I’m with you. I don’t believe there is any such thing as scientifically recognizable disembodied “intelligence.” The only intelligence we can recognize scientifically as intelligence, we can compare to our own embodied experience with the intelligence of natural beings. We would not be able to scientifically identify aliens as the source of intelligence until we had natural experience with them.
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In your picture of things that are “natural”, I see God’s design, as a Christian. I don’t see how science could determine that though.
When we see a rock that might be an arrowhead, we only know to look closer at it because we have seen humans create arrowheads. We know the smoke stacks and computers and drawings of aliens are created by humans because we’ve seen them created by humans.
How exactly would a scientist determine if a biological function is designed or not? All I’ve seen from the ID movement so far is arguments of incredulity (such as irreducible complexity, which turned out to not be so irreducible).
I guess I’m making an arguement of incredulity about how to detect design. 
But you’re making the claim that science should include the idea of a designer, and I think we’ll need more information on how exactly to do that. And again, since I know the designer you have in mind is supernatural (as I also believe), I don’t know how we would detect supernatural design. You said to take supernatural out of it, but that would leave us with only design by designers that we have physically encountered, and that would specifically exclude God. Surely you don’t want to do that.
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I think I shared the following hypothetical elsewhere recently… but Consider the very conceivable possibility that humans could soon figure out how to tinker with DNA, develop designer genes, insert completely new and artificially constructed sequences to accomplish certain new or improved significant biological functions.
Now, imagine that some major catastrophe nearly wiped out civilization, then, 1000 years from then, humans discover anew how to sequence the human genome.
Would you maintain it would be entirely impossible - literally no conceivable way - that humans could examine their genetics, and determine if certain functions, and or their underlying genetics, were in fact designed by previous generations of humans?
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I would continue to maintain that theology ought to be left out. If there was something discovered in the genetic code, for instance, that somehow everyone agreed was of such a nature that it was clearly designed (say for the argument, some extended sequence of “junk DNA” in a whale that, when decoded, was word for word the first 30 chapters of genesis in Hebrew)…
I would still myself refrain from making any specific theological conclusions. I might lean toward suspecting God to be that intelligence, for my own theological reasons. But a committed atheist could see and recognize that obvious design and still maintain alternate theories: Contamination, fraud, previously undiscovered early advanced civilizations, alien influence, etc. I also personally speculate on if angels were his actual tools for accomplishing various biological feats. For that matter, God could have hypothetically taken on some kind of entirely natural human form, used other forms of alien life, or who knows what.
The specific means by which The design got into the genetics, in my far-fetched hypothetical case, would remain something for theologians or philosophers to debate. They could debate the specific identity of the designer in other words, but I would maintain that conclusion remained outside the realm of science. There is no scientific test we can do on DNA to tell if my hypothetically obvious design came from God himself, an angel, an extinct human civilization, an alien, or the like. The specific identity of said designer, even in such a far-fetched illustration, would have to simply be and remain “indeterminable by scientific methods”.
In other words, I concur it is impossible (logically absurd, in fact) to speak of “detecting supernatural design.”
I’m pretty sure that train has already left the station. What is the expectation of finding God’s fingerprints on creation if not an effect of a theological conclusion? I’ll never understand why so many insist on assigning God that function.
Would there be no other rationale for esteeming God unless everything empirical were reducible to His intentions? What if He too, meaning that to whom people have long turned for succor and understanding, were Himself a manifestation of the universe’s evolution? Would that render your relationship with Him invalid?
At the very least it would certainly render our understanding as of Him to whom we presume to relate as being seriously inaccurate - or based on a falsehood of the most fundamental sort. Sure - we obviously relate to many things of creaturely status including even and especially the incarnate Christ Himself. But if God is merely another member of the universe (like a Zeus or an absentee landlord or a superman) then this category mistake of Christian Theism would run so deep that I cannot see how any Christian theism could survive it.
[…though I must add… Lewis’ words do give me pause to carefully consider my “philosophical commitment” above when he asked (in essence) … If we heard a voice that we knew unmistakably to be His say: ‘my child, they have misled you and I cannot do for you anything toward securing the eternal bliss you hoped for’ … would that then be a reason for us to turn our backs on Him? Would it not be better to, in despair, join Odin in his fight against the monsters even if only to die with him? (or words to that effect … hopefully my memory hasn’t scrambled Lewis’ meanings too badly.)
And yet; I can’t help but think that my ‘commitment’ above remains as solid ground even on Lewis’ terms - his hypothetical scenario notwithstanding.]
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Those who endorse ID are, whatever their personal beliefs, refraining from importing “God” into their science. They may well believe the designer to be a God, but when they do their science, they are not trying to find “God’s fingerprints” in creation, simply (to follow the analogy), “are there, or are there not, fingerprints?” Belief in God is consistent with the claims of ID, but the two are not related.
When Hubble discovered evidence of the expanding universe, and therefore a “beginning” to creation (which I understand, to that point, was hardly scientific consensus)… he was not to my knowledge doing so because he wanted to defend Genesis 1:1 and claim the universe had a beginning so that he could affirm a theological belief. he espoused the idea because that is what he saw in the cosmos, regardless of whether it helped, or hindered, any particular theological conclusion.
The fact that the universe having a beginning is found by Christians to be consistent with their theological belief in a finite universe and a creation does not mean that any Christian who espouses big bang cosmology is doing so for theological motives, or because they are “expecting to find evidence of God’s activity in creation.”
Ideally, they are doing so because that is what they see in creation.
I can speak for myself. I personally would not lose a wink of sleep if, after examining the evidence, I found I could not find God’s “fingerprints” in creation. I can appreciate, though I disagree, with the basic EC system. I am a Calvinist who believes that God controls and orders all of creation, every single thing that happens right now… I speculate that God could be directing and ordering events and bringing them to intended outcomes through means so subtle (perhaps even at the quantum level) that they would be undetectable by our empiric science.
The reason I am sympathetic to the ID perspective is not because I want to find God’s fingerprint, that I have a need or desire to find theology in my biology. I generally would be a very happy and content EC supporter. It is simply not what I find when I look at the evidence as I see it. I see “fingerprints” so to speak. Not because I have an expectation of seeing God’s fingerprints, but simply because when I look, I see fingerprints. Granted this is consistent with my belief in God, but a lack of fingerprints would also be consistent with my belief in God, and I could easily embrace an EC perspective. I personally happen to see fingerprints because I see them.
Oddly enough, all I see hen I examine arguments from Darwin supporters (whether Christian or not) are, essentially, what come across to me as arguments from credulity.
If genetic engineering were involved, I would think we’d expect to not see the nested hierarchy of common descent that we see today. I don’t know if not seeing common descent would lead them to seeing a designer. At most, it might obfuscate what really happened, leaving those humans with an inability to figure out what happened. I would expect them to continue trying to figure out what happened, rather than stopping and saying, “This must have been designed!” There are a lot of points along the way where we could have done that with biology today, but instead of stopping at design, we continued looking and found mechanisms.
Now I think the whole evolutionary process is designed, and I agree with you about God’s ability to work in the world, possibly through quantum physics undetected (though I’m not a Calvinist, so I don’t think He’s manipulating every single thing at all times - I don’t think we can know how much He manipulates or what He manipulates).
The scenario you give, with the obfuscated designer, doesn’t seem to match up with the God of the Bible, who says the heavens declare His glory. Now I do see God’s finger prints all over, but I don’t see where He specifically needed to intervene (like giving a nudge at some “edge of evolution” to get over a hump in a process He created in the first place and could perfectly well have created to get over that hump on its own). Since all natural processes are created by God, something occurring naturally is still designed by God. I feel like the ID movement is separating God from nature, implying that if it’s natural, it wasn’t God.
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An additional observation, maybe #9 to my initial list above, is that no less a luminary then Francis Collins himself seems perfectly willing and ready to discard methodological naturalism, and tentatively entertain a design hypothesis, when it comes to the question of origin of life…
Another issue, however—one where I am very puzzled about what the answer will be—is the origin of life. Four billion years ago, the conditions on this planet were completely inhospitable to life as we know it; 3.85 billion years ago, life was teeming. That is a very short period—150 million years—for the assembly of macromolecules into a self-replicating form. I think even the most bold and optimistic proposals for the origin of life fall well short of achieving any real probability for that kind of event having occurred. Is this where God entered? Is this how life got started? I am happy to accept that model, but it will not shake my faith if somebody comes up with a model that explains how that the first cells formed without divine intervention. Again, watch out for the God-of-the-gaps. However, I think it is noteworthy that this particular area of evolution, the earliest step, is still very much in disarray.
If he is willing to entertain the possibility that the first life was so designed, then the principle of recognizing design, and/or recognizing the limits of blind and unguided natural processes, seems legitimate.
Thus the difference between Francis Collins and Stephen Meyer is not one of actual underlying principle of whether it is appropriate to recognize intentional design as a legitimate alternate hypothesis of natural explanations fail, but simply a matter of when or how often to do so, no?
If human genetic engineering goes anywhere like what I see in mechanical engineering or computer engineering, then I would expect to see such nested hierarchy, evidence of common descent, vestiges of earlier models, etc.
I am still astounded that in my current windows I can find vestiges of MS-DOS, and I don’t even want to tell you about certain parts and systems on our most modern submarines that are identical to the boats we used in WWII.
