The discussion on this blog has lately turned to the question of whether or not Intelligent Design is science (see comments on recent posts). To generate some more discussion, I offer the following post adapted from Chapter 6 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:
The Darwinists= claim that Intelligent Design is not science cannot be determined from science itself. Science requires philosophical assumptions, and Darwinists philosophically rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence. As we have seen, science is a search for causes, and there are only two types of causes: intelligent and nonintelligent (natural). But, of course, if your definition of science rules out intelligent causes beforehand, then you=ll never consider Intelligent Design science.
The irony for the Darwinists is this: if Intelligent Design is not science, then neither is Darwinism. Why? Because both Darwinists and Intelligent Design scientists are trying to discover what happened in the past. Origin questions are forensic questions, and thus require the use of the forensic science principles we already have discussed. In fact, for Darwinists to rule out Intelligent Design from the realm of science, in addition to ruling out themselves, they would also have to rule out archaeology, cryptology, criminal and accident forensic investigations, and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). These are all legitimate forensic sciences that look into the past for intelligent causes. Something must be wrong with the Darwinists= definition of science.
Table 6.2 shows the difference between empirical science and forensic science:
Empirical (Operation) Science Forensic (Origin) Science
Studies present Studies past
Studies regularities Studies singularities
Studies repeatable Studies unrepeatable
Re-creation possible Re-creation impossible
Studies how things work Studies how things began
Tested by repeatable experiment Tested by uniformity
Asks how something operates Asks what its origin is
Examples: Examples:
How does water fall? What=s the origin of a hydroelectric plant?
How does rock erode? What=s the origin of Mount Rushmore?
How does an engine work? What=s the origin of an engine?
How does ink adhere to paper? What=s the origin of this book?
How does life function? What=s the origin of life?
How does the universe operate? What=s the origin of the universe?
What about God of the Gaps? Next post.
Do you really believe that “Darwinists philosophically rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence.”? If so then I now understand why you reject Evolutionary theory. It would appear that you don’t really know what the theory of evolution is. Perhaps if you had a better understanding of it you might learn to embrace it.
Darwinists do NOT philosophically rule out intelligent causes. Never have never did. What they rule out is SUPERNATURAL causes. There is a very big difference. Now as to why they rule out supernatural causes. It’s because it is impossible to study the supernatural using the scientific method. How do we test for the presence of the supernatural? What kind of experiment could confirm that action was taken by a supernatural agent? How can we be sure that a supernatural agent didn’t temporarily alter the rules of mathematics and temporarily made it so that 2+2=5? Once we allow the supernatural in no further study is possible.
How nice, Frank. Another NEGATIVE argument. Since ID does not stand on its own, lets shift the burden somewhere else.
At the very least, we need a definition of “Darwinism” from which we can work. What specifically do you mean by Darwinism?
I’m sure that will be perceived as a dodge, a shifting of the burden, but it is essential we understand each others’ terms. So be careful with your definition and the liberties taken forming it.
Kendenny:
I could embrace evolutionary theory once someone shows me the natural law that can create information-rich biological systems out of non-living chemicals, and then can progressively create new, more complex systems without intelligence.
Would you consider alien intelligence Supernatural? Is Dawkins being unscientific when he suggests aliens?
And no, study does not end if there is a supernatural force, just like archeology and criminology don’t end because there are intelligent free agents who make arrowheads or commit crimes.
Frank
Frank said “I could embrace evolutionary theory once someone shows me the natural law that can create information-rich biological systems out of non-living chemicals”
And you have been told numerous times that this is not part of evolutionary theory.
Do you understand the difference between natural and supernatural? Of course aliens are not supernatural. And you’re not still thinking that Dawkins actually suggested aliens. You have already been corrected on that score.
As far as study ending at a supernatural force. It must. There is nothing we can study about a supernatural force.
Ah, but Kendenny, Frank is out on a limb:
3. Are Miracles Possible?
If miracles don’t happen as most university professors believe, then Christianity is nonsense. The seminar will show you that not only are miracles possible, but the greatest miracle of all has already occurred and we have scientific evidence for it.
How can it be a miracle AND there be scientific evidence for it? By definition, miracles and scientific evidence are mutually exclusive.
What definitions are YOU using, Frank?
