Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
DI flak Robert Crowther is busily working to prop up the "Darwinists out to destroy us all" story the DI is spinning over the denial of tenure to Gonzalez at Iowa State. He's responding to the various posts about it and guess who is first on the list? Predictably, his response is the standard issue nonsense we're used to from him and the other DI boy wonder, Casey Luskin. Let's take a look:
This seems to be the point of Darwinist Ed Brayton's escape-from-reality blog complaining about what he calls the "ID Persecution Complex." In truth, however, it's not ID proponents who suffer from a failure to accept reality, it's the Darwinists. Darwinists like Brayton exhibit symptoms of what might be called Darwinist Denial Syndrome: When confronted with evidence of discrimination against an ID proponent, they deny, deny, deny.
Confronted with evidence of discrimination? No one has been confronted with such evidence because no one has such evidence. If you have some, Robert, feel free to offer it. You and the other DI flaks seem to believe that the denial of tenure itself is evidence of discrimination. This is pretty much par for the course for ID advocates, of course, who don't seem to have the first clue what evidence actually is (which is why they keep claiming that their long-debunked arguments against evolution is evidence against evolution).
According to Brayton, reports that ID scientists have faced discrimination are just a "false cry of persecution." Brayton undermines this claim by ranting breathlessly out of both sides of his mouth. Take his discussion of the discrimination and harassment faced by Dr. Richard Sternberg. Out of one side of his mouth Brayton insists the discrimination never happened. Then--without even pausing--he rants out the other side of his mouth that Sternberg deserved the treatment he got because he allowed an article supporting ID to be published in the biology journal he edited.
Robert, seriously, you should at least try to represent someone's argument honestly. I know it goes against the whole ID ethos, but it's what intellectually honest people do. There is absolutely no conflict in what I have written about Sternberg. Do I deny that he faced discrimination? Absolutely. He still has precisely the same access to the Smithsonian's collections he always had, even after his Research Associate appointment expired and he had no sponsor left to continue it.
Tell me Robert, other than a few of his colleagues wanting him out (and not getting what they wanted), what actually happened to Sternberg? Absolutely nothing. He took lots of criticism, of course, and that criticism is entirely justified for reasons I've documented before. But ID advocates seem to have the same problem with the concept of discrimination that they do with the concept of evidence. Arguments are not evidence (especially old, bad taken directly from long-discredited creationist material) and criticism is not discrimination.
Comments
The Destitute....an evidence free zone.
Posted by: Wobert | May 15, 2007 11:24 PM
uhh... Actually, I would like to eliminate all adherents of ID and any other kinds on nonsensical woo. Just because they are paranoid, doesn't mean that we aren't out to get them. I would rather convert them by logic and reason, but they seem to have effectively inoculated themselves against that approach. So we seem to be left with pointing out how far off the mark they are and taking steps to minimize their pernicious influence. If that means removing them from jobs they probably never should have been appointed to in the first place, that is OK with me.
Posted by: Tex | May 15, 2007 11:39 PM
"Arguments are not evidence"
No, but arguments can be based upon evidence. Speaking of evidence, what could possibly count as evidence for design? Have you ever really, deeply thought about that question?
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 16, 2007 12:40 AM
Sure, we see evidence of design every day. What would constitute evidence of supernatural design? Good question. Wish one of you guys would answer it coherently.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | May 16, 2007 1:16 AM
Well, let's define the terms of discussion. Please explain the difference between "natural" and "supernatural" design.
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 16, 2007 1:29 AM
Crandaddy:
Oddly enough, that's a very good question. (What could possibly count as evidence for design).
Seriously, I think if you can answer that question in a rigorous manner, you'd be halfway there - because at least then you would be well on your way towards designing a testable experiment.
The problem is that IDers don't even really know what design is, they just say "I know it when I see it".
It's my opinion that it will be very difficult if not impossible to answer even that question, much less create a testable experiment.
Because, by the very definition of supernatural, once you can experimentally verify something, it becomes not supernatural anymore. :-)
That's what really gets me about the IDers... if they actually managed to scientifically prove the exitence of god and that he/she/it designed the universe, then they've pretty much completely trashed the whole notion of God's omnipotence.
Posted by: Russell Miller | May 16, 2007 1:48 AM
The Designer making an appearance would sure do the trick....though that wouldn't prove that the Designer is supernatural. He/she could just be a really, really advanced alien. Or if you want something less extreme, an encoding in our junk DNA that says something like "Kilroy was here" when translated would certainly raise suspicion.
"Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian," as J.B.S. Haldane famously put it, might disprove evolution, but they wouldn't prove design.
Posted by: Gretchen | May 16, 2007 2:46 AM
"Oddly enough, that's a very good question. (What could possibly count as evidence for design)."
Yes it is a very good question, and it's one I've spent a great deal of time obsessing over. Perhaps if Ed has done the same we'll have a nice discussion. If not he may end up banning me for asking too many pesky questions that he can't answer. We'll see.
"Seriously, I think if you can answer that question in a rigorous manner, you'd be halfway there - because at least then you would be well on your way towards designing a testable experiment."
The problem with establishing an empirically based justification of design is that you can't directly detect it. In fact, you can't really detect any causes. You establish their presence by observing and categorizing the behavior of observable objects.
"The problem is that IDers don't even really know what design is, they just say "I know it when I see it".
I've never known any IDer to say that, and if I ever see it, I'll flatly disagree. ID (as I view it) is an empirically-based epistemology, so if design is to be detected, there must be evidence for it. So what counts as evidence? Does anything count as evidence? If not, then there is no empirical justification for design.
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 16, 2007 3:00 AM
I have to agree that everything he says about your stance on Sternberg is consistent. The fact that someone can be punished while not being persecuted is too obscured by the emotions of his target audience to be received any other way. The cry of "persecution" is such a powerful adhesive among any religious group that it will still be effective. The most difficult thing in the world is neutralizing that without being tuned out. It's a trump card, politically.
I say we give DI what they claim they're getting anyway. Let's persecute them, the Discovery Institute, by ignoring them. We have to make sure that we're not giving them more attention than they deserve. They're simply invalid.
Posted by: silkworm | May 16, 2007 4:54 AM
Crandaddy said:
Well, you're off to a stunning start with that statement, anyway.
First of all, what counts as a design? Is a spider web a design? How about a crystal formation? Can some things be designed but not others?
The whole problem with Paley's watchmaker argument is that if we see a watch on the beach and pick it up, we know that it is designed because a) we know something about who designed it and for what purpose, and b) we have the natural world to contrast with it. Watch = designed. Beach = presumably not. Assuming the universe is designed, neither of these two points of evidence can be applied to it. We haven't seen anyone designing or constructing universes, and we don't have any undesigned universes to compare to this one and see if there's a difference.
Posted by: Gretchen | May 16, 2007 5:52 AM
As someone who actually is a designer, I think we talk about design in a odd way in this context.
All natural things are designed, that is quite obvious. They have been altered and altered again to fit their environments and the ecological niches they inhabit. So I am not sure about laughing at ID folk calling things 'designed' - of course they are designed. The fact that there has yet to be any evidence that the processes that produce these changes need to be anything more than natural processes that we can mostly see at work in the world today is the key problem with ID.
I sometimes think that we should be taking their language over in the same way they steal ours. Evolution is not by any means a random process. Many of the changes in DNA that give rise to variation are random, but the selection process by which is is determined which DNA variant reproduces more effectively than the next is guided very firmly by natural selection and often by the intelligent and intent-driven decisions of other intelligent organisms. So insisting that there is no evidence of design isn't quite true - design is just a way of achieving fitness for purpose most of the time - it's the fact that there has yet to be any shred of evidence that the design is being achieved by anything other than natural processes.
We can fight them with their own words - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - it isn't enough not to be able to discover the natural process that designs organisms and genes, you have to emiprically demonstrate that a natural process could not have done it. Given our often meagre understanding of the universe this would surely be about as impossible as proving empirically that God did not exist at all, in any shape or form - FSM, white beardy man, multi-armed elephant thingy, whatever.
Their argument, essentially, reduces to meaninglessness.
Posted by: Matthew Young | May 16, 2007 6:31 AM
Tho I usually disagree with PZ's approach, this seems a case where a slightly more PZesque response might be called for: why shouldn't an advocate of pseudoscience be denied tenure? What would have happened if this guy had gotten tenure? ID advocates would trumpet it as evidence of the validity of ID. See? We have another tenured professor at a major university! Obviously someone who advocates psuedoscience and is a senior fellow at an institution that's at the center of a crusade to destroy science education shouldn't be given a tenured professorship in science. That's just common sense. This is basically a case of lunatics crying persecution because they aren't allowed to run the asylum.
Posted by: Boo | May 16, 2007 6:35 AM
The thing is that a watch is designed by entirely natural processes. The human brain is a product of nature and as such anything it does is a natural process.
