The Third Side by Thomas Vaughan May 14-30 in Houston
| May 13, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Thomas Vaughan has written a play that takes a critical look at both intelligent design and evolution. It opens this Thursday and extends for two weeks. It’s being produced by Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company (go here).
The writer’s notes are as follows and include a generous remark about me. I’m grateful to Thomas Vaughan for allowing me to look over his shoulder and offer comment. I encourage everyone in the Houston area to go see this enlightening play.
The character Henry Darden’s views are based on the ideas of well-qualified scientists. These professionals are not creationists, and they do not believe in Intelligent Design. Their credentials and their motives are impeccable. As a dramatist, I am not qualified to have a worth-while opinion on who exactly is right in this scientific debate, but it was the blistering, often personal attacks on these individuals by their colleagues that inspired this play.
The hostility these men and women received, however, is nothing compared to the vitriol directed towards Dr. William Dembski, a leading advocate of Intelligent Design (ID). I want to personally thank Dr. Dembski here. Knowing full well that I did not agree with his views, Dr. Dembski still took the time to read the play to help assure the accuracy of how the ideas behind ID were portrayed. He even suggested a fine story note that I used and I think the play is better for it. I am very grateful for his trust, his generosity, and most of all his open-mindedness.
This stands as a stark contrast to some of those that I communicated with in the same capacity who hold the more mainstream view of evolution. They were openly hostile to not just the play but the very notion that these minority views should be given a voice at all. The interviews with the notable scientists these ideas are based on were attacked without being read. One individual even suggested that the interviews were probably just made up and not worth reading in the first place.
While this hostility came from only a few, and only from the academics, it was enough to assure me that the basic thrust of the play was essentially correct. It is worth noting that many more people have helped tirelessly with this production who still disagree with the arguments presented by Henry Darden. I thank each and every one of them.
I also want to express my gratitude to the cast and the crew. A brand new play is a scary endeavor and this group of people never flinched. Not once. They were game for every bit of it. I especially want to thank Jennifer Decker for her vision and leadership with Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company. I am not sure that I would have dipped my toes back into the theatre without her support.
While the ideas in the play are certainly many, this night of the theatre is still meant as entertainment. Perhaps a bit more, but certainly nothing less. It is my sincerest hope that it has achieved that end.
Thank you all for coming and enjoy the show.
36 Responses to The Third Side by Thomas Vaughan May 14-30 in Houston
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Marduk:
While creationists don’t like to see themselves as “holocaust denying” types when it comes to logic, truth is many of them fit that category exactly.
Which logic is that, Marduk? And when you say “creationists”, do you mean Darwinism deniers?
Barry, the comment you refer to as number 19 is now comment 16. Since comments tend to disappear from UD without warning, it might be a good idea to quote something unique from the comment you’re referring to so a browser search can find it.
My description of evolution in (for the time being) [16]:
“This new bacteria has 999,999 base pairs that are identical to its sister bacteria, all of which are healthy, and a single base pair that is different. Is this new bacteria going to be healthy or die?”,
” I’ve read that in actual observations, about one quarter of these single-base mutations are harmful, another quarter are helpful and the rest have no effect at all.” and
“Those are pretty good odds, especially since a bacteria that gets a bad mutation dies off and is soon replaced by the offspring of the gazillion bacteria that didn’t mutate. (Natural selection in action.)”
Are pretty much standard evolutionary theory. The fact that you think they “betray[] a woeful lack of understanding of even the most basic evolutionary concepts even at the basic level of single celled organisms. Pretty much everything you say is either flat out wrong or distorted.” pretty much demonstrates my point:
NOBODY on UD seems to understand even the most basic facts of Darwinian evolution. Instead, over and over, we see various ID honchos raising straw men such as, “random errors can accumulate … to produce the information and information-processing machinery of living systems.” and then – well, you don’t actually even knock them down. Instead we get nonanswers like saying evolution can change beak size, but “None of this is capable of producing information-processing machinery.”
Well, I’d like to ask anybody on UD what DID produce the information processing machinery in humans and other animals then? If you say a designer did it, fine. So HOW did he do it and WHEN did he do it?
Evolution can give a mechanism for producing it: mutation of DNA and natural selection. What are the designer’s mechanisms?
Evolution can give you some good ideas on when various bits of information processing machinery were created – sub-cellular information processing first (bacteria that are attracted to light or sugar, for instance), then very primative nervous systems such as those in jelly fish, then the first knots of nerves that made the first “brain”, etc. What timetable does ID provide?
Regarding Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution”, I’ve been trying to read it for months, but I keep getting stopped by his chapter on malaria. I’m not at home right now, so I can’t give you quotes, but here’s what I remember about the part that boggles my mind:
Behe says that a single base pair mutation can overcome some anti-malaria agents in a very short period of time because single base pair mutations are pretty frequent.
He also says that a two base pair mutation can overcome some tougher anti-malarial agents after a longer period of time because it takes much much longer to get two base pairs to mutate in a way that blocks the drugs.
But then he notes that sickle-cell anemia has existed for millions of years, yet malaria has never found a combination of mutations that will defeat it, therefore complex things cannot be accomplished via Darwian evolution. Q.E.D.
But sickle-cell anemia fights malaria by making red blood cells sickle – that is they change from their normal round “jelly doughnut” shape to skinny stretched out shapes that are too narrow for the malaria organism to enter them.
