As Jim Croce once sang, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, You don’t spit into the wind, You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t match wits with David B. Hart.” (At least I think those are the lyrics, its been awhile since I heard the song.) Hart’s commanding intellect and depth of knowledge are so daunting that only the foolish would rush to disagree with him. While I’m naturally reticent to disagree with anything he writes, he made a claim about intelligent design theory (ID in his review of Richard Dawkin’s latest book that I believe is worth challenging.
Although I’m broadly skeptical about ID as it relates to biology (indeed, I broadly skeptical about how much we really know when it comes to the biological sciences), I have to take issue with this claim:
The best argument against ID theory, when all is said and done, is that it rests on a premise—“irreducible complexity”—that may seem compelling at the purely intuitive level but that can never logically be demonstrated. At the end of the day, it is—as Francis Collins rightly remarks—an argument from personal incredulity.
If this is truly the best argument against the theory, then ID is in very good shape.
Before we address whether irreducible complexity can be logically demonstrated, let’s examine the claim that it presents an argument from personal incredulity.
While Charles Darwin wasn’t aware of the term “irreducible complexity” he did posit it as a way to falsify his theory. In The Origin of Species, he wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” Opponents of ID naturally have a stake in dismissing irreducible complexity since it undercuts the primary challenge to Darwin’s theory. Labeling ID as an argument from personal incredulity or argument from ignorance is a shortcut to a showstopper: ID is guilty of this fallacy, ergo ID is false.
But what exactly is the fallacy being committed?
Although I can’t recall ever encountering an real live example of the argument from personal incredulity in the wild, the form is generally claimed to take one of the following forms:
1. There is no proof (or you have not proved) that p is false. Therefore p is true.
2. There is no proof (or you have not proved) that p is true. Therefore p is false.
But what’s wrong with this form? As philosopher Brandon Watson notes:
[I]t’s hard to see why this is fallacious; it is natural to read it as both defeasible and enthymematic. Walton, among others, has noted that as a matter of practical reasoning, this is often an excellent form of reasoning. (I have not determined that this gun is unloaded; it is reasonable to regard it as, for all practical purposes, a loaded gun unless it is shown to be otherwise.) But practical reasoning leaks into speculative inquiry; and as a purely speculative matter the above forms of reasoning can be quite reasonable. If I say, “There is no evidence that such-and-such drug has the effects attributed to it,” I am not appealing to ignorance. I am appealing to the evidence of the inquiries themselves, the inquiries that have been made into the effects of the drug in question, and it stands or falls with the adequacy of these inquiries. [italics in original]
Perhaps there are fallacious forms of the argument from ignorance, but if so they probably do not apply to ID. To see why, consider this thought experiment:
Yesterday I was on the moon. Since I was able to take my laptop and had a (really good) wireless Internet connection, I was able to send an email to NASA. Though I’m unclear on the process they used, they were able to verify that I was, to their great surprise, reporting from the lunar surface. When they asked me how I got there I told them that I couldn’t be completely certain, but I was pretty sure that I had walked to the moon.
As you can expect, they were rather skeptical despite the fact that they didn’t possess any reports of a spacecraft leaving earth’s atmosphere over the last 24-hour period. In fact, they didn’t have any evidence that would provide a suitable explanation at all for my journey. But while they could not come to a decisive conclusion about how I got there, they were sure of one thing: I didn’t walk to the moon.
Would I be justified in claiming that the NASA scientists were committing the fallacy of an argument from personal incredulity? Technically yes, according to the popular understanding of that so-called fallacy. But this runs counter to our intuitions—and for good reason: NASA would be quite justified in their skepticism.
Once we understand all the physical parameters and factors required to support my claim—the limitation of human feet, the lack of a walkway from earth to the moon, the superhuman speed and stamina required for the journey—we could reasonably conclude that even if we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility, we can render it extremely unlikely that I was able to walk from the United States to the Sea of Tranquility. Excluding this possibility doesn’t help us explain how I got up there but it does aid in understanding how I didn’t.
In essence the folks at NASA would examine the known parameters and posit an argument to the best explanation. Philosopher J.L. Mackie explains that these arguments share a common form:
The evidence supports the conclusion, it is suggested, because if we postulate that the conclusion is true—or better, perhaps, that it is at least an approximation to the truth—we get a more adequate overall explanation of that whole body of evidence, in light of whatever considerations are cited, than would be given by any available alternative hypothesis
While NASA has no positive evidence to support their conclusion they can use analogical reasoning and induction to rule out what is not possible, leaving them open to search for positive evidence on which to base an explanation. They can save time by ruling out the impossible in order to spend time searching for the probable.
ID theory follows a similar approach. ID advocates claim (with much justification) that the entire scientific community is clueless about the emergence of biological complexity and that the material mechanisms to which the biological community looks provides no clue how these systems might realistically have come about. Their claim is that certain features are irreducibly complex—that they are a single system composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. They consider explanations that these structure arose by natural selection to be equivalent to my walk to the moon. And since they believe the natural parameters rule out the possibility of these complex structures arising solely by natural selection, they are warranted in searching for an alternate explanation.
Since there has been a gross explanatory failure in accounting for biological complexity I’m not sure why there is such opposition to considering this possibility. Obviously, if you are committed to atheistic materialism then you are less likely to consider evidence for intelligent design (though you should still be open to it). But why should theists be similar constrained? This research program may lead down a false path—but so has the current approach. Since biologists are unable to explain any complex biological functions without resorting to the language of teleology and design, you’d think they’d be more open to the possibility that actual teleology or design was involved in the process.
Nevertheless, there may be a strong case to be made against intelligent design theory. The entire concept may prove to be a complete waste of time and resources. If so the opponents of ID should make a positive case for how we rule out the design inference. Otherwise, they are merely presenting their own argument from personal incredulity.
January 5th, 2010 | 10:09 am
[...] In UD Contest 19 Denyse asked readers to identify the several errors in a passage from David B. Hart’s blurb about the “problems with ID. Over at First Things Joe Carter also goes after Hart (here). [...]
January 5th, 2010 | 11:11 am
Joe,
There is an error in Darwin’s argument which in turn hurts your argument. The idea “which could not possibly” represents the regular evidential approach taken by evolutionists. While the whole of the argument is inductive (as are all historical arguments), the challenge to the critic is to present some sort of deductive challenge that cannot be refuted. IOW, it’s a straw man challenge. It’s a malformed argument set up to protect the position. The challenge to evolution is not one of evidence but of the framing of evidence. It is the structure of the various evolutionary models which ought to be confronted, as that is their greatest failing.
The problem with current ID theory is that their model has much the same weaknesses as the natural models. It depends upon an historical recursion, a type of confirmation bias. I’m looking forward to a new model from the ID community that resolve or reduce this tendency.
January 5th, 2010 | 12:16 pm
I have yet to have somebody tell me the difference between personal incredulity and scientific skepticism. It seems like if it’s PC then it’s scientific skepticism if its not PC then it’s the fallacy of personal incredulity.
January 5th, 2010 | 12:51 pm
“ID advocates claim (with much justification) that the entire scientific community is clueless about the emergence of biological complexity and that the material mechanisms to which the biological community looks provides no clue how these systems might realistically have come about.”
Yet, the scientific community – with people who actually engage in direct, primary research (unlike an ID community made up mainly of lawyers, engineers, and some mathematicians and philosophers with maverick complexes) – claims, with much justification to have more than a clue about the emergence of biological complexity. Further, the scientific community claims that material mechanisms do indeed provide substantial clues about how these systems might realistically have come about.
These claims and the evidence supporting them are widely available from reliable sources on the Internet.
To me, it’s not just that ID rests on an argument from personal incredulity – as you seem to stipulate throughout – but it’s also that ID’s argument comes up short against materialist arguments based on empirical data, multiple lines of evidence, and self-scrutiny.
January 5th, 2010 | 1:21 pm
[...] A Walk to the Moon Tuesday, January 5, 2010, 9:00 AM Joe Carter As Jim Croce once sang, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, You don’t spit into the wind, You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t match wits with David B. Hart.” (At least I think those are the lyrics, its been awhile since I heard the song.) Hart’s commanding intellect and depth of knowledge are so daunting that only the foolish would rush to disagree with him. While I’m naturally reticent to disagree with anything he writes, he made a claim about intelligent design theory (ID in his review of Richard Dawkin’s latest book that I believe is worth challenging. [...]
January 5th, 2010 | 2:39 pm
The fallacy is the “thought experiment.”
The thought experiment is essentially an analogy. Analogies are not “evidence.”
This thought experiment begins with an implied, “Assume as true… [I Was on the moon].
This is no more valid than, “Assume Santa Claus has a flying sleigh–how does he do it?” If you can’t explain his propulsion method then you are employing an argument from incredulity when you deny Santa’s existence. This is Joe Carter’s point and it’s invalid.
The “assume” wrecks the example.
Also, This:
“1. There is no proof (or you have not proved) that p is false. Therefore p is true.
2. There is no proof (or you have not proved) that p is true. Therefore p is false.”
is not the form of the argument against Intelligent Design.
Natural selection, genetic drift and other engines of evolution are not “walking to the moon.” These have each been observed in nature. They are not “mythical” like Santa’ sleigh propulsion system.
ID proponents have made the argument from incredulity by saying we don’t know how “X” evolved, therefore it did not.
An evolutionary response demonstrating possible evolutionary pathways is not a mirror image argument and not an argument from incredulity. The response concededs there may well be examples of biological design, but those have simply not been demostrated yet.
