A few years ago I wrote (follow up here):
Suppose that you find a watch in the forest. If you know there is
no watchmaker then the theory of evolution is a brilliant and
compelling explanation for the presence of complexity without design.
But suppose that you know a watchmaker exists then surely the simplest
and most compelling explanation is that the watchmaker made the watch.
Any other explanation, particularly one so improbable
as evolution would seem to be preposterous and beside the point.Thus for someone who knows, really knows, that
god(s) exists (and there are many people who claim to know that god(s)
exists) then some form of creationism follows as a
rational deduction from the premises. It’s no point telling these
people that creationism is unscientific because given the premise that god(s) exists creationism is scientific.
If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in
every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned
nature.
Not surprisingly the argument created a firestorm of opposition (see the many nasty comments on the two original posts). Thus, I am quite pleased to see that renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel writing in Philosophy and Public Affairs has recently made the same argument. Nagel writes:
What [Intelligent Design] does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance. Once it is assigned a significant prior probability, it becomes a serious candidate for support by empirical evidence, in particular empirical evidence against the sufficiency of standard evolutionary theory to account for the observational data…
…Judge Jones cited as a decisive reason for denying ID the status of science that Michael Behe, the chief scientific witness for the defense, acknowledged that the theory would be more plausible to someone who believed in God than to someone who did not. This is just common sense, however, and the opposite is just as true: evolutionary theory as a complete explanation of the development of life is more plausible to someone who does not believe in God than to someone who does.
Nagel has much more of interest to say about teaching science given that ID is scientific if one accepts belief in god.
Hat tip to Robin Hanson’s post, Intelligent Design Honesty, at Overcoming Bias.
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Nagel isn’t making the same point. Your point was that the existence of God implies some form of creationism; his argument is that the existence of God makes design hypotheses candidates for scientific testing. His argument is significantly weaker, and significantly more believable.
could god(s) not have created an initial set of parameters that allowed evolution to occur? ie. a big bang from which everything else ‘naturally’ follows? is it too much to ask for ID enthusiasts to pull their heads out of their arses?
I like your blog, but you are really clueless about what science is.
> What [Intelligent Design] does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance.
This seems like a tautological hypothesis to me.
Almost like saying “the belief in a hypothesis depends on a belief that the hypothesis is correct”.
I would rather say that ID is equivalent to the assumption of the existence of a “designer”.
I actually agree with this reasoning. Too bad then, that the massive evidence for evolution is (due to symmetry) therefore evidence of nonexistence of god.
This reasoning seems to me to establish only that intelligent design is a religious, rather than a scientific, theory. How is that an argument for teaching it as science?
The argument assumes any God must be the “designer” in the Intelligent Design sense. I surely don’t need to outlay all the gods in all the pantheons of the world’s religions that aren’t creators. It is also untrue that God the Father in the traditional Christian sense is required to have created the world in the fashion of intelligent design. This is not “functionally equivalent” to atheism as Alex has stated in an earlier post. It is therefore difficult to see how evolution is inconsistent with belief in God.
> I think there’s a scientific case for the criticism that Darwinian evolution is not sufficient to explain all life we observe on earth. The problem is, critics generally do not offer a better theory (saying ‘God did it’ is obviously not scientific).
I think it is better to criticize ID theory as an empirically empty hypothesis, rather than as unscientific.
Some hypotheses might be “true” while not being terribly “useful”.
Tautologies like this: “when it rains, it rains.” Or: “in evolution, the most successful will survive”. (where “successfulness” is defined by “surviving in the process of evolution”)
These hypotheses are empirically empty. They are impossible to falsify, because the scope of outcomes they predict is so broad that it doesn’t restrict the possible set of outcomes in any meaningful way. As such, they are not of any help to the agent who employs them to reduce complexity and to provide certainty for his actions.
(note that an omniscient being (e.g a superrational homo oeconomicus) would not require the help of hypotheses. it would simply and correctly predict the world as it would be in the future and act accordingly. Imperfect beings like us however cannot do so and must make “good guesses” with the help of imperfect hypotheses if they want to act at all. The hypotheses never completely correspond to the facts in all and every circumstance, but if they are “good” they have a good chance of predicting states of the future which are relevant for the success of our indidivuals plans)
I think intelligent design can be criticized quite effectively on these grounds. It may be “true”, yes. But to state that the world and its living organisms have been created according to a plan doesn’t restrict the set of possible outcomes in any meanginful way. Any observed state of the world is in principle compatible with it being a part of a “plan” (fossils might be part of a plan to test the faith of believers, for example).
Only through specification of the contents of the “design plan” could ID imply testable results by restricting the scope of possible outcomes. However, this would be equivalent to knowing the mind of god, and nobody can seriously believe to possess that knowledge. Thus, ID might be “true” or not, but the problem is that that wouldn’t change anything for us. Thus we should be indifferent to this “theory”.
The theory of evolution (not the tautological version of it I stated above) on the other hand might not explain every single fact in the course of evolution. But it can provide “pattern-explanations” which rule out broad classes of outcomes, and thus bring some empirical content to our hypotheses about the world.
“If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned nature.”
Belief in evolution does not demand that a person deny a divine being.
The Scientific Method consists of crucial steps:
1. Use your experience
2. Make a guess at an explanation
3. Deduce a prediction based on that guess
4. Test that guess – run experiments that can both prove AND disprove the guess
The arguments made above and by Nagel are both sufficient to satisfy steps 1 and 2 – but Intelligent Design fails as a Scientific Theory because of two key flaws: it provides no predictive value, and it is not falsifiable. Any predictions made using ID are simply random guesswork, or based on information already in evidence. There is no way to disprove ID, because any new evidence that is presented is automatically acceptable to the theory because “God made it that way.”
I do believe in God, and have no problem with the theory of evolution.
And because my belief in God is not “scientific” but faith based, I have no problem not teaching creationism in public school biology courses. However, creationism and ID certainly are fair game for comparative religion and philosophy courses.
The “truth” is the truth, and my church teaches that scientific “truth” does not conflict with the “truth” of the church.
But what troubles me is the seeming “religious certainty” and occasionally resulting demonization of those who do not agree with those who are “scientifically certain”. Just as the demonization of agnostics, atheists, and those who aren’t “believers” troubles me. (Somewhat like what we’re seeing in the current election with the fringe elements all over the political map….)
Which is why it is important to have good friends who don’t agree with you. Makes it much more difficult to demonize those whose beliefs resemble those of someone you love.
Of course if you really did not make that assumption, you would spend your time praying or whatever instead of trying to reshape the world by your own efforts.
Says you.
Bernard Yomtov: ID is not testable regardless, and to the extent that the design of organisms is far from perfect, doesn’t that throw the whole “omnipotent, omniscient designer” idea into doubt? Why did this genius designer give us an appendix?
More than that, the bad design of organisms is proof that intelligent design is false. Would an intelligent designer design the neck of a giraffe so that a nerve goes all the way down it and then back up again? Of course not, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that you’d expect in an organism designed by evolution.
Similar examples are the human brain, where the part that dcecodes visual input is the furthest away from the eyes, making it slower and requiring longer-than-necessary cabling to connect them. Of the testes: they need to be cool, so are located outside the body of the torso, and are therefore vulnerable to damage.
Intelligenct design is a sxtupid theory. Incompetent design would be more plausible.
Alex is right, and so many of you want to have it both ways. You can’t.
“could god(s) not have created an initial set of parameters that allowed evolution to occur? ie. a big bang from which everything else ‘naturally’ follows?”
At least your explanation doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Where did the big bang come from?
We don’t find a watch bearing the clear stamp of design but rather a kludge bearing the clear stamp of evolution. If god created us, he used evolutionary algorithms in his thought processes when doing so, he created us as the products of evolution.
Also, by the logic you seem to be suggesting, isn’t god the simplest explanation for objects falling down too? The point of science is not to “explain” but to predict outcomes as narrowly as possible. When we try to predict life narrowly based on anthropomorphic attributes we ascribe to god we predict totally incorrectly running straight into the problem of evil where once again theologians try to explain, not to predict (why earthquakes but not Godzilla or freed demons?).
