[00:00:05] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello and thanks for joining us. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Does the human body tell the story of evolution or intelligent design? And when it comes to medicine, does evidence take precedence over cumulative scientific knowledge? Today I have the pleasure once again to chat with molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. Doctor Wells holds a PhD in molecular and cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a PhD in religious studies from Yale University. He has previously worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at UC Berkeley and a supervisor of a medical laboratory in Fairfield, California. He also taught biology at California State University in Hayward and continues to lecture on the subject. His latest book is zombie more icons of evolution. Jonathan, welcome back to the ID the Future show.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Andrew well, in recent years, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen science, and I use it here with a capital letter. Science wielded in powerful ways and not all of them good. We've seen science bandied about on both sides of issues, and we've seen the media, big tech and even the government suppress certain scientific ideas because they were considered misinformation. Heck, I even heard doctor Anthony Fauci say that an attack on him was an attack on science itself. And he's not alone in that sentiment. Jonathan, what have you observed about science's role in our culture in the last few years?
[00:01:45] Speaker C: It has grown enormously. But the science whose role has grown is not the science that I love. It's a science based on opinion of majority of so called experts working in various fields. It's based more on materialistic philosophy than on evidence. And so it's wielded, as I think we've seen, as a weapon of intimidation rather than an appeal to evidence and truth.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: And we're really seeing this in multiple subjects, primarily COVID, because that's the big deal for the world right now. But as you'll point out later, it's really in other areas as well and quite disturbing. I find that when you're discussing science, whether it's with friends or colleagues or just in general, it's really important to define the term and know what's being discussed about science. In zombie science, your latest book, you say science can mean several different things. Can you tell us more about that?
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Sure. As I hinted a moment ago, the science I love is actually a search for truth. And we search for truth by proposing hypotheses and then comparing them to evidence from nature to find out if they're true. We never know for sure that something isn't totally true, but if the evidence fits it, we can tentatively assume that it is. If the evidence does not fit it, we have to revise it or discard it. That's empirical science. But science in recent decades has taken on a new meaning, and that is not the search for truth, but the search for natural explanations. This actually reduces to materialistic philosophy because naturalistic explanations can invoke only basically matter in motion. So it greatly restricts the real world in the name of so called science. The other meaning of science, as I hinted at a moment ago, is consensus science. Well, this is really just an opinion poll at the moment of what people who call themselves scientists think. Over the centuries, the scientific consensus has changed many times, and thank goodness, or we would still think that earth was at the center of the solar system, or that things burned by giving off Phlogiston. Lots of scientific ideas have changed over the years, and with them, the scientific consensus. So it's not really that reliable. For me, the most reliable science is science that follows the evidence.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah, and that would make a lot of sense. And there's so much at stake, isn't there? There's so many folks being afraid of cancellation, of losing their funding and their positions, and it's just so much easier to keep quiet and follow that herd rather than stand up and say, wait a minute. Well, what's the danger on relying on consensus science? Doesn't science advance by challenging accepted hypotheses? How do we know what settled science is versus ideas where the jury's still out?
[00:04:44] Speaker C: Well, as far as I'm concerned, the preponderance of evidence can certainly point in one direction rather than another. But as soon as we say we know it all on this subject, we have what you call settled science, then it seems to me that science, true science, has stopped in its tracks.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true enough. Can we trust what scientists say about their work? You know, they have a lot of expertise, but once they start talking, they may get out of their depth. And on a related note, what about the science spokespersons and the science media? They attempt to distill scientific study for lay person eyes and ears, but they often end up spinning it or extrapolating it incorrectly.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Quite true. In my experience, the scientists who publish papers in scientific journals tend to be much humbler about their claims in those papers than the commentators who comment on those papers. For the media and the public, it's understandable in a way, because as a commentator for the public or the media, it helps to sensationalize things, exaggerate the importance of something, because, in truth, most scientific results, that is, empirical science, results, are really relatively trivial. So they're magnified to sound very important by the purveyors of scientific journalism, so called scientific journalism.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Right. And that is important to remember. You know, it's not all entirely groundbreaking or earth shattering. Science often progresses in increments, but they've got to make news out of it. And so the tendency is there. Well, what do we do? I mean, what do laypeople do? Do they need to learn the scientific jargon and terminology so that they can go back to the sources? Or is there the possibility of finding reliable sources, such as our website, evolution news and science today, that can cover it in an honest way? Nate?
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Well, I think it's very unrealistic to hope that lay people will learn the jargon of science. It's hard enough for me to keep up with the jargon because it's changing all the time, and it changes in response to the demands of the latest ideology. We give you lots of examples, but that alone summarizes the problem. So, of course, it's possible to go back to the original scientific papers. I do that every day. But for, you know, someone who's selling real estate or building a. Building. Building houses, I think it's unrealistic. I would encourage such people to be at least mildly skeptical of the claims of famous or expert scientists. Those claims often tend to be, as in the present circumstance, scaremongering. In fact, a friend of mine years ago called it scary science. And when you look at the evidence behind it, it's almost always the case that the truth is not what it is made out to be.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Right. That's great advice. Just start with a default position of mild skepticism until the truth is confirmed. Well, why is it important to follow the evidence wherever it leads?
