Why I am Not a Critic
by MikeGeneIn my previous blog, I outlined ways in which my views of ID differ from mainstream views of ID. Let me now symmetrically balance this out by pointing to the areas where I disagree with the average ID critic.
Here are some ID critic positions I have commonly run across that I disagree with.
- ID is nothing more than religious belief and an attempt to sneak creationism into the public school curricula.
- ID is Complete Bunk and Total Nonsense.
- Irreducible complexity (IC) does not exist and if it did, it would always be explained (and predicted) by neo-Darwinian evolution.
- Complex specified information (CSI) does not exist in any biological system and if it did, it would be always be explained (and predicted) by neo-Darwinian evolution.
- Evolution is the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.
- ID is inherently anti-evolution. But if it is not, it is superfluous.
- All biological information has arisen by non-teleological processes.
- To detect design, one must first demonstrate the identity, methods, and psychology of the designer.
September 9th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
If you change ID to Religion (as in any monotheistic or polytheistic variety of them), would you then disagree with it too?
I changed my mind after loitering here a bit and reading what you guys think.. but the reason I'm asking you the above is that there is really nothing that could change my mind about religions themselves, as opposed to an ID which I find to be elegant in a way.
Comment by dimasok — September 9, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Hi dimasok,
Nothing? Why is that?
Comment by Steve Petermann — September 9, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Because I believe that everything BUT the hypothesis of the creator that might be omnibenevolent, all-powerful, etc is pure invention. I can see why many people would see a deeper mechanism to the multiverse hypothesis and I started seeing it myself, but I'd like it to remain in that crossroad of ID & Science and not wander into religion because as I see it, ID is NOT religion.
Comment by dimasok — September 9, 2007 @ 1:07 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Hi Dimasok,
You wrote…
Personally, I have resolved it by saying "ID Science is not inherently religious".
I have a different opinion concerning the popular movement as led by Dr. Wells, Dr. Dembski and, generally, the Discovery Institute.
Comment by Thought Provoker — September 9, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
dimasok,
Religious sentiment need not claim all the "omni's" that have been commonly associated with God. In fact many contemporary religious formulations reject these postulations. Witness Western forumations of panentheism via Marcus Borg, Nancy Murphy, Charles Hartshorne and Philip Clayton of process thought, et. al. and Eastern formulations via Sri Aurobindo, Ramanuja, et. al. All of these are compatible with forms of EAM. That's why I questioned your "nothing can change my mind".
That's fair.
Comment by Steve Petermann — September 9, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
You left off my personal favorite,
"Intelligent Design is just stealth YEC. And anyone IDer who claims not to believe in YEC is either a liar or deluded."
I kid you not, I have come across this claim more than once. When I explained that I had an interest in ID, but accepted evolution, common descent, etc.. I was told that the ID people had managed to trick me, and this is all part of their plan to get reasonable people to believe in YEC. Still trying to figure that one out.
Comment by nullasalus — September 9, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Mike wrote: (re-ordered by me)
Disagreement with the first two statements seems to imply a position which is inherently anti-evolution, and thus in agreement, and not in disagreement, with the third statement. The key here is how teleology is viewed within the theory of evolution.
The division among biologists regarding teleology in biology seemed to be concerned with how to treat the evident teleology in nature. Some see the theory of evolution to eliminate teleology altogether, while other see the theory of evolution as a naturalistic explanation of teleological notions in biology.
So teleology is something of an open question, and as such the question is whether ID can supply something to the theory of evolution without changing the theory to the point of being an entirely new theory. I hope to get Mike's thoughts on this.
One of the criticisms typical of ID-critics is that ID is not a mechanistic theory. Even given that for Mike, ID has not progressed to the point of a scientific theory, my thinking is that unless ID can provide a mechanistic explanation, it remains inherently anti-evolution.
Comment by Zwischenzug — September 9, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
nullasalus:
Yeah, me too! My husband still goes off on rants about evil "creationism" whenever I explain some ID concept, and he DOES believe God created everything! Go figure… §;o)
Comment by Joy — September 9, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
This is the one I understand best. I can shorten it though.
There is no such thing as complex specified information (CSI).
Dembksi made a brave stab at it and then covered it with a veneer of maths - but in the end it doesn't work. For at least two reasons
1 TThe definition of specified is only precise and objective in limited, articial domains such as bridge hands or dice rolls.
2 Even in those limited domains there is no reason to dismiss a hypothesis just because the outcome happens to be specified and this outcome is improbable given the hypothesis. All outcomes are improbable if defined closely enough.
Comment by Mark Frank — September 9, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
September 9th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Zwischenzug:
This is fairly confusing. "Evolution" is the changes over time in forms of life, presumably facilitated by the fact of descent with modification (variation) in populations. Disagreement with the Neodarwinian Synthesis - a theory about the origins of the modifications/variation, the reason certain variations predominate over time and how/why dramatic form changes come about is just disagreement with the theory. It's not in any way a denial of evolution.
Again, no it's not. The mechanisms are being identified right now by biologists in academia and private practice. Many of them look less than random, and selection as the ultimate gatekeeper is losing its hegemony over the direction of evolution. The issues in this debate are whether or not there is teleology in the process - basically, whether adaptation and adaptive evolution (adaptation is almost always related to selective pressure) is in fact blindly accidental or creatively and purposefully organized.
IOW, it's the underlying assumption of ateleology - the insistence that the admitted appearance of design is to be rejected on metaphysical principle - that is being challenged. That metaphysic is a corruption of science. It is not itself science and will never be science. It's ideology, enforced by an "orthodoxy" that biologists themselves acknowledge.
ID would investigate the admitted appearance of design as if it's right there in front of our eyes. Which it is.
Comment by Joy — September 9, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 3:23 am
Joy wrote:
We disagree on what anti-evolution means. If Mike is looking at it similarly to your view, then I accept your response and it (Mike's post) all makes sense. But my thinking is that since it is the average ID-critics' criticism which Mike disagrees with, we need to understand what an average ID-critic means by anti-evolution. And in this regard, I maintain that anti-evolution means denial of the theory of evolution (Modern Synthesis from talkorigins.com):
Joy continued:
There may be evidence for directed variation, and if ID in general, and EAM in particular, only claim that some variation show signs of direction then that alone probably doesn't constitute a position of being anti-evolution. But ID and EAM, I believe, claim something further, as your response indicates. And by mechanistic explanation I mean some principle, through laws or processes, by which intelligence influences variation. Without such a principle, I maintain that ID cannot simply be an addition of something extra to the theory of evolution, and if this is the case, then it is anti-evolution.
Comment by Zwischenzug — September 10, 2007 @ 3:23 am
September 10th, 2007 at 9:02 am
I never quite understood why is it that ID should be anti-evolution.. AFAICS, there is no reason why positing a transcendent, superintelligent designer needs to be at odds with the theory of evolution since we have plenty of evidence that the fossils records are correct and that indeed many species went through an immense amount of modifications/alterations throughout the million years. I think the dispute is not over the actual denial of the theory of evolution, but the specifics of how things unfolded during this period (what if anything brought it about, why it took so long, etc). Most of the heat evolution gets had always been because of it's implications that we are no more than chimpanzees and that the humans are much older than the predicted age of the universe in religious texts and that's why I've said several times in the past that ID is not religion and touting it as such severely hurts it's credibility! People who do not take the word of their religious books literally or take it selectively piece-by-piece could be brought towards a consensus that their main postulates of a supreme creator, afterlife, etc are all left intact whilst the scientific data on non-metaphysical matters reigns supreme everywhere else (that includes certain branches of pseudoscience and other fields of interest which could all be valid despite the reluctance to accept any of them by mainstream science).
Behe's criticism for instance I find to be unappealing. He selectively chose what the theory of evolution had issues with (the flagellum, blood-clots formation, etc) and made it sound as if a designer is the only way these things could have developed - lots of strawmans there! I'm sure evolution can/will explain it perfectly well, and if there are signs of intelligent design anywhere at all, I tend to think it's the universe (or multiverse or however you want to call it) itself and not our biological underpinnings which are secondary and don't seem to be all that complicated in comparison.
I do wonder though that if a supreme creator is behind all this, why did he/she/it make so many apparent mistakes with us? I think a guided process of evolution would have made machinery that was much more foolproof and efficient, so either the process was launched and then left unguided to develop by itself (with the concomitant errors) or it was never guided to begin with.
Comment by dimasok — September 10, 2007 @ 9:02 am
September 10th, 2007 at 9:23 am
dimasok:
Years ago (the pre-ID era) when I first viewed natural history debates the line up was evolutionists vs. creationists and the arguments pitted a gradual process, fueled primarily by RM filtered by NS, against a sudden creation. At the time I naively assumed that if one concurred that the RM + NS process took place, that was enough to admit one into the club. When IDists like Behe, Mike Gene and others then contended that an evolutionary process included a teleological element and this position was met with fierce resistence, I realized the debate is not entirely about a physical process. That in turn distinguished this type of controversy from string theory, for example.
One can argue that front loading at point of origins is a concept independent of a physical mechanism. But I can just as effectively argue that a non-FL approach (the standard approach) is devoid of a mechanism as well. So if that is true why does this not come down to a difference in metaphysical perspectives?
Comment by Bradford — September 10, 2007 @ 9:23 am
September 10th, 2007 at 9:33 am
As I've said above, it should come down to this! The only thing worth mentioning is that not the mechanisms of either ID or Science (I do think they can work in synergy still…) are blameworthy for the current state of affairs, but the actual scientific data. Do you acknowledge, for instance, that we are descendants of more primitive animals or that the universe is not 6,000 years old and was not created in 6 days?
You guys managed to convince me over my time here that there is indeed a rationale for the existence of a supreme being (and that pseudoscience is plausible), and the mechanism that front-loaded it all is a metaphysical question that indeed boils down to whether one admits the possibility of God or not, but I don't think there is a dispute as to the timetables of the creation of the universe or us, since that was always my belief that science was as accurate as it could get in presenting this type of data in a precise manner and it also helps that it all sounds logical to me. Now, anyone could of course believe that the universe is generated exclusively by their own mind and manipulate the data any way they wish as to when and how it was created, but if that's what the holy scriptures do, then there is no reason why anyone else shouldn't be able to do that (according to Bostrom's Simulation Argument for instance, how old the simulations are or who and how created them is anyone's guess…).
There is a dispute of that particular flavor in science vs ID but it looks to me ludicrous since, again, ID is not religion and none of what the holy books say that is out of their jurisdiction should be taken to be the truth coming from a horses mouth. Now you might say that if scientific data is out of their jurisdiction, why isn't God? The reason is that, for me, recently anyway, science seems to necessitate some sort of a supreme being, but that's as far as I'm willing to go with this without crossing the science vs religion divide when I firmly belong to the former.
Comment by dimasok — September 10, 2007 @ 9:33 am
September 10th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Comment by Thought Provoker — September 10, 2007 @ 10:39 am
September 10th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Hi Bradford,
You wrote…
I suggest what you are talking about is ID Science. And while there may be merit in suggesting that ID Science is getting more resistance than necessary, I offer that has a lot to do with its association with the ID Movement.
