Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Over at Dembski's Home for Wayward Sycophants, crandaddy has made a rather curious claim that provides an excellent pretext for analyzing further the links between ID and creationism while simultaneously providing a case study in the ability of ID advocates to ignore evidence that they wish didn't exist. He is responding to the praise of Barbara Forrest from Pat Hayes and myself, and this is his argument:
Now, here's what I don't understand. Forrest has a PhD in philosophy from Tulane, yet the best ID=Creationism arguments she seems to be able to put forth are either red herrings (The designer has to be supernatural.) or ad hominems (The IDists are big, bad Creationists trying to sneak religion into science classrooms.) Why can't ID opponents focus on the arguments, themselves, and show how they are equivalent to Creationism? If ID really is just repackaged Creationism, why not just expose the arguments for what they are and be done with it? There's no need to expend such effort in propagating logical fallacies if their position is really as sound as they would have us believe. In fact, ID opponents' insistence on invoking obviously fallacious arguments is one of the things that led me to conclude that their position is in more trouble than they would like the public to know. Therefore, I would like to encourage opponents of ID to continue to focus on its supernatural implications and the supposedly impure motives of its advocates. Your efforts in this regard can only help us.
Now, I want you to settle in for a very long post because this could take a while. But I think it's going to be very instructive both in regard to how dishonestly crandaddy is portraying Barbara's work and in predicting how they will respond to the facts I will assemble in this post. But before I get to answering his challenge, I want to point out several things about his premise that are wrong.
First, he is wrong when he claims that the argument that the designer of ID must be supernatural is a "red herring". In fact, this argument is well supported with the words of the ID advocates themselves. Despite their repeated claim that the designer could be an advanced alien race, their own arguments make clear that they don't really believe that; their own arguments demand a supernatural designer. The DI's own definition of ID includes both cosmological ID and biological ID and says that the physical laws of the universe themselves are evidence of design. An alien, of course, would be within the universe and could not have created the universe. William Dembski makes this explicit when he wrote:
"The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life."
Likewise, their constant arguments against naturalism are evidence that the designer must be supernatural. If they are going to make the argument that naturalism is wrong because it rules out the intervention of an intelligent designer, then that designer cannot itself be within the boundaries of naturalism. If it is, then it makes their argument against naturalism completely pointless. So, far from being a red herring, this argument is supported by both reason and their own words; the nature of their arguments demands that the designer be supernatural.
He's also wrong when he says that the argument that ID advocates are really creationists trying to assert religion into classrooms is an ad hominem. There is, again, ample evidence to support the argument. A large number of the prominent ID advocates really are old-fashioned, young earth creationists. An even larger number of them were defending creationism using the same arguments with which they now defend ID. If you don't believe me, simply look at Dean Kenyon's affidavit in the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard case where he defends creation science and defines it exactly the same way he later defined intelligent design in Of Pandas and People, acknowledged by ID advocates as the first ID textbook.
Now, on to crandaddy's challenge. He asks, "Why can't ID opponents focus on the arguments, themselves, and show how they are equivalent to Creationism?" In order to make this statement, crandaddy has to ignore a huge chunk of Barbara Forrest's work in this area. Dr. Forrest certainly has addressed the major ID arguments and shown why they are all essentially the same as earlier creationist arguments. She discusses it in her book and she testified to much of it at the Dover trial. In fact, one of the exhibits she used in the Dover trial was a comparison of several arguments made by advocates with virtually word-for-word predecessors in creationist literature. I'm going to add to her argument with many more examples.
If he demands that we show that the arguments used by ID advocates today were identical to arguments used by the advocates of creationism, this is in fact trivially easy to do. It's safe to say that there is not a single ID argument that can't be traced directly to the creationist literature. For example, Nick Matzke at the NCSE has been collecting examples of the "irreducible complexity" arguments made by ID advocates today and tracing them to the creationist literature. I'll post a few obvious examples here.
The flagellum has become the centerpiece of ID, the one shining, golden example of the inability of evolution to explain biochemical complexity. It's probably invoked more often than any other ID argument. Guess what? The entire argument was made, virtually verbatim with exactly the same descriptions of the "molecular machinery", in the creationist literature before Behe's book was published and made it famous. In fact, this was introduced during the Dover trial during the cross examination of Scott Minnich.
Minnich, like Behe, repeatedly invokes the flagellum as the central proof that evolution could not create biochemical complexity and therefore it must have been intelligently designed. But during cross examination, Steve Harvey, one of the plaintiff's attorneys, put up an exhibit of an article in the Creation Science Research Quarterly from June 1994, two years before Behe's book was published. It included the same drawing of the flagellum, with the same identification terms used for all of the components that was later used by Behe and Minnich. The CRSQ article used the same term for the flagellum, "bacterial nanomachine", that Behe and Minnich later used.