At what point does intelligence cease to be dubbed intelligence? We build houses to keep out the wind and rain - that is intelligence. Rabbits dig warrens - that is intelligence. What about living things like plant seeds that can remain dormant for years before just the right environmental conditions trigger germination? Is that intelligence? It's pretty fucking clever if it isn't.
Go down the ladder of intelligence and try and decide for yourselves at what point deliberate agency starts and finishes. Maybe scientists think this is easy and answered this question long ago - if so, please enlighten me, because I get the impression that humans are hugely vain about our expanded brains when we have absolutely no right to be whatsoever. As Hobbes never tires of reminding Calvin - 'Pinnacle of evolution? You wouldn't last five minutes in the jungle with those reflexes.'
Posted by: Matthew Young | May 16, 2007 6:39 AM
Sorry, getting off topic, there.
I agree with Boo though, any sort of DI/creationist association does imply a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of science, and surely this is relevant.
Posted by: Matthew Young | May 16, 2007 6:43 AM
With regards to Boo's point, I think this is a tricky area. Gonzalez is undoubtedly an excellent scientist in many respects, with an enviable publication record. On this basis (and ignoring the need to get major grants etc), I'd say that he is worthy of tenure. However, his pseudoscience is deeply regrettable and tenure would give him further opportunity to legitimise his wacky viewpoints. This is particularly the case when he ventures away from his own area of expertise and into biology - surely an abuse of status.
Having said that, I'd probably be inclined to look favourably on his application on the basis of his research output. I'd then seek to manage is extracirricular creationism, although avoiding restrictions on free speech. A tricky business.
Posted by: SteveF | May 16, 2007 7:29 AM
We know a watch is designed and the beach is not, right? That's what Paley said, and that's what the DI people say -- we know it when we see it. But don't the creationists also believe that the beach -- and everything else -- was designed?
I think their answer would probably be that god made the beach indirectly, by setting up natural forces to do the job. But the same argument could be made for a watch -- god made the man who made the watch. Anyway, there is no end to the chain of makers needed, so this is a dead end.
Then there is irreducible complexity, but we know that's a phantom.
I'm left to conclude that we must resort to a set of heuristics: straight lines are not found in nature very often; some chemical compounds form only under extreme conditions; purity is rare in nature, i.e., you don't find large lumps of 99.9% pure carbon steel.
Perhaps this is something that exobiologists have considered: How can we determine whether an item of unknown origin is a natural object or an alien artifact.
These are just thoughts I'm mulling about. Can anyone help me figure out if/where my logic is going muzzy?
Posted by: xebecs | May 16, 2007 7:45 AM
Crandaddy:
In other words, you look at stuff in nature, say 'it must be designed becasue it is sort of like human contrivance X, and human contivance X was designed'.
In other words, you 'identify' design by employing arguments via analogy and counting that as evidence.
Analogies are not evidence, metaphors and descriptive terminology are not evidence, mathematical gobbledegook premised on made-up values are not evidence.
Sorry...
Posted by: slpage | May 16, 2007 8:32 AM
The problem with establishing an empirically based justification of design is that you can't directly detect it.
Yes, you can. We're familiar with design patterns from multiple fields of human engineering. Take software for example. Computer scientists are eminently familiar with Church/Lambda Calculus formalism, so when looking at OCaml or Haskell source we can deduce that it was designed with that in mind. Do you know of anything similar for the "designer" you and your ideological kin constantly invoke?
"In fact, you can't really detect any causes. You establish their presence by observing and categorizing the behavior of observable objects."
Wrong, and obviously intended to retrofit ID into scientific methodology. You most certainly can observe causes, it is only when you operationally define causes that you can infer them from observed effects. To say that science never detects causes is fatuous.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | May 16, 2007 8:40 AM
Also relevant is the old Panda's Thumb thread in which it was pointed out that, according to Dembski's own definition, natural selection is an intelligent process.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | May 16, 2007 8:48 AM
Crandaddy, you said this:
Then this:
Then this:
So -- serious question -- what exactly is your point? That it is impossible to provide evidence for design?
What am I missing? How would that be an argument for intelligent design?