Therein lies my deepest concern with the entire methodological naturalism approach. It is all but guaranteed to ensure that the inquirer will not arrive at the correct conclusion if the actual truth, in fact, is that said phenomenon was designed. In this hypothetical example I laid out, that method or approach will all but guarantee an inability for a future scientist to recognize or identify what is true. Rather than allowing a hypothetical future scientist to ever recognize the truth that a particular biological system was humanly engineered, this method will ensure he misses it, and (forever?) pursues erroneous alternatives and never (even tentatively) arrives at the true conclusion… because… Science!
But again, we don’t do this for forensics or SETI. Why not? Why are they allowed to recognize design? Why ought we not expect them to continue trying to figure out what happened, rather than stopping and saying, “this must have been intentional!”
The more I think about it, this episode is a perfect case study to make my point. I don’t know if any of you are interested, able, willing, or desiring to get a hold of it and watch it, but this perfectly illustrates my qualms.
Ultimately, my concern with MN is the core philosophy, and if the approach to truth is or is not valid, useful, and able to assist us in arriving at what is true.
I would love to Imagine someone completely devoted to methodological naturalism watching this episode. When the Federation scientists determined that certain parts of this DNA were in fact purposefully designed and intentionally set into the genetic code, I can imagine my hypothetical MN-devotee screaming at the television, “ why are they so quickly assuming intentional design in the DNA!! That isn’t ‘Science’! They should continue to indefinitely explore every other natural alternative!!!“
I’ll have to go watch that episode. I thought I had seen all of them, but I don’t recall that one offhand. I can always enjoy me some Picard. 
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In humans maybe, but our relation to other life would clearly diverge. I don’t think we’d have a need to genetically engineer chimps the same way we would humans. And once 1000 years have gone by without said genetic engineering, the evidence of common descent we have today would be lost, wouldn’t it?
Isn’t that getting into scientism though? Science won’t find all truth.
I see two scenarios presented here:
- Humans genetically alter life and its not detectable a thousand years later, so truth isn’t found because of MN.
- Life appears designed despite having known mechanisms that cause those design features. Truth is not found if MN is not used, since someone stops at “design” and stops looking for a natural means.
So scenario #1 has actual design as the truth, and scenario #2 has no design as the truth. How do we know which course to take? And again, how do we scientifically detect design by a supernatural being, since that’s ultimately what you and I believe?
I’m with Dr. Collins on the origin of life. It could be a miraculous supernatural event (which wouldn’t be detected by science). It could be a natural event (which theologically, I’d insert God as the cause of the conditions that created it). So while we have no scientific answer, we continue to search for that answer. If it’s a supernatural miraculous event, we won’t scientifically find an answer. I don’t know how “design” helps us scientifically, because again, this is a supernatural event in the case of a designer. If reality is that extraterrestrials started life on Earth, that just kicks the can down the road without really answering the question. Because those beings would be natural beings created somehow.
Now if life occurs in a lab by setting up just the right conditions such that chemistry happens and now we have life, I’ll just say, “Cool! Maybe that’s how God did it!” My concern is for the people who are saying it MUST have been a miraculous supernatural event. God of the gaps can be dangerous in those cases, as the gaps close (new ones form, of course, because science!).
I don’t mean to overstate, but I honestly am so glad we can agree even that far.
So that is essentially where I am, if that is interesting. I had grown up being taught the Darwinian theory, and as a child and teenager, had no significant qualms about it. I had later been exposed to creationism, and while interesting, I found myself somewhat skeptical Partly because I knew I didn’t know nearly enough to judge between the claims one way or the other.
( in fact, if interesting, I clearly remember hearing a creationist speak about the ridiculous odds of a single protein coming together by chance, and as a teenager, I instinctively myself thought in my brain, sure, it may have tremendous odds against it, but the opposing theory assumes countless years and countless opportunities, so it Probably is not as astounding odds as you suggest)
It was when starting my biology major (Which I never finished) And I started pulling through the actual raw data of how biology works that I seriously grew increasingly skeptical of Darwinian processes to accomplish the astounding feats attributed to it.
So now, when I look at a biological system, I instinctively see 2 things simultaneously:
A) I see an obviously natural system, that gets along just fine, that seems to follow certain principles, that interacts quite well with all the other basic laws of chemistry and physics, and I see certain changes that occur across generations that needed no intelligent guidance or intervention of any kind, That resulted from strictly blind, unguided, and entirely natural processes.
B) I also see all manner of astounding intricate complex design, especially at the cellular level. Complex and astoundingly intricately designed machinery, database systems, decoding systems, transportation networks, and all the like. And then add the macro level I see other stunning achievements of engineering; flight and echolocation perhaps the most astounding to me, and both of those claimed to have a rose blindly multiple times by convergent evolution.