January 5th, 2010 | 2:52 pm
“ID theory follows a similar approach.”
What “theory” is that? ID proponent Paul Nelson has acknowledged ID’s lack of a theory:
“Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as “irreducible complexity” and “specified complexity” – but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.”
- Paul Nelson, Touchstone Magazine 7/8 (2004): pp 64 – 65.
ID proponent Michael Behe, under oath, admitted that ID would qualify as a “scientific theory” under his broadened definition – and so would astrology. He also acknowledged, under oath in federal court, that his proposed concept of irreducible complexity is flawed, and that he had not addressed the flaws.
Irreducible complexity is laughed off by the biologically literate because they are aware of mechanisms, such as exaption, through with such complexity might naturally arise.
January 5th, 2010 | 3:16 pm
It continues to amaze me how the ID community faults evolution for not YET being able to explain every nuance and mechanism through which natural selection has operated for billions of years. At the same time, I have heard no ID partisan offer any semblance of a mechanism for how their so-called intelligent designer (i.e., god) brings forth the initial “irreducibly complex” manifestations. Do these prototype organism have little “god antennas” tuned in to hear what god is instructing them next to build? Perhaps a fully designed eye falls from the sky and lands on a creature/ Maybe its like a PowerPoint slide, and god chooses the appropriate transition effect? I’m partial to the chekerboard myself. Or could it be like Adam, and these organisms sprout from the soil?
January 5th, 2010 | 3:29 pm
Joe writes: “Analogies are not `evidence.’”
Then evidence is not the only way we know things. For example, jurisprudence relies heavily on analogical reasoning in order to arrive at conclusions that seem to be things we know. Consider the argument that ID is “religious” for establishment purposes. Here one may offer reasons to show that ID is more similar to religion than not. But in order to do this one must engage in analogical reasoning. So, if “analogies” cannot be the basis of knowledge that may count for or against theoretical claims, then one has undermined one of the central arguments against teaching ID in public schools.
What’s more, Darwin himself relied on the analogy of the techniques of animal husbandry in order to make a case for natural selection. Again, if you get rid of analogical reasoning, you undercut one of the most compelling arguments offered by Darwin.
Having said that, I think that ID’s ultimate failure is that it buys into too many Enlightenment assumptions about the nature of science and knowledge. Here, we would do well to listen to the counsel of Dallas Willard in his latest book, Knowing Christ Today.
January 5th, 2010 | 3:32 pm
I think Larry Tanner has hit the nail on the head.
Plus, this sentence, “And since they believe the natural parameters rule out the possibility of these complex structures arising solely by natural selection, they are warranted in searching for an alternate explanation.” has the further implication that until such alternate explanation is extant, the argument remains, pure and simple, the argument from personal incredulity.
January 5th, 2010 | 3:44 pm
What I find interesting about this post is that you basically sidestep the question. The issue at hand is not whether Dawkins is correct in asserting that designers are making arguments from personal incredulity. That’s basically irrelevant in comparison to the real issue.
The real issue is in Darwin’s statement “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Proponents of ID have never successfully demonstrated an example of irreducible complexity. Functions and organs as complex as the eye, the brain, and the central nervous system are all reducibly complex both logically and within the evolutionary record. Even mechanical analogies, like a mousetrap (i.e. “What good is half a mousetrap? Therefor a mousetrap is irreducibly complex”) have been demonstrated as lacking http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html
In the end, the greatest fallacy of ID proponents is to put God in the gaps. They point to insufficiently explored areas of biology and biological theory and declare “AHA! We have found God.” That’s theologically disgusting and scientifically ridiculous.
Where you truly break down is here “Since biologists are unable to explain any complex biological functions without resorting to the language of teleology and design, you’d think they’d be more open to the possibility that actual teleology or design was involved in the process.” If you want to talk about fallacies, that’s a pretty big one, and it’s called the straw man.
January 5th, 2010 | 4:33 pm
re Collin’s comment…
I suggest that there are two problems here. The first is not the data but the worldview which interprets the data. If naturalism, or something like it (say, materialism) is true, then the only explanatory resource available to the naturalist is the laws of physics or “science.” That being part of the definition of naturalism. (See The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Edition) The second problem is the obsession to explain the physical structures of living things when what needs to be explained is the information that built those structures in the first place. Although I find Behe’s arguments compelling (others, obviously, do not), I believe they are irrelevant. Biologists have known, since 1953 or thereabouts, that information (DNA) is what separates life from non-life. Therefore, as Küppers and others have noted, the problem of the origin of life is the problem of the origin of information. So how to explain the origin of information in terms of the laws of physics (for the naturalist) is the big question.
The big answer is that they cannot do so and they will never be able to do so because the laws of physics have nothing whatsoever to say about information. They never have and they never will because physics is about the material world and information is immaterial. It’s pretty simple, actually. In order to have information you must have language (symbols and rules) but nothing in physics addresses symbols – the representation of one thing for another, or rules – how the symbols are arranged to mean something. That there is biological information and a biological language in the robust sense of the words is difficult to deny. Life, in all of its varieties, is the expression of this information through this language. Mechanical processes, no matter long they may have to operate, will never, ever, account for language and therefore information and therefore life. Or so I say.
January 5th, 2010 | 5:41 pm
Larry Tanner These claims and the evidence supporting them are widely available from reliable sources on the Internet.
Where? I’ve looked for years and never found them. If someone on the interwebs has that sort of proof then they need to take it to Copenhagen and pick up their Nobel.
Joe McFaul The thought experiment is essentially an analogy. Analogies are not “evidence.”
The thought experiment wasn’t presented as evidence. It was presented as a thought experiment.
The “assume” wrecks the example.
So hypotheticals can never be used as examples in thought experiments?
Natural selection, genetic drift and other engines of evolution are not “walking to the moon.” These have each been observed in nature.
No one says that they are mythical. But the claims of ID—which I agree with and the evidence shows—is that they are insufficient to explain certain biological phenomena.
ID proponents have made the argument from incredulity by saying we don’t know how “X” evolved, therefore it did not.
I know that is a line that is oft-repeated, but I have never seen an advocate of ID make that claim. Never.
An evolutionary response demonstrating possible evolutionary pathways is not a mirror image argument and not an argument from incredulity.
No, its just a speculation.
ID proponent Michael Behe, under oath, admitted that ID would qualify as a “scientific theory” under his broadened definition – and so would astrology.
And so would Darwinism. In science its called the “demarcation problem.” It’s very difficult to find the line of demarcation between science and pseudo-science. Once you try to create a strict definition of what can be considered a “theory” you leave out broad areas of science (i.e. string theory).
Irreducible complexity is laughed off by the biologically literate because they are aware of mechanisms, such as exaption, through with such complexity might naturally arise.
You’re kidding right? Expation is basically saying, “I need this feature to serve more than one function, ergo it serves more than one function.” Since the feature can’t be observed in the evolutionary process, it’s often just a post hoc explanations to explain something that has not been (and likely cannot be) proven.
Brian Bissett It continues to amaze me how the ID community faults evolution for not YET being able to explain every nuance and mechanism through which natural selection has operated for billions of years.
I think you misuderstand the IDer’s critique. It’s not that there is no explanation yet, its that there is no possible way for natural selection to account for the changes. Take, for example, prions. They evolve without benefit of natural selection because they cannot reproduce.
Paul B has the further implication that until such alternate explanation is extant, the argument remains, pure and simple, the argument from personal incredulity.
I think you missed the point: Claiming that something is an argument from personal incredulity is merely another way of saying, “I don’t like their position.” It’s not a real fallacy.
Andrew Even mechanical analogies, like a mousetrap (i.e. “What good is half a mousetrap? Therefor a mousetrap is irreducibly complex”) have been demonstrated as lacking
All I’ll say on this point is that anyone that hasn’t heard the “refutations” of irreducible complexity really need to do so for themselves. In particluar they should read the attempted demolitions of the mousetrap example. The one Andrew links to is a superb example. The fact that it is on a college website is particular rich. (It’s seriously one of the goofiest arguments I’ve seen in a long time. Someone should tell the author that a mousetrap that can’t catch a mouse isn’t a mousetrap. It’s just a piece of wire. But in fairness, it can be used as a conductor of electricity so it probably has some evolutionary use, right? Perhaps that is what is meant by expation.)
Anyone that wonders why ID is even given a hearing just has to look at these sorts of “explanations.” They make Kipling’s “Just-So Stories” seem reasonable.
ID may be wrong (and I suspect it is), but if that’s the best that Darwinist can do (and I suspect it is) then it shouldn’t be surprising that few people besides the already convinced find their arguments and explanations weak.
January 5th, 2010 | 6:52 pm
This is where Joe Carter’s argument fails:
“the entire scientific community is clueless about the emergence of biological complexity and that the material mechanisms to which the biological community looks provides no clue how these systems might realistically have come about”
I’m not even sure where to begin to educate Mr. Carter; prebiotic synthesis, thermodynamic definitions of life, epigenetics, etc.?
We should clarify that ID means different things to different people. For Michael Behe, ID explains the appearance of cellular life, but evolution explains everything after (including eyes, hearts, and brains) but other ID proponents disagree and outright reject common descent. Thus the fatal (scientific) flaw to the ID theory (actually a hypothesis) – its is subjective, not objective.
January 5th, 2010 | 7:23 pm
How mousetraps evolve:
Prions evolve without the benefit of DNA
The infectious proteins called prions show all the hallmarks of population genetics, even though they have no genetic material … this is precisely the behavior we call evolution when it happens to a living organism or virus.