Posted by: itchy | May 16, 2007 9:28 AM
My understanding is that Gonzalez is a physicist, not a biologist. In that case, the decision of an institution to grant tenure would be based on his professional work in physics; apparently this output was not satisfactory to Iowa State. I would have somewhat of a problem with denying an otherwise excellent physicist tenure exclusively because of misguided beliefs about biology - but, again, people are denied tenure for all kinds of reasons, and being denied is not the same as persecution. If Newton was retained by Cambridge despite his dabblings in the occult, I think we can afford an otherwise excellent physicist to be granted tenure. On the other hand, even though I am a biologist, I know the basic outlines of what's going on in physics as an educated layperson. If I subscribed to evolutionary biology in my own work, but then subscribed to an earth-centered cosmology, it would be a good sign that I am not a well-rounded scientist. So, at the very least, Gonzalez may be a good physicist, but he's not very scientifically-literate - and if he's vocal about it that would reflect poorly on Iowa State. I surely wouldn't want an IDer in my department!
Posted by: Chuck | May 16, 2007 9:37 AM
Re SteveF
There have been questions raised as to Prof. Gonzalezs' scientific publication output, particularly after he joined the faculty at Iowa State. However, as unfair as denial of tenure for advocating crackpot ideas may seem relative to academic freedom, the question arises: do the other faculty members at Iowa State really want to be saddled with another Arthur Butz, Michael Behe, Peter Duesberg, or Brian Josephson? Because they have tenure, the universities employing them are stuck with them.
Posted by: SLC | May 16, 2007 9:50 AM
Some of the commenters above have hit on important aspects of this. I think Crandaddy's question is ill-conceived. The question is not how to detect design, or what evidence of design might be, but how to distinguish between indirect, unintentional design (design shaped by the routine interactions of the world according to the laws that govern such interaction) and direct, willful design (this is the criticism that Howard Van Till has been making of Dembski's work for years). The IDers do this, as someone said above, by analogizing to human design, attempting to infer from natural objects that they were designed the same way an archaeologist infers human design in artifacts found at a dig site. But this is a terrible analogy to either biological entities or to universal ones (remember, the DI's definition of ID includes "certain features of the universe", by which they of course mean the physical laws of the universe itself). It's a terrible analogy for multiple reasons. First, because we can only make inferences to human design because we know the capabilities and limitations of human beings and have examples of human design to compare them to. As Gretchen points out, we have no examples of universes to compare ours too, nor do we have human-designed living organisms to look at. The entire ID argument relies solely upon poking holes in evolution and using a standard god of the gaps argument - "not evolution, therefore God." If they have a coherent, rigorous way to detect design in biological or universal objects, we're all waiting to hear it.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | May 16, 2007 12:31 PM
That's just it, Ed--Dembski's "Explanatory Filter" is useless. And almost all talk of design ignores what has to follow design: production. I've designed all manner of quark-free life forms, but I haven't a clue how to bring any of those designs into production. The best answer from the ID camp is Behe's "poof." Because ID is just a way to speak about Creationism without mentioning religion, it can't address the process of making designs concrete, because the creative act (that follows design) is an act of God.
Posted by: mark | May 16, 2007 12:58 PM
Re: SLC
That's not really true. In most cases, tenure just means your contract is allowed to renew continually with minimal review and you are eligible for promotion. I believe that most universities can axe any faculty member at a moment's notice, but won't unless that faculty member shows particularly bad judgement or becomes completely unproductive or both.
Posted by: cserpent | May 16, 2007 1:23 PM
Having looked at the (admittedly incomplete) information about Gonzalez that's been posted in various places, and at the IAState statement, and with some of my own research, I think it's probable that Gonzalez was denied tenure for pretty much the same reason most people are denied tenure: he failed to establish an independent, visible, externally-funded research program. I think, therefore, the speculation about his ID views from both sides is off-base. I don't think an IDer whose work is not directly impacted by his views should be denied tenure.
Henry Schaefer, perhaps the most prolific quantum chemist alive today, is probably an IDer or creationist. Richard Smalley. who won the Nobel prize a few years back for fullerenes, was probably an IDer. I am scared by the idea that either of those superb chemists could have had their careers prematurely terminated because of subscription to, or advocacy of, an idea, which, while unscientific, really has not direct impact on their work. Note the 'probably'; neither made or makes a great effort to promote IDism. I'm simply intepreting public statements they've made.
It is my belief that most IDers do indeed have a ass-backwards understanding of science. If so, then they will fail in science in ways that have nothing to do with ID. There is no need to have the debate we're having. Because I have confidence in science, and (generally) in the current system for vetting scientists, I don't see any reason to put a finger on the scale.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | May 16, 2007 1:25 PM
My view is that if design is to exist, it must be derived from intentionality. That aside, when I speak of detecting design, I refer to the empirical justification of its presence. This seems to match well with your epistemic distintion between "indirect, unintentional" design and "direct, willful" design. How are they different?
