Transcript Darwin´s Greatest Discovery:Design without Designer

Darwin’s Greatest Discovery:
Design without Designer
Francisco J. Ayala
University of California, Irvine
William Paley
Natural Theology, 1802
Alfred Russel Wallace, “On the Tendency of
Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the
Original Type; Instability of Varieties
Supposed to Prove the Permanent
Distinctness of Species”
Journal of the Proceedings of the
Linnaean Society of London (Zoology)
3 (1858): 53-62.
We believe that there is a tendency in nature to the
continued progression of certain classes of varieties further
and further from the original type—a progression to which
there appears no reason to assign any definite limits. This
progression, by minute steps, in various directions, but
always checked and balanced by the necessary conditions,
subject to which alone existence can be preserved, may be
followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena
presented by organized beings, their extinction and
succession in past ages, and all the extraordinary
modifications of form, instinct and habits which they exhibit.
CYTOCHROME C
Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species
As more individuals are produced than can possibly survive
… Can it be thought improbable, seeing that variations
useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other
variations useful in some way to each being in the great
and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the
course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can
we doubt that individuals having any advantage, however
slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving
and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may
feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious
would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable
variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call
Natural Selection.
Stages of eye complexity in mollusks
(limpet Patella)
(slit shell mollusk Pleurotomaria)
The “theory” Intelligent Design (ID)
is not science
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It cannot be tested (how do we know what the
intentions of the Designer were?)
There is not any evidence, any research, any
hypotheses to test
The ID of organisms is Imperfect Design, not
Intelligent Design
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Human jaw
Human birth canal
Forelimbs
Judge John E. Jones III
Dover:
December 20, 2005, 139 pages
“It [is] abundantly clear that the … ID Policy
violates the Establishment Clause. In making
this determination, we have addressed the
seminal question of whether ID is science.
We have concluded that it is not, and
moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from
its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”
Judge John E. Jones III
Dover:
December 20, 2005, 139 pages
“The leading proponents of ID make a bedrock
assumption which is utterly false. Their
presupposition is that evolutionary theory is
antithetical to a belief in the existence of a
supreme being and to religion in general.
Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts
testified that the theory of evolution represents good
science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific
community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor
does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”
ID is contrary to religion: incompatible with
an Omnipotent, Wise, and Benevolent
Creator
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Imperfect, incompetent, dysfunctional design
Cruelty: predators (chimp eating a monkey;
baboon killing babies)
Oddities: praying mantis, midge flies
Sadism: parasitism (e.g. “river blindness”,
malaria, TB)