Is Intelligent Design Theory Scientific?
Last week’s post turned into a typical argument over whether Intelligent Design (ID) is a “scientific” theory. Let me say upfront that part of this argument is pure posturing (on both sides); the people who are pro-ID want to be able to say it’s scientific, while its opponents want to be able to say it isn’t. The unspoken premise, of course, is that “scientific” means “true,” which isn’t actually true.
Now the commenters on Free Advice are actually above such pettiness, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. In particular, Daniel Kuehn and Gene Callahan were (at various points) challenging whether ID can be properly called scientific, not because that would render it a false notion, but simply in the interest of explaining why so many mainstream scientists object to it.
In the present blog post, I want to challenge this interpretation (particularly the strong version that Callahan laid out). In other words, I am going to argue that ID is “scientific” or at least, it can be. The standard arguments from biologists and others against ID–by which they try to rule it out of court as not even the type of thing that scientists could do, let alone that it is true–are simply wrong.
To set the context, here is what the Union of Concerned Scientists had to say about Intelligent Design theory:
The intelligent design movement is exceptionally good at creating false controversies and misconceptions. Yet their basic claims are easily debunked.
*There is scientific controversy over evolution: There is no debate about evolution among the vast majority of scientists, and no credible alternative scientific theory exists. Debates within the community are about specific mechanisms within evolution, not whether evolution occurred.
…
*Intelligent design is a scientific theory: A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true scientific theory, the existence of an “intelligent” agent can not be tested, nor is it falsifiable.*Intelligent design is based on the scientific method: Intelligent design might base its ideas on observations in the natural world, but it does not test them in the natural world, or attempt to develop mechanisms (such as natural selection) to explain their observations…
It is the last two points above, that I claim are totally bogus. I actually got Kuehn to agree that the Union of Concerned Scientists used sloppy wording, but then Callahan rushed in to defend them:
[T]he postulates of their discipline prevent them for searching for such evidence [of design], i.e., a presupposition of all of the physical sciences, including biology, is that the proper sort of causes to search for are mechanical causes that operate without intelligence or design. So of course they see no evidence of intelligent design — they deliberately don’t look for it!
Now, I think this is the RIGHT way for them to do research. Their job is to see how far they can take the principle of mechanical causation. They are mistaken only if and when they base silly pronouncements like “Evolution shows [there] is no place for God in the world” on that research!
Gene is toeing the standard biologist line, but I think he is wrong. I will make my point with two examples, one fanciful, the second less so:
FIRST EXAMPLE: Suppose for the sake of argument that all life on Earth was designed by intelligent aliens from a distant galaxy. Now those aliens come from a planet where life did evolve spontaneously from the primordial soup, the way most scientists currently hypothesize happened on Earth. And in fact, if people like Michael Behe looked at the cells taken from the alien planet, they would agree that there was no “irreducible complexity.” It would be entirely plausible that the intelligent aliens could have evolved through “mindless” processes over billions of years, because the structures in all life forms on their planet would not have any “jumps” or features that didn’t confer an immediate reproductive advantage.
Anyway, these intelligent aliens come along, see Earth 4 billion years ago, and realize it is a great place for them to seed life. The aliens design a supercell with all sorts of information packaged into it, taking into account the environment in which its descendants will evolve. The aliens program in all sorts of “irreducible complexity” in this initial supercell.
This scenario is admittedly fanciful, but it is theoretically possible. That could be just how it happened. Now if that were the case, how would humans ever learn the truth? According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, it would have be up to lawyers, philosophers, and car mechanics to realize that the current hypotheses about the origins of life are wrong, and to posit a rival explanation that better explained the facts which we can observe today. If a biologist or chemist or astronomer ever chimed in on the issue, he or she would be leaving the realm of science. Even if the aliens left us a message (in an abandoned spaceship, say), or even if the aliens showed up and told us what really happened, none of the biology textbooks could incorporate such unscientific things into their chapters on the origin and evolution of life.
SECOND EXAMPLE: Key military and government officials start dropping like flies. Autopsies reveal they have succumbed to some previously unknown virus. The strange thing is, the virus’ genetic material is such that it is harmless for just about any human it could come in contact with. It’s almost as if it has been “designed” to take out the key officials. On a lark, the government scientists take a sample of blood from the President, Vice President, and people in Congress. It turns out that the virus attacks their cells too. But the scientists let the virus interact with thousands of blood samples from ordinary Americans, and nothing happens.
The President calls in the leading researchers on bioweapons and counterterrorism. He says, “Our intelligence networks have been warning for years that the government of X has been working on just such a virus. However, we have no real proof, just some intercepted emails talking of intent. Can you look at the virus and tell me if it could be the result of natural evolution? Or can we be absolutely sure that this was deliberately designed to take out our people?”
