Cornelius Hunter takes that on:
In a debate with Michael Ruse at Oregon State University, a student in the audience asked me how one does science according to intelligent design. It is a common question. If the designer can autonomously create designs, how can one make predictions? If the natural world operates not according to a set of natural laws, but instead according to an autonomous entity, then how can science proceed? Indeed, more commonly evolutionists do not ask such questions, but rather boldly assert that under any such formulation, science becomes utterly impossible. Many such examples could be given but an op-ed article in the New York Times from evolutionist and then president of the National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts, will suffice:
In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from confirmable evidence. Because “intelligent design” theories are based on supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.
Science Depends on It
In other words, there is an intellectual necessity of strictly naturalistic explanation — our science depends on it. And so, it would seem that intelligent design commits the intellectual sin of being a science stopper. But as we shall see, this intellectual necessity argument reveals something very different…
Cornelius Hunter, “Is Intelligent Design a Science Stopper?” at Evolution News and Science Today (February 11, 2022)
Before we even get to Dr. Hunter’s observations and arguments, notice how much nonsense the demand for naturalism contributes to popular science media: Any day now, we are going to
- hit on the origin of life
- find the consciousness spot in the brain/prove there’s no consciousness
- prove there’s no free will
- establish that apes do SO think just like people
The fact that this promissory materialism, for which Darwinism is the origin story, is all hype and no hope never means anything. A fresh batch of media will bring up the same worn themes. And it’s as close to science as large numbers of educated mediocrities ever want to get.
You may also wish to read: Darwinian evolution and apparently suboptimal design: Cornelius Hunter points out that the most powerful arguments for schoolbook Darwinism are theological in character: What God wouldn’t do, etc. And they also apply only to alternative viewpoints, not to core Darwinism itself.
Refusing to subscribe to materialism will not stop real science. Science deserves the name of science only if it works regardless of worldview.
As to: “Is Intelligent Design a Science Stopper?”
Far from it, the assumption of Methodological Naturalism and/or Darwinian materialism is the real ‘science stopper’. Whereas the assumption of Intelligent Design was, and is, the ‘science starter’.
As Rodney Stark noted, “That the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again.”
Although atheists are loathe to honestly admit it, (indeed some atheists, intentionally or not, even try to lie about it), but the fact of the matter is that Judeo-Christian presuppositions lay at the founding of modern science itself.
Stephen Meyer, (Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge), in his recent book, “Return of the God hypothesis”, listed the three necessary Judeo-Christian presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe as such.
And these Judeo-Christian presuppositions that were necessary for the founding of modern science did not just evaporate into thin air, but these Judeo-Christian presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science continue to be very much essential for the successful practice of modern science.
As Paul Davies succinctly put the situation, “even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
And as Paul Davies noted elsewhere, “You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed.”
In short, the atheist, in the very act of him ‘doing science’, (and apparently completely unbeknownst to himself), is providing proof that the Judeo-Christian worldview must be true in some essential way, shape, or form.
And it is not as if the assumption of Intelligent Design in science is off in a corner hiding somewhere.
All of science, every nook and cranny of it, is bursting at the seams with ‘Intelligent Design’.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is contingent and rational in its foundational nature and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can, therefore, dare understand the rationality that God has imparted onto the universe), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism.
Moreover, falsely assuming ‘atheistic/methodological naturalism’ as one’s starting philosophical position for ‘doing science’, (instead of assuming Christian Theism, ), actually leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
So again, far from intelligent design being a ‘science stopper’, the assumption of Intelligent was in fact a necessary assumption for science to even get started in the first place,.
Whereas, on the other hand, the assumption of Methodological Naturalism and/or Darwinian materialism turns out, in the end, to drive science into catastrophic epistemological failure. i.e. Darwinian materialism is a far worse than ‘science stopper’, it is a ‘science killer’
That obvious fallacy has not as yet been put out of it’s misery? Did not Ruse spot the hole in his argument, that naturalism is imposing an ideological a priori driven by unscientific agendas?
I will add something to my comment at 1. Science can support a worldview but it can only do so by producing conclusions that don’t depend on the worldview. Otherwise, arguments will be circular.
If the designer invented a frame work (universe and laws of physics) and within that framework invented another framework (life) and within that framework another framework (ecologies with complex species) and then a final framework (genetics) there is plenty for science to do and ID does not stop any of it.
If so called defenders of true science wants to beg the question and say that one framework begets the other through natural means, so be it. This is the position of the theistic evolutionists. They are ID adherents but say that the universe with its laws is all the design there was.
The other frameworks mentioned above flow from the original creation and were not invented afterwards. But they along with atheists are using a logical fallacy to justify their position. ID says that if this is the way it happened, then the designer has kept the mechanisms hidden.
Thus, other ID adherents say there is a problem and any naturalistic mechanism proposed violates logic and evidence. Nothing stopping anyone from investigating possible mechanisms. So ID is definitely not a science stopper.
No one can point to any field of enquiry that ID says stop. They may say such and such is a waste of time because of the begging the question nature of it but pursue it if you wish. We may get other useful results in these efforts from serendipitous findings.
Claim: Intelligent design theory is science stopper
The quickest and easiest way to refute this claim is to show us a list of all the magnificent brilliant original scientific discoveries made on the basis of “Intelligent Design theory” over the past quarter century, along with citations indicating where they may be found in the science literature.
Can you list even one scientific discovery that was made without a ‘”intelligently designed” scientific instrument being used to make that discovery?
Seems fairly obvious to me that if you can’t even do science in the first place without using ‘”intelligently designed” scientific instruments, then science itself can’t possibly be based upon naturalistic presuppositions.
And indeed it isn’t. (see post 2)
As to major discoveries in science that support Theism and/or Intelligent Design
As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. – In fact modern science is even very good at pointing us to Christianity as the solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’
Verse: