Posted on 11/17/2005 11:27:22 AM PST by Nicholas Conradin
The time has come to be blunt. The problem with Intelligent Design is not that it is false; not that the arguments in its favor reduce to smoke and mirrors; and not that it's defenders are disingenuous or even duplicitous. The problem with Intelligent Design is that it is dumb. I would contend that ID is dumb biology; even if it is on to something, what it is on to has no connection and does no meaningful work in biology (or physics). However, and more significantly, ID is dumb philosophy.
First, and despite the claims of its defenders, ID is a position in natural theology. And, despite its name, natural theology is not a branch of theology or of science, but of philosophy.
Natural theology lives on the boundary of natural philosophy (science) and metaphysics. The fundamental question of natural theology is: given what we know about the world from natural science, is the best available metaphysical picture of the universe one according to which the objects of natural science form a closed system or, alternatively, one according to which at least one entity fundamentally different from the objects of natural science is required to explain the structure of the natural world.[1]
Once we recognize that ID is a metaphysical position, we can recognize that ID has two principle competitors: metaphysical naturalism and global non-naturalism. Both of these frameworks compete with ID as fundamental perspectives for understanding the world.
First, let us consider metaphysical naturalism. Roughly, a metaphysical naturalist claims that the world per se is roughly the way that the world is portrayed in the natural sciences. The first, but not principle advantage, of naturalism is its profoundly elegant simplicity; at its heart rests the intuition that the world simply is the way that it seems to be. However, to really understand the power of this intuition pursued to a philosophical conclusion we must be willing to embrace its power to drive David Hume's war against superstition and moral privilege. The power of the tools that naturalism puts at our disposal for understanding who we are and why we are the way we are; for understanding the real place of human beings in the cosmos; and for elevating the dignity of the ordinary, both ordinary human beings and the ordinary world, cannot be overestimated. If you don't feel the pull of naturalism, then even if you ultimately find it inadequate, as I do, you just don't get it.
On the other hand there are a wide variety of non-naturalist cosmologies. General characterizations of non-naturalism fall together much less straightforwardly than do such characterizations of naturalism. This is, at least in part, because of the much greater historical depth of non-naturalism. Although, today, naturalism does feel like the default metaphysical position for those who begin their metaphysics with natural science, that is a quite recent phenomenon. Unfortunately, not being naturalists is about the only thing that the various non-naturalists have in common.
Fortunately, the virtues of non-naturalism can be usefully characterized as just the opposing virtues to those of naturalism. The best non-naturalist cosmologies derive from a very real sense on the part of their defenders of the messiness of the world; a sense that, contrary to naturalist expectations, things don't come together when we look deeper. That is, naturalism seems to require that there be a scientific picture of the world. Instead, claim their opponents, things just get weirder. Whether we are looking at quantum theory; at the strange fact that stars ever manage to light their fusion engines; at the weird and totally unexpected patterns that crop up in the fossil and evolutionary record; how can anyone who really digs down, even if they don't ultimately agree, fail to feel the pull of a metaphysical picture, which, at least, explains how all of this weirdness manages to fit together into a WORLD?
And, what do the ID types want to set against these? Some kind of bastard child of naturalism and non-naturalism. According to ID, the world perked along perfectly fine for several billion years according to the rules of physics. Over most of space-time the naturalists have it basically right, things just sort of go the way they seem they should. Then, a couple of billion years ago, along came The Designer, not itself the product of those processes. It showed up and decided to take a bunch of these otherwise perfectly natural chemicals and put them together to make bacteria and then designed in a replication system. Then it left it alone for another several million years and decided, "Hey, I've got these bacteria around, let's collect them into these other things." And, so forth.
But, this is just dumb! It takes the real virtues of both real alternatives and turns them on their heads. If naturalists value metaphysical simplicity, the simplicity of ID becomes simplemindedness. The ID theorist response to any puzzle is to demand a simple solution, even if the simple solution amounts to deus ex machina. This isn't just lazy philosophy; it's lazy fiction. On the other hand, if non-naturalists have a valuable sensitivity to the messiness of the real world, the ID theorists goal is to make that messiness go away. Pointing at every gap in our understanding and saying, "See there goes God, or whoever." isn't sensitivity to complexity; it's just stupidity.
Consider one of the most fully developed alternative evolutionary cosmologies; that of Teilhard de Chardin.[2] De Chardin, one of the most celebrated paleo-anthropologists of his generation, noticed certain patterns in the evolutionary record available to him. In particular, he noticed what seemed to be patterns in the evolutionary record related to the evolution of central nervous system complexity, i.e. thought, that seemed to be surprising if the only constraints operating on biological evolution were basic physics, the physical boundary conditions and natural selection.
