Show Me the Science [Critique of Intelligent Design, by Daniel Dennett

New York Times ^ | August 28, 2005 | Daniel C. Dennett

[silverleaf]

Yes, Einstein did believe that an intelligence designed our universe and he greatly respected it, even though he did not worship it because he did not believe in a personal God nor an afterlife. Do not be battered down by people who have not read Einstein's thoughts thoroughly enough to understand this. Thank You for pointing this out. Modern day skeptics would ban Einstein from the science classsroom if any student dared to ask him about the origins of the universe and the origin of natural law.

[Congressman Billybob]

I never said that ID is in opposition to evolution. That is a straw man argument. Einstein's conclusion included many parts, but one was that Planck's Constant had to fall within a very precise range for the formation of an expanding universe to be possible.

In short, Einstein believed that with its complexity and beauty, the universe itself presumed a magnificent plan, unknown and unknowable to humans except in small measure. Stripped of emotional freight, that's what I, and Einstein, and Paine, and many others, concluded that ID is.

Prime mover does not mean a God who takes a current interest in the welfare of either His universe, or mere humans. That is the province of religion, not science. You mistake both my argument and the Einstein quotes I used.

John / Billybob

[Dimensio]

To quote you, "Brilliant rebuttal."

Well? What does the fact that people in foxholes don't cry out to Darwin, Einstein or Dennet have to do with anything?

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP - what an ignorant article. The author displays a total lack of understanding of what ID advocates, an ignorance of the design of the eye, and a total unawareness of irreducible complexity and information theory. It is easy to burn down a strawman - a lot more diificult to deal with reality.

[js1138]

Stripped of theology and emotion, your version of ID is known and "fine tuning," or the anthropic principle.

Most of the people who believe this also believe that evolution happened historically pretty much the way mainstream biologists say it did.

I don't think scientsis care enough about this proposal to support or argue against it. It has no implications for science. It's equivalent to saying your legs are long enough to reach the ground.

[shuckmaster]

Let's have a look at some of the quotes that the creationists like to sweep under the rug, shall we?

"In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task..." -- Albert Einstein, "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium", published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.

And: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -- Albert Einstein, letter dated 24 March 1954, included in "Albert Einstein: The Human Side".

And: "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished." -- Albert Einstein, quoted in W. I Hermanns "A Talk with Einstein," October 1943

And: "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment." -- Albert Einstein, letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950

And: "To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding the orderliness we find in the perceivable world." -- Albert Einstein, letter to an Iowa student who asked, What is God? July, 1953; Einstein Archive

And: "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.... This is a somewhat new kind of religion." -- Albert Einstein, letter to Hans Muehsam March 30, 1954; Einstein Archive

And: "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism." -- Albert Einstein, 1954 or 1955; quoted in Dukas and Hoffman, Albert Einstein the Human Side

And: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls." -- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersy: The Citadel Press

And: "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve." -- Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797

And: "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems." -- Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein Creator and Rebel, New York

And: "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." -- Albert Einstein, letter to a Baptist pastor in 1953; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 39.

And: "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." -- Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times obituary, April 19, 1955; from George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts, New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, p. 134.

And: "Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees." -- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," in the New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930, pp. 3-4; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 205-206.

And: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one." -- Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., September 28, 1949; from Michael R. Gilmore, "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?," Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):64.

And: "I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. Your counter-arguments seem to me very correct and could hardly be better formulated. It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world as far—as we can grasp it. And that is all." -- Albert Einstein, to Guy H. Raner Jr., July 2, 1945, responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism; from Michael R. Gilmore, "Einstein's God: Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?," Skeptic, 1997, 5(2):62.

Einstein's "God", his "religion", was the deep spiritual awe he felt in contemplation of the majestic breadth and depth and orderliness of the Universe itself: "The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere." -- Albert Einstein, letter to a Rabbi in Chicago; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 69-70.

Hat's off to Ichneumon for compiling this list of Einstein quotes

[protest1]

...or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science?

Piltdown Man?

[js1138]

What about Piltdown Man?

[Gumlegs]

On the other hand, in a fox hole or bomb shelter or concentration camp, not one evolution believing soul has been found to cry out to Darwin, Einstein or Dennett.

Excellent evidence that the theory of evolution is not a religion. Thank you.

[Jeff Gordon]

Its quite enought for me to have the ID'er be the first mover of things from nothingness

Exactly. In the femtosecond before the Big Bang the Creator implemented the laws of physics. The laws from which all things evolved including life. Belief in anything less is to deny the omnipotence of God.

[Jeff Gordon]

Intelligent Design is also a hypothesis.

Please enumerate a few experiments which can be used to gain insight into the validity of the ID "hypothesis."

[Jeff Gordon]

The statistical evidence argues to otherwise.

Opinion polls do not count as proof of ID.

[satchmodog9]

I have my own feelings about our origins and I will not share them at this time. My problem is with the article which states that there is all this evidence about evolution, a century of it. While I do believe in much of what evolution teaches, we must remember that there is now twenty years of global warming science that is becoming truth without having the theory proved. Evolution, ID and global warming are all up for debate and everyone wants to ram their agenda down each others throats. Both sides should be taught and discussed on all subjects.

[VadeRetro]

Einstein frequently made it clear that he did not accept an anthropomorphic God who needs to meddle miraculously in His own creation.

[catpuppy]

the theory of evolution is not a religion

To the extent that faith is necessary to fill in the gaps in evolution's theory, perhaps it is.

[Jeff Gordon]

But he did believe in what is now called "intelligent design."

Dr. Einstein attempted to disprove Quantum Physics by saying "God does not play dice with the Universe."

Einstein was wrong.

[Wycowboy]

"There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is
spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural
creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous
generation that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically
disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us
with only one possible conclusion, that life arose as a creative act of
God. "I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to
believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is
scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
(Dr. George Wald, evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)

[Tench_Coxe]

"and we have detailed computer models to demonstrate that the creative process works just as the theory says"

Programmed by the same folks who made the global warming models, no doubt.

[Jeff Gordon]

Is this supposed to mean something?

Yes, but you need to faith to understand it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Congressman Billybob wrote:

I never said that ID is in opposition to evolution.

Ah - there is perhaps the source of the confusions in the replies of myself and others to your comments.

It seems pretty clear to me now that "Intelligent Design" has a couple of meanings:

1. An apparently older meaning, that you subscribe to, consistent with or somewhat similar to such understandings as Deism or Pantheism.
2. An apparently newer meaning, that you discredit as a straw man, that emphasizes its opposition to evolution, and starts its motivation with examples of elegant design in nature - "No way this was an accident of random selection of random mutations."

Looking back, you have been quite clear in your connection of Intelligent Design with Deism and Pantheism, as perhaps is consistent with the various beliefs of Einstein, Paine, Spinoza, Thoreau, Sagan and others.

But I would not call the alterative, newer meaning, just a straw man. This meaning is sufficiently wide spread to be taken as a credible meaning intended when the term is uses. For example, from WikiPedia.org:

Intelligent Design in summary

Intelligent Design was born out of opposition to the theory of evolution. Its putative main purpose is to investigate whether or not the empirical evidence necessarily implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents. For example, William Dembski, one of ID's leading proponents, has stated that the "fundamental claim" of ID is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

Let me acknowledge, by the way, that Deism and Pantheism are in some ways quite the opposite of each other, even though I am quite comfortable with your lumping them together. As I understand it, Deism says God created the Universe and split the scene, whereas Pantheism says that the Universe is God.

Does anyone have any good idea which meaning of Intelligent Design Dennett had in mind when he wrote this article?