The researchers propose that there are a number (possibly more than a dozen) of low-energy potential prion structures that are separated by higher energy barriers. When a prion converts a normal protein, it typically forces it into the same structure as itself, but at a low probability, other variant structures result. The population of these variants can then expand or contract based on selective pressures.
January 5th, 2010 | 9:37 pm
@Joe Carter
You’re exactly right that a mousetrap that doesn’t catch a mouse isn’t a mousetrap. Just in the same way that a shark that can’t catch fish isn’t a shark, it’s dead. The fact that minor variations in a very simple piece of wire (giving it a loop, laying it on its side, etc.) can increase the chance that the object is successful is directly analogous to natural selection.
Using a mousetrap or a pocketwatch to disprove natural selection is a goofy proposition to begin with. It substitutes evidence of natural selection of complex organisms, organs, functions, etc, for an analogy that is, ultimately, lacking.
Given such a goofy argument on the part of IDers, obviously the response will be equally goofy. The basic fact that a complex trap could be thought up in stages as opposed to being created all at once is why it works.
January 5th, 2010 | 10:35 pm
I find all the comments against ID usually very uninformed. A little over 10 years ago I was a believer in Darwinian evolution and then saw an ad for an Intelligent Design forum in New York City. I went to it and became intrigued. To make a long story short, I have searched and asked for a coherent defense of Darwinian evolution since that time and have yet to find it or anyone willing to provide one. They always seem to exist somewhere but no one can quite get their hands on it. I have had evolutionary biologists say it does not exist because it happened some other way though they can not provide empirical support for the exact way it actually did happen.
Most people confuse micro evolution which is well accepted by proponents of ID with the ability to generate novel complex organized capabilities and there is no evidence that it ever happened through naturalistic processes. The debate is not over evolution or if it happened or not but what was the mechanism for the appearance of many life forms and their unique capabilities. There is a lot of arm chair speculation or just so stories but no hard evidence that can show how these complex novelties arose. People often present interesting phenomena such as the prion example but that falls so far short of the development of something like the eye which was essentially complete at the Cambrian Explosion and appeared out of nowhere.
Over the last couple years I have written some summaries of arguments and ideas about ID in some long comments at Bill Dembski’s blog, Uncommondescent. For those who are interested in understand ID, here are four links which represent one person’s perspective after ten years of reading and debating it. If you are going to criticize ID, then you should really try to understand what it is about rather than take what someone says on a blog or in an article or make disparaging remarks about how dumb the ID people are. The links are to the specific comments and one of them is a series of three comments.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/november-apologetics-conference-we-need-more-than-good-arguments/#comment-296129
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/ud-commenters-win-one-for-the-gipper/#comment-299358
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lenny-susskind-on-the-evolution-of-physicists/#comment-326046
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/faq2-is-open-for-comment/#comment-304029
January 5th, 2010 | 11:42 pm
Tom Peeler,
The reason that the physical sciences don’t address the issue of “information” is that it is not a scientific question; it is a philosophical (metaphysical/ontological) issue and should be discussed in that arena (and has been via, e.g., the “linguistic turn” in 20th century philosophy).
January 6th, 2010 | 1:13 am
suppose a visitor unfamiliar with the united states and its monuments came upon mount rushmore and was asked about its origins…. would it not be insanity for him to state that mount rushmore was the result of chance?
like it or not, the flagellum is a molecular motor. motors have the appearance of design. and design presupposes intelligence.
during my biochemistry classes in graduate school, my professors would speak of transcriptases and other enzymes as “doing this” and “doing that.” transcriptases are only folded chains of amino acids — in what sense are they “agents” such that we could speak of them “performing” such acts? how do these amino acid chains “know” to “proceed along DNA,” starting and stopping and hopping merrily along, faithfully copying information…. my professors might as well have been talking about intelligent dolphins.
moreover, that a sperm and an egg can combine to form a zygote containing enough information to differentiate properly, wire the brainstem and cortex, construct the cornea and the lens of the eye with properly tuned indices of refraction so as to focus light, wire the retina and the 1.2 million neurons of each optic nerve, fold every receptor in every cell accurately, configure the immune system with its many possible T-cell receptor combinations, differentiate into different cells for different organs…. and eventually give rise to a mind (not merely a brain) that can reason and wrestle with logic and have free will….
anyway, can all this embryology happen strictly by chance? surely it is a mark of sanity to be incredulous before such a philosophical, non-scientific claim. indeed, primitively claiming a “life force” is at least being true to the facts.
finally, though there is evidence for intelligent design in the natural world, i don’t think the definition of science should be expanded to include supernatural causes (intelligence). science should be limited to seeking natural causes for natural phenomena; in instances where natural causes cannot be found, science should remain silent.
which means science should stay out of philosophy and meta-narratives lest it become both bad science and bad philosophy.
January 6th, 2010 | 8:14 am
“The reason that the physical sciences don’t address the issue of “information” is that it is not a scientific question”
Nearly every biology department in the country has bioinformatics courses and several have separate sections or degrees in the topic. The term information has many uses but google bioinformatics or go to wikipedia to see that science treats some uses of the term “information” as science.
” i don’t think the definition of science should be expanded to include supernatural causes (intelligence). science should be limited to seeking natural causes for natural phenomena;”
ID does not use the concept of “supernatural” in its examination of physical phenomena. The concept of “intelligence” is used frequently in several different scientific disciplines. So to equate intelligence with supernatural is a non sequitur. On a site devoted to religious ideas, one would think that there would be an acceptance that the supernatural or God has interacted with the physical phenomena of this world. But ID does not make this assumption, only that an intelligence has operated at some times in the past and it is possible to see the effects of this intervention.
January 6th, 2010 | 9:47 am
Jerry,
Tom was referring to some definition of “information” that (in his opinion) the sciences don’t address. In doing so, he seemed to be talking about a philosophical use of the term as something like what Thomists call “intelligibility.” I’m not sure why ID has to reinvent the wheel and act as if no one has ever thought of such a thing before.
January 6th, 2010 | 2:42 pm
dear jerry,
thank you for your thoughtful reply. please allow me to clarify, first by quoting your post.
“ID does not use the concept of “supernatural” in its examination of physical phenomena. The concept of “intelligence” is used frequently in several different scientific disciplines. So to equate intelligence with supernatural is a non sequitur.”
i once asked both behe and dembski at a conference about their definition of science — more specifically, whether we should, given evidence for intelligence, now study this designer/mind scientifically. they both seemed a little embarrassed by the implications of their expanded definition of science, for surely it would be far fetched to run experiments on this designer/mind? can this designer/mind be described using equations? neither behe nor dembski seemed very enthusiastic about these projects.
in other words, how can theology (loosely defined as the “study of the designer/mind”) be studied scientifically, assuming a workable definition of “science” that binds all scientists in all places regardless of worldview?
as for other scientific disciplines that use the concept of “intelligence,” i don’t know of another discipline that uses it in the way ID does — as a overarching purposeful mind that is not a human mind. in fact, there are plenty of scientific disciplines that use the concept of “artificial intelligence,” which simply proves the point.
“On a site devoted to religious ideas, one would think that there would be an acceptance that the supernatural or God has interacted with the physical phenomena of this world. But ID does not make this assumption, only that an intelligence has operated at some times in the past and it is possible to see the effects of this intervention.”
i’m an orthodox catholic. i believe, inter alia, that somehow God became a zygote in bethlehem to redeem our sorry race. and i also agree that intelligence operates in the physical world. in fact, i don’t think we can think a single true thought without interacting with this intelligence…. science itself is loaded with epistemological assumptions.
but i digress. i agree it would be quick — and unnecessary — to jump from ID to the God of christianity. but ID implies the existence of a designer/mind, and if the definition of science is to be expanded to include scientific study of this designer/mind itself, then surely the word “science” becomes too slippery to be useful.
what i propose is an arbitrary, restricted definition of science, but a necessary definition nonetheless. the alternative would be the equivalent of hamlet running experiments on shakespeare.
NB: this definition of science would also exclude evolutionary speculation that amounts to metaphysical naturalism. naturalism is philosophy, not science. in fact, perhaps both ID and metaphysical naturalism should be taught in philosophy classes, not in science classes.
i hope this clarification helps. sorry for the verbiage….
January 6th, 2010 | 3:57 pm
As any carefully worded ID website will tell you, the “Designer” need not be God, it could be an intelligent alien (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
January 6th, 2010 | 4:04 pm
Regarding irreducible complexity, the exaption point doesn’t (pace Mr. Carter) have to show independent evidence of the different functions in order to blow a hole in Behe’s argument. Behe’s argument about irreducible complexity was, basically, that there are biochemical structures that are complex and which require the presence of several components in order to perform their function at all. It is a problem for Behe, a fatal problem, that he has no argument establishing why that function has to stay the same throughout the supposed evolutionary history of that structure. You throw the onus of proof on the objectors, but that’s not justified at all. All the objectors need to establish is that Behe’s argument depended on holding the function constant over the history of the structure (and the argument manifestly does depend on that assumption), and that Behe has no basis for that assumption (and for Darwin’s Black Box, at least, that’s true). This is the more problematic since biology is full of examples of homologous structures that currently perform different functions.
As for defeating design inferences, there are people who have taken up these arguments seriously, and I find it hard to believe that you have simply been unable to find them. Look up Michael Ruse and Elliot Sober. For a particular example, there’s a paper from 1999 in Philosophy of Science (Sober is one of the co-authors) that addresses Dembski’s then-current argument about information. (I echo the comment above that there are various different approaches under the ID banner, and the fact that you are still talking about irreducible complexity after Behe, from what I understand, has pretty much given it up himself, is puzzling.)