Last year, Dembski wrote a series of posts titled ID's Cultured Theological Despisers The third in the series dealt with Alan Padgett. Dembski first quoted from the pro-religious Vital Theology newsletter…
Here is Dembski's reaction…
The ID Movement engenders much more resistance than ID Science. When an Intelligent Design textbook claims…
"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact-fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, and so on."
…the knee-jerk reaction is negative, especially if you don't make the effort to disassociate your ideas for those of Dembski, Wells and the Discovery Institute.
Comment by Thought Provoker — September 10, 2007 @ 10:42 am
September 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
TP, the problem with your "movement" argument is it does not fit the data. And what is the data? The evidence of reasons given by critics themselves in articles written by prominent critics and in the comments left by less known critics in many forums whose archives are public. You find much equating of ID to creation and conflation of arguments for ID with arguments for God. In any case ID is not about Dembski's character no matter how much shield bashing goes on.
Comment by Bradford — September 10, 2007 @ 10:59 am
September 10th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Zwischenzug:
Obviously we disagree. You want evolution itself to BE the NDS. It's not, but you're certainly not alone in your reverence for that ideologically motivated theoretic.
No legitimate theory in science is identical to the phenomena it purports to explain. The NDS theory *is not* evolution. Thus disagreement with that theory *is not* "anti-evolution." Surely this also makes sense. There have been working biologists in all generations since Charlie Darwin's day who disagreed with the theory, thought there was more going on. Heck, Charlie himself thought there was more going on at the origins end than the NDS allows.
Theories are not sacrosanct, they are not Holy Writ, they are not identical to the phenomena they purport to explain. Theories get tweaked all the time based on new evidence and observations, and are occasionally overthrown entirely. That's how science was intelligently designed to work. It was never intended to be a religion or a religious ideology. It does not deal in absolutes, and is not a school of metaphysics. Except in biology. I view that as corruption.
"Only?" Why should anyone's empirically based issues and criticisms of NDS mechanisms have to conform to NDS assumptions? That's not science nor is it 'scientific'. EAM - Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis - does claim more. It claims that living organisms are agents of their own design and adaptations, in response to selective pressures in their environment. Thus shaping their own evolution over time, if they evolve rather than go extinct. This also explains the often ad hoc nature of adaptive developments and the range of relative 'success' in the attempt. And while it doesn't deny that accidents happen, or that life is hard, it maintains that genomic disruptions caused by mutagenic chemicals, radiation and other 'random' events are predominantly harmful and are the causes of functional loss, not adaptive gains.
What is the "law" of randomness?
Like everyone else, you are entitled to your opinion. It needn't make any sense to me. I've always found it kind of funny how DDs [Darwin Defenders] and Creationists all think alike. Whatever life and evolution are, they must have been imposed upon hapless blobs of goo by some exterior agency.
I find life to be fascinating, amazingly complex, and surprisingly tenacious. The only agency we actually know anything real about is found exclusively in living beings. I have never seen any reason to exclude living beings from any of the vital processes that allow its existence in time, its continuation over time, or its adaptation to the conditions in which it lives in time.
But you can call that "anti-evolution" if it floats your boat. I don't mind.
Comment by Joy — September 10, 2007 @ 11:28 am
September 10th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I agree with Padgett completely but Dembski seems to me the type of guy who is causing the rift in the first place.
Comment by dimasok — September 10, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Thought Provoker, your quote mining of Dembski plays out poorly. It appears that Dembski was responding to Padgett's ideas about Christian involvement in the debate, thoughts about creation/God/etc. As such, it makes sense that he would talk about how ID does or does not mesh with theistic belief.
Note this sentence from Dembski: "Theism allows both ID as well as a form of evolution in which God's purposes in nature are accomplished in a way that is scientifically undetectable." In other words, he is clearly distinguishing between what theism entails/allows and what ID entails, namely that intelligent activity is detectable in an objective scientific manner. One can of course dispute whether the latter scientific proposition is correct, but Dembski is quite right to point out that the scientific point is perfectly compatible with traditional theism.
My impression is that most of us have some question about whether Dembski has been successful in outlining a robust methodology for detecting design. Further, my impression is that bearing the brunt of much of the evolutionary community's ire over the years has taken a toll on Dembski's patience and civility, particularly in matters where he feels critics are reflexively falling back into the kinds of stereotypes Mike outlines above. Nevertheless, Dembski is clearly interested in the scientific/mathematical aspects of the theory and is not, whatever may be said of his personality, only interested in a culture war.
Under any objective standard, those who refuse to address the scientific questions and instead constantly propogate the nonsense Mike lists above — including militant tactics to deny tenure, close down research centers and the like — are far more guilty of propogating a culture war than Dembski, Wells, the DI and other folks whom it is currently fashionable at Telic Thoughts to regard as "undesirables."
The "ID Movement" concept gets lots of press on this website, but it is, frankly, overstated.
Comment by Eric Anderson — September 10, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
dimasok wrote: "I agree with Padgett completely but Dembski seems to me the type of guy who is causing the rift in the first place. "
Dembski is promoting a rift between science and theology? LOL
Comment by Eric Anderson — September 10, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
dimasok wrote: "I do wonder though that if a supreme creator is behind all this, why did he/she/it make so many apparent mistakes with us?"
Ah yes, the old argument from poor design. Given that this argument is, at its base, a theological argument, it appears, dimasok, that your stumbling block is your theology, rather than the evidence.
Comment by Eric Anderson — September 10, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Mark Frank:
Right. This is why I think Dembski's CSI approach fails. What we need is not demonstration why a thing is improbable, but why it is impossible given the laws of nature, chemistry, etc.
