Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID

_{Salvador Cordova

June 24, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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Although I accept ID, I actually think there are respectable reasons to reject or at least withhold judgment on ID in biology. I am writing this essay because I expect I’ll refer to it in the future since I will frequently grant that a critic of ID might be quite reasonable in not embracing ID.

Unlike some of my ID colleagues, I do not think rejection or non-acceptance of ID is an unrespectable position. It may not be obvious, but several revered “ID proponents” either currently or in the past said they are not convinced ID is true. Foremost would probably be David Berlinski. Next is Michael Denton, and next is Richard Sternberg. I do not know for a fact what they believe now, but statements they’ve made in the past have led me to conclude although they are obviously sympathetic to ID, they had not accepted it at the time of their writings. One might even put Robert Jastrow and Paul Davies in the list of “ID proponents” who actually reject ID.

GOOD REASONS TO REJECT ID
1. Absence of a Designer. I know I might get flak for this, but I think a good reason to reject ID is the absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer in operation today. With many scientific theories we can see the hypothesized mechanism in action, and this is quite reassuring to the hypothesis. For myself, I wrestle with the fact that even if ID is true, the mechanism might be forever inaccessible to us.

2. Lack of direct experiments. A designer may decide never to design again. That is consistent with how intelligent agents act. So even if the Designer is real, even if we’ve encountered Him once personally in our lives, the fact is we can’t construct experiments and demand He give us a demonstration.

3. Belief that some future mechanism might be discovered. This is always a possibility in principle.

BAD REASONS TO REJECT ID

1. Theology! There are some Christian theologians who believe in eternal life, the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of Christ, but believe God wouldn’t design life based on whatever theological viewpoint they have such as their interpretations of the writings of Thomas Aquinas. I put this at the top of the list of bad reasons to reject ID.

2. “God wouldn’t do it that way”. This is also a theological argument, but is so prevalent its in a class of its own. How would any know God wouldn’t do it that way!

3. Bad design. See my take in The Shallowness of Bad Design Arguments.

4. Common Descent. Common descent is incompatible with Creationism but not ID.

5. Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution doesn’t solve the origin of life problem, and thus Dawkins over extends his claim that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Darwinian evolution also has been refuted theoretically and empirically, but not everyone has caught on.

6. ID was invented to get creationism into public schools and is part of a right wing conspiracy to create a theocracy, and ID proponents are scoundrels and liars. These claims are false, but even if true, they are completely irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of ID in biology. I posted on the irrelevance of ID proponents being scoundrels. See: Scoundrel? Scoundrel?…I like the sound of that.

7. ID demeans God by making God responsible for bad designs. Denyse O’Leary deals with this one here: Here’s one bad reason for opposing ID.

I invite UD commenters to offer their own list of good and bad reasons to reject ID. This list is certainly not exhaustive, or correct, just my opinions.

