Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
There is an interesting exchange going on in the comments after my post on ID and Creationism. I want to move part of that conversation up to the top so it doesn't get lost. In particular, I want to focus on an argument made by Jeremy Pierce, author of the Parableman blog. I want to focus on that argument because I think it cuts to the heart of several important questions involving ID and evolution. First, I want to establish what Jeremy is arguing by quoting him. In essence, he is arguing that ID is synonymous with theistic evolution. I first began to detect that this might be his position when he said:
Behe's view is perfectly consistent with a closed universe. All he says is that a designer is somehow behind it, which is consistent with thinking the designer set up all the laws so that these unlikely events would all occur at once.
Then a bit later he followed that up by saying:
Behe's way of conceiving of the design is not that these features were created by an act of special creation. He conceives of them coming to be by natural forces, just ones that you wouldn't expect to come together in exactly the way they did unless some designer was guiding the natural forces in exactly the way theological determinists believe God to be guiding every natural process.
So in essence he is arguing that Behe's position is that God set up the natural laws that govern the universe in such a way as to insure that, some time much later, they would come together to create life. I was a bit taken aback by this argument so I tried to make sure that I was reading him right and I replied by giving two possible ways to interpret his remarks and asking him which one he meant. I wrote:
1. God set up the natural forces originally in such a way to bring about unlikely events later at a particular time and place.But this would be arguing that the way the universe was set up made the origin and evolution of life on earth inevitable and all simply a result of the interaction of purely natural forces. And this is wholly contrary to the ID argument that biochemical systems could not have evolved merely by the interaction of natural forces. Remember, the second step of Dembski's explanatory filter is evaluating whether an event could take place by the interaction of law and chance. You seem to have Behe arguing that such systems did evolve due to the interaction of natural forces, but God set up those forces from the very beginning to make sure that would happen. And that's actually much closer to Van Till's position of the "fully gifted creation" than it is to the ID position.
Unless you really mean:
2. God set up the natural forces, but then intervened to violate them and bend them when necessary to make sure that these systems would come together, either by directly inserting code into the DNA that could not have evolved on its own or by making sure that improbable collections of amino acids or proteins came together when they otherwise would not have to form the complex biochemical systems that, allegedly, could not have formed through natural processes.
You don't make clear which of these you are endorsing, or which of them you think Behe is endorsing. I think his position is #2, not #1. If it's #1, then it's really the same as Van Till's "fully gifted creation" perspective, which is decidely anti-ID. If you mean the first option, this is indistinguishable from theistic evolution and it renders all of the anti-evolution arguments from Behe and the other IDers completely irrelevant.1. God set up the natural forces originally in such a way to bring about unlikely events later at a particular time and place.
But this would be arguing that the way the universe was set up made the origin and evolution of life on earth inevitable and all simply a result of the interaction of purely natural forces. And this is wholly contrary to the ID argument that biochemical systems could not have evolved merely by the interaction of natural forces. Remember, the second step of Dembski's explanatory filter is evaluating whether an event could take place by the interaction of law and chance. You seem to have Behe arguing that such systems did evolve due to the interaction of natural forces, but God set up those forces from the very beginning to make sure that would happen. And that's actually much closer to Van Till's position of the "fully gifted creation" than it is to the ID position.
And his reply confirmed that it is option #1 that he is arguing for:
As for Behe, I don't think frontloading requires bending the laws of nature if the frontloading isn't in the genes themselves but in the laws of nature and how the laws would determine everything else to come out...My point isn't about Behe's actual postulation of what the mechanism is. It's that the general view he presents (whose details are to some degree left open) is perfectly consistent with saying that the efficient causes of evolutionary development were exactly what contemporary evolutionary theory says but that that's not enough to explain the unlikelihood of those efficient causes coming together in the way they did unless the natural laws from the beginning of the universe were chosen so that exactly this result would occur. That view can accept everything Behe says, as far as I know, and it can also accept everything Ken Miller, for example, would say about the efficient causes of evolutionary processes...It (ID) doesn't say that these things couldn't have evolved, just that it's very unlikely without having been designed to evolve. This is true of Behe and Dembski. It's an inductive argument, not a deductive argument, and inductive arguments cannot have a conclusion that something is impossible, just that it's very unlikely. I agree with you that this position is close to Van Till's, but that just shows that his opposition to ID misunderstands the argument, because the argument is perfectly consistent with his own view.
(Your second version is not what I'm saying. The ID arguments are consistent with that view, but that's not the one important to me. Everyone can see that that's consistent with ID. Most ID people do seem to endorse that if they endorse either view. What people seem to have problems seeing is that the first view also is consistent with the ID argument.)...
What ID arguments claim is that the way things are is unlikely given mere naturalism but much more likely (indeed, on the view I was discussing inevitable) given a very particular plan of God's providence ensuring certain outcomes. But that doesn't mean they're inevitable given naturalism, just inevitable given that things were set up initially the way they were.
Okay, I think we've got a good handle on Jeremy's position here, and I'm glad that he is honest enough to say that Behe does not, in fact, take this position. The only specific postulation that Behe gave of how front-loading might be done, if I recall correctly (it has been some time since I read his book), is that God might have front-loaded the genes for future adaptations and innovations into the first cell. And as I noted in a previous comment, this is an untenable claim because, as any geneticist can tell you, unexpressed genes will mutate without constraint and all function will be lost in a very short period of time. But that's not terribly relevant at this point.
What Jeremy is arguing for here is not ID, as defined by every prominent ID advocate, but is theistic evolution. In particular, he is arguing for a version of the strong anthropic principle, the idea that the universe was created with the physical laws necessary for life to begin and evolve. And while I personally have no problem whatsoever with this argument - as a deist, it's fine by me - I think it is entirely contrary to ID for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that virtually all of the people whose work defines ID bluntly deny that theistic evolution is compatible with ID. But we don't even need to make that argument because it can easily be demonstrated that if Jeremy's position was compatible with ID, it would render virtually all of the ID arguments moot.
He admits that his position is close to my friend Howard Van Till's position, which he calls the fully gifted creation position, but that position is clearly in favor of theistic evolution, not ID. That position says what Jeremy is saying, that God set up the physical laws of the universe in such a way as to bring about life, perhaps even intelligent life, at some point. But Howard rejects ID completely and has said repeatedly that ID advocates are taking the odd position that God created the world with all of the necessary attributes to sustain life (what Howard refers to as the robust formational economy), but did so poor a job of it that he had to continually intervene to make sure it worked.
Jeremy claims that this is because Howard misunderstands the true ID position, but that is clearly false. If in fact the true ID position was essentially the same as Howard's theistic evolutionist position, then why have none of the ID advocates pointed out that Howard is arguing against a fasle conception of ID? He has had long exchanges back and forth with Dembski and many others, and at no time did any of them say, "Howard, you've got it all wrong. Your position is the same as ours. ID only says that God set up the initial conditions, not that he had to do anything at all later on to make sure life came about." No, they argued with Howard and took the contrary position. Indeed, Dembski makes it very plain that not only is ID not consistent with Howard's theistic evolution position, but that it is ID's biggest challenge:
Howard Van Till's review of my book No Free Lunch exemplifies perfectly why theistic evolution remains intelligent design's most implacable foe. Not only does theistic evolution sign off on the naturalism that pervades so much of contemporary science, but it justifies that naturalism theologically -- as though it were unworthy of God to create by any means other than an evolutionary process that carefully conceals God's tracks.
None of the major ID arguments can be made compatible with this type of theistic evolution, even Behe's argument from irreducible complexity. Remember, his argument relies upon it being incredibly improbable for so many components to come together all at once through natural processes. But natural processes can only mean under current natural laws, and if one is going to argue that those laws were designed in order to make such events inevitable, or even probable, as Jeremy does above, then it renders the premise of Behe's argument completely false. The source of those natural laws and processes is a separate question. Behe says that under the natural laws as they exist now, it's impossible for a complex biochemical system to form; Jeremy (and Van Till) say that those natural laws were designed intentionally to allow or even to guarantee that such systems could form. Behe's argument clearly requires intervention in the natural processes from outside, while their position only requires that the processes be set up initially so that no such intervention is needed.
Likewise, Dembski's explanatory filter is also incompatible with this conception (and Dembski himself has said so). In order to make the design inference, one must first rule out chance, necessity (which means natural law) or the interaction of the two. But if those natural laws were set up initially in order to allow, or mandate, the origin and evolution of life, then no such inference is possible. You cannot say that a given outcome is too improbable to have come about as a result of the interaction of chance and natural law and argue that natural law was designed in order to facilitate that outcome. This is clearly a contradiction because if the latter is true, then any conclusion of improbability would be false.
In addition, Jeremy's position renders all of the anti-evolution arguments within ID utterly pointless. Their argument is that it is impossible for evolution to explain (fill in the blank) through the interaction of the natural laws and chance, but the theistic evolution position that Jeremy is arguing for would take the opposite position - of course evolution can account for those things because God designed the natural laws to facilitate the evolution of life in all its forms. Either way, this position is clearly contrary to ID as defined by every single ID advocate in existence. Jeremy is not advocating ID, he is advocating theistic evolution. Which is fine by me, I'll even agree with him. But it renders the entire ID movement, every argument and the position of every ID advocate, superfluous. And that's fine by me too.
Comments
Behe falls into the pattern previously described: when challenged directly on this or that major element of evolutionary history he'll defer by asserting the negative. He's not a YEC. He's not against common descent.
But in practice, he can't seem to help himself in finding every specific element or piece of evidence for these things unconvincing. Or fishy friend Tikky is one recent example. If one has no problem with common descent, then the idea that Tikky is ancestral (whether directly or cousinly) to tetrapods is uncontroversial and its features pretty obviously fitting precisely into the basic pattern of common descent. And yet the response to the find from Behe was not particularly distinguishable from even the more intelligent YEC's (i.e. those who are bit more careful than Hovind or Ham in the sorts of obviously ridiculously things they'll say).
Posted by: plunge![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 3:43 PM
I've never heard of a theistic evolutionist claim that their beliefs are anything more than philosophical, let alone that they can prove it with science. Also Pierce's theistic evolution argument seems to make it sound as if the natural laws necessitated the development of life, even human life, on Earth. I think that as we learn more about conditions on Earth at the time that life developed, it becomes more difficult to make this argument as conditions were brutal and life easily could have been destroyed before it got off the ground (and actually might have done so a few times before the last time stuck). At best, I think, theistic evolutionists can say that God/whoever front loaded enough so that the development of some type of life was possible.
Posted by: Matthew![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 4:48 PM
I am not arguing that ID is synonymous with theistic evolution. I am arguing that the two are consistent.
I'd like to see some evidence that the bulk of those who argue for ID think ID is inconsistent with evolution. I'm 100% convinced at this point that they don't think that. My reasoning here is mainly that I believe what they report as their own position.
By the way, I haven't endorsed any position here except the meta-position that ID is consistent with evolution.
The quote from Dembski seems to me to take issue not with the closed universe but with the naturalism of Van Till. In particular, it emphasizes that there are no signs of design, which Dembski thinks we should expect if the universe is designed. Van Till wants a designer who hides that fact, as far as Dembski is concerned. So that is indeed a position contrary to ID. But you can hold the view I was putting forth and agree with Dembski on that. In fact, that's what I think Van Till ought to say. He just doesn't.