What the NeoDars have not shown is true blue, blow by blow, account of the how certain bio features, like say, the famed flagellum, has arisen, sans huge gaping gaps in how the proper timing and sequencing of the proteins came to be the way they are in relation to one another. It's one thing to point to this or that protein and say that they were somehow "co-opted" and came together, it's another thing to demonstrate how it did and in what precise sequence. Forget about probability, nobody knows that it's even possible
for these assembly instructions to arisen without intelligent foresight. Contra to what some people seem to think, everything is not possible in this universe. There are some color combinations of a Rubic's Cube that are not possible, unless someone rips the stickers off and puts them on in an unusual way. You can't get there randomly spinning the cube's parts.I think the ID crowd needs to focus on the issues of possible pathways. Statistics are meaningless when dealing with whether or not a thing is even possible or not, that is, whether or not there is a possible pathway from one state to another. Demonstrate that it's impossible for a flagellum or any other biological entity to have been constructed without intelligent insight, and you have won the game.
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 10, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Eric Anderson
Let me put in this way - Dembski is to ID what Dawkins is to evolution. Dembski is a vicious detractor of evolution and since science is evolution + standard model of physics (for now anyway), I'm not aware of any reconciliatory attempts from him to unite science & theology. He just hates evolution as much as Dawkins hates ID, and they bark their snides at each other like a pair of malicious dogs. Let them have it.
These are my personal observations, not necessarily of the religious or scientific flavor. I experience us as being very poorly designed beings and that has nothing to do with whether evolution or ID are correct. I find lots of things to be aesthetically displeasing (not only the universe).
MikeGene
I agree with your original post by the way. I have a problem with people like Dawkins & Dembski who skewer their respective positions. I think ID is a valid proposition in terms of a supreme creator that transcends the boundaries of space & time but at the same time I don't think it should be taught in classrooms since it doesn't have much to offer other than the ultimate question of the designer and science is what's going to bring us closer to the post-human era and for that we need lots of brilliant scientists, not ID advocates who don't do much in the areas of my interest (immortality, singularity, etc).
Comment by dimasok — September 10, 2007 @ 5:36 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Eric:
Right on target Eric. Efforts to portray Dembski and Wells as the villains in the culture war are political jockeying tactics. Dembski bashers would like nothing better than to relegate Dembski to the realm of what is politically incorrect. When reason and fail them they can play the Dembski card.
Your comment is understated. There are no effects of this so called movement that do anything more than serve as fodder for the critics.
Comment by Bradford — September 10, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
kornbelt:
I've never understood this position. Why is it necessary to demonstrate an impossibility when many biological beliefs are fashioned around a good dose of extrapolation?
Comment by Bradford — September 10, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Bradford:
That's a good point, and I completely agree. What I mean to say by all of this is that neither "side" (and by side, I mean those open to ID, and those closed to it in any form), has come close to demonstrating their case. Which is why guys like me are not convinced either way, from a rigorous scientific standpoint. The ID folks are going to have to do more than poke holes in MET. (That's easy to do.) Poking holes doesn't go very far in convincing ideologues. And vice versa, of course. If the ID guys could demonstrate (like Darwin challenged) that certain biological features have absolutely no non-intelligent natural pathway to their creation, then at last that feature would be a proof that ID is true. I'm afraid statistics aren't going to cut it here if you want to overcome emotionally based ideology that believes anything is possible with infinite numbers of multiverses.
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 10, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Kornbelt, statistical odds arguments are unlikely to win the day but where mechanistic arguments are weakly supported, criticism of them need not be discounted. Default options are inherently weak.
There is one type of statistical approach that I think can bear fruit for ID but it is linked to empirical results that could test both sides. Genomic changes are very much regulated and there is clear evidence for hot spots and highly conserved genes that undergo fewer mutations. Regulatory elements are themselves essential to prevent genomic meltdowns as well as allow for change. Yet they would have to evolve and this suggests a challenge. Would a primitive genome lacking basic repair mechanisms have the stability needed to allow for an accumulation of gradual beneficial changes?
Comment by Bradford — September 10, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
September 10th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
dimasok wrote:
How would you design us?
Why are we made of atoms? Why is there DNA? Why don't strips of scotch-tape fall in love and have children? Why don't brains spontaneously form in pots of paint? There are scientific answers to these and similar questions. If you can specify a complete science for a different and better nature, be my guest.
It strikes me that we don't have perfect knowledge of what is, and what isn't, logically (or metaphysically) possible when it comes to mental states in relation to physical entities.
Can a piece of glass be in love? My intuition says no, and says, hence God cannot make a lovesick piece of glass. My intuition also says that it might well be impossible for any physical things to be conscious unless they're endowed with brains like those of humans or animals, and it might well be impossible for such brains to exist unless the laws of nature are as they are in our world.
Electrons can't understand quantum mechanics, and pieces of glass can't be in love because they don't have brains. I think that's plausibly a necessary truth. And if so, it's possibly because it's also a necessary truth that all brainless matter can't, and only living brain matter can, possess mental states [in the domain of material being]. And it's possible that living brain matter cannot exist unless the physical laws of our universe obtain.
If non-brain matter can be conscious, then this is a) something that no-one has ever shown, and b) far from obvious. Similarly, if living brain matter can exist with different physical laws in place, then this is a) something that no-one has ever shown, and b) far from obvious. And given that we really don't know what is the case about this modal landscape, appeals to omnipotence are beside the point.
The evolutionary naturalist also makes another, absolutely critical assumption, and that is that a designer of life would have had a large number of other possible ways to do it. But why assume any such thing?
