Pinkerton's Mind
by MikeGeneJames Pinkerton wrote an essay about Intelligent Design. Let's take a look.
Pinkerton begins by trying to describe ID, but he really ends up describing himself. He writes:
And ID, of course, is religiously inspired"¦"¦And while religion is at the core of ID
Standard stuff. As is common among many critics of ID, he even looks to "The Wedge" to make sense of things:
And so the DI mission is clear: "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies." These heady fighting words certainly put the ID movement in its proper ideological and theological perspective.
When Pinkerton speaks of "its proper perspective," he is really telling us his perspective (whether it is the proper one depends on who you ask). He sees ID through the prism of the political movement (perhaps even a conspiracy theory). His mind hears "God" when he reads ID. In his mind, "religion is at the core of ID." And to support this perspective, he cherry picks sociological data (admittedly, there are many cherries to pick) to make sense of a concept. See what I mean?
Okay, so I'm used to people thinking they "really understand" ID when they don't. In fact, given that ID is despised by most in academia, one way to make yourself look like part of the "smart crowd" is to repeat the slogans and complaints of the intelligentsia. Yet this type of confusion wreaks havoc with the remaining points of Pinkerton's essay.
Pinkerton explains that the problem with ID is that "it's simplistic." This conclusion merely stems from the way his mind has defined ID. When it is presented with ID, it hears nothing other than "God did it." Of course that's simplistic. He then explains:
To argue that complex biological phenomena are "irreducibly complex" is to abandon the scientific quest.
How does Pinkerton know this? I've explored some biological phenomena from the perspective of IC and it is the beginning, not abandonment, of a "scientific quest." Go here and check out (for example) BR No. 23 or BR No. 30. That's just a start.
Then again, I'm not sure what Pinkerton means by "scientific quest." My confusion comes from his reliance on the professor with the bold title:
To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like "God was always there," and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say "DNA was always there," or "Life was always there," and be done with it.
I've already obliquely touched on the problem with this argument here.
If a "supernatural Designer" did indeed design DNA or a protein machine, then that fact would be a true fact about our world. The "supernatural Designer" would explain the origin of the DNA or protein machine, even if we couldn't explain the origin of the "˜Designer." (Of course, the whole issue of "explaining" something may not be as simplistic as people imagine). But Dawkins is telling us we would have to ignore this true fact about our world until we could also explain the origin of the "Designer." So in the meantime, we would be obligated to incorporate false explanations into the Uber-Story we are trying to tell ourselves.
(Besides, does science really work like this? No. For example, science can point to Gene X to explain trait Y even if science cannot explain the origin of the Gene X. In fact, the origin of Gene X is usually considered a separate topic.)
Furthermore, Pinkerton should consider that it is very easy to construe Dawkins' explanations as "simplisitic." Take the origin of an IC machine. To "explain" its existence, it is highly likely that Dawkins would have to invoke something like cooption. But what is the essence of this "explanation?" It simply posits that the IC parts originally just happened to interact in a way that happened to confer a reproductive advantage. That is the core of the explanation "“ things just happen by chance and if that means more offspring will be produced, the thing that just happened gets perpetuated. "Just happened" is not terribly more sophisticated than "God did it," now is it?
Pinkerton then adds:
So the better mission for the ID-ers, should they choose to undertake it, would be to identify the Intelligent Designer.
Consider Pinkerton's suggestion. Now read this.
Pinkerton then writes:
As Schulz suggests, religion is simply on a different plane than science. The whole point is that you take it on faith: you either believe or you don't. In fact, the Catholics put Mysterium Fidei, the mystery of faith, at the center of their belief system. Which is fine, but once again, it's not science.
Pinkerton's mind is conditioned to equate ID with religion, so he thinks he is making a point here. But all he is offering is the simplistic dichotomy between "science" and "faith." As if all human inquiry can be neatly fit into two little tidy boxes. But what if we were to inquire about Pinkerton's views on economics, global issues, and politics? Is this science? Of course not. So I guess that means that all of Pinkerton's writings are Pinkerton's Faith.
Pinkerton also adds:
Or one could settle for H. Allen Orr's two-word description of ID in The New Yorker: "junk science."
As we can see here, there is no lack of labels for ID. So it's non-science, bad science, anti-science, and now junk science. All in one.
Pinkerton finally ends this portion:
So enough on what might be called RID, for Religious Intelligent Design. One can either believe in it, or not, but if one does, it must be taken on faith.
These sentiments are understandable once you realize Pinkerton's mind hears "religion" when presented with "ID."
The rest of Pinkerton's essay is about "transhumanism." Transhumanism sounds like faith to me, but we won't go there. What matters is that Pinkerton acknowledges there are aspects of our reality that exist only because of ID (Bill Dembski comments on this here). He then envisions that these aspects will continue to transform our reality, making more and more of it ID-dependent. This remind me of an essay I wrote years ago (ID is in the Cards), so maybe I'll post it. But for now, notice that Pinkerton is poised to embrace ID101. But his mind won't ever go there because it has been conditioned to see ID as something that can be nothing more than religious faith.
