The Flawed Philosophy of Intelligent Design

Tech Central Station ^ | 11/17/2005 | James Harrington

[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.

[goldstategop]

Your handle is named after the most elegant postulate in the history of philosophy: Occam's Razor, better known as the Law Of Parsimony. In essence, if there are two explanations for some thing, the simpler explanation is most likely to be the correct one. Darwin's theory succeeds because it leaves out unnecessary "attractive" features. The simplicity of the explanation is what gives it staying power. We can understand the history of life on earth, not by reference to a deus ex machina as in Intelligent Design; we can deduce the processes that operate in the natural world directly from the study of Nature itself.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[goldstategop]

The problem with ID theory is there is no way to empirically verify its claims. With evolutionary theory, you have testable claims that show whether you can disprove it. To date no one has been able to falsify evolution as the key concept in our understanding of the organization of life on earth.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[goldstategop]

This goes under the rubric of Complexity Theory. There is an organized chaoticness to the way things work in the world and nothing is every completely straightforward. Life is messy and perhaps the biggest drawback to ID theory is that it ignores this facet of life on earth: that things do not seem to happen in a predictable manner. It goes back to that old question: does God play dice with the universe? If we have an Ultimate Designer, he doesn't seem to get every detail picture-perfect. Its a like a sweater that has a lot of kinks in it. If we pull at one thread, it unravels. None of this is a problem if we accept a naturalistic explanation. Imperfections are Nature's answers to the riddle of overcoming the challenges of existence.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

Flawed Philosophy of Intelligent Design

Redundant headline.

[WildHorseCrash]

Don't call me a liar. These are your words.

I said you are either a liar or had a reading comprehension problem. I did not call you a liar. I was being charitable

You claimed that I "denied that DNA had information." That is clearly false. Your post 279 states my post to the effect that "Your majory error here is the belief that DNA is encoded information. It is not. It is one, big, long, complex biochemical problem." The next paragraph showing the context and later posts made perfectly clear that I am specifically stating that DNA is not coded information in same way that language is coded information.

There is a clear distinction between your statement that I denied DNA had information, and my statement that it was not coded information specifically coded information in the manner in which language is coded information. So you are clearly wrong, as I never claimed that DNA had no information.

When you pointed out the error I made, I accepted it. Now, you are clearly in the wrong, as you have said I made a claim I clearly have not made. If you persist in that claim from this point forward, I will have to conclude that you don't have a reading comprehension problem, but are, in fact, a liar.

[grey_whiskers]

Not for nothing does Civilization III require the discovery of Theology before you get any Education or Science.

And not for nothing does the "Disco" cheat on Warcraft II start up a soundtrack that includes the lines "I am a medieval man!"

;-)

[grey_whiskers]

I then went on to explain that if we use those random mutations to actually produce new programs using a mechanism similar to those found in nature (reproduction of the most fit plus small random mutations, or recombining best programs and picking bits from each one), those programs can display unbelievable complexity and fitness for the solution very rapidly.

That's probably where you lost him. In the genetic algorithm/ simulated evolutionary work, you have a known, constant goal the entire time; ecosystems do not suddenly appear and vanish; there is no predation nor disease; and there is never any extinction.

Not to mention that it begs the questions about "origins" etc. The sample code from which you start, the computer, the kernel of the algorithm which keeps the "best" solutions and discards the others, the very parameters used in the scoring function, did not spontaneously appear.

Perhaps a better illustration would be to start with a blank slate of memory, or random 1's and 0's, and not even a compiled program to start as the basis for your mutations. [Pre-amino acids, you know. ;-) ]

So as an illustrative example to point the capabilities, or a "thought experiment" put into practice, it's just dandy.

But the degree of similarity to biological systems might not be as close as you want for a well-formed simulation...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Given the fact that too many creationists falsely believe that punctuated equilibrium is the same as the hopeful monster theory, I sometimes choose not to use the term

Howzabout if you patiently explained the difference to them?

For scientists and academics, intellectual one-upmanship is part of the game, and for some a source of pride and fun; but for those "in the real world", it just comes across as being an insufferable prick.

Cheers!

[RogueIsland]

LanaTurnerOverdrive

Love the handle!

[js1138]

Chemistry is not a blank slate. The trick in building computer simulations of evolution is to model the crucial features of chemistry with available computer resources.

That's one of the things the Santa Fe Institute was established to study. If they had "the" solution we'd have heard about it.

[AndrewC]

I said you are either a liar or had a reading comprehension problem. I did not call you a liar. I was being charitable

Don't call me a liar. You have done it twice now. Despite your attempts at obfuscation you used the word liar.

And you are still wrong. DNA has encoded information. Say it. DNA has encoded information. You may choose to attempt a tapdance, but you are wrong. DNA has encoded information.

Plus your context evidence was completely wrong.

One more time....

...DNA has coded information.

ADCY2

Official Symbol: ADCY2 and Name: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain) provided by HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee
Gene type: protein coding
Gene name: ADCY2
Gene description: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain)
RefSeq status: Reviewed
Organism: Homo sapiens
Lineage: Eukaryota; Metazoa; Chordata; Craniata; Vertebrata; Euteleostomi; Mammalia; Eutheria; Euarchontoglires; Primates; Catarrhini; Hominidae; Homo
Gene aliases: HBAC2; KIAA1060
Summary: This gene encodes a member of the family of adenylate cyclases, which are membrane-associated enzymes that catalyze the formation of the secondary messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). This enzyme is insensitive to Ca(2+)/calmodulin, and is stimulated by the G protein beta and gamma subunit complex. It is expressed in brain.

[WildHorseCrash]

Well, I see by your post that you refuse to concede that your statement was a mistake, so I must concede you are a liar. Since I have no business with liars, I will leave you to continue to lie with others, liar.

Farewell, liar.

[jwalsh07]

For scientists and academics, intellectual one-upmanship is part of the game, and for some a source of pride and fun; but for those "in the real world", it just comes across as being an insufferable prick.

Ouch.

[AndrewC]

Well, I see by your post that you refuse to concede that your statement was a mistake, so I must concede you are a liar.

Goodbye Mr. Dimwit. You can run but you can't hide. Thanks for running and proving your idiocy.

Initially you replied to post 170 which made no mention of language. After asserting that Your majory error here is the belief that DNA is encoded information. It is not. It is one, big, long, complex biochemical problem. (Note-- no limiting of your denial of coding of information) You attempt a red herring with Language, include binary computer language, is coded knowledge. The word "cat" in English is an arbitrary code to stand for the animal, as is "gato" in Spanish, "Katz" in German, "chat" in French, etc. It is simply encoded knowledge. We've agreed that the code "cat" will stand for the fuzzy little carnivore.. So what? What does that have to do with encoded knowledge in DNA. Nothing. Your next statement is an attempt to eliminate genetics from a universe you have yet to describe. Not so in genetics. For example, the RNA codons "GGA GGC GGG GGU" stands for "glycine," not because it is some arbitrary code like language (like, in fact, the sequence of Latin letters G-L-Y-C-I-N-E is an arbitrary code, standing for the amino acid), but because when you line up the nucleobases guanine, guanine, adenine, guanine, guanine, cytosine, guanine, guanine, guanine, guanine, guanine, and uracil, in that order, run it through the magical RNA machine, you actually get the amino acid glycine. You actually create the stuff. It doesn't stand for it, it actually makes the actual thing. It is not a code, it is not coded information. It is chemistry.

Your statement is complete feces, especially the highlighted stuff. That is not limited. LIAR yourself.

One more time....

...DNA has coded information.

ADCY2

Official Symbol: ADCY2 and Name: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain) provided by HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee
Gene type: protein coding
Gene name: ADCY2
Gene description: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain)
RefSeq status: Reviewed
Organism: Homo sapiens
Lineage: Eukaryota; Metazoa; Chordata; Craniata; Vertebrata; Euteleostomi; Mammalia; Eutheria; Euarchontoglires; Primates; Catarrhini; Hominidae; Homo
Gene aliases: HBAC2; KIAA1060
Summary: This gene encodes a member of the family of adenylate cyclases, which are membrane-associated enzymes that catalyze the formation of the secondary messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). This enzyme is insensitive to Ca(2+)/calmodulin, and is stimulated by the G protein beta and gamma subunit complex. It is expressed in brain.

[WildHorseCrash]

Hey, liar, that's pretty funny. Being called a dimwit by a creationist is pretty ironic, don't you think, liar? After all, being a creationist is pretty much the definition of being a dimwit. Isn't it, liar? (Or, liar, are you one of those creationist retards who prefers IDer? Which is, liar?)

Well, liar, I am not "running." As I said, liar, I have no dealings with liars, I am no longer interested in discussing this matter. So, liar, if you continue to respond, I will continue to point out that you lie, liar, all you want. So, liar, that is the situation.

[AndrewC]

Liar yourself. Your statement has been shown to empty. Tell us again how glycine is actually formed from that sequence. Har! Har! Liar yourself Liar. I can do name calling too. However, I have plenty of evidence that...

One more time....

...DNA has coded information.

ADCY2

Official Symbol: ADCY2 and Name: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain) provided by HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee
Gene type: protein coding
Gene name: ADCY2
Gene description: adenylate cyclase 2 (brain)
RefSeq status: Reviewed
Organism: Homo sapiens
Lineage: Eukaryota; Metazoa; Chordata; Craniata; Vertebrata; Euteleostomi; Mammalia; Eutheria; Euarchontoglires; Primates; Catarrhini; Hominidae; Homo
Gene aliases: HBAC2; KIAA1060
Summary: This gene encodes a member of the family of adenylate cyclases, which are membrane-associated enzymes that catalyze the formation of the secondary messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). This enzyme is insensitive to Ca(2+)/calmodulin, and is stimulated by the G protein beta and gamma subunit complex. It is expressed in brain.

Joe Isuzu has nothing on you.

[WildHorseCrash]

Joe Isuzu... wow, liar, not only are you a lying creationist retard, but you're a dork, too.

[bmwcyle]

Read tag line.

[AndrewC]

WildHorseCrash ---- You claimed that I "denied that DNA had information." That is clearly false

[NOTE.. WHC leaves out coded]

WildHorseCrash --- you actually get the amino acid glycine. You actually create the stuff. It doesn't stand for it, it actually makes the actual thing. It is not a code, it is not coded information.

Liar, Liar pants on fire.

[jwalsh07]

How many amino acids can a 4 base codon code for?

Answer below.

None.