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Intelligent Design and Evolution
A few years ago I wrote (follow up here):
Suppose that you find a watch in the forest. If you know there is no watchmaker then the theory of evolution is a brilliant and compelling explanation for the presence of complexity without design. But suppose that you know a watchmaker exists then surely the simplest and most compelling explanation is that the watchmaker made the watch. Any other explanation, particularly one so improbable as evolution would seem to be preposterous and beside the point.
Thus for someone who knows, really knows, that god(s) exists (and there are many people who claim to know that god(s) exists) then some form of creationism follows as a rational deduction from the premises. It's no point telling these people that creationism is unscientific because given the premise that god(s) exists creationism is scientific. If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned nature.
Not surprisingly the argument created a firestorm of opposition (see the many nasty comments on the two original posts). Thus, I am quite pleased to see that renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel writing in Philosophy and Public Affairs has recently made the same argument. Nagel writes:
What [Intelligent Design] does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance. Once it is assigned a significant prior probability, it becomes a serious candidate for support by empirical evidence, in particular empirical evidence against the sufficiency of standard evolutionary theory to account for the observational data...
...Judge Jones cited as a decisive reason for denying ID the status of science that Michael Behe, the chief scientific witness for the defense, acknowledged that the theory would be more plausible to someone who believed in God than to someone who did not. This is just common sense, however, and the opposite is just as true: evolutionary theory as a complete explanation of the development of life is more plausible to someone who does not believe in God than to someone who does.
Nagel has much more of interest to say about teaching science given that ID is scientific if one accepts belief in god.
Hat tip to Robin Hanson's post, Intelligent Design Honesty, at Overcoming Bias.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 12, 2008 at 07:05 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Nagel isn't making the same point. Your point was that the existence of God implies some form of creationism; his argument is that the existence of God makes design hypotheses candidates for scientific testing. His argument is significantly weaker, and significantly more believable.
Posted by: Andromeda at Sep 12, 2008 7:26:19 AM
This is an anti-science method of first order. If I take this postulate seriously then I can claim that relative prices are determined not by an invisible hand or market process but by the intelligent designer. And there will be no way to disprove that theory scientifically. You can try to show that market processes work really well, but "I" will just respond that there are some difficulties of your theory and doubt intelligent price formation. And you cannot disprove it, since one you accept my postulate it is a valid hypothesis that cannot be tested.
Posted by: Barry Ickes at Sep 12, 2008 7:43:02 AM
could god(s) not have created an initial set of parameters that allowed evolution to occur? ie. a big bang from which everything else 'naturally' follows? is it too much to ask for ID enthusiasts to pull their heads out of their arses?
Posted by: bob at Sep 12, 2008 7:44:40 AM
If God(s) really did create man to his image, He must be rather dim witted. It took Him more than 600 million years from the creation of very similar multicell organisms, slowly nudging various species along until one finally started to worship him.
I'd be much more inclined to believe that God got life started 4 billion years ago, then decided to take a 100 billion year vacation. He's evidently no longer around.
Posted by: Martin at Sep 12, 2008 7:57:05 AM
I like your blog, but you are really clueless about what science is.
Posted by: Mark at Sep 12, 2008 8:05:46 AM
I was raised, as I have mentioned before, with compatible forms of Lutheranism and science. It was what is sometimes derided as a "God of the gaps", but really that God might be a guide, and have a hand in, the natural world that we observe around us.
I find that at odds with your summary:
Nagel has much more of interest to say about teaching science given that ID is scientific if one accepts belief in god.
I don't see that as science at all, when one needs to accept a conclusion to make the study work.
No, my observation is that rational religion and rational science have adequate explanations for how the world works. That's really the way it always has been. Atheism and agnosticism are not new words. It comes down, as it always has, to Faith.
(I'm not really sure a world "designed" for Faith would have the sort of proofs IDers seek.)
Posted by: odograph at Sep 12, 2008 8:06:36 AM
> What [Intelligent Design] does depend on is the assumption that the hypothesis of a designer makes sense and cannot be ruled out as impossible or assigned a vanishingly small probability in advance.
This seems like a tautological hypothesis to me.
Almost like saying "the belief in a hypothesis depends on a belief that the hypothesis is correct".
I would rather say that ID is equivalent to the assumption of the existence of a "designer".
Posted by: at Sep 12, 2008 8:10:35 AM
I actually agree with this reasoning. Too bad then, that the massive evidence for evolution is (due to symmetry) therefore evidence of nonexistence of god.
