Defusionism

...My suspicion was confirmed by Collins's new book The Language of God...

...For instance, ID theorist Stephen Meyer--employing the same IBE logic as Collins-recently contended in a peer-reviewed biology journal that intelligence is the best explanation for the information embedded in the DNA molecule...

...Rather, based upon current evidence, Collins argues that intelligence is the best explanation currently available...

...What Collins wanted to knowwas whether Coyne thought this evidence suggested luck or design...

...Given the heat of the current debate over Darwin's theory in biology, it may surprise many readers to learn that mainstream physicists and cosmologists have been discussing design in their disciplines for decades-please, no one alert the ACLU...

...One could try to counter this argument with evidence, but it accomplishes little to mischaracterize it as an argument from ignorance...

...But this is hardly the ID argument...

...On one hand, there's just too much to write about...

...It was a thoughtful question, but Coyne evaded it, saying it was not really a scientific issue...

...The UN Exposed is the sort of book that can only have been written by a reporter with a strong sense of his b e a t - The UN Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World by Eric Shawn (SENTINEL, 336 PAGES, $23.95) Babbin Jed Babbin is a TAS contributing editor and author (with Edward Timperlake) of the new book Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States (Regnery...

...Kofi Annan's term expires at the end of this year, and he is working feverishly to divorce his legacy from the Oil for Food scandal and re-create it by other means...

...Of several competing hypotheses, Collins asks which one best explains the physical evidence: Sheer chance that our universe has the right parameters to be habitable...

...The logic he employs is common in science...

...But the interesting thing there is that while he invokes certain methodological principles to rule intelligent design out of court in biology, he has already violated those rules in his design arguments in cosmology and physics...

...Rather, ID maintains that certain aspects of nature exhibitpositive signs of intelligence...

...But that is true today, and it may not be true tomorrow...

...Collins allows as much for his arguments but not for others...

...Although he is a medical geneticist by training, Collins gives an excellent lay treatment of the argument for design in physics and cosmology...

...Luckily Francis Collins, who led the race to map the human genome, rose to the microphone and broached the subject for me...

...Faith that places God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps...

...BOOKS IN REVIEW Best Explanations R ECENTLY ASTROPHYSICIST and stalwart Darwindefender George Coyne lectured before the largest scientific organization in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science...

...In biology, Collins should have retained the sound logic and high standards of critical judgment he used to skewer the cosmological prophets of scientific materialism...

...What's good for the goose is good for the gander...

...Still, design is not asserted here merely to fill a gap in our knowledge...

...Collins gets hung up on a common misperception about ID in biology, namely that it is an argument from ignorance...

...Unlike Churchill, Annan can't expect history to be kind to him, because he won't get to write it...

...They are positive reasons, based on knowledge, rather than default assumptions based on (a temporary) lack of knowledge:' (Emphasis added...

...OCTOBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 75...

...A word of caution is needed when inserting specific divine action by God in this or any other area where scientific understanding is currently lacking...

...The UNtouchables T HE UNITED NATIONS is an author's nightmare...

...Collins thinks ID theorists look at nature, see extraordinary complexity, and conclude God-musta-done-it...

...That is, if the force of gravity was a tiny fraction smaller (one part in 10 to the 14th power) the universe would have kept expanding without forming galaxies (and thus we would not be here...

...Collins probed Coyne as to why gravity is so "finely-tuned...

...And gravity is only one of many instances of fine-tuning...

...It's almost impossible to keep up with the latest diplomatic and financial chicanery that are the daily products of the General Assembly, the Security Council, a n d - o f c o u r s e - t h e secretary general...

...yet if gravity were the same tiny fraction greater, matter in our universe would have glommed together and not expanded outward to form galaxies, stars, and planets (and thus we would not be here...

...Meyer's argument is based upon knowledge of what it takes to engineer information-rich systems, not upon a lack of knowledge...

...Collins cannot consistently employ design logic in physics and cosmology and then say that such logic is invalid in the biological realm...

...Indeed, everything at the UN is devoid of reality, Shawn reports from his lonely vantage point...

...He writes: 74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 BOOKS IN REVIEW Given the inability of science thus far to explain the profound question of life's origins, some theists have identified the appearance of RNA and DNA as a possible opportunity for divine creative action...

...Concurring Logan Paul Gage is a policy analyst at the Discovery Institute...

...multiple universes with various constants exist, but we got the good one...

...On the other, it's hard to write anything about the UN that hasn't been written before or to give life to the tiresome anti-Americanism that is the daily staple Reviewed by Jed of the UN's General Assembly, the Secretariat, and the French comic opera improperly named the "Security Council:' In overcoming these and many other obstacles, Fox News UN correspondent Eric Shawn has produced a most valuable book on an unsavory subject...

...We don't have Churchill to kick Kofi's keister, but Shawn does quite well enough, exposing how the secretary general's cloistered life-in his multimillion dollar Sutton Place townhouse, in his palatial UN offices, and everywhere else he goes-consistently isolates him from real-world realities...

...or the game was rigged (designed...

...Today, cosmologists generally agree there was a beginning to the universe followed by a period of rapid expansion...

...This could be an appealing hypothesis, given that no serious scientist would currently claim that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life is at hand...

...with many other scientists, Collins concludes that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for the Big Bang and finetuning...

...Take his treatment of the fine-tuning problem...

...Collins adds: One must leave open the door to the possibility that future investigation in theoretical physics will demonstrate that some of the fifteen physical constants that so far are simply determined by experimental observation may be limited in their potential numerical value by something more profound, but such a revelation is not currently on the horizon...

...Moreover, scientists have failed to show how information in DNA can be generated by a mindless cause...

...and in our uniform experience, whenever we see such properties and can discover their origin, they always turn out to have been the product of intelligence...

...DNA exhibits informational properties...

...As the odds are terribly against chance, and because these hypothetical multiple universes are completely unobservable, Collins uses Occam's razor (ironically, a favorite tool of skeptics) to infer design...

...Thus, according to Collins, science is always capable of changing, so this argument for design is not a knockout...

...I left feeling unsatisfied-like Whitman after hearing the learned astronomer-and I suspected Collins did too...

...As he railed against biological arguments for The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins (FREE PRESS, 304 PAGES, $26) Reviewed by Logan Paul Gage intelligent design (ID), I wondered what Coyne thought of the nowmainstream design arguments in his own field...

...While in the 19th century most scientists thought the universe was eternal, the rise of Big Bang cosmology in the 20th changed things...

...Consequently, Meyer argues, we are justified in inferring an intelligent cause for genetic information...

...It is called Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE...

...There are "good reasons" to infer an intelligence behind nature, Collins writes, "including the existence of mathematical principles and order in creation...

...Now in a later chapter, Collins opposes intelligent design arguments in biology...