What Are The Top Five Myths About Intelligent Design?

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 24, 2012

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My friend Melissa Travis just posted this excellent blog post dissecting five of the top misconceptions about intelligent design. She writes,

There are few things more frustrating than hearing the same tired old myths and misconceptions over and over again, particularly when they directly relate to the subject you’ve devoted your education and career to. Intelligent Design theory suffers this plight, even at the hands of Christians who freely criticize it without doing their homework. In this short post, I would like to list and comment upon the untruths I hear most frequently.

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Comments

I'll respond to Eric's (12) above and return later on for Mung's (13) & (14). The big part of my point is that we don't know those things about the designer. We assume those things about the designer. That's how inference to the best explanation works -- we're trying to explain the observations (in this case, functional specified complexity). We say, "well, perhaps there's an intelligent agent at work -- the existence of functional specified complexity is much more probable if there were such an agent than if there isn't." OK, but now what? Just making the inference isn't enough -- we need a way of testing the inference to see if it's right, or on the right track. And how do we do that? In most science, when we're trying to see if our postulations are sound, we need to figure out a way of testing them, and to do that, we need to develop a model of how the posited entity causes the observable regularities. What I'm trying to get at here is that there's a deep conceptual linkage between explanation and causation: we explain p in terms of q by showing how q causes p. But in order to generate a testable model of the designer, we have to be able to specify quite a bit about its nature, which is to say, we have to make a conjecture about it. Just inferring, or making the postulation, isn't enough -- we've got to be able to figure out whether we're right or not, and I don't see how ID can do that without making a conjecture about the identity of the designer and then testing the implications of that conjecture. Suppose I have a problem with my car, or my computer. I think to myself, "well, if I were an engineer, how would I have designed it? I would made a car that does ____ when ____ but does _____ when _____." I'm making a conjecture about the intentions and purposes of the engineer, and if I know what I'm doing, I can test those conjectures. If the intentions and purposes of the designer are off-limits to conjecture, then I don't see how the theory can ever get to a point where it's even vulnerable to refutation. And that's not good, because it would mean that even if evolutionary theory is wrong, design theory would be not even wrong.Kantian Naturalist_{October 24, 2012
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p.s. what sort of models did you have in mind? models of the past, models of the future?Mung_{October 24, 2012
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Hi KN, good post. Always nice to hear from you. Say you are a telegraph operator and hear clicks in the speaker on your end. They make no sense according to the morse code you've been taught. You might attribute the cause to electrical disturbance (noise) on the wire. Say you hear clicks in the speaker on your end. again they make no sense according to the morse code you've been taught but they do exhibit a regular repeating pattern. You might attribute the cause to some natural regularity. Now say you hear an intelligible message in morse code. You might attribute that to an intelligent cause. But say there is a machine on the other end which is generating the electrical impulses. Would you consider that machine an intelligent agent? I think your main point is that you don't think ID is testable. So it's sort of faux science until we can use it to generate models. Is that right? As an aside, does evo theory allow us to make predictions according to models of how or even some species will evolve and what it will become?Mung_{October 24, 2012
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KN, thanks for your thoughts. I'm not sure what the additional information about the designer would be intended to do for us. There are indeed some things we can say about the designer (singular here just for simplicity): We know the designer is very skilled, with knowledge of codes, algorithms, storage, retrieval and translation mechanisms, as well as intimate understanding of biochemistry and physics (and, it now appears, probably quantum mechanics as well). We know the designer had the ability to interact with matter. We know the designer is capable of creating the system in question, with all the capabilities we could individually ennumerate for the particular system. Beyond that, I don't know what the designer's identity would serve to tell us in a scientific sense. For example, I don't need to know the first thing about the identity of the individual(s) at AMD who designed my CPU to appreciate and conclude that it was designed. I don't need to know their identity to learn from the design, or to use the principles of its design to make something of my own. The designer's personality, habits, beliefs, and so on are irrelevant to the design inference. The second order question of the designer's identity is of course interesting in its own right, but we must not mess up design theory with that issue. Not going there is not a weakness. Indeed, one of the great strengths of intelligent design is that it asks a very limited set of questions and does not attempt to go beyond what can reasonably be inferred. I view the refusal to speculate on the designer's identity as one of the great strengths of the theory. If it went into that, I would not be nearly as comfortable supporting the idea.Eric Anderson_{October 24, 2012