You assume that cases of human design can be epistemically justified but don't lay out the details of this position. I don't grant you any foundation to work from here; you'll have to establish that yourself.
Not quite. It relies upon ruling out known mechanistic regularities and probabilistically eliminating chance to empirically justify the actions of other minds (design). If there is a fill-in-the-gaps argument, it's mind-of-the-gaps, and this applies to any mind outside of yourself.
If you have a coherent, rigorous way to detect design anywhere outside of the self, I'd love to hear it!
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 16, 2007 3:35 PM
Darwinist Ed Brayton
Ed, I'm sure you were as shocked as Mark Chu-Carrol to learn that you, a nonscientist, were a "Darwinist". What better evidence that "Darwinist" as used by the IDers/creationists means little more than "someone who doesn't buy our BS"?
Crandaddy, you seem to have problems with the basic way science does things. For one, it is he who is proposing the radical theory that must make the arguments and present the evidence, not those defending the status quo. Einstein had to do it, Darwin had to do it, and now you have to do it. It is for you the IDer/creationists to figure out a way to detect design independent of knowledge of the designer, not the rest of us. Personally I hope you succeed, because I think it is intellectually fascinating, and also because I believe if you did, the theological versions of ID would flunk the test.
Second, you seem to view science as more than the "as is" exercise it is. Science does not deal with intent, except as a clue to what occurred (as with a murder investigation). However, there is nothing in science that is "derived from intentionality". There is a good reason for that: "intentionality" implies free will, which drags the whole discussion into a philosophical arena where the issues are far from settled. No one really knows, as specifically as you need to to do good science, what "intentionality" means.
I personally think we can, to a very limited extent, discern design, even without much knowledge of the designer. I don't think we will mistake the first alien spacecraft that lands for a naturally occurring event. But such examples are rare. For the most part, design detection is fraught with error even in the best cases. Ask any archaeologist. Who hasn't seen a face in the clouds?
The biggest problem ID has IMO is that you just don't have the goods. I can envision a lot of things we could find in nature that would have me thinking design, but they are nothing like what you have. The flagellum does NOT look like a motor. The eye is NOT good design. Irreducible complexity argues for STUPID design. And so forth.
Posted by: Science Avenger | May 16, 2007 6:33 PM
The term "Darwinist" is an idiotic bit of dishonest framing by the ID movement. They've never offered a coherent definition of it and they never will. It's much more effective as a buzzword that just means Them.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | May 16, 2007 6:42 PM
I don't think we will mistake the first alien spacecraft that lands for a naturally occurring event.
Too late, earthl...er, I mean, no certainly not, it'll be obvious, big and shiny and menacing looking!
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | May 16, 2007 8:14 PM
Uh, you are missing the fact that Gonzalez wrote a physics/astronomy book, The Privileged Planet, which endorsed ID not just in biology, but in physics/astronomy, and not just in the origin of the universe, but in the origin of the Earth. If Gonzalez's colleagues thought that the book's arguments were crap, wouldn't that be a valid point against giving him tenure? (amongst all the other issues they have to consider)
Posted by: Richard Thawyer | May 16, 2007 11:50 PM
Uh, you are missing the fact that Gonzalez wrote a physics/astronomy book, The Privileged Planet, which endorsed ID not just in biology, but in physics/astronomy, and not just in the origin of the universe, but in the origin of the Earth. If Gonzalez's colleagues thought that the book's arguments were crap, wouldn't that be a valid point against giving him tenure? (amongst all the other issues they have to consider)
I haven't read his book. But in themselves, 'cosmological fine-tuning' arguments are embraced by most theistic evolutionists. And while I'm not a theistic evolutionist, and have little intellectual respect for their position, in the absence of scientific evidence against that position, it's hard to see it as anti-scientific.
A lot of very bright people have written a lot of very dumb things in order to get around the conclusion of a materialistic universe.
I guess my position on academic freedom is that one should positively avoid considering material like this unless there is a strong argument that it is directly relevant. If it's in his file, and he's asking for it to be considered as an academic publication, and there are things in it that are transparently wrong, then by all means consider that. If it's not in his file, then it's his private life, and you leave it alone. You should give the benefit of the doubt to the candidate if at all possible.
It's quite possible The Privileged Planet did kill his tenure, by distracting him and taking time away from the things he should have been doing. I'd leave it at that.
