Atheists for Intelligent Design?
That’s the implication of an essay by philosopher Howard Kainz in First Things. Kainz discusses the work of several atheist academics whose work endorses, or at least respectfully entertains, arguments in favor of an intelligent designer of the universe. I had heard about Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (authors of “What Darwin Got Wrong”), but not Bradley Monton. Kainz:
Bradley Monton, in Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, in contrast to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, is not so much concerned with deficiencies in neo-Darwinism, but rather in pointing out unfairness and invalid criticisms of arguments by proponents of ID. Monton maintains he is looking for thetruth, wherever it leads.
Monton’s starting point is the recent trial, Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, which ended with a decision against a school board in Pennsylvania. The school board wanted to require a disclaimer read to 9th grade biology students, informing students of the existence of ID as an alternative theory regarding evolution. Judge John Jones in 2005, however, ruled against the school board. After hearing expert witnesses on both sides, he concluded that ID is a religious view and not science, and thus cannot be taught in public schools.
The reason given for the “non-scientific” nature of ID was that science had to be restricted to a naturalist methodology, prohibiting any approach or evidence which could bring in the supernatural. Monton considers such a restriction as completely arbitrary, and even offers some thought experiments showing how a supernatural agent could be detected through scientific methods. He mentions with approval some examples of two conversions of atheists to theism, on the basis of scientific evidence: The physicist, Fred Hoyle, whose atheism was “shaken” when he came to the conclusion in 1982 that some “superintellect” had “monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology”; and the famous philosopher, Anthony Flew, who in 2004 announced that he could no longer remain an atheist, largely because of his study of “fine-tuning” arguments in physics and the resistance of DNA evidence to any naturalistic explanation.
The Monton book has been out for a couple of years, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m intrigued. I confess that I hesitate to dive into any of this because, like 99 percent of the public, I lack the scientific expertise to fairly evaluate the arguments of either side. I am a theist who believes God created the universe. I don’t have a theological problem believing that He did so through natural selection, though if it were to be shown conclusively that there had to have been an element of design, I would simply say, “Of course,” and get on with it. I don’t see a bright line between the natural world and the supernatural world. Because I’m not committed to a fundamentalist, literal reading of Genesis, I don’t feel obliged, as a matter of logic and intellectual integrity, to say that either religion is correct or science is. Science and religion are not the same things, but I can see how, in this particular case, science helps me understand my religious beliefs better. I believe that Truth is One, and that science and religion are two different ways of knowing, but not necessarily contradictory ways of knowing. If you ask me which one is more trustworthy as a guide to answering a particular question, I would say that depends on the question — though it’s entirely possible that one way of knowing, while being less suitable as a guide to an answer, may still shed important light on the answer.
Now, on the ID controversy, I wish I had more confidence in my ability to parse through the arguments on either side, but I find that I’m reduced to the same condition that most of us are: having to take it on authority that this or that position is correct. It is very, very difficult as well to filter out confirmation bias, especially on such an emotionally charged topic. As neuroscience has shown, we are far more likely to credit authorities who confirm what we already believe, or wish to believe. To be clear, this doesn’t make the authority incorrect! I may wish to believe that chewing bubble gum cures cancer, but I would be a fool to believe the doctor who tells me that this is true over a doctor who says it’s nonsense. Still, we seem to be hard-wired for confirmation bias. Mercier & Sperber hypothesize (scientific paper here) that when we think we’re reasoning, we may actually be simply marshaling arguments to confirm our own biases — and that this is actually an evolutionary strategy for survival. As Jonathan Haidt put it in his discussion of the Mercier & Sperber paper:
Why is the confirmation bias, in particular— this is the most damaging one of all—why is the confirmation bias so ineradicable? That is, why do people automatically search for evidence to support whatever they start off believing, and why is it impossible to train them to undo that? It’s almost impossible. Nobody’s found a way to teach critical thinking that gets people to automatically reflect on, well, what’s wrong with my position?
And finally, why is reasoning so biased and motivated whenever self-interest or self-presentation are at stake? Wouldn’t it be adaptive to know the truth in social situations, before you then try to manipulate?
The answer, according to Mercier and Sperber, is that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That’s why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, and it’s here on your handout, “The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.”
Now, the authors point out that we can and do re-use our reasoning abilities. We’re sitting here at a conference. We’re reasoning together. We can re-use our argumentative reasoning for other purposes. But even there, it shows the marks of its heritage. Even there, our thought processes tend towards confirmation of our own ideas. Science works very well as a social process, when we can come together and find flaws in each other’s reasoning. We can’t find the problems in our own reasoning very well. But, that’s what other people are for, is to criticize us. And together, we hope the truth comes out.
But the private reasoning of any one scientist is often deeply flawed, because reasoning can be counted on to seek justification and not truth.
Anyway, my point is that the emotions are so strong around the issue of natural selection and intelligent design that it’s hard to know who, exactly, to trust. My default position is to go with the scientific consensus, which is against ID, but I have deep misgivings about that, because of the overwhelming hostility the scientific establishment has toward questioning the premises and conclusions of natural selection. The anger — the rage, really — of so many biologists at the thought of design in nature is so disproportionate that I cannot help but be skeptical about their conclusions. It doesn’t make them wrong, of course, but understanding how confirmation bias works, in part from understanding in retrospect how it has misshaped my own thinking, makes me doubtful that biologists are nearly as disinterested in the outcome of this discussion as they think they are. Remember what Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin said in the New York Review of Books:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
See? For Lewontin, the non-existence of God is assumed, and assumed absolutely. No evidence that points to an insufficiency of purely material explanations for physical reality can possibly be entertained. How is this any more honest than a theist who refuses to accept any evidence that would undermine the argument for God? I believe that many scientists, especially biologists, are so “religious” about the intelligent design issue because they want to believe God does not exist as much as a theist wants to believe the opposite. Mind you, the truth is the truth is the truth, and it doesn’t cease to be the truth because the “wrong” people believe it, or the truth challenges what we desperately want to believe. But the subjectivity of the investigator cannot be easily disentangled, if it can be disentangled at all, from the object of the investigation.
I find myself more willing to pay attention to the arguments of someone like Monton, who is committed to atheism, because at least that filters out a lot of the confirmation bias. That is, if someone like Monton sees reason to take design seriously, then attention must be paid. (Similarly, when theistic scientists, like Simon Conway-Morris, endorse natural selection, I’m more inclined to take them seriously). The astonishing thing about the discussion of intelligent design is how unrestrained the personal attacks on serious people who take ID the least bit seriously can be. On his blog, Monton discusses how raising questions, even from an atheistic standpoint, about the case against ID gets him personally savaged. For example, here. Excerpt:
Here’s another ad hominem charge against me: he accused me of ”self-serving career advancement”. I asked him how my taking a stand that leads to having to deal with criticisms like the ones he’s giving furthers my career, and he replied with something about increasing book sales. Well, it’s true that I want my ideas to be widely read, but there’s a difference between advancing one’s career and selling more books. One of my colleagues asked me just a couple days ago how I think my reputation will be affected once my book comes out, and I said that I’m pretty sure that my reputation will be negatively affected, because there’s so much animosity toward intelligent design, and yet I’m being more sympathetic to it than most atheists are. I’m not writing about intelligent design to further my career; I’m writing about intelligent design because I’ve seen a number of bad arguments on both sides, and I want to elevate the debate — that’s what will most further the cause of reason. I’m especially concerned, though, when I see bad arguments being given on the atheist side, because better arguments can and should be given. If the arguments that Klymkoswky gave represent the best arguments atheists can give against intelligent design, then the atheist position is in trouble.
Assuming Monton’s account of the Klymkoswky speech is accurate, then this is not disinterested scientific critique. This is personal invective. One sees this all the time. When preachers and religion apologists do it, you roll your eyes and move on. But when scientists do it, it’s far more disturbing, because they are, or ought to be, committed to dispassionate analysis. Here’s more of that kind of thing.
To be sure, Monton does not embrace intelligent design; how could he, as an atheist? Nor does he fully reject it. He only contends that the arguments against ID are not as strong as the anti-ID side thinks they are, and says in this lecture – if you listen, go past the garbled introduction, which lasts 4 minutes or so — that analyzing the arguments made him less committed to atheism than he was previously. Ah ha! He is less than a True Believer. Therefore, a threat.
Anyway, in the lecture, Monton says he is an atheist because he doesn’t believe the evidence for the existence of God is there. But ID argues that there is evidence in the natural world for the divine. That, Monton says, interests him, so he’s looking into it. He says if he could be shown plausible scientific evidence for the existence of God, he would cease to be an atheist. Because this is what ID claims — that the existence of God can be inferred from scientific evidence — he’s interested in examining the evidence.
What’s wrong with that? Seriously, what’s wrong with it? If this puts him in the camp of the impure, big deal. Says Monton: ”Bad people can still give good arguments. … I don’t care if they’re bad people or not. I don’t care about whether they’re trying to promote theocracy, or not. I care if their arguments are good, or not.”
Which is as it should be. And by the way, Monton seems a lot more persuaded by the arguments from physics for the fine-tuned universe than from anything in biology. This blurb from UNC-Chapel Hill philosopher John Roberts is another reason I’m interested in Monton’s book, and will probably order it:
“This is a brave and important book. Monton does not defend ‘intelligent design’ as true — he thinks it is most likely false. Instead, he defends it as a hypothesis worth taking seriously. He argues convincingly that it can be formulated as a scientifically testable hypothesis, and that there is some important empirical evidence for it — not as much evidence as its supporters claim there is, but some evidence. Virtually all voices in this debate insist either that ID is not even worth taking seriously or else that it is manifestly the truth. It is refreshing to see a talented philosopher give the thesis its due and make a serious attempt to weigh the evidence for and against it, without the weight of the ‘culture wars’ hanging over every sentence.”
One more thing: another scientific area where science matters far less than emotion is the whole global warming debate. As with evolution, my default position is toward the scientific consensus, but the personal vehemence with which the mainstream treats dissenters — less as dissenters than as heretics — makes me more sympathetic to the doubters than I otherwise would be. Whenever people are so ferociously eager to extirpate dissent, I can’t help wondering if maybe the dissenters are trying to tell us something we need to hear. Noting that the post-Katrina predictions that global warming was going to give us a world of mega-hurricanes has not come true, Walter Russell Mead writes sarcastically:
For those of you who are confused, let me remind you: the only meteorological phenomena that count are the ones that confirm the climate alarmist case. It doesn’t matter what it is — drought, flood, blizzard, heat wave — if it can be made to support fear about the climate, it matters and it needs to be thoroughly analyzed and widely publicized.
Meteorological phenomena that, to the unsophisticated, might appear to undermine the case that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don’t immediately pass a stringent carbon treaty, are meaningless and should be ignored.
People seem to be missing out on the crucial distinction between saying Intelligent Design isn’t science, and saying it isn’t credible. It ISN’T science. I tend to think it IS credible. Probably that’s what most of the critics of ID are saying, and I just wish they would say it more clearly.
“…the overwhelming hostility the scientific establishment has toward questioning the premises and conclusions of natural selection.”
There is no such hostility toward questioning the premises of evolution. There is hostility toward exponents of crappy alternate “theories” such as ID. Scientists have examined such “theories” and demolished them.
If you’d like to read such demolishings, you’re in luck. Just today PZ Myers has up a relevant post. It’s vituperative — he’s displaying the aforementioned hostility toward exponents of crappy “theories” — but (in the second half) also includes a number of links to actual demolishings, i.e., arguments by various writers showing that ID and its ilk are crap.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/lonely_broken-hearted_creation.php
So, read and learn, and it’ll be cleared up for you.
-Oss
Whoops, the post was from yesterday. Dot one’s i’s and cross one’s t’s…
1) you are quoting Richard Lewontin out of context. The following sentence in that article is: “The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” This is why naturalism is not arbitrary but necessary for science. If you allow an omnipotent god to explain anything, then that omnipotent god can explain everything, and the need to resort to counter intuitive physical explanations (such as that matter is made up of atoms, which are made up of protons and electrons) goes away. The point is not that belief in god is incompatible with belief in science, but that God can have no explanatory role in science whatsoever, because resort to God once undermines the entire enterprise.
Darwinian naturalists persistently use the term “creationist” to describe anyone who questions the theory of evolution. The term is meant to convey the notion that only a Genesis literalist could possibly oppose or question evolution. That they would use such a tactic shows how political their defense of the theory has become.
One thing I hate about the ID debate is how it jumps from one field of science to another. Cosmology is the study of the origin of the universe and the fine tuning debate is within this domain of science. A biology class wouldn’t touch on any of this.
The Dover case was about biology, not cosmology, and specifically about natural selection as a mechanism of evolution. Within the field of biology the evidence is clear that species are the result of decent with modification from a single common ancestor, and natural selection is the underlying mechanism. Of Pandas and People was an ID text book that was involved in the Dover case. One reason the ID-ers lost was when they made the new edition of their book they did a global search and replace for the word God and replace it with “Intelligent designer”. So the judge ruled their text was not science.
The reason science avoids the concept of God is not because of hostility to it. The problem is that God is a hypothesis that solves all problem, you can always say God did it. So by limiting yourself to natural mechanisms you are forced to look deeper into nature. Plus there’s no control group possible for God.
Cosmology is an immature science, as it has only been possible since the mid 20th century, and we only have one universe to study. So when there are claims of fine tuning of the universe, that implies there were choices in the values for such parameters. We don’t know if that is possible or if we live in the only possible universe.
Having read a book, I assume it has an author. Believing that the author herself has an Author requires no greater a leap of faith, because the author’s existence is more improbable than that of her own work.
For me, the point where it becomes imperative to reject Monton’s entire diatribe is here (bold added):
The reason given for the “non-scientific” nature of ID was that science had to be restricted to a naturalist methodology, prohibiting any approach or evidence which could bring in the supernatural. Monton considers such a restriction as completely arbitrary, and even offers some thought experiments showing how a supernatural agent could be detected through scientific methods.
Monton can decide that the law prohibiting public urination is arbitrary, and be just as correct until the full context is brought to the premise. At no point in the quoted text does Monton go back to basics, the actual points of the scientific method. One point — with a small apology to you, Rod — explicitly acknowledges confirmation bias and defines the protocols and procedures designed to eliminate it, and if that’s impossible then to minimize it and make sure it stays visible and acknowledged. Falsifiability, repeatability and peer review all cover bias.
Simply put, ID fails at every point to satisfy the scientific method. Until Monton finds a falsifiable, repeatable and peer reviewable method besides thought experiments to measure the existence of the supernatural, it remains correctly and completely barred from science.
I can only relate what I know about those scientists with whom I’m acquainted, particularly those who are themselves religious believers: The hostility is not towards religion. It is towards those religionists who clearly reject the very foundations of science because they want to teach their beliefs to children under the guise of “alternate theories”. They are not defending, in this case, natural selection. They are not rejecting any challenges to it. Indeed, I find such a charge — that they automatically reject challenges to their “Darwinian dogma” — beyond ridiculous, because that theory represents decades of elapsed time and tens of thousands of hours of human work challenging the prevailing wisdom of their time. Darwin did not give us stone tablets we still use. He started a process that the scientific method carried forward to the present, and will continue to refine it and reveal improvements, changes and even disproofs. If you don’t believe that is possible, just look at quantum theory and the Newtonian theories it has trashed. Better yet, read up on the development of plate tectonics.
MWorrell, we can observe the book and its author.
But who’s the author of the author’s author? If that author doesn’t have an author, then why assume the first author does?
Dreher: “But ID argues that there is evidence in the natural world for the divine.”
No. ID argues that there is evidence in the natural world for a designer. ID wants to leave it at that. Scientists can’t do that. Scientists have to ask how an intelligent designer would interact with the natural world. That poses a whole host of new problems, fantastical problems. Natural selection may have its own problems to solve, but it’s still a simpler hypothesis than assuming a divine creator. ID adherents are free to assume the more fantastical hypothesis, but they shouldn’t be surprised if orthodox scientists tend to disregard their theories until they overcome the burden of Occam’s Razor.
The line between the supernatural and the natural world is absolute. The Creator is not the creation. Further, the Creator who values faith so that it is requisite for salvation, would not leave a clear fingerprint behind and render faith moot; for then failure of faith would be a failure in reason, and reason does not save or damn.
ID is doomed to failure (in my opinion, as a believer) because the answer can not be found “out there”, anywhere. A scientist, no matter how personally and vociferously godless, proceeds correctly in his field when he does not ascribe any observation to divinity. If a scientist claims that his observations render the divine an impossibility, he is out of his depth and need not be taken seriously. This is a mercy, when confronted with tedious people like Dawkins.
