Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [105]
There is, in fact, no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal. There is only the natural, the normal, and mysteries we have yet to explain. It is also curious that ID miraculously intervenes just in the places where science has yet to offer a comprehensive explanation for a particular phenomenon. By a different name for a different time, ID (God) used to control the weather, but now that we have a science of meteorology ID has moved on to more obdurate problems, such as the origins of DNA or the evolution of cellular structures such as the flagellum. Once these problems are mastered then ID will presumably find even more intractable conundrums. Thus, IDers would have us teach students that when science cannot fully explain something we should look no further and declare that “ID did it.” I fail to see how this is science. “ID did it” makes for a rather short lab lecture.
Finally, since ID creationists argue that what they are doing is no different from what the astronomers do who look for intelligent design in the background noise of the cosmos in their search for extraterrestrial intelligent radio signals (the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] program, for example), then why not postulate that the design in irreducibly complex structures such as DNA is the result of an extraterrestrial experiment? Here is a viable hypothesis: ID = ET. Such theories have been proffered, in fact, by some daring astronomers and science fiction authors who speculated (wrongly it appears) that the earth was seeded with amino acids, protein chains, or microbes billions of years ago, possibly even by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Suffice it to say that no creationist worth his sacred salt is going to break bread or sip wine in the name of some experimental exobiologist from Vega. And that is the point. What we are really talking about here is not a scientific problem in the study of the origins of life; it is a religious problem in dealing with the findings of science.
3. ID Intervention. According to the evidence, several billion years ago an Intelligent Designer created the first cell with the necessary genetic information to produce most of the irreducibly complex systems we see today Then, the laws of nature and evolutionary change took over, and in some instances natural selection drove the system, except when totally new and more complex species needed creating. Then the Intelligent Designer stepped in again to intervene with a new design element.
Just when and where ID intervened in the history of life is hotly disputed by ID theorists. Did ID trigger the big bang and laws of nature, then let the cosmos inflate and create its own subatomic and atomic particles? Or did ID do all of this, then let the stars create all of the other elements through natural processes? Did ID go so far as to generate all the stars and planets, along with the biochemical conditions necessary for life to arise, which then did on its own through natural forces? Or did ID take care of all of the physics and chemistry of life’s creation and then let evolution take it from there? And as for the history of life itself, after (and however) it was created, did ID create each genus and then evolution create each species? Or did ID create each species and evolution create each subspecies? Most ID theorists accept natural selection as a viable explanation for microevolution—the beak of the finch, the neck of the giraffe, the varieties of subspecies found on earth. If ID created these species why not the subspecies? If natural selection can create subspecies, why not species? Or genus, for that matter? A species is defined as a group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations reproductively isolated from other such populations. We see evolution at work in nature today, isolating populations and creating new species,