinists tend to be bitterly resentful of any thinker who challenges the fundamental theory on which their careers have been built.

In another way, however, it is peculiar that there is such a furious and often ill-informed objection to a learned volume that isn’t even about the theory of biological evolution. The book advances well-reasoned arguments based on solid evidence about a prior problem—the origin of the cell’s information content—concerning which most scientists would concede that they know very little.

The one thing that many of these scientists think they do know for certain is that, however the cell may have originated, the process could only have involved natural (i.e., unintelligent) causes. But this conclusion is not something these scientists know from the evidence. On the contrary, it is something they know—or rather, think they know— regardless of the evidence. For a long time, it has been the rule in evolutionary science that, if the evidence does not support a fully naturalistic theory about both the origin of life and its subsequent development, then there must be something wrong with the evidence rather than with the theory or its underlying philosophy.

This last paragraph shines a light on the way many people think about evolution. They work from a basic theological assumption, i.e. either God doesn't exist or, if He does, He doesn't meddle with the natural world. This, it should be noted, is not a conclusion that science is qualified to render. It's not based on empirical evidence. It's a purely theological assumption about the existence and nature of God.

From that basic conviction, though, it's argued that, since there's no divine intervention into the natural world, however life arose it must have been through exclusively natural processes and any theory that denies this must be wrong because it contradicts the basic conviction. If you sense that this has about it the odor of a circular argument you wouldn't be wrong.

It's ironic that the theory that is everywhere hailed as scientific - naturalistic evolution - is at bottom religious (and circular). Yet this theory, based as it is upon theological assumptions about God, can be taught in public schools but Intelligent Design, which does not require any assumptions about God, cannot. Why is that?

Thanks to Evolution News and Views for the tip.