The CRSQ article directly invoked irreducible complexity, saying, "However, it is clear from the details of their operation that nothing about them works unless every one of their complexly fashioned and integrated components are in place." And it made the exact same argument that Behe and Minnich make today about the flagellum: "In terms of biophysical complexity, the bacterial rotor flagellum is without precedent in the living world. To the micromechanician of industrial research and development operations it has become an inspirational, albeit formidable challenge to best efforts of current technology, but one ripe with potential for profitable applications. To evolutionists the system presents an enigma. To creationists it offers clear and compelling evidence of purposeful intelligent design."
It's an identical argument, right down to the use of the phrase "intelligent design" and it is found in an explicitly young earth creationist journal two years before Behe published and popularized it. Nor is that the only source; in fact, there are 5 separate creationist sources that make the exact same flagellum argument that ID advocates make today. Just to name a few, it was made in the Bible Science Newsletter earlier in 1994, and as far back as 1986 in Origins Research in an article by Art Battson.
Another example of a common ID argument that can be traced directly to the creationist literature is the argument concerning the Cambrian explosion. Hardly a word of Stephen Meyer's article on the Cambrian explosion in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was changed from earlier creationist sources. Henry Morris was making the exact same argument in Scientific Creationism in 1974. In fact, the argument has continued to be made even while actual fossil finds have shown that the Cambrian "explosion", rather than being a mere 10 million years was actually closer to 100 million years.
Likewise, all of the arguments found in Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells can be traced directly back to the creationist literature. In fact, many of those articles are now available online so they're easy to find. Want to see creationists making the same arguments Wells makes about Haeckel's embryos long before he used them? Go here. And here. Peppered moths? Try this one. The Miller-Urey experiments? Got that one too. Or here. Arguments from homology? Yep. Archaeopteryx? The same arguments can be found in a thousand different creationist pamphlets, including here. And those are just the ones on the ICR webpage. One could easily go on listing these all days.
If that's not enough for you, consider that Dean Kenyon, the principal author of Pandas, the first ID textbook, and a current DI fellow, used the same definition for "creation science" in his affidavit and in earlier texts of Pandas that he used for "intelligent design" in later editions of the book. Here's what he says in his affidavit:
Creation-science means origin through abrupt appearance in complex form, and includes biological creation, biochemical creation (or chemical creation), and cosmic creation.
And here's the definition that he used in an early manuscript of Pandas, before the Edwards decision made teaching creationism illegal:
"Creation is the theory that various forms of life began abruptly, with their distinctive features already intact: Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers and wings, mammals with fur and mammary glands."
And here is the definition that he used in the final version of the book, published after the Edwards ruling came down:
"Intelligent Design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc."
It's the same definition. The only counter-argument to this is that ID does not include many of the beliefs that were included in creationism, such as belief in a young earth or a global flood, nor does it require a literal interpretation of Genesis or any other sacred text. Indeed, John West of the Discovery Institute makes exactly that argument:
According to West, creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text.
But here again, Kenyon shows that this argument is false. In his affidavit in Edwards, he said that "creation science" didn't require any of those things either:
Creation-science does not include as essential parts the concepts of catastrophism, a world-wide flood, a recent inception of the earth or life, from nothingness (ex nihilo), the concept of kinds, or any concepts from Genesis or other religious texts.
Game, set, match. But I'll make a prediction: now that his challenge has been answered, crandaddy will change his argument completely. Now that it has been shown that all of the major ID arguments can be traced back to the creationist literature, it will now suddenly become irrelevant. Now the argument will be, "So what if they can be traced to creationist literature? All that means is that two different groups with different perspectives both notice the same problems with evolution. That doesn't mean their positions are the same, it only means that evolution's weaknesses are obvious to everyone." Mark my words.
Comments
So, wait, Behe didn't actually figure out the "irreducibly complex" system of the flagellum? I never read Darwin's Black Box but I know of the general arguments made within. Does he ever give credit to the original "research" like a real scientist does?
Posted by: llDayo![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 9:53 AM
Nice article. Nothing we didn't already know, but here it is all in one place.
Posted by: bourgeois_rage![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 10:25 AM
Ed,
Always a pleasure to read your posts.
One point to add: the designer of ID must be supernatural or the result of a supernatural cause, otherwise it must have evolved naturally and then we're back to Darwin.
Posted by: BobZ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 10:27 AM
Or, in other words, who designed the Designer? A non-supernatural designer immediately bucks the question of details up one stage, but doesn't solve the philosophical problem at all.