More generally, it’s one thing to propose that there are still conceptual questions about a dominant scientific paradigm. It’s another to argue that those are not just questions, but fatal problems in that paradigm. And it’s still another to offer a replacement. ID proponents have – perhaps – had some success in the first. They have done nothing towards the third. I would say they’ve had no or very little success in the second as well. But at any rate these are three very different things, and part of what explains the hostility of the scientific community to ID is that it is a real-world movement to get science education to include “alternatives” to broadly Darwinian evolutionary theory. But nothing the ID authors have done has come close to establishing an alternative.
It’s true that the scientific community is belligerent on the topic, and that their philosophical worldview comes into play very seriously here. But there are examples of people making serious conceptual arguments against the dominant understanding of evolution (Jerry Fodor’s forthcoming book, for one – look up his 2005 (?) article in the London Review of Books) – and while there was still some wailing and gnashing of teeth at that article, Fodor’s book will be taken seriously, more seriously than anything under the ID banner. Is that nefarious? Perhaps, but not necessarily, since Fodor is not claiming that he has an alternative theory, and is not part of a movement to get an alternative into textbooks.
January 6th, 2010 | 4:19 pm
Correction: I see that Hart was the one who brought up irreducible complexity in the first place, so that criticism of Mr. Carter is withdrawn.
Hart’s remark is a bit of a throwaway, perhaps, and maybe he hasn’t done his homework, but I think it could be defended. The key is what he means by “at the end of the day.” I assume (and hope) he realizes that ID arguments are not actually framed as appeals to personal incredulity, and that people like Behe and Dembski are at pains to try to establish some particular kind of complexity or information that is distinctive of living things, and is not just “lots and lots of complexity – too much for that Darwin thing to handle.” The thing is, none of these attempts have been particularly successful. Sober et al. seem to do a pretty thorough destruction of Dembski’s then-current concept of special information (I don’t recall what his term is), and Behe’s irreducible complexity clearly depends on the un-argued for assumption that there is one single function for a biochemical machine that remains the same throughout the history of its reproduction in organisms. (This is a particularly unjustifiable assumption for Behe, who explicitly, in that work, says that biochemical structures are literally machines – so he has no room to argue that there is some inherent or essential function – a machine can have different functions depending on what use one puts it to.)
This isn’t an exhaustive or even extensive list, of course, but Hart may just be assuming that these efforts haven’t been successful. And I think that’s a pretty good assumption, actually. Contrary to what you imply, serious thinking biologists and philosophers of biology have spent some time refuting these proposals.
January 6th, 2010 | 4:44 pm
Steve,
You said:
“I’m not sure why ID has to reinvent the wheel and act as if no one has ever thought of such a thing before.”
I am not aware that ID is reinventing anything or is acting that no one has thought of these things before. Design arguments go back to Plato and probably further. There are many definitions of the term information and the one ID usually uses is the one used in biology. So there is no new use or reinventing of anything. Francis Crick in 1954 was the first one to refer to the structure of DNA as information and over time biology has called the relationship between the nucleotides in DNA and the structures of proteins and RNA an information system. ID just uses what biology uses. It is fairly typical of ID to use what scientists are already using but in some case to extend or reinterpret the conclusions of science.
More than one person has made the analogy between the transcription/translation system in biology between DNA and proteins as analogous to computer programming and language. Such a system does not exist anywhere in the world except for life and human activity. So the question becomes how did such an extremely complicated and coordinated system (roughly a thousand different proteins and RNA polymers all of which are themselves very complex) arise when no where else in nature is there even a simple type of a similar system. And this is not the only organized complicated system existing within the cell and organism. There are many others.
So ID points to this and makes the claim that such a system could be created by an intelligence but is very unlikely to have been the result of natural processes. Stephen Meyer has just written a long and extensive book on this topic called “The Signature in the Cell.” The point I am trying to make here is that there has been a lot of careful thought put into the ID hypothesis.
People may not agree with it after examining it but they should appreciate that the points of view expressed by ID proponents are based on science and are not based on a shallow understandings of the physical world. While it would be nice to have many of the readers here become more supportive of ID, the minimum objective is to have the readers more knowledgeable of just what ID is.
January 6th, 2010 | 5:03 pm
Where you truly break down is here “Since biologists are unable to explain any complex biological functions without resorting to the language of teleology and design, you’d think they’d be more open to the possibility that actual teleology or design was involved in the process.” If you want to talk about fallacies, that’s a pretty big one, and it’s called the straw man.
No. All one has to do is take a cursory look at Coyne and Friends to find it filled with teleology.
For instance, this from Gould:
That “will produce” at the end makes for a requirement which is unsupportable. That is teleology at its best.
Or this from Coyne:
Coyne’s assumption about teleology is a worst-case matter. And that mispreresents the situation and the problem. Still, he makes an a priori appeal to different causes. Again, that’s teleological.
Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, p. 725
Coyne, Why Evolution is True, p. 14
January 6th, 2010 | 5:06 pm
Brian B,
At the same time, I have heard no ID partisan offer any semblance of a mechanism for how their so-called intelligent designer
They don’t have to. ID intends to correct the guessing involved in over-excited model-making among the scientific theorists. Think of it as a type of falsification in the world of models (because evolution is not deductive).
January 6th, 2010 | 5:53 pm
Hi Steve, you say “The reason that the physical sciences don’t address the issue of “information” is that it is not a scientific question; it is a philosophical (metaphysical/ontological) issue and should be discussed in that arena (and has been via, e.g., the “linguistic turn” in 20th century philosophy).”
How can biological information not be a scientific question? And how can biological information not be information? Since Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA it’s been one of the central questions, really, in biology. How can one explain life without reference to information? And how can one have information without language (symbols and rules)? And how can one get language from the laws of physics?
I merely pointed out the inability of the explanatory resources of the naturalist (physics) to handle these questions. And since Darwinian evolution is the reigning naturalistic story, it follows that it is false. If you disagree, perhaps you could explain to me why I am mistaken about information being a “scientific” issue in the first place, or, if you do agree that biological information needs to be explained, how the laws of physics plus eons of time can do it.
p.s. It is impossible to “do” science apart from philosophy. In fact, if the philosophical assumptions are wrong, the scientific conclusions will necessarily be wrong. The questions of ontology and epistemology are fundamental even though they are often ignored.
January 6th, 2010 | 5:55 pm
“I have heard no ID partisan offer any semblance of a mechanism for how their so-called intelligent designer brings forth the initial “irreducibly complex” manifestations.”
Supposedly within a short time, scientists plan to create their own cell from scratch. There is a whole area of biology called Synthetic Biology. So an intelligence in the past could have the capability to do something similar. Even Richard Dawkins believes that such an event would be feasible and certainly Francis Crick at one time believed this too as he was an advocate of panspermia for awhile.
I do not see this as an issue for ID. It is certainly a question of interest but has nothing to do with whether ID makes sense or not. The ability to create life does not seem to be an issue. One could take the tack that if basic laws of nature could do it without an intelligent input, then why couldn’t an intelligence do it even quicker. Neither is the identity of the designer an issue. Also an interesting question but not one that affects whether ID is valid or not. These are quite separate issues.
Since this is a religious site, do some people here believe that God does not have the power to create life? I believe the Nicene Creed says something about this.
January 6th, 2010 | 7:23 pm
Andrew, thank you for your response. I have a couple thoughts based on what you said:
I mentioned in a post earlier that the identity of the designer is an interesting question but not one that is crucial for the validity of ID or not. Certainly lots of people want the answer to this question and as you said it may not be within the power of science to answer any of the questions about such a person let alone all. There may be additional information in the future that might allow someone to speculate scientifically on characteristics of the designer but as of now, it is really difficult to get people to believe that such an entity existed let alone what was this designer like. For that, one probably has to leave science. One exception, the designer of the universe had to be an intelligence of immense capability and this can be logically deduced from the nature of the universe.
My guess is that Behe and Dembski realize this so to get into discussions of who the designer is would be leaving science and open them up for all sorts of claims about their motives. People want those who support ID to tell them their religious motivations so they can then say that ID is a form of religion. Both Behe and Dembski are comfortable in discussing their religious beliefs but as separate from their science. Behe has admitted the whole process of life’s origin and the major changes in life over time are a mystery. But he has ruled out Darwinian processes in his book, “The Edge of Evolution.”
I find the rejection of the possibility that an intelligence could have existed to be interesting phenomena both among the atheists and religious people. The atheist generally support the SETI project as potentially useful so they think it highly likely that other intelligences exist and even Richard Dawkins has admitted that an intelligence in the past could be the origin of life on Earth. And to people of faith who believe that God exists and is directly responsible for the universe and life itself, they surely believe that God could be such an intelligence. Somehow evidence that God had a hand in life is taboo for many. As a Christian, I find this inconsistent. All ID posits is that life and many of its major changes are most likely a result of intervention by an intelligence into the lawful process of the material world.
I am well aware of most of the theistic evolutionist’s objections to ID but when examined all these objections seem to become contradictory when they simultaneously oppose ID. ID does not posit how the intelligence did it, only that it was done and there appears to be evidence that it happened. And the most proffered mechanism by theistic evolutionists, Darwinian processes as formulated by the latest evolutionary synthesis, does not seem to hold up under close examination. It is not just ID who believes this but many evolutionary biologists. They both examine the same data.
Another interesting phenomena is the hostility or low opinion that is exhibited towards ID proponents by many Christians. You expect this from atheists but not from Christians. As I said earlier, the objective of my time here which will be brief is to dispel misunderstandings about those who endorse ID.