Comments

Darwins said almost nothing about the origin of life. Hist "warm little pond" was a line in a letter to Hooker, the only references in The Origin are to life being breathed into one or a few forms. "Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some primordial form, into which life was first breathed’"wd400_{June 26, 2013
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Elizabeth Do you hold that successive macro evolution is true and that one species gave rise to another? That is a major leap of faith even more than I have! I will tell you what causes speciation. LOSS of information not new information.... check it up!Andre_{June 26, 2013
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Elizabeth I don't follow are we saying Darwin never suggest OOL? What about his warm little pond? Is that a creationist/ID myth?Andre_{June 26, 2013
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Querius: the principle of parsimony does is not the principle of "sticking with the simplest explanation". Occam's rule is: "do not multiply entities unnecessarily". It means that if you can explain your data by a model that includes factors A, B and C, or, alternatively, by a model that includes A, B, C, and D, then you should choose the first (the one without the "unnecessary entity"). But if you then find new data that cannot be explaned by A, B, and C, but can if you also invoke D, then D is no longer an "unnecessary entity", and you must include it in your model. In practices we always have unexplained data - they are called the "residuals" in the model, if only because of measurement error. For this reason, "parsimony" can be used to select models that explain the most data for the fewest parameters. This tends to lead to more robust models (models that will give the same result on different samples).Elizabeth B Liddle_{June 26, 2013
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Andre:
Elizabeth James Barham wrote a beautiful article, it is a 4 part series, enjoy http://tbsblog.thebestschools......-metaphor/ beautiful….
I agree that they are beautiful articles, beautifully written. There is just one problem: they elegantly slay a straw man. He makes two good points: 1. Darwian evolution cannot account for the prerequisites for Darwinan evolution (which is self-evident) - those prerequisites are: self-replicators that replicate with heritable variance in reproductive success. 2. That it it is possible that the simplest possible entities that do it are still too complicated to have come about by chemistry. These are valid criticsms of a non-Design account of life, although not of Darwin's theory, because his theory was explicitly not intended to explain how the prerequisites for Darwinian evolution came into existence, and of course cannot. However, the focus of Barham's critique is Darwinian evolution itself, and he repeatedly characterises "Darwinian" principles, contentions, theories, in a way that no "Darwinian" would recognise. But it's interesting - it tells me a lot about where the ID argument is coming from so thanks! That is not a jibe. I will think further on his articles.Elizabeth B Liddle_{June 26, 2013
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Eric
That’s it? This was already dealt with in a prior thread. I don’t think you’re going to convince any objective observers if that is the “evidence” you think demonstrates CSI emerging from natural processes.
Well, the argument (as I recall - and I did not have an unbanned account here at the time) seems to hang on how you define CSI. And as no two ID proponents seem to be able to agree on how you define CSI, then I'm not surprised that it's not going to convince anyway. Perhaps you could link to the thread and recommend what you see as the key rebuttal? But in that experiment (and no, it's not the only one - I could refer you to Lenski's AVIDA as a better example) I started with a string of random virtual coin-tosses, and evolved a string of coin tosses that were highly specified by Dembski's compressibility criteria (and definitely one for which Design would be inferred were a human to toss them), simply by "RM + NS". Moreover, the fitness criterion did not specify a compressible sequence (so the "solution" was not "smuggled in" via the fitness function). It simply rewarded sequences where the product of the strings-of-heads was high. The only sense in which it did not have CSI by Dembski's definition is that Dembski rules it out BECAUSE it is highly probable under the Darwinian hypothesis! So at worst, my exercise demonstrates the circularity of Dembski's definition. But more interestingly, it demonstrates what must be the case - that the Darwinian mechanism can add information (where information is a low probability sequence in a Shannon complex string, Dembski's definition). Dembski would say that it has moved it from elsewhere, rather than created it - but whatever the terminology, what was a string low in SC evolves to become a string high in SC. So Darwinian mechanisms CAN add information. Which moves the question to where they get it from (if we believe the Law of Conservation of Information). I'd say they get it from the environment.Elizabeth B Liddle_{June 26, 2013
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Querius, Like any heuristic, Occam's Razor can be misapplied. That doesn't invalidate it.