Posted by: Barry![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 10:44 AM
Like many of the ID crowd, crandaddy is either very, very stupid or a shameful, bald-assed liar. Apparently, they must hope that their congregation does not check out the works of evolution scientists.
Posted by: mark![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 10:59 AM
I think another substantial point to be made here is this: identifying someone as a creationist is not an ad hominem. The term gets thrown about often in rhetoric, but rarely does it apply as a logical fallacy. Here, crandaddy fails to document where the identification of creationists is used to refute one of their "arguments" [yes, those are sneer quotes] on the basis that they ARE creationists. IOW, in the case of preventing ID from being taught in public schools, being a creationist does have a bearing. Thus, it isn't just attacking the messenger, but establishing intentionality, which is germane to 1st Amend discussions. If, OTOH, we said, "the flagellum is not irreducibly complex because they are creationists," that would be an ad hom.
They erroneously conflate identifying the source of the argument with a label, with fallaciously refuting the argument on the basis of that label.
Subtle, but important, difference.
Posted by: sdanielmorgan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 10:59 AM
Bobz, that's very true, but when presented with that argument, the few IDers who give any coherent response that isn't "Therefore God exists!" claim that there could be some other non-Darwinian, non-intelligence-driven material process that created the designer. Of course, in arguing this, they undermine the whole foundation of ID, which rests on the premise "not natural selection = intelligent design". Logical consistency was never one of their strong points.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 11:06 AM
daniel-
Finally, someone who knows what an ad hominem is. I get so tired of seeing that phrase thrown around by people who think that it means saying anything that upsets them.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 11:38 AM
Why can't ID opponents focus on the arguments, themselves, and show how they are equivalent to Creationism?
Didn't a federal judge already do that? Maybe crandaddy slept through Kitzmiller v. Dover.
The Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:
Posted by: ivyprivy![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 11:48 AM
Despite their repeated claim that the designer could be an advanced alien race, their own arguments make clear that they don't really believe that; their own arguments demand a supernatural designer.
In Natural Theology, Paley never comes out and says God but uses various designer labels such as:
Intelligent creator
Intelligent author
Intelligent power
Intelligent beings
Intelligent agent
Intelligent mind
Intelligent will
By also using intelligent beings I guess the space alien hypothesis was a viable consideration in 1802.
I can only conclude that Crandaddy believes that beyond the philosophy there is a valid scientific basis for ID and does not understand why the scientific community does not engage ID on its terms instead of the reverse. It always comes back to "where's the ID research program?".
Posted by: Bruce Thompson![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 12:01 PM
Forrest (like Sober) is wrong if she does indeed say the biological ID designer must be God. The IC arguments obviously refer to the only type of life we have studied: terrestrial life. Such studies do not preclude that advanced, alien, evolved life designed life on earth. This applies to BobZ's comment:
"the designer of ID must be supernatural or the result of a supernatural cause, otherwise it must have evolved naturally and then we're back to Darwin."
This is erroneous--as the refence to Darwin implies that BobZ is talking about biological ID and, as mentioned, it is rather obvious that IC systems, if they exist, do not require that they were designed by other IC systems.
As for cosmological ID, I agree that there we are talking about the design of the entire universe, and so it becomes somewhat absurd to make any sort of claim that we needn't identify the designer with God.
That said, I think it is a fairly weak argument to say what I think you are saying, at least in part: although biological ID does not demand that God is the designer, cosmological ID does, and the DI affirms both types, ergo the DI cannot escape God being the designer. It is my impression that the DI is ~99% about biological ID vs. evolution--and so it should be judged for logical self-consistency on that basis.
I would like to see how it is argued that the fine-tuning arguments are neo-creationism. I don't deny it--but I'd like to see the arguments. The reason: fine-tuning ID only makes sense for an old universe, and so it has outspoken opponents among the YECS--including Hovind and Ham. So it would be interesting to see how something opposed by the big-name creationists is, in fact, creationism.
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 12:13 PM
Because creationism doesn't necessarily imply YEC. As you well know, big bang theory received some initial opposition before the evidence became overwhelming because it was perceived to support creationism.
David, nobody's forcing the DI to commit to cosmological ID, but it's up their on their website, so they're the ones with the weak argument. If they were really driven by a scientific rather than a religous motivation then they'd drop the cosmological ID side, but they aren't so they don't. Keeping the cosmological side helps get more funds from their creationist chums and rubes.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 12:27 PM
A rather timely article about creationist opposition to ID:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/117/22.0.html
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 12:33 PM
Dave Heddle wrote, "[I]t is rather obvious that IC systems, if they exist, do not require that they were designed by other IC systems."
