Charles Krauthammer in TIME Magazine, Contra ID

Once again we have the major media bashing ID without understanding it. Charles Krauthammer writes in TIME Magazine this week, "Let's Have No More Monkey Trials: To teach faith as science is to undermine both."

He calls Intelligent Design "Creationism's modern stepchild," signaling his conflating of two very different streams of thought. This explains how he can conclude that it is teaching "faith as science."

He stands on slippery ground when he says,

"Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation."

But observation and experimentation themselves go back to first principles. Science is based not on itself, but on a philosophical foundation. One would think Krauthammer should have known this statement could not be correct.

But let's not push that too far, nor go into an explanation of science's foundation that may be irrelevant in this case. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt on that. I think what he really meant was that science begins not with prejudged conclusions, such as that there is a God behind biology. (It's not what he said, but from the rest of the article it seems likely that's what he intended.) If he actually read any current ID thinking, of course, he would find out that it, too, avoids prejudged conclusions, even as it points out natural phenomena that are difficult or impossible to explain on evolutionary assumptions.

It's hard to believe he did that reading; if he did, he missed what it said and came out instead with his own prejudged conclusions. Krauthammer says,

"This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.

"How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so."

The God-of-the-gaps argument will die someday, or rather, someday more people will recognize it's already dead. I've done my own shooting at it, but I know it's going to be a matter of time before it gets its proper funeral.

It's worth focusing on that last set of thoughts, though: "There are gaps. . . . Perhaps they are filled by God. . . . . it is certainly not science to merely declare it so."

The problem with most evolutionary teaching today is that it will not even acknowledge the gaps, and their seriousness. ID recognizes them. It does not "declare" ("merely" or otherwise) that they are filled by God. It resorts to a hypothesis of bare intelligence as the most plausible explanation for the observed phenomena.

ID theorists are comfortable, by the way, with saying that they step out of science into philosophy when they suggest that conclusion. Krauthammer says with a sneer, "It is certainly not science. . . " with the implied ending, "and if it isn't science, then out with it!" So, is he proposing that schools should only teach science? Of course not. Is he proposing that science classes teach only science, and nothing else? That seems more reasonable--but only because most people, including scientists, don't understand where science ends and philosophy begins.

If you want to understand why scientists put such stock in the (rather elusively defined) "scientific method," you eventually have to get back to philosophy; that's where the explanation is. If you teach that what science does is just to give natural explanations of natural phenomena, you're making a philosophical statement; you can't avoid stepping out of science. Whether or not that's a valid philosophical statement is not my concern here. I'm just eager to establish that science, for all its marvelous success, is not king of the epistemological world; and it does not have to be--or rather, it cannot be--the sole landlord of the educational world.

I would therefore answer his complaint, "It is certainly not science," with something like, ". . . and your point is?" -- because he's on the way toward saying something he cannot justify.

There's more good commentary on this at William Dembski's weblog.

Posted: Tue - August 2, 2005 at 12:46 PM |

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Charles Krauthammer in TIME Magazine, Contra ID

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson