Posted on 02/22/2007 6:22:34 PM PST by Boxen
In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.
Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.
ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.
A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.
This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.
Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.
"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this." In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.
Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.
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Sober, Elliott. "What is Wrong with Intelligent Design," The Quarterly Review of Biology: March 2007.
Since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology has been dedicated to providing insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics.
Someday we'll all find out.
Till then, what I think about it has no function.
I thought intelligent design was a theory that certain designs were put in place at the beginning so that the universe tends toward certain results - life, intelligence, etc. Not that God specifically designed a panda's thumb, or the bamboo the panda eats.
This universe seems to tend toward life and awareness, two very great mysteries. The scientists say this is all just the result of random physical interactions, and I say hooey. A universe that can be aware of itself is more than random.
"Hey, Mr. Stephen Jay Gould, you egghead, God too smart for ya?"
All complex biological structures are emperical data supporting ID. Complex structures do not, however, support TOE. There is nothing in TOE to require change from simple to complex. All such arguments are based on assumptions that can only be explained by ID.
Ah, yes.
Everything came out of Nothing from Nowhere for no apparent Reason.
Life is just a curious side effect of an unknowing, uncaring Cosmos.
When we die, we are just so much compost.
So the best thing we can hope for is a life of self-gratification and a painless extinction.
Lovely belief system, that.
In a different day and age it would be called Nihilistic Hedonism, or is that Hedonistic Nihilism.
I can't really quite remember, but it doesn't matter because even my Logic is the result of chance, random collisions of unthinking atoms having no design or purpose.
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I don't bother bumping crevo threads. Foregone conclusion they'll still be active fir at least a few days.
A third and valid criticism is that Intelligent Design has no empirical data to support it and, thus, has generated no hypotheses nor has it published any scientifically-generated results in scientific journals.
One could argue that a divinity could not spontaneously appear, but had to be designed/imagined by humans, and not too intelligently at it.
And to the evolutionist this would deny ID in the case of the engine since it fells falsification since they went out and found one that actually ran.
An evolutionist is somebody who could open the hoods to TWO cars, a Ford and a Chevy, and figure the engines in BOTH of them just kind of drifted together. The question of who or how many people or what kinds of people it takes to make Ford or Chevy engines is pretty irrelevant, neither one of them just happens.
"What is Wrong with Intelligent Design,"
ID is thought to be the opposite of evolution. What's wrong with evolution guided by ID? It seems that those who object to the concept of ID do so because to accept ID opens up a pandora's box.
After having accepted ID question #1 has to be "Who is the Practitioner of the ID?". To do so the questioner already admits that there is a BEING superlative to the questioner whose actions transcends all knowledge he/she possesses up to that point.
Things are now getting slippery. Question #2 will be "What does this BEING want from me and how will I know when IT contacts me?" For many it is easier, at this point, to end the search for truth and turn to the concept of evolution because the latter is easily more acceptable.
Why do people assume "intelligent design" refers to some god? Space aliens are as likely a source of the intelligence as a god. Or does the ID theory specify "god"? I've heard of ID but have not read about it and I'm curious to know if a god is the only assignee of the intelligence behind intelligent design
What is wrong with Intelligent Design?
Its based on a fable, relies on blind faith, is untestable and non verifiable, and there is no body of evidence in existence to prove it.
A creationist would open the hood of the car and say "I can't explain it, its a MIRACLE"
Has Gould ever proclaimed himself a creator? Moot point.
Intelligent Design seems to have several flavors. The intelligent design that this author speaks of does not specify an intelligence.
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