So I am essentially, in a sense, staring at that proverbial arrowhead when I look at biology. I could honestly go either way. I can imagine a scenario where God achieved these feats using means that were entirely undetectable, and unable to be differentiated from what we call natural. Simultaneously, I have reason to doubt that natural processes, however coaxed by God, can adequately explain what we see.
So here I am looking at my arrowhead, and I think it worth exploring both alternatives. Were biological systems a result of blind chance following the course of unguided natural forces (a completely natural rock that happens to look like an arrowhead?) however those processes were designed by God behind the scenes, or are they of such specific complexity and design that unguided nature is simply not nearly as adequate an explanation as intentional design?
I for one am interested in fully exploring both theories. And that is my core issue with what is presented as methodological naturalism. Essentially, right after I make known my willingness to explore both options, I am told, “Stop! Cease! Desist! Thou shalt not appeal to deign! You must only allow natural (I.e., unintelligent) explanations in your science. You are trying to smuggle theology into science!” Etc., etc.
But from where I stand, it is clearly begging the question. There seem two clearly legitimate alternatives: the A) design hypothesis, and the B) natural hypothesis. And “scientists” then tell me, “no, we will not even consider option A. It is unscientific, we will not even give that one a glance. We will only explore option B. Then they do all their research, come back, and tell me they have concluded that said biological feature is the result, not of design, but of natural forces.
Right. Do you see, from my point of view, why this is singularly uninteresting to me? How it begs the very question I was asking?
- I ask, “was the arrowhead-shaped rock designed, or is it simply natural?”
- I am told, “I won’t even consider the possibility that it was designed, let me find a natural explanation.”
- Then my friend does his research, comes back, and says, “I have concluded that this rock is not designed.”
sigh.
if the rock was designed, my friend’s method will guarantee he will never recognize it as such.
To borrow and paraphrase from Lewis yet again (he was speaking about something slightly different but his logic is particularly relevant]…
Those who assume [a methodology that excludes considering design] are merely wasting their time by looking into the [science]: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.
For what it is worth, I have no problem (in fact, I would endorse the idea most strongly) that if and when someone arrives at a conclusion of design, they ought hold that tentatively, and like all good science, continue to test that theory, seek counter-evidence, explore alternate models, be willing to further question it, etc.
I would never want a scientist to stop at design, or to ever stop exploring alternate theories.
What I object to is the absolute and total prohibition from allowing a scientist to even consider design, much less allow him to hold it as even a tentative conclusion or working hypothesis.
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If the mission of science is to understand how things work with the hope that some of what we discover may be useful, why should it matter so much if things were designed or not? Of course science also helps us understand how things have gotten to the state in which we find them. For these questions created vs evolved could be relevant. But if, as in that Star Trek TNG episode, the design we find turns out to be from an earlier civilization of intelligent life forms … what does it matter? Seemingly that just kicks the can down the road and back in time so that we might ask for what purpose that race of beings created the thing. The appeal of that episode doesn’t take you back to a de novo creator, only to an intermediary.
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This happens with older artifacts. A sharp edged piece of flint may have been cleaved off while rolling down a stream, and it is actually pretty hard to tell the difference between it a crude tool. I have a flint scraper from the Sahara desert that I wonder if is natural or manmade, as functional but crude. I’ll go back and look to see if intentional flaking patterns exist, but it is claimed huge numbers of artifacts are in North Africa so I think it is real. Some argue for naturalistic causes of them however. (Sort of ironic, isn’t it. The young earth folk arguing for naturalistic rocks and the old earth arguing for manmade artifacts!)
Your point is a good one but I still I wonder how you would determine is design was present, especially if you find a plausible mechanism for a naturalistic cause. In the case of DNA, to go to your submarine analogy, if you found a part that functioned in a WWII sub but was made of a titanium alloy unknown to that era, you would know it was later put there. With DNA, you could look at ERVs and mutations to see if they were appropriate to the context of the rest of the DNA. If you saw a sequence found only in bacteria, or if a de novo segment was found unrelated to any other DNA, you know something fishy was going on. In fact, that very thing in done to see if GMO genes are present in plants and animals. I may have posted this before, so forgive me if redundant:
Is your God so limited that He couldn’t tweak a process that He created to produce exactly what He willed? I thought you Calvinists believed God determines the exact landing spot for every rain drop.
I certainly acknowledge that determining this may be very difficult to impossible. Certain aspects may be impossible to determine.
My only significant point in this entire discussion is that it should be appropriate to let scientists try. There should not be a methodological reason that forbids them from even pursuing the question.