Boston Globe Letter to the Editor Regarding Intelligent Design

The Boston Globe - Intelligent design's doubt: Is evolution the full story?

To the Editor:

In Sunday’s article “Intelligent design’s doubt: Is evolution the full story?” the writer states that “even if it were accepted that evolution had been assisted by some designer, intelligent design cannot say who or what the designer is.” This statement is misleading on its face and is used by intelligent design advocates to attempt to get around the barriers traditional creation stories have had. It is true that it does not say whether the designer is God, Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, or Queztalcoatl, and so does not endorse any specific religion. It may not say who, exactly, the designer is; but when you carry intelligent design out to its logical conclusion, it does declare that some supernatural intelligence exists. One might argue that maybe the designers were aliens; but then how did the aliens become complex enough to have intelligence and manipulate our evolution? No, the only possible designer is some form of God.

Intelligent design basically says using mathematics what creationists have always been saying; specifically, that everything works too perfectly and is too complex to have not been designed. However, there is much evidence that things don’t work all that perfectly; they just work, period. And if things were so perfectly designed, there shouldn’t be any evidence, at all, that the components of these ‘perfect’ mechanisms had any other function in the past. If all life is so perfectly designed, why are we humans imperfect in so many ways?

We must remember that even the simplest bacterium we study today has been evolving for around 3.5 billion years. When animal-like cells developed from bacteria, bacteria had already been around and evolved for 1 billion years. When multicellular organisms first appeared, the animal-like cells had around 1.5 billion years to evolve and diversify prior. In contrast, human civilization has only been around for the last 30,000 years, 0.0008% of the total time life has existed. Science has only been around for maybe the last 300 years, 0.000008% of the total time life has existed. Given the very fast reproductive cycle of single-cell organisms, it’s entirely possible that seemingly irreducibly complex structures could have developed in those inconceivably long periods of time.

At worst, intelligent design would halt research into other ideas of the origins of life; as intelligent design, like all creationist theories, is not falsifiable. At best, intelligent design would have science taught and researched as normal, with the caveat that some kind of God exists. At worst, it interferes with science. At best, it inserts religion into science classes. When it comes down to it, intelligent design is no better or worse than other creationist theories and, like them, it has no valid place in our research labs or our science curriculum.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Bauer

The Heavens Are Shifting

Major news in space this week. We now have a 10th planet, and a lake of water ice has been found in a crater on Mars. Just look to the left! Incredible sight, isn't it? Water does exist on Mars, and that means it's very likely that we might find evidence of old life, or possibly even life living deeper in the soil. (story)

And yes, we do have a 10th planet too! 2003UB313 is it's current name, although a more pronouncable name is being considered. I'll update this when it is named. The body is at least the size of Pluto, though it has a very eccentric orbit at a high angle to the orbital plane of our solar system. It, along with Pluto, are thought to be objects from the Kuiper Belt, which is a sphere of icy, rocky objects at the outer edge of our solar system. Of course, this also calls into question whether objects the size of Pluto and this new object should actually be considered planets. But either way, it's pretty cool, and sobering, to know that there are still things in our own solar system we don't know about yet.

Update: As a point of interest, a few days before, there was an object 70% the size of Pluto found. Many months ago an object 50% the size of Pluto was also found, named Sedna by its discoverers. Wrote Shakespeare: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Update 2: I've been recuse in forgetting to mention that there is much consternation about the status of Pluto and objects similar in size to Pluto, and whethe they should be considered actual 'plantets'. I must say I'm on the side of considering objects like Pluto to not be planets. However, if we are going to consider Pluto a planet simply because it's always been considered as such, then it must be argued that objects bigger than Pluto must be considered planets as well. However, it's also predicted be some that Mars-size objects are lurking out there as well. Now, I'm not sure how easy it is for bodies bigger than Mercury to be knocked into orbits outside of the orbital plane, but I think I good operational definition is to say that planets are bodies large enough to become spherical due to gravity and whose orbits focus around a star and lie in the same plane. Of course, I could be wrong, but given our model of planet formation, it is likely that most planets will originate in the same plane.

It's the stem cells. I hear their cries.

If you haven't read it already, check out this Doonesbury comic from last Sunday.

Stem cells hold much promise for many treatments for debilitating diseases, and our country is falling behind in stem cell research. Even if other kinds of stem cells which "don't involve the destruction of an embryo" might be possible, it is ludicrous to categorically rule out stem cell research before it is actually known what is possible.

So many Congressmen who know virtually nothing about a topic think they can talk for hours about morality and ethics and what's good for people. How hypocritical can these people get? "I respect life," they say, " and we must build a culture of life!" Of course by that they mean "We must end abortion! We must protect the life of embryos!" Yet these same people seem to have no qualms with throwing away the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of non-Americans in a war we've been duped into and which has subsequently been bungled so badly. What about their lives? Shouldn't a "culture of life" also mean a "culture of peace"?

There was absolutely no reason we had to go into Iraq when we did. Iraq had little to no connection with al Qaida, unlike Afghanistan, or with 9/11, much less than, say, Saudi Arabia. And we know that Iraq wasn't necessary and was pushed for no other reason than to get rid of Saddam, even though he posed no real threat to us or almost anyone, from leaked documents such as the Downing Street Memo, among other things. Explore that website to find out what it's all about, and tell me you see nothing wrong with it, especially with the changing rhetoric the administration was using. Going to war with Iraq has resulted in a damaged economy at home, instability in the Middle East, and a new training ground and more reasons extremist leaders can give to gain converts to terrorists organizations. All the money we're now spending in Iraq could be going to many better pursuits.



But speaking of abortion, anyone who considers themselves "pro-life" must realize that a full-out ban of abortion will not work. All such a thing would achieve is to push desperate women to illegal clinics or to attempt to perform abortion themselves. This would lead to a very dangerous situation for these women, and for pro-lifers to be taken seriously, they must want to protect these women at least as much as their fetuses.

The goal of pro-lifers should be to reduce the number of abortions, and any pro-choice supporter should recognize this as a noble and ideal goal. To do this, however, not only should options such as adoption be promoted, birth control must be promoted as well. Unfortunately, many pro-lifers also fall on the side of abstinence-only education, which, it is shown, doesn't work effectively enough to protect people when they finally do have sex, even though it is effective in delaying a person's first time. This is why comprehensive sex-ed, emphasizing abstinence but including birth control, is a much better idea. But many pro-lifers basically want to force abstinence on people and then want to punish them for having sex by forcing them to give birth. This is a sad worldview, and it won't help pro-lifers achieve their goal of reducing the number of abortions.

And again, I'll express my believe that that's a goal my fellow pro-choicers should aim for as well. We must make abortion a rare last-choice procedure, and to cultivate that as a common view in our society, promoting birth control and informing about adoption. It should be the woman's choice, but we need to decrease the chances that a woman should have to make that choice, and to let her know, without pushing one or the other, of other choices she has.