One of the things I've been saying for a long time about "intelligent design" is how frustrating it is trying to get IDers to spell out what they think actually happened. They've got lots of criticisms of evolutionary theory, but no model of their own for the natural history of the earth. Some of them claim that ID doesn't really deny evolution but works well with it. For instance, Bruce Gordon posits that ID is compatible with practically any position on the natural history of life on earth, and with evolution specifically:
First of all, what has come to be called 'design theory' is at best a means for mathematically describing, empirically detecting, and then quantifying teleology (goal-directedness) in nature, without prejudging where or whether it will be found. Secondly, if it is granted that teleology might be an objective part of nature, then it also has to be acknowledged that design research can be carried out in a manner that does not violate methodological naturalism as a philosophical constraint on science. I have no attachment one way or the other to methodological naturalism as a metascientific principle, but honesty demands the recognition that design-theoretic research does not logically entail its denial. Thirdly, design research is compatible with a realistic teleology like that of the vitalism espoused by thinkers such as Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch. It is compatible with the suggestion that life on earth was purposely seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos (though this leaves another rather pressing question unanswered). It is compatible with a theistic- evolutionary perspective of continuous development in which the unfolding of the universe and of life was implicit in finely-tuned. initial conditions. On a less sanguine note, it is logically compatible with "creationism' in, a variety of forms, though many of these can readily be dismissed on well-established scientific grounds. And there may be other metaphysical possibilities. Beyond this, adjudicating among these various metaphysical interpretations is a task that falls to philosophers and theologians and forms no part of any contribution to science that design theory might make.In conclusion, it is crucial to note that design theory is at best a supplementary consideration introduced along- side (or perhaps into, by way of modification) neo-Darwinian biology and self- organizational complexity theory. It does not mandate the replacement of these highly fruitful research paradigms, and to suggest that it does is just so much overblown, unwarranted, and ideologically driven rhetoric.
But if you ask the major players in ID whether they accept the theory of evolution - which is common ancestry, the theory that all modern life forms are derived from one or a few common ancestors via descent with modification - you will get wildly differing answers. Their media appearances in just the last few days demonstrate this. First, William Dembski went on Nightline and said that he accepted common ancestry as valid. When the host made the statement that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, he replied:
Well, what are we talking about? If we're talking about common descent, universal common ancestry, I think there's good evidence for that. But if we're talking about the mechanism of evolution, how did all this great diversification and complexity come about, uh, there there's great, uh, diversity of opinion within the scientific community.
But in an appearance on the Lou Dobbs show, Jonathan Wells said that common ancestry was out too, that the evidence for common ancestry was very suspect:
When I say Darwinian evolution, I'm referring to Darwin's theory, which he called descent with modification. The first element of that is, as Michael points out, descent of living organisms from common ancestors. The second element is the mechanisms of modification. I think the evidence poses serious problems for both aspects of Darwin's theory...I think that students need to know that the evidence for this common ancestry thesis and for the mechanism of evolution, the evidence is serious wanting. And students need to know the truth about the evidence.
Michael Behe is on record many times as saying that he accepts common ancestry as well. So among the three most prominent ID scholars, we have a serious split here. Two accept common ancestry and say the evidence supports it and a third says the evidence contradicts it. So what exactly does ID say about the natural history of life on earth? Your guess is as good as mine, which is to say as good as theirs. The only thing they all agree on is that God must have done something at some point within evolution, and lo and behold that point just happens to be wherever scientists do not have a compelling explanation for how some very specific biochemical system evolved. It's a classic "god of the gaps" argument - yes, we accept that life evolved (except for those of us who don't) but in any area where science is still working on a good explanation of a specific problem within evolution, that's where God must have jumped in to do....well, something. We don't know what. Or when. Or how. We just know that, right now at least, evolution hasn't explained it and therefore God must have done it.
As my colleague Howard Van Till would say, this is not only bad science it is bad theology. It presumes that God did such a poor job of creating the conditions that give rise to life that he had to continually intervene and tinker with it to get it to work right (see this article for a further explanation of his views).
There is a further problem for the IDers in that their position of accepting common ancestry would seem to conflict with their claims on the Cambrian explosion, for example. The DI has made a huge deal out of the Cambrian explosion as an argument against common ancestry, asking where the remains are of the ancestors to those organisms which came to be in the Cambrian. But if one accepts that the evidence for common ancestry is strong, then the Cambrian explosion must be an artifact, not a genuine problem for common ancestry. So why are Dembski and Behe not telling Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells, both of whom use the Cambrian explosion constantly in their arguments, that it's not a problem for common ancestry? I'll submit that it's because they neither have, nor are concerned with having, a coherent model of the natural history of life on earth; they only have, and are only interested in having, arguments that show a lack of explanatory power for evolution so that they can claim that wherever such a lack exists, that's where God must have done....well something.