The view I was sketching is not merely the strong anthropic principle. That just sets up the conditions necessary for allowing evolution to occur. What is needed to satisfy the ID argument is something much more particular, which would be laws that determine exactly how specific events will occur that will lead to the exact conditions for the origin of the cell, conditions that are unlikely without a designer. This indeed is an ID argument, because it's claiming that the chances are too low for us to get the exact laws that would guarantee the exact parts necessary for the cell to exist all appearing at the same time under the right conditions. The conclusion is then that a designer would be necesssary to explain such laws. This basically Behe's argument about the cell put into terms that are fully consistent with natural causes (efficient causes anyway) of evolution, and it does indeed require a designer. This view doesn't defeat the argument. It motivates the same conclusion from the same surprising fact but in a different way.
As for evolution, you're right in a sense and wrong in a sense. This position says evolution can explain it in terms of efficient causes, but at a more fundamental level we should be surprised that those particular efficient causes would come about if there were not some purpose for them to come about, and that requires a final cause of a designer. So evolution doesn't provide that kind of explanation. It's not an argument against evolution, but it's an argument against the sufficiency of evolution as an explanation of the scientifically discovered facts. As I read Behe, this is completely in the spirit of his argument even if he would give the details a little differently, and it's not really at all in the spirit of Van Till, who doesn't seem to me to recognize this position as even possible.
Matthew, you're failing to distinguish between two kinds of probability, as I've noted in the other post with someone else. One is the likelihood of life arising given the sort of way we should expect things to go without a divine final cause. That's really low. The other is the likelihood of life arising given a divine plan of providence that intended for life to arise. That's 100%. I don't see how someone couldn't maintain both theses, and then the first one explains why ID arguments would at least have a running chance, while it doesn't abandon the idea of absolute divine sovereignty that's necessary to explain the chance occurence of the right conditions for life, and so on.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 5:34 PM
The only problem I have with the theistic evolution standpoint is it seems to really limit God's power. The entire 'setting the stage', when the stage leads to something in his own image type idea seems ponderous and rather, well, silly. Especially since the entire concept of a 'creator' of supreme intelligence simply begs the question of how that being evolved or appeared. It simply doesn't make sense. It's just creating more and more questions.
I would imagine such a being must sit around wondering who 'fine tuned' whatever place they live is so they can exist there. It's turtles all the way down.
Waiting 4.6 billion years to see your 'product' isn't exactly impressive. Although it is a universe and not a volkswagon.
:-)
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April 26, 2006 5:36 PM
It seems to me you could make an IDesque theistic evolution argument by adding an initial state. If God set up the laws of the universe, then configured the Big Bang in such a way as to place all the pieces in all the right places like a trick pool shot on an unfathomable scale, all these ideas could be reconciled.
This does not, of course, satisfy ID people because it would be indistinguishable from naturalistic evolution. I was raised Mormon (I got better, thank you), and as such I attended a religious instruction class before school during high school. As part of this class I did a presentation on this idea, and the unkind reaction of my generally extremely mild mannered teacher (who was not an ID advocate, by the way, but a fairly run of the mill fundamentalist) which started me wondering about the dangers of dogmatic thought and eventually led me to my current, well, anuminous state.
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April 26, 2006 5:57 PM
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Okay, let's turn this around: provide us with some evidence that ID advocates believe their ideas are consistent with theistic evolution or with the claim that God merely set up the natural laws and the initial conditions in such a way as to make the evolution of life, or intelligent life, or complex life (pick whatever level of specificity you want), either likely or inevitable. That is precisely the position that Van Till takes, yet all of the ID advocates who have engaged with him have said very plainly that they do not accept his argument. I don't know of a single ID advocate, at least of any prominence, who takes the position you're taking.
No, I don't think so. The only distinction between Van Till's "naturalism" and "atheistic naturalism" is that he believes that the natural laws and initial conditions were set up by God. After that point, he rejects intervention. Van Till would agree that the natural laws themselves are evidence of design, that they were indeed designed by God. He does not reject the notion that evidence can point to God, he rejects the notion that there is a necessity for direct intervention by God in the biological realm that would leave evidence behind that would distinguish it in some way from other natural objects that are all equally "created" in his mind. Howard argues that there is no way to distinguish objects which are created directly and objects which are created indirectly, through the operation of the normal laws and initial conditions that the creator set up. His position is not that there is no evidence of design, it's that there is no evidence that could distinguish direct design from indirect design. And Dembski rejects his position because he is arguing for direct design, no matter how much he denies that in other forums. It's the only way his argument against Van Till is in any way coherent.
But that is the strong anthropic principle, in one of its many forms. There are many ways to state the SAP. Some claim that the natural laws were designed to allow life to exist, others say they were designed to allow intelligent life to exist, some say "complex life", and some say that they were designed to make life, in one of those forms, inevitable. It's just a question of how specifically you want to phrase it. But if those natural laws and initial conditions were set up in order to make the origin life (or the cell, or complex life, or intelligent life, or whatever level of specificity you want to place on it) either likely or inevitable, then it makes all of the arguments against evolution from IDers totally pointless. Their response shouldn't be, "Evolution can't possibly do that". Their response should be, "Of course evolution can do that, the laws and the initial conditions were set up precisely so that it could do so." But that is not the position that any ID advocate takes, ever. ID only "consistent" with ID if you define ID in the broadest possible manner ("A designer did something somewhere at some time to make life possible"). But again, that position totally negates all of the actual arguments made by ID advocates in favor of ID.
But Behe doesn't make the argument that the particular natural laws and initial conditions that allow evolution to create IC systems demands a designer; he makes the argument that evolution cannot create such systems in the world we live in now - a world guided by those natural laws. If those natural laws were designed to make the origin of the cell likely or inevitable, his argument falls apart completely. And again, the only possible solution that he has offered to the IC problem is not a fully gifted creation, but the direct intervention of God to plant DNA in the original cell that coded for innovations millions of years in the future.