What possible kinds of mutations to the malarial cell would ever un-sickle a red blood cell???
Add that to Gonzalez’s blundering about solar eclipses and Dembski’s “proving” that dead organisms will never “find” the evolutionary sweet spot that consists solely of organisms that successfully reproduce and I hope you’ll understand why I really don’t think that anybody in UD understands the Darwinian evolution that they are criticizing.
Tommy V: “Much like Djmullen, you think what is important is your cleverness rather than the ideas themselves.
You make the mistake of thinking your cleverness adds value to anything other than your own ego. But the ideas, facts and data are totally separate from your cleverness. They are not connected.
Lies can be said by brilliant men, and brilliant ideas can be parroted by simpletons. The quality of the person has no bearing on the ideas themselves.”
Tommy, read my last message to Barry (if it survives). The reason ID so thoroughly disgusts people who actually understand evolution is because ID theorists make it so achingly, obviously clear that they DON’T.
When people come along who are clearly talking through their hats about something they don’t understand AND they say that their opponants are just being clever and “…make the mistake of thinking your cleverness adds value to anything other than your own ego,” and imply that we’re liars and simpletons – well, let’s just say that that’s not the Dale Carnegie approved way to Make Friends and Influence People.
By the way, I don’t want anybody to think that my comments to GilDodgen were meant as an insult. Google “Gil Dodgen” and you’ll find that:
1) He’s an accomplished hang glider pilot. I’ve done a little ultralight flying and hang gliding is like ultralight flying, except your engine is always dead.
2) He edited “Hang Gliding” magazine for years.
3) You’ll find many articles he wrote for that magazine that are clear and well enough written to make me jealous.
4) You’ll also find a place where you can download the checkers playing program he wrote and if you manage to beat it, just turn the difficulty level up a bit and try again. You’ll eventually lose, I guarantee.
5) He’s also worked on using microcomputers, GPSes and servos to steer parachutes to targets miles away. I started to write similar software to land ham-radio payloads dropped from weather balloons and got just far enough into the job before 9/11 stopped our balloon flying to know how difficult that is to do.
and
6) He plays the piano, which puts him way above me.
I respect Gil’s intelligence and dilligence and ditto for most of the people in ID. But none of you understands evolution and your vacuous arguments are very highly annoying!
Think of the punch line to the old joke to get an idea of how we feel.
“Are you Catholic?”
“Am I Catholic? Why I’m so Catholic that my father is a priest and my mother is a nun!”
“Why’d they throw me out?”
Tommy V,
Thanks for the summary of the play. Is it available anywhere or will it be done in southern California? Your description is fascinating.
Part of what strikes me as fascinating is that you seem to have (I would say inadvertently, but that is giving too little credit to your subconscious) hit upon the core issue. The core objection to ID is not fundamentally a scientific one. It is a religious one. The evidence for design is there. It is only that design suggests a designer, and upon further consideration a Designer, and many, I gather you among them, are uncomfortable with such an Entity.
If we accept that the scientific evidence points to design, and we accept that the major objection to design is discomfort with the Designer, then we are forced to the conclusion that the dispute is science versus religion, with the ID proponents being those motivated by science and the ID deniers being the ones motivated by religious considerations. This is, of course, the precise reverse of how the conflict is usually portrayed in the mainstream media.
Congratulations for seeing the controversy so clearly. Perhaps someday you will have the courage to follow the science where it leads, regardless of your religious sensibilities.
djmullen,
#33
Well, now, let’s see. It appears that you disapprove of people
1. talking about something they don’t understand
AND
2. saying that their opponents are just being clever and imply that their opponents are liars and simpletons.
Did I get that right?
Then I read in #33
and #32
and #34
That would certainly seem to imply that we, all of us, are simpletons.
You seem to realize that this is an overstatement, as in 34 you give detailed evidence that gildodgen, at least, is not a simpleton. It’s just that he doesn’t understand evolution. Presumably you do. (Never mind the fact that for some 40 years he used to believe in, not just evolution, but naturalism. Somehow that knowledge has gone.)
Now, since you really do understand evolution, perhaps you could explain a few things to those of us who are talking through our hats about something we don’t understand.
You mention (#32) that
I was always under the impression that the ratio of deleterious mutations to advantageous mutations was something closer to 999 to 1. Perhaps you could let us know where you read this. It should be easy, as you seem to be saying that this is “pretty much standard evolutionary theory.” There should also be evidence for this, as otherwise “pretty much standard evolutionary theory” would be wrong, or at least highly speculative.
Second, you say (#32),
Truly, this is fascinating. In parallel with your comment about the Designer, I would like to know “HOW” mutation of DNA and natural selection did it. I presume that you would not say, a la Goldschmidt, that it was done all at one time. So what were the intermediate steps? Which proteins and/or non-coding regions were changed, and in what order, so as to keep alive the creature, or more precisely series of creatures, as they gradually changed from a part-chimp part-human part-something-else into a human.
Too much of a challenge? There were multiple pathways that could have been used, and we can’t be sure which one actually was? Fine. Then give one plausible pathway. The more plausible pathways there are, the easier it should be to find one.
You really should do this. We wouldn’t want anyone to think that you are talking through your hat about something you don’t understand. That wouldn’t be in accord with the Dale Carnegie approved way to Make Friends and Influence People.