“Suppose that you find a watch in the forest.” Is it running? Does it have a maker’s name inscribed on the face? Is it a wrist watch and do I have wrists? Is it a pocket watch with attached fob and do I have clothes? If I don’t have clothes then a pocket watch is USELESS no matter whose name is on the face…
Most likely, when I find those forested watches, I suspect that some dumb flatlander hunter lost his watch while deer hunting. But I am willing to entertain the idea that the Loki watchmaking company goes around seeding random forests with dropped watches just for shits and giggles.
Tom: “At least your explanation doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Where did the big bang come from?”
Did you know that the total energy content of the universe is zero? The positive energy held in matter and photons and electrons and so on is exactly balanced by the negative energy of gravity.
The creation of the universe from nothing (If that’s what actually happened, I understand it’s something of an open question) does not involve the creation of energy from nothing, and does not violate the laws of thermodynamics. Or do you assume that people studying high-energy physics are unaware of grade-school level concepts? It would be pretty embarrassing for them to miss that, don’t you think?
Alex’s argument holds if one says that intelligent design and creationism are potentially “logical,” not “scientific.” Logic and science are related in as much that science uses logic, but science is not logic.
Karl Popper, an extremely influential philosopher of science, limits science to the set of experimentally falsifiable hypotheses. An hypothesis is only scientific if it is falsifiable. Logic only requires the foundation hypotheses to be stated and agreed upon (obviously, the line of argument is stronger if there is data to support these hypotheses). In science, we use logic to determine what we should observe if our hypothesis is true and if it is false. Logic is a tool of experimental design.
Creationism and intelligent design are not science because the hypothesis of a creator deity is not falsifiable.
The logical problems with creationism and intelligent design is that the actions of such a creator deity to create a universe like the one we live in are not necessarily consistent with assumptions about that creator deity’s nature.
I don’t have time to read these comments, but my take is this. Evolution does give a method for complex human life to form out of an earth that was void of anything complex 5 billion years ago. But you could also say that OJ provided a theory as to why he was innocent. True, it was possible that all that evidence was planted but it was very unlikely and it certainly did not provide “reasonable” doubt.
Likewise, the chance of evolution creating complex life is vanishingly and impossibly small if biological events happened only by pure chance. I don’t need a semantic argument about whether ID is “science” or not, but the fact is the existence of complex life demands a belief in something outside of the theory of physics or biology designing life as we know it.
Starting from any premise that is not supported by evidence (and I’m not saying there is no evidence against the existence of gods, but that there’s neither any proof for or against) is not scientific. So, intelligent design/creationism is a viable philosophy if you assume the existence of a god/gods, but it is no way scientific.
“Alex is right, and so many of you want to have it both ways. You can’t.”
I would grant that Alex is correct if you, he, or anyone else who thinks ID can be considered a scientific theory could propose a test that had the potential to convince believers in an all-powerful creator that no god designed our universe.
Matt (10:31:56), the supposed improbability of complexity arising through chance is not evidence for intelligent design. This is an argument from ignorance not from evidence.
Tom (10:54:50), matter and energy are the same thing (E=mc^2). There is enough negative energy to account for the positive energy and matter.
Tom: “The law applies to matter as well. Are you stating the the total matter content of the universe is zero as well.”
Matter is basically condensed energy. Energy can become matter, and matter can become energy, at a rate given by E=MC2.
Immediately after the Big Bang, there was no matter. Later, as the temperature fell, some of the energy in the universe became matter. If you were to convert all matter in the universe to energy, then the total energy content of the universe would be zero.
“And the big bang happens without anything acting upon it?”
I’m no cosmologist, so take this as the view of an informed amateur: Whether or not something caused the Big Bang is an open question. Maybe we are effectively inside a black hole in another universe; black holes are known to have a cause. Maybe what we call the “Big Bang” was just one of an endless series of inflationary events that created an area of spacetime too large for us to ever know what lies outside it. Maybe other universes “bumped together” and than caused the Big Bang. And maybe it just… happened.