I'm sorry, I'm just baffled by this argument. The argument you made is virtually synonymous with Van Till's position, and it's a position that Behe has explicitly rejected. Yet you think it's "in the spirit" of Behe and not Van Till.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 6:15 PM
Ed (or Jeremy),
Have you read The Privileged Planet? I have and found it a refreshing reprive from the anti-evolutionism of most ID. Any thoughts on how it fits with Van Till's views (which I haven't read)?
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April 26, 2006 6:47 PM
Ken Brown wrote:
I haven't read it, no. My understanding is that it makes the argument solely for cosmological ID, which I doubt Howard would object to at all.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 6:55 PM
I'm not surprised at the confusion between ID and Theistic Evolution. Look at the Discovery Institute's own definition:
"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
It seems to me there's a bit of a schizoid conflict between those "features of the universe" and the features "of living things." If the design is set in at the level of the universe, that's a different kettle of fish than claiming that God's design is discovered through evidence of direct intervention in biochemical systems. There's also the part claiming natural selection must be "undirected." Undirected at what level? Any theist can admit that an event can be a natural event, but still somehow "willed" at a vaguely-defined metaphysical level.
As has been noted elsewhere:
"The fact that the laws of the universe are perfect for life is evidence for a Designer. The fact that the laws of the universe can't produce life is evidence for a Designer."
Posted by: Sastra![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 7:37 PM
An awful lot of words are wasted up there, when Behe made his position crystal clear: The Intelligent Designer Formerly Known as God intervenes occasionally, suspending natural laws to glue tails on bacteria. From A Puff of Smoke:
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April 26, 2006 8:11 PM
Anuminous,
Except that, if you have deterministic physics and sufficiently (very, very!) fine control over the initial conditions (initial microstate), you can violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics[1] and perform miracles. This of course still wouldn't satisfy ID people because it's not the way a human being would go about doing miracles, and their God is very human-like. Similarly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with "waiting 4.6 billion years to see your 'product'" (as Chance put it), but it's not the sort of thing a God made in man's image would do. It's not surprising that an old Earth/universe is not popular in some corners.
[1] Red Herring Alert: Creating the human genome (some 3 billion base pairs) at room temperature requires some 3*10^9 * 300K kT ln 4 = 1.7 * 10^-11 Joules (about 4 quadrillionths of a dietary calorie (kilocalorie)). The Second Law of Thermodynamics really doesn't pose a problem for Darwin's theory.
Posted by: Andrew Wade![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 26, 2006 9:05 PM
Andrew,
I can't say it is a position I take seriously at this point, but as a fifteen year old trying to come to grips with conflicts between my upbringing and my observations of the world, it made a lot of sense.
As I think about it some more, once you are positing miracles (in which group I would include the scenario I described above -- that is one hell of a trick shot after all) pretty much anything goes, but ID advocates do not have that available to them. They want to maintain their secular illusion, so no theistic anyting can be allowed.
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April 26, 2006 9:51 PM
Sastra, you mentioned something worth repeating: the cosmological and biological ideas seem to be in direct contradiction at times, but apparently without anyone in the movement caring (perhaps because the conclusion is more important than any of the particulars). First there must have been a designer because the nature of the universe is so hospitable to life, and then there must have been a designer because the nature of the universe is so UNhospitable to life. But they can't BOTH be meaningful signs of design.
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April 26, 2006 10:04 PM
Del Ratzsch's "Design, Chance, and Theistic Evolution" is helpful in sorting out how compatible theistic evolution is with ID. Here is a relevant quote:
"Theistic evolution and design theory need not be in disagreeement over some kinds of design in some loci. On the face of it, nothing whatever in theistic evolution requires that its advocates refuse to admit that phenomena in nature be results of deliberate, foresighted, active intent or that such phenomena exhibit evidences of such design. Theistic evolutionists can readily incorporate design that tracks back (continuously) to primordial conditions or to the ultimate structuring of natural laws and principles.
...
Theistic evolutionists thus apparently cannot make use of - indeed must reject - the design arguments and evidences most popular among creationists and many other design theorists, those being arguments resting upon degrees of improbability and specific types of complexity purporting to show the inability of nature and natural processes to produce the phenomena in question from prior natural conditions - that is, proposed indications of counterflow. According to a consistent theistic evolution, nothing wholly within, say, the biological realm exhibits counterflow, although such things may exhibit design. And here again is evidence that our typical clues to designedness - counterflow - are irrelevant to some key types of supernatural design."
(Counterflow, for Ratzsch, refers to what would have happened had nature operated freely. This need not be a "violation" of any natural laws - for example, the building of the Hoover dam exhibited a lot of counterflow (it wouldn't be there if nature operated "freely") but didn't violate any natural laws.)
In the quote above, I take Ratzsch to be making a point very similar to what Jeremy has been saying. Even though theistic evolutionists must reject many of the ID arguments, it is still consistent with ID. That is, there doesn't seem to be anything that would prevent a theistic evolutionist from recognizing that something shows the "marks" or evidences of design. Instead, what theistic evolution rejects are certain means (i.e., direct) to get to that design.
Ratzsch even goes on to point out that another problem that arises between IDists and theistic evolutionists is that theistic evolutionists tend to not allow nomic discontinuity to be a part of science while IDists tend to say it is a permissible part of science. This, to me, is what Dembski was critiquing about Van Till's position. (As Ed says, Van Till "rejects intervention" after creation.) I do think, though, that Dembski ignores design that doesn't have discontinuities. Actually, I just remembered that in Ratzsch's critique of Dembski's explanatory filter in Nature, Design, and Science he points out that Dembski's filter wouldn't recognize design that did have a "continuous" natural history. IOW, I think Dembski is often too "narrow" when he talks about design.