Posted by: Gerard Harbison | May 17, 2007 11:04 AM
Matthew Young said:
[my emphasis]It isn't "clever" when a seed stays dormant, Matthew. That is nothing at all to do with intelligence, because there is no choice involved, no alternative behaviors available. When a rabbit digs a warren, the rabbit might not dig a warren. It might dig a warren somewhere else. Even the shape of the warren is developed as a result of choices that the rabbit makes in the process of digging. However, the seed is responding entirely on a chemical level. The chemical reactions are entirely deterministic. They either happen or they don't. They follow rules of physics and chemistry, and the response pathways are deterministic responses to the presence of water. light, and/or other chemical nutrients. There is no "choice". Therefore, no "intelligence", unless you want to go down the metaphysical route of saying that the entire universe embodies "intelligence" -- but you have wandered outside the descriptions available to science, there.
The question is not entirely as complicated as you make out.
As to how seeds might have developed a dormancy response in the first place -- simple. Natural selection, and survival under conditions where dormancy is a useful response. If anything which germinates regardless of external conditions dies, selection will act reasonably quickly to propagate the dormancy trait. Given that this, too, is the purely deterministic result of purely physical processes, I still don't think you can class it as "intelligence".
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | May 17, 2007 12:05 PM
Yes it is a very good question, and it's one I've spent a great deal of time obsessing over.
...And, apparently, absolutely no time researching or trying to answer.
My view is that if design is to exist, it must be derived from intentionality.
So what, exactly, is the "intention" with which life on Earth was "designed?" The IDers refuse to speculate about this, because that gets them into theology, and their precious big tent would be torn apart as a result. Not to mention their pretense that ID is not about religion. So without any clear idea of the "Designer's" "intent," ID and its "inferences" remain utterly baseless.
That aside, when I speak of detecting design, I refer to the empirical justification of its presence. This seems to match well with your epistemic distintion between "indirect, unintentional" design and "direct, willful" design. How are they different?
This paragraph is nothing but word-salad. Also, your use of the word "justify" is suspicious; are you sure you know what it means? How are we supposed to "empirically justify" something?
[The ID argument] relies upon ruling out known mechanistic regularities and probabilistically eliminating chance to empirically justify the actions of other minds (design).
In which case, ID is nothing, because all of its attempts to rule out those things have been proven empty, if not blatantly dishonest.
If there is a fill-in-the-gaps argument, it's mind-of-the-gaps, and this applies to any mind outside of yourself.
Horsemuffins -- it applies ONLY to minds that have the power to design and create an entire ecosystem -- if not an entire universe -- and leave no physical traces of such manufacture behind. In other words, God, or someone with the same skill-set. ID is about a creator-god, and always has been, and your attempts to pretend otherwise are too laughable, too late.
AS to the original subject of Gonzalez' alleged "persecution," my own opinion is that since ID is clearly not a legitimate minority scientific idea, but a religious con-game whose dishonesty and scientific vacuity has been repeatedly proven -- in a Federal court, no less -- it is therefore either incompetent or dishonest for a science professor to tout it in a university; and incompetence and dishonesty are both legitimate grounds for denial of tenure. If, indeed, that was the reason for denial of tenure in this case, then the decision was valid.
Posted by: Raging Bee | May 17, 2007 12:11 PM
How ironic.
You don't get into a designer's head and try to figure out if he designed or not; you infer its presence from the study of patterns in nature. Anyone with an average IQ who thinks about this matter should be able to figure that out.
Research
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 17, 2007 1:00 PM
Crandaddy:
We see humans produce things. That is evidence. Is it proof? Not in all cases, but no matter; it's solid evidence in nearly all cases.
When we then see an object that is very similar to another object that we previously saw produced by a human, the most likely explanation is that it, too, was designed (and produced) by a human. It's possible a superior being could have done it, and it's possible that it was random chance of atoms forming spontaneously. But nearly infinitely less likely.
Well, whatever it is in the gaps would fill the gaps, so, no matter how you gussy it up, that would be a fill-in-the-gaps argument.
But, as for your methodology -- disprove nearly every piece of evidence for evolution and thus remove its explanatory power -- by all means, have at it.
Two problems:
1. The evidence for evolutionary theory is overwhelming and multidisciplinary -- which means you have lots of work to do -- and each day, you're losing ground, as evidence corroborating evolutionary theory is discovered.
2. Even if you were successful in undermining every piece of evidence for evolution, you will have only achieved parity. You will not have put forth a shred of evidence in support of your theory. There would be no more reason to believe in a "mind-in-the-gaps" theory than in any other explanation from the infinite pool of possibilities.
