Thinking Christian

Rebecca Bynum has some marvelous insights on scientism’s impulse to abolish humanity from among humanity:

One might recall the great glee with which Jane Goodall’s discovery of the tool-making and using of chimpanzees was greeted (wild chimps were observed stripping the leaves from twigs in order to use them to fish for termites). This was due not to the fact that it raised chimpanzees in our estimation, but rather because it lowered man. Louis Leakey exclaimed, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” One more supposedly unique human attribute was knocked off the list, and we could no longer claim to be the only tool making and using animal.

[From The Progressive Diminishment of Man - New English Review]

Also,

It may be argued that what man believes himself to be determines not only his conduct, but the substance of what he feels is possible, thus determining the scope of art and culture. The ostensible purpose of science is to serve man through the ever-expanding knowledge of facts, and yet as science has ascended, many scientists have mounted a purposeful attack on the ancient concept of man in order to diminish him in his own estimation. The feeling among scientists seems to be that man does not deserve a privileged place in the universe.

As good as her analysis is, though, it sounds eerily familiar.

HT: Bradford

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Last week I posted an article in which I attempted to show that evidence against evolution can legitimately be evidence in favor of Intelligent Design. I ran into some serious opposition on that, and even though my interlocutors’ objections there were often mis-aimed, they did lead me to think through the matter more deeply