Posted by: Tiedemies at Sep 12, 2008 8:23:27 AM
I actually agree with this reasoning. Too bad then, that the massive evidence for evolution is (due to symmetry) therefore evidence of nonexistence of god.
Posted by: Tiedemies at Sep 12, 2008 8:24:51 AM
LOL...the rationalists try to make nice with the superstitious.
The one essential assumption of science is that we essentially live in an actual material place with at least local fixed laws. If you don't make that assumption there is room for all sorts of stuff.
Of course if you really did not make that assumption, you would spend your time praying or whatever instead of trying to reshape the world by your own efforts. This is what people actually did in the prescientific era...
Posted by: RobbL at Sep 12, 2008 8:33:47 AM
This reasoning seems to me to establish only that intelligent design is a religious, rather than a scientific, theory. How is that an argument for teaching it as science?
Posted by: Alan Gunn at Sep 12, 2008 8:33:55 AM
Well, if you belive in Santa Claus it makes the "created by elves" theory of toy formation seem much more
believable. But most people give up that theory once they become aware of the evidence against it.
Outside of the United States and Turkey, many people in developed countries seem quite capable of
believing in gods while rejecting creationism and accepting the evidence for evolution. But even if
we discover gods that are capable of designing life AND discover evidence that they designed us, it would
just shift the problem back one level and we'd have universtity departments trying to work out how the
gods evolved and why they have an odd compulsion to make life with so much junk DNA and things like the
human appendix.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Sep 12, 2008 8:38:12 AM
The argument assumes any God must be the "designer" in the Intelligent Design sense. I surely don't need to outlay all the gods in all the pantheons of the world's religions that aren't creators. It is also untrue that God the Father in the traditional Christian sense is required to have created the world in the fashion of intelligent design. This is not "functionally equivalent" to atheism as Alex has stated in an earlier post. It is therefore difficult to see how evolution is inconsistent with belief in God.
Posted by: Millian at Sep 12, 2008 8:39:55 AM
I don't see why "ID is scientific if one accepts belief in God."
ID is not testable regardless, and to the extent that the design of organisms is far from perfect, doesn't that throw the whole "omnipotent, omniscient designer" idea into doubt? Why did this genius designer give us an appendix? Further, anyone advocating such a theory would have to deal with the vast body of empirical evidence in support of evolutionary processes. Is all that evidence just wrong?
I don't think much of the watch analogy - watches don't reproduce or compete for food, or prey on other items of jewelry. But let's try this. You find the watch and conclude that it was made by a watchmaker. Fine. But then you decide that the watchmaker is infallible and perfect and can easily make any kind of watch at all. Then the watch stops working. Now what? Well, he could have made it perfect but decided not to? This is a scientific theory? Nonsense.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Sep 12, 2008 8:42:29 AM
> I think there's a scientific case for the criticism that Darwinian evolution is not sufficient to explain all life we observe on earth. The problem is, critics generally do not offer a better theory (saying 'God did it' is obviously not scientific).
I think it is better to criticize ID theory as an empirically empty hypothesis, rather than as unscientific.
Some hypotheses might be "true" while not being terribly "useful".
Tautologies like this: "when it rains, it rains." Or: "in evolution, the most successful will survive". (where "successfulness" is defined by "surviving in the process of evolution")
These hypotheses are empirically empty. They are impossible to falsify, because the scope of outcomes they predict is so broad that it doesn't restrict the possible set of outcomes in any meaningful way. As such, they are not of any help to the agent who employs them to reduce complexity and to provide certainty for his actions.
(note that an omniscient being (e.g a superrational homo oeconomicus) would not require the help of hypotheses. it would simply and correctly predict the world as it would be in the future and act accordingly. Imperfect beings like us however cannot do so and must make "good guesses" with the help of imperfect hypotheses if they want to act at all. The hypotheses never completely correspond to the facts in all and every circumstance, but if they are "good" they have a good chance of predicting states of the future which are relevant for the success of our indidivuals plans)
I think intelligent design can be criticized quite effectively on these grounds. It may be "true", yes. But to state that the world and its living organisms have been created according to a plan doesn't restrict the set of possible outcomes in any meanginful way. Any observed state of the world is in principle compatible with it being a part of a "plan" (fossils might be part of a plan to test the faith of believers, for example).
Only through specification of the contents of the "design plan" could ID imply testable results by restricting the scope of possible outcomes. However, this would be equivalent to knowing the mind of god, and nobody can seriously believe to possess that knowledge. Thus, ID might be "true" or not, but the problem is that that wouldn't change anything for us. Thus we should be indifferent to this "theory".