Looking at some examples from Science, consider the consequences of always trying to stick with the simplest explanation.
Occam's Razor does not ask us to stick with the simplest explanation, and anyone who thinks so doesn't understand Occam's Razor.keiths_{June 25, 2013
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Yeah, Occam's Razor is applied too broadly, serving as an unwilling champion of the status quo. Looking at some examples from Science, consider the consequences of always trying to stick with the simplest explanation. How often has this been the right approach? Consider these once so-called "fundamental truths" of Science: - The cell is the basic unit of life consisting of undifferentiated protoplasm. - The atom is the smallest indivisible particle of matter. No wait, it's protons, neutrons, and electrons. No wait, it's . . . - Life is generated constantly and spontaneously. - Earlier and smaller life forms are simpler than modern, larger life forms. Thus, fossils of an ancient organism that is phenotypically identical with a modern one, must of necessity be assigned to a different genus and species. - Geological processes are always gradual and uniform. - Evolution leaves a trail of vestigial organs and junk DNA. - Existence is deterministic and everything is completely Newtonian: mechanistic and predictable. - We must practice "genetic hygiene." After all, the German race is the most advanced and superior to the others. Thus, because we have the power to control evolution, we have the responsibility to do so. We are not bound by arbitrary and petty social conventions. - All behavior is simply and solely the product of operant conditioning. - Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The embryos demonstrate it beyond question. - Only YOU can prevent forest fires. - "Living fossils." - Excess calories make you fat. Regardless of the existence of a divine creator, assuming that creation is designed, purposeful, and complex would have accelerated scientific progress through history rather than hindering it. You ARE in favor of scientific progress, right? It seems like things get more complex as we delve down into them rather than simpler. Thus, Science would be better off regarded and taught as a humble, infinite journey rather than as a proud, infallible destination.Querius_{June 25, 2013
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Heh. Axel, your mentioning CERN reminds me of one of my physics professors mentioning a similar concern regarding the first nuclear detonation, namely that the chain reaction might continue without stopping. Apparently, the risk was deemed sufficiently remote, and besides they really wanted see what would happen. And hey, if they were wrong, well there'd be no one left to complain, right?Querius_{June 25, 2013
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Joe, no matter how many times you make the claim, plant breeders in the 1940's and 1950's did not design, sculpt, assemble or in any way, shape, or form create Turf13. This protein (that forms a multi-subunit gated ion channel) arose (from scratch, with no protein forebears) by random, undirected processes that occur all of the time in nature. As far as IC or not, I'll believe Behe, who states, in no uncertain terms in Darwin's Black Box, that gated ion channels are IC. And Jed Macosko, who told a discussion at ISCID that single polypeptide chains are IC. Sorry - when you get your third Ph.D. in advanced ID studies, then maybe I'll change my opinion on this. But for now, Behe and Macosko overrule you. BA77, Jonathan M's "review" of my essays really says nothing. He seems to think that, because someone did not have a tiny video camera inside the very cell in which Turf13 arose, then we don't know how things happened. But we plainly do. The process involved well-understood biochemical reactions, no miracles required. Jonathan M also seems to think, as did Dembski before him, that females are evolutionary dead ends. (That is where goes the argument that the Turf13 genotype is a deleterious one.) There is not much I can do if that is the opinion of IDists - it's wrong, of course, but it is also a discussion-stopper. Best to leave those with such opinions to their own thoughts, and move on to more interesting and fruitful conversations.Arthur Hunt_{June 25, 2013
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Loved that can of Campbell's Primordial Soup... Baxter's soups are very enticingly packaged, but not so good to the taste. My wife's were a million times better. Though she never mastered anything like a primordial soup, even though I badgered her about it. A bit like the CERNE business, when people, I think, were worried a new universe might be created, or this one destroyed by a chain reaction, or some such. Except, I expect, for Esteban Hawkins and his fellow-multiversers who, might well have been hoping against hope, the former might eventuate.Axel_{June 25, 2013
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I just added:
7. ID demeans God by making God responsible for bad designs. Denyse O'Leary deals with this one here: Here's one bad reason for opposing ID.
scordova_{June 25, 2013
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Sal wrote:
. . . GOOD REASONS TO REJECT ID 1. Absence of a Designer. I know I might get flak for this, but I think a good reason to reject ID is the absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer in operation today. With many scientific theories we can see the hypothesized mechanism in action, and this is quite reassuring to the hypothesis. For myself, I wrestle with the fact that even if ID is true, the mechanism might be forever inaccessible to us. . . .
I, too, believe that "the mechanism might be forever inaccessible to us." But this neither makes ID unscientific, nor untrue. The only repercussion is that ID can't be used to PROVE that God exists. But, of course, the entire field of science lies outside of this. Now here's why I think the mechanism will forever remain inaccessible to us. It involves a thought experiment. Let's assume in this thought experiment that an Intelligent Designer exists and is capable of intervening in nature, able to adjust/change/invent genomic information at will. Now let's suppose that the Intelligent Designer acts on some animal, changes its genome which then changes in its behavior and morphology. Let's assume that the changes made were at 100 locations within the genome, and involves de novo gene creation, inversions and subtle SNPs. Finally, let's suppose that the Intelligent Designer chose to do this to an animal on an isolated island, known to man, and where the species that has now been changed was completely known, and for whom a complete genome readout was available. We would then have two organisms, related by a kind of pseudo-common descent, whose genome and morphology and behavior has changed, so much so that this new form is decisively a new species. Now, I submit that there is no way in the world to "prove" that the mechanism involved was a kind of 'creation' brought about by an Intelligent Designer. The only thing that we 'know' are the 'before' and 'after' understandings. Nevertheless, it is clear that the change brought about was entirely, positively NON-neo-Darwinian/Darwinian. At the same time, however, we cannot completely eliminate the possibility of some kind of 'natural process' effecting this change. Thus, we cannot "prove" that the Intelligent Designer brought about the changes demonstrated, nor, ad fortiori, that the Intelligent Designer exists. [In the back of my mind, I have here the cecal valve growth of the lizards on Pos pod in the Adriatic. It's similar, but only in a limited way, to what occurs here.] All this said, in the end what is decisive here is that "neo-Darwinism" is completely incapable of explaining what the changes that occurred in the thought experiment. To me, this is the most important 'science' that ID performs---weening the fawning acolytes of Darwinism away from their beloved, yet errant, theory. However, we can go further. Given our 'information age', the most reasonable explanation for the results of the thought experiment is the involvement of some kind of 'designer.' Maybe, as your third reason for not accepting ID states, this means that some 'other' final explanation will be determined; but that doesn't mean that in the meantime Darwinism/neo-Darwinism shouldn't be jettisoned. BTW, Denton believes in "design"; he just doesn't believe in a 'designer', nor one that operates using primary causation.PaV_{June 25, 2013
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Elizabeth James Barham wrote a beautiful article, it is a 4 part series, enjoy http://tbsblog.thebestschools.org/seeing-past-darwin-i-machine-metaphor/ beautiful....Andre_{June 25, 2013
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Opps....forgot the link http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_gifs/4653502/Beer+gifa/ForJah_{June 25, 2013
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Haha just found this imagine...this is essential what evolutionists believe.ForJah_{June 25, 2013
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FCSI is a powerful objective means for determining design. It can be tested alongside a process. As far as I can tell there is no simulation (GA, EA etc...) that shows that the Darwinian mechanism can generate AND sustain FCSI. The only way around this is to conclude (ignorantly) that FCSI does not pertain to biological systems.computerist_{June 25, 2013
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Elizabeth...could you give me a definition of mechanism. Like what is a mechanism in a biological context? Also, I don't know much about math but the article you wrong doesn't seem to get the idea of CSI. You are only counting the heads and ignoring the tails is essentially what is happening. You might as well reduce to a coin with only heads on each side. But I don't think that anyone doubts that after flipping a coin 500 times and landing on heads each time or getting to your estamite as the goal is information at all. It happen by necessity. It seems like biological evolution doesn't work this way. It counts heads and tails...it doesn't just ignore tails. I guess we could refer to heads as a beneficial mutation..and heads as a degenerative one. But that would necessitate the coin has a higher probability of turning up heads(which makes it an unfair coin). And then of course your analogy is missing one thing. You don't have enough goals. You only made one. In a biological context, time is the ultimate goal. It's the one thing that differs micro-macro evolution. I don't see a time constraint in your analogy of winning the jackpot. How much time would it take you to reach 10^60?ForJah_{June 25, 2013