Trying to summarize his conclusions from this is just about as possible -- that is, it's not possible to do fairly -- as would be attempting to summarize, for example Richard Dawkins' attempt at an evolutionary account of vision. However, what follows should at least give the reader a taste.
Teilhard thought that he could "derive" the operative constraints on evolutionary systems necessary to generate the patterns he discerned. He argued that those constraints pointed to a global teleological structure for the entire universe. Roughly, these constraints are equivalent to postulating the evolution of conscious awareness, the noosphere, as a cosmological endpoint for all natural processes.
This is probably wrong, but it is real philosophy; you could spend years struggling with everything you need to really get a handle on in order to see where Teilhard goes wrong.
And this is the first thing to notice; unlike ID, Teilhard's cosmology is not a shortcut to anywhere. Teilhard's cosmology does not close off questions; it opens them up. And, if it is right, it really does help us make metaphysical sense of everything about the universe without having to abandon real science at any point in the process. That is, for Teilhard, as much as for any naturalist, we understand the universe by looking at the universe; not outside of it. In Teilhard's universe there are no dei ex machina; things happen in the universe because that's the way they happen in this universe. The difference is that this universe is not quite as straightforwardly self-subsistent as the naturalists would have it be.
And instead of attempts to really work through these problems, we are offered ID.
Consider the following example. Imagine yourself as a visiting alien; when surveying "Africa" you discover large termite mounds. Most of the crew gets right down to the business of studying termites and figuring out how they manage to produce their nests. But, a few make a different claim. Given that the termites are clearly not sentient, they decide that the termites could not possibly have built their nests in the absence of an independent sentient nest designer -- The Termite Farmer. Therefore, they take off and go looking for The Termite Farmer instead of studying what termites actually do.
Among what I would call "real" termite biologists there can be both naturalist and non-naturalists. That is, some of them think that what you see is what you get; others think that there is something more subtle going on with the termites. However, unlike the design theorists, they both think that you learn about termites by studying termites. Not, by wandering around looking for hypothetical termite designers. However, it's actually worse than that. It's as if the believers in termite-mound designers didn't just go around being pains in the neck to real biologists by pointing out the places they don't quite understand yet; problems with which the real termite biologists are, of course, already perfectly familiar. Instead of either getting down to work or getting out of the way, they go around crowing that termite biologists get it all wrong because the termite-designers tried to make it look as if they, the designers, didn't exist. That is, ID theorists need to claim that, although life looks like a fundamentally natural process subject to natural explanation, that naturalness is an illusion. But, this isn't just bad science or bad philosophy; it's a conspiracy theory fit for The X-files, and thus, while it may not be religion, it certainly is just dumb!
The author is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University, Chicago.
NOTES
[1] There is another branch of "natural" theology, one that operates from an a priori basis. This family of arguments attempts to prove that possession of certain concepts or the ability to make certain judgments implies the existence of a "divine" being. Anselm's argument, what Kant calls the Ontological Argument, is the quintessential example.
2 Despite the claims of many naturalists, de Chardin does not make an argument from design in the sense at issue here. See Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).for an example of this mistake. See Stephen Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology for a (roughly) naturalist engagement with Teilhard which avoids this mistake.
>>Yet, now those 'superior' cultures invoke the same principle when they cannot explain the formation of eyes or mitochondria. Only, instead of 'gods', the word is 'intelligent design'.
What an asenine statement. The formation of eyes is not the issue, nor is mitochondria, nor RNA, ATP or any other cellular entity...
ID tries to deal with why eyes are even formed in the first place, why there are things like mitochondria, and why there is even reproduction, and how reproduction works.
There has not been a single 'scientific or statistical argument' in favor of ID presented by Behe or anyone else.
I expect plenty of examples to be posted in response to this claim, but every one of them will instead be an argument against evolution, not for ID.
Well, I don't have a clue as to what either of these big words means, so I must be one of those dumb people he is talking about. It must be nice to be smart enough to understand how life began and how the universe came into being. I guess I'll just go back to reading my comic books now.
I wouldn't say ID is necessarily theology.
What if the designers were visitors from space?
Anyway, calling something "dumb" isn't really a valid argument against it.
With all due respect, and as someone who keeps a copy of your great work de Inventione on my desk, let me say that this is quite possibly the weakest and most bizarre argument I have ever seen in all my days.
You're arguing from a video game?
