Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Letter to The Times, 'Junk Criticism of ID'
Here's a copy of the letter I wrote to The Times re Mark Henderson's inaccurate article about ID and creationism:
Dear Sir,
Science correspondent Mark Henderson ('Junk Medicine: Creationism' Feb 11th), gets the facts about intelligent design theory (ID) and creationism wrong. He is wrong about ID being a 'cloak' for creationism, because ID explicitly excludes essential creationist assumptions and conclusions. ID neither draws upon, nor concludes with, any supernatural assertions; whereas creationism is rooted in 'literal' interpretations of religious texts. ID makes two purely scientific claims: 1) there are scientific tests for ruling in intelligent design as the best explanation for certain types of pattern (something readily accepted within forensics, the search for extra-terrestrials, etc.), and 2) some things in nature pass these tests. Mr Henderson is wrong to say that either creationism or ID undermine medicine by denying evolution, because neither denies the micro-evolutionary explanations required to understand the mutating pathogens he references. Finally, he is wrong to imply that ID cannot contribute to medical research, because it already has (cf. ID theorist Dr Jonathan Wells' article, 'Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?', published in the peer reviewed journal Rivista Biologia, which uses the ID hypothesis as a guide to cancer research).
Yours Sincerely,
Peter S. Williams (MA, MPhil)
Southampton
Dear Sir,
Science correspondent Mark Henderson ('Junk Medicine: Creationism' Feb 11th), gets the facts about intelligent design theory (ID) and creationism wrong. He is wrong about ID being a 'cloak' for creationism, because ID explicitly excludes essential creationist assumptions and conclusions. ID neither draws upon, nor concludes with, any supernatural assertions; whereas creationism is rooted in 'literal' interpretations of religious texts. ID makes two purely scientific claims: 1) there are scientific tests for ruling in intelligent design as the best explanation for certain types of pattern (something readily accepted within forensics, the search for extra-terrestrials, etc.), and 2) some things in nature pass these tests. Mr Henderson is wrong to say that either creationism or ID undermine medicine by denying evolution, because neither denies the micro-evolutionary explanations required to understand the mutating pathogens he references. Finally, he is wrong to imply that ID cannot contribute to medical research, because it already has (cf. ID theorist Dr Jonathan Wells' article, 'Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?', published in the peer reviewed journal Rivista Biologia, which uses the ID hypothesis as a guide to cancer research).
Yours Sincerely,
Peter S. Williams (MA, MPhil)
Southampton