[00:07:59] Speaker C: As I said earlier, good science. The best science is a search for truth. And the best way we can approximate the truth about nature is to follow the evidence, not to be led by the nose by some current fad or ideology. And unfortunately, the latter is often the case.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we've been doing that with intelligent design for decades, and we're seeing that later on, our predictions may be confirmed. Science catches up, and as we do the necessary experimentation and testing. So that careful approach does pay off over time. Well, you've recently written some comments on a blog, or not on the blog, but about a blog called science based medicine. It's owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society. The about section says that, quote, good science is the best and only way to determine which treatments and products are truly safe and effective. Unquote. They talk about EBM, evidence based medicine, a vital and positive influence on the practice of medicine. But then they want to talk about SBM, science based medicine, to come alongside that evidence and enhance it using their words, with the broader view of cumulative scientific knowledge from all relevant disciplines. Now, obviously, one of those relevant disciplines would be evolutionary biology. What's your sense of the science based medicine website and its goals?
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Well, the first thing to note is the distinction that the website makes between science and evidence. That, to me, is a red flag right from the start. The particular blog to which you're referring was about the best treatment for children with gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is officially defined as a mental disorder in which a child's perception of gender differs from their biological sex, and so on and so forth. There are more details, but most children who feel that way, and this is a statistical fact, that is, evidence, shows most children will outgrow this by the time they're adults. So most practitioners, or at least many at this point, recommend what's called a watchful waiting approach. That's based on evidence. Science based medicine, on the other hand, says watchful waiting is obsolete, and what we need to do is immediately proceed on to transitional treatments, that is, transgender treatments. So a boy who feels like a girl or a girl who feels like a boy should, as soon as possible, be started on treatments that help them transition to the other sex. The problem with this, when we look at the evidence, is that, as I said, most children, that is, about 75% who feel this way will grow up being comfortable with their biological sex. On the other hand, the evidence also shows that if children are started on what's called puberty blockers, to stop puberty, so they can then take hormones to transition to the other sex, children who start on puberty blockers, 98% of the time, will go on to complete the transition. So that's a radical difference between children who are left to sort it out for themselves with watchful waiting, compassion, listening, and so on. Most of them will become happy with their sex, whereas the ones who are started as soon as possible on transgender treatments, basically, that's the decision to continue on to complete the transition. Science based medicine says that there is no controversy over this issue, when in fact, there's a huge controversy over it. What interests me is that the same thing has been said in the evolution controversies by Darwinists. They claim that there is no controversy over darwinian evolution. Well, of course there is. There was long before Darwin wrote the origin of species. So the idea that there's no controversy and that this is settled science is just absolute nonsense.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So to come along and say, well, we have evidence here and it's vital and positive, but let's rely on consensus science, let's rely on this big, weighty capital letter word to just go right ahead and be impatient and start assigning treatments. That sounds dodgy. So are there other differences between science based medicine and evidence based medicine that we really need to keep in mind?
[00:12:33] Speaker C: Well, I think the core difference is that science, so called science based medicine, relies on ideas.
It says it relies on scientific knowledge. But we're not talking about knowledge. We're talking about ideas such as darwinian evolution, which, as I have argued, I and others have argued for decades, is not based on good evidence, but is actually materialistic philosophy masquerading as empirical science. So science based medicine wants us to rely on that more than the evidence in this case regarding the treatment of gender dysphoria.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Wow. Well, there's something else I wanted to talk to you about that's a bit related here, and that is on the topic of evolutionary biology. The contributors of this blog, science based medicine, recommend Nathan Lentz's 2018 book Human errors, as they put it. Lentz's book shows that, quote, the human body can't possibly be considered the product of an intelligent designer. Rather, its flaws tell the story of evolution. No intelligent designer would have put our retinas in backwards or filled our genomes with genes that don't work or viral carcasses of past infections. These and our many other defects are explained only by the quirks of evolution.
Your book zombie science includes a chapter showing that the Darwinists backwards retina argument completely ignores the biological evidence. Can you explain that a bit?
[00:14:05] Speaker C: Sure. Before I do, let me add that I also wrote a book in 2011 titled the myth of Junk DNA. So Lentz's claim, which is endorsed by science based medicine, that most of our DNA is junk, is empirically false. So that's a prelude to what I'm about to say on the eye.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: In the human eye, the retina, the back of the eye, contains light sensitive cells. That's what enables us to see. And each of these light sensitive cells is elongated. The light sensitive proteins are at one end, while the other end connects to nerves that take impulses to the brain. Well, in the human retina and the retina of all animals with backbones. In fact, the light sensing end of the cell points away from the light towards the back of the retina, and this is Lenz's argument that this is crazy. No designer would do it this way. Therefore, it must have been due to quirky or accidental evolution. But scientists have known since the 1960s that this design of the retina is actually very good, if not optimal. And here's why. The light sensitive end of the cell, with the pigments that detect the light, has the highest metabolic rate of any cell in the body. It requires a copious supply of blood, which give it the nutrients it needs. It also needs to slough off used sections of the cell that have already detected light and now contain toxins.
At the back of the retina is a blood layer that supplies the cells with nutrients and a layer that scours away these used parts of the cell that just get in the way. The nerve cells come out of the cell on the side where the light enters, and then traverse across the retina to a point where they plunge through a hole called the blind spot to go to the brain. The difference between the blood layer and the nerve layer is the blood layer is opaque. Light does not pass through it, whereas the nerve layer is almost transparent. So if the human eye were constructed the way lentz and many other evolutionary biologists think it should be constructed, the blood would be in front and we would be blind.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. Well, listeners, if you don't have a copy of zombie science, I would advise you to get a hold of one. I have mine here and it's a great compilation of more icons of evolution that Doctor Wells refutes and discusses in detail. And it's a great addition to your intelligent design and evolution library. Well, Doctor Wells, thank you very much for your time today. It's great to have your insight on these matters and we will definitely take your advice into account here.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here. Andrew.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: You can learn more about Jonathan Wells's work and
[email protected]. That's iconsofevolution.com. You can find other episodes of id the future wherever podcasts are found
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[00:17:38] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
