The Seattle-based staff of Discovery Institute and the Center for Science & Culture just celebrated our Christmas luncheon where we had a chance to reflect on the breakthroughs we saw in 2019. I cannot help but feel as if we are at a moment in history similar to the day the Berlin Wall fell. That day represented the collapse of the barrier separating East and West Germany. In the same way, the philosophical wall separating scientific inquiry from empirical reality is starting to crumble.
What are those breakthroughs? They list three “scientific advances”
Michael Behe wrote a book
Marcos Eberlin wrote a book
Brazil now has an intelligent design society.
“Philosophy is useless, theology is worse… they want to sap your energy, incarcerate your mind.”
Dembski: In the next five years, molecular Darwinism – the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level – will be dead. When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of the right molecules. I therefore foresee a Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism in the next ten years. Intelligent design will of course profit greatly from this. For ID to win the day, however, will require talented new researchers able to move this research program forward, showing how intelligent design provides better insights into biological systems than the dying Darwinian paradigm.
And still not a single test of a single ID hypothesis to be seen. Not a single ID pharma company has been started. The DI’s lab component is no longer.
Thanks for reminding me of Dembski’s 2004 declaration. I am intrigued by the “Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism” that was predicted to happen by 2014. See, there was this fanatical group, the Taliban, that were in control of Afghanistan. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. bought off the allegiance of various local warlords who switched sides, and the Taliban was driven from power very rapidly. That is the “Taliban-style collapse”.
That’s why there is total peace in Afghanistan right now, with no Taliban around at all. Oh, wait …
I’m honestly confused by that analogy. What is a “Taliban-style collapse”? What would it have looked like? Are they really using an analogy that casts themselves as imperialists?
Actually, Dembski’s 2004 statement is simply the latest in a very old series of predictions about the imminent collapse of evolution. There is a classical collection of these predictions that was put together by Glenn Morton, the same guy who explained “Morton’s Demon” in another classic article. The talk.origins website had a link to it, which has gone dead, but there is another copy up at a website called AnswersInScience. You will find it here. It adds some more recent quotes. Morton seems to have taken down his original copy. The original quote in the Imminent Demise is from (wait for it …) 1840.
Joshua: Yes, they are not worried about analogies to invasions. But I think that they thought that only a little push would topple the whole rotten edifice.
All of ID’s “science” is based on making analogies. A flagellum acts like a designed outboard motor so it must BE a designed outboard motor! No surprise they’d resort to dumb analogies (evolutionary science is like the Taliban) for their political propaganda too.
I stopped taking @bjmiller seriously when he seemed to take issue with the fact that hydrophobic interactions are entropy-driven. Nothing really to see here.
Admittedly I don’t follow ID much. I read Darwin’s Black Box and Tornado in a Junkyard when I was an undergraduate and then got sidetracked doing actual science. I find the kind of predictions and statements that are quoted in this thread rather horrifying. I’m an Evangelical raised in YEC, but this reads as pure propaganda. It really does ID no favors.
The statement is badly dated in more than one way. Not only was Dembski wrong about the imminent demise of evolution. At the time, it also appeared as if the Taliban had been totally and permanently crushed in short order by the US-led military invasion. So, in a weird way, it was actually a rather apt analogy, just not at all in the way Dembski intended.