The famous failed attempt at universally replacing “creator” with “intelligent designer” in an ID “textbook” is all you need to see to understand scientists’ well-earned hostility and hatred towards the concept. The whole thing is a bad faith con job, cooked up none too cleverly in the latest attempt to undermine science curricula. If it was just a thought exercise with no obvious incontrovertible lying behind it and no policy sledgehammer corps taking it up at every opportunity, I’m sure the scientific community would be fine with calmly discussing (and dismissing) it.
If it was just a thought exercise with no obvious incontrovertible lying behind it and no policy sledgehammer corps taking it up at every opportunity, I’m sure the scientific community would be fine with calmly discussing (and dismissing) it.
You’re sure of this? Really?
Rod, TTT is right about the “Of People and Pandas” fracas.
The reaction scientists have to discussing God varies with the field. No one wants to teach intelligent falling or quarks having free will, so physicists (except for cosmologists) don’t have to deal with this debate. Some of them like Fred Hoyle will even say things like “The universe was a put up job”.
But biologists have had to bear the brunt of the fundamentalist incursions into science, so they’ve gotten somewhat touchy. It’s probably no accident that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are both biologists.
“You’re sure of this? Really?”
Why ought they discuss it? To what benefit, and to whom? It (ID) isn’t natural science. It isn’t theology. It isn’t the doctrine of any established religion of which I am aware, it isn’t even dogma. Neither hot nor cold. You know what to do.
[If it was just a thought exercise with no obvious incontrovertible lying behind it and no policy sledgehammer corps taking it up at every opportunity, I’m sure the scientific community would be fine with calmly discussing (and dismissing) it.
You’re sure of this? Really?]
I’m sure if it. Because until very recently that was exactly what happened. Until the rise of the religious right in the ’80s science and religion were not at odds at all, at least not in the public square. It was the political actions of the right that insisted that religion was not a matter of faith but had to be literally true. At the start it was creationists and when it was clear that the courts would not consider allowing schools to teach that, it became ID, which is creationist theory in a lab coat and glasses.
Most scientists don’t care what people of any religion believe. They care that those people use their political power to declare it true and to then formulate policy based on it. Scientists know what happens when you let the likes of Lysenko loose on the world and are prepared to fight it tooth and nail. As they should.
Re: Until the rise of the religious right in the ’80s science and religion were not at odds at all, at least not in the public square.
Um, ever hear of the Scopes trial? That was back in the 20s. In reality evolution has always been controversial, and there have always been church groups that fought against its inclusion in school curricula.
Just as for Jesse Jackson, it is Always And Everywhere Selma, 1965, for certain scientists and their fellow travelers, it is Always And Everywhere Dayton, 1925. By which I mean, the science-and-religion issue is never more complex than the absolute right-and-wrong of the Scopes template. Similarly, with Jackson, there can’t be any progress or gray areas. The moral panic around the issue makes that impossible.
I’m not going to take one side or the other on this one. I refuse to be dragged into another debate that does not present a hindrance to my faith. Rather, I will say that the single greatest flaw I find in qualifying ID as science is that it doesn’t quite meet at least one Hallmark of Science. The hallmarks of science are guidelines that determine what is or is not a scientific endeavor. If I remember correctly, they are: 1) all experiments must be repeatable; 2) all claims must be falsifiable; 3) Occam’s Razor: the simpler of 2 equivalent explanations is given priority.
Essentially, since we’ve never replicated the creation of life (let alone discovered any significance of life elsewhere), it is practically impossible to recreate intelligent design. Further, we can make the claim that God doesn’t exist (not a claim I make), but, as of now, it cannot be empircally proven or disproven (disclaimer: not saying faith or religion should be empiricized). Granted, as for the first hallmark, we can’t replicate macrocosmic evolution. This is why it can’t be qualified as scientific law.
Honestly, this is one of those moments where I really like my former astronomy professor’s take on science vs religion: “They are two separate languages talking about the same things in different ways.”
[Um, ever hear of the Scopes trial? That was back in the 20s. In reality evolution has always been controversial, and there have always been church groups that fought against its inclusion in school curricula.]