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I think CSI is a non-starter with respect to living organisms. As far as I can tell, no one calculates or knows how to calculate CSI as defined by Demsbki. DFSCO, on the other hand, can be calculated but has no relationship to CSI apart from the fact that both are put forward as measures of information (AFAICT). Demsbki's CSI would have been calculated from the numbers of available replicators and events, an analysis of an independant specification (albeit a rather sketchy and arbitrary one), and a probability calculation which took account of any appropriate mechanisms that may apply (eg heredity). The calculations done by KF seem to be similar to the ones I would do if asked to estimate the chance of a random process producing each example at the first attempt. In the case of the frog, it is equivalent to the probability of producing one particular individual of the species Xenopus tropicalis from scratch at the first attempt. Why should anyone think that a calculation of DFSCO is any way equivalent or within a hundred miles of the same ball park as the CSI calculation that no one can do?steveh_{June 25, 2013
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This is getting to be fun! Finally, I'm getting to see it. Why bother with the nub of the question, Joe?Axel_{June 25, 2013
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Elizabeth@74- That ain't natural selection and it ain't CSI. Not only that but reproduction is the very thing that needs to be explained in the first place.Joe_{June 25, 2013
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Andre: Thanks for the links, although I'm not quite sure what point you are making with them - could you be explicit?
Elizabeth, have yo taken the time to read the seeing past Darwin series? Highly recommended!
I've taken a lot of time to do a lot of things, but I don't know what you are referring to here - could you link or cite?Elizabeth B Liddle_{June 25, 2013
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Elizabeth @74: That's it? This was already dealt with in a prior thread. I don't think you're going to convince any objective observers if that is the "evidence" you think demonstrates CSI emerging from natural processes.Eric Anderson_{June 25, 2013
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Elizabeth @67: I'm willing to entertain the idea that this is just a semantic misunderstanding, but the question I was responding to is the demand that design proponents outline a "mechanism" for how, say, first life was designed. There are certain design processes that designers sometimes follow and we could speculate on these processes, but that isn't germane to the design inference itself. (We can know the pyramids in Egypt were designed even if scholars continue to debate how it was done. The two questions are separate.) We know how design works as a general process: a designer sees a problem or has an idea, the designer studies the relevant physical parameters and concepts, the designer then creates a proposed solution. The design may be right the first time, it may require some reworking and refining, and so on. This is a design process. Those who demand a "mechanism" of design aren't talking about this. They are demanding some kind of mechanistic explanation. That simply isn't relevant. If I demand that you tell me the "mechanism" that caused the iPhone to have a 4" screen, that is an irrational demand. The reason it has a 4" screen is that the designers decided that was the size of screen they wanted to use. Period. We can speculate on why that might have been by considering the overall product, its intended function, battery life, production costs, and on and on. But the ultimate reason it has a 4" screen is because the designer wanted it that way. There isn't a "mechanism" that explains it. And the fact that there isn't a mechanism does not invalidate the ability to infer that it was designed. It may frustrate the individual who wants to see a physical mechanism as the ultimate cause of everything, but that is a limitation of that individual's view of reality, not a problem of the design inference itself.
Sure, we think things have causes – but you do too. What is the difference between a cause that moves something because it is a particle and a cause that moves something because it is mind?
Oh, stop being silly. A particle only does what it does because it is headed that direction and is obligated to interact in a certain way when it hits the next object. In the truly materialist worldview (and I have not argued that you hold to this view), the particle is doing what it does because it, in turn, was set on its trajectory by some other interaction of matter and energy, on and on back to the Big Bang or the Multiverse or whatever purely materialistic "cause" the materialist posits. A mind can choose to interact or not, depending on goals and foresight and planning and purpose and an end in sight. Let's not get into semantic distractions in the current discussion about what a mind is, whether there is free will, and so on. The question here is whether design must result from some physical mechanism. Obviously it need not. That is the whole point of design -- the ability to select a contingent and, through choice and purposeful action, instantiate something that would not have otherwise come about. If we want to debate whether designers exist or whether everything we think of as mind, choice, free will, etc., is all an illusion, that is a separate topic.Eric Anderson_{June 25, 2013