Sure, there are lots of ways to design a building, a curriculum, an album cover, a toothbrush, a mousetrap, and so on. But how many ways are there to design living physical things? Anybody know?
It is thus incumbent on the evolutionary naturalist to demonstrate that there is even one logically and physically possible alternative way to have created and ordered complex life that would have been a) available to even an omniscient and omnipotent designer, and b) preferable, all things considered. I'm not aware of this ever having been done. Not even remotely. The actual evidence from theoretical physics and cosmology is that the mathematical structure underlying the physical world must be very finely tuned for stable complex physical structures, and hence life, to be instantiated. And an intelligent designer of physical life would presumably possess this knowledge too.
The onus is therefore on the person claiming to know that there's a feasible and preferable alternative design.
So if someone actually has a fully specified design of an alternative and better world, then let's see it. Don't forget to find out how many deliriously happy organisms exist in the other galaxies of this universe, since that would obviously be a relevant consideration when carrying out a comparative evaluation of the alternative design with the actual universe.
Also, if we assume that all the negative aspects of the actual universe boil down to either A) the laws of physics plus free will, or B) just the laws of physics, what changes to the laws of physics would you make? (Be aware that the actual physics is very finely tuned for the existence of complex life.) And would your alternative design include or exclude free will?
If you're still fleshing out the details of your superior universe design, then let us know when you are done.
As I've said before, the ID critics' 'argument' basically comes down to the following two assertions, and one question:
1) If I Was The Intelligent Designer, I Wouldn't Have Done It That Way.
2) Laws Don't Need Any Thought Or Agency To Exist, Or To Control Nature.
Q) If There Was An Intelligent Designer, Why Did It Cover Its Tracks?
The problem with 1 is obvious: none of the critics can specify a complete science of an alternative universe that would contain complex and intelligent life-forms, and would be demonstrably superior to the actual universe in some sense of 'superior'. None of the critics really knows how to create a universe, or how to create alternative forms of matter, energy, physical causation, life, embodied consciousness, embodied rationality, or embodied value. Since they don't, all they do, and all they can do, is to make noise, wave their hands, while saying, "Oh, I'm so intelligent, I wouldn't have done it like that". But the statement is as spurious as it is empty of substance, in the absence of a complete scientific specification of the imaginary superior alternative.
The problem with 2 is equally obvious. That proposition is self-evidently unscientific and metaphysical, self-evidently question-begging, and self-evidently controversial in the extreme, even among non-theistic philosophers. The word 'laws' implies intelligence and rationality. The explanandum is precisely observed regularity. If 'laws' are real and independent of both the minds and matter they govern, then that's a statement of metaphysical Platonism, which is hardly an uncontroversial position. Humeans universally reject it. If, alternatively, talk of 'laws' is just a shorthand way to refer to the observed regularities, then one is merely identifying the explanandum, not providing an explanans at all.
And the problem with Q is the same: it is self-evidently unscientific and metaphysical, self-evidently question-begging, and self-evidently controversial in the extreme. For it ignores the large body of data pointing to cosmological fine-tuning, Earth's planetary and biospheric fine-tuning, and the fine-tuned nature of genetic code, none of which indicates determined 'track-covering'. Even before the discovery of these modern data, most intelligent people (even religious skeptics like Hume and Voltaire) thought it very doubtful that the universe was the product of unintentional, non-agency based processes, because of the strong appearance of mathematically intelligible design throughout the known universe. Indeed the more recent findings of cosmological fine-tuning have been enough to convert some atheists to deism, and to motivate others to find justifications for a multiverse. Q assumes track-covering, but this idea is not in the data. It is instead a clearly contentious interpretation of the data.
Given that we really don't know what is the case about the modal landscape"“"”the logical and metaphysical space of possibilities faced by a designer"”-appeals to omnipotence, as I said, are beside the point. Omnipotent beings, on nearly all accounts, can only do what is logically and metaphysically possible (much of which is determined by mathematical rationality, since mathematical rationality constrains possible physics). If the intelligent designer is God, then it should be remembered that the concept of God is standardly taken to be a concept of a maximally rational mind.
What about an intelligent designer who is capable of performing miracles? Well, what counts as miraculous is a function of what is non-miraculous, i.e., natural, normal. And so what counts as miraculous logically must be rare, relative to the natural and normal. If miracles were constant, we wouldn't regard them as miracles. Which is the main reason we (or at least the naturalists among us) don't regard the 'miracle of life' as a real miracle.
But in a way it is a real miracle, for the number of logically possible lifeless physical worlds is infinite. All you have to do is vary the value of, say, the cosmological constant. It is amazing, given the infinite number of ways in which things logically could have been much less regular, and more random and unpredictable, that the actual universe is as regular, orderly, predictable, and scientifically intelligible to minds like ours as it is. Given a perfectly rational and moral creator, it's not that amazing. But given naturalism, it is literally incredible, for there is no logical necessity requiring that an impersonal, unintentional Nature obligingly cooperate sufficiently as to make science possible. In fact, the degree of predictability in natural phenomena is actually rather staggering upon the hypothesis of naturalism. Because Nature wouldn't care how predictable it needs to be to make human or any other organisms understand Nature.
Evolutionary naturalists from Darwin on have invoked 'engines of variation.' But every time I come across an actual engine, I regard it as having been intelligently designed by an engineer. Similarly, every time I come across a watchmaking factory, I infer that it was probably intelligently designed"”especially if it is a highly automated watchmaking factory. But maybe that's just me.
