Ab Abu Abul Evolution

Those who thought that the acceptance of Darwinian evolution in the West put an end once and for all to the belief of scientists in the biblical creation story are in for a disappointment. The conservative right in the USA has developed a new weapon - the theory of intelligent design - to fight those who believe that man descended from monkeys

Adi Elia, Galileo

Photo courtesy of Freedom website

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Those who thought that the acceptance of Darwinian evolution in the West put an end once and for all to the belief of scientists in the biblical creation story are in for a disappointment. The conservative right in the USA has developed a new weapon - the theory of intelligent design - to fight those who believe that man descended from monkeys

What will future generations think of the biblical version of the story of the creation of the world? Will they treat it as an anecdote from ancient times and teach it in religion and heritage classes, or is there a chance that it will return to biology classes, from which it was shamefully expelled when Darwin's theory of evolution was accepted as a scientific convention in the West? Those who percolate from the second option may have reason to be worried. In recent years, the conservative right in the US has been perfecting a new weapon, which will be used in the fight for the world view of all of our children. And not just any weapon, but one that claims to deflect the endless debate about its existence (or non-existence)
of the Creator, from the theological stripes to the scientific stripes. ,

It is rather surprising to discover that precisely in the USA, which advocates the separation of religion from the state, the Supreme Court banned the study of the "Theory of Creation" as part of science lessons only in 1986. The essence of this Torah can be learned from the words of Judge William Overton in '82, When he forced the state of Arkansas to remove her from the curriculum in its public schools. "Creationists do not advocate collecting data and weighing it against conflicting scientific data. Instead, they interpret the book of Genesis literally, and try to find scientific support for it." ,
Overton stated in his ruling that "creation science" is not science but religion, and won applause from the scientific community. Paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, for example, wrote in his book "Bully for Brontosaurus" that "this is the best legal document ever written on this issue."
Although the creationists burned their chance to be taken seriously in the legal system and certainly in the scientific one, in some countries in the USA they are still in the picture. In '99 they succeeded in removing the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution from the Kansas curriculum, a decision that was reversed by the state board of education only about a year ago. But something must be done in order not to abandon the territory to those who believe that man is mercifully descended from the ape, that's why a new invention was born: ‏intelligent‎
design theory (IDT) which holds that it is possible to offer scientific proofs for the existence of God.
Until recently, the boundary between the story of creation and science was clear:
The believers rejected the theory of evolution without relying on the findings of research, because if it is written in the Old Testament that the world is 5763 years old, and the Bible was written by the heroic hands, who are we to doubt?

But the theory of intelligent design has a seductive appeal, at least in the eyes of some people. In some countries in the USA, where the conservative right has a majority, this Torah has been gaining momentum since it was first published in the early 90s. ,

Randomness or intelligent creation?

Michael Behe, a biochemist who spent four years researching DNA in government institutions in the US, is considered the strongest scientific trump card of the Torah supporters. Baha is a devout Catholic but never uses religious rhetoric when making his arguments. Here's a taster: suppose a certain person dies. Was his death bad luck, an accident, or the inevitable result of natural circumstances, such as a terminal illness? And maybe murdered? If we cannot plausibly explain his death as an accident or as a result of natural circumstances, we must consider the possibility that he was killed on purpose. ,
Similarly, Baha explains, when we see a complicated pattern in nature, which cannot be formed randomly or as a result of the laws of nature known to us, we can assume that it was created deliberately by an intelligent agent. If we know that the phenomenon is not man-made or animal-made, we can see it as the result of the work of a creator with superpowers. ,
Baha, who attacks the theory of evolution head-on in his book "Darwin's Black Box" ('96), claims that it does not explain in an acceptable way systems that are characterized by the two basic concepts of evolutionary theory: "irreducible complexity" and specific complexity". The first concept refers to systems that include many parts, which work in combination in such a way that the destruction of one of them will cause the mechanism to stop working. For example, a mousetrap. A simple trap has at least five parts: a plate, a spring, a hammer, a hook and a handle, arranged in a certain way. If one part is missing or appears in the wrong order, the mechanism will not function as a mouse trap. We know that the trap was not created by chance or by the forces of nature, but was designed by humans with the intention of catching mice. ,
According to Beha, when we encounter systems of this type in nature, which also have "specific complexity", we have no choice but to assume that an intelligent creator is behind them. And what is "specific complexity"? William Dembski, a doctor of mathematics and philosophy from the TAT supporters, explains: If we see some letters scattered on a table in this order - from to Yavid Sheltoy - it will be both statistically improbable and not specific. On the other hand, if we see the word "this", it will be specific, that is, a word in the Hebrew language, but statistically the probability of a two-letter Hebrew word is not negligible. "In none of these cases do we have to assume intelligent planning," says Dembski, "but if we see the letters in the next order - David as a bean - we can assume that such planning was carried out, because this result is both specific and of low statistical probability. Therefore it can be assumed that an intelligent creature arranged the letters. According to Dembski, we make such assumptions every day, when we conclude that the reason something happened is because it had a planner. If the same creator is the God spoken of in the Bible, the TAT people admit, this is already a metaphysical or theological question. ,
If you have noticed the fact that the examples given so far are not from the field of biology, it is no accident. When they are asked to provide scientific findings, the scientists retreat to legal-style quibbles and extract evidence that Darwin's theory also has flaws. ,