Again, the argument that we cannot possibly detect design -- stating at the outset that it is impossible to provide evidence for your theory -- is a bizarre way to promote an idea. Some might even say it would undermine it.
Ironically, your hypothetical work refuting evolutionary theory would allow someone to recite your claim for evolution: "I can't possibly provide evidence, therefore, it is true."
I'm sure you would. That it is lacking does not hurt evolutionary theory one bit, but it certainly would help alternative theories: provided, of course, that we actually *did* detect the design once we were able to do so.
Posted by: itchy | May 17, 2007 1:14 PM
Crandaddy blithered:
You don't get into a designer's head and try to figure out if he designed or not; you infer its presence from the study of patterns in nature.
I thought you just said you infer design based on something called "intentionality." Make up your mind, willya, boy? And if you can't, or won't, even speculate on what living things are "designed" for, how can you be sure they're "designed" at all?
Also, I looked up that Wikipedia entry, and found this sentence:
Many things can be justified: beliefs, actions, emotions, claims, laws, theories and so on. Epistemology focuses on beliefs.
The same entry also says, in big letters: "Justification is a normative activity."
So you still need to explain what "empirical justification of its presence" is supposed to mean. Your "arguments" are nothing but word-salad.
Posted by: Raging Bee | May 17, 2007 3:47 PM
Crandaddy said: you infer [design]s presence from the study of patterns in nature. Anyone with an average IQ who thinks about this matter should be able to figure that out.
That's just another version of "I know it when I see it". That's not good enough for science. If you want to be taken seriously by scientists, then finish the job Dembski started. Make his Explanatory Filter something that can discern between the designed and the undesigned. Is a snowflake designed? Is a crystal designed? The flagellum? The eye? The faces on Mount Rushmore? Show us, objectively, and in detail, how you discern design. Waving one's arms about how obvious it is sounds like crankery, not science.
Posted by: Science Avenger | May 17, 2007 5:31 PM
To Itchy,
We see human bodies move. Do they serve as conduits for design? It seems likely that they do, but which things are designed and which aren't? Supposedly human bodies display seizure activity as well, but that's not design. Or is it?
This is actually very close to an ID argument. The only thing I would challenge is the presumption that we know when and where humans design, so I would reword your first sentence as follows: When [I] then see an object that is very similar to another object that [I] previously saw produced by [myself], the most likely explanation is that it, too, was designed (and produced) by [an intelligent agent].
I call into question the presumption that we just know human design when we see it. The proper starting point is not "human" design but my own design because I can know my own design from direct experience.
For the record, I consider myself a theistic evolutionist who is sympathetic to ID explanations. I'm much more interested in the philosophical foundations of ID than with its application to evolution, biology, cosmology, or whatever else.
ID seeks an empirical distinction between mental acts and background natural processes--not just "evolution" but any naturalistic process that can be understood to occur. This is why it can apply just as well to acts of terrestrial or embodied agency as it can to acts of disembodied agents such as God.
When I design, I cause the designed pattern; if something else makes me do it, then I'm not the designer. I can tell the difference because I directly perceive my own will and know if it is present or not because and only because of this direct perception. This is my primary experience with design.
Now, what are some properties that my designs have? I identify two necessary relational properties. First, they are repetitions of preexisting patterns. Even if I've never done it before, I necessarily know what it is that I want to do before I do it. The pattern therefore exists in my mind if nowhere else.
Second, as I said above, they are caused by me and not caused by causes which are not me. They therefore have a causal relation to myself as an agent. Possible causes of events which are not caused by agency--the paradigm case of which must be myself (I dare anyone to show otherwise.)--are two in number: mechanistic determinacy and chaotic randomness.
So...
If I am to justify on empirical grounds that a pattern is designed, I must have a preconceived notion of the pattern before I encounter the physical instantiation whose design is in question, and I must be at a loss to explain how mechanistic determinacy and randomness fail to offer a sufficient explanation for its existence. By sufficient, I mean that no mechanistic causes are known, and the probability of chance producing it is small enough to be effectively ruled out. I think Dembski sets this at 1/10^150, his UPB.
I don't argue that, but I think the anti-ID side pushes us in that direction. My goal is to provide the ingredients for a proper empirical justification. See what I just wrote above.
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 18, 2007 2:27 AM
To Raging Bee,
Right. It attempts to ascribe rational warrant to belief in some proposition. What's your point?