January 6th, 2010 | 7:41 pm
evolution is not deductive
Then you are at odds with the foremost ID scientist, Michael Behe, who accepts evolution and common descent as logically deductive and scientifically “proven.”
ID does not have a common thesis nor make any testable predictions because it is not a theory but a reaction.
The important thing about Intelligent Design is that it is not a theory – which is something I think they need to make more clear. Nor is Intelligent Design an explanation. Intelligent Design is a challenge. It’s a challenge to evolution. It does not replace evolution with something else … Intelligent Design doesn’t tell you what is true; it tells you what is not true. It tells you that it cannot be that this whole process was random.
– Michael Medved, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow
January 6th, 2010 | 7:55 pm
Another interesting phenomena is the hostility or low opinion that is exhibited towards ID proponents by many Christians
The Vatican and the Pontifical Academy rejects ID because it is both theologically and scientifically unsound:
In 2004, the International Theological Commission, in a statement endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger, then President of the Commission and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made the following points:
‘While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of the first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago.
‘Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.’
And this…
Affirming the reality of an intelligent design for the creation and development of the universe is not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith, said the preacher of the papal household.
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, offering a Lenten meditation to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican officials March 13, said the controversy that has arisen between scientists supporting evolution and religious believers promoting creationism or intelligent design is due mainly to a confusion between scientific theory and the truths of faith.
January 6th, 2010 | 9:22 pm
“Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.’”
This paragraph is in no way at odds with Intelligent Design. For example, it says that biological sciences furnish mounting support for some theory of evolution. ID agrees whole heartedly. It says there is a controversy over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. ID agrees whole heartedly. There is no issue here.
“Affirming the reality of an intelligent design for the creation and development of the universe is not a scientific theory, but a statement of faith, said the preacher of the papal household.”
ID says the scientific evidence is very strong that the universe was designed. Something a lot of atheistic scientists have agreed with. ID examines the science and makes no statement of faith but expresses that the the fine tuning of the universe is extremely unlikely and that it can not be a random event. To counter such an observation, the answer by many scientists has been that our universe is just one of an infinite number of other universes and the fact that it is conducive to life is just a random event because some universes must be like ours.
Does the preacher of the papal household support the multi-verse position? Is this cleric saying that the universe is not fine tuned for life as many scientists have agreed?
“the controversy that has arisen between scientists supporting evolution and religious believers promoting creationism or intelligent design is due mainly to a confusion between scientific theory and the truths of faith.”
ID makes no claims about truths of faith but only looks at scientific data so how can this statement be true? Catholics, Protestants of several denominations, Jews, Muslims and agnostics have supported ID. So what are the truths of faith common to these people? Also ID is not creationism even if one wants to equate creationism with a belief in God as some do. ID uses the tools of science to investigate the same material as other scientists do. The only difference is that ID in some cases makes different conclusions. How is this a confusion of scientific theory with the truths of faith. It sounds more like the cleric is confused and not the supporters of ID.
January 6th, 2010 | 9:56 pm
jerry,
Catholic/Theistic evolution beliefs that the first appearance of life was divine, but that “random” Evolution proceeds there after. From God’s supernatural perspective, the evolution of life has been “planned” but to the human natural perspective, it is a mathematically random process. Thus there is no physical element of design, only a spiritual element. Belief.
Organizers of the five-day conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University said Thursday that they barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”
While there are some Darwinian dissenters present, intelligent design didn’t fit the bill, they said. “We think that it’s not a scientific perspective, nor a theological or philosophical one,” said the Rev. Marc Leclerc, the conference director and a professor of philosophy of nature at the Gregorian. “This makes a dialogue very difficult, maybe impossible.”
Charles Harper, senior executive vice president of the Templeton Foundation, echoed these views in an email to the Templeton Report, while also stressing that the content of the conference had been determined solely by its organizers. “We welcome serious, open debate,” he said, but “we use peer review in our grant-making, and professional biologists see the ID position as grossly lacking in scientific rigor and credibility. The ID movement simply lacks any record of scientific accomplishment to match its widely stated claims to have undermined the mainstream of contemporary evolutionary biology.”
January 6th, 2010 | 11:43 pm
Joe,
I think that you’ve mischaracterized one of the ID arguments as the “argument from incredulity.”
I think that the “incredulity” argument (IA) may be characterized as the following: “From what I have seen of the evidence and evolutionary explanations of it, I don’t see any way for things to be the way that they are apart from ID.”
I think that the previous statement of IA could be restated as follows, “Evolutionists have failed to provide mechanisms, not to mention compelling evidence, for Common Ancestry.
Essentially, ID is a request for a mechanism for Common Ancestry and evidence that the mechanism actually operated historically. We may think that this request is unlikely to be fulfilled, but that doesn’t make the request unreasonable from a scientific perspective. Rather, the unlikelihood of fulfillment shows our epistemic poverty and gives us reason to exercise caution as regards claiming what is known.
January 6th, 2010 | 11:59 pm
R. Hampton, you said:
“but that “random” Evolution proceeds there after.”
Thank you for responding to my comments but I am a little taken about. Your comment above seems to me very hard to believe. This statement seems to have obviated man as a goal in life. Random means anything could happen. It does not mean something is teleological. Otherwise it is not random. By proclaiming evolution is random, it seems to me that a religion has just pronounced its irrelevancy. I have too much respect for the Catholic Religion to believe this is true.
“From God’s supernatural perspective, the evolution of life has been “planned” but to the human natural perspective, it is a mathematically random process. Thus there is no physical element of design, only a spiritual element. Belief.”
To me this is a breath taking statement not only because it just contradicted the previous sentence but because of its contradictions with modern science and the data but especially in its theological implications. It makes evolution a theological doctrine not a physical process. It implies that science is then determined by theology no matter what the physical world actually says. How is this different from the Young Earth Creationist who ascribe a literal interpretation of Genesis? The reason their views are rejected is that their beliefs do not match the physical world.
If the Church says the evolution of life has been planned, how did the desired outcomes come about? Did they poof into existence or did they proceed by genetic processes of inheritance? If it is the former, then how is that different from ID? And if it is the latter, how did the genetic changes happen that enabled new life forms to emerge? If God somehow caused the genetic changes, then how is that different than ID? And why would the changes in life be made to appear random. Even random changes leave a trail that can be analyzed by science. But what if they do not appear random which is what I and many others believe the data says. I find a lot of contradictions which I think should be explored somewhere.
First of all no matter what the theology says, ID says there is evidence of design in evolution as it actually appears in the world. The theology will have to deal with the science eventually because it is not going away. I do not think the Catholic Church wants to endorse fake science, because then the Catholic Church will have to eventually live with the consequences. The Catholic Church can not make up things that do not match the physical world. It will be a laughing stock. It is one thing to be cautious, it is quite another to pronounce something as true that defies the facts.
When did such a doctrine appear in Catholic theology? On what basis did it appear? Why would God act in such a way? I think these are all very interesting topics.
Has it been considered by the Magisterium?; pronounced by the Pope? In all my readings about evolution in the last 10 years, this is the first time I ever heard this. I am certainly not the person to argue Catholic theology but I am interested in what the Church believes on this.
January 7th, 2010 | 12:22 am
R Hampton, your explanation of “Catholic/Theistic evolution” starts out sounding like deism’s blind watchmaker, and ends in complete incoherence. The only way I can make even partial sense of it is to replace “natural/physical” with “real,” and “supernatural/spiritual” with “pretend.” Perhaps that is your intent, but it hardly commends itself to serious consideration.
When Catholicism asserts that God is Creator of Heaven and Earth, these are not abstractions, but particular symbols of “all that is seen and unseen.” In other words, He not only created ‘life,’ He created me.
Saying that evolution is planned from God’s perspective while simultaneously being “a mathematically random process” from a human perspective means absolutely nothing unless you mean to say that the ‘randomness’ perceived by humans is simply an ignorance indicative of an inability to properly perceive the actual plan, which is hardly what anyone means by ‘random.’ Your statement repudiates itself.
And what in creation is a “physical element of design?” And what does “Belief.” mean at the end of that sentence? Are you saying that belief is a “spiritual element” of design? What does that mean? Does that mean belief is a component of design, or that design is a component of belief, or that one is a product of the other? Is it supposed to mean that design is a figment of the imagination, or that belief itself is an intentional construct? I’m sorry, I find your conclusion incomprehensible.
January 7th, 2010 | 12:40 am
Jerry,
You ought to read The Miracle of Evolution by Stephen M. Barr from First Things (February 2006):
Let us suppose that the scientific claims of neo-Darwinism are correct. What baleful philosophical implications would this have? Absolutely none, as far as I can see. Some people are concerned about “naturalism.” But if one is happy with natural explanations of the formation of stars and planetary systems, why not of plants and animals? All natural explanations obviously presuppose a natural order that is lawful, and that order or lawfulness points to a God as the architect of it. As many authors have convincingly argued—including Henderson in Fitness of the Environment (1913), Barrow and Tipler in The Cosmological Anthropic Principle (1986), and Denton in Nature’s Destiny (1998)—the evolution of life by natural processes requires that the laws of nature be very special indeed, and in many ways. Why, then, is it philosophically important to maintain that the molecular motions or genetic mutations had to be special as well?