Wow! If an IC system was designed by a system/intelligence that is *not* IC, then are you actually saying that it's possible that the designer *evolved* *naturally*???
Posted by: gascan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 1:23 PM
David Heddle: "Forrest (like Sober) is wrong if she does indeed say the biological ID designer must be God. The IC arguments obviously refer to the only type of life we have studied: terrestrial life. Such studies do not preclude that advanced, alien, evolved life designed life on earth. "
As I said, that just bumps the problem up one stage - how did the aliens come into being?
Posted by: Barry![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 1:34 PM
gascan,
"then are you actually saying that it's possible that the designer *evolved* *naturally?"
Yes. I am saying that biological ID does not preclude it. Personally I don't believe it, I believe the designer was God.
Barry,
There is nothing in biological ID that claims these designer-aliens could not have resulted from abiogenesis followed by eons of Darwinian evolution after which, as advanced, evolved beings, they came to earth and designed life with IC components. The only claim IDers make is that life on earth appears to be designed.
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 1:42 PM
So you would not agree with the very ideas that you would advocate? I think you just made Ed's point for him.
Posted by: bourgeois_rage![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 1:52 PM
bourgeois_rage:
"So you would not agree with the very ideas that you would advocate? I think you just made Ed's point for him."
Is it impossible for you to comprehend how I could argue that someone's argument is self-consistent while at the same time allowing that I disagree? That, in fact, I do not disagree with ideas that I advocate? Have you ever heard of the technique of playing the "devil's advocate"? Anybody with even marginal rhetorical skills should be able to see that I did not "make Ed's point for him."
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 2:07 PM
So the ID position is that the only example of life that any scientist we know of has ever seen, was designed, and yet you somehow know, without any supporting evidence, that it is possible for life to arise spontaneously, even though you doubt that possibility based on faith. And you call this position a "scientific theory."
(**TILT**) (**BOGGLE**) HUH??
Posted by: gascan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 2:25 PM
gascan,
"So the ID position is that the only example of life that any scientist we know of has ever seen, was designed, and yet you somehow know, without any supporting evidence, that it is possible for life to arise spontaneously, even though you doubt that possibility based on faith. And you call this position a "scientific theory.""
You seem to be talking to me, because you mentioned "you doubt" and "based on faith" but I do not call it a scientific theory, so you need to get your facts in order.
Again, the position is defensible--if we are designed it says nothing about other types of life elsewhere.
So I don't get your point at all.
When IDers make the privileged planet argument, a common non-IDer rebuttal is: of course the earth looks tailor made for us, but that says nothing about other possible life forms.
So at that point, non-IDers are more than willing, without any evidence, to allow for other types of life. The ID argument that life elsewhere could be very different from life on earth (namely it needn't be designed) is quite similar, as far as I can tell.
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 2:42 PM
ID = CREATIONISM: PROOF!
Just click on this link - and don't blink!
http://www.creation-science.com/
Dave
Posted by: Dave Thomas![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 2:45 PM
Posted by: David Heddle:
"Barry,
There is nothing in biological ID that claims these designer-aliens could not have resulted from abiogenesis followed by eons of Darwinian evolution after which, as advanced, evolved beings, they came to earth and designed life with IC components. The only claim IDers make is that life on earth appears to be designed."
First, how many statements by IDers are there on the record that reject natural causes?
Second, stipulating that claim means that (1) abiogenesis is possible from purely material causes and (2) that extremely complex life can evolve, from purely natural causes. Given those two assumptions, and the *fact* that the fossil and biological evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution on Earth leaves ID as nothing.
Posted by: Barry![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 3:01 PM
Barry,
I don't know how many, but aren't those statements against natural causes explaining life on earth? And the second part of your comment is not germane--at best it argues that their basis for inferring design is weak--but that is independent of their argument that the designer needn't be supernatural.
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 3:23 PM
Okay, it seems reasonable to state that perhaps aliens from far, far away came to Earth, where they designed and assembled complex life forms. It's not reasonable to add that it would have been impossible for such complex life forms to come about via evolutionary processes. But the real disconnect is to say a process like evolution is impossible on Earth, yet quite possible on some distant planet. Surely extraterrestrial life would differ from that with which we are familiar, but could it possibly be non-irreducibly complex? Wouldn't aliens also require teeny-weeny Evinrudes, clotting cascades, and other such complex machinery?
Posted by: mark![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 3:24 PM
David-
I will make several arguments in response to this notion of separating biological ID from cosmological ID.
1. The DI itself does not separate them. They offer a single definition of ID that combines the two together into one single "theory" that says:
They make no distinction. Furthermore, Dembski also makes no distinction when he writes:
Now, even if we granted that there was a distinction between the two and looked just at biological ID, there would still be good reasons to argue that the designer of biological ID must be supernatural, for the following reasons:
2. If the designer is not supernatural, then all of their endless ravings about "naturalism" are pointless and irrelevant because the designer himself would be "natural".