To provide empirical justification for some proposition P, one must provide one or more propositions which are true representations of some observed state(s) of affairs the truth of which provide rational grounds for believing that P.
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 18, 2007 2:37 AM
To Science Avenger,
This is a good point. Yes, we do need a rigorous, well-defined design detection formulation. At least Dembski is trying to provide this, and if he hasn't nailed it, I believe he is at least on the right track. He has the right general idea, at least: design is to be found in the absence of natural regularity and random chance.
Posted by: Crandaddy | May 18, 2007 2:41 AM
Luna_the_cat:
I am not quite as ignorant as you seem to think, honestly, I just may not have stated my point very clearly. I do understand how seed dormancy would develop under natural selection, and I am not trying to imply that the dormancy/germination decision is what we would call conscious or intelligent decision thought.
What I meant was that there must be blurry edge between the pure chemical chain reaction of seed dormancy and conscious decision making. Somewhere presumably between, say, funghi and molluscs, or whatever. So at what point do we decide 'intelligence' to begin on that particular spectrum - is there a clear dividing line?
I would also ask if a lot of what we term 'conscious decision making' might be little more than an elaborate version of the same deterministic chain reactions, and we are kidding ourselves that we are making 'well thought out choices' - that what we think of as our deep pondering may be no more than an emergent property of the chemical processes in our brain over which we have far less control than we think. In the same way that what we think of as deep meaningful love for our mate is nothing more than a 'fuck fuck breed fuck' response triggered by hormones.
Posted by: Matthew Young | May 18, 2007 5:50 AM
Crandaddy said: [Dembski] has the right general idea, at least: design is to be found in the absence of natural regularity and random chance.
I disagree. One is never going to be on solid ground with a "not-A therefore B" approach, because there is always the possibility of unknown other causes. One needs positive evidence, and for that one needs a specific description of the hypothesized cause. This is where ID breaks down, because IDers keep playing this game of pretending that forbidding discussion of attributes of the designer is somehow a scientific approach. It isn't. It completely neuters the process.
This of course shouldn't come as a shock to anyone familiar with the history of ID being a sciency wedge to get into science classes, with the big spook in the sky to follow as the pre-ordained result. If they were really interested in design detection, they would be more interested in what archaeologists and SETI are doing, and would look for true traits of intelligent design, such as foresight, and cooption of traits from novel sources. That they instead spend so much time fiddling with flagellums reveals that they aren't really looking for an answer. They think they already know it.
Posted by: Science Avenger | May 18, 2007 1:36 PM
If I am to justify on empirical grounds that a pattern is designed, I must have a preconceived notion of the pattern before I encounter the physical instantiation whose design is in question...
In other words, your "design inference" is based on your own purely subjective "preconceived notion" of a "pattern." Which means that your "design inference" is based on nothing but "I say it looks designed, therefore it is designed." Sorry, that's not good enough.
...and I must be at a loss to explain how mechanistic determinacy and randomness fail to offer a sufficient explanation for its existence.
Just because you're "at a loss" to explain something, does not mean such an explanation doesn't exist. This is nothing but argument from ignorance. "At a loss" means "we don't know yet," not "it was designed, no further inquiry allowed."
...and the probability of chance producing it is small enough to be effectively ruled out.
Show us the math, and the underlying assumptions, by which you would calculate such probabilities. Also, where did Dembski get that number? His bum?
Furthermore, your "improbability" argument depends, not merely on the probability of something evolving, but the probability of the same thing being created by design. Can you calculate the probability of, say, a Designer designing a bacterial flagellum, rather than something else? Show us the math, dude.
Right. It attempts to ascribe rational warrant to belief in some proposition. What's your point?
That's not what "justify" means in the definition you gave me. Also, it's still a normative action, having nothing to do with observation, verification, or proof.
To provide empirical justification for some proposition P, one must provide one or more propositions which are true representations of some observed state(s) of affairs the truth of which provide rational grounds for believing that P.
In plain English, that means that we consdier P true if we observe P to be true. All you've done is restate a banal truth as word-salad, without even linking it to your central "point." What observation backs up your "design inference" again?
Yes, we do need a rigorous, well-defined design detection formulation. At least Dembski is trying to provide this...
Give us a shout when he succeeds. Until then, you have nothing; and at this point, there's no sign he's even making any specific effort in this direction. (What, exactly, has he done so far, other than posturing on a blog where differing views are banned?)
Posted by: Raging Bee | May 18, 2007 2:09 PM