Frank wrote:
“And no, study does not end if there is a supernatural force, just like archeology and criminology don’t end because there are intelligent free agents who make arrowheads or commit crimes.”
Yes, by definition scientific study ends at the supernatural. Once there is a scientific (natural) explanation, it’s no longer supernatural, no longer a miracle.
I have two problems with ID. One is epistemological, the other theological.
The epistemological problem I have is this: IDers, when faced with something they don’t understand, declare that it cannot be understood. This is egocentrism at its worst. What makes them think that just because they cannot understand something that nobody can? The IDers can’t stand the fact that they don’t know something, so they have set up a road block and declared it unknowable territory. Why do they think that the world must be completely transparent to their understanding at all times? The historical evidence shows that this has never been the case. Science has pulled back the veil on much of reality — it makes me suspicious when someone grabs the veil and starts tugging on it to slow down or stop the unveiling.
The theological problem I have is this: if ID is true, then God wasn’t all that intelligent of a designer. First, he couldn’t even managed to figure out how to make a universe that didn’t need him coming in and intervening all the time to make complex organs or organelles. Second, he couldn’t seem to manage to make an organism that wasn’t a hodgepodge, with things being jerrymandered to fit what was already there. The brain is a series of evolutionary steps, one built on top of the other. There is a nerve that quite inefficiently loops up over the heart — something that makes sense if the heart was in a different place once in evolutionary time, and, as it moved, the nerve had to go with it (something shown by evolutionary theory). Thus, IDers have a serious theological problem on their hands that nobody seems to want to talk about: the God of ID is an incompetent idiot. For that reason alone, ID should be rejected.
Troy,
If God wants to intervene, who are we to say he is less of a God if he does? It seems to me you are putting your own theological requirements on God by saying he has to do it your way or he is an idiot. That seems to me to be the ultimate expression of egocentrism.
Blessings,
Frank
Christopher,
You continue to beg the question. WHO said science must end at natural causes? That is exactly the question. If there is a supernatural force out there who can intervene in the natural world, then we may be able to detect his effects (i.e. the universe itself, life, information, reason, morality, (the ten effects)).
Blessings,
Frank Turek
Frank,
Commonly accepted definitions of science – the ordinary sort – exclude the supernatural. To be clear, you want to change the rules and/or definition of science, correct?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (props to Sagan).
IMO, you are making an extraordinary claim saying that science does not end at natural causes. I am not saying you don’t have evidence (to you if not me), but I certainly haven’t seen extraordinary. The book? Fair enough if so.
I did read some of your book, then sidetracked to Geisler’s earlier book, then sidetracked to who knows what. Nothing extraordinary yet, but I’ll keep reading.
Christopher,
You said “commonly accepted” as if the argument from popularity makes something right. Again, the defintion is the very question we are discussing. It doesn’t help to beg the question.
It is not an extraordinary claim to say the universe had a beginning. All the scientific and philosopical evidence point to that. IMO it is extraordinary to DENY it or to throw doubt on the law of causality as you have.
Creation certainly is an extraordinary event (because the Creation of the Universe doesn’t happen everyday– it is out of the ORDINARY). But I would argue that the evidence is also extraordinary. As we point out in Chapter 3 and reference in a couple of posts here (I know, you’re getting to the book), there are at least five lines of scientific evidence (SURGE) that point to a beginning as well as the philosophical truth that the universe (and time) had a beginning. That’s beyond the ordinary.
Blessings,
Frank Turek
Yes, God could have — but why would he have? You would have to provide some pretty overwhelming evidence that there was some reason why God would need or want to do something like that when it is absolutely not necessary. The egocentrism comes in on the part of the IDers like Behe who, faced with something they don’t understand, assume that no other mortal will ever understand it, so God must have intervened to do it. Unlike them, I have no delusions about my ability to know everything there is to know. The IDers DO posit a God of the gaps. And what is going to happen when we do find explanations for all the things they are baffled at? Do away with God, since there are now no longer any gaps? ID is exactly the kind of thing which drives people away from God.
Troy,
ID has nothing to do with the intellectual capacity of mortals like Behe. It has to do with the capacity– or lack thereof– of the four known natural forces and the empirically-detectable signs of intelligence. Here are three basic facts that drive me to posit an intelligent designer:
1) There are only four natural forces and none of them have been observed to create life from nonlife or specified complexity (information).
2) But we don’t just lack a natural cause– the evidence in life is empirically detectable and demands an intelligent cause (in all our experience, specified complexity only comes from intelligent causes)
3) Since causes cannot give what they haven’t got, natural forces cannot explain life or the universe itself.
Now, we can keep looking for natural causes for life. But unless we discover a new natural force, there does not seem to be much hope for the current four.
If you could identify the natural forces that drive “information theory” (which you mentioned in another thread)– and you could show that those forces can create life and specified complexity–then we could dispense with ID. After all, ID is falsifiable when natural forces are identified to do the job. What are those natural forces?
Thanks again for your posts.
Blessings,
Frank Turek
Frank,
You didn’t answer the question.
I have to disagree with your “argument from popularity” charge. I am not appealing to popular opinion, but to a collective of authoritative sources with sufficient documentation.
Are you or are you not trying to change the rules and/or definition of science?
With regard to forensics in detecting design, doesn’t that assign to/assume of god anthropomorphic properties?
We detect human design in an arrowhead by comparing it to something we KNOW humans design. Does it not beg the question as well to say we can detect the design of a supremely intelligent being? Or could it be god is man’s greatest creation?
The first thing I would recommend is that you go read some of the work out there on quantum information theory. Next, I would recommend that you read the works out there on chaos theory, bios theory, catastrophe theory and emergence, complexity theory, and self-organization theory. All of these together help to explain how you go from simple to more complex entities. The evidence to date shows that the smartest thing we have 100% proof of — humans — only produce very, very, very simple entities. In fact, we take ores of complex chemical composition and then greatly simplify them by purifying the metals out of them. We then take those metals and make simple shapes with them that work together to make slightly more complex things like engines and cars. Complex entities are bottom-up processes beginning with simpler entities.
Also, your assumption is that different levels of complexity all follow the same rules in the same ways. Physics can in fact only tell us so much about chemistry, and chemistry can only tell us so much about biology, etc. The four forces are more than sufficient, however, if you understand how they work first at the atomic, and then at the chemical level, where those forces are used in a different way than at the merely atomic level.
And it does have a lot to do with not the intellectual capabilities of people like Behe, but with their egos in relation to their capabilities. My point is that we are of course ignorant of much about the universe, and to assert that just because we don’t know something, it’s not knowable is to be incredibly arrogant. We know more about how nature works than we did during Galileo’s time, but to assert that we know everything because of that is to attempt to cut of further inquiry. We don’t know everything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot left for us to learn. Quite the contrary. It seems the more we learn, the more we learn we need to learn. Science is not and has never been the realm of absolute certainty. Still, it has been the best, most effective way of learning about the world — precisely, I think, because of its institutional humility in the face of nature.
Dr. Camplin writes:
My point is that we are of course ignorant of much about the universe, and to assert that just because we don’t know something, it’s not knowable is to be incredibly arrogant.
The most incredible thing about this ID debate is how consistently the ID position gets misrepresented. What they’re saying is not all that complex — so why do their opponents always, always get it wrong?
I’ve read dozens of articles by ID authors. I have yet to see a single one of them make the claim that because we don’t know something, it’s therefor not knowable. That would be ridiculous on its face, and none of them have said anything remotely like that.
What they have said is that because we can’t see any way that a complex system could have arisen without a specific designer, it’s reasonable to posit a designer. That’s not within 100 light years of saying something “cannot be known,” it’s simply observing that one explanation fits the facts better than another.
Plumb Bob: “I’ve read dozens of articles by ID authors. I have yet to see a single one of them make the claim that because we don’t know something, it’s therefor not knowable.”
Maybe not those exact words but “We don’t know how it could have happened naturally therefore it had to have happened supernaturally.” is essentially the same thing.
“irreducible complexity” means “we can’t know how it came to be”
“irreducible complexity” means “we can’t know how it came to be”
No, it does not. If something is irreducibly complex, it means it can not be reduced to less complex functions, and therefore, could not develop by assembling preexisting components. In other words, there exists the logical impossibility of separate preexisting components. The system must exist altogether or not at all.
So Ir. Com. is not about ignorance of something but about the absolute impossibility of it.