What we do know is that the Big Bang sits at a place where our laws of physics break down, just as Newtonian mechanics can’t describe the motion of electrons, or of spaceships travelling at 90% of the speed of light. We’ll need a whole new understanding of physics to explain what happens when gravity and the electroweak force are the same thing before we can make any meaningful statement about whether effects needed causes before the Big Bang. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to answer that question. Maybe the LHC will provide some small clues. or maybe it’ll forever be unknown.
Tom said:
And the big bang happens without anything acting upon it?
No. Meet the real anthropic principle:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2006-02/msg0073320.html
An *inherent* thermodynamic energy conservation law that enables the universe to periodically “leap/bang† to higher orders of the same basic configuration in order to preserve causality, the arrow of time, and the second law of thermodynamics… indefinitely… … …
The universe is Darwinian, in other words.
Then you have a **perpetually** evolving structure, where all of the so-called “anthropic problems” are resolved without need for apparent absurdities, like inflation or a singularity, when a causally connected universe with volume has a big bang, which also resolves all of the “anthropic problems†, found here, as well as the rest of them:
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/209/mar31/anthropic.html
Glad I could help…
People are missing the point here. Of course intelligent design and creationism are unscientific. The point that Nagel was trying to make is that if people are going to believe in god, then it is entirely reasonable that they believe in intelligent design. If you believe in god, it is entirely reasonable and rational that god designed the universe according to some grand plan.
So given that intelligent design is entirely rational (given that you believe in god), and 90% of the world’s population does believe in god, why is there so much popular outrage over intelligent design? And why, specifically, so much outrage over the evangelical Christian concept of intelligent design?
The answer is “culture wars”. Once again, Christianity, and especially evangelical Christianity is considered low-class. Religion is clearly divided along class lines, with the poor and working class being far more religious than the middle and upper classes. Being against creationism and intelligent design is clearly a form of class-signaling.
I mean, think about it – There isn’t the same sort of popular outrage about European governments funding homeopathic medicine, even though homeopathic medicine is as completely unscientific as creationism. Why? Clearly, homeopathic medicine presents a bigger danger to the public welfare than creationism, as someone might forgo real medicine for homeopathic quackery. Well, because obviously the belief in homeopathic medicine is popular among upper-class people. It doesn’t matter if it is based on quasi-religious Greek mythology, there is virtually no outrage that it is NHS funded or taught in many state-funded schools or universities.
See what I mean! Culture Wars! It doesn’t matter that in many EU countries blasphemy is a criminal offense, abortion is illegal, or the official state church is funded by the tax-payers… those forms of religious fanaticism can be ignored when it doesn’t fit in with the self-image of American cultural inferiority. It is all about class-posturing!
Exactly. ID is declasse.
And what is this “ID” thing that is declassé?
I am often reminded of Carl Sagan who spent all those years teaching evolution as fact rather than theory. It’s hard to admit evolution is only a theory.
Let me refrase this: What if you also find less evolved watches in antique shops, along with evidence that watches have changed shapes and functionality over centuries in order to better measure time?
You do and they have. Does that mean that watches evolved or that they are designed by an intelligent creature?
I don’t think Rex Rhino’s statement that “Religion is clearly divided along class lines, with the poor and working class being far more religious than the middle and upper classes” is true in the South. My observation is that lower income whites in the South are actually less likely than middle and upper income Southerners to attend church.
It seems to me that the premise “god(s) exist” only implies some type of creationism if one’s concept (of which there are many) of such god(s)includes the property of “creating stuff non-randomly,” in which case it’s just a tautological consequence of the premise. To the extent that the god(s) may or may not be inclined to create life non-randomly, then 1) it is unclear what the content of the strong belief in god(s) is; and 2) all of the evidence suggests god(s) + evolution.
“Intelligent Design fails as a Scientific Theory because of two key flaws: it provides no predictive value, and it is not falsifiable”
Well, that’s not really true. Jump off a bridge, and you have a perfect experiment to either verify or falsify any given religion’s claims, as well as test its predictive value. Only problem is that you can’t communicate the results to anyone else…
Even if it were entirely unfalsifiable, and provided no predictive value, that does not mean that ID is untrue. When I am dreaming, there may be no way of reliably falsifying the theory that I am in a dream (other than something like jumping off a bridge), but that does not mean that I am not, in fact, dreaming.
