This is the second in my series of linked blog entries on my experience of being converted (or not) to intelligent design.
The first of the books I read was What’s Darwin Got to do with it? by Robert Newman, John Wiester and Janet and Jonathan Moneymaker (I just love the polarity of the comments on Amazon). I mostly started with this as it was in friendly cartoon form (not unlike one of the Horrible Science books) so seemed a good way to pick up the main themes quickly.
I’m going to start with two points from here: what labels to use, and whether intelligent design has any scientific legitimacy.
The book is in the form of a friendly debate between two professors, and they start by ditching the terms creationism and evolution, in favour of intelligent design and darwinism. I half agree. They dump creationism because it’s a loaded term, making you think of a young Earth, only 10,000 years old and a literal creation in six days. This, they imply, is garbage. So we’ll adopt the less loaded intelligent design. Fine.
They dump evolution because they don’t dispute the evolutionary process by natural selection on a small scale. Fine so far, but I can’t accept the substitution of darwinism. To me, the ‘ism’ makes it sound like a religious belief – one of a strictly godless world where everything is mechanistic. That too is a loaded term. So I can’t go along with the book here. I’ll use a new term, evolutionary design (where the D word is in implied inverted commas), to encompass the full panoply of evolution.
Now some would say, there’s no need to dispute this at all. It’s ‘obvious’ that science shouldn’t even consider the possibility of intelligent design. But I’ll go along with the book in saying this isn’t a good scientific viewpoint. You don’t dismiss things arbitrarily because they are different. Of course this doesn’t mean you can examine everything – nothing would ever get done if I expected equal time to be given to the great green Arklseizure theory, for instance. But intelligent design is rather less bizarre.
Specifically, I’d say intelligent design deserves examination, because it’s a theory that works quite well be inference. This is, of course, Paley’s 19th century argument about finding a watch and inferring a watchmaker. While this doesn’t prove anything, it makes the concept worth considering. We can’t dismiss inference in science – almost all cosmology is based on inference one way and another, for instance.
Note that this does NOT mean I accept that intelligent design should be taught in schools. There are lots of alternative theories that shouldn’t come into the curriculum (e.g. alternatives to the big bang) because there just isn’t time, and it’s confusing at the level it’s taught. Same here. The curriculum should mention that all scientific theories are current best understanding and likely to change, but should not waste time on the alternatives. However, the quite logical inference protects ID from being instantly discarded.
At this stage, then 1 1/2 points to the book, 1/2 a point against it. In the next post I examine the key arguments and decide whether this book has changed my thinking. I’ll need some help – there are at least two scientific statements it makes which I can’t reasonably assess – but I’m sure the NN community will help me out.
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To be cynical, I suspect that’s the point.
I agree with you that ID deserves examination, i.e. that it is worth people researching it. There are questions over how well they do that, but I’ll leave that to later, after you’ve had your say.
Bob – I don’t think you have to be cynical to observe that.
I suppose I could be accused of being cynical in undertaking this exercise too, but I am genuinely trying my best to be open minded to argument and seeing where it takes me.
I am genuinely trying my best to be open minded to argument and seeing where it takes me.
I think you’re being very brave, Brian. Given the amount of heat generated on both sides, it must be very hard to do the equivalent of shutting out all of that extraneous noise so that you can concentrate on the arguments, how they are presented, and if those arguments are convincing. I look forward to following your progress.
-”my experience of being converted (or not) to intelligent design”_
I read that sentence, with my eyes omitting the (or not), before scrolling down to post #1 on this topic. I have to confess I was worried about you for a few seconds there.
preview, Cath, preview.
I’m afraid I’ve more time for out-and-out Creationists than for IDers. IDers pretend that they’re scientific, but are intellectually bankrupt. At least Creationists don’t make the attempt to be scientific. They say “What Science says is wrong”, which while a bit Homer Simpson at least has some self-respect. Gotta admire their gall.
Richard – I think the problem with that approach is it confuses motive with accuracy. You can dislike why someone does something and they still might be right. I understand why a fair number of people support ID, but all I’m saying at this stage is that when people dismiss it out of hand they are applying an unbalanced criterion – if we were to dismiss all inference, we would have to ditch most cosmology, etc.
I think ID can be dismissed out of hand as science because it doesn’t actually make any falsifiable predictions. Cosmology does, even if not all of the predictions are practically testable. Ditto evolution itself, come to that.
No one in the ID movement has come up with an experiment that can’t be wriggled out of.