However, I'd have thought that these 'engines of variation' that are posited by evolutionary naturalists depend on much more general (and non-biological) physical theories having to do with everything from the Big Bang to the initial conditions of life's appearance on Earth to the general physical environment in which it subsequently developed. Mutations are, after all, physical events presumably governed by physical laws. And from what I understand of the relevant sciences, all of this basic physical order was 'fine-tuned' to an astounding degree, and was so structured prior to and quite independently of life itself.
This extensive fine-tuning data seems to me to be far more suggestive of intelligent design than of chance or impersonal Cosmic Laws that somehow just happen to be such as to control the behavior of gazillions of physical particles (or, if you prefer, 'collapsed waveforms') and field strengths in such astoundingly regular, ordered, mathematically elegant and intelligible ways, and also just happen to be such as to produce complex, intelligent life. Indeed, the non-intelligent non-design naturalistic hypothesis strikes me as rather ludicrous by comparison to the ID one, and thus irrationally motivated.
Comment by stunney — September 10, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 12:07 am
To add something to stunney's fantastic observations,
I personally don't believe in perfection - just infinite improvement. I think it's as much a mistake to look at humans and complain about poor eyesight and bad backs as it would be to, say, look at a fetus and complain about the lack of independent breathing or eyesight. Our wonderful species can improve itself, to an individual, within a lifetime.
I'd differ with stunney in that I'd argue that whether or not there's another way to create something with thought or life or the rest doesn't matter. I, personally, could not have been any other way than what I am/was, anymore than Bill Gates would still be Bill Gates if he had been born a bangladeshi child with a club foot and became a dockworker. There was only one way to end up with 'me'.
Not that I'm all that important. In fact, the opposite's the case - I'm pretty damn flawed. But like my compatriots, I can improve, and the potential for improvement is limitless, and I would argue, infinite. Just what I'd expect from a smart deity, but others' mileage will vary.
Comment by nullasalus — September 11, 2007 @ 12:07 am
September 11th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Stunney
I'm not against ID. I'm against religion, so that was unnecessary in case you were addressing it to me. While I can find beauty in the universe, in humans, etc, I still find way too many negatives in order to be fully content. In my DAILY life, I don't really care how things happened before I was born (how the universe developed, how did life arise, if there is a God etc), but I do care about my experiences - about biological malfunctions, diseases, aging, death, unfriendly universe (beyond the apparent fine-tuning, the universe seems to be entirely against our species) and the myriad of other problems. Beauty is the least that can be said about the universe & life.
Have you ever heard of "cognitive closure?
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/p...
nullasalus
I'd have to disagree with that.
Unless we move to the post-human era, the "limitless potential" you speak of is really very very limited.
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 2:59 am
September 11th, 2007 at 3:00 am
dimasok wrote:
I agree with your first statement. There is no a priori conflict between the theory of evolution and positing a designer. But your second statement seems internally inconsistent. If the dispute is with the specifics of how things unfolded, then the dispute is with the theory of evolution since, the theory must be consistent and explanatory to some level of inference regarding how things unfolded.
Comment by Zwischenzug — September 11, 2007 @ 3:00 am
September 11th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Joy wrote:
The point you make if a very good one. A theory is not identical to the phenomena it purports to explain. But since "anti-theory-of-evolution" would be a cumbersome term, it seems possible that "anti-evolution" is a short-hand for the term. You disagree, and I accept that as your position. The question I pose is whether the average ID-critic also sees "evolution" in "anti-evolution" as the phenomena and not the theory. Not that your position isn't appreciated, but this question is more to the point of my first post to Mike.
Wesley Elsberry is a prominent ID-critic. In his article, "Viewpoints on Evolution, Creation, and Origins" (under the topic "About Antievolution" at antievolution.org), he draws a Venn diagram with four circular regions labeled E, C, A, S, and states the following:
Now Elsberry is a way-above average ID-critic, and the point I'm trying to make is that an average ID-critic would tend to see things the way Elsberry would. So if Elsberry sees "evolution" in "anti-evolution" as the theory and not the phenomena, the average ID-critic would tend to see similarly.
Comment by Zwischenzug — September 11, 2007 @ 3:03 am
September 11th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Stunney
I'm not against ID. I'm against religion, so that was unnecessary in case you were addressing it to me. While I can find beauty in the universe, in humans, etc, I still find way too many negatives in order to be fully content. In my DAILY life, I don't really care how things happened before I was born (how the universe developed, how did life arise, if there is a God etc), but I do care about my experiences - about biological malfunctions, diseases, aging, death, unfriendly universe (beyond the apparent fine-tuning, the universe seems to be entirely against our species) and the myriad of other problems. Beauty is the least that can be said about the universe & life.
Have you ever heard of "cognitive closure?
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/p...
Now if that's true, then you would always be constrained by your particular representation of the universe and thus, the impossibility of illogical omnipotence and other similar features would be rendered entirely plausible by standards inconceivable to us.
nullasalus
I'd have to disagree with that.
Unless we move to the post-human era, the "limitless potential" you speak of is really very very limited.
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 3:10 am
September 11th, 2007 at 3:39 am
dimsock wrote:
You indicated some dissatisfaction with the way the universe is designed. My question, in effect, was: compared to what?
You're not the only one not to be fully content, I'd venture. This may be due to your not having yet achieved mystical union with God.
Physical finitude implies the destructibilty of our bodies. Moral autonomy implies the possibility of wrongdoing. It's not clear that there's a possible world containing infinite bodies or one in which rational agents are both autonomous and determined to be morally perfect, except insofar as such bodies and agents are united with God. In other words, such a world defines the Christian concept of heaven.
If it was entirely against us, we wouldn't be here.
