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'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics': Supernatural Selection
The New York Times ^ | 14 April 2002 | JIM HOLT

Posted on 04/14/2002 12:31:25 AM PDT by sourcery

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April 14, 2002

'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics': Supernatural Selection

By JIM HOLT

INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND ITS CRITICS
Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives.

Edited by Robert T. Pennock.
Illustrated. 805 pp. Cambridge, Mass.: A Bradford Book/The MIT Press. Cloth, $110. Paper, $45.



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In the last decade or so, creationism has grown sophisticated. Oh, the old-fashioned creationists are still around, especially in the Bible Belt. They're the ones who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that God created it and all its inhabitants in six days and that fossils are a product of Noah's flood. In the early 1990's, however, a new breed of creationists appeared. These ''neo-creos,'' as they have been called, are no Dogpatch hayseeds. They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the authority of Scripture; rather, it proceeds from premises that are scientific and philosophical, invoking esoteric ideas in molecular biology, information theory and the logic of hypothesis testing.

When the neo-creos go public -- as they did recently in a hearing before the Ohio Board of Education, which they were petitioning for equal time in the classroom with Darwinism -- they do not stake any obviously foolish claims. They concede that the earth is billions of years old, and that some evolution may have taken place once the basic biochemical structures were brought into being. What they deny is that the standard Darwinian theory, or any other ''naturalistic'' theory that confines itself to mindless, mechanical causes operating gradually over time, suffices to explain the whole of life. The biological world, they contend, is rife with evidence of intelligent design -- evidence that points with near certainty to the intervention of an Intelligent Designer.

''Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics'' is a great fat collection of essays, some three dozen in all, that examine this thesis from every imaginable angle. Its editor, the philosopher Robert T. Pennock, has himself written a book opposing the neo-creos (''Tower of Babel,'' 1999), and he admits that his selection here is stacked against them by about two to one. Yet most of the major proponents of intelligent design are represented: Phillip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the father of the movement; the biochemist Michael J. Behe; the mathematician William A. Dembski; and the philosopher of logic Alvin Plantinga. They are given the chance not only to present their reasoning but also to defend it against their more prominent Darwinian critics, including the biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins and the philosophers of science Philip Kitcher and Michael Ruse. The debate ranges freely over genetics, theology, the history of science and the theory of knowledge. The rhetoric is spirited, if sometimes barely civil, and the to-and-fro of ideas can be impressive.

Before we get to the scientific arguments of the neo-creos, a word should be said about their motivation. Just what do they have against Darwinism? Unlike the old-fashioned creationists, they are not especially worried about evolution conflicting with a literal reading of Genesis. Then why can't they join with the mainstream religions, which have made their peace with Darwinism? In 1996, for example, Pope John Paul II said that the theory of evolution had been ''proved true'' and asserted its consistency with Roman Catholic doctrine. Stephen Jay Gould, though agnostic himself, salutes the wisdom of this papal pronouncement, arguing that science and religion are ''nonoverlapping magisteria.'' But the neo-creos aren't buying this. They think that belief in Darwinism and belief in God are fundamentally incompatible. Here, ironically, they are in agreement with their more radical Darwinian opponents. Both extremes concur that evolution is, in the words of Phillip Johnson, ''a purposeless and undirected process that produced mankind accidentally'' and, as such, must be at odds with the idea of a purposeful Creator.

The neo-creos are right to think that evolution is not religiously neutral. If nothing else, it undercuts what has traditionally been the most powerful argument for God's existence, the ''argument from design.'' No longer is the God hypothesis required to explain the intricate complexity of the living world. Christian intellectuals who accept Darwinism insist that evolution still leaves ample scope for a Creator-God, one who got the universe rolling in just the right way so that, by sheer chemistry and physics, beings like us would inevitably appear without further supernatural meddling. Ernan McMullin, a philosopher of science at Notre Dame who also happens to be a Catholic priest, argues that the resources of God's original creation ''were sufficient for the generation of the successive orders of complexity that make up our world.'' (Another contributor wonders whether the creationist idea of divine action hasn't been ''unduly affected by the 'special effects' industry.'') But this deistic notion of God holds little appeal for the neo-creos. They remain vexed that, as Richard Dawkins pointedly observes, ''Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.''

