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Intelligent design really isn't so smart
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Dr. Tom Peterson
Guest Commentary
May 9, 2008
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If it's true that home schooled children are derided, as Mr. Mike Martin claims in his April 27 column, "Question 'fact,' face ridicule," his own words illustrate why. His ignorance of science and misstatement of well established scientific principles are appalling.
I am a committed Christian, and find no conflict whatsoever between my faith and my intellect, which recognizes that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution (meaning descent with modification from common ancestors). I'm not sure what "Darwinism" means, except that it's supposed to be an insult. Darwin's contribution was to provide a plausible mechanism, natural selection, and to amass strong evidence for the mutability of species.
As a surgeon, it seems to me that if he claims that various biological mechanisms are "intelligently designed", then it is incumbent on him to explain all the examples of BAD design. Like the frequency of cephalo-pelvic disproportion, in which a baby's head is too large to fit through the birth canal, resulting in the death of both mother and child in the absence of advanced medical care. Or the problems we have with wisdom teeth, low backs and sinuses.
Why do people (along with our primate relatives) have the genes for manufacturing vitamin C, but in an inactivated form, so that when we began to build ships and explore the world, thousands paid the price in death by scurvy. For that matter, why do anacondas have limb buds? Why do many sperm whales have a vestigial pelvis and often leg bones? All of these make sense in the context of an evolutionary history, but not in terms of intelligent design by a designer of even modest competence and originality. (That's not an indictment of God; it's a suggestion that maybe God DIDN'T design every detail. The insult is by those who would impute this bad design to God.)
Martin ridicules radiometric dating, trotting out some of the same tired old objections answered by science 50 years ago. He suggests that radioactive decay rates, for example, may not really be constant. As a Christian, I am willing to stipulate that God could have changed these to suit his purpose.
If there's no way to test this bizarre claim, it's not science. He also claims that we have to "assume" that there's no daughter isotope present in the original mineral. Actually, the crystals that incorporate potassium-40 don't incorporate the inert gas argon-40. No assumption, just chemistry.
Scientists are indeed skeptical and conservative, holding onto an old paradigm until a new and better one proves its worth. Often there is resistance, even in recent times. Alfred Wegener, who proposed continental drift; Barbara McClintock, discoverer of introns in genes; and Walter Alvarez, proposed the asteroid impact for the end Cretaceous extinction, all faced uphill battles and admittedly unfair criticism. They went out and did the hard science to prove their case, and were ultimately vindicated. Sadly, Wegener died in 1930, 30 years before the recognition of his genius. If intelligent design is legitimate science, why do its proponents seek to prove their case by legal and political paths, rather than actually doing the science?
While Mr. Martin may be willing to throw out most of geology, astronomy, genetics, physics and medicine, and all of biology; I, for one, am not. The God I know is one who creates universes governed by His natural law with a thought, not a pet God limited by anyone's vestigial imagination.
Dr. Tom Peterson is a Greeley surgeon and has B.S. degrees in mathematics and biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.A. in biology from the University of Colorado (Boulder) and an M.D. from the University of Colorado (Denver).
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