Can Chukomoko be green?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of Bertrand Russell prevailed in the Western scientific community, according to which questions such as whether God (or any intelligent creator) exists, cannot be tested by a scientific experiment that will confirm or disprove them, and therefore they are meaningless just like the question whether And Komoko can be green.
Contrary to this view, which represents the arrogance of the scientific-secular mind of its time, the philosopher Karl Popper advocated pluralism and settled the question of how a religious person could be a scientist (Darwin, for example, was an Anglican Christian who in his youth intended to become a priest). Popper claimed that an experiment cannot confirm a scientific theory but only to disprove it, therefore any model or theory will be considered scientific only if it is disprovable, and it makes sense to hold on to it as long as it has not been disproved by any experiment. For example, if we discover that the boiling temperature of water is 100 degrees Celsius, we can see this discovery as a scientific fact. But if it suddenly turns out that the boiling temperature is different in the Himalayas or in the Dead Sea, we will need a model that can explain the results of these experiments. According to this model, the boiling temperature of water at sea level would still be 100 degrees. If we do another experiment and find that the water boils at a different temperature in the sealed vessel, we will have to expand the model once more, and so on. Claims such as "an intelligent creator exists", or even "nature has laws", may be true, but their discussion is not a scientific discussion. According to Popper, it is certainly possible to say a sentence like "the boiling temperature of water in an open vessel at sea level is 100 degrees because God decided so". The first part of the sentence is scientific. The second part is not, but may still be true. ,
But intelligent design theorists are not satisfied with Popper's pluralism. They want to occupy their place precisely in Russell's kingdom of secular science. Dembski, Beha and their comrades in the struggle do not want to fail where the creationists failed. They repeatedly claim that they have scientific proof and that they do not rely on biblical doctrine.
"What is praised as the victory of science is actually the victory of censorship
and the discrimination based on a worldview", announced the heads of the "Discovery" institute from Seattle, which is defined as the main think tank of the TAT, after the Kansas ruling. "This is not what science and what America is supposed to be." Now they are trying to hang on to another US Supreme Court ruling, which states that studying competing scientific theories is not unconstitutional. According to them, schools that will not teach the OT simply because it suits certain religious views, will discriminate against them. The fact that the glorious process of creation became something possible
To explain in a purely material way, without spiritual intervention, pours salt on creationists' wounds since Darwin published his book "The Origin of Species" in 1859. At the Discovery Institute, which is run by conservative Republicans, science is seen as a weapon of war against what they call "the immoral materialism of science", which stems from Darwin's teachings. ,
Jonathan Wells (Wells), Dr. of molecular biology from the institute
"Discovery" makes vigorous use of the strategy of promoting science at the expense of Darwinism. In his book "Icons of Evolution" (Regnery, 2000) he attacks loopholes in Darwin's writings and encourages the reader to conclude that since this theory has not been proven to be necessary, the theory of intelligent design is the only logical alternative. Welles's critics - and the scientific world is unable to accommodate them, say that his demands from Darwin's theories are so high that he would never have been able to satisfy himself if he had applied them to the Earth. ,
Even those who remember almost nothing from biology lessons at school have probably not forgotten the examples they used to explain Darwin's theory (for example, the picture of the monkey standing up and turning into a man). Wells claims that each of these examples is a distortion of reality or an outright lie. For example, one of the most cited studies in textbooks deals with the peppered moth and is supposed to demonstrate evolution in action. At the beginning of the 19th century, it became clear in England that this moth, whose white color dotted with black helped it camouflage against birds of prey, became rare in areas where smoke from factories polluted the tree trunks, and a darker moth took its place.
In the 50s, due to the English researcher Henry Bernard Davies Kettlewell
(Kettlewell) followed the success of birds of prey in hunting moths of different colors in the forests of England, and discovered that the dark moth's chances of being preyed on decreased in areas where there was air pollution, and increased in areas where the air was clean and the trunks were light. In the biology books there are photographs of the pepper moth resting on a tree trunk. However, Wells claims that they are fake, and that the pepper moth does not usually rest on tree trunks, but flies at night and clings to the bottom of the upper branches of the tree during the day. Wells says the photographs were produced by scientists attaching a live moth to a tree trunk during the daytime, when it is dormant, or taking a dead moth and attaching it to the trunk. He accuses the authors of the biology textbooks of omitting this information and ignoring the controversy surrounding Kettlewell's research, in order to hide the weaknesses of Darwin's theory. ,
Kettlewell was indeed criticized by colleagues who accused him of artificial research, but to claim that the controversy in his case was hidden is a wild exaggeration. ,
The attempt to simplify the biology books as much as possible did result in the distortion of the evidence for the existence of evolution. But - and here too the weakness of the arguments of Wells and his colleagues is revealed - even if we agree that the evidence is much more complicated than what was presented in the textbooks, it still does not mean that there is no good evidence. Even the researchers who criticized Kettlewell checked his findings and found that they were correct. ,
And let's say the photos were fabricated. So what
One of the main problems in Darwin's theory, for which he was attacked several times
Many, is the assumption that by chance mutation some species gained a survival advantage. The weakness in the claim is that the mutations in nature have such small effects that it is not clear if they are indeed sufficient to bring about a significant change in survival. Most of the traits that have evolved are an accumulation of mutations, not a single sharp jump. How does it happen that these traits are still inherited, if they do not give significant priority? This is a question that Darwinists find it difficult to answer