I take it you haven't seen that mind-blowingly gorgeous airline hostess in the commercial for Koran Air that is currently running on TV, then.
Comment by stunney — September 11, 2007 @ 3:39 am
September 11th, 2007 at 3:39 am
dimasok,
I'd love to hear an alternative. Especially from someone who isn't about to employ substance dualism. One thing to keep in mind: I'm not saying that I can't become something more than human. I'm saying that anyone with a history different from mine, would not be me. I'd definitely have issue with some transhumanist plans for 'continued existence'. But some transhumanists disagree with each other. No big deal.
Perhaps - depends what you mean by post-human era. Still, you can't have a "post-human" era without starting with humans. And, I've pointed you at him before, but: "He argues that a man must become an autotrophic, self-feeding creature, acquire a new mode of energy exchange with the environment that will not end." The quote is talking about a transhumanist. Hint: It ain't Kurzweil.
Anyway, that's the funny thing. I talk about humanity's infinite ascendance. You disagree, and argue humanity can only ascend through use of technology you believe humans will acquire. That, to me, sounds like you're agreeing with me. We may disagree on the specifics, but so what? The point is you and I both have hope for humanity, and are as a result exceptional optimists. We may disagree on a lot, but we both have a strong distaste for that 'death cult' wing of humanity that declares us to be doomed. You think we'll achieve immortality and such by the singularity. Me, I'm not sure how it's going to technically happen, but I'm more and more confident it will happen.
Comment by nullasalus — September 11, 2007 @ 3:39 am
September 11th, 2007 at 4:05 am
dimasock wrote:
McGinn is the leading exponent of the New Mysterianism, as I have had occasion to mention several times on this blog. He doubts that cognitive closure with respect to the Hard Problem is possible. Here's something I wrote about this position for some non-philosopher Scottish friends in 2004, with apologies for the caps:
Comment by stunney — September 11, 2007 @ 4:05 am
September 11th, 2007 at 8:15 am
dimasok: While I can find beauty in the universe, in humans, etc, I still find way too many negatives in order to be fully content.
Well, I know you are "against religion", but all ideas contained in one or more of them may not be necessarily incorrect. For example, somebody came up with the idea that this world was designed by some rather smart extraterrestrial(s), but became "cursed" due to human rebellion.
You may be dissatisfied with the flaws in your physical makeup. God knows, I am too. We all are. We all suffer. And we're going to die. And we know it. And we don't like it. We don't want to suffer and we don't want to die. But this is not evidence against design. It's only evidence of our dissatisfaction.
It's only a bad design if the goal was to have humans live forever without dissastifaction, suffering or death, in our current physical state. But what if the goal was to have a world were real suffering and problems occured?
How could you demonstrate sacrificial love and compassion if you currently lived in a perfect world? In order for you to demonstrate sacrificial love, you would necessarily have to live in a world where there is suffering. And likewise, for others to have the opportunity to help you, you would have to have a real chance of involuntarily suffering.
If the current goal of the designer(s) were to give you and me this opportunity, then a perfect world right now would be the flawed one.
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 11, 2007 @ 8:15 am
September 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Stunney
Compared to how the universe could have been whilst preserving every other features you've mentioned in your posts.
See, here I have the biggest problem - what mystical union are you talking about? Do you assume that if the universe was just right for us to arrive and that it could not be any other way and if the creator is a transcendent rational being, that it necessarily implies that he has deep communion with the chosen ones? Whilst I wouldn't be dismissal of the fact that many people might have experienced that deep union, you should understand my disbelief since I have no idea what that means, whether it's just a play of words from spiritual astonishment over the universe (ala Einstein) or whether it can be cultivated at all by the sheer act of will.
Yeah I agree, no doubt about that.
I take it you have seen that most other people in the universe are not mind-blowingly gorgeous at all as to warrant this sort of statement on a few isolated cases
Well since I believe modal realism is correct, I do think there are an infinity of different modes of existence/universe/etc.
Now I wanted to ask you about your Christian views. Which interpretation of Christianity do you ascribe to anyway? You seem to me to be much more intelligent and thoughtful over empirical & metaphysical matters than any other religious people or any scientists for that matter, but how can you unify your views with the Christian viewpoint apart from the similarities with the creator is beyond me.
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 10:34 am
September 11th, 2007 at 10:35 am
nullasalus
I'm glad to hear that and indeed you're right
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 10:35 am
September 11th, 2007 at 10:43 am
stunney
So, you are not against New Mysterianism? McGinn, Chalmers and Nagel are probably my favorite philosophers/scientists so I adapted their views myself in more than one ways.
I'm a very contradictory person mate. On the one hand, I agree with you and them completely - it does seem to be that Naturalism is INADEQUATE and should be forsaken, at least in the part where the transcendent creator is missing from the overall picture, and McGinn & Chalmers illustrate this point brilliantly. It also helps that i've been a panpsychist for quite a while, and that already pulls me out of the Naturalist camp anyway, and bodes nicely with everything McGinn, Chalmers and you've been saying (and Chalmers also has a form of panpsychism in mind although it's a bit less extreme than mine I guess).
On the other hand, I'm a transhumanist which kinda makes me a Naturalist since transhumanism is based on the naturalistic picture of the world complete with groundbreaking implications we've bound to see soon.
I tried to look for your comments on the blog about the "Big Wow" scenario whereby we are sort of the remnants of the consciousness that evolved after the BB but you didn't seem to figure there, so I'll take this opportunity to ask you what you think about Zizzas scenario?