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April 27, 2006 1:11 AM
Posted by: Ginger Yellow![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 5:27 AM
Van Till would agree that the natural laws themselves are evidence of design, that they were indeed designed by God. He does not reject the notion that evidence can point to God, he rejects the notion that there is a necessity for direct intervention by God in the biological realm that would leave evidence behind that would distinguish it in some way from other natural objects that are all equally "created" in his mind.
Then I rest my case. You've made it for me. That is most clearly an intelligent design argument. You seem to object that this is using the term in its broadest sense, but that's exactly my point. You seem to want to restrict the term artificially to include only the kind of argument that involves special creation either of whole species at once or special creation of specific steps in the evolutionary process. Either view is intelligent design, but so is the view I've been sketching that you say is Van Till's view. My main claim that you seem so resistant to is that Behe's general argument, despite his preferred way of cashing out his view, is consistent with that sort of perspective. Van Till refuses to see this, and Behe resists it in terms of his own view, but I think it's true despite their resistance to it.
Macht seems to me to have it right. I've been making the same point as Del Ratzsch.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 8:18 AM
But Jeremy that absolutely is not Intelligent Design as a unified concept. It's arguably cosmological ID, and it's certainly creationism - the basic idea that life and/or the universe was created. But Intelligent Design as understood by the people behind the movement - Behe, Dembski, Wells etc - strongly incorporates and indeed focuses on biological ID. And the basic tenet of biological ID, the idea that informs the various strands such as IC and SCI, is that given the natural laws as we understand them, it's vastly unlikely that life would have emerged and that its present diversity would have occurred. Just because a position is consistent with the idea that there was an intelligent designer doesn't make it consistent with Intelligent Design as a concept.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 9:08 AM
Jeremy said:
It's not Ed "artificially" restricting the term, he's just pointing out that every member of the Discovery Institue, including the two leading proponents of what is commonly labeled "The ID Movement", so defines it. He's pointing out that your position, Jeremy, is Theistic Evolution, not ID as it's defined by most of the rest of the world. You're responding by saying essentially that ID is just a subset of TE, which is fine for you but you're not using it the same way everyone else is.
The Discovery Institute's position is more narrow than yours and it's not trivial to distinguish between the two. For practical purposes, in the real word TE is not equal to ID any more than Christianity is equal to Catholicism. One is a subset of the other, but they are not equal. You are conflating the two, claiming the name of the subset (ID) and marking it as the superset (TE), but what Ed is trying to point out to you is that the most vocal and prominent ID proponents vociferously deny that position.
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April 27, 2006 9:11 AM
When you get down to it, it seems like basically an argument that God can have designed everything to look the way it does for his own inscrutable reasons. Where is the evidence that makes any of it science? Even more basically, I think it comes to "Humans were designed (one way or another) by God, so we're special to God, therefore we are in some sense immortal, because otherwise we just die, and I don't want to die."
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April 27, 2006 9:21 AM
(First time poster, but longtime reader and big fan of Ed's blog)
I'm having a hard time understanding how VanTill's position (as it is described here) is really theistic at all. If god created the universe and the natural laws, then sat back and watched it go, how does that not qualify as deism? Can anyone provide pointers to VanTill's writings or postings here?
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April 27, 2006 10:50 AM
macht-
I think the quote from Ratzsch only supports my position. When he says that theistic evolutionists "can readily incorporate design that tracks back (continuously) to primordial conditions or to the ultimate structuring of natural laws and principles", he's speaking of exactly the kind of design that Jeremy is speaking of, and that Van Till is speaking of. In that perspective, everything in the universe is equally and in same sense "designed". This establishes the first part of my argument, that what Jeremy is talking about is theistic evolution, not ID. The second part of my argument, that if ID merely meant theistic evolution in this sense it would render all of the arguments offered for ID totally meaningless, is supported by the second part of Ratzsch's statment:
There is a very real distinction between ID, which requires direct intervention specifically because, the argument goes, nature is not sufficent to bring about biochemical complexity, and theistic evolution in the sense that Jeremy and Van Till mean it, which says that nature is absolutely sufficent to bring about biochemical complexity because God designed nature to make sure it would. These are very different ideas. If the second one is true, the first one is false, and vice versa.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 10:55 AM
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Absolutely not. You seem to want to steal the ID label from those who originated it and who use it to mean an interventionist model of creation and apply it to your own idea, which clearly conflicts with their position. ID is not just a vague concept, it's a movement made up of people with specific arguments. And your position is in very clear conflict with all of those people and with the arguments that they make. If you are right, then all of Behe's arguments about improbability and the insufficency of nature to produce biochemical complexity are false. If you are right, then all of Dembski's arguments about the insufficency of natural forces to create specified complexity are false. If you are right, then all of the ID movement's voluminous arguments against evolution are false. Your position falsifies every argument they make; thus, it is absurd and confusing to insist on giving it the same label when we already have a perfectly good label for your position - theistic evolution. Giving two opposing ideas the same label can only serve to confuse, not to illuminate.
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April 27, 2006 11:02 AM
Yup. And that's a fatal weakness. If this hypothetical god has that much control over the initial conditions he could have created the universe last Thursday and could have arranged it so that the sun turns into a cube tomorrow. (Or arranged it so that photons will scatter in the atmosphere tomorrow in exactly the right way to make the sun look like a cube to all observers)[1]. By itself the "trick shot" hypothesis is worse than useless. Christians of course have various postulates about God that would tend to rule out such things as Last Thursdayism or a cubical sun tomorrow. But as you say they're not available to ID advocates trying to maintain an illusion of secularism.