What is a miracle?

As mentioned, the proponents of the TAT try not to get their hands dirty with empirical science of the good old kind, and they have good reason. What experiment can they already propose to prove that there is something behind mechanisms of specific complexity
Force majeure? ,
If God created Adam and Eve from the earth, it indeed deserves to be called a miracle. But wouldn't it be equally a miracle if God created the genetic code that controls the development of humans and all other creatures, or created a world whose laws dictate slow development with the help of mutations? The theory of intelligent design does lead to more questions than answers. If evolution does not happen by itself, does the same creator personally intervene every time a new biological species needs to be created? Is its presence required to create any "system of specific irreducible complexity" that we know in nature? If so, when, where and how exactly does it happen? Did the Creator create the first man as an adult for everything (including the navel)? The TAT officials refuse to answer such questions. It is much easier for them to attack Darwin than to defend themselves. ,

Wells, for example, mentions the supernatural only briefly, but often implies that it is the only alternative, and warns his readers of the materialistic view that Darwin's theory encourages by denying the existence of the spiritual world. "Biology students study materialist philosophy under the guise of scientific theory," he writes. ,
Statistically, the creationists say, the chance that a complex molecule like that of DNA will be created is similar to a transparent chance that someone sitting at a typewriter will type the Bible. Whereas the biologists answer that two conditions are required for such a "miracle" to take place: enough time and enough molecules. In terms of two billion years and an unimaginable number of molecules, the chance of the formation of a molecule capable of replicating itself is extremely probable. ,
In order to try to give the theory scientific validity, William Dembsky claims that it is possible to propose an experiment that would disprove it. According to him, if it were possible to prove that biological systems such as bacterial whips, whose specific complexity cannot be reduced, could have been created by a Darwinian process, this would have been a complete contradiction of the theory of intelligent design, if only because one does not look for intelligent reasons if There is evidence in the field for the existence of a natural process. The problem with this argument is that it does not propose an experiment, but rather presents a theory, meaning that the challenge it sets itself is also philosophical and not scientific. ,
Other religious scientists claim that Darwin's theory is not scientific because it is difficult to disprove it through experiment. After all, if we disprove a certain evolutionary process, the Darwinists will always be able to claim that the evolutionary process that actually took place is different from the one that was disproved in the experiment, and it has not yet been discovered. ,
In an article published by Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Halperin, director of the institute
Schlesinger for the study of medicine according to the Torah at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, he describes the evolution of the black cat that passed between the clergy and scientists: "For religious people, the term evolution reminds us of the uncompromising struggles waged by 19th century scientists against the Catholic Church. The scientists who were freed from the yoke of the church at that time fought furiously against every religious belief, as a reaction to the restrictions imposed by the church on scientific thinking. Giordano Bruno's impeachment in 1600, Galileo's inquisition in the 17th century, together with the tradition of his silent muttering 'and yet move, move', became an integral part of the anti-religious myth of scientists 19th century", writes Halperin. "The theory of the origin of species, which uses the laws of evolution, then became an important part of the banner of liberation from the yoke of the church, and it symbolizes in the eyes of many the antithesis to religious belief."

