Over at Biologos, an evangelical theologian named Robin Parry has written a hit piece titled, God is More Than an Intelligent Designer. Now, I have no problem with someone criticizing Intelligent Design. But I do have a problem when someone criticizes it without getting out of his armchair and taking a look at the evidence for and against it. My own position is that Intelligent Design theory should be evaluated on strictly scientific grounds. Parry, unfortunately, criticizes it for all the wrong reasons, which can be summed up in a single, dismissive phrase: “Your God is too small.”
Is Parry right? Let’s have a look at his arguments.
God of the gaps?
The problem with Intelligent Design (ID) is its tendency to look for God (or simply a “designer”) in the gaps of scientific explanations. So-called irreducible complexity, for instance, is seen as evidence of this “designer” because science cannot (in principle, we are told) explain it in terms of natural processes. But if future science did actually explain any alleged instances of irreducible complexity, then such instances would cease to be evidence of the “designer”. (Emphasis mine – VJT.)
Well, of course. That’s the whole idea. Science stands or falls on the evidence. ID claims to be a scientific theory, so it has to be falsifiable.
Parry appears to be making an incorrect assumption, however: he seems to think that Intelligent Design requires the “designer” to intervene in, or tinker with, the physical world, overlooking the possibility that God might have “front-loaded” the cosmos, setting up its initial conditions so that life (including complex organisms) would emerge naturally. (Front-loading the laws of Nature wouldn’t work.) Parry should be aware that several leading figures in the Intelligent Design camp – including Professor Michael Behe – have argued that no tinkering by the designer is necessary. Indeed, in his book, The Edge of Evolution (pp. 229-232), Behe describes in some detail how the design of life could have been accomplished without any interference. [To be sure, philosopher and ID advocate Stephen Meyer disagrees: he argues that if chemistry can’t explain the origin of DNA, neither could the initial conditions of the universe; but this is a fallacious argument, because it compares apples and oranges: the laws of chemistry aren’t specific enough to account for DNA, but that doesn’t mean the initial conditions of the cosmos couldn’t possess the requisite specificity.] What this means is that in order to falsify the claim that irreducible complexity points to a designer, it isn’t enough to show that irreducibly complex structures could have arisen naturally. One also needs to make a plausible scientific case that no “bias” in the fundamental parameters or initial conditions of our cosmos would have been required, in order to generate these structures. (If biological complexity could only be explained by appealing to cosmic fine-tuning, that would be merely pushing the question of design one step further back.)
I might add that ID theorists have never claimed that phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of unguided natural processes are (a) evidence for the existence of God (as opposed to an unknown Designer), let alone (b) the only possible evidence for God. So the “God of the gaps” accusation is simply a baseless canard.
The designer: just another being?
The problem here is that the “designer” — which almost every ID advocate thinks is the biblical God — is pictured as one being among others (albeit a more intelligent and powerful one) acting as a cause in the world in the same manner as other causes act in the world.
Most ID advocates do indeed identify the “designer” with the biblical God, for philosophical and theological reasons – but not for scientific reasons. And no, the “designer” is not pictured as “acting as a cause in the world in the same manner as other causes act in the world,” for the simple reason that Intelligent Design theory is silent regarding the designer’s modus operandi. No-one knows how the designer acts. Nor does any ID advocate claim that the designer is but one being among others. Indeed, it is difficult to see how an ID proponent who upholds the fine-tuning argument for cosmological design (as many writers over at Biologos also do) could regard the designer of the cosmos as “one being among others.” At the very least, such a designer would have to be something lying beyond the cosmos – in other words, transcendent. The “one being among others” objection looks plausible only if we confine our attention to biological design.
God doesn’t act like that
The reason that this is a problem, at least for Christians, is that classical theology does not picture God in this manner — as one cause or being among and alongside others. Rather, divine Being is of a fundamentally different kind from creaturely being, and divine causation acts at a different level altogether. God is the one who imparts be-ing to the whole of created reality and who enables all of the powers of causation within creation. So God was the explanation for the whole, but was not to be found in the gaps.