[1] This is assuming a deteministic ("billiard ball") universe and sufficient computing power to pick the right initial conditions. This is probably an all or nothing thing; if you can't control/pick the inital microstate of the sun with sufficient precision to turn it into a cube tomorrow, chaos theory suggests that photons from the sun would have thrown off the more interesting "trick shots" on Earth by now too.
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April 27, 2006 11:03 AM
Posted by: macht![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 27, 2006 11:34 AM
macht-
But as I explained to Jeremy above, ID already has a definition, given it by those who created both the term and the movement. What you term "lower level" arguments are the entire subset of arguments offered by all of the advocates of ID in favor of ID. Every single argument requires an interventionist God, not the non-interventionism of Jeremy or Howard's position. We already have a perfectly good term for that position, theistic evolution. And that conception is explicitly rejected by all of the major ID advocates. So what good is it to insist on using the same label for two conflicting ideas when we already have well understood labels for the two separate positions as it is?
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April 27, 2006 12:05 PM
I'm not insisting on using the same label for each. I think theistic evolution is a fine label for distinguishing what differences there are between it and other types of ID. What I'm suggesting is what Ratzsch suggested. Namely, that "[t]heistic evolution and design theory need not be in disagreeement..."
I'll even say that Van Till's position, IMO, does seem to be in conflict with ID. A main feature of the ID position is that purpose or plan or some similar idea can be a legitimate part of science. From what I've read of Van Till (his views on categorical complementarity, etc.), he seems to suggest that he doesn't think those things are legitimate parts of science. Again, it is this type of thing that Dembski seemed to have a problem with. But these views on how science works aren't a necessary component of theistic evolution.
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April 27, 2006 12:22 PM
macht-
Again, I only think this works if you completely ignore all of the arguments made by ID advocates and broaden out the definition of ID to just "some designer did something sometime". But that's not the position that any ID advocate takes, so it makes no sense to apply the same label to two contradictory sets of ideas.
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April 27, 2006 1:33 PM
Sure it is. Almost every ID advocate takes that position. It's just that various ID advocates have different answers to it. Just like there could be various answers to how heliocentrism works or evolution works. What you just said is the point I was trying to make - that you are thinking about ID too narrowly, that you need to broaden your definition.
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April 27, 2006 1:58 PM
This is true in exactly the same way that it is true that if the Pope would just broaden his definition of Catholicism, he'd be a Methodist.
You don't get to pick and choose how the ID advocates -- specifically, the Discovery Institute -- define themselves. They have that privilege. And according to their definition -- not yours or Eds or mine -- they are not Theistic Evolutionists. You're just espousing a version of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
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April 27, 2006 2:08 PM
And I think you're thinking of it too broadly. The fact that every ID advocate I know of says the same thing strongly suggests that I'm right. What you are trying to do is bring theistic evolution under the ID label, but you can't do that without negating all of the actual arguments that ID advocates make and redefining it away from what those who originated and built the idea and the movement believe.
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April 27, 2006 2:10 PM
If theistic evolution is brought under the ID label, then teaching ID in the schools doesn't sound like such a scary thing. I mean, gosh, all we're saying is that some people think some sort of designer had something to do with it, some where, in some way. What's so wrong with that? It doesn't challenge science. So surely it can be *mentioned* in a science class.
Ok. So we're all agreed that we can have Intelligent Design in the schools. Issue over. Now it's just quibbling over the small stuff -- like maybe how various advocates might interpret it.
I think I've figured out what comes after "teach the controversy" bombs.
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April 27, 2006 2:35 PM
Deism is not primarily about how (or if) God causes things. It's primarily about whether God revealed anything through special revelation. Deists tend to minimize God's role in events other than setting up the initial conditions and thus don't see the setting up of those conditions as part of a plan of providence that what specific events will later happen. I can't see Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine using the kind of language Leibniz, Malebranche, or others who held the sort of view I'm sketching used in response to the problem of evil. Voltaire particularly objected to Leibniz's work on the problem of evil for exactly the reason that his deism led him to reject divine providence. He didn't think God could care about the sort of thing Leibniz insisted God cares about. Yet Leibniz clearly held that God chose this exact world in all its details as the best possible world, with the laws of nature guaranteeing that it would result in exactly what has resulted.
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April 27, 2006 2:49 PM
I decided to get out Mere Creation. Here are some of the key themes from Dembski's introduction. He first distinguishes between "mere creation", by which he means theism, and "undirected natural causes", by which he means naturalism without any directedness whatsoever. In this distinction, Van Till clearly is on the theistic side of the fence. He then explains that the history of design arguments as a basis for belief in God is simply to argue for some sort of designer-creator. There's nothing here so far about how God designed and whether it requires the suspension of natural laws at certain points. When that issue comes up, he clearly places people who answer no on his side rather than on the naturalistic side.
He even lists two groups of people who are on his side in this debate: "One advocate of creation thinks it is essential that God intervene in the causal structure of the world. Another thinks it essential that God not upset the causal structure of the world."
He goes on to explain how he thinks unifying these groups against naturalism with intelligent design arguments is the goal of the book. Naturalism, as he defines it, is the view that undirected causes within nature explain everything. The view I was sketching says there are no undirected causes, never mind any that explain anything. On naturalism, there's no sign of God's handiwork (though he is willing to extend the term to include a divinely caused world with no signs of design).
I think part of the problem is his use of the term 'self-contained'. The careful reader will see that he distinguishes between a self-contained world with divine intent and recognizably designed features and a self-contained world without those, i.e. naturalism. He then speaks of God "interacting with the world" in a way that might include Van Till's sort of view, i.e. a world closed in the sense of no efficient causes outside the deterministic order set up at the beginning, as long as the signs of design are present in the universe. A noticeably designed but causally close universe is not, as he is using the term, self-contained.