To regain the advantage for religion, the neo-creos have devised a two-part strategy. First, they try to establish their intelligent-design theory as the only alternative to Darwinism for explaining life. (The content of intelligent design is deliberately left vague: it can mean either creation by the designing agent or purposefully ''guided'' evolution.) Then they proceed negatively, deploying various arguments to show that Darwinian mechanisms could not possibly do the trick. The logic of this strategy is impeccable: Either Darwinism or intelligent design. Not Darwinism. Therefore, intelligent design. Armed with that conclusion, they hope to pry scientifically minded people away from a purely secular worldview.

AT the moment, there is no serious scientific rival to Darwinism. Indeed, if the explanation for the origin and complexity of life must be sought in physical mechanisms, then an evolutionary theory of some sort would seem to be inevitable. But why, the neo-creos ask, should other sorts of explanations -- those positing intelligent causes, supernatural interventions -- be ruled out by fiat? To do so betrays a commitment to ''metaphysical naturalism,'' the doctrine that nature is a system of material causes and effects sealed off from outside influences; and that, they say, is a matter of faith, not proof. But the Darwinians have a devastating retort to the charge of metaphysical naturalism: nothing succeeds like success. As Michael Ruse points out, modern science's refusal to cry miracle when faced with explanatory difficulties has yielded ''fantastic dividends.'' Letting divine causes fill in wherever naturalistic ones are hard to find is not only bad theology -- it leaves you worshiping a ''God of the gaps'' -- but it is also a science-stopper.

Besides, the evidence for Darwinism looks awfully strong. Yes, there are internal disagreements over the mechanisms and tempo of evolution. But the core thesis that all living things have a common ancestry, long supported by the pattern of structural similarities among them and by the fossil record, has received stunning new confirmation from molecular genetics. Johnson does his lawyerly best to cast doubt on the evidence for common ancestry. However, the more tough-minded of the neo-creos are willing to accept the historical claim that organisms evolved from one another. They even acknowledge a role for the standard Darwinian mechanism (natural selection operating on random variation) in the process. To make good on the second part of their strategy, the Not Darwinism part, they instead try to show that for deeper reasons Darwinism is bound to fall short of telling the whole story. They have three main arguments, all of which seem clever at first blush.

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TOPICS: Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creationism; crevolist; evolution
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To: Sabertooth
My complaint is with those who claim agnosticism, but are actually veiled atheists.

As has been pointed out in the past, in a purely logical argument "atheist" and "agnostic" resolve to the same thing. One can make a separate distinction for "strong" agnosticism versus "weak" agnosticism, but I don't think most agnostics actually claim to be agnostics in the strong sense a majority of the time (though a mathematician might). So-called "strong agnosticism" ("it is not possible to know if God exists") can also be construed as absolutely correct and resolveable to the definition of "atheist" in a purely logical construction if one really wants to step into the mathematics of logic and set theory.

The problem with the way I see "atheist" used as a definition is that people are attaching characteristics of a specific individual to a word definition that has no such subjective interpretation. "Atheism" does not denote a "faith-based" or "religious" characterization even though many people who are atheists have religious-like personality traits. This is essentially a fallacy of categorization and incorrect association, and being of an incorrect construction such as "some priests are pedophiles, therefore all priests are pedophiles", a violation of first-order logic.

61 posted on 04/14/2002 2:33:24 PM PDT by tortoise
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To: Jeff Gordon
I have to read the book, but if it does not go beyond the usual Scientific American article on the subject, I suspect that the Darwinists will overlook ththat thery have their own god of the gaps." I don't see how the biologists can ever reduce everything to physics --and that is really what they are claiming--until relativity and quantum theory are reconciled. Since science is far from the holy grail of the "theory of Everything." any thing less that, especially one which tries to incorporate a philosophy, can be no more than apologetics. It tells me a lot about the writer of this article that he believes that the argument from design is "the" most compelling argument for God. But that would be the argument for continguency, One has to be like Bertrand Russel and just flat-out deny it : an act of faith that he made in fealty to his dead father's memory rather than from what he learned in his grandfather's library or from his own studies.
62 posted on 04/14/2002 2:34:35 PM PDT by RobbyS
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To: AndrewC
 
Shall we flip a coin?