The assembled scientists are horrified at the Commander in Chief’s ignorance. “Mr. President,” they protest, “don’t you know that we are scientists? How in the world can we even entertain the notion that something under our microscopes was designed? Your hypothesis of ‘intelligent foreign scientists’ is non-testable and nonfalsifiable. If you want, we will come up with a story about what the chemical composition of the atmosphere must have been like, 2 billion years ago, to explain why this virus is the way it is. But that’s the most you can ask of us in our capacity as scientists.”
So does everyone still like the Union of Concerned Scientists’ definition of the boundaries of a scientific theory?
Bob,
I think you are absolutely right on this. There is a difference between something’s being a scientific theory and it being a true scientific theory. Geocentrism, for example, is certainly a scientific theory, it’s just one that it’s true.
My view would be that Intelligent Design (i.e. the theories of someone like Demski or Behe) are scientific but false.
“There is a difference between something’s being a scientific theory and it being a true scientific theory.”
But there are actually four possibilities. A theory may be:
1) Scientific and true;
2) Scientific and false;
3) Non-scientific and true; and
4) Non-scientific and false.
Especially note the existence of category 3. For instance, I believe the theory that “Caesar crossed the Rubicon under arms because he thought that otherwise at least his career and probably his life were over” is true. But it is certainly not a scientific theory (unless we take science in the broader sense of any organized body of knowledge).
Gene,
I don’t dispute the existence of your third category, and I would agree with you that your statement about Caesar would fall into that category. But I don’t think that Intelligent Design belongs there (and not just because I think the theory is false!)
Non-scientific is gibberish.
1) The consensus in philosophy is that the problem of demarcation has not been solved, but lawyers and politicians act as if the solution is trivial. There simply is no (known) hard and fast rule that will sort science from pseudoscience (or even metaphysics, for that matter).
2) Your second example is an integral part of the plot of Metal Gear Solid. The virus is called FoxDie.
This reminds me of a quote I heard recently about what science is and how it relates to religion from the physicist Ron Hellings:
“I have heard people say that science and religion are two paths to truth. I do not believe that. There is only one path to truth, and to me it seems closer to science than it is to what passes for religion in most people. But it is not the scientific method. The only people I know who care about the scientific method are philosophers. Scientists don’t worry about it. What scientists do is what Karl Popper said in his cute definition of science: ‘Science is doing your damnedest with your mind – no holds barred.’ The problem with science is not the process, but the artificial limits that most scientists put on the evidence they will accept. Evidence, they say, must be objective. This is a reasonable limitation, in a way, because the goal of science is not just to find truth, but also to communicate it. And you can only communicate things that others will understand through your common experience. But many scientists use this limitation on what they can communicate to others as the criterion for what they will accept for themselves. They will not seek a revelation because it would be a subjective evidence. So what? What a brain-numbing, truth-avoiding, closed-minded attitude this is! This is not doing your damnedest with your mind, no holds barred; it is setting up artificial rules that exclude a wealth of evidence and knowledge. This is bad science.”
“There is only one path to truth, and to me it seems closer to science than it is to what passes for religion in most people.”
Given the myriad of ways in our everyday life that we come upon this or that truth, I don’t even know what to make of a statement like this. It’s as though someone told me “There is only one mode of transportation, which is more like boating than walking.” I assume they must mean something, but I can’t imagine what.
re: “There is only one path to truth, and to me it seems closer to science than it is to what passes for religion in most people. But it is not the scientific method.”
The link didn’t show up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzynRPP9XkY
Bob, the scientists in example two are not being asked a scientific question, but a forensic one. The fact that scientific knowledge may bear on some question does not turn it into a scientific one: the introduction of DNA evidence into a trial does not make the finding of guilty or not guilty a scientific finding.
So forensics is non-scientific?
It is perfectly correct to say that ID is not falsifiable.
You haven’t explained how it can be falsified…… You have only asserted that scientists, working under the current paradigm will never be able to come to the conclusion that it is true even if it is true.
Yes, that is exactly why it is not scientific. It cannot be disproved (or proved, as you correctly pointed out) within the rules specified by the scientific method.
Evolution on the other hand is a scientific theory. It is possible to disprove it under the scientific method…. All you have to do is find a human fossil older than the oldest ape fossils…..
Bob,
If you think the Union of Concerned Scientists’ criteria for scientific theory is wrong what would be yours?