When he finally indicates what ID is about, he says it's about denying undirected natural causes and affirming intelligent causes. It's not about distinguishing between natural and supernatural causes, which is how you've been treating the ID movement. He's distingushing between those who allow final causes and those who insist that naturalistic efficient causes are the only explanation. He says ID doesn't presuppose miracles. It's compatible with evolution, because it's merely about whether there are signs of intelligence in the causes, not about how those causes came about.
He does say that ID is incompatible with a view commonly referred to as theistic evolution, but when he makes it clear what he means he's not talking about people who take the view I'm sketching. The view he's calling theistic evolution that he says ID is incompatible with is the view that natural causes are undirected. He's thinking of people like Ken Miller. If Van Till takes the sort of view I've been sketching, then Dembski would have no problem with that as far as this introduction goes.
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April 27, 2006 4:06 PM
Dembski argues that ID allows for both intervention and front loading. In fact Dembski's argument of conservation of CSI does not distinguish when CSI is injected.
Mike Gene is someone who moved the design event outwards to an initial condition. Personally, I believe the Big Bang to be an exquisite place, just inside the Planck time limit so it remains undetectable to us.
Front loading is covered by the Design Inference but Dembski seems to be no fan of such a solution. To solve how information is imparted by God, Demsbki made the scientific error of suggesting an infinite wavelength channel, which also has zero bandwith and zero energy. The latter one is why Dembski proposed it, the former one shows that no information can be transmitted via such a channel. Physics may not be Dembski's strongest point.
There is an interesting paper by Murray I believe who argues that if ID cannot distinguish between stacking the deck (front loading) or intervention, and he argues that ID can't then ID cannot add much scientific relevance to the mix.
Found the reference: Michael J. Murray, NATURAL PROVIDENCE (OR DESIGN TROUBLE) Faith and Philosophy
Recent work in Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) reopens a number of questions concerning God's providence over nature. Friends of IDT claim that their "explanatory filter" allows us to detect design empirically and that this provides a way to make appeal to supernatural design in properly scientific explanations while at the same time undercutting methodological naturalism. I argue here that the explanatory filter is fatally flawed, and that detection of detection of design would not undercut methodological naturalism in any case. Friends of IDT fail to see this because they adopt a Newtonian conception of natural providence, while failing even to consider a preferable Leibnizian conception.
In his paper he argues
The claim here is that designed events can be caused by either intervention or deck-staking-plus-nomic-regularity (or something more complex if indeterminacy is relevant; see note 12 for more on this). If all we have access to is apparently designed outcomes, we cannot distinguish between those that result via "law" (deck-stacking) and those that result from "design" (intervention). Thus, we cannot engage in the project suggested by IDT advocates after all, namely, setting aside methodological naturalism and letting the explanatory chips fall where they may. The explanatory chips can't discriminate between these competitors.
Interesting approach.
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April 27, 2006 5:30 PM
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Of course Van Till is on the theistic side of the fence. No one doubts that, so this assertion is utterly pointless. But I think we've hit on the problem here: you think that the distinction between ID and not-ID is the same as the distinction between theism and atheism. That simply is not the case, as the existence of lots of anti-ID theists easily demonstrates.
Because he's discussing the distinction between theism and atheism. But Dembski also claims that ID is not about the existence of God at all, which means that the distinction between ID and not-ID cannot be the theism/atheism line. It doesn't matter what he said in Mere Creation about theism and atheism; it matters that the arguments he and every other ID advocate makes for ID are not consistent with the position that God set up the natural laws and the initial conditions to make life probable or inevitable. It has been explained why they are incompatible repeatedly and you keep ignoring that reasoning and finding some other basis for your assertion. Do you realize how bizarre it is to be claiming that Dembski thinks Van Till's position is compatible with ID when he has written multiple essays explicitly denying that Van Till's position is compatible with ID?
But - for what seems like the hundredth time - then someone needs to explain what possible purpose is served by his arguments against evolution and his entire probability position if ID could also mean that the natural laws, rather than making life wildly improbable, make it likely or even inevitable. You're claiming that ID can mean two contradictory things at the same time, that it can mean that the natural laws operate in such a way as to make the origin and evolution of life wildly improbable and that it can mean that the natural laws operate in such a way as to make the origin and evolution of life likely or even inevitable. The only thing that adding God in to that equation does is delineate the line between theism and atheism, and that simply can't be the dividing line between ID and not-ID. It doesn't matter whether you think you've come up with an interpretation of Dembski's words that might make them compatible; they aren't logically compatible and Dembski himself explicitly says so.
Then doesn't that completely destroy his sometimes-claim that the designer could be a space alien? Aliens are not a "final cause".
Except that Dembski has explicitly said, multiple times, that he does have a problem with Van Till's position. This is just getting weird. Dembski says the sky is blue and you say, "I've read some of his work and I think he might really mean that the sky is green, at least for some possible meanings of the word 'green'." You cannot claim that Dembski would be okay with a position he specifically says he's not okay with, for crying out loud.
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April 27, 2006 5:57 PM
Ed, in the words of countless British soap characters: "Leave it, he's not worth it." Jeremy's is just a more sophistic and sophisticated version of the standard ID bait and switch - when trying to persuade someone that ID is plausible, use the vague and general "the universe/life was designed" definition, but when trying to persuade someone it's scientific, use one or more of the specific "IC therefore not evolution therefore designer" or "SCI therefore not evolution therefore designer" arguments.
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April 27, 2006 6:55 PM
Ginger Yellow, that's a really strange comment given that Jeremy hasn't tried to argue that ID is plausible or scientific. All he is saying is that ID and theistic evolution aren't incompatible.
Although this discussion is getting kind of old since it's basically coming down to an argument over a label.
