I’m afraid I do not accept your assessment of the situation here. The book I reviewed is the most careful treatment of design arguments I’m aware of. It deals specifically with Behe and Dembski (though not, as I noted, Meyer), and does so respectfully, offering the most charitable interpretations of the arguments. But he ultimately finds damaging problems with the arguments. Maybe he’s wrong, but I find his analysis persuasive. @Humeandroid agrees that the DI blog misrepresents science. Maybe he’s wrong too, but I have seen first-hand the effect that the rhetoric of the DI group has on people who align themselves with ID, and I continue to believe that it does condition them to distrust science.
I’m sorry it frustrates you that we don’t see things the same way. I’m doing my best to see the situation through your eyes. There’s no malicious intent. Perhaps I don’t have the ears to hear. Sometimes people just disagree.
Let me wade in here. I think the ID camp is broad. But the essence of the ID idea is differentiated from YEC specifically in this way, that it is nature itself that demonstrates design rather than accident. ID does not start from scripture, but starts from nature, not necessarily even as God’s second book. As an investigator, scientist, observer, is what we look at more like an undefined accident, or a well working design. Regardless of how you answer the question, this is not an anti-science argument or position. So some atheists would argue that the design got there by accident. I believe that ID believe the design was intelligent, not accidental. Thus intelligent design. That is pretty well the limit of ID in a nutshell as I understand it.
The issue of god of the gaps, or evolution of the gaps, or irreducible complexity, are involved, but are side trails, and not fundamental to the concept of ID. Reducible complexity can demonstrate design as well as irreducible complexity. Gaps may point to design leaps, but lack of gaps may point to intelligently designed process.
All creationists, even evolutionary creationists, need ID. Without ID, what is left is a. lack of design (accident), b. or an unintelligent design . Either one leads to a god of chaos, or a god more stupid than us. Certainly, such a god could not be creator.
YEC particularly recognize this fact, that ID is necessary for creation, including for YEC, and thus support the ID concept even when it is identified by atheists, buddhists, evolutionists, and OEC.
But YEC is not synonymous with ID. YEC is not even synonymous with being anti-science, which most of them are not. Attacking ID for being anti-science is a straw man argument, is uncharitable, and is clearly wrong.
I didn’t read the full review, only the top page, where you wrote:
" Instead of attempting to exploit the insufficiencies of science to prove the existence of God, perhaps the more constructive approach is to look at the natural world in the light of faith. We see God’s hand throughout the created order not because science can’t explain nature, but because it can. The Designer’s mark is not in systems that don’t work quite right and need tinkering; those are signs of imperfection. Scientists—whether Christians or not—who uncover the inner workings of nature are the ones who learn something of the mind of God."
This is the sort of comment that deters better relations between ID people and BioLogos people.
That’s why I didn’t respond. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to do my job plus respond to all the comments. Yours was triaged out since you didn’t actually read the review.
The implication of that paragraph is the old canard that ID is all about tinkering, when it’s clearly about teleology, no more, no less, if you read its own literature.
Even those within ID who might be progressive creationists are not in the business of compensating for imperfection. If anything in the spirit of Aquinas they’re suggesting that miraculous works have a place in the universe because they give greater glory to God than the operation of secondary causes alone. They also have the same spirit as Newton’s actually, for it was Leibniz who first originated that familiar jibe about tinkering when he said “[Newton’s God] had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.” - but Newton was merely opting for theism against deism, a God who is intimately involved rather than a God who makes clockwork and goes for tea.
Ironically, my experience has been that imperfection in nature is more the province of many TEs than IDists, with their fixation on natural evil and theodicy, which if anything they share with YEC rather than ID. But instead of human sin or Satan being responisble for the imperfections of nature, they cite the autonomy of evolution from God as the explanation for suffering in the natural world. “The mind of God” is not at all what they have in view when they quote Ken Miller or Franciso Ayala or John Haught on the poor design of the birth canal, the jaw, the spine - or tapeworms.
I myself have been taken to task here by no less a BioLogian than Darrel Falk for suggesting that God’s providential governance of the world extends to all life, and doesn’t exclude viruses or carnivores or parasitic wasps. So do we have disagreement amongst ECs on whether nature is good, or rather imperfect? Or is it just rhetoric? Either way, that paragraph is a little disingenuous in its criticism of other schools of thought.
