Design Discussion Continues
Apropos of the discussion regarding intelligent design on this blog, Lehigh University biology professor Michael Behe* has an op-ed in today’s NY Times. He lays out the basic rationale for ID, though he discusses no specific examples. His conclusion might sound familiar to those who read my last post:
Still, some critics claim that science by definition can’t accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can’t settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don’t bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.
Also, John Schroeder has a though-provoking post in which he argues that a god who transcends the Universe is outside the system that science is investigating.
*Full disclosure: I am pursuing a master’s degree in chemistry from Lehigh, but I have never met Dr. Behe.
Well, as our man on the scene, repair thee hence and discover to us whether he has six fingers or cloven hooves.
I find the gradual retreat of Christian Fundamentalism from “Evolution is a Lie” to “MicroEvolution” to “Intelligent Design” fascinating. I wonder where we will be 50 years hence?
On the plus side, I can now use Prof. Behe as a counter-example whenever someone claims that a Ph.D. in the sciences is more meaningful than one in the humanities. Anecdotal evidence is incapable of proving much, but it can disprove generalizations.
His logic is quite amusing, too.
Claim 1: Empty Rhetoric
Claim 2: Bait-and-switch
Claim 3: More or less accurate
Claim 4: Turns the scientific method on its head.
The idea that any sort of conclusion follows from such claims is silly, and my logic professor would be most upset if she saw me saying something like that.
You know, I miss the days where a theist would attempt to actually prove that God exists, as opposed to just demanding that scientists disprove Him. Debates are more lively when both sides are making falsiable assertions.
Where is Christianity headed with respect to the Bible and science? I think toward a more commonly accepted view that the Bible doesn’t offer scientific reasons for things but offers theological understandings of our creation and of God’s purposes.
“nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. ”
Uh, yes, it would be. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?
“Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don’t bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed”
Ack! This is the same logic by which the Mohists, a classical Chinese philosophical school, proved the existence of ghosts. It is no more valid now than then.
As for Schroeder: If God is outside the system, and the system can describe the creation of life, then why bother putting God back in? And Schroeder argues something close to that, in the last part of his essay–but he omits the fact that a great many people believe that their religion makes specific truth-claims about the natural world, including things like Noah saving animals. Here we can introduce the anti-fundamentalist arguments of Huxley, Darrow and Dawkins.
A rapprochement like that of Gould’s separate magisteria is possible, but only between science and those religions who acknowledge the separateness of science and morality, or at least of physics and metaphysics.
“The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.”
No, it’s not uncontroversial at all. If anything, history shows even the most critical of minds are quite adept at perceiving design where there really is none. From Kepler’s absolute certainty that the perfectly circular crater walls on the moon were designed, to the eye, etc. history has demonstrated that the progress of scientific knowledge has always been able to explain through natural means complexity that previous generations, in their ignorance or failures of imagination, found utterly irreducable.
At every step of this process have been the contemporary equivalents of the ID movement screaming “Stop! We have found a system that assuredly must be designed and which it will be fruitless to investigate.” The Mt. Rushmore analogy of this piece is that same idea, applied now to the “black box” areas of molecular biology.
Yet, these naysayers have always been proven wrong in the past; why ought we arbitrarily decide they are correct today? Why, other than motivations outside of science, ought we stop investigating and assume an unevidenced designer, assume that they are any more likely to be right now more than ten, fifty, one hundred or six hundred years ago?
The separation of physics and metaphysics is a particularly useful delineation. Speculations that are possible to test by the controlled interactions with the world (as in physics, chemistry, or molecular biology) or by the accumulation of physical evidence from the world to support the construction of a rational historical narrative and comparison (anthropology, paleontology, much of evolutionary biology) make up the sciences. Metaphysics alone is the realm of theology.
I guess my point about metaphysics is similar to Schroeder’s. Science can describe anything about the system (the world line of all bits of information originating with the Big Bang at 13.7 Ga) but, in my view, cannot tell us much about anything outside that system. All other speculation is metaphysical (including discussions of multiple universes unless these universes are necessary in the GUT which will, by definition, have sufficient predictive power to be convincing). Earth’s biosphere surely arose by the processes described in the evolutionary model built up over the decades since 1859 - any demands to the contrary simply have not stood the scrutiny of science or even bothered to provide a satisfactory alternative explanation. If God ever does become observable by science, we will need to describe God with the same vigor as all other phenomena. The result of that, I suspect, will not satisfy most Christians.
A Steve,
“I find the gradual retreat of Christian Fundamentalism from “Evolution is a Lie” to “MicroEvolution” to “Intelligent Design” fascinating. I wonder where we will be 50 years hence?”
Umm, creationists have pretty much accepted microevolution at least as far back as the 1940’s. and they continue to do so at the present time.
Chuck,
I don’t know if we can make that sharp of a division between the physics (or, science in general) and metaphysics. Science often informs metaphysics (e.g., quantum mechanics has pretty much gotten rid of the mechanical, deterministic view of the universe). Also, metaphysics is a necessary part of science (e.g., the question of how science should be done is a metaphysical question).
The question of how science should be done is technical and, at the most abstract, epistemological rather than metaphysical. While science and logic can and should set the limits to the discussion in metaphysics, I don’t really think that the discussion can work both ways except in the most theoretical cosmological sciences and only when used as a vehicle to generate testable hypotheses as a by product. By most definitions of metaphysics I’ve ever heard, questions of “meta reality” are inherently useless and sometimes repulsive to scientists. All we can deal with is what the world gives us to study, and nothing more. Arguments over the meaning of quantum mechanics are at most parlor games for real physicists - and the same is true for much of the scientists. When creationists argue over the minutiae of Popper’s theories of falsification, most biologists aren’t paying attention, nor should they. By the way, if you think most creationists accept micoevolution, read some polls or visit a small town in any state, red or blue and talk to the fundamentalists you’ll meet. Also, see my post in last Monday’s discussion on ID for a refutation of the long-held fallacy that micoevolution and macroevolution are governed by different processes.
I took your use of “metaphysics” to be literally “above physics.” I wasn’t talking specifically about questions of existence or properties or causation. So I agree that science has to deal with epistimological questions, too. But you are wrong that it doesn’t go both ways. The underdetermination of theories (i.e., empirical data alone is consistent with any number of theories) guarantees that non-empirical principles are needed to guide science. It doesn’t matter whether scientists are repulsed to them or not - they are needed, they aren’t useless.
And I wasn’t speaking about popular opinion about creationism, I was speaking about what creation scientists themselves have said about microevolution. Any good book on the history of creationism (e.g., “The Creationists” by Numbers) will show this to be true. And I didn’t say anything about whether they are correct or not, just that they’ve held that position since at least the 1940’s.
“And I didn’t say anything about whether they are correct or not, just that they’ve held that position since at least the 1940’s.”
And since A Steve’s timeline looked at approximately 50 year intervals, your point would be…?
I don’t think there’s a “retreat” going on in any part of the Christian community regarding evolution. At least, no more than changes in the consensus on evolutionary theories represent a “retreat.” I think all three of those views have been held since Darwin’s time (although ID has only recently been formally expressed).
For instance, I doubt that most Christians of Darwin’s time would have found anything controversial about those finches with the different beak sizes. That would be an example of microevolution, though the term had not been introduced at that time.
Paul,
I didn’t take what A Steve said to mean that every 50 years there is a change. He talked about a “gradual retreat” and part of my point was that the “Evolution is a lie”=>”microevolution”=>”intelligent design” sequence isn’t really a sequence since IDer’s still accept microevolution. The sequence doesn’t even really follow since they aren’t even talking about the same things. I took the “I wonder where we will be 50 years hence?” to be asking what creationists will be saying in the future, not as laying out some pattern of the evolution of creationist thought.
But assuming A Steve was saying that these changes happened every 50 years, he’s still wrong. Another 50 years back puts us in the 1890’s or so. In his book “The Battle of the Beginnings,” Del Ratzsch opens his chapter on the history of creationism with “As noted, much (though not all) of the Christian community had achieved peaceful coexistence with biological evolution within a few decades of 1859.” By this he means that while there was some initial resistence to Darwin’s ideas in the few years after 1859, by the end of the century there weren’t too many Christians that had a problem with it. It wasn’t until 20 or so years later in the 1910’s that some Seventh Day Adventists started raising problems with the theory.
Eric,
While I don’t think there was anything controversial about the finches changing beaks, there was controversy about how they changed. So as long as microevolution doesn’t imply that it was done through natural selection, then I would agree with you. Many creation scientists haven’t even had a problem with microevolution creating new species, as long as the new species were of the same “kind.” But there has been a lot of disagreement over how the changes occur.
intelligent design as op-ed
As one of the ID movement’s most visible proponents, Behe might seem a good choice for such a task; but he seems to regard this statement of postulates as an argument, which clearly it is not. Perhaps the kindest conclusion to be drawn is tha…
I note that Anthony Flew has convinced himself that a superior intelligence must have provided the spark of life. Flew was a skeptic, an atheist, a philosopher knows as “The Champion of Unbelief”. It would be useful to follow his reasoning (he has written books on logic).
Right on Cue
The local high school has just become the first in the [US] to discuss an alternative Darwin’s theory of evolution in class, called Intelligent Design. … This argument lays bare the game of semantics being played to discredit science.