Some say Darwinism undercuts the Argument from Design. They are wrong. It may be “a design-defeating hypothesis,” as Cardinal Schönborn says, but only in the sense that it defeats some design arguments, not all. And some design arguments deserve to be defeated. For example, Newton believed that the mutual gravitation of the planets would cause their orbits to wobble increasingly, like a top that is running down, and that God had to intervene periodically to readjust them. But Laplace showed by a famous calculation that the solar system is self-stabilizing. It would be wonderful if there were convenient scientific proofs of God’s activity in nature of the kind proposed by Newton and the Intelligent Design movement. But God doesn’t always sign His work. Human reason, unaided by faith, can indeed see convincing evidence of design, Providence, and purpose in nature, but that does not make valid every purported scientific demonstration that God has acted in this specific place or that. And it is deplorable that God’s title of “Intelligent Designer” is now widely seen as depending on highly disputable claims about the mechanics of evolution.
January 7th, 2010 | 12:55 am
Fr Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross:
there is “a well established” tradition “that reconciles the notion of creation with the idea that the world evolves in time and history, a world where events which we consider causal are possible,” and “where catastrophes, extinctions and a certain opposition among species exists.”
“From the perspective of Christian theology, biological evolution and creation are by no means mutually exclusive. We can, if we consider the term evolution more broadly without any reference to any one specific evolutionary mechanism, that evolution is ultimately God’s tool of creation, insofar as evolution is understood as a progressive [process of] diversification, organisation and complexification of the morphology of living beings.”
“For example, who can claim,” he added, “that what appears to be random before our eyes does not follow any rules, i.e. a Creator? Only when randomness or indeterminism are morphed into a philosophical absolute that has no place for an underlying plan for the world or finds no meaningfulness in evolution coming from the Creator, can an apparent but fallacious clash between science and theology develop.”
January 7th, 2010 | 2:36 am
R. Hampton,
Thank you for your reply. I will read Stephen Barr’s entire essay in the next couple days. But right now I will make some comments on what you have written.
First of all I do not believe there is any conflict between science and theology. I believe there is only one truth. If science points to a sudden appearance of a life form, then theology has to be consistent with it. If science points to a gradual appearance of all life forms then theology has to be consistent with it. God gave us the ability to recognize his work and we should not reject what we see. This also means that we must not change the science to suit a theology.
Second, I find no problem with the Darwinian process of evolution from a theological or philosophical point of view. Barr wrote
“Let us suppose that the scientific claims of neo-Darwinism are correct. What baleful philosophical implications would this have? Absolutely none, as far as I can see.”
I agree and mentioned earlier that I believed in Darwinian evolution till about 10 years ago when I first investigated it in detail. My religious beliefs have not changed since then. I still have no problem with it theologically but I have a big problem with it scientifically. It is so easy to refute that I cringe when I see so many people hold it almost like a religion. So the one truth that I adhere to has to lie somewhere else.
Barr wrote
“Some people are concerned about “naturalism.” But if one is happy with natural explanations of the formation of stars and planetary systems, why not of plants and animals? ”
I have no problem with that if it were true. But the evidence for plants and animals comes nowhere near the evidence provided for the stars and planetary systems. In fact the evidence points elsewhere.
I also do not disagree with all his arguments for fine tuning and the design of the universe and the consequent orderly system. I do not believe that Darwin’s ideas undercut the argument from design at all. They are rejected not because they are fallacious from a philosophical or theological stand point but because they are at odds with reality. There is no evidence that life progressed along the patterns that Darwin described and good reason to think that they couldn’t progress using his ideas. Many have commented when discussing Intelligent Design that if the opponents to it ever presented a comprehensive body of knowledge supporting any form of naturalistic evolution, ID as far as evolution is concerned would fold up and go home. But it doesn’t even come close.
Illustrative of this is all the examples you have given. None have dealt with real issue of life’s changes which is the incredible increase of information that is needed to progress from microbes to man. No theory yet presented has an answer for this problem. This is why those who adhere to ID are convinced they are right. What would take to erase that conviction is good science explaining how the changes could have taken place. We know intelligence can do it. We have yet to see a naturalistic way that could do it.
Nothing in Barr’s two paragraphs you cited lends credence to Darwinian principles as the mechanism for evolution. In fact nothing anywhere lends credence to Darwinian principles as the mechanism for major changes in life. You do not have to agree with the ID position, but you should understand what it is about.
From Fr Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti,
“From the perspective of Christian theology, biological evolution and creation are by no means mutually exclusive. We can, if we consider the term evolution more broadly without any reference to any one specific evolutionary mechanism, that evolution is ultimately God’s tool of creation, insofar as evolution is understood as a progressive [process of] diversification, organisation and complexification of the morphology of living beings.”
There is nothing in this paragraph that ID would disagree with. Notice Fr. Tanzella-Nitti made no specific claims just as Pope Benedict made none when he was Cardinal Ratzinger.
Fr. Tanzella-Nitti said:
“For example, who can claim,” he added, “that what appears to be random before our eyes does not follow any rules, i.e. a Creator? Only when randomness or indeterminism are morphed into a philosophical absolute that has no place for an underlying plan for the world or finds no meaningfulness in evolution coming from the Creator, can an apparent but fallacious clash between science and theology develop.””
I am not sure what there is to disagree with here. What is in nature is a mixture of random and non random. But as I said above, random processes whether just apparent or real can be analyzed. There does not seem to be any evidence of a random process leading to anything meaningful. So this does not seem to be the way God has chosen to direct evolution. ID understands all the arguments that have been proffered for evolution and found none that are in sync with all the data, random or otherwise. ID has no problem that apparent random processes could be directed by God. Some people have said God might be doing it through quantum events. Can God not leave a trail. He is capable of anything. Except there is a trail in the data and it is sudden appearances and that is the data set that has to be explained if science and theology are to be one.
Sorry for the long comment.
January 7th, 2010 | 8:57 am
We have hit upon at least two of the problems of Catholic thought about evolution. Actually, when I talk to laypersons about the subject, many are quite lucid, believing in God-guided evolution. And I think Pope Benedict XVI has shown wise reserve and a spirit of inquiry, and has made clear that humans are in some way a product of design. (In his first address as Pope he said, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution…Each of us is necessary.” Vatican site).
However, when I read statements from various academics and clergy, I wonder at their logic. The two problems are that first,they either don’t realize how great a barrier is the probability of origin and evolution of life and/or realize it yet still think randomness can get us to the complexity we have. The second is the ideal of evolution, from Big Bang to humans, is so strong that nothing can stop it (not even the incongruence of randomness with complexity).
As to the first problem, I would like to refer all who think the random movements of the universe to be adequate for life to an article by David L. Abel, published Dec. 3, 2009 in Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling called “The Universal Plausibility Metric (UPM) & Principle (UPP)” at this link:Abel . Abel draws bounds for the plausibility of any theory a scientific paper may present about the origins of life, and if the theory does not meet these standards, he urges the paper should not be published. The bounds of plausibility include all the quantum events, all the particles and all the seconds of a 14-billion-year-old universe. If an event is less probable than all these multiplied together, it is not plausible. Able asserts that a plausible solution has not yet been found. Whether a chemical or physical reason may be discovered in the future to explain origin or evolution is another question, but speculation is not the same as fact.
As to the second problem, I ask myself about the motivation of those who insist on random, materialistic evolution. Are people afraid the science community will treat us badly if we believe God made us after the Big Bang? They will, but our faith asks of us to stand up to disdain. Are some overwhelmed by the possibility of God touching His own Creation? It is by our respect in His sovereignty we accept that He does as He sees fit.
Thank you, Joe Carter, for speaking up after this perplexing review appeared in First Things.
January 7th, 2010 | 3:53 pm
[the] real issue of life’s changes which is the incredible increase of information that is needed to progress from microbes to man. No theory yet presented has an answer for this problem.
1. Evolution does provide a very detailed answer – with over a century of contributions from the fields of chemistry, biology, genetics, etc. – but it’s one that you do not accept. That is not the same as having no answer.
2. Increasing complexity is a natural function of the universe itself. Mr. Barr tackles that cannard often used by IDers, here’s just a sample:
Another instructive case is the formation of the solar system, which scientists believe condensed from a cloud of gas and dust. The solar system exhibits a high degree of regularity: For example, the planets all orbit the Sun in very nearly in the same plane and in the same direction. Did the particles in the original cloud have to be moving in a special, highly correlated way to end up with such an orderly result? No. One can show that a swirling cloud of gravitating particles will tend, as it radiates its heat, to form a flat, rotating disk and ultimately a planetary system.
January 7th, 2010 | 4:01 pm
What Fr. Tanzella-Nitti is saying is that randomness – true mathematical randonmness – is not an argument against god or intelligent design. The actual evidence for intelligent design is a universe that randomly leads to intelligent life via its own fundamental laws. In essense, the very logic described by Physics/Science is THE signature of God, not the complexities of cellular structures and the like — that they arise “naturally” is an example of God’s true genius.
January 7th, 2010 | 6:04 pm
R Hampton: “2. Increasing complexity is a natural function of the universe itself. Mr. Barr tackles that cannard often used by IDers, here’s just a sample:
Another instructive case is the formation of the solar system, which scientists believe condensed from a cloud of gas and dust. The solar system exhibits a high degree of regularity: For example, the planets all orbit the Sun in very nearly in the same plane and in the same direction. Did the particles in the original cloud have to be moving in a special, highly correlated way to end up with such an orderly result? No. One can show that a swirling cloud of gravitating particles will tend, as it radiates its heat, to form a flat, rotating disk and ultimately a planetary system.”
