DO PEOPLE EVOLVE OR IS EACH PERSON DESIGNED?
( Intelligent Design or Darwinism?)
Perhaps the most embarassing paradox of the ID controversy is the fact that no scientist or scholar on either side of the dispute has ever made a study of the nature and behavior of individual persons, as such, to determine whether the claims of NeoDarwinism about evolution, natural selection, adaptation and other related theories can be reasonably applied to the human being.
It is after all the ultimate question. Yet is has been avoided by every investigator in the life and human sciences from Darwin to Dawkins. Instead of pursuing the obvious task, scientists have sought answers to the questions by examining and projecting other phenomenon, thereby seeking to establish principles which argued for the reality of design or one more display of naturalism.
Apparently nothing can be said when dealing with abstraction and probabilities which cannot be refuted by reference to other similar evidence. Whether support for Intelligent Design grows to where it can be taught in public schools as an optional approach to the issues is a possibility we hope will become a reality. But even when it is taught, what is taught that becomes bedrock to theistic belief?
In support of ID, we have near 50 years of phenomenological research into the nature and behavior of over 50,000 people one-at-a-time, when they were engaged in pursuing activity of unsurpassed personal value.Based on an idiographic paradigm, we discovered an absolute consistency in the structure, type of content and dynamics of individual nature and behavior, which I characterized as a Motivational Pattern of Giftedness (' giftedness' because it was an endowment not the result of personal effort). These discoveries paved the way for establishing a science of persons, which is predictive, comprehends the nature, and explains the behavior, of each person.
Place these findings against the representations of N eoDarwinians about evolution, natural selection, adaptation, the reality of a phenotype emergence of the new, exclusive motivation to produce more life, malleability of human behavior, and the absence of purpose and intention in the human race. The facts about the nature and behavior of the human being undermine all major precepts of Darwinian evolution when it comes to the person. Experts like Dawkins, Lewontin, Mayr and even Gould deny the application of Darwinian theories to facts of human nature and behavior as revealed in our research. For example:
DO PEOPLE COME INTO THIS LIFE READY-MADE (SIMA) OR ARE THEY FORMED OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME INTERACTING WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT? (Darwinian)
DO PEOPLE UNDERGO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE DURING THEIR LIFE TIME (Darwinian) OR IS THEIR NATURE AND BEHAVIOR STABLE AND DEVELOPING WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF THEIR PATTERN? (SIMA)
HUMANITY HAS ONE AND ONLY ONE PURPOSE; SUCCESSFUL REPRODUCTION (Darwinians), AS CONTRASTED WITH THE DEMONSTRABLE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE AWASH IN THE DESIRE TO ACCOMPLISH MANY THINGS IN LIFE WHICH HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH PROCREATION (SIMA)
IN NATURAL SELECTION, IS ADAPTATION TO FIT THE ENVIRONMENT THE WAY PEOPLE SURVIVE, (Darwinian) OR DO PEOPLE ACHIEVE THEIR PURPOSES BY MANIPULATING THEIR ENVIRONMENT?( SIMA)
"The metaphor of adaptation .... is now an impediment to a real understanding of the evolutionary process .... organisms not only determine what aspects of the outside world are relevant to them .... but they actively construct in the literal sense of the word, a world around themselves .... organisms are in a constant process of altering
their environment."
Lewontin(2000) 48, 51-55
ARE BEHAVIOR PATTERNS OF GIFTEDNESS CONTAINING 25-35 ELEMENTS, THE RESULT OF NA TURAL SELECTION?
" If we are to so much as discuss the possibility of a behavior pattern's evolving by natural selection, we have to postulate genetic variation with respect to the tendency or capacity to perform that behavior pattern... there must have been genetic variation in the past if we are to treat the behavior pattern as a Darwinian adaptation (i.e. adaptation as produced by natural selection)
Dawkins(1982) 18-19
"But the plain fact is that the genetic mechanism shows not the slightest sign of being able to convey specific behavior patterns"
Taylor (1983) 221
"What is the direct evidence for genetic control of specific human social behavior? At the moment, the answer is none whatever".
Gould ( 1977) 254
I have found no evidence that any of those scientists or scholars designated as Darwinians by themselves or others, ever studied the individual person, as an entity, or performed any extended research on individual persons as such. The failure to seek reliable data on this most accessible organism is incomprehensible and obviously driven by an hysterical fear that the divine would be lurking in that data. (A thought attributed to Steven Pinker in 'The Blank Slate')
Copyright 2007 Arthur F. Miller
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