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 10:43 am
September 11th, 2007 at 10:54 am
kornbelt888
That's sort of like Gnosticism, no? Indeed some of them might be correct, but not all of them wouldn't you say? I don't really mind when Stunney says that the creator is a transcendent, rational being (and since he doesn't use the word "omnipotent" together with it, it seems even weirder that he has solidarity for Christianity). I mean, with Modal Realism, everything exists some place somewhere, but that would never get us anywhere…
Most of the qualms I have with religion have to do with what one must accomplish in order to be admitted to the afterlife or to the "truth" and every religion has a distinct set of goals and hoops you must jump through in order to get there, as if each and every one has an exclusive clout on the universe & God and if you don't share their sentiments, you're a pariah and an infidel (and in case of Islam, should be killed).
In case someone goes through the motions of their religion as a symbolic gesture of respect - that I have no issues with, but once you start promulgating an opinion dressed as a fact that you should pray X amount of days, not have sex, cover your women or the abnormally long list of prerequisites of these absurdities, I get pissed off. Imagine our world where the beauty for instance is covered in these ridiculous garments? That would take away one of the facets that makes this existence tolerable and beautiful.
It seems to me that the Abrahamic religions (although the Eastern ones have a lot of this too) are more concerned with the socio-political picture of the world rather than the metaphysical grounds underpinning their views of reality and that's why I think a world that is religious-free in the socio-political sense is a MUCH better world and why I think that ID is not religion at all, since I can remain a proponent of some of the main ideas of religion whilst remaining a vehement opposing force to their preposterous man-made, primitive guidelines as to how everything should function since that has absolutely nothing to do with metaphysics or our lot in the universe.
So you sort of assume, like Stunney with the universe, that the world has to be as dreadful as it is in order for us to be here?
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 10:54 am
September 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
dimasok:
I would put it differently. I would say that the range of experience available here, from the very good to the very evil, is potentially necessary if this place is a testing ground, as I suspect it is. In the end, Reality is what it is, and ranting and raving against it, just because I don't happen to like all of it, is going to be a pointless endeavor. We must do the best we can. And I believe active self-sacrificing compassion is a big part of it. It would be impossible to demonstrate this in a perfect world. Perfection will come later. Indeed, I believe it will be heaped upon those "in the kingdom", as it were. Now is the time for demonstration in the face of adversity.
Christianity, since you mentioned it, is not really a complicated affair. There are two principle concerns: loyality to Yahweh and Yahweh's King ("the Messiah"), and compassionate service. On these two things hang all the law and the prophets.
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 11, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
That is the old testament though. Don't you find both testaments to be.. well… barbaric?
The Yahweh of old testament is, to quote Dawkins: "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully".
The new testament is a bit better, but still exhibits some of these characteristics. And you wonder why I hate religion and think it has nothing to do with ID…
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 1:26 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Zwischenzug:
The shorthand is a sleight of mind intended to support a stereotype that 'prominent' ID critics do in fact wish to perpetuate. A form of propaganda. And Elsberry has been as guilty of it as any others.
How often, when a new critic shows up around here or on any other forum where these subjects are discussed, should we have to defend the telic view against this propaganda? It's a waste of time, energy and bandwidth. If y'all can't frame your arguments on any firmer grounds - based on what is actually true - the conclusion from this end is not going to be to your liking.
Yet that is not at all our experience, so Elsberry is wrong and so is "the average ID-critic" his shorthand seeks to indoctrinate. Truth is that NDS is being challenged almost daily from within science itself because its baseline assumptions no longer hold in the face of new technologies and incoming evidence. At least in the science of physics the practitioners aren't whining and crying that their best established model is now known to be wrong/incomplete. Nobody's launching culture wars or in-house inquisitions to save it from its known inconsistency. There's no religious fervor invested in provisional theory. They do science.
If Elsberry and the rest of the culture warriors knew and accepted that their theory is provisional - a mere FAPP approximation, like all theories - they wouldn't be culture warriors. The prospect of new approaches to the phenomena in question would not threaten them so personally. They would not have to demonize those seeking new approaches. They'd do science.
Most working scientists aren't culture warriors, you know. If there's anything to the telic view, the evidence will lead science in that direction eventually no matter how much they scream and cry. If there's not, all that screaming and crying will have been the waste of time I already see it to be.
The "Anti-Evolution" frame is unappreciated here.
Comment by Joy — September 11, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Are you juxtaposing the biological bias of Dawkins and others to the theory of evolution to the less biased scientists working with the standard model of physics?
Comment by dimasok — September 11, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
September 11th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
dimasok:
Dawkins is free to his own opinion. But I don't find his arguments persuasive.
For example, take the incident with the Midianites. Israel was instructed to go there and crush them. But only after Yahweh indicated he was completely fed up with their perversions and child sacrifice. Was Yahweh merciful to let it go on so long? Was he merciful to cut it short? What would you have done?
Of course, you can't really answer the question, because you don't know what is at stake behind what we see in the mundane world here.
What if, say, you discovered that all the Midianites that got creamed by the Israelites were incarnated entities that were the moral equivalent of an Adolf Hitler, or worse, on another planet in the past? How would that change your view of their fate?
Now sure, all of this could be legend and fairy tales, but that's beside the point. All the facts of the case may not be in evidence. And Yahweh might not be such a bad guy, if you knew all the facts. Over and over, Yahweh pleads with Israel and others to abandon sorcery and idolatry, and to live a simple and compassionate lifestyle. Moreover, there is some cosmic score settling so important, that the very creator of the planet, had to incarnate and get crucified to stave of some kind of cosmic horror for those who would reach out and take the life-line. Sounds like benevolence ramped up to the max, to me.
One thing for sure, a closed mind is not the solution.
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 11, 2007 @