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Gregory: So let's see. Your contention is that we can't infer design if we see something that is beyond human capabilities. Stuff that is within current human design capability can presumably be inferred to be designed and we can conclude that natural processes could not have brought it about. That is all well and good. But if it is beyond current human design capabilities, then we can't infer design and -- Ta-Da! -- natural processes might have been able to bring it about. Wow. Forget about SETI, forget about encountering artifacts from some other intelligent civilization, forget about other discoveries that might be beyond our current technological experience. According to Gregory, unless we can design it, we can't recognize design. Grab the guy off the street and show him a piece of technology he doesn't fully understand or isn't capable of designing himself (pick anything: a CPU, a flash memory array, etc.) and, according to Gregory, the poor gentleman can't reasonably infer design. He has to rely on his materialism-of-the-gaps default answer that "nature dun'it" until he gets to the point he can design it himself -- at which point he can infer design. Pretty remarkable. The idea that we can't infer design unless we have experience building it ourselves is patently false, both in theory and in everyday practice. Finally, based on your statements, I presume you will fully accept that the design inference can apply to biology once humans have created, say, a protein or a stretch of DNA that codes for a discrete function? ------ BTW, there is not a ton of design work out there that is beyond the scope of what intelligent design applies to. It's just that design is not controversial in those areas, so it is accepted as par for the course and we don't need to write books or have debates about whether design is relevant. Nobody questions in those areas that: (i) the particular item is designed, (ii) design principles are required to create it, (iii) natural processes aren't up to the task, (iv) modifications and improvements of any reasonable scale also require additional intelligent input. All of this is right down the lines of what intelligent design proponents are saying. It is only when we get to biology (and cosmology, to a similar but perhaps lesser extent) that controversy arises. Not because design is any different or harder to see, but because it steps on some people's deeply held a priori philosophical preferences. BTW, sounds like a neat conference. I'm jealous I didn't get to attend.Eric Anderson_{October 24, 2012
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I'd appreciate some responses to a concern I have about intelligent design. As Kairofocus points out, the basic idea is as follows: (1) postulating the existence of unobservable entities to explain observable regularities is a legitimate form of scientific practice; (2) we observe functional specified complexity in various human and non-human artifacts; (3) in case (2) above, those artifacts are produced by an intelligent agent of some sort. (4) so, in the case of functional specified complexity in cellular machinery, we postulate the existence of an intelligent agent as the cause of that complexity. Here's my worry: in good scientific practice, we don't just posit the existence of some unobservable. Rather, the posited entity has to have the right kind of causal relationship with the observable entities in order to produce them. And that means that the nature of the posited entity has to specified fairly precisely. It's only then that the postulation can be tested. What worries me about intelligent design is the commitment to placing the identity of the designer outside of design theory proper. I don't see how design theory can actually test the postulation without specifying what what kind of causal relationship it has with cellular machinery, and that in turn requires specifying what kind of being the designer is. But without doing so, we don't have a working scientific theory -- there's only a hypothesis that needs to be tested. In other words, my contention is that it's not the case that the identity of the designer must be outside the scope of the theory proper. Rather, we'd only have a working scientific theory if the designer is identified -- at any rate, identified enough so that we can build a model of its causal relationship with cellular machinery and then figure out how to test the model.Kantian Naturalist_{October 24, 2012
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Myth #7: The intelligent designer is intelligent.Mung_{October 24, 2012
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Gregory, Ph.D. (title written to follow the appeals to authority in Melissa’s Blog cited)
Intellectual dishonesty. When she mentioned Ph.D.'s it wasn't to make an appeal to authority. It was merely to mention people who had certain beliefs. She mentions two PhD's and offers them as examples of people who hold two differing opinions on a matter, not as authorities on the matter.Mung_{October 24, 2012