Does anyone here remember James Lovelock and the Gaia Hypothesis?
I mention it because the writings of Teilhard de Chardin were cited therein as a natural philosophy bolstering the Gaia concept.
To have him appear in the discussion of ID is a tie that binds the notion of Gaia with ID, for which I see a very strong link.
And what if the moon is a giant piece of cheese? These are meaningless hypotheticals in the absence of any, say, evidence.
I say that to get to this specimen of weak thinking: ...Roughly, a metaphysical naturalist claims that [1] the world per se is roughly the way that the world is portrayed in the natural sciences. The first, but not principle advantage, of naturalism is its profoundly elegant simplicity; at its heart rests [2] the intuition that the world simply is the way that it seems to be.
(The numbers I added).
The writer seems to think his [1] and [2] are the same thing. But they are the same thing only if you ASSUME that "...portrayed in the natural sciences.." is equivalent to "...seems to be...". They may be equivalent, but this is an epistemological assumption the writer seems to be unaware of. Of course, we all have the hardest time seeing OUR OWN assumptions as anything other than axioms.
Or maybe he realizes he is working with an epistemological assumption, which he is calling an "intuition" -- an intuition which he says is at the "heart" of naturalism.
So, it goes like this: I "intuit" the universe is just the way it "seems" to be, and I then follow that intuition and investigate the universe by the methods of natural science, and argue that anyone who says the universe is not, or more, than what it 'seems" has the burden of proof -- and why? Because, at the heart of my thought is an "intuition", and mine is better than yours.
You may actually operate like this and be a great scientist (which is fine, actually), but this is not rigorous philosophy.
The best term for that relevation, I think, would be data.
If ID proponents are serious, they must do research and produce data---Just like the scientists.
I can answer that one easily: to see. But that's about as far as IDers will go, because their dogma requires them to ignore the selective pressures that actually led to the evolution of eyes.
"ID tries to deal with why eyes are even formed in the first place, why there are things like mitochondria, and why there is even reproduction, and how reproduction works. '
What an asinine (that, by the way, is the correct spelling. You may want to learn how to use spell check) statement. So, why are there eyes? Or mitochondria? Science can explain that, and even common sense can. One does not need ID for that.
More importantly, can ID explain why the Universe or life exists?
I understand the desperation some people feel that they want to introduce ID into the curriculum. I read the whole article as best as I could understand it. It seems to be that ID is more fitting in philosophy than in science. Unfortunately they don't teach metaphysics in grade school or high school. Not that Darwinism is flawless---there is a lot to be desired in it's theory--but it is approached in a scientific (empirical) fashion despite the holes one can poke in it. Parents see their kids getting barraged by an atheist agenda and are fed up. They would really like what their kids are learning at home and in church to be comlimented by what they learn in school. Those of Evangelical persuasion know that "creationsim" per se is never going to happen---so they've come up with ID. Now the atheists want to make ID into some hideous monster--but I agree with the author of the post that is belongs in philosophy. All you ID supporters are getting your knickers in a knot because he used the word DUMB
I'll keep an eye out for the big news.
"ID doesn't have to be "disproved."
It's a canard.
Something that isn't proven or disproven doesn't exist. Right?
"The burden falls on its proponents to show that it is a legitimate theory and should be considered such. They have failed to do so."
I think I said that.
"With no 'testable' theories, ID will be hard to prove unless there is a 'revelation' in the scientific world. "
The question is, which position is more plausible? Another question is, who gets to decide which philosophical positions are presented as dogma in gov't schools? The most important question regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory is, who has the last word regarding schooling, the gov't or parents?
I would suggest that the author dispense with language that makes him sound like a typical Dim trying to argue a point and maybe do a little scientific research on ID. How? How about taking the Bible apart, passage by passage and trying to prove what it says is either right or wrong. Use its words as a theory and see how it holds up. Enough rights, with insufficient wrongs gives credence to what it says. Isn't that how the Evolutionists and other scientists do it? Start with a theory and take it apart as far as possible to test it?
"The best term for that relevation, I think, would be data."
Seems to be they only way you could have a 'revelation'.
I agree.
How would this fit in with an opinion that says 'All the Civ games pander to the politically correct'? How could someone one one hand dismiss the relevancy of these games to the real world, then turn around and exploit a feature in them that supports his ideas?
But for now,the theory of gravity has been shown not to be bullet proof. Einstein's assertion that the speed of light cannot be exceeded has been shown not to be bullet proof.
So, according to your "logic" you can throw away your TV and fall off the planet.
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