Challenge to the Discovery Institute

I was doing some minor editing to a previous post ("Klingy thinks Medical Doctors' Opinions are Important, on non-medical topics, Is it?") and something occurred to me.  If it's true, that medical doctors support Intelligent Design (ID) more than they do Evolution, I would like klingy, or any of the other talking heads from the Discovery Institute, to explain to me just:

What parts of Intelligent Design theory are medical doctors using in their medical practice?

I'm serious.  In the original post from little davey 'klingy' klinghoffer, he stated that medical doctors:

"have a special perspective on intelligent design"

He tried to 'explain' that's because they focus on 'function', so evolution is useless to them.  Of course the concept of 'function' has nothing to do with ID at all.  'Function' is like a snapshot in time.  The heart does this, the liver does this . . . we understand many of these things because of the doctors and researchers that have studied these things for years.  Where is ID 'theory' in all this?

If evolution is useless to doctors, and they have a 'special' perspective on ID, just what part of ID are they using in their medical practice? I mean if ID is supposed to be a replacement evolutionary theory, then shouldn't it address the same questions? Particularly questions evolution addressed decades ago?

Here is a link to a website from Berkeley, we've mentioned this site before, "Understanding Evolution".  It's basically a free, on-line Evolution 101 course from UC Berkeley.  If you haven't taken a look, I highly recommend it.  This specific link is for relevance of evolution in medicine.  They go into a number of cases, including infectious diseases . . . like the flu and immunizations, antibiotic resistance, HIV--SIV--FIV's evolutionary history, genetic diseases, and more.

Let's add a bit to my challenge, here should be an easy one:

How does ID explain antibiotic resistance?   

If you can't handle this one, how about picking any of the other case studies from the Berkeley site and try and explain the ID perspective on it.  Be specific, vague references and unsupported conclusions won't cut it.

One last thing from Berkeley, the closing quote from this section [underlining added by me for emphasis]:

"Understanding evolution helps us solve biological problems that impact our lives. There are excellent examples of this in the field of medicine. To stay one step ahead of pathogenic diseases, researchers must understand the evolutionary patterns of disease-causing organisms. To control hereditary diseases in people, researchers study the evolutionary histories of the disease-causing genes. In these ways, a knowledge of evolution can improve the quality of human life." (Berkeley:  Evolution Relevance)

Individual medical doctors may not need a thorough understanding of Evolution to do their job, but any that deny Evolution's relevance to modern medicine and medical treatments is either ignorant or deliberately misleading you, in either case, you might want to find a new doctor!

So there is my challenge.  I want to know what impact ID has had on modern medicine!  In all honesty, I don't expect an answer from the DI.  But in equal honesty, I think anyone whose doctor disagrees with evolution should be able to answer my challenge.

Klingy thinks Medical Doctors' Opinions are Important, on non-medical topics, Is it?

Does the Discovery Institute really understand the word 'hypothetical'?  I don't think so.  In little davey 'klingy' klinghoffer Evolution and 'news' and Views post "The Medical Background to Intelligent Design", I think he misses the point.  But then since he is repeating a constant Creationist trope, it might be understandable.  Here is a quote of his:

"Biological systems not only need to exist but to function properly. It's no use tracing a hypothetical path of evolutionary descent unless every living thing along that path was fully functional in the real world."

The trope I mention is their continual insistence that a biological system must exist in its final and absolute state in order for it to be considered functional.  How many times does this have to be addressed before he, and the rest of the DI get it?  Michael Behe tried this with his 'Irreducible Complexity (IC)' and that work so well that he's backed off considerably from providing examples.  He got his hat handed to him after testifying about it during the 2005 Dover trial and and the court said:

The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large." (Wikipedia: Irreducible Complexity)

If you don't recall the details, here's a quickie refresher: He argued that evolution, particularly evolution by Natural Selection, was impossible because 'certain' biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems.  He cited a number of potential systems, like blood clotting factor and the immune system as irreducibly complex.  However, when faced with over 50 peer-reviewed articles and papers explaining these in evolutionary terms, he rejected them out of hand saying that they were not enough.  You can see why the court said what it said about it.

My initial reaction was much simpler.  Michael Behe postulates an idea with absolutely no support except for wishful thinking and conjecture . . . and rejects actual peer-reviewed papers that he hasn't even bothered to read.  Anyone else see something wrong with that?

Anyway, you can see klingy is beating on that drum again.  Only he's not calling is IC, but the premise is the same.  He seems to define 'function properly' as functioning in the way the current biological system functions.  What he does is dismiss any possibility of the parts that make up a biological system having any other function.  Like all DI'ers, he discounts it.  He is once again claiming evolution's impossibility, while failing to support is argument with anything other than wishful thinking.

I do enjoy how he brought in medical doctors into the argument.  Back in 2005 the Discovery Institute claimed 60% of medical doctors didn't believe in evolution, in In 2007, the Jewish Theological Seminary conducted a survey on this topic, finding that 78 percent of doctors accept evolution.  As we have said before, you can find a survey on any subject that will support a particular view, so surveys like these are meaningless.  The real question is "Is it important that a practicing medical doctor accept evolution?"  The answer seems to be that for the most part, no.

When I first realized that, I was more than a bit surprised.  But when you think it through, doctors use the results of the biological science, but are not necessarily educated in understanding the details. Most specialties in medicine require no actual study or understanding of evolutionary theory to do their jobs.  There are some, like dealing with infectious diseases or cancers where evolution is key to their work, but for the most part doctors don't need it. Their focus is on the here-and-now and not on how we got here.  So when is comes to asking medical doctors about their level of belief in evolution, the answer isn't very important.  Which pretty well makes the DI's point meaningless. 