I think we’re making progress here in understanding each other. I don’t think that ID leaders (though I’m not so sure about the next tier down who write many of the EN&V blog posts) intentionally try to lead conservatives to be anti-science. Rather, I think it is a consequence of their work. I’m sure that Behe genuinely believes that his examples of irreducible complexity show that the accepted science is wrong. My point is: that conditions people to mistrust science. Meyer’s argument is more subtle because lots of experts agree that Neo-Darwinism doesn’t have the resources to handle the Cambrian Explosion. The way that message filters down, though, is: evolution is wrong and even experts agree but won’t admit it publicly. That is false, and I continue to claim that it conditions people to mistrust science and scientists. DI bloggers could stem the tide of that mistrust by stating clearly evolution is not a theory in crisis, etc.
If you’ve seen why I’ve been in the news the last two weeks, you might guess that I have fairly significant first-hand experience with conservative Christians who mistrust science. And the fact is that they appeal directly to the published works of ID theorists. And whether or not they are mistaken in their understanding of those works, it is those works and the rhetoric that surrounds them that conditions them to mistrust science.
Enough said from me. Feel free to take the last word in this exchange.
In 2006 I was honored to participate in the Oxford Roundtable, Faith and Science, the Great Matter. In it, I presented the thesis that the fundamental forces, masses and constants were finely tuned by God such that they imparted to cosmological, chemical, and biological evolution eight phenomena that were expressed repeatedly at every level of complexity suggesting a Creator behind life. For life, and more specifically, intelligent life, to evolve there must be requisite conditions. These requisite conditions have 1) “optimal solutions” and these optimal solutions 2) occur at “precise peaks,” 3) have “compelling detractors” around these peaks, 3) occur in an “ample sample,” 4) and thus have a “statistical certainty” of being found by evolution. 5) Once each is found, of necessity, it leads to 6) “narrowing options,” which imply 7) “essential sequencing” of these optimal solutions. Finally, in each case the process can be described with 8) “intricate simplicity.” With adequate time, these eight phenomena will lead to intelligent life and probably that life will be humanoid in appearance. Here is the latest version of that slide show, which provides examples of these eight phenomena at the quantum through organismic levels of complexity. I have other examples that were not presented, but I’d be interested in having others ponder this to see if there are examples from their specialties. Notice this is a bottom-up design process with a top-down perspective that has God laying out the ground rules from the bottom up but relying heavily on chance to accomplish the desired top down results.
Now that I have read the review, my comments stand. You are implying that ID is claiming that God is a tinkerer and that he needs to fix an imperfect creation. My original comments make perfect sense. You are assuming that if God did any additional creating in nature, then that makes him a tinkerer, and nature imperfect. But what if God had intended to continue to create? What if he hadn’t meant for nature to be fully capable of producing life in all its forms?
Why Reclaiming Design, when most of the efforts carried out here on a regular daily basis seem to refute, precisely, the concept of a designed universe? Aren’t you graciously trying to steal the thunder well gained by ID?
@jstump@Eddie
There is a simple way to resolve this.
In a real sense both ID and evolutionary creationism accept design, but so far neither has been able to explain how God how God guides evolution to carry out God’s Design.
If either one or both would just do this instead of fussing at each other, the problem would be solved and the world would be the richer.
(If you are interested in solving this problem, I will give you a hint. It has to do with ecology. )
Even in your replies, Jim you continue to confuse creationist arguments against evolution (such as miraculous interference) with ID arguments for design. A creationist will argue that irreducible complexity indicates that evolution could not produce such an organ. An ID will argue that irreducible complexity indicates that such an organ was designed, and not a mere undesigned accident, whether it was produced through evolution or not. The difference is subtle, but important.
I am actually confused here. If something is irreducible complex this would mean that the evolutionary pathway cannot be demonstrated. Thus no accepted science exists, although there may be some non-scientific consensus. If the evolutionary pathway can be demonstrated, then there is no irreducible complexity. I believe these to be mutually exclusive.
While a blanket mistrust of science is absurd, stupid, and unlikely, certainly a cautious acceptance is reasonable. When most people say that others mistrust science, they are saying a falsehood. Mistrust of science is not based on what a person says about one or two or half a dozen issues. It is based on what that person has adopted on the basis of science. If a person does not ride in a vehicle, use a microwave, or a radio, or a television, or use plastic, nor use fertilizer, or herbicides, or vitamins or penicillin, nor believe in gravity, nor use electricity, then perhaps it is justifiable that such a person doesn’t trust science. There are a few people like that. But to make your pet issue about people not trusting science? They do. But not on your issue.