Halperin says that among secularists the word evolution evokes
Similar associations, but from the other direction. "In the eyes of many, the theory of evolution is seen as a scientific substitute for belief in the Creator of the world. Many people, especially those who are far from scientific research and its principles, see it as scientific proof of the absence of divine creation, and of the natural evolution of man from the ape, who evolved from inferior creatures, who evolved from an archaic biological cell, created by chance by physical and chemical events in an ancient age."
According to Halperin, the root of the mistake is the lack of separation between the laws of natural selection and the theory of evolution. "Mixing concepts and the lack of distinction between an assumption or theory and conclusions arising from controlled experiments are widespread phenomena. The time has come to clarify the scientific concepts, and to differentiate between scientifically provable laws of nature, and extrapolative theories lacking scientific proof, which serve as an emotional anchor for staunch atheists." And what are those theories? Certainly not the laws of natural selection, since these "can be observed and proven and are accepted in the world of Judaism". Halperin claims that the theory of natural selection satisfactorily explains the phenomena of changes in traits during generations, but - and this is a big problem - it does not determine anything about the origin of species. ,

And what about politics?

It is clear that the way to the Ministry of Education, in whatever country it is, must go through politics. In Israel, the religious politicians obtained an exemption from Darwin studies for the students of the ultra-orthodox sector, and rabbis like Amnon Yitzchak usually compare the secular culture to the culture of monkeys, because the secularists rely on the theory of evolution. ,
In the US, the Discovery Institute holds conferences for Republican members of Congress and scares them with the Gospels of Job along the lines of "America's morality is threatened by the corrupting materialism of the atheism of modern scientific naturalism, and the theory of intelligent design is the only way to win the cultural war on America." ,
At one of the conferences, one of the speakers, Nancy Piercy, quoted a poem by
The band "Bloodhound Gang", which goes like this: "You and I, honey, we're just suckers, so let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel." This, she said, is what we can expect if we accept Darwin's theory and do not believe that we are worth more than other animals and that we were created in the image of God. She reminded the audience that the US legal system is anchored in belief in the Creator as the ultimate source of morality. Darwinism, which subverts this approach, is therefore dangerous to morality and the law
Darwin, if he were alive today, would probably sigh and say: again
Accusing me of immorality? Even during his lifetime thinkers used his teachings to draw conclusions about the desired social order. Some based their racist ideas or their class perception on her, and others who believed that she preaches social equality or the correction of the world through revolution and re-education. All of these tried to harness a theory that refers to the biological development of species to their social and moral world view. Herbert Spencer - (the father of social Darwinism, threw natural selection into the social sphere) to justify capitalism, Engels - to justify the socialist revolution, the Nazis - to justify racism, and the members of the upper classes all over the world - to perpetuate their advantage in the education systems.