I haven't checked, but I am sure there are some medical doctors who signed to 'Dissent from Darwinism' petition, that's we've discussed all too often.  If you remember those posts, while the statement they signed claimed to dissent for scientific reasons, the reality was they signed for religious reasons.  I am sure there are a number of doctors who have a philosophical stand against evolution, but I doubt those that use evolution as part of their medical duties would agree.  Remember that while doctors are highly educated, the education is tightly focused.

While I am sure doctors wouldn't like the comparison, but can a car mechanic build a car?  No, that's not their job or training.  That is similar for medical doctors.  I have three degrees dealing with computers, but I cannot build a computer.  I can assemble one from parts purchased from multiple sources, as I have done on a number of occasions.  I can fix them, program them, network them . . . but I do not have the training or experience to 'build' one.  Why would we expect doctors to know everything about biology?  I wouldn't go to a biologist for a medical diagnosis, would you?

Of course the DI doesn't care about the reality.  All they care about to be able to string together words and phrases that make it sound like Evolution is on its knees.  You know for a scientific theory whose death knell has been declared continually for over a century and a half, its constant survival might seem surprising, until you look at the actual attacks.  Then it's easy to see why it's still the most supported theory in biology, maybe in all of science.

Practical vs Impractical . . . or Evolution's utility vs Creationism!

One of the questions I have dived into several times discusses the impracticality of Creationism. More specifically the question I ask is what part of any scientific theory, or scientific advancement uses Creationism?  To date the answer to that question has been silence, and it continues to be silence.  No one has been able to point to anything that shows an actual use of Creationism in science.

The best some have tried to do is claim credit for some scientific advancement because the scientist who made the breakthrough was a theist of one form or another.  My response to that is usually "So what!"  Just because Newton believed in God, show me where God had a hand in Newton's theories? Show me the part of any theory where you identify and categorize the actions on any particular deity? No one has been able to, not once!

So since Creationism is pretty much useless, then Creationists must show that Evolution is also useless.  After all, isn't it logical to infer that if evolution is useless, then Creationism must be the only answer there is?  I know, not to me, and not to anyone with a working brain.  Even if you manage to convince someone that Evolution is useless, that doesn't automatically imply that Creationism suddenly has value.

But you know they have to try, and one of my favorite Creationists, the homophobic and Biblical-revisionist - little kennie ham - had one of his pet 'scientists' give it a go.  He's tried it before, remember just last year it was "A Renowned Creation Scientist, Inventor of MRI".  Of course this was nothing but an example of a theist who managed to develop some very cutting edge science regardless of his religious beliefs.  As usual, no one can point to any part of the theories behind magnetic imaging and say "and here is where God did such-and-such." But since he is a Creationists, little kennie uses him as a poster-boy for Creation Science.

I will repeat something I have said over and over again.  Being a Creationist doesn't mean you cannot think . . . it's just that being a Creationist, most tend not to think, particular when someone like little kennie is telling you that thinking certain things goes against his religious beliefs.  Well, this time kennie has a pet medical doctor who makes this claim: "Evolution Has "Absolutely No Effect" on Medical Practice".  To which I can only reply "Bullshit!"

Apparently Tommy Mitchell has forgotten much of what he learned in preparation for his medical career.  Many of the medicines and treatments he used were tested out on various animals.  Why is that?  It's because they react much in the same way humans do.  Why would that be?  Of course the Creationist would say that maybe they were placed on this Earth for the purpose of medical testing. But the evidence shows that such testing works because of the evolutionary relationship we have with those animals.  Here is a quote from little kennie that he says he got from Dr. Tommy:

"When Grandma’s in the ICU and her kidneys are not working, you’re not sitting there thinking, “Well, her kidney’s evolved.” No, you just care that Grandma’s kidneys don’t work, and you want them to work again. So, operationally, evolution had zero effect on anything I did as a physician"

So where did the treatment and medications Tommy must have used come from?  Let me guess a quick prayer and they just pop into existence on Grandma's nightstand?  Tommy might be disingenuous, but the majority of the medical field knows the impact of evolution on medicine!

How about pesticide/drug resistance?  Does Creationism have an answer why individuals and groups develop a resistance to certain pesticides/medications over time?  Evolution explains it quite handily and that is something medical research doctors take into account regularly.  But I guess Tommy wasn't one of those.

One of the most telling evidences that support evolutionary theory is genetics.  But maybe Tommy slept through that part of his education.  Phylogenetic analysis, ribotyping, and parasite virulence are a few other examples where Evolution has impacted medicine.  I have to thank Talk Origins for these examples, there are many more at "The Claim that the theory of evolution is useless, without practical application."

It seems Tommy has been operating a medical license without appreciating the underlying knowledge and information that supported everything he did as a medical doctor.  I really don't care that Tommy is a theist, but I don't appreciate it when he denigrates the science behind his own education.   Which is what he did when he said this:

"Actually, taking care of Grandma today in the hospital has nothing to do with accepting evolution"

Again, denying everything that went into the development of Grandma's medicines and treatments!  I did have to check and see if he got his medical education at Liberty University (Falwell's Lament), but no, he did go to one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country.  Just goes to show you that Creationists are capable of insane level of denial!  No wonder he and kennie get along so well.

So Tommy has his say, I wonder if he will now list all the times Creationism was used in the development of medicines and medical treatments?  But I think if he were capable of addressing that, he would have lead off with it instead of trying to backdoor evolution.  I almost wish Tommy had been one of my granddaughter's doctors during a recent medical issue.  I would have loved to see him blubber through a creationist explanation of her treatment.  While it might be humorous to consider, I wouldn't have wished her to receive treatments from someone who can so glibly deny the science behind such treatments.  Luckily for his career as a doctor, science works whether you 'accept' evolution or not.