3. All of the arguments they make for biological ID would apply just as well to alien life if it had evolved on its own. All of the ID arguments about the impossibility of abiogenesis would apply just as well to life on other planets as it applies to life on this planet. All of their arguments about the impossibility of building up complex biochemical structures without prior design would apply just as well. Surely a being with the intelligence to create life would, itself, exhibit CSI and structures within their body that are IC according to the same standards they use for human life. The only thing an alien designer would do is give us another living species that, according to IDers, could not have evolved on its own; the aliens themselves would still require intelligent design by their standards.
Your argument that their arguments only address life on earth just don't work here because their arguments do not just address life on earth. Their arguments address the question of whether natural processes anywhere can produce biological complexity. Surely on one is seriously going to argue that an alien species capable of creating life on this planet would not, itself, have to exhibit the same kinds of complex systems that the IDers claim cannot have come into existence without a designer. No one's going to buy that argument; no one should.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 3:51 PM
I forgot to make one point, David. It's not reasonable to argue that in order to be creationist, one has to accept a young earth. There are old earth creationists as well as young earth creationists. The age of the earth is not a necessary part of any creationist position.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 4:13 PM
Thanks, Ed, Mark.
To summarize and repeat for David's benefit - any natural designer merely kicks the problem of IC, design, etc. up a notch, leading to the question 'Who designed the Designer?'.
Posted by: Barry![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 4:21 PM
The ironic thing about poorly used accusations of ad hom is that often the false accusation of fallacy turns into the real fallacy itself!
i.e.: I'm don't have to address your actual arguments because you insulted me!
Posted by: plunge![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 4:48 PM
Heddle wrote:
...And the second part of your comment is not germane--at best it argues that their basis for inferring design is weak--but that is independent of their argument that the designer needn't be supernatural.
I agree: there's no necessary connection. Both arguments are INDEPENDENTLY weak, and each is laughable on its own merits.
Posted by: Raging Bee![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 4:55 PM
Ed wrote,
"The DI itself does not separate them [cosmological and biological ID]. They offer a single definition of ID that combines the two together into one single "theory""
OK but that, I would think, is a kind of shallow victory. If the DI stated that it was only concerned with biological ID, would you drop the claim that their designer is necessarily supernatural?
And as for Dembski's quote, is Dembski = DI? I would think you would want to try to argue based on something more substantive than a quote. And not on the fact that they mention of the design of the universe. I would think you'd argue on the basis of their bread and butter: biological ID vs. evolution. Does biological ID as championed by the DI require a supernatural designer? I would say it doesn't, but if I wanted to argue that it did, I would not be satisfied by tying it to cosmological ID or proving it on the basis of a Dembski quote.
Ed,
"All of the ID arguments about the impossibility of abiogenesis would apply just as well to life on other planets as it applies to life on this planet"
Why? Now I could easily be wrong, because I don't know their arguments in detail. However, I am speculating that their arguments against abiogenesis occurring naturally on earth include (a) the primordial atmosphere was not conducive (e.g., too oxidizing) and (b) there wasn't enough time (life arose on earth too fast to be natural). Regardless of whether these arguments have merit, they are in fact arguments against abiogenesis on earth--conditions, one can speculate, may have been more favorable elsewhere.
Ed wrote,
"It's not reasonable to argue that in order to be creationist, one has to accept a young earth."
Did I somewhere argue that there are no old earth creationists? If so I retract--given that that is how I describe myself, what choice do I have?
Barry,
"any natural designer merely kicks the problem of IC, design, etc. up a notch, leading to the question 'Who designed the Designer?'."
No, it doesn't. If the designer evolved, then there is no necessity to ask "who designed the designer."
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 5:10 PM
No, David, I've already covered that in a previous post.
Posted by: Barry![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 5:14 PM
David Heddle wrote:
No, because their other arguments would still demand it, as I'll get to below. But this argument is still important because it shows that A) they (meaning the DI and all of their associated scholars) are being disingenuous - no, I'll say it, they're flat out lying - when they claim that their arguments are compatible with a natural designer, alien or otherwise. This is very important when a court is looking at an asserted purpose.
I didn't just offer a Dembski quote; I offered the DI's own definition as well. It's kind of silly to claim that biological ID is their "bread and butter" and that's all that should matter when their own definition of ID includes the nature of the universe itself. Besides which, this isn't the only argument that I offered. The ones below are still entirely valid.
Well, you said the following, which is what I was responding to:
The fine-tuning arguments are not consistent with young earth creationism, but they certainly are consistent with old earth creationism. And notice here that you are engaging in the same sort of reasoning you accuse me of above, arguing purely on the basis of what "big-name creationists" say rather than on the logical result of the arguments being made.
No, this is a far too narrow reading of ID probability arguments. Forget abiogenesis; even if somehow they could get beyond that, none of the arguments about biochemical complexity are earth-specific. Again, no one can seriously argue that a natural, evolved designer with the intelligence to create life on earth could possibly have evolved without any having any biochemical components that would meet the definition of an IC system or without exhibiting CSI under Dembski's definition. Remember, IDers argue that even an E. coli bacteria is far too complex at the molecular level to have evolved via natural processes; is it at all reasonable to believe that they would look at an alien life complex and intelligent enough to create life on earth and say, "Oh sure, that could have evolved on its own"? Of course it isn't.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 5:35 PM
I don't know--I can't shake the feeling that the argument is no more sophisticated than this: 1) the DI says life on earth was designed. 2) life on earth is complex. 3) anything that designed life on earth would be even more complex and 4) therefore it would have to be designed as well.
That may be an attractive argument, but it is not irrefutable.
Posted by: David Heddle![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 5:57 PM
Just because the conclusion requires a supernatural being doesn't mean it's religious creationism. The latter starts with the Bible. ID arguments don't. It's not the conclusion that marks the difference. It's the argument itself that marks the difference, not the conclusion. The judge in the Dover case made this mistake.
Similarly, it's also irrelevant that some people (even if it's 99% of ID advocates, which it isn't) hold both that the ID arguments are correct and that six-day creationism is true. Those are simply two different claims, and it is indeed inaccurate to discount one as creationism just because the other is. The Dover judge also made this mistake.
It's irrelevant as well that ID arguments were found in creationist literature. ID arguments are much older than the current ID movement. They're in fact 2500 years older. Plato's is the first I'm aware of, and he certainly wasn't engaging in religious creationism. That religious creationists will endorse an argument says nothing about whether the argument is religious creationism. Religious creationists will agree that murder is wrong, and that doesn't make the view that murder is wrong the same view as religious creationism.
Epicurus is the first person I know of to give the standard anti-ID arguments that are now common and all over your site. Epicurus was a hedonist. By your method of reasoning, I can conclude that opposition to ID is pure hedonism and merely your attempt to justify feeling good.
By the way, several ID proponents do not hold the view that "various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact". 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.
sdanielmorgan: I think you're missing the point of the ad hominem charge, at least in the way that some people use it. It's in response to the attitude that ID arguments don't need to be critiqued because they're just religious creationism. It's not in response to the claim that they can't be taught in schools because they're religious creationism. The second claim is indeed inaccurate. These classic philosophical arguments are not even close to religious creationism. But it's not an ad hominem. However, the first sort of statement is an ad hominem. Labeling it religious creationism is not a good rhetorical strategy for justifying an unwillingness to look at the argument, and there are people who do that.
I wonder if part of the problem in this post and these comments is a little unclarity on what counts as creationism. There's the trivial kind, i.e. theism. Of course theism is creationism in the sense that there's a creator. But that kind of creationism is not forbidden in schools. It's religious creationism, i.e. arguing for theism on the basis of a religious text, that is forbidden in the schools. There would be nothing wrong with teaching the classic arguments for the existence of God from Thomas Aquinas in a public school, and of course the best way to do this would be to present the arguments in as fair a way as possible so that the students could see what motivated Aquinas and then to point out where contemporary philosophers have sometimes disagreed with his premises. That would not count as teaching creationism in the sense that teaching creationism is illegal. It would indeed count as teaching creationism in whatever trivial sense that theism is creationism. Several arguments in this post and the comments (particularly Ginger's) rely on an equivocation on this ambiguity.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 6:12 PM
As long as Jeremy isn't arguing that it would be ok to teach Aquinas' views in biology class, I agree with most of his points.
I would also add that just because a scientific theory can lead someone to a metaphysical position does not mean that it isn't a scientific theory. If Dennett believes evolution proves the universe has no purpose, that is a philosophical claim, but it doesn't affect the truth or falsity of evolution. Likewise, if Dembski thinks the designer behind life's CSI has to be God, that makes no difference at all to whether CSI=design is a legitimate inference from the evidence. The design inference itself doesn't depend on the assumption that God is the designer, it only depends on the obvious observation that designers (like us) produce CSI all the time, and no non-intelligent (and non-CSI) processes are known to do so. If the next logical step is to ask "who designed the designer?" that is to move beyond the inference and make a philsophical argument, which has no bearing whatsoever on the inference itself.
