Let’s talk about the two letters written to the Cigar last week about real science and faith science and the debate about creationism being offered in university curriculum.

First off I’d like to talk about the analogy Babu Ranganathan cited in his letter. It attempts to make evolution and the coming together of molecules to create simple cells analogous to a tornado whipping through an airplane junkyard and creating a 747 jumbo jet.

It is not the inherent behavior of metal parts to spontaneously join with similar or different parts to form complex new arrangements. Yet this is precisely the normal behavior of most chemical elements that constitute the earth, the universe and life itself. The spontaneous formation of millions of complex compounds elements is energetically favored by the second law of thermodynamics.

This analogy does a poor job of creating a parallel with evolution as well because it assumes evolution is one random, immediate event involving thousands of pieces coming together at once. In reality, evolution proceeds via branching through common descent. Offspring are similar to but not exact replicas of their parents. This produces the necessary variation to allow for adaptation to an ever-changing environment.

Mr. Ranganathan also mentions that if cells evolved, would have to all at once. He claims that a partially evolved cell cannot wait millions of years to evolve in an unstable environment. This is a misunderstanding of evolution.

There is variation in every species. In the struggle for existence, these individuals with variations better suited for the environment leave behind more offspring than individuals that are less adapted. This is known as differential reproductive success. In other words, the single-cell cyanobacterium that may have been Earth’s first form of life didn’t need to survive a million years so it could evolve. It just needed enough time to reproduce, which in the case of many cyanobacteria is a matter of hours.

The most successful offspring survive and reproduce, passing on the small change to their offspring through many generations until eventually the lineage is unable to mate with members of its ancestral group - these individuals are then classified as a new species.

Take the modern day example of bacteria that are becoming resistant to human-made antibiotics. It’s an example of evolution on a small scale. Over a matter of 50 years, which in geological terms is less than the blink of an eye, bacteria have acquired genetic mutations that make it possible for them to survive against our antibiotics, rendering many of the early formulas completely ineffective and obsolete.

Evolution professor Steven Irvine offers other example “in insects that have evolved resistance to insecticides, or plants that have evolved resistance to toxic soils. The evolution of the AIDS virus has been observed in great detail over the last 20 years as well.”

Most of these mutations are simply small, genetic or chromosomal aberrations that have small effects - slightly keener hearing, a new shade of fur, etc. Some of these small effects may provide benefits to an organism in an ever-changing environment. Natural selection is not random and certainly does not operate by chance. Natural selection preserves the gains and eradicates the mistakes. The human eye evolved from a single, light-sensitive cell into the complex eye of today through hundreds if not thousands of intermediate steps, many of which still exist in nature.

Both authors also claim that intelligent design should be offered in the university science curriculum as an alternative to evolution. The University of Rhode Island has a fairly extensive philosophy and religion program. Classes like PHL328 - The Philosophy of Religion and RLS125 - Biblical Thought are where students should be able to go to hear about intelligent design.

Most biology professors have their lesson plans stretched thin as it is. They don’t have time between cell reproduction and punnent squares to stop and cater to intelligent design advocates. Professor Irvine believes it would “be absurd to teach intelligent design alongside biology because biology is based on science and intelligent design is not science. Perhaps intelligent design could be part of a comparative religions class.”

He continued by saying, “There might be justification for discussion of intelligent design in order to show students how and why it is not science.”

Most evolutionary scientists, like Irvine, make it abundantly clear that they do not consider intelligent design to be a legitimate scientific endeavor. Looking for the footprints of the divine being is not necessarily unscientific. What is unscientific is to decide ahead of time on the answer and search for God with the determination to come up with a positive result. That is precisely what most intelligent design advocates seem to be attempting. Knowing the answer in advance and being immune to contradictory evidence are typical of pseudoscience.

Young-earth creationists, for example, claim that the earth is approximately 10,000 years old. When presented with fossil evidence to the contrary, some propose that God put the fossils on the earth for a reason that we do not know, to test our faith.

By proposing such an ad hoc hypothesis, they make it impossible to measure the age of the earth. It is 10,000 years by some holy decree. A hypothesis has to be testable, or else it is useless as a scientific tool. A good test has to risk failure, and a good scientist recognizes failure. A theory that explains everything also explains nothing, because it cannot be tested.

I’m not saying we should abolish it all together, but separate intelligent design from science that is actually based on scientific method and fact. Creationist theories belong in philosophy and religion classes - nowhere else.

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