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From the article:
ID is not “interventionist” as many theistic evolutionists (and atheistic evolutionists) like to claim.
I was going to call this one but I guess if you support a front-loading kind of ID then I guess that is true.
The idea of a designing intelligence steadily and purposefully guiding the development of life at the sub-atomic level is compatible with ID, but that particular scenario is not required by ID, either.
You know, I have to admit, this statement alone helps me to see why some ID proponents say ID is compatible with common descent. If the interventions were all at the subatomic level then the chemical/genetic trails is uninterrupted. I'm not saying I agree in design but I see a bit better what the argument is. And I still have trouble 'cause there is no unified ID hypothesis. There seems to be so many different flavours of ID it's hard to know what the main argument is aside from: we think it's designed.Jerad_{October 24, 2012
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Hang on, who changed the title of the article for this post? It's really called:
Top Five Myths Christians (and Non-Christians) Often Believe About Intelligent Design I think there's an important difference in slant there.
Jerad_{October 24, 2012
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G: On the way out the door. Of course we have good reason to infer that the first relevant cell was a gated, encapsulated, metabolising automaton with significant self-assembly capacity and using a code based von Neumann kinematic self replicator. Such was full of FSCO/I. And, since we know what is reliably and repeatedly observed to be causally adequate for FSCO/I -- design, and what is not -- blind chance and necessity; we have every good epistemic reason to infer to best explanation on sign that the cell was designed. KFkairosfocus_{October 24, 2012
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Myth #6 - Intelligent Design 'theorists/advocates/proponents' are the most important 'theorists/advocates/propnents' of 'design' in the contemporary scholar/scientific landscape. The true story: This past weekend, along with over 1400 other scholars and scientists, I attended a major international conference on science and society that focussed principally on 'design.' Many 'design' topics were discussed. I looked at the large program booklet and still haven't found a single presentation by an 'intelligent design' = Big-ID (in contrast with small-id) proponent. Bottom line: There is a TON of 'design theory' out there even today that is simply outside the scope of 'intelligent design' as the IDM names it. The funny thing is that all of the ideas and work involving 'design' presented at that conference are already examples of 'intelligent' design. That is, they indicate 'design' by 'intelligent' human beings for which we can study 'design processes' and 'design strategies,' and other such things that Big-ID does not study (because of its dogmatism?). This is not the "same tired old myth" about ID. Instead, it reveals a weakness in ID theory enough to suggest pause for some reflexivity. "We already know from direct experience how to detect intelligence in other branches of science, so inferring intelligence based on the same type of observed effects is completely reasonable." - Melissa Our 'direct experience' of 'designing' technology differs categorically from supposed 'direct experience' of the origins of life, which we (human beings) do not have. Gregory, Ph.D. (title written to follow the appeals to authority in Melissa's Blog cited)Gregory_{October 24, 2012
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oh, they are. And trying to decide how to twist and distort. :)Mung_{October 24, 2012
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Excellent:
MYTH #4: ID uses a disguised form of the “God of the gaps” fallacy. The true story: ID does not say “We don’t yet know how life emerged from non-life, therefore an intelligence must have done it.” Rather, it makes a two-fold argument: 1) Neo-Darwinian explanations for the emergence and divergence of life are sorely insufficient in their explanatory power and 2) there are features of nature, such as the specified complexity of the digital information in DNA, that are best explained by intelligent agency. We already know from direct experience how to detect intelligence in other branches of science, so inferring intelligence based on the same type of observed effects is completely reasonable. In scientific practice, we infer the existing cause that is KNOWN to produce the effect in question. Since biochemistry contains information, ID theorists infer that there must be an informer, because there are no other sources of information. Ironically, whenever a materialist says, “We don’t yet know how life emerged from non-life, but one day science will explain it,” they are actually using the Science of the Gaps fallacy.
I hope certain objectors are reading. KFkairosfocus_{October 24, 2012
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haha, anti-id of the gaps. No peer reviewed articles. Well, ok, but no peer reviewed articles in journals about w. Well, ok, but no peer reviewed articles in journal x or y. Well, ok, but no peer reviewed articles in journal z.Mung_{October 24, 2012
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