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 6:40 PM
The latter starts with the Bible. ID arguments don't. It's not the conclusion that marks the difference. It's the argument itself that marks the difference, not the conclusion.
All presented arguments "for" intelligent design are negatively phrased (i.e., are worded as an evidenciary lack). Hence, ID as a resultant system cannot have been generated by deductive reasoning (denial of the antecedent, anybody?). ID as a resultant system is not the result of a rational mind moving forward from hypotheses, but is the result of retroactive generation of hypotheses from a pre-decided conclusion. The indisputable correlation of both ideas and argumentative actors (e.g. the DI) indicates a Creationist origin. I apologize for my terseness but it's getting a little irksome to see these fallacious arguments being made time and time again.
Posted by: Jonah Edwards![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 6:49 PM
The flagellum has become the centerpiece of ID, the one shining, golden example of the inability of evolution to explain biochemical complexity. It's probably invoked more often than any other ID argument. Guess what? The entire argument was made, virtually verbatim with exactly the same descriptions of the "molecular machinery", in the creationist literature before Behe's book was published and made it famous. In fact, this was introduced during the Dover trial during the cross examination of Scott Minnich.
So what? That doesn't make the argument itself creationism. It is merely an attack of evolution. You are saying that any attack on evolution must be creationism. Is that true?
Look, just because a creationist makes an argument, it doesn't make the argument creationist, got it?
Minnich, like Behe, repeatedly invokes the flagellum as the central proof that evolution could not create biochemical complexity and therefore it must have been intelligently designed.
So what John Kerry repeatedly said Saddam had WMD and had to be taken out. I guess that means he's a Republican.
Another example of a common ID argument that can be traced directly to the creationist literature ...
Again. SFW? It doesn't matter if X's and Y's make the same argument A. It doesn't make A an X or a Y argument by default. It surely doesn't make X=Y simply because they made the same argument, necessarily.
Look. This is a terrible post and you should never have given those folks so much ammo.
You should have just pointed out that anytime anyone makes a claim that something was "designed" they mean it was "created" instead of evolved. This is creationism pure and simple. When you say something was created/designed you are using a creationist argument.
When Behe says the flagellum was designed, he's really saying it was created, not evolved. This is a creationist argument. See how easy that was?
Now retract this horrible post that you spent way too much time on.
Posted by: beervolcano![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 6:57 PM
Jonah, ID arguments aren't intended to be deductive arguments. They're quite plainly inductive. They're supposed to be inferences to the best explanation, not arguments that no other explanation could be possible at all.
I'm not sure how denial of the antecedent is supposed to be coming in here, but that's not a fallacy that an inductive argument can manifest. All inductive arguments are deductively invalid, but that doesn't make them any worse as inductive arguments.
Maybe it's because of your terseness, or maybe it's because the terseness isn't shortening anything that would make sense to begin with, but I can't understand what you're trying to say in the second half of your comment. It looks as if you're saying that ID arguments are question-begging, but that sort of claim is just misunderstanding what inductive arguments are like. They see some data and see if an explanation they arrive at independently can explain that data, and ultimately they have to see if there are other, better explanations. How you come up with the hypothesis is irrelevant to whether the hypothesis is the best explanation. Maybe of our best scientific views appeared only because someone thought they would be aesthetically pleasing if they were true.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:04 PM
When Behe says the flagellum was designed, he's really saying it was created, not evolved. This is a creationist argument. See how easy that was?
Actually, that's not true. 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.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:15 PM
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Except that the creation science advocates said the very same thing about creationism. They were just as adamant as ID advocates today that they were just following the evidence wherever it leads and that their arguments did not require any position at all on the validity of the Bible. In the introduction to their book What is Creation Science?, Henry Morris and Gary Parker wrote:
Likewise, look at the statement from Dean Kenyon's affidavite above:
By the same token, creationists made the same distinction between their religious views ("religious creationism") and their scientific views ("scientific creationism") and argued that the fact that they personally believed the creator to be the Biblical God had nothing to do with their scientific claims or what they wanted to teach in schools. Morris and Parker again:
So those ID advocates who claim that ID is completely different from creationism are in effect saying, "When those creationists said the same thing we're saying, you shouldn't believe them; despite their denials, they started from a religious position and worked backwards. When they said they didn't work that way, they were lying. But when we say it, you should believe us, even though many of us (Dean Kenyon, Paul Nelson, Nancy Pearsey, Charles Thaxton, Percival Davis) were the same ones telling you what we don't think you should have believed before." I think we can be forgiven for being skeptical of that argument, don't you?
Whether creationism is "six-day" or not is irrelevant. Creationism is not limited to young earth creationism.