May I suggest that this example of Barr’s actually has nothing to do with life? Indeed the origin of the solar system (as far as I know, not being a scientist of any kind much less an astro-physicist) may be perfectly explained by the laws of physics, as anything in the material world would be.
However, life and information are inextricably linked. Can’t have one without the other. But in order to have information of any kind, one must have language to encode, transmit, and decode that information. Whether the information originates in sign language, computer code, natural language, or biological language, it requires a language. All languages are comprised, elementally, by symbols, and rules for the arrangement of those symbols. Physics is manifestly incapable of explaining this. What does string theory, quantum physics, relativity, the Standard Model, thermodynamics, or any other aspect of physics have to say about why ‘cat’ means one thing and ‘act’ means another? A mind, or Mind, on the other hand, does a quite satisfactory job of explaining information. Darwinism as an explanation for life is “not even wrong.” To plagiarize some famous physicist. I forget now who it was, Pauli maybe.
January 7th, 2010 | 8:47 pm
I have to respectfully take issue with some of the claims made by R. Hampton regarding the Catholic position on evolution.
I am 48 years old. During my lifetime, the debate on evolution among religious people has moved left. Positions that would have seemed rather avant-garde thirty of forty years ago are now positions espoused by intelligent design proponents, who are maligned by liberals as obscurantists.
For instance, when I was growing up in the seventies, nobody in Catholic circles – and I mean nobody – argued that evolution was an unguided process. The only controversy was between those who preferred to believe in creation and those who believed that God guided the evolutionary process, leading it to produce human beings, seen as the flower of evolution. While evolution was viewed as a natural process, it was not seen as random, either from a human or Divine perspective. Rather, evolution was regarded as a process designed to produce us, and the design was something which would be readily apparent to any open-minded seeker after truth.
R. Hampton wants Christians to accept that we live in “a universe that randomly leads to intelligent life via its own fundamental laws.” I have to say that this position would have been “off the theological map” when I was a child – and for good reason.
First, it’s theologically disastrous. Tell Joe Schmoe and Jane Doe that they originated as a result of a random process, and they will feel massively demoralized, on an emotional level. They’ll also ask: “So why are we still supposed to believe in God? Who needs God, in a random universe?”
Second, attempting to locate the hand of God in the laws of nature, as R. Hampton does, is a double-edged sword. After all, the same laws of nature gave us the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. A God who designed a universe like that doesn’t sound like a personal Deity. He might love humanity, but He certainly doesn’t love me. (And if you attempt to counter that by suggesting that Satan has been tinkered with nature, as David Bentley Hart does, then all I can say is: if Satan can tinker with nature, why not God?) In other words, R. Hampton’s model of Divine action is deistic.
Third, who hasn’t heard of the multiverse? Seeing the hand of God in the laws of nature is all very well, but most people know that atheists have a ready counter to that: we just happen to live in a lucky, life-friendly universe. (True, theists can respond that the laws of nature are unexpectedly elegant from a mathematical standpoint, even for a life-friendly universe, which suggests a Designer. But that’s a rather subtle argument that most people simply won’t get.)
Fourth, either the laws of the universe are deterministic – in which case we are back with Newton’s clockwork universe, which renders freedom problematic – or they are indeterministic, in which case the laws of nature will not produce human beings, or even life, without quantum tinkering by God. But doesn’t that give the Deity even more work to do, as He has to make a zillion interventions to produce us?
Finally, the traditional position of the Christian Church is that God can be clearly known by the things He has made (Romans 1:20). If people are told that humans originated by a random process, they will justifiably object that in that case, we can have no clear knowledge of God – in which case we could be excused for ignoring Him. That’s not Christianity.
I would like to conclude by suggesting that R. Hampton read Stephen Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell.” Intelligent design advocates do have a well thought-out intellectual position, and R. Hampton will find his scientific and philosophical objections to ID answered in Meyer’s book.
ID advocates have no problem with evolution. What we reject is unguided evolution.
January 7th, 2010 | 9:05 pm
Let’s be careful on how we use the term random. It is not a abstract mathematical term. The evolutionist uses it in much the same manner as the philosopher uses the term contingent.
January 7th, 2010 | 9:21 pm
The information contained within life (how molecules are arranged into something complex) is the same kind of information contained in everything else in the universe. Complexity is information – that is, an ordered arrangement necessary for a specific function.
The prion is a perfect example. By many defintions, it is not a living organism because it can not metabolize (eat) nor move – yet it can make a copy of itself. If we choose a more broad definition to cover reproductive but inannimate objects, then stars are alive as well. If we choose a more narrow definition, then prions contain no information (as an IDers uses the term “information”) — in either case its a losing propostion for ID.
January 7th, 2010 | 10:05 pm
Collin Brendemuehl,
You can can say that genetic mutation is contingent, but the happenstance of a given atom/molecule connecting with a specific other is truly random. Both play a part in evolution.
January 7th, 2010 | 10:09 pm
R. Hampton said
“Evolution does provide a very detailed answer – with over a century of contributions from the fields of chemistry, biology, genetics, etc. – but it’s one that you do not accept. That is not the same as having no answer.”
How do you know I will not accept it. I am still looking for it. I have read Coyne, Carroll, Dawkins, Gee, Collins, Miller and several other proponents of naturalistic evolution and I have not seen it. I have asked evolutionary biologists and they have not provided it. They get so far and they then stop. So maybe some specific cites might be best because these experts in evolutionary biology are not telling me where it is nor are their books. I find it interesting that they write books but do not include the evidence in the books.
Let me best illustrate this with a debate by Philip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, and Will Provine and evolutionary biologist from Cornell. It took place at Stanford University in 1994. I suggest all interested readers go to Youtube and put in “Provine Johnson Stanford” and up will pop a series of videos on this debate. The interesting thing is that the so called religious person, Philip Johnson, presents nothing but science and the atheist, Provine, uses only religious arguments and in the end admits belief in evolution is all based on faith.
My point being that the defense of naturalistic evolution does not exist or else the sophisticated evolutionary biologist would have presented it to the sophisticated audience at Stanford. This same phenomena happens again and again so when someone tells me I will not accept it, I can only smile. It is the same excuse offered up time and time again.
As the movie from a few years ago said, “Show me the money.”
The next complaint is
“Increasing complexity is a natural function of the universe itself. Mr. Barr tackles that cannard often used by IDers, here’s just a sample:”
This is so untrue it shouldn’t deserve a response. The first mistake is to assume complexity is sole issue. The information in the genome is incredibly specific as well as complex and points to functionally complex entities such as proteins and RNA polymers through an intermediay process that involves over a thousand inter related parts. It has often been compared to computer programming but actually is probably much more sophisticated. The example Dr. Barr provides is nothing like this and while complex, can not be described as a information processing machine in the same sense. The complexity is not specified. What Dr. Barr points to are the four forces of physics working to condense and distribute particles based solely on these four forces and the results are various physical entities. There is no pre determined linkage between a distribution and a final outcome that is determined by organized structural process that automatically leads from one complex configuration to another. To compare the two is irrelevant and I am sure Dr. Barr would not assume they are equivalent in any sense if asked.
I wish criticisms of ID would try to understand just what it says instead of taking unconsidered shots at it with irrelevant arguments. Try to understand why ID says what it does.
January 7th, 2010 | 10:30 pm
“The information contained within life (how molecules are arranged into something complex) is the same kind of information contained in everything else in the universe.”
I am sorry, but this is so far from the truth that it is kind of trivial refuting it. I know of no one except maybe you who would say that a rock found in the woods contains the same type of information as that in the genome of an organism. The real question is why are you making such assertions that are so far from reality. Complexity is not same kind of information as specified complexity is. Three groups of 31 letters
Not complex but specified – there is a pattern
ABABABABABABABABABABABABABABABA
Complex and not specified – there is no pattern
ICFJHGLEAVAJEHBELFREIADJFEWQPIZ
Complex and specified – there is a pattern
TOBEORNOTTOBETHATISTHEQUESTION
I suggest you and all interested readers get hold of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell to understand the difference.
January 8th, 2010 | 10:56 am
The argument for intelligent design is this:
I don’t understand how X phenomenon can have occurred by natural means. Therefore it must have occurred by magic.
The refutation of the argument is this:
Well, maybe there are other reasons for your not understanding something. Maybe you’re just stupid.
January 8th, 2010 | 4:59 pm
The argument for evolution is this. The universe consists of only material things (matter and energy) and therefore everything must be explained by reference to physical laws. (Which are immaterial, encoded in the language of mathematics, also immaterial, by the way.) Therefore anything that looks like design is not real design, it’s only matter in motion described by physical laws. So no matter how overwhelming the impression of design (the data) it is impossible for it to be design (because we said so in our unexamined premise) therefore it isn’t design, and anyone who says different is stupid, insane, or wicked. Odd choice of words since in a naturalist/materialist universe there is no such thing as wicked…
January 8th, 2010 | 5:00 pm
Hi Mike, I argue on behalf of intelligent design all the time and so do many others. I’ve never seen anyone make the argument you make “on our behalf.” Care to cite a reference or two?
January 8th, 2010 | 8:23 pm
jerry,
A peptide has both complex and specified information within its structure. Peptides can form on their own, and afterward, self-reproduce.
And yes, a rock does contain complex, specific information. Change the order/structure of the atoms and it’s a different kind of rock altogether or potentially another kind of material.
As for DNA, it is not as precise as you would think. Sections can become re-arranged and individual acids can be interchanged with another, so that a former “junk” sequences can be turned into information, and a former informative sequence can be turned into junk. A very crude representation (to borrow your analogy) would be:
parent
aeaeaeTOBEaeaeORNOTTOaeaeBEae.
offspring
aeaeaeaOBEYeaeORNOTaOaeaeBEYe.