[The trial saw modernists, who said religion was consistent with evolution, against fundamentalists who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The trial was thus both a theological contest, and a trial on the veracity of modern science regarding the creation-evolution controversy. The teaching of evolution expanded, as fundamentalist efforts to use state laws to reverse the trend had failed in the court of public opinion.]
Yes I have. It’s where the religious fundamentalists lost their ability to dictate public policy based on the teachings of the bible.
_The Language of God_, by Dr. Francis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project and a devout Christian), is a good primer on genetics, evolution, and the synthesis of faith and science.
It’s got a good critique of Intelligent Design, which, capitalized, is not the same as lowercase intelligent design. Many fundamental principles of capitalized ID have been refuted in recent years. ID’s flaw seems to be inserting God wherever today’s (now yesterday’s) science doesn’t have an answer. I.e., He’s a “God of the gaps,” who has to retreat with each successive scientific discovery.
for certain scientists and their fellow travelers, it is Always And Everywhere Dayton, 1925. By which I mean, the science-and-religion issue is never more complex than the absolute right-and-wrong of the Scopes template.
Actually, I’d say the Dover case was even more simple and absolute than Scopes, and involved far more evil. The defining book about the case is called “Monkey Girl” because that’s the epithet used against the children of local families who didn’t want ID taught in their schools.
As a biologist and former science teacher, I wish we lived in the good old days of Scopes.
Coming to this late, but oh, well.
First, I’d point out that Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are both distinguished PhD.’s in biology (the former directed the Human Genome Project, the latter has taught at Harvard); moreover, they are both practicing Christians (Evangelical and Catholic, respectively). Neither has the slightest truck with Intelligent Design (henceforth ID), and the latter has even written a book rebutting it (though not specifically aimed at ID, Collins’s excellent The Language of God is a defense of evolutionary science).
The fact that these are both practicing, believing Christians who also are trained in the science in question, biology, and who are additionally highly respected and proficient in their field counts enormously in my view. If they think there’s no good evidence for ID, I’m strongly inclined to agree (to the limited extent that I’m familiar with the biological arguments, it seems to me that their side is correct, anyway; but they know far more about it than I ever will).
For that matter, the Catholic philosopher (and conservative to boot) Edward Feser has argued many times against ID from the perspective of Thomist philosophy.
If you carefully note the ID defenders who actually have degrees in science, almost none of them are in biology. For example, one of ID’s best-known proponents, William Dembski, has degrees in math, psychology, and philosophy.
The only ID proponent I can think of who actually is a biologist of some note is Michael Behe. Please note that he still accepts that humans and chimps share common descent, that the cosmos is billions of years old, that all life on Earth has common origins, that Darwinian evolution by natural selection actually occurs, etc. His main thing is the origins of protein synthesis (on which topic Collins and Miller strongly disagree with him); but the point is he actually agrees with 90% + of mainstream evolutionary theory. This is in contrast to most of the other prominent ID theorists who are either young-Earth creationists or who are cagey about saying what they actually believe.
The point is that even believers who actually are trained in biology reject ID, and even the one biologist who supports it is in some ways almost a liability to it. This, to me, is highly significant.
Second, consider this. If there were loads of Jews, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Sikhs, Daoists, Buddhists, and such promoting ID; and if they were representatives of both the liberal and conservative wings of their respective faiths; then I’d consider that given the diversity of religious views involved, there was no common agenda being advanced, and that there might be something worth taking a look at in regard to ID. I notice, though, that almost all ID proponents are not only Christian, but conservative Evangelicals. There is David Klinghoffer, an Orthodox Jew, and Behe, who is Catholic; but they are the proverbial “exceptions that prove the rule”.
Finally, submitted for your approval the infamous Wedge Strategy developed and promoted (but very secretively and quietly) by the Discovery Institute, the main bastion of ID. This document is explicit in arguing that the assault on evolution is not a matter of going where the evidence leads, but of defeating materialism and secularism and orienting the US to a conservative Evangelical worldview in theology, morality, and so on. Please note that Phillip E. Johnson, the Discovery Institute founder, is a young-Earther and literalist Fundamentalist, as are most other DI members, so we’re not talking about returning to traditional morality, but a version of it not congenial to Catholics, Orthodox, or non-Fundamentalist Christians in general, let alone other faiths.