In Truth and Love,
Ernie
All it really means is that the people who think it’s irreducibly complex don’t care to find out if that statement is true or not. It’s simply a sign that states, as the old maps, “Beyond here lie dragons.” They have chosen to ignore all the work that has been done in information theory, complexity, emergence, and self-organization. Catastrophe theory explains how you can move from less complex to more complex in a discontinuous leap. What they claim is not impossible. And to claim something is impossible is to try to cut off all inquiry into it. It’s worse than ignorance — it’s an attempt to keep people ignorant.
“WHO said science must end at natural causes? That is exactly the question.”
Yes, in some sense it is. I heard the creationists make the claim that their “the Earth is only 10,000 years old” nonsense really is science before the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. They also threatened to file a lawsuit. Needless-to-say, the board told the creationists to go away and file their stupid lawsuit. They can’t teach their nonsense in Texas and call it a “science education” degree.
So maybe we will get a Texas judge to back up the Dover judge who told the creationists “That’s not science!”.
The bottom line – if it’s not “natural”, it won’t have “natural” causes and “natural” effects and it can never be science. So “intelligent design”, whatever that is, can never be science.
FAQ: Does intelligent design make predictions? Is it testable?
Someone asked this question. I put it to Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute. Casey and I had the privilege of working together to torch (my biased opinion of course) Eric Rothschild and Eugenie Scott in a debate last year at the Commonwealth Club. Here’s what Casey sent back:
Hi Neil,
We have an FAQ on the IDEA Center website about ID-predictions. See these 2 pages:
FAQ: Does intelligent design make predictions? Is it testable?
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1156
Also, feel free to use the attached document, “The Positive Case for Design,” which discusses the positive predictions of ID and is available online at:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=986
I hope these help.
Sincerely,
Casey
Casey’s new co-authored book: Intelligent Design 101 is just out.
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Design-101-Leading-Experts/dp/0825427819
“And to claim something is impossible is to try to cut off all inquiry into it. It’s worse than ignorance — it’s an attempt to keep people ignorant.”
What’s funny about this statement is that it is the very thing that those who hold to Darwinism say about ID. Some may not say it directly, but some do (i.e., Dawkins, Dennet, etc) but even those who don’t say is directly certainly imply it by the very fact that they argue against it.
Oh, wait, they don’t really say it’s “impossible” they just say it’s stupid to attribute design to something that according to Dawkins, “gives the appearance of being designed for a purpose”. So if it does give the appearance of design, why is it so “stupid”, “irrational” and/or “unreasonable” to interpret that as actual design. Call me stupid, I guess.
Hi Frank,
Del Ratsch – philosopher of science – does a talk about this subject. I downloaded it for free from the Maclaurin Institute a couple of years ago. Hopefully it is still available?
One of the key points he made was that the definition of science changed at least three times in the 20th century alone. And interestingly he points out that both Newton AND Darwin had to struggle against the pre-held definitions of what science was in their day. He goes on to discuss the legitimacy of I.D. as science.
So an interesting question that must be considered before we want to critique I.D. is ‘what is science?’. But as Del Ratsch also points out, there is and has never been a complete definition – probably part of the reason it keeps changing?
But really, big deal if opponents of I.D. want to challenge it on what they think are scientific grounds. Does it really matter – ultimately – whether I.D. is deemed scientific by the current guardians of the academy? As Doug Wilson once said, “Why should we care that the guardians of the academy believe that we are not intellectually respectable? They believe that the moose, the sperm whale and the meadowlark are all blood relations. Why do we want their seal of approval on our intellectual abilities? It is like asking Fidel Castro to comment on the economic viability of Microsoft.”
Is knowledge any less knowable outside the scientific realm; that seems to be their implication?
But if we can’t know “scientifically” that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, shall we deride the historians for their petty faith in historical documents too? Or if I found an arrow head on Mars, or something similar to cuneiform chiselled into the Martian rock, is the conclusion that an intelligent source was behind it all justified or must I first attempt to “scientifically” undermine this conclusion by conjuring up imagined event causations?
Intelligent Design is obvious. And for anyone to tell me otherwise, well, a blind man may as well tell me that colours don’t exist or a man without a nose may as well try to convince me that flowers have no scent.