We turned to the philosopher Yosef Agassi for a brief discussion about the nature of the TAT. Agassi, a physicist and Doctor of Philosophy of Science, was deeply influenced by Popper's teachings. On the other hand, he is also a trainee of Yeshiva Aloma and Merkaz Rabbi, who grew up on the values ​​of the religious Zionist movement.
"The fact that IDT supporters are attacking Darwin just shows how much they are
Ignorant and peoples of the land", Agassi says with a surprising twist: "No one accepts Darwin today, at least not his views. There is no debate about the findings themselves, but the theory is not accepted today in anyone's opinion. Darwin's theory has evolved and developed into much better theories, such as neo-Darwinism and neo-Mendelism." ,

So Darwin is a fasa?
"Good scientists are no one's fool followers. Even those who believe, and rightly so, that Darwin was a great man, do not automatically accept him: he can be wrong, he can change his mind, and he relied only on the findings that had been discovered up to his time. A religious scientist believes in every word written in the Bible, but as a scientist he cannot believe so completely in Darwin's words,
which is just flesh and blood".

And what should be taught in school today?
"On this question I actually support the people of IDT: I think that it is necessary to teach theories competing with Darwin in schools, including their Torah and its early version, creationism. Everything has to be taught. Admiring science beyond a certain limit is anti-scientific".

And where will they learn these Torahs, in the religious classes or in my classes
The biology?
"The point is not in which classes you learn it. I think it is good to start with the Bible, and where it does not provide explanations for the phenomena we know, we should expand to other areas. In the Bible, for example, nothing is written about ecology, so when such a topic is missing, it has to be supplemented from more up-to-date sources, and this is also where Darwin and those who came after him have their place." ,

What do you think about arguments like that of Rabbi Dr. Jacob Halperin, who recognizes evolution but not Darwin's theory of the origin of species?
"I prefer the religious that talks about the Bible than the religious that talks about the origin of the species. In the Talmudic tradition there is a simple rule: when there is a disagreement between religion and science, religion gives up. That is, in the Jewish tradition it is impossible for there to be a conflict between religion and science. After all, this is a matter that began in the Christian world, with Galileo's trial, and was adopted by the Jewish establishment."

Why do IDT people insist so much on entering science classes and not content with the coexistence that Popper's pluralism offered them?
"They cannot take Popper seriously because Popper is against authority, and they just want to decide which authority is the right one - Darwin or the Bible." ,

Scientific editor's note:

God willing, there are confrontations that end in a knockout. Eliezer Ben Yehuda was physically persecuted and today Hebrew is also spoken in the ultra-orthodox communities of Israel. Humans who walked on the moon found fragments of rocks and not a celestial crystal. And the animal world underwent major changes during its existence, species appeared and species became extinct, among them Homo erectus and the Neanderthals.

Mountains of facts, wherever one observes, testify to the change of the animal world, the succession of species. "Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution," claimed Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the most important geneticists of the 20th century, in an article he published in 1973, an article that opened with a quote from a Saudi sheikh who came out against The infidels who claim that the earth rotates on its axis. Not only theories, medical procedures are also based today in one way or another on the claim of evolution of the animal world and man in general. I allow myself to disagree on things that Adi Alia quotes from the mouth of - or brings implicitly in the name - Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Halperin.

The succession of species, evolution, is a settled fact, no less than the fact that the earth rotates on its axis to the chagrin of the Saudi sheikh, from the fact that the heart pumps the blood to the capillaries and from the fact that a human embryo is created by fertilization. On the other hand, the mechanisms that drive evolution are from a scientific point of view a "hot potato", provoking hot and sharp disputes (and extremely fruitful!); But these scientific disputes are all based on the assumption of evolution. ,

Adi Aliya is an editor and journalist
For the series of lectures by Prof. Yoel Rek from the Department of Anatomy at Tel Aviv University, November 2003 - January 2004 - on the Freedom website