Exactly right – I agree with all this. Let’s treasure this moment, Bob 🙂
As for Gene’s thoughts – he’s trying to argue that some of these examples are history, but I don’t think the case is as clear cut as he’s trying to make it. The asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater, for example, which killed off all the dinosaurs, was a single historical event that we have studied scientifically. If you were recounting things that happened in the past, offering descriptions and perhaps even implications, that would be history. But if you use the scientific method to formulate a useful body of knowledge about these events, it’s science. Lots of science covers singular historical events. The creation of the Moon (which Bill O’Reilly apparently puzzled over recently , peddling God as an explanation) was a singular event. What makes it science is not so much the subject of study as the method used to study it. Much of human history, when studied scientifically becomes social science. An alien seeding or man-made virus instance of design could clearly be studied by biologists scientifically – and it could also be studied by social scientists.
I think what the scientists were concerned about is that they were thinking about ID as a theory of some supernatural Creator making life. You really can’t blame them for seeing the theory this way. You can’t act as if “intelligent design” and “creationism” are unrelated. I think anyone that suggests this is disingenuous. You alluded to this in your last post – you talked about evidence of design as if it were evidence for “the God of the Bible”. That is what I still think is unscientific. At this time we have no idea how we would identify divinity scientifically. Maybe one day we’ll get a grasp on that, but right now we don’t. If you stray into this demonstration of the God of the Bible territory, you are straying out of science not because he is defined out of science simply because he is God, but because we have no way of interrogating him with the scientific method. The only way we experience God is through personal revelation and hearsay. Neither of those can be scientifically interrogated. If the second coming happened today, and Jesus submitted himself to people’s curiosity and lots of different scientists could confirm his existence and check him out, we could start to scientifically understand what this quality we call “divinity” is. It’s not that God is off-limits according to scientists! They’d love to study him. It’s that God, if he exists, has removed himself from the prospect of being scientifically examined.
Given this complete lack of evidence I think we can forgive scientists the short-hand of saying belief in God is unscientific. What they mean – I think – is that there is no evidence to look to scientifically at this time, and so there is no obvious warrant for believing in one God over another, or in believing in any God.
You say they have axiomatically removed God from the running. It seems to me God has removed himself from the running.
Gene I think DK is totally right here (and yes I am treasuring this moment…). According to you, Gene, it is not a scientific question to ask whether the universe started in a Big Bang or not, to ask whether humans are descended from the same ancestor as apes, etc.
But of course those are scientific questions, at least if you asked 99% of the physicists/cosmologists/biologists working today.
And there is a thing called forensic science. So I think your handling of the second scenario would be hilarious hair-splitting at best.
And the reason why forensic scientists are said to use “science” is the because of the method they use to gain useful knowledge, not the subject of their inquiry.
In the case of God, we have a subject that is particularly inimical to the application of the scientific method. It’s not inconceivable that the divine could have this method applied to it. I just have no idea how one would do that and I don’t think anybody else does either. Until someone does have an idea, there will be no science of God.
“Given this complete lack of evidence I think we can forgive scientists the short-hand of saying belief in God is unscientific. What they mean – I think – is that there is no evidence to look to scientifically at this time, and so there is no obvious warrant for believing in one God over another, or in believing in any God.”
I’d contend that the existence of science is itself damned good evidence for the existence of God… and so did most scientists from Galileo and Kepler on to the mid-19th century.
And there was no new scientific evidence that suddenly changed this. Instead, progressivist politics condemned religion, and scientists (generally) wanted to be seen as progressive.
“If the second coming happened today, and Jesus submitted himself to people’s curiosity and lots of different scientists could confirm his existence and check him out, we could start to scientifically understand what this quality we call “divinity” is. It’s not that God is off-limits according to scientists! They’d love to study him. ”
And they do all the time. Those studies are called astronomy, and physics, and chemistry, and biology…
When I realized that the continued fraction expansion of e spits out the even numbers, in sequence, every third partial quotient, I thought, “Here is as beautiful a proof of God’s reality as one could want.”
“Maybe thats cause its midnight, in the dark of the moon besides.
Maybe the dark is from your eyes, maybe the dark is from your eyes”
How is astronomy, physics, biology, etc. a study of God?
Are astronomers, physicists, biologists, etc. aware of this fact? Certainly many of them believe in a God, and have faith that he has something to do with the subjects of study. But I don’t think many will claim that they are studying God.
How is the continued fraction expansion of e a proof of God? What kind of God is proven by that? I don’t get it.
Do you mean that it is impressive? That I can see, but it’s an odd God that you’ll derive from that.
“How is astronomy, physics, biology, etc. a study of God?”
When theists make this claim, they usually mean that they are learning about God through these subjects in a way that is analogous to an artist biographer that learns about their subject by examining their paintings or sculptures. For instance, Newton seemed to think that studying natural philosophy would allow him to “know the mind of God”.