January 9th, 2010 | 11:05 am
R. Hampton,
parent
aeaeaeTOBEaeaeORNOTTOaeaeBEae.
offspring
aeaeaeaOBEYeaeORNOTaOaeaeBEYe.
It is convenient that your letters changed to the point you wanted to make. With 53 variables (considering small and large letters and a period), how many generations (of organisms or sentences) would it take to produce that outcome in a natural setting? If I have counted correctly, you have 30 units, and remember that some specifically would have to remain as they are (or return to previous). Also, you need to remain functional or the organism will probably die (or readable as we try to decipher your sentences). Remember, this is just nature, so we can’t have any back-room computing to set the letters where they need to be in the future under the auspices of natural selection.
As I understand prions from a quick perusal, they do not reproduce in and of themselves, but invade living cells and affect the folding of related proteins. The fact that proteins in the cells are functional is due in large part to their specified complexity, which induces folding into usable, functional shapes. You might want to consider Levinthal’s paradox, in which Cyrus Levinthal theorized that one protein molecule has an estimated 10^143 number of conformations. The time to sample all conformations for one protein would exceed the time of the Universe so far, even if each sampling lasted only picoseconds. Work of Hubert Yockey, one among a growing number who have studied in this area, has estimated that 1 in 10^65 proteins (for 100 amino-acid proteins of random arrangement) will be functional for a specific purpose.
Also, there appears to be a principle of a fine-tuned universe, wherein physical forces like gravity and the strong force are within very small parameters that have allowed for things like atoms and molecules to work.
January 9th, 2010 | 11:24 am
[...] By Rusty An interesting conversation took place, recently, at First Thoughts. Joe Carter wrote A Walk to the Moon, and Stephen Barr responded. And then, there were the 150+ [...]
January 9th, 2010 | 12:11 pm
Tom, of course you and other ID proponents disguise the nature of the argument as much as you can, but every argument in favor of ID is as I set it forth above. For references, take Behe’s mousetrap example. His insistence that a supposedly irreducibly complex system cannot have come into existence through a sequence of modifications is simply an assertion that he cannot understand how such a system can have come into existence through a sequence of modifications.
January 9th, 2010 | 12:17 pm
Tom, no, the argument in favor of evolution is that only phenomena for which there is evidence may be considered, not because those are the only possible phenomena, but because if you allow for phenomena for which there is no evidence, anything can be explained through a verbal construct. Magic might be real, but if the answer to “how does television work” is “oh, by magic” we aren’t brought any closer to an understanding of how television works, any more than we are brought to an understanding of the diversity of life by the assertion that the magic intelligent designer designed everything like it is.
The only thing information we get from intelligent design relates to the intelligence and integrity of intelligent design proponents.
January 10th, 2010 | 4:01 pm
Hi Mike, I beg to differ. How is arguing from first principles possibly an argument from ignorance? Or from “magic?” I suspect that you are confusing two things, logically impossible things that are literally impossible and empirically “impossible things” (i.e. a perpetual motion machine) that are logically possible but will never occur because physical laws (thermodynamics, in this case) forbid it. You are also making the mistake of assuming that reason is not real even as you (incorrectly) reason.
I do not allow for phenomena for which there is no evidence. The materialists CLAIM that we do this all the time but they are wrong. Materialists claim that nothing beyond the physical world exists, so any claim of anything that exists beyond the physical world such as design, purpose, minds or souls, God, a moral law, first principles, and so on, is simply wrong. Thus you are in the odd position of using your explanation of how humans came to be to deny the existence of everything that makes human beings what they are. I find this simultaneously hilarious and maddening.
Materialists, strangely enough, seem to recognize the reality of the physical laws to which they cling as the explanation for everything, and the language of mathematics in which those laws are written, even though both the math and the laws are non-existent in the materialist ontology. They, and you, if you are one of them, are irrational in this regard.
To deny the existence of something by fiat, a priori, without evidence, and then accuse us of appealing to the nonexistent things you have declared out of bounds ONLY on the basis of your declaration commits a gross logical fallacy. It’s called circular reasoning. I wish more scientists were better trained in philosophy or understood the role of reason and first principles in the scientific method. Virtually 100% of the time I make this argument I have first principles thrown back in my face as if I am appealing to some religious or philosophical abstract nonsense that has no empirical foundation (OF COURSE first principles are not empirical, they are immaterial and thus not subject to being sensed – we directly experience them with our minds – which you deny the existence of) rather than as fundamental (first) principles that are literally undeniable and which are the only certain path to truth.
This is THE problem in the discussion. It’s not about IC (irrelevant, even if a good argument, if you’ve read my comments on that) or about design or intelligence per se, it’s about the ontological and epistemological commitments one makes. That is, what exists and how do I know it? Unfortunately, in my experience, materialists always seem to be unable, or unwilling, to articulate their basic intellectual commitments. I believe that is for two reasons. The first is that the logical contradictions their conclusions contain are made crystal clear if they pronounce the commitments that lead to them, and the second is that reason plus evidence always leads to the conclusion of God and Design. Therefore, they refuse to commit, up front, to the foundations for their worldview. I suspect, if you are a materialist, you will be no different. I will be happy to be proved wrong, though, so feel free to disabuse me of my false thinking regarding the inability of a darwinist cum materialist cum naturalist cum atheist to make intellectual commitments at the beginning of a discussion and stick to them through the conclusion. In other words, it’s about the premises, not the conclusions, which follow from those premises. The only real way to argue about the conclusions (God/no God, design/no design) is to carefully examine the premises that lead to the conclusions.
Here’s a warm-up question for you. In a universe of “NO design,” how is it that there is an overwhelming (Dawkins, etal) “appearance” of design? And how do you tell the difference between real design (which doesn’t exist, according to you) and the APPEARANCE or illusion of (non-existent) design? And how would you even be aware of apparent design if there were no real design? You’re busted already and we haven’t even started. Let’s do it.
January 11th, 2010 | 10:53 pm
Tom, saying that something has an “appearance” doesn’t give us any information about about the thing, it tells us how you perceive it.
For you to claim that something has the appearance of design means it looks to you like it was designed. It’s a meaningless and worthless claim.
Again, the fact that you can’t understand how something can have come into existence other than by magic doesn’t mean it did come into existence by magic.
January 12th, 2010 | 1:21 pm
Mike, you say: “saying that something has an “appearance” doesn’t give us any information about the thing, it tells us how you perceive it.” This seems to cast doubt on the entire scientific enterprise. It sounds like a radical form of skepticism which ultimately leads to the self-defeating conclusion that we can know nothing about reality (itself, a claim to know) but only our perceptions of it. This was the position of David Hume’s tortured philosophy.
But science is about data, or the “appearance” of things, empirically detected and measured AND rational explanations of that data. If everything is merely “appearances” then you have yours and I have mine and that’s really as far as it can go. But if there is an objective reality that we are trying to understand, and there is, then perceptions, our sense experiences, are vitally important. Perhaps this is the time to point out that our perceptions, our senses, can mislead us (a stick in a glass of water is not actually bent) and that we need reason (and often further observations) to keep us from deluding ourselves. It’s also perhaps the time to point out that correct reason, applied to empirical facts, never deceives us. If all cats are mammals (true by definition, i.e. the law of identity) and Felix is a cat (actually Felix is a cat) then Felix is a mammal. Necessarily true. If all books (anything containing information encoded in a language) have authors, and the genomes of life are books (biological information encoded in DNA or the genetic language), then the genomes of life have an author. Argue with that.
You say: “For you to claim that something has the appearance of design means it looks to you like it was designed. It’s a meaningless and worthless claim.”
This is breathtakingly inane. Sorry but it has to be said. So if I were to reply to you that “for you to claim that the appearance of design means it only looks like it was designed but it is not really designed” (because it’s only your perception) by saying “it’s meaningless and worthless” you would grant me the point? You would throw up your hands and say “well, Tom said it was meaningless and worthless so it is.” I doubt it. So tell me WHY my claim is meaningless and worthless. It’s called making an argument.
I am still asking how you can deny ontological or metaphysical status to the concept of design, yet grant that status to something called the “appearance of design.” That is irrational no matter how you slice it. Let’s get past that first. Tell me how you explain apparent design in the absence of real design in the first place. You guys are so intellectually bankrupt that you can’t even see basic flaws in your arguments like this. “Apparent design” indeed. Too funny.
January 14th, 2010 | 9:10 am
Testing, testing…
What happened? Was it something I said?
January 16th, 2010 | 8:54 pm
Tom, again, the fact that you can’t understand how something could have come into existence other than by magic doesn’t mean it must have come into existence by magic. And that’s all you’re saying with your endless jabbering about the appearance of design. You don’t understand how particular natural phenomena came into existence except through the hand of some magical designer, so what? Who cares? The fact that you don’t understand something tells us only about you, nothing about it.
Your claim is meaningless and worthless because it relies on classification, not on description. It’s a verbal construct, similar to your syllogism about cats and mammals.
The fact that all cats are mammals isn’t true because of any sort of “law of identity”, it’s true because of the definition of the word “cat” and the word “mammal”. You spend a lot of time classifying and not much time describing, and that’s typical of creationists. You don’t actually describe these supposedly magically designed phenomena, you just give them a classification of “appearance of design” and pretend that you have therefore proved the existence of a magic designer.
You can’t show that something came into existence by magic because you don’t understand how it could have come into existence otherwise. You have to show that magic is real.
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