Thus, not only do believers who know the topic not buy ID; not only do most non-Christian theists buy it; but it can be shown that it’s actually a Trojan horse designed to capture and re-shape our culture. For all these reasons, I think that it not only doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but must be vigorously opposed as being untrue, lacking integrity, and as mounting a secret assault on the values of those of us (even religious conservatives) who are not Fundamentalists and young-Earthers.
In general, on another note, I’d agree completely with Franklin’s and MH’s takes on this.
Regarding physics, I think the fine-tuning of the cosmos is interesting and may be significant; but that’s not biology, and it is open to both theistic and non-theistic interpretation. I don’t think God’s existence can be decisively proved in a definitive way (after all, if it could, it wouldn’t be faith, right?); so certainly trying to do so with science is barking up the wrong tree. On the other hand, I think the existence of God (contra the New Atheist types) isn’t inherently incoherent, contradictory, or repugnant to reason. In short, I don’t think either theists or atheists can definitively prove the other side wrong. Given which, IMO, we should try to all do good science, respect each other, quit yelling at each other, quit doing all the stuff the Discovery Institute is trying to pull off, shut up with the New Atheist stuff, and try to all get along.
Like that’s gonna happen–sigh!
Oops–the above should have read, “not only do most non-Christian theists not buy it [ID]“. Sorry about that!
The anger — the rage, really — of so many biologists at the thought of design in nature is so disproportionate that I cannot help but be skeptical about their conclusions.
The problem with this line of argument, Rod, is that I really wonder who, besides the A-list of current pop-science skeptics like Dawkins and PZ Myers, you are talking about?
When I talk to working biologists, I don’t get any sense of “rage”. What I do get, however, is exasperation at having to make the same points over and over again to evolution skeptics–creationists and IDers–who simply ignore what they say, and keep re-iterating the same shopworn “problems with evolution” (irreducible complexity, etc).
It’s the slow realization that the “other side” really doesn’t want to have a discussion. And they don’t want to find out what scientists are actually working on, what questions they are focused on in the field.
If Dawkins, Myers and the more sarcastic ones all stopped writing books today, it would make no difference to the progress of evolution research–as you can see from a glance at the contents of any issue of Science, Nature, or Cell.
The science would go on.
If Behe, Dembski, Meyer and the other IDers (all on the same payroll by the way) stopped writing today…you’d never hear another word about ID. Because there’s no peer-reviewed research. There’s just a sham lab out in Seattle, funded by Christian Dominionists, who want to make it look like there’s a “there” there.
There isn’t.
Red Emma: The notion that there IS an “intelligent design” is more than credible. The curriculum that has been labeled by its authors “Intelligent Design” is an attempt to insinuate this notion be means of “scientific proof.” That is fundamentally what is wrong with ID. It is clumsy, mechanistic, and in order to provide faux scientific evidence for “an unknown god,” that can be slipped into biology class, it attempts to squeeze a transcendent deity into a box the human mind can fully grasp.
A much better approach has been outlined by Simon Conway Morris, a biologist at Cambridge and a Christian, who points to “convergence” in the evolution of different biological functions, rather than mechanistically trying to “prove” that “God did it.”
ID truly is a specimen of “liberal creationism.” It’s no coincidence that many of the articles at the Discovery Institute accuse Darwinists of “racism.” ID meets Cultural Marxism.
Nevermind the fact that ID isn’t even a falsifiable theory (something even Behe will admit) and shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone with an IQ over 90.
and shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone with an IQ over 90.
See, this is exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off. Though I believe in God, I don’t believe in ID, and accept that some form of natural selection accounts for our biological development. But I only believe that based on the authority of scientists. Still, I really hate that some people who disbelieve in ID can’t simply say that it’s a false theory; they have to add, “and people who take it seriously are mentally retarded.” It’s that culture-war spitefulness — and that’s exactly what it is — that rubs me the wrong way.