Good one Gene. Believe it or not, I was actually setting people up with something like that with my “suppose the Bible were embedded in human DNA.” But since a lot of people (including DK) continue to claim that even if the Bible were in human DNA, he still can’t conceive of what “scientific evidence” of the God of the Bible would look like, I didn’t bother…
(And I had in mind the “unexpected” appearance of pi in different spots, or why mathematics should “apply” to the natural world in the first place. I mean really, why in the heck is it at all useful for us to think through the implications of apparently arbitrary definitions of triangles and things like that? The critics of praxeology can be forgiven for thinking that a priori deductions are useless. But they need to be forgiven, because they are wrong.)
DK, it really is amazing how big the gulf still is between us. In my view, the God of the Bible exists. He has given us a wealth of evidence in the natural world that He exists, and on top of that, He personally inspired a whole book about His nature. Then He became a human being and performed a bunch of miracles, such that people all over the world still daily attest to His existence and nature.
And you are still saying, not merely that you reject this evidence, but that God has withdrawn Himself from our scrutiny.
How can that be, when you yourself admit that you can’t even conceive of how He could reveal His attributes in a way that scientists could grasp?
I started questioning my faith in an adult Sunday school class I took at my church the summer break after my freshman year in college. It was taught by a theologian who I believe had taught at some point, but dropped that to start a software company. Anyway – it was a rigorous class, and he almost certainly knew more theology than the pastor did (which is fine, the pastor’s job is to do pastoral work).
What bothered me when we really got into the nitty-gritty of the material was how (1.) self-referential and (2.) second hand every piece of evidence for God was. This wasn’t especially problematic from the teacher’s point of view – he is a solid Barthian so the dependence on revelation rather than intuition wasn’t especially problematic. The important role of grace in Barth’s theology also starts to fray if man can find his own way to God.
You see mathematics in nature as some sort of proof of God. I see a few basic abstract rules that we, as humans, developed based on what we saw in nature. With those rules we derived some very complicated mathematics, and lo and behold we saw that higher mathematics in nature. But what else would you expect? We abstracted a few common elements of nature, toyed around with those abstractions for a while, and found equivalents again in nature. Don’t you think it would be weird to base mathematical axioms on the way we experience the world and then not see implications of those axioms in the world?
It’s beautiful, of course. It’s beautiful that our powers of observation, abstraction, derivation, and comparison are capable of that. Our brains and senses are beautiful and awe-inspiring. I’m not sure how one would derive divinity from that unless one were completely at a loss for other explanations.
Now, let’s say I let the beauty lead me to some embrace of some sort of divinity. I still don’t see how you get the God of the Bible from that. Why not any other number of rival gods? Why not a mysterious god that we know nothing about? The jump to theism is unwarranted, and therefore in my mind ill-advised, which is why I am an agnostic that lives my life like an atheist. The jump from theism to Christianity is something that you haven’t come anywhere close to justifying. I don’t think you’ve justified theism, but beauty and wonder are hard to get a grasp on so I could give you theism for the sake of argument. I don’t see how we get beyond that except through faith in a self-referential, second-hand account.
If you found an old book that said “Zeus wrote this book”, and a chain of people going back a couple centuries who all attested to the fact that Zeus wrote the book would you adopt Greek paganism? I don’t think so. You aren’t Muslim or Mormon so that logic alone clearly doesn’t convince you. The logic of self-referential second-hand evidence doesn’t bear any weight for you. So why do you cite “on top of that, He personally inspired a whole book about His nature. Then He became a human being and performed a bunch of miracles”??? Mohammed performed miracles, had a book written by Allah, and lots of people today still attest to that. Why are you not a Muslim?
See, deep down you agree with my logic. As it has been said “we’re all atheists [or agnostics] – I just add one more religion to the list than you do”.
Daniel,
I completely agree with your points, but I think you are failing to take your doubt far enough. When I began to question God, I began to question everything. My entire perception of the physical world depended on axioms, i.e. ideas that humans just made up. As I kept digging and doubting I was running out of reality. I couldn’t find any absolute truth. Everything was a decision to believe in a construct to make sense of reality. Nothing was true on its own.
Atheism wasn’t tempting because nihilism seemed just as sensical. It was at that point that I chose to believe in God. Not because of the evidence, but because the absolute lack of proof for anything at all. A mind outside of myself that held everything together was more appealing than the alternatives.
I kept and discarded qualities of God that made sense as I went along. It took a while, but eventually Jesus made sense. The longer I live the more all my experience point to the God of the Bible.
I agree atheism is as unsatisfying and unprovable as theism. That’s why I’m an agnostic.
I think I do accept this pervasive uncertainty, but all you do is just “make do”. You approach the world probabilistically rather than deterministically. So I’m faced with uncertainty in reality – but what do I make of that. I don’t know if my chair is real and sturdy or not. How do I respond? I act based on past experience and take a wager. I make the leap and live life as if the chair were real and sturdy. If that presumption continues to serve me well, I’ll continue to hold that presumption.