The fact is, thought, that if you think that certain features of the universe display marks or signs of design, purpose, plan, etc. and you come to this conclusion by looking at nature as opposed to reading some religious text, then you accept a design argument. And this is perfectly compatible with theistic evolution.
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April 27, 2006 7:21 PM
And by "thought" I mean "though."
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April 27, 2006 7:22 PM
And he's doing it by saying a) the vague and general definition of ID is compatible with theistic evolution (of course it is - that's pretty much a tautology), and b) ID as proposed by Behe/Dembski et al is the vague and general definition of ID (it clearly isn't, but is rather the "scientific" version of ID) and is therefore compatible with theistic evolution. That's the bait and switch.
A design argument is compatible with theistic evolution. But not the Discovery Institute's design arguments, as they explicitly say themselves and Jeremy insists on ignoring.
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April 27, 2006 8:13 PM
No, it's not about theism vs. atheism. The whole point of the introduction was to show that it's about "undirected natural causes" vs. "intelligent causes". He states quite plainly that someone could theoretically hold that the intelligent cause is not God (and therefore is not a theist), though people haven't been doing that so far. But that means it's not equivalent to theism. He also states quite plainly that one can be a theist and consider there to be only undirected natural causes, as Ken Miller clearly does. Miller is not an ID person on Dembski's account, but Van Till as you've presented him is an ID person on Dembski's account. Van Till as you've presented him believes there to be intelligent causes, and that's all Dembski is really concerned about in figuring out who belongs under the ID umbrella. The position you're assigning to Van Till is included in that.
But from the quote above, I don't think Van Till holds that position, or I don't think Dembski thinks he holds it anyway. Dembski's problem with Van Till is that he thinks Van Till's position means the natural order "carefully conceals God's tracks". Since Dembski in the introduction I just read carefully distinguishes between the kind of theistic evolution that does this (Ken Miller) and the kind that doesn't (the kind I've been outlining), it would surprise me to see him attributing to Van Till the position of theistic evolution that he sees as opposed to ID because it "carefully conceals God's tracks" unless he thought Van Till was in the Miller category.
In the Dembski essay you linked to, he makes it clear that his opposition to Van Till is exactly for these reasons. Van Till thinks in a process sort of way that God is working out purposes in the world through natural causes, which Dembski in the introduction I just read is not opposed to, but his problem with it in the essay you linked to is that none of this requires intelligence. Anything that happens in the world is compatible with divine guidance, and therefore nothing is distinctively divine about it. If there were something observably divine about it, as Dembski thinks the ID arguments require, then he'd be fine with it, even if it had everything front-loaded. The problem isn't with the front-loading. The problem is with disguising something that might as well be undirected natural causes as intelligent causes, when there's nothing about them that requires thinking of them as intelligent. That, he says, is incompatible with intelligent design, but that's not the view I've been talking about here.
In the same essay that you linked to, Dembski says that he doesn't think ID requires miracles in the sense of counterfactual substitution (i.e. violations of the laws of nature). That's in fact the opposite of what you've been saying about him. You've been saying that he takes ID to require this sort of miracle, something the front-loader can't have. But he very plainly says that he thinks the two are compatible in the very essay you're trying to use to support your interpretation of him.
He then goes on to say what I've been saying about improbability vs. impossibility. All ID arguments claim is that these events are naturally improbably and that they shouldn't be expected to occur if unguided natural causes are all there are. That doesn't require supernatural miracles in the sense of breaking the laws of nature. Natural laws are compatible with the formation of the flagellum. It's just that so many other configurations are possible that you wouldn't expect it, so there must be a mind in some way responsible. This argument is fully compatible with front-loading, which is Dembski's point.
If you're right, then it applies to any inductive argument that seeks to explain a surprising event by hypothesizing something according to which it wouldn't be all that surprising. If we see the coincidental murder in a distinctive manner of five different people simultaneously but in five different places, that should surprise us. We shouldn't expect five people to do something so similar. At least we shouldn't expect that unlikely result if there wasn't some sort of collusion between them, and then the theory of collusion makes it very likely that the result we've observed has happened. This is how inductive explanation works.
In intelligent design, we see a surprising result, something that (according to the argument) appears to be irreducibly complex, the sort of thing that possibly could arise with unguided natural causes but shouldn't be expected. It cries out for explanation, and the explanation is that an intelligent mind is behind it. So something unlikely according to one set of data (our original information) is made likely by the hypothesis. The hypothesis makes it very likely, but that doesn't invalidate that it looks very unlikely without the hypothesis.
The same thing is true of the front-loading ID hypothesis. The event looks very unlikely given unguided natural causes. Once you have the front-loading ID hypothesis with determinism, then you have an inevitable event. But that doesn't invalidate the argument, because the argument isn't claiming that the event isn't inevitable. It isn't claiming that the event really is unlikely. It's simply claiming that the event is unlikely given unguided natural causes.
Then doesn't that completely destroy his sometimes-claim that the designer could be a space alien? Aliens are not a "final cause".
You have to keep the different ID hypotheses separate. One hypothesis is Dembski's preferred non-frontloaded miracle hypothesis. Another is the frontloading ID proposal I've been outlining. A third is the alien hypothesis. It doesn't make any sense to say that the second approach rules out aliens and then to conclude that ID therefore does. Just because the second approach rules out aliens, you can't conclude that ID does.
Alien causes would be guided anyway. It would also be interventionist in the immediate sense. They would efficiently cause certain events in the development of life on earth, ones that wouldn't have happened otherwise. There's still a final cause, because they're intelligent minds intending something for a purpose.
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April 27, 2006 8:22 PM
Excepts from Howard Van Till's response (submitted 18 October, 2002) to William Dembski's remarks, "Naturalism's Argument from Invincible Ignorance," on ISCID Forums