Three points. First, I will repeat the earlier commenter’s charge that you have taken the Lewontin quotation out of context. Lewontin says he “excludes” God not because he wishes a priori to exclude a particular kind of explanation, but because he believes an omnipotent God is substantively and fundamentally not an explanation at all. He might be correct or mistaken, but intellectual honest demands you represent his views accurately. The entire article is available for free:
http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm
Second, the kind of “authority” on which one takes scientific truth outside of one’s field is substantively and fundamentally different from the kind of authority exercised by the religious. It takes time and effort to understand enough of the process and methodology of any particular scientific discipline to intellectually legitimatize the expertise of scientists in that discipline, but the effort is possible for even the curious layman. In contrast, I’ve found no way to legitimatize any religious authority, try as I might.
Finally, the “culture-war spitefulness” is not entirely — and, I would argue not primarily — a fault of the scientific community. Whether you like it or not, the culture war between science and religion has been enthusiastically promoted by the religious (n.b. the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document). I’m not a lily-livered “why can’t we all just get along” confrontation-phobe. Religious conservatives and reactionaries have their agenda, and they use the tools at their disposal to promote it. Good for them. We have our agenda, and we’ll use the tools we believe are effective. If you want to argue they’re not persuading you personally, that’s fine (although of minimal value: no individual tactic will persuade everyone), but it’s just hypocrisy to say that when both sides use some tool such as ridicule, it undermines only one side and not the other.
Rod: Still, I really hate that some people who disbelieve in ID can’t simply say that it’s a false theory; they have to add, “and people who take it seriously are mentally retarded.”
That’s a point, to an extent, but consider the following:
One, most of the prominent ID advocates are young-Earthers (though they’re often quite cagey about stating this explicitly in public debates)–they believe that the universe is only about 6000 years old and the Genesis account it literally true. Now, even if one were to accept the subtler form of ID endorsed by someone like Michael Behe, I know enough physics to tell you that the possibility of this being true is zero. Young-Earth creationism is truly in the same league as belief that the Earth is flat.
Now, to believe that the cosmos is 6000 years old–or that Earth is flat–is not a sign of mental retardation. Highly intelligent people believe all kinds of ridiculous, manifestly incorrect, or just plain weird stuff. However, if a person believes something that is manifestly ridiculous and wants to promote belief in the same as a way of influencing public policy or trying to propagate his beliefs–in short, to try to teach my child that Earth is flat or to force her school to teach Flat-Earth-ism–then I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to fight such actions by showing how ridiculous these beliefs are–that is, by ridicule.
I’d point out that if you read the stuff by your former Beliefnet co-blogger David Klinghoffer, or watch the execrable pro-ID movie Expelled, that the other side has no problem saying far worse things about its ideological opponents than calling them “retarded”. There are all kinds of tropes blaming Darwin and supporters of evolution for all the 20th Century abuses of their theories–Social Darwinism, eugenics, Nazism, the Holocaust, and so on. A good discussion of this and how looney it is by Derbyshire is over here.
The thing is, as I said regarding the Wedge Strategy, and as John Farrell and Larry also point out, the pro-ID side is not about science, but about pushing a theological agenda covertly, and their side is not going to “play nice” if scientists respectfully listen, don’t call names, and give them a seat at the table. Heck, a Flat Earther doesn’t deserve a place at the table, any more than does someone who thinks 2 + 2 = 84.5
As I said, when large numbers of non-Evangelical Christians start supporting ID, and when the proponents actually start producing original research (and the complaint that no one will hire them or give them labs is spurious–why don’t the DI and the deep-pocketed supporters pay for researchers to do it on their dime?) instead of propaganda, then it will be time to take ID seriously. Until then, there’s no reason for a truce with forces who don’t want to expand science, but subvert it for cultural and religious ends.
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The culture war spitefulness is not primarily the fault of the scientific community. There are, of course, science teachers who will rub each class’s nose in their personal choice to interpret the data as support for atheism, and get quite spiteful about it. But they are not particularly common. They just get played up as poster children to salve the wounded pride of the creationists.
I think Rod’s ultimate point was that snide remarks about people’s intelligence is not necessary, and undermines respect for the point of view being offered. Just because ID people are enaged in a covert strategy to push a theological agenda, just because they don’t play nice, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t rely on soberly presented facts and evidence. If we’re going to use humor, it should be funny, not spiteful.
Further, as someone whose IQ has been measured as low as 70, I resent being cast as part of the ID crowd based on a meaningless statistic. (It has also been measured as high as 145).
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