Everyone logically and empirically (unless you’ve received a personal revelation you find convincing) SHOULD BE AN AGNOSTIC. But that’s an intellectual stance. How shall we live? I don’t see a reason to live as if a God exists. I don’t really see how that changes things (I don’t see atheism as nihilism as you apparently do… not sure where that came from for you), I’ve never come across a circumstance in my life that makes sense for me to wager that God exists. So for the last eight years or so I’ve lived like an atheist, although intellectually I’m a determined agnostic.
Jesus makes sense to me. But there’s lots of systems that are internally consistent and “make sense to me”. The “plan of salvation” that evangelists are trained to run through in five minutes is VERY internally consistent. Internally consistent systems are useful if you can apply them in useful ways. Logic and mathematics, for example, are internally consistent. Godel and others taught us not to make too much of that – but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a useful abstraction.
What is the use of the internally consistent Jesus abstraction? I don’t know. I know how math is useful, but I don’t know how Jesus is useful. To live more moral lives? I think I live roughly the same moral life now as I did when I believed in Jesus. To give us hope/make us feel good? I haven’t been depressed or hopeless since dropping the Jesus abstraction. Indeed – the very reflection that I’m a member of a species that could invent an abstraction as hopeful and heartfelt as Jesus gives me hope! What a wonderful faith to come up with! But the abstraction itself doesn’t give me much reason to believe it.
Why would one believe it?
To escape hell. To conquer death.
If I had any good reason to think hell was an issue or that death could be conquered by faith, I might have it. Since I don’t, it doesn’t seem like a very useful abstraction for me to adopt.
On your quibble Atheism=nihilism. I’m not saying that si true. Most intellectual atheists I run into believe materialism is self-apparent, and that God must be proved. My use of nihilism was a skepticism of both.
You seem to be a carbon copy of myself some ten years ago. I called myself a theist, but my God was defined by me.
My road to Christianity came through my rejection of morality. What others saw as a compulsion I saw as a rational self-interest. Morality, was based on made up axioms, which I had already rejected. The Christians I knew were held back from achieving their moral goals because they had fooled themselves into believing that moral things offered less utility than immoral things.
Feeling rather smug about my enlightenment, I read Romans 7 and 8, and discovered that Paul was already there 1950 years ago.
That last question of mine is not rhetorical, Bob.
If you want to say to me “He personally inspired a whole book about His nature. Then He became a human being and performed a bunch of miracles, such that people all over the world still daily attest to His existence and nature.”
Then you have to clarify for me why you find the God of the Bible convincing in this way and not Allah or the God of the book of Mormon. You can’t throw this at me and then not be able to justify why this logic lead you where it did.
And I should note – with the KJV in the DNA, what I said was that (1.) it would not constitute scientific proof for anything other than a designer, but (2.) it would be enough to put me, as a betting man, back in the pews.
Daniel_Kuehn: Bob’s example wasn’t hypothetical. Entire chapters of the KJV *are* encrypted in our DNA. It’s just that God used a one-time pad. 😉
“…you yourself admit that you can’t even conceive of how He could reveal His attributes in a way that scientists could grasp?”
I can’t speak for Daniel, but if there was an all-powerful god that wanted everyone to believe in it, that would be trivially easy to accomplish.
For starters, it could speak to everyone at the same time, saying, “I am god, I exist, and I am in your head”. Then, it could make the sun, the moon, and the stars dance around in the sky, turn day into night and back again repeatedly, faster and faster, while playing techno music.
Then, it could launch everyone into space and take them on a one-minute tour of the solar system, bring them back to earth, plunge them into a volcano, take them to the molten core, teach them Austrian economics, and put them back where they started unharmed.
Contrast the above with “the ‘unexpected’ appearance of pi in different spots” and mathematics applying to the material world.
1. Which strategy would an intelligent being be more likely to pursue: Magical Mystery Tour or Blues Clues?
2. Why would an all-powerful being that wanted humans to believe in it not make its existence more obvious?
3. What kind of god would try to convince people of its existence by inserting pi into places where humans would not expect it to be?
4. Why would this god that wants humans to believe in it limit the evidence for its existence to that which would only be appreciated through the intuition of uniquely perceptive mathematicians (or economists)?
No, that’s a fair point Anon. I’m on board with much of this. I would note two things:
1. A God that prefers blind faith and existential leaps to simple belief might hide these things. This is the Christian God, of course. That’s one possibility that I can’t disprove, but by construction it’s not a possibility that you can derive from the observable universe.