The theory of evolution (not the tautological version of it I stated above) on the other hand might not explain every single fact in the course of evolution. But it can provide "pattern-explanations" which rule out broad classes of outcomes, and thus bring some empirical content to our hypotheses about the world.
Posted by: ba at Sep 12, 2008 9:00:24 AM
"But even if we discover gods that are capable of designing life AND discover evidence that they designed us, it would just shift the problem back one level and we'd have universtity departments trying to work out how the gods evolved and why they have an odd compulsion to make life with so much junk DNA and things like the human appendix."
And mortgage-backed securities.
Posted by: meter at Sep 12, 2008 9:01:52 AM
"If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned nature."
Belief in evolution does not demand that a person deny a divine being.
Posted by: Andrew Stivers at Sep 12, 2008 9:03:57 AM
If you are including knowledge of god as a premise without scientific evidence than it isn't science. Why stop at starting with one untestable premise why not have dozens. Working with enough untested/false/untestable premises any result or theory can be scientific. The advantage of of evolution over creation is that it works on evidence that is/was there.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Sep 12, 2008 9:05:15 AM
The Scientific Method consists of crucial steps:
1. Use your experience
2. Make a guess at an explanation
3. Deduce a prediction based on that guess
4. Test that guess - run experiments that can both prove AND disprove the guess
The arguments made above and by Nagel are both sufficient to satisfy steps 1 and 2 - but Intelligent Design fails as a Scientific Theory because of two key flaws: it provides no predictive value, and it is not falsifiable. Any predictions made using ID are simply random guesswork, or based on information already in evidence. There is no way to disprove ID, because any new evidence that is presented is automatically acceptable to the theory because "God made it that way."
Posted by: Brandon Horn at Sep 12, 2008 9:05:35 AM
You are confusing "science" with "logic." While the argument is logical if one takes "god" as a premise, it is still not scientific. Science is about being able to test not only results, but premises. Logic is about inference. Both you and this other non-scientist Nagel guy are wrong about what science is.
Posted by: King Rat at Sep 12, 2008 9:14:12 AM
I do believe in God, and have no problem with the theory of evolution.
And because my belief in God is not "scientific" but faith based, I have no problem not teaching creationism in public school biology courses. However, creationism and ID certainly are fair game for comparative religion and philosophy courses.
The "truth" is the truth, and my church teaches that scientific "truth" does not conflict with the "truth" of the church.
But what troubles me is the seeming "religious certainty" and occasionally resulting demonization of those who do not agree with those who are "scientifically certain". Just as the demonization of agnostics, atheists, and those who aren't "believers" troubles me. (Somewhat like what we're seeing in the current election with the fringe elements all over the political map....)
Which is why it is important to have good friends who don't agree with you. Makes it much more difficult to demonize those whose beliefs resemble those of someone you love.
Posted by: at Sep 12, 2008 9:24:22 AM
Outside of the United States and Turkey, many people in developed countries seem quite capable of believing in gods while rejecting creationism and accepting the evidence for evolution.
Not sure what your experience and data are, but my anecdotal experience is that there are many people in the United States who believe in God and and have no trouble with the evidence of evolution.
Posted by: at Sep 12, 2008 9:28:20 AM
Of course if you really did not make that assumption, you would spend your time praying or whatever instead of trying to reshape the world by your own efforts.
Says you.
Posted by: at Sep 12, 2008 9:30:47 AM
Alex-
You gotta know that when you put up a post like this, you will be treated like a guest who has just let loose a loud and stinky fart at a sophisticated party. Eww! ID!
Posted by: Rich Berger at Sep 12, 2008 9:33:11 AM
Bernard Yomtov: ID is not testable regardless, and to the extent that the design of organisms is far from perfect, doesn't that throw the whole "omnipotent, omniscient designer" idea into doubt? Why did this genius designer give us an appendix?
More than that, the bad design of organisms is proof that intelligent design is false. Would an intelligent designer design the neck of a giraffe so that a nerve goes all the way down it and then back up again? Of course not, but it's exactly the sort of thing that you'd expect in an organism designed by evolution.
Similar examples are the human brain, where the part that dcecodes visual input is the furthest away from the eyes, making it slower and requiring longer-than-necessary cabling to connect them. Of the testes: they need to be cool, so are located outside the body of the torso, and are therefore vulnerable to damage.
Intelligenct design is a sxtupid theory. Incompetent design would be more plausible.
Posted by: Cabalamat at Sep 12, 2008 9:42:35 AM