There is nothing to prevent God from being both the One who imparts being to created reality and Someone Who intervenes in history. Indeed, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all insist that He is precisely that, for they ascribe various miracles to the Creator. Christians, for instance, believe in the virginal conception of Jesus. I fail to see how a theologian could gladly accept the virginal conception but balk at the idea of God bringing about a few divinely guided mutations in the lineage leading to human beings.
God and science don’t mix
The explanations of the empirical sciences function at the level of secondary causation within the created order, and pay no attention to metaphysical questions of primary causation. As such, God does not feature in scientific explanations. This is unproblematic so long as scientists don’t imagine that reality can be encompassed within the realm of what science can explain — that road ends up collapsing in on itself. Treating some things in the world (but not others) as the result of God rather than of inner-creational causes is to mix up these different levels of explanation. Setting divine and creational causes up in opposition as some kind of zero sum game is unhelpful.
To deal with the last point first: it is a myth to claim that Intelligent Design sets divine and creational causes up in opposition to one another. Rather, what it does is set guided and unguided causal processes in opposition to one another. Now, it is certainly possible for a theologian like Parry to maintain that all law-governed natural processes – including the processes leading to the formation of carbon (which is required by all living things) in the early history of the cosmos – are ultimately guided by the Creator. He is entirely correct, of course; but that kind of statement would cut no ice with a scientist. However, if one could show that the formation of carbon was itself a highly fine-tuned process, then he might conclude, as the late Sir Fred Hoyle did: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” Hoyle was hostile to religion, but he was courageous enough to follow the evidence where it led.
Parry asserts that God does not feature in scientific explanations. That would have been news to Sir Isaac Newton, whose Intelligent Design arguments I’ve documented in detail here. And in case someone wishes to object that Newton lived 300 years ago, when the rules of science were different, then how about the late nineteenth-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), who put forward a scientific argument for the existence of a Creator and who insisted that science didn’t rule out talk of a Creator; it merely ruled out discussion of his modus operandi? Heck, there have been at least 31 great scientists who made scientific arguments for the supernatural.
But if nineteenth-century scientists don’t impress you, then how about some prominent twenty-first century scientists who reject methodological naturalism? Here’s atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll:
Let’s imagine that there really were some sort of miraculous component to existence, some influence that directly affected the world we observe without being subject to rigid laws of behavior. How would science deal with that?
The right way to answer this question is to ask how actual scientists would deal with that, rather than decide ahead of time what is and is not “science” and then apply this definition to some new phenomenon…
There is a perfectly good question of whether science could ever conclude that the best explanation was one that involved fundamentally lawless behavior. The data in favor of such a conclusion would have to be extremely compelling, for the reasons previously stated, but I don’t see why it couldn’t happen. Science is very pragmatic, as the origin of quantum mechanics vividly demonstrates. Over the course of a couple decades, physicists (as a community) were willing to give up on extremely cherished ideas of the clockwork predictability inherent in the Newtonian universe, and agree on the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. That’s what fit the data. Similarly, if the best explanation scientists could come up with for some set of observations necessarily involved a lawless supernatural component, that’s what they would do.
And here’s New Atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution Is True:
I’ve previously described the kind of evidence that I’d provisionally accept for a divine being, including messages written in our DNA or in a pattern of stars, the reappearance of Jesus on earth in a way that is well documented and convincing to scientists, along with the ability of this returned Jesus to do things like heal amputees. Alternatively, maybe only the prayers of Catholics get answered, and the prayers of Muslims, Jews, and other Christians, don’t.