2. I’m still not so sure about this whole idea of math popping up where we don’t expect it. Why wouldn’t we expect math to pop up in different places. Math is just the body of claims we’ve derived from simply axioms that correlate to the way we understand reality (magnitudes, addition, multiplication, the ability to reduce things to units – ie, measurement, etc.). If we got the axioms from nature wouldn’t we expect to see higher order implications of those axioms in nature too. The whole mathematical enterprise is absolutely wondrous and beautiful, to be sure. It is surprising insofar as our feeble brains didn’t see it coming. But upon closer inspection, it shouldn’t be surprising at all.
Can I reprint some of this for next week’s post? I think you did a good job of taking the “God is revealing Himself in Nature” argument head-on. I have an answer for you, but I think this is a pretty big topic and should have its own post.
Is this to me? I always have trouble following the comment hierarchy on this blog. If so, yes, definitely.
No it wasn’t to you. 🙂 If you look at the post in your browser, the hierarchy is clear, but if you’re using a blog reader or something it is probably not obvious.
Maybe you should think about addressing topic more than once per week. You’ve got some good momentum here….
I agree with Daniel Hewitt – I think we should be able to wrap up this existence of God thing by April or so. Then we can move on to string theory.
Ah… found the reply button… (sometimes it’s there, sometimes not…)
Feel free to re-post what I wrote. Looking forward to your reply.
Is Intelligent Design Theory scientific? I really don’t know. I suppose that depends on what your definition of science is. Although I share your beliefs Bob, I tend to think the answer might be ‘no’, due to the inherent limitations of science. Whether or not it is reasonable….that’s a whole different debate.
I would be interested to hear both Bob and DK play Devil’s Advocate to their own current belief systems as they stand right now. Granted, you’ve already done this in a general sense I suppose by explaining your logic behind your current beliefs and dispelling counterexamples as you see fit, but what specifically (if anything) makes y’all more inclined to the others worldview?
Bob – I think this week’s virus argument fails for the same reason that last week’s genetic complexity argument fails – You’re ignoring the fact that evolution does produce directed complexity without the need for design. And you’re ignoring many of potential explanations that don’t rely on designer or evolution (but everybody ignores because it has nothing to do with science AKA no evidence, or God – AKA nobody to believe on faith without evidence).
I believe I covered this in my last email to you.
More inclined to believe in God?
Well I don’t think we have any evidence that there is no God, simply an almost complete lack of positive evidence or indication. If you mean the Christian God and not just a deity broadly conceived, I think if I came to that it would have to be purely and entirely by faith. One by-product of losing my faith is that I’ve come to appreciate how utterly essential faith is to religious identity. Without proof, it’s all that’s left.
I suppose what I’m getting at is if I were to attack my own position I would say “yes, we are presented with essentially no scientific or logical evidence of God. The fact that we find certain things impressive says nothing about divinity. But we should believe in God on the basis of personal revelations – maybe you don’t have this available to you, but that is a firm basis. In the absence of revelation, you will just have to have faith – faith is the evidence of things unseen”.
I think there’s merit in forming beliefs on the basis of personal revelation. If Bob recounted a personal revelation, there’s not much I could say to contradict that. I’d assume he was sincere. I wouldn’t consider it scientific evidence or a “proof”. But it’s certainly grounds for maintaining religious belief yourself. If I had a revelation I would certainly start going to church again.
Faith is trickier to justify than personal revelation, but it’s not something I can disprove. All I can say is “I don’t find that to be sufficient justification”. This is essentially Kierkegaard’s argument, is it not? We cannot hope to know the truth of God in a determined way, so we must take a leap of faith. I think William James was thinking along the same (and correct) lines as well when he justified belief in God, not in a proof but in the legitimacy of a will to believe.
While I appreciate Christopher Hitchens, I’m not Christopher Hitchens. I don’t have a problem with people taking a leap of faith – I just wish they would really recognize that that is what they are doing, and what they’re venturing with that. We take leaps of faith every day based on insufficient or contingent knowledge. It seems to me that greater leaps require greater justification. And I see little justification for this particular leap – certainly for the leap from theism to Christianity.
Daniel Kuehn,
You said: “Everyone logically and empirically (unless you’ve received a personal revelation you find convincing) SHOULD BE AN AGNOSTIC.”
I always love to hear absolute statements from people who deny the existence of absolute statements. BTW, you should read Ayn Rands Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, it will do wonders for your skepticism of axiomatic concepts. pay special attention to the Q&A section at the end as it is very revealing concerning all of the epistemological issues raised in this blog. Also, the book “The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics” by David Harriman is also very good too.
Very true – I was debating with Jan Helfeld this weekend and he raised much the same point to me. I told him that whenever I (whenever anyone) uses declarative statements it’s just linguistic short-hand for something we find extremely probable, and should be understood as such. We can be absolute with a confidence interval.
Is this true in this case, though? Is “should” an absolute? I’m not sure it is, RS. That’s imperative, not declarative, RS.
Daniel,
Your statement is more declarative than you admit. Agnostic is by definition a declarative worldview of skepticism and it completely contradicts your claim to logic and your interpretation of empirical data since, by your own standard, you admit to not being sure. Here is the best refutation I have heard on this issue of agnosticism…
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/agnosticism.html
That link is atrocious, RS. It’s identifying a lot of things as “fallacies” that aren’t. How is this a fallacy: “He treats arbitrary claims as ideas proper to consider, discuss, evaluate”???
It’s also focusing on strawmen. The agnostic position is not to say “it’s up to you” to these questions as if anything goes. The point is that if you do make a commitment to a claim, you have to acknowledge the contingency of that commitment.
The author also bungles the nature of the claim – he suggests that the agnostic treats these sorts of claims as deserving “epistemological respect”. That completely misunderstands the point. The point is that epistemologically we cannot say anything. The agnostic says that all epistemological points are moot points! We may still discuss evidence and persuasion and likelihood – but not knowledge, not epistemology.
If that’s the best you’ve heard I’m shocked you’ve been convinced.
I’m still working out my own thoughts on this stuff, and I know not everyone is going to approach this like I do – but if you want to think clearly on this you really oughta steer clear of the Randians, RS.
Daniel K,
It’s best to ignore links containing “rand”….
Now you know for next time 🙂
“The point is that epistemologically we cannot say anything.”
and
“The agnostic says that all epistemological points are moot points”
except to say that we cannot “say anything” and excepting the point that there is no point?
so then all statements are false or moot except the ones you deem are true. is that dogma or is that dogma?
and then there is this:
“The point is that if you do make a commitment to a claim, you have to acknowledge the contingency of that commitment.”
contingent on what exactly? If I state that “this is a tree” and point to a tree that both of us can see, feel and smell then what else is this claim supposed to be contingent on? am I to wait for a divine revelation beamed directly to my brain that “downloads” truth into my head?
RS – the fact that epistemological questions are essentially insoluble means that we treat them as moot. That’s not some sort of conclusive claim about the nature of reality that you can twist into a contradiction – it’s just a statement of the way in which we ought to approach things. It’s an “ought” claim, not an “is” claim.
But in getting through our daily lives, of course we justify certain claims and stances. Insights from epistemology cna help us make those justifications. You’re just fooling yourself if you think you’re getting to some ultimate reality. But the point is – that’s ok. Who cares?
“If I state that “this is a tree” and point to a tree that both of us can see, feel and smell then what else is this claim supposed to be contingent on?”
Are you s*&%ing me? It is contingent on our sight, feeling, and smell. I would have thought that would be implicit.
Daniel,
So basically, you are asserting that knowledge as such is not really knowledge unless it is omnipotent knowledge gained through some means other than that of the sense? And you know this how? By what means?
All you are asserting is nothing but dogma, no different than the priests and mystics that you have explcitly rejected but have implicitly accepted but wont admit to.
The contradiction is explicitly yours. You claim simultaneously that epistemological questions are moot and insoluble and that such an epistemological claim is a true description of reality. Obviously the first part contradicts the second so which is it? Do you know it or dont you? You cant claim to know something and to not know it at the same time. I would have thougth that THAT was obvious. apparently not.
and this one too…
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/skepticism.html
Thanks Daniel. Great response and exactly what I was looking for!
Now if that were the case, how would humans ever learn the truth?
Your first example conveys an argument that is based on appeal to ignorance. The fact that scientists may not be able to prove or disprove, given today’s technology, the hypothesis that aliens are responsible for human life, does not give one the logical right, so to speak, to believe that aliens created human life.
While it is correct to say that it is “theoretically possible” for aliens to have created human life, this is the case only because we already know that intelligent life is not actually a theoretical concept, but a real world concept found in humanity. Thus it does not take faith to believe in intelligent life.
Your hypothesis of ‘intelligent foreign scientists’ is non-testable and nonfalsifiable.
Your second example conveys an argument that is actually testable and falsifiable, at least in principle. It is, in principle, possible to test the hypothesis that foreign agents developed a virus that targeted certain people. If one had complete information regarding foreign research and development in bioweapons, then one could confirm whether or not the virus was man made, or whether it was a product of natural selection.
The fact that such experiments may not be practically possible, due to government secrecy, etc, does not rule out the fact that it is falsifiable in principle.
Intelligent design, like the multiple universes doctrine, is non-falsifiable in principle, hence are not “scientific”, according to the Popperist conception of science.
Intelligent design could have been “scientific”, even though it is non-falsifiable, but it would have to pass the internal logic test. Praxeology is non-falsifiable, yet it is logically consistent, hence it is scientific. Intelligent design is non-falsifiable, but it is logically contradictory, hence it is not scientific.