It is somewhat ironic that the bio-scientific content of the Darwinian paradigm is far greater than the intelligent design school of thought, yet the ID notion is intuitively appealing. I am startled to see a claim of “settled science” regarding the former. It is hardly settled when we have the debates such as on this site, the declaration by dozens of bio-scientists questioning natural selection, and the insistence by scientists outside of the bio-area that we are dealing with a qualitative/semantic outlook regarding natural selection as a so called law of nature, and yet it cannot be quantified using any scientific method, including stochastic approaches.
I do not think anyone can consider a matter “settled” within science with such questions remaining unanswered. ID is intuitively appealing due to the fact that we see design features (such as arrangements, and symmetry, in nature), but I feel the fundamental approach is intellectually naive – it seems sensible to me to start with the intelligibility of nature, and from this develop a detailed philosophy that would provide a basis for seeking an intelligent or intelligence that may be scientifically associated with the design/geometry/maths observed in nature. If the ID movement can take this direction, it would be up to them to develop a scientific project that provides scientifically testable insights for all scientists to consider. Until then, ID is a means for arguing against things such as directionless and truly random/pointless and unintelligent chance – but offers little in the way of scientific experimentation.
Mistrust of science is an odd statement and I think it is unhelpful in these discussions.
Jim, I appreciate your own personal pain in this matter, and the culture wars are unhealthily entrenched over there is the US as seen from this side of the Atlantic (I’m not sure if that gives us greater objectivity or just less insight).
Certainly I recall a prominent TE author in 2011 roundly denouncing the leadership of BL for even allowing the publication of articles countenancing the possibility of an historical Adam and Eve, so the desire for censorship seems to be endemic and not restricted to Fundamentalists.
But as I understand the Bryan College issue, you’re suggesting that their new (and to my mind biblically totally unnecessary) insistence on the supernatural biological origin of Adam and Eve rests in part on the Board’s reading ID texts. Presumably that would mean books like Gauger et al on human origins, a book which suggests that the orthodox scientific exclusion of a bottleneck of two, rather than 10,000, may be less watertight than supposed. This at most shows such an understanding of A&E to be a possibility to be weighed.
If a non-biologist (though an academic, presumably trained in critical thinking) on reading that takes it to mean that the literalist interpretation of Genesis must be imposed on their institution, then the responsibility surely lies entirely with them, not on the authors they have read.
We don’t denounce Bertrand Russell for daring to write a book outlining his arguments against Christianity, and we wouldn’t blame his book if it led some demagogue to ban religion. In fact we’d be better off blaming his opponents for failure to refute his case adequately… perhaps by misrepresenting and demonizing it.
I wish we could talk in terms of design which is the topic, rather than ideologies which are the problem.
The death of Nobel Prize winner Yoichiro Nambu reminded of the role of “symmetry” in science.
The concept of symmetry as pioneered by Emmy Noether has become basic to our understanding of the physical universe. Symmetry is also basic to the human understanding of design. Therefore it follows that based on our understanding of the science of the universe, the universe is designed.
This is the best argument we have against the claim of Darwin and Dawkins that the universe is without design. Now of course they will say that the universe has only the appearance of design, but there is no real difference between appearance and reality.
Hello again folks,
As you could have guessed, I’m all for ‘reclaiming design’ from ‘Intelligent Design’ ideologues who regularly misuse it.
“yes—intelligent design”. – Brad Kramer
Yes, this is as former BioLogos president Darrel Falk already wrote:
“All of us at BioLogos believe in intelligent design.”
He of course did not mean the Discovery Institute’s late-modern ideology. Instead, he meant argument from/to design, i.e. what Jim and Brad seem to also mean in this thread. Discovery Institute (DI) leaders and downstream IDist apologists, however, have yet to publically acknowledge the helpful distinction. This makes the communication problematic.
A major change has happened in recent months regarding the DI’s ‘Intelligent Design’ theory (IDT). Not only have both Protestants and Catholics come out against it (even some formerly employed by the DI, starting already in 2005, then with gusto in 2010, such that IDT’s popularity is dwindling). But also now several well-known evangelicals have said they theistically accept lowercase “intelligent design” (cf. the classical theistic ‘design argument’), while scientifically rejecting uppercase “Intelligent Design” (IDT). This move is significant, but not yet well-known.