And here’s P. Z. Myers, a biologist and critic of Intelligent Design, who regards the very concept of God as nonsensical, but who thinks that scientists could still discover and investigate causes that fall outside the natural order:
My position is that we cannot find evidence for a god, that the God Hypothesis is invalid and unacceptable, because “god” is an incoherent concept that has not been defined…
By the way, I do agree with Coyne on one thing: I also reject Shermer’s a priori commitment to methodological naturalism. If a source outside the bounds of what modern science considers the limits of natural phenomena is having an observable effect, we should take its existence into account.
Parry’s insistence that science has no place for God-talk strikes me as a trifle dogmatic, to say the least, when leading contemporary scientists who are also vocal atheists disagree.
Who designed the designer?
Let us continue with Parry’s piece:
Furthermore, the most that ID could ever demonstrate is that certain things in the world (but not the the world as a whole) were designed by a very intelligent (though not omni-intelligent) and powerful (though not all-powerful) being (or groups of beings). But such a being is more like an archangel than God. And of such a being we may still ask, “Who designed it?” for it would certainly not be the kind of thing that could explain its own existence. This intelligent designer would be as infinitely removed from God as a flea.
I’m sure Parry has heard of the fine-tuning argument. For advocates of Intelligent Design, this argument constitutes evidence for the design of the cosmos, while arguments relating to biological complexity point to life’s having been designed. So I don’t know why Parry thinks Intelligent Design can only show that “certain things in the world (but not the the world as a whole) were designed.” (And in case Parry wishes to object that our universe might turn out to be just a small part of some larger multiverse which was not designed, I should inform him that fine-tuning advocates have anticipated that objection: Robin Collins argues that a multiverse that could generate a universe like ours would itself have to be designed. Physicist Paul Davies also has a killer argument against the multiverse as an explanation for everything.)
I have a question for Parry. Assuming that the fine-tuning argument does point to the universe’s having been designed, would he agree that the designer of the universe would have to be omni-intelligent and all-powerful? If not, why not? (I’m asking because theologians and philosophers don’t agree on the definitions of these terms, and I’d like to know what Parry’s definitions are.)
What of Parry’s final point, that one could always ask who designed the designer, since “it would certainly not be the kind of thing that could explain its own existence”? For my part, I wonder what basis Parry has for his assurance that the designer of the cosmos “would certainly not be the kind of thing that could explain its own existence.” Why not? At the very least, one could argue that a transcendent designer of the cosmos might be self-explanatory. I’m not sure how Parry thinks an archangel could design a cosmos.
But as I have mentioned before, Intelligent Design theory doesn’t deal with the identity of the Designer. It is perfectly consistent to hold that scientific arguments can never establish that the designer is a self-explanatory Being, but that philosophical arguments can be marshaled to show that the designer of the cosmos is either a self-explanatory Being or a being kept in existence by a self-explanatory Being.
Dragons?
I am not for one moment suggesting that those who believe in God should not look at complex systems within creation and marvel at how they manifest God’s goodness and power — after all, such complex systems live and move and have their being in God, manifesting the Divine Logos — but that is a very different issue from seeking to find them as evidence of direct divine intervention. There be dragons!
I’ve dealt with the claim that Intelligent Design requires divine intervention above. Lastly, the problem with Parry’s “There be dragons!” dig at the ID movement (a reference to the medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps) is that most of the arguments for Intelligent Design were unknown to people in the Middle Ages, who believed in the spontaneous generation of life, and even fairly complex animals such as rats, mice and crocodiles from non-living matter. It was not until the invention of the microscope that we see Intelligent Design-style arguments appearing in the writings of scientists such as Robert Boyle. As for the universe, people in the Middle Ages were quite familiar with the Aristotelian view that it had always existed. No-one knew about the Big Bang or the fine-tuning argument. In other words, the “dragons” in the Intelligent Design account of the world are not old ones, but very new ones. The dragons may of course be slain, as new explanations for life and the cosmos are put forward – but my plea is this: let science, and not theology, do the slaying.
stcordova,
Science is observation.
How does one falsify the claim that just because something looks irreducibly complex, and we can’t explain it, ONE day we may?
