Re: [asa] TE/EC Response - ideology according to Terry

Even if the fundamental forces, constants, and energy/matter of the
universe were all intelligently designed for life, I understand ID
theory to suggest that such fine-tuning would only be necessary, not
sufficient, for life because life requires additional intelligent
design, more information input, more irreducible/specified complexity.

I'm not the first person to note that such criticisms of neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory might be equally applicable to many theories in
biology. For example, I wonder whether Cameron's recent criticisms of
Darwinian evolution apply to embryology (developmental biology). No
stages or outcomes in embryonic development are attributed to an
intelligent agent, yet we can't explain how most of them develop.

Even if genes and gametes and wombs were all intelligently designed for
embryonic development, might not additional information input be
necessary once sperm and egg meet? As an experiment, I've altered part
of Cameron's recent post so that it would apply to embryology rather
than Darwinian theory. Please note that I'm trying here to separate
developmental from evolutionary biology, something I consider quite
difficult, but others must not since they claim that evolution is
unimportant to biology in general. Nonetheless, in order to accomplish
this separation we need to leave aside the question of where the
information in DNA and gametes and wombs originally comes from. Those
questions are central to evolution and ID theory, but not to embryology
itself for the purpose of this exercise.

On what basis could biologists conclude that intelligently guided action
by one or more conscious beings is unnecessary for the successful
development of an individual embryo? How could one counter the
following criticisms?

"Developmental biology (embryology) is weak science. There's almost no
evidence for it. There's evidence for mechanisms behind a few discrete
events such as fertilization, morphogenic gradient formation, and
segment determination via Hox genes, but they are merely the preamble to
embryology, not the real thing. The real thing is the claim that the
random and non-random factors that bring about a zygote through
fertilization can then go on to change that zygote into a
fully-developed embryo. Think of everything that happens in embryonic
development: establishment of symmetries and asymmetries, poles and
axes, different cell and tissue types, organs and integrated organ
systems, programmed cell death, stem cells and terminally differentiated
cells - all conveniently and simultaneously developing in just the
right ways to be compatible with each other and progress toward the goal
of a viable new whole organism. Developmental biology (embryology)
theory *presumes* that certain genes in certain contexts will
automatically be expressed at the right times and in the right places to
bring all this about, and then, having assumed the conclusion that it
prefers, goes out after the fact, trying to find out how it all
happened. Developmental biology (embryology) is a doctrine in search of
a detailed mechanism. That's not how science is supposed to work.
Science is supposed to work out theories in the light of a careful study
of the actual working of detailed mechanisms. The Big Bang theory was
worked out by people who had a great deal of detailed knowledge of
nuclear physics, Newtonian celestial mechanics, relativity, wavelengths,
the Doppler effect, etc. But developmental biology (embryology) cannot
proceed in this normal scientific manner, because it does not know any
of the detailed mechanisms. It knows only microdevelopmental
mechanisms, the ones you find in a developmental biology or embryology
text, but those explain only tiny modifications of already existing
structures, not the emergence of those structures from the zygote.
Developmental biology thus has to make a more extensive use of *a
priori* reasoning than any science has done since the Scholastic science
of the Middle Ages."

Well, I can anticipate one response: "Embryology is valid science
because we can observe multiple embryos develop and can experimentally
manipulate them. We don't need to first know how it happens, because we
can see it happen. If we could not watch organisms develop from
zygotes, then we would need detailed mechanisms before embryology would
be a science. But since we can see it happen, the detailed mechanisms
can come later."

My response to such a response: The fact that embryonic development of
individuals is rapid, commonplace, and observable in real time does not
fundamentally distinguish the mysteries of embryology from those of
phylogeny.

What really made people think that embryos can develop naturally and not
necessarily miraculously? Perhaps in the 1740s, when the Swiss amateur
scientist Abraham Trembley (1701-1784) discovered the ability of pieces
of the polyp Hydra to regenerate entire organisms, this and other
similar embryological observations suggested that matter was not
necessarily dependent upon miraculous interventions for each and every
individual. If an early (or contemporary!) embryologist was going to
share the psalmist's faith that God knits each of us together in our
mothers' wombs and knows each of us individually as our Creator, no
longer could such faith be supported by the absence of embryological
explanations, or threatened by progress in embryology.

I think we are now living in a similar time, when evolutionary
observations are suggesting that matter is not
necessarily dependent upon miraculous interventions for each and every
species or group of species, and maybe not even for the first living
cells.

Cheers!

Charles (Chuck) F. Austerberry, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Hixson-Lied Room 438
Creighton University
2500 California Plaza
Omaha, NE 68178
Phone: 402-280-2154
Fax: 402-280-5595
e-mail: cfauster@creighton.edu
http://groups.creighton.edu/premedsociety/
 
Nebraska Religious Coalition for Science Education
http://nrcse.creighton.edu
 
 

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Received on Tue Jul 21 18:12:47 2009