Jantzen appears to add yet another name to this list, though it is not said directly in Jim’s review or in this thread. I included that same view in my 2014 book “Human Extension: An Alternative to Evolutionism, Creationism and Intelligent Design” (Palgrave Macmillan).
Owen Gingerich seems to have started the pitch for clarity in “God’s Universe” (Harvard University Press, 2006). Folks like Stephen Barr, Ted Davis, Edward Feser, Randy Isaac, Darrel Falk and others have supported the polite request. The purpose of the clarification means that IDists would no longer be allowed to equivocate between varieties of design, as they have too often done so far. However, the DI’s CSC, the ‘home’ of IDism and its ‘intellectual originators,’ hasn’t yet publically addressed the request. Will they (starting with Stephen Meyer and John West) ever step up to the challenge?
Jantzen’s book, though I have not yet read it, seems like it can help clarify the situation. Add to that it speaks against the DI-promoted monopoly over ‘design’. No doubt Jantzen rejects the DI talk of themselves as neutral ‘design theorists’, when ‘IDist apologists’ is what ID activists should be more appropriately called. Most ‘design theorists’ reject IDT as unscientific, as I discovered at the international Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) meeting in 2012, which openly embraced and discussed ‘design theory’, but publically ridiculed IDism.
The biggest change in the discourse happened just a few months ago, when DI fellow William Lane Craig reiterated Gingerich’s claim (though he doesn’t give credit for his new position).
“I think it advisable to capitalize ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) in order to signal that we are using the words in a technical sense, rather than in the sense accepted by every Christian." - W.L. Craig
This amounts to a crushing blow to the apparently intentional equivocation rampant among IDists regarding ‘design theory’ and ‘design/Design.’ Craig even says openly that it’s possible to be a Christian who rejects IDT.
“Obviously, theists, who believe in an intelligent designer of the universe, may not be on board with all the tenets of ID." - W.L. Craig
Thus, IDT should be properly distinguished by capitalisation from the ‘design argument’ that all Christians (as well as Baha’is, Muslims and Jews) accept. Otherwise, Christians would feel forced to accept IDism simply because the DI conflates ‘design’ with ‘Design’. When will the DI face this significant dilemma so that evangelicals won’t be forced against their will and intelligence?
I do hope Christian evangelicals will realise that if such a well-known evangelical as W.L. Craig can properly distinguish between uppercase IDT (‘strictly scientific’) and lowercase ‘intelligent design’ (natural theology), that others will courageously follow his lead. People who promote ‘intelligent design’ but don’t insist on its ‘scientificity’ are not actually defending the DI’s very specific definitions of IDT. In sum, this move for clarity refutes the IDist platform adequately and convincingly, without demonising or misrepresentation. It may also likely be strengthened by what appears to be the contents of Jantzen’s book on varieties of ‘design’ and ‘design arguments’.
Recognizing impersonal causes was the necessary first step for design arguments to get off the ground. But now the arguments that attempt to draw theological conclusions from scientific premises are confusing the boundaries that scientists have come to respect.
Here is the problem if I may. Jim writes that science explores impersonal aspects of reality, while theology explores personal aspects of reality, which is the reason that science is structurally unable to detect the presence of a personal God in nature.
That is a reasonable argument, except in the case of evolution science is not exploring the impersonal, but the personal since the story of evolution is the story of how humans evolved, or how impersonal matter became fully personal humans.
Evolution is not physics, although Darwin and Dawkins would like it to be. It is not about the physical universe, but about the organic, living universe, which follows its own rules in addition to the laws of physics.
Nature is not impersonal since humans are a part of nature, which is the meaning of evolution. Not only are humans personal, but evolutionary life exhibits a spectrum of personal aspects leading to the creation of humanity.
The problem theology has with evolution is the same problem science has with evolution. It does fit into the natural/impersonal vs. supernatural/personal philosophical Western model of reality. It is neither fully impersonal nor fully personal. Organic nature is both personal and impersonal.
Evolution challenges Western dualism and forces us to either reject it for the false monism of either Scientism or Creationism, or move on to a new more inclusive Triune world view.
Reality is not solely physical. Reality is not solely spiritual. Reality is not physical and rational. Reality is physical, rational, and spiritual.
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