That can’t be falsified, anymore than if you see all the stars in the sky line up to spell out God, you could say, “Well, we can’t explain how it could occur naturally RIGHT NOW, but maybe one day we will find the answer.”
Falsifiable is a nonsense concept. Somethings can be and some things may not be, and neither is a fundamental necessity of science.
Sal,
If you ended up on an uninhabited island and you came across an arrangement of letters each engraved on a separate stone making up the following phrases:
A man, a plan, a canal: Panama
Live not on evil
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
What kind of falsification or scientific proof would you need that those letters were arranged by a intelligent designer?
Or would you automatically assume that random processes have arranged those letters?
J-Mac,
There is now falsifying the idea that it occured naturally, because they could always just fall back on, “We don’t know how, but one day…”
phoodoo,
The stones engraved and then arranged themselves into sentences that make sense… It does make perfect sense … because science makes perfect sense like that all the time..lol
All you need is faith…
J-Mac,
Faith and time.
That depends on whether that’s a green screen she is standing in front of.
Enough time, enough luck, enough faith…and you can accomplish almost anything…but in your imagination only…
…and ruthless efficiency
…which is was predicted and expected of random processes “designed” by dumb luck… It happens all the time…especially among those suffering from delusions… lol
J-Mac,
*whoosh*
I would say science is about explaining stuff, in as much detail as possible. The more detail, the smaller the set of observations compatible with the explanation.
That’s what makes proper science falsifiable.
Sigh… I fear you may be correct
After my teacher passed away, his successors yanked our essay offline.
We can always take comfort in Isaiah 1:9
FWIW, I don’t see how any investigation of that could be scientific. Sort of like “Where does goodness come from?”
You’re a Feyerabendian, phoodoo!
Just googled that… Epistemological anarchism!?!?
phoodoo,
As I’ve told you already, I don’t regard evolution as being entirely unguided. There’s no contradiction in the idea of God making man via a process which is (a) foreseen in all its details and (b) not only foreseen but also intended, as regards some of the details – namely, those details which bring about those human traits which are intended by God. [Case in point: God obviously intended humans to have big brains, but He may not have intended us to have 46 chromosomes in our cells, and I’m sure He didn’t intend us to become long-sighted during middle age.]
You’ve misconstrued my ideas. See above.
It’s perfectly coherent that neutral mutations should be unguided, and yet conform to God’s plan, insofar as they do not hinder it. The plan is what God brings about via those beneficial mutations which He intends.
A few of the mutations leading to man were guided, as I clearly stated in my OP. The number is not large: about 240 compared to 22.4 million unguided neutral mutations in the human line. That’s about 1 in 100,000. Also, God has perfect foresight. He knew which neutral mutations would occur in the human line and at what point in time, and what effects they would have. He allowed the sequence of mutations we’ve been exposed to in the human line, because He knew they wouldn’t interfere with His plan to produce a self-aware, God-conscious being.
Do you know what I mean when I say that God intends some weather events (e.g. drought-breaking rains which bring welcome relief to farmers) but not others (e.g. Category 5 hurricanes which destroy whole communities)? Now substitute “animals” for “weather events” and you’ll see my point.
Do you believe that God explicitly intended the coming-into-existence of the Anopheles mosquito? And if so, upon what do you base such a belief? Do you believe that each and every one of the 2,000-odd species of cichlid fish were intended by God? If not, why not?
You asked me some specific questions about when I believed humans appeared and which mutations I believed were guided. I answered your questions in detail, spending a considerable amount of time in composing them. A normal person would have said, “Thank you.” At the same time, you’ve been disappointingly vague about your own beliefs. Are you a creationist, and if so, what kind?
Please do not put words into my mouth. The fact that God does not intend certain species of creatures does not imply that He does not love them.
J-Mac,
J-mac,
Those are man-made designs. I said ID is science for man-made designs because we have seen such designers. We have direct observation. We also have repeatability, therefore ID is science for man-made designs.