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Eric:
Where is this complex specified information you claim has been produced through a purely natural process such as RM+NS?
Getting CSI from NSElizabeth B Liddle_{June 25, 2013
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Here is a thought, if theism is a product of natural selection how did atheists get it right to become greater than their cause? Effects can never be greater than their causes, scientific fact....Andre_{June 25, 2013
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ID/creationism may have minor defects in the details. However they represent the unique rational explanation for the origin of life and species. Evolutionism cannot even be considered a competing theory or hypotheses, because a theory/hypotheses must have at least a level of rationalness greater than zero, while evolutionism is totally absurd (rationalness equal zero), from whatever point of view one considers it. As someone said, evolutionism, far from being scientific, is like a cultural "zombie", i.e. a narrative "corpse" artificially animated for political/ideological reasons.niwrad_{June 25, 2013
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'Occam’s Razor is yet another theological concept stolen by materialists that is not supportable via their own ideology.' Don't confuse them, William. There's a good chap. You took the words out of my mouth, nirwad. The conception of this thread does not reflect well on you, scordova. On the other hand, by dialoguing with the 'nutters' of atheist nescience, this blog is always bound to 'make another fool, where there was only one', on a somewhat more populous scale. Though I must admit it keeps the blog lively - kind of trick-shooting fish in a barrel. Personally - perhaps unlike most - I'd prefer hearing you talking among yourselves, sane, deists, at the very least. It's not that the materialist nescientists are incapable of keeping up with the implications of the progress of science. They just don't want to. And, you know, they might as well spend their time reading comics, as pondering the latest scientific advances, for all that they derive from them, in terms of their metaphysical, indeed, theological, implications - apart from their pay-cheques, of course. Ah, those despised creationist IDers, Planck, Einstein, Godel et al, who provided the paradigms that provide them with their livelihood.Axel_{June 25, 2013
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To help Elizabeth, Old school Darwinism http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/663803?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102369620691 21st century claptrap.... http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-biochem-030409-143718 Elizabeth, have yo taken the time to read the seeing past Darwin series? Highly recommended!Andre_{June 25, 2013
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RD Fish:
I find it difficult to find people who will engage in debating issues regarding the meaning of “intelligent cause” in the context of ID.
You have already been given the answer. That you choose to ignore it means that you ain't interested in any debate.
The entire theory boils down to this single term – the sole explanatory construct of ID! – and yet ID proponents are generally loathe to discuss what that term might mean specifically.
That is simply not true:
I was recently on an NPR program with skeptic Michael Shermer and paleontologist Donald Prothero to discuss intelligent design. As the discussion unfolded, it became clear that they were using the phrase "intelligent design" in a way quite different from how the emerging intelligent design community is using it. The confusion centered on what the adjective "intelligent" is doing in the phrase "intelligent design." "Intelligent," after all, can mean nothing more than being the result of an intelligent agent, even one who acts stupidly. On the other hand, it can mean that an intelligent agent acted with skill, mastery, and eclat. Shermer and Prothero understood the "intelligent" in "intelligent design" to mean the latter, and thus presumed that intelligent design must entail optimal design. The intelligent design community, on the other hand, means the former and thus separates intelligent design from questions of optimality. But why then place the adjective "intelligent" in front of the noun "design"? Doesn't design already include the idea of intelligent agency, so that juxtaposing the two becomes an exercise in redundancy? Not at all. Intelligent design needs to be distinguished from apparent design on the one hand and optimal design on the other. Apparent design looks designed but really isn't. Optimal design is perfect design and hence cannot exist except in an idealized realm (sometimes called a "Platonic heaven"). Apparent and optimal design empty design of all practical significance.- Wm Dembski Feb 2000 Intelligent Design is Not Optimal Design
Ya see RD, it's your easily refutable tripe that makes IDists loathe to debate with you. It ain't the subject matter...Joe_{June 25, 2013
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