Proper Scientific Debate

Let's have a proper scientific debate

Intelligent design evokes strong responses. Time for cool investigation, writes Barney Zwartz.

Opponents of intelligent design theories fear the evolution debate has been hijacked by the fundamentalists. I fear they are right, but it's scientistic (blind faith in science) fundamentalists, not religious.

Intelligent design theorists say evolution is largely demonstrable but is not the result of mere chance. The traditional account of a steady but gradual development, they say, is at odds with the incredible complexity of even the simplest cell, whose structures are interdependent and could not develop without each other.

Intelligent design theorists also point to the "anthropic principle", the recognition in the past 30 years that all the seemingly arbitrary constants in physics have one strange thing in common — they are precisely the values needed for the universe to produce life.

The concept of intelligent design was developed by non-Christian scientists such as molecular biologist Michael Behe, not because of the presuppositions of faith but because science took them there, through difficulties in making the facts fit the theory. (This, after all, is how scientific progress is supposed to happen.)

The trouble is that evolution is an absolute article of faith with some scientists, at least as deep-rooted as God is with creationists. They believe science has or will have the answer to everything, and no other discourse is needed.

cont @ The Age.com