February 20, 2001

Tell it to The Gazette

EVOLUTION DEBATE

Scientists continue search for rules of nature

Regarding the evolution debate, "intelligent design"

seems to be the most recent concept that biblical literalist

creationists hang their hats upon. The basis of the

argument is, in a nutshell, that because people design and

create things that we recognize as being obviously designed

and created as opposed to random and spontaneous

assemblages, it then follows that we should recognize other

things, namely life, the universe, and everything, as

obviously having been created by some greater designer. This

is clearly anthropomorphic and does not feign to be humble.

Whereas creationists used to

incorrectly embrace the thermodynamic concept of

entropy, now they look for salvation in information

theory in support of intelligent design. Entropy and

information are, in fact, the same concept and have

the same mathematical description. The crux of the

problem has to do with how order arises out of chaos.

Creationists claim that it takes a designer and a

guiding hand to accomplish this. Four centuries of

science have shown that what it takes are rules by

which nature works. If a creator or designer

formulated those rules, so be it. That has nothing to

do with science.

Our major problem as scientists is that we do not

know all the rules. It is a goal of science to discover

those rules. To what extent we can discover all the

rules is a separate issue. There may indeed be things

that are beyond our comprehension but that does not

matter as science is more a process than an end

result anyway. Beyond marveling at the indeed

marvelous complexity and variety of the universe,

intelligent design does not add anything of substance

to the discussion.

Lowell Morgan

Monument