ID applies also to God-made designs. But there is no repeatability, unless scientists see God in the act of creation, therefore it is not science for God-made designs.
However, it does not make ID false for God-made designs, it’s just not classified as science. ID for God-made designs is accepted with some level of faith, not sight. Science is by sight, but “blessed are they who believe but have not seen.”
What I see is not a gradually more sophisticated accommodation of the haredi teachings to the outside world, but a political process of lining up with the U.S. religious right.
One can point out that the teachings of their tradition reject a literalist reading of Torah, but the political alliance will win out over the intellectual argument.
Joe, it saddens me greatly to consider you are correct and I am not.
In the grand scheme of things – politics is transitory, tradition is not.
In my mind’s ear, I can hear what would be Stephan Jay Gould’s inevitable retort to current events:
As I mentioned earlier; we can always take comfort in the “remnant” mentioned in Isaiah 1:9
I think I know what you mean, and I also find it kind of laughable. I also find it laughable that you believe God intended some mutations and not others, and didn’t really intend 46 chromosomes, but at the same time, he didn’t really mind it either. In the same way he didn’t really intend the emergence of the Anopheles mosquito, but, he can live with it. Same thing with cholera. Alopecia and Tourette’s he actually planned, but he made sure not too many people get it.
Furthermore, you seem to believe in the bible, but like, some of it?
And like when did he start giving out souls, was it the very first Heidelberg man? There was one creature just before Heidelberg man, that was fairly smart, but couldn’t make a good spear. So he didn’t get the soul yet. But then one mutation-that God intended, made a pre-Heidelberg woman give birth to a Heidelberg man that could make a spear. Souls were invented!
Have you spent much time contemplating this?
You are of course entitled to any world view you like, but at least have enough awareness to understand that its your worldview, one you just thought of and not too deeply, and its not really one others should take all that seriously, as it is clearly not very hashed out and coherent. I am not sure what aspect of it you find profound enough to think anyone should consider it as having any connection to reality.
That does not follow, that is just your assertion. As I have pointed out, there are many aspects of evolutionary theory that can’t be falsified. So its not science also?
It comes from the heart, of course. 🙂
phoodoo,
I think you identify some weaknesses in Vincent’s position. Though he is to be complimented on having a position and making an effort to publicly defend it.
Do you have an alternative worldview?
Now you know why evolution is not science. And we’ll never hear you bitch and moan about creationists asking for more detail, will we.
And reproduction. Don’t forget reproduction.
Yes please.
Uhmmm… careful now. Science is also about making models to explain the observations and to generate useful predictions.
Mung has a point – according to a strict interpretation of your definition, the belief in a Heliocentric Solar System is not science… how can we “know” the earth goes around the sun and not vice versa except by some version of extrapolation which is not direct observation?
Is that why we hear it so often here at TSZ?
That’s perhaps a universal truth.
Do you? I am not a religious preacher, VJ is. Its just that what he preaches is completely convoluted.
When I think my worldview is relevant (which I have done many times in the thread about the so called existence of evil), I mention it, when I don’t, I don’t. VJ is constantly writing these long winded posts, complaining about some quasi-religious/science arguments-and claiming they are nonsensical based on some religious belief of his that he invented- “will” and not “would” in the bible…
Have I ever, once quoted the bible here? Certainly not. Do I claim to know what God is like, again no. But I can make claims about the universe we observe, and the logical inferences that can be drawn from it.
I wasn’t telling you. There’s wording above what you quoted showing that I was telling dazz. I was explaining that incoherence to dazz, not to you. You already knew that was incoherent. Reading comprehension phoodoo. Try and read carefully before exploding.
I have plenty or crackers, thank you.
I guess I didn’t make myself clear enough, “making models to explain the observations and to generate useful predictions” would definitely count as “explaining stuff, in as much detail as possible” in my book
No, I don’t
What do you mean by “more” detail? Are you admitting that there’s at least some detail in the explanations provided by evolutionary theory? LMFAO
There’s never enough data explained by evolution. Gaps is all you guys see. In the mean time, no attempt is made on your part to provide alternative explanations. Hypocrite and fallacious morons is what you are
No problem…
But while we are on the same page here and agree. let’s point out exactly where Bill and others jump tracks.
Bill asked me earlier about science and evolution – in his words:
How could I know?
I responded with a question, explaining I needed to know we were on common ground as far as science was concerned.
I asked him:
How do you “know” the earth goes around the sun and not vice versa, even though the Bible says otherwise?
He failed to answer the question… because all knowledge is tentative! That means the Theory of Evolution is no less and no more tentative than the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System.
Why?
Because science is about building models based on extrapolation. That applies to models of the solar system no differently than models of evolution.
The “truth” of one is no more or less “true” than the other.
Stephan Jay Gould said it first and he said it best:
Evolution is both Fact and Theory!
The example I use in class: Gravity is both Fact and Theory!
We use Newton’s Theory as a model to launch satellites into space and we use Einstein’s Theory to synchronize satellite clocks with Earth bound clocks because satellite run slower according to the Theory of Relativity.
http://wise.fau.edu/~tunick/courses/knowing/gould_fact-and-theory.html
I don’t remember anyone asking for “more detail” from creationists. We do ask for anything meaningful at all from creationists. For the first fact that they can explain sans unwarranted assumption.
They complain that we don’t explain everything, while we complain that they don’t explain anything. Both are correct, and somehow they can never understand how never explaining anything is actually far worse than not explaining everything.
Glen Davidson
It’s fluid
Fine. I was just curious as to what you may have as personal beliefs, aims, guidelines, goals.
I don’t see that. He doesn’t come across to me as “preachy”.
I agree that it’s difficult to try and put beliefs against facts.
Religious arguments to me seem to centre on emotional commitment. I prefer to hear your political comments. They have a frisson of down-to-Earthiness that your comments on biology lack.
Sure. But that follows from the emotional commitment.
Sure. But I haven’t noticed where you have done so.
Actually, no we don’t.
Hi Sal,
Interesting points, Sal. Personally, it wouldn’t bother me too much if your view of ID turned out to be correct.
I suspect that testability only applies to specific ID hypotheses, rather than to the hypothesis of Intelligent Design as a whole (“Someone did this”), which are too vague. For example, we might be able to test the hypothesis that there are “bursts” of Intelligent Design occurring with periodic regularity, once every 26 million years or so. That would (if tested and confirmed) link alleged cases of Intelligent Design to the approach of Sun’s hypothetical death star.
Just a quick question. What if astronauts on Mars found something like Arthur C. Clarke’s monolith? Would you infer design?
Well, maybe that’s because you have an emotional commitment to biology.
Why would you even say that?!
here is some reading material for you:
Not to mention General Relativity
for more: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html
It was Mung who said we shouldn’t complain when they ask for more detail about evolution.
Of course I agree with everything else you said there
I think that’s sort of the point about ID. At what point can ID be inferred through observation. There must be a point. And it is must mean that ID is science.
Because perhaps my education is better than yours, I don’t know.
Keep reading.
So the cosmos, life, the laws of nature…. and now we can add alien monoliths to the list of things ID is supposed to explain. Nice.
goddamit… I haven’t been around enough.
Now I am beginning to appreciate the exasperated frustration behind the epithet IDiot
discussion is futile and trolls out in full force
TomMueller,
Ok, well let’s keep this conversation for further reference, shall we?
In the meantime maybe keep reading.
There…must…be…a…point… Priceless.
That’s possible, maybe. But it tends to be supported by factual observation and experiment.
That’s it
I am out of here
last contribution before I go
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OAufD-uE-8Oa366J74pkfsy1FzRTJgiw/view