The most glaring contradiction in intelligent design theory is the fact that omniscience and omnipotence, two attributes of God, cannot logically co-exist. If a god knows what will happen tomorrow, said god will be unable to change it without invalidating its knowledge. If this god retains the power to change what will happen tomorrow, then it cannot know with exact certainty what will happen tomorrow. It is no solution to this problem by imagining a realm where contradictions are allowed. If I said a square circle exists, and you said that’s impossible, for such a concept is a contradictory absurdity, then I would not solve the problem by imagining a realm where square circles can exist. All I would be doing is abandoning reality and rationality.
Then there is the problem of claiming that something exists for which there is no way to detect it, either indirectly or directly. How can a human mind claim that something exists for which there is no direct or indirect evidence? How can one even research intelligent design scientifically?
I won’t respond to your critic of Robert’s hypothetical questions. I do want to address your last two paragraphs:
“The most glaring contradiction in intelligent design theory is the fact that omniscience and omnipotence, two attributes of God, cannot logically co-exist.”
Why can’t they? I would argue that being Omnipotent, He knows how He will act in the future for all time and in every way. Therefore He can and does know the entirety of the future.
“Then there is the problem of claiming that something exists for which there is no way to detect it, either indirectly or directly. How can a human mind claim that something exists for which there is no direct or indirect evidence? How can one even research intelligent design scientifically?”
Define “detect.” I would argue that you have all the tools necessary to “detect” the existence of God: Eyes, ears and a brain. “Accepting” the continuous stream of input you receive as evidence of God is quite another thing entirely.
Here’s a fun thought that has stumped every honest atheist I’ve ever posed it to: Consider a gold watch, with all of its gears, switches and other intricate parts working together to keep accurate time. Could such a watch ever be created “naturally”, given an infinite amount of time and all the natural processes and resources available in the universe? The intellectually honest answer is no, of course not. The creation of said watch requires a designer, and its existence implies there is one. I believe the same applies to us.
I don’t really understand what this discussion is about. Two things I particularily don’t understand:
1. How do you seperate a scientific theory from an unscientific one? What are the critera a theory has to fullfill to qualify for science?
2. What consequences do you draw from the fact that a theory is scientific. Why does it matter to you wheather ID can be called scientific or not?
Looking forward to your reply.
I think you raise two great questions. The ground being fought over here is in the realm of hard science, i.e., physics, biology, chemistry, etc., rather than soft science, i.e., economics, sociology, history, political science, etc. so you have to focus on scientific method for your answer which implies that you can take a hypothesis, test it in a lab, and reproduce the result. That is my two cents on that and not being a scientist in that mold I offer that very tentatively.
The more interesting question, to me, is your second one. Why is it important? Without the creation story Christianity, as currently understood, is a dead letter. If you believe in evolution, you deny the key claim of the Christian faith which is that God created us in his image. It’s just that simple. This is why Christians cling to the “God of the gaps” and deny the validity of evolution – to not do so would be to admit the falsity of the currently constituted Christian worldview. I say currently constituted because Christianity could live on as wise teaching with Jesus being a moral exemplar or something like that but it would cease to have power to command behavior and would devolve to mere suggestion. That is something the religious leaders of our time, and times past, fundamentally understand. To give up the ghost – so to speak – sounds the death knell for the entire project. Thus Intelligent Design is the coat rack on which all hopes for continued relevance hang.
“Without the creation story Christianity, as currently understood, is a dead letter.”
Am I only allowed to believe in scientific facts? If I came to the conclusion that ID is not a “scientific theory” (whatever that means) would that mean I can’t believe it is still true?
I think you are mixing up scientific theories and true theories. Wheather a theory is scientific or not doesn’t say anything about its correctness. On the other hand a non-scientific claim can still be true.
I still don’t get why it is important to Bob wheather the things he belives in are labeled scientific or not. What’s the point?
You very well may be right but you have to admit that it is the Creationists who promote ID as an acceptable and scientific alternative to evolution. It is on that basis – that ID is scientific – that the Creationists have chosen the battle and it is a battle they cannot win and should not have joined. Even if we could all agree that ID is not scientific that doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to believe in God. It is no different from people who believe in UFOs, leprechauns and fiscally responsible politicians contrary to all evidence or lack thereof.
@Bob
“Can I reprint some of this for next week’s post? I think you did a good job of taking the “God is revealing Himself in Nature” argument head-on. I have an answer for you, but I think this is a pretty big topic and should have its own post.”
Sorry, I thought you were responding to Daniel, but it looks like you were responding to me. Feel free to re-post what I wrote. No attribution required.
How can a human mind claim that something exists for which there is no direct or indirect evidence?
Very good question! … And yet the human mind can claim that God exists.