One might as well, were there no such
a thing as evidence.  Fortunately, the
body of science in support of evolution
leaves one in no need of coin flipping any
more than determining the roundness of
the earth by drawing straws.

Darwinian evolution evidently
denies a free will. It might describe it as a "random" will.

I don't see how you come to that.

63 posted on 04/14/2002 2:35:51 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: tortoise
"Agnosticism" was simply a word that T. Huxley made up because atheism was socially unrespectable.
64 posted on 04/14/2002 2:37:49 PM PDT by RobbyS
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To: Sabertooth
. But the at least have a data set of one

Now we're getting close to solipsism. I know a fellow who has talks with the Blessed Virgin when he's not on his meds. (He's been diagnosed as schizophrenic). No, I find all this inner experience stuff totally unconvincing.

65 posted on 04/14/2002 2:38:59 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: BMCDA
And thus Atheism and Agnosticism do overlap to a great extent.

Yes, in my opinion. Neither is a theist. Where they differ is in the emphasis they place on the burden of proof. The atheist might critize the agnostic thusly: "Why do you even consider the possibility of X when there's no reason to do so? If you are open to the existence of X (with utterly no evidence for X) then why not UFOs, ghosts, etc.?" So the atheist would view the agnostic as incapable of deciding when there's nothing to decide. I don't know if I'm explaining this well at all.

66 posted on 04/14/2002 2:40:22 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: all
scientists call it ''junk DNA'' cause they don't know why it's there
I read these were helixes disconnected after our Fall (from consciousness to subconsciousness)
so we wouldn't hurt ourselves (too much)
and they are in process of being reconnected now
all our original powers will be restored to us

seems to me our mind comes from God
evolution explains how single celled organisms in the sea evolved into complex bodies
67 posted on 04/14/2002 2:45:23 PM PDT by palo verde
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To: The_Reader_David
of "fitness" will involve laws, and that the resulting law-constrained stochastic search does not have the philosophical content needed to make Darwinism into an atheistic argument-from-no-design.

You really can't say what the laws defining fitness, the adaptive landscape, etc, will be like, since we don't know what they are.

IMO Darwin's insight that the environment treats organisms rather like an animal breeder does, and that this plus lots of time suffices to explain the diversity of life, will stand.

68 posted on 04/14/2002 2:45:25 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Virginia-American; JennyP
I find all this inner experience stuff totally unconvincing.

And I've conceded that there's no reason you should, beyond faith... that was the point of the little tangent that VadeRecto and I took regarding the ramifications of agnosticism and science on atheists and theists.

Science helps neither prove their point.

BTW, doesn't the atheist's argument from the absence of an inner experience also fall into solipsism?




69 posted on 04/14/2002 2:46:06 PM PDT by Sabertooth
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To: Titus Fikus
Atheists who think it best to deal with it by ignoring it are indeed fools, because if nothing else, that which we do not know exists today as a very powerful force in the world if only because so many people realize they don't know what they don't know. It is the atheist who is in the absurd position of admitting both that he doesn't know what he doesn't know, and at the same time claims he knows what it is.

This is an obviously false characterization. An atheist/agnostic/whatever doesn't have the answer, so they don't make one up to fill the gap i.e. they can no more accept "God did it" as an answer to something they don't know than "the Leprechaun did it". There are an infinite number of stupid answers for every undiscovered correct answer. There is nothing in "God did it" that distinguishes it from the huge set of stupid reasons. If there was, it could be considered as a useful theory. As it stands, "God did it" is utterly undistinguished as an answer. Evolution (which has nothing to do with the existence of God, no matter how many people try to frame it that way) distinguishes itself in a number of ways from "the set of all stupid answers".

That is actually what the argument is about. What distinguishes "God did it" from the myriad of other apparently stupid reasons? If we could answer this, life would be easy.