Instead, unfalsifiability (and unscientific-ness) of ID would only mean that any opposition to ID is also unscientific, because the opposition provides no predictive value, and is not falsifiable. Science, then, would seem to have nothing to say about intelligent design, either for or against. Why then are the supposedly science-minded so quick to heap scorn and derision on ID and its supporters, quite above and beyond the simple claim that it does not qualify as a scientific theory?
Are you an ID supporter, Doug?
I’m pretty neutral on both id and certain claims in evolution (for instance the origin of the first cell, and the development of entirely new organs from random mutations). I don’t know enough to make my own conclusion, and I can see so much bias, and irrational arguments on both sides that its hard to simply trust “experts” on either side. More importantly, I don’t see how it really matters one way or the other, though I do find the discussion fascinating.
You do and they have. Does that mean that watches evolved or that they are designed by an intelligent creature?
It means they evolved, actually, according to their own processes.
I said above that watches don’t reproduce. Not quite right. They do, just not by themselves. Watchmakers are their DNA. They copy watches and occasionally try a new design. Guess what. Sometimes the new designs are no good. That is, they fail to survive in their environment – the watch market, or the test lab. Or they survive for a while and then die out when the environment changes. Some changes are successful. The design becomes more common, but if the environment changes the new species may disappear as well.
The ID model would have us believe that many years ago there was a watchmaker who designed a few models which still exist today. That’s not true. Finding an antique watch is like finding a fossil of a species that is no longer in existence.
(This might’ve been said somewhere above (I’m not gonna read all them comments plus the ones in the original two threads))
In this case, please explain to me why the Catholic Church, various forms of Judaism, and many other theistic systems have no problem what so ever with evolution.
It’s perfectly possible to believe that 1) God exists, 2) He has a plan, 3) That plan operates through the mechanism of evolution and 4) as you say, this mechanism is so brilliant and compelling that only God could’ve come up with it.
Of course it’s not what I believe but it is what many sensible religious people believe. You’re focusing on a particular, very vocal and radical group and generalizing from their prejudices to the population of the religious (of one sort or another) as a whole.
Or in other words, if you believed in a watchmaker, found a watch in the woods, you’d still want to know how the watchmaker constructed it and made it tick. Wouldn’t you?
“Why then are the supposedly science-minded so quick to heap scorn and derision on ID and its supporters, quite above and beyond the simple claim that it does not qualify as a scientific theory?”
Because in a philosophy class it’s an interesting argument. From a scientific standpoint you might as well argue that the universe was pooped out by a giant pink rhinceros. Prove to me that it wasn’t.
Attractors should be advocates. I swear I speak English.
Because its supporters keep trying to jam this version of thinly veiled Sunday School into science classrooms, despite the fact that, by your own admission, science has ‘nothing to say about intelligent design’.
I imagine if there was a persistent, relentless nationwide campaign to introduce the teaching of voodoo into Economics curricula, paid for and mobilized by forces not the least bit interested in Economics, but profoundly interested in voodoo, the economists of the country might muster up a little scorn and derision.
People who support modern science should stop using the terminology of the creationist retards. Instead of calling their childish magical creation myth “intelligent design”, call it what it really is: MAGIC.
I call creationists “retards” because only a brain-dead idiot could believe in magic in the 21st century.
The problem is religion. Religion makes normal people stupid, and religion makes stupid people imbeciles. There could be nothing more idiotic than the idea there’s a sky fairy hiding in the clouds performing magic tricks, or what creationist morons call intelligent design. Grow up Bible Thumpers. Stop living in the Dark Ages. And stop pretending your insane religious beliefs are scientific.
It seems to me that a more important question is: “Is evolution occurring today?”
I think yes.
“Is intelligent design occurring today?”
Haven’t seen any evidence.
Isn’t this sort of like arguing whether newtonian mechanics worked 5000 years ago on earth? The kind you learn in High School.
The point is, why not teach the mechanism of evolution, just like the Mechanics chapter in High School Physics. That is, elementary genetics, natural selection, Hardy Weinberg, etc. This would be in biology.
I don’t know what class you would put intelligent design. I think it would have to go in current events.
ziggurat: I think most people here would have no problem with teaching of ID in a philosophy class, or a sociology class, or a history of religion class. But when it’s explicitly billed as a science subject and a serious opponent to a major and well accepted scientific theory, the argument that it’s not science is a valid one.
Besides, what would they teach? Cut out the lies and misinformation about the theory of and evidence for evolution, and what’s left? “Goddidit”? Is there any actual positive content there? Because I’ve been looking, and I don’t see it…
Winter, I’m not talking about arguments that ID should not be taught in science classes. Read the post right before mine. That’s what I’m talking about.
I’m curious. An old, tried and true method of deduction says that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. With the current folks posting on here, I’m curious how that kind of logic would factor into your positions and arguments here…
I think it can, but that’s not my intentiont to argue that here. I’m just curious what some of the minds on here think, ASSUMING that logic could be applied.
There is an absolutely enormous and ever growing body of evidence from the fossil records, from comparative anatomy, and most recently from the study of genetic codes and the mechanisms of cellular biology, which, taken together, clearly and unambiguously point to a common ancestor from which all terrestrial life descends.
The empirical evidence for evolution is beyond doubt regardless of whether someone is certain that “god” exists. Regardless of what renowned philosophers might say, someone can only be a creationist or believe in “intelligent design” if they are either ignorant of the empirical evidence for evolution or if they base their beliefs on something other than empirical evidence. In the first case, they are ignorant and in the second unscientific.
As the comments on this blog show, those who are against ID being taught in science classes do not simply argue that science classes are the wrong venue, they ridicule *anyone* who believes in ID, whether those people think it should be taught in science classes or not.
Doug, I’m not sure what you’re asking for here. It seems to me that the policy argument is whether ID should be taught in science classes. And for that the obvious correct answer is hell no.
That’s the question and that’s the answer.
You seem to be expecting that people here should offer ID enthusiasts some sort of respect as human beings or something. What does that have to do with anything?
Someday if I meet an ID enthusiast who behaves like a respectable human being I will respect him. But that’s a complete side issue. The policy issue is whether to teach ID in science classes.
“For starters, science relies upon the premise that there is no non-natural (a.k.a. supernatural) intervention with the natural world.”
No. It doesn’t. Not the way you seem to think.
Science is a search for natural explanations of the natural world. It does not explicitly say there can be no supernatural causes. What it does say is that there is no particular reason to believe in supernatural explanations, even for things that science does not understand, because there is no sensible method of testing such a claim. It is further worth noting that science is continually discovering natural explanations, so someone who takes a gap in scientific knowledge as proof of the supernatural is has a good chance of being proven wrong.
I suppose you could discuss ID or creationism in a philosophy of science class, but you really need to know some science for that to be an intelligent discussion and not just a rehash of silly arguments. That’s one reason, among many, why you shouldn’t “teach the controversy” in a biology class. The students don’t know enough to understand the controversy.
Sorry to come late, but this irks me:
__Likewise, the chance of evolution creating complex life is vanishingly and impossibly small if biological events happened only by pure chance.__
But it didn’t and doesn’t happen by pure chance! That is the chatter of someone who doesn’t understand how Darwinian natural selection works! The whole point of natural selection is that things happen for a reason. Animals grow and develop eyes because the animals for whom light sensitivity is a mutated trait outlive (and thus, out-reproduce) animals for whom it is not. Over time, this results in organs specialized to light sensitivity which are connected to neural centers specialized to processing that form of information. Voila, sight!
The problem people have is a refusal to look at the bigger picture. It doesn’t happen within a single organism, or even within 10s of generations of organism, but indeed hundreds of thousands and millions of years.
Of course, that all falls apart if you refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence suggesting the Earth is significantly older than 6,000 years.
J. Gear down big trucker. Just because someone disagrees with something you think is obvious does not mean they are “liars or else stupid,” even if they’re wrong, and even if they’re stubborn.
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