Paul Nelson is correct when he admits that there is no actual theory of ID to guide research. No only is there no theory of ID, there isn't even a coherent conception of what actually happened. There is only an attempt to poke holes in evolution large enough to put the word "God" in the hole. And this is quite by design, I might add. The traditional creationists tried to come up with a specific model that makes predictions about the nature of the evidence with a young earth, flood geology model; the problem is that those predictions fail and the evidence flat contradicts the model. So the IDers have learned from this that if you don't try to establish what actually happened, or where and when it happened, you can't be shown to be wrong. Vagueness as compelling argument.
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For instance, Bruce Gordon posits that ID is compatible with practically any position on the natural history of life on earth, and with evolution specifically:
Practically any?
I'd like to know of any position on the natural history of life on earth that's not compatable with ID.
There is a similar thread currently on talk.origins, but I think you summed it all up quite nicely.
I think it's important to point out that when activist school board members come out in the papers declaring that they think ID should be taught in schools, that ID deserves equal treatment, and so forth, it's rather obvious that these people do not know a lot about ID. As you pointed out here, there simply is no such thing as ID. So when these school board members say that they think ID should be taught, they are exposing themselves as activists. Only an activist would want something to be taught based solely on the fact that it conforms to their ideological views, prior to even learning what it is they want to be taught.
During the testimony of ID proponents at the Kansas School Board hearings, was the reiteration over and over that there was no overt developed available curricula for teaching ID. To them it seemed like a minor matter, in that, as Ed so ablely points out, that really isn't their intent in the first place. I must say though, that if they actually had a definitive theoretical construct of ID, they would probably have already developed the associated teaching materials. They seem to live by the rule: "Don't put it on paper!"
Dembski is convinced that common descent is a reasonable inference from the evidence? Has he flip-flopped?
(Sorry about the mynym-like extended quotation.)
Well said, Ed. Might have included mention that P. Johnson specifically developed ID as a wedge strategy, and wedge is the word he used. A rather large, ubiquitous umbrella under which creationists of all flavors could gather and coordinate their opposition to evolution.
As my colleague Howard Van Till would say, this is not only bad science it is bad theology. It presumes that God did such a poor job of creating the conditions that give rise to life that he had to continually intervene and tinker with it to get it to work right (see this article for a further explanation of his views).
That would presume that conditions that require tinkering and intervention would amount to something that is a "poor job," or it presumes that conditions that don't require intervention or tinkering would prevent "God" from tinkering and intervening as if it would be some kind of a big hassle or something. Last I heard, "God" is a tinkering and intervening kind of a guy. I don't see how affirming the consequent should be considered good theology, but I guess it's as about as good as any other.
Very interesting post. I've gotten into this topic on my blog, after surfing for information on Earth's magnetic field. Apparently, there is some published papers on the Earth's magnetic field being used to support the non-evolutionist points. It doesn't take a PhD to see their pseudo-science fall flat on its face, though. They publish to their own publications, and their papers are written to look scientific, but would never be published in any reputable journal. Anyway, I think the educated majority agree that ID is rather IDiotic... now if its stealth-like danger can be confronted head-on, maybe we can avoid it being touted as "science" to school boards.
I don't see why someone would use the fossil record to indicate common descent of all life on earth. Fossils work well for closely related organisms (e.g., vertebrates), but when you try to use them to support common descent of all animals or all life, the data falls short.
Molecular evidence, on the other hand, indicates common descent of all life on earth. Why else would bacteria, animals, plants, and fungi share similar genes? You would think that there would be multiple "designs" for molecules required in subcellular processes, but the evidence suggests homology extending all the way back to the origins of life. The data coming out of recent genome projects (and even early sequencing projects) make the theory of common descent irrefutable. The big question in biology now is not whether or not it happened, but, rather, how the radiation occurred.
But if you ask the major players in ID whether they accept the theory of evolution - which is common ancestry, the theory that all modern life forms are derived from one or a few common ancestors via descent with modification - you will get wildly differing answers.
I think that's because there's wildly differing views among IDers. It doesn't always seem easy to lump them into one category, and the views are highly diverse. As such, we should be hesitant to lump them together.
"As such, we should be hesitant to lump them together."
This is one of those statements that sounds significant upon a casual reading, but really says nothing. "Intelligent Design" is supposed to be a scientific movement. While evolutionary biologists may, for example, disagree about the existence or importance of certain mechanisms of diversification, none dispute common descent. Without the latter, there is no evolution -- it's that important.
If ID advocates cannot agree on such a fundamental point, that disagreement speaks volumes about the conceptual coherence of ID itself. If, as Josh suggests, there are these cardinal conceptual controversies -- and hence no conceptual "lump" -- ID cannot be called a "theory" in the scientific sense of the term.
"Differing views" in this case should, in the reasonable view, be the death of advocacy for any ID viewpoint in a science classroom.
As Ed has shown again and again, the real glue that holds ID together is the god-of-the-gaps approach to science. The impulse to theism is the common denominator by which ID advocates may be lumped together. We should be happy at that, since GOTG has not been taken very seriously since William Paley's days. Politics is a different matter, of course, but one can hope.
Scott (Eon)
Creationists of whatever stripe love to point out "gaps" in phylogenetic trees or in the fossil record. Among their favorites their claim of a lack of intermediates between primitive eyes and modern mammalian eyes. I would point to this recent article in nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7039/edsumm/e050512-01.html
If an IDer really wanted to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint, he or she should propose a theory and provide some evidence for the theory. In the ten years or so that I've been paying attention, no body has done so. They haven't proposed a theory. And they haven't provided any evidence.
All that they have done--from what I have read--is to try to identify gaps in the evidence for Darwin's theory. Gaps in evidence for one theory is not evidence for their "proposal."
I'll merely mention one aspect from my specialty--physics. During the 1940s and 1950s, there were two competing theories of cosmology--Fred Hoyle's "steady state" theory, and the "big bang" theory (too many proponents to credit). Both were competing and both had evidence behind them. Indeed, the same evidence. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1963-64 put the death-knell to the "steady state" theory. The CMBR was a prediction of the Big Bang theory.
But at least the steady state theory had evidence behind it--which was why it was taken seriously. And it was evidence that tended to suggest that the Big Bang theory was correct, over the steady state theory.
The IDers don't even produce evidence to suggest that whatever they are saying has anything to do with reality.
Josh wrote:
Well, there are obviously some differences among ID advocates. Paul Nelson and Nancy Pearsey, for instance, are young earthers while most of the others are not. But the point of my post was that there simply is no ID model or theory for the natural history of life on earth. There is only an attempt to poke holes in evolution, but even there they can't seem to agree on something as basic as whether common descent is valid or not (and as someone noted above, Dembski can't seem to decide how he feels about it himself).
I don't think this is merely a matter of disagreement, however, I think it cuts deeper to the question of why we're even discussing ID when they can't (or won't) even give us the basic framework of a model that could explain the data. You can't derive testable hypotheses from a model that does not exist. All we really have is an argument from personal incredulity (I don't see how evolution could have done X) that morphs into a God of the Gaps argument (and therefore, God must have done it).
Ed, you wrote:
That reminds me how I have to chuckle when ID is compared to other pseudo-sciences like Astrology. What you described actually makes ID all the worse.
In Astrology, there is a theory, say: "Our lives are influenced by the positions of the moon and planets at our birth."
Then we could form a hypothesis such as: "select a random group of people born on July 1,1950 and compare their lives with a group born on random dates that year. TofA would say that the first group's lives would be more alike than the other group.
There's no difference, of course, but at least we have a theory with testable hypotheses. So comparing ID to Astrology is giving ID far too much credit!!!
Actually, the Cambrian Explosion is a myth that's outlived it's usefullness - in other words, a non-issue. Two good sources of information are the talkorigins site:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC301.html
And I don't have the reference handy, but the IDiots often quote-mine someone on the Cambrian, saying it is a problem for evolution. Unfortunately, they often leave out the rest of his quote (and chapter IIRC) where he explains how it is really not a problem (due to more fossil finds, etc). TO has some in their quote-mine project:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-2.html
But a quick skim didn't ring any bells as to the specific quote misuesed.
Now if ID is taught in schools one might suggestt the world was designed by the devil. Or by a minor god in the pantheon. Or perhaps by almighty Zeus himself.
Sadly the ID crowd will come back with the claim that is sacrilegious. Not the right creator, they'll say. So then there'll be an effort to 'establish' the correct religion. Sound familiar?
On Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has an odd complaint: ...
Well Krauze, you could have actually spelled out your argument here for us to discuss. Your response doesn't really fix the problem, I think. You say that there are ID creationists and ID evolutionists and that ID is just an "overall framework". This strikes me as an odd little semantic game. An overall framework of what, exactly? What common premise do ID creationists and ID evolutionists share? What does ID actually MEAN in this regard? I'm certainly interested in hearing.
Krauze's comments seem to forget about Jonathan Wells. None of his stuff actually supports intelligent design -- it's all pure invective against evolution (erroneous, but pure in its error).
If ID supports evolution, all of Wells' stuff is unnecessary, unuseful, and potentially destructive.