70 posted on 04/14/2002 2:46:54 PM PDT by tortoise
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To: palo verde
You might enjoy reading "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976, 1990), by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes. "
71 posted on 04/14/2002 2:49:17 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: tortoise
There is nothing in "God did it" that distinguishes it from the huge set of stupid reasons. If there was, it could be considered as a useful theory. As it stands, "God did it" is utterly undistinguished as an answer. Evolution (which has nothing to do with the existence of God, no matter how many people try to frame it that way) distinguishes itself in a number of ways from "the set of all stupid answers".

Very nice and I couldn't agree more!

72 posted on 04/14/2002 2:51:39 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: tortoise
That pretty well nails it.
73 posted on 04/14/2002 2:53:59 PM PDT by gcruse
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To: PatrickHenry
There is a subtle philosophical distinction.

In my teens, when I'd recently figured out that I'd been an agnostic for years, I thought that an atheist "knew" that there was no God, whereas an agnostic just couldn't tell and didn't see how everybody else was acting so cocksure.

74 posted on 04/14/2002 2:54:49 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: tortoise
The problem with the way I see "atheist" used as a definition is that people are attaching characteristics of a specific individual to a word definition that has no such subjective interpretation.

As I use and understand the terms in their common parlance, an atheist believes that God doesn't exist, a theist believes He does, and agnostic reserves judgement.

Since God's existence is neither provable nor disprovable, both atheists and theists are persuaded to their conclusions by some other means... "Faith" seems a reasonable term for belief in the absence of proof.

That the faith of atheists is manifested differently than that of theists doesn't change the fact of their belief in the absence of proof.

Since science attempts to describe aspects of nature by way of theory, evidence, and proof, it seems to me that scientific agnosticism on matters beyond nature is appropriate.




75 posted on 04/14/2002 2:55:56 PM PDT by Sabertooth
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To: VadeRetro
In my teens, when I'd recently figured out that I'd been an agnostic for years, I thought that an atheist "knew" that there was no God, whereas an agnostic just couldn't tell and didn't see how everybody else was acting so cocksure.

Which is a reflection of the individual's personality, and doesn't have any bearing on the basic facts. I'm cocksure that 43*13=559, whereas someone else might not be so confident offhand. That I am confident and the other party is unsure does not make my position less correct, nor does the reverse.

76 posted on 04/14/2002 3:02:06 PM PDT by tortoise
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To: Sabertooth
BTW, doesn't the atheist's argument from the absence of an inner experience also fall into solipsism?

"Of course solipsism is the only true philosphy, but that's just one man's opinion" (I forget the source, Martin Gardner quoted it). Who knows? How do you tell mania from enlightenment or prophecy? Is an atheist like a blind person, or is a believer like a delusional person? I have to go along with the skeptics here, the 'inner experiences' contradict themselves too often, and resemble mental illnesses (and acid trips) too much to convince me that they have any reality outside of the experiencer's head.

It's hardly solipsism to observe that there is no-one present when my friend sees the BVM.

77 posted on 04/14/2002 3:03:37 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Sabertooth
BTW, doesn't the atheist's argument from the absence of an inner experience also fall into solipsism

Good point sabertooth
I don't think anyone will be talked into or out of believing in God
My own experience is that I experienced the reality of God as an inner experience
But in order for the mind to believe something is true, it has to be logically true too
I went looking for the logic and it was there
Love, Palo
78 posted on 04/14/2002 3:03:41 PM PDT by palo verde
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To: PatrickHenry
Well I think that theism/atheism and gnosticism/agnosticism are two different animals. Theism and atheism cover the beliefs of a person whereas gnosticism and agnosticism are concerned with the knowledge this person holds.
So there is no third position between theism and atheism because one is either a theist or not a theist i.e. atheist.
A theist is therefore simply someone who believes in deities (for whatever reasons) and an atheist is someone who does not believe in deities (for whatever reasons). So it is possible to be both a theist and agnostic as well as an atheist and agnostic.
79 posted on 04/14/2002 3:04:54 PM PDT by BMCDA
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To: tortoise
43*13=559

Let me whip out my knotted-string calculator. One, two, three, four, five . . .

80 posted on 04/14/2002 3:05:15 PM PDT by VadeRetro
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