Plato made a very basic argument similar to the basic ID premise that the complexity of the world requires a designer. But we're talking about a whole series of arguments, almost all of them anti-evolutionary in nature, that creationism and ID have in common, almost word for word, and that has nothing at all to do with Plato. The vast majority of ID arguments are purely anti-evolution.
What Behe actually believes about how God went about "designing" those biochemical systems that he claims could not have evolved is a total mystery, to us if not to him. He never bothers to say how God did it. He did come up with one possible way he could have done it in DBB when he said that front-loading was possible - that God had pre-programmed in the genetic code for later developments in the original cell and they were then "turned on" millions of years later. But of course, if that was the case, then the non-coding genes would have accumulated massive amounts of mutations that would have destroyed their function long before they were "turned on".
So now he's in the position of arguing that God made sure that none of that would happen and miraculously bent the laws of nature in order to make sure the genes were still good. Now, if that's the argument he's going to make, how on earth does anyone still want to claim that we're not talking about a supernatural God and not a material designer? That's the whole point - their arguments, like it or not, require a supernatural force capable of "guiding the natural forces" - which means violating or suspending the laws of physics when necessary. So much for the "it could just be an alien" argument.
This is wrong, at least from a constitutional standpoint. The Edwards decision did not list a bunch of religious claims that had to be made in order to trigger the violation. In fact, they said that the Act was in violation of the establishment clause merely because it advanced "the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." It further cited as proof of the religious nature of creation science the mere fact that it "included belief in the existence of a supernatural creator." The belief in a supernatural creator is enough, under current precedent, to make it a religious belief and therefore unconstitutional to teach in public school science classrooms.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:20 PM
beervolcano:
You are completely missing the point. I am answering the argument that in order to show that ID is creationism one should be able to show that the ID arguments are equivalent to the arguments of creationism. I did just that. Of course one can argue that it doesn't matter, but I'm not answering those people, I was answering someone who claims that it does matter.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:23 PM
Jonah,
It is this claim that is tiringly repeated... IDists focus on negative evidence because the positive evidence is so breathtakingly obvious that no rational person could deny it. It takes no special argument or observational skills to recognize that intelligent designers are capable of producing CSI - anyone who denies that is either "lying or insane." The only question is whether there is any other way for CSI to arise.
IDists don't actually need to answer that question themselves, but anyone who denies ID must offer a concrete example of CSI arising from non-CSI through an unguided process. Thus in responding to ID's challengers, IDists are forced to show why the claimed counter-example has not truly proven CSI from non-CSI.
IDIsts might be wrong about this (i.e. true counter-examples might exist), but that doesn't mean they are trying to prove a negative; they don't need to, they only need ID to be the best explanation currently available.
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:24 PM
Posted by: Heathen Dan![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:30 PM
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
But wait. In your earlier comment, you said:
There are two different ways to interpret this:
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. If you mean the second option, then it only supports my argument that ID, even in Behe's formulation that accepts common descent, requires a supernatural designer.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:31 PM
By the way, please don't take anything I'm saying as an argument that ID should be taught in public school science classes. I don't think it should at all. Not because it's not science (though it might not be) but because it is not established science, and as such it has no business in a high school curriculum.
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:33 PM
Ken Brown wrote:
I think this presumes too much. First, it presumes that Dembski's CSI is actually a meaningful, coherent measure of something. I don't think that's true. It also assumes that his tests for CSI can distinguish between direct design and indirect design. I don't think that's true either. I also don't think analogies to human designers have much validity when positing how a supernatural designer would behave.
Posted by: Ed Brayton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:34 PM
Hmmm, I think it's about time I read some of Van Till's work, we might have a lot in common.
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:38 PM
Ed,
I think you are wrong on this point, but framing a response will take me some time.
On this, I agree with you, and I think it is the biggest problem with ID as presently formulated.
Yet all that is required is that the purported designer be at least as capable as we are.
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 7:46 PM
On second thought, I'm not even sure what you mean when you say you don't think "Dembski's CSI is actually a meaningful, coherent measure of something."
Posted by: Ken Brown![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 25, 2006 9:01 PM
Ken Brown wrote:
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to play the liar or the lunatic here. No, we don't see "intelligent designers" capable of producing CSI. What we see are human brains capable of producing CSI. Our brains are unbelievably complex, yes, but they're just machines. Nothing we've seen (apart from the fairy tales our ignorant ancestors told each other) indicates that ou brains, wonderful as they are, are in any way unnatural. "Intelligence" is simply the natural functioning of the human brain, and there is no designer in the skull, no ghost in the machine.
Disagree with me? Produce a counter-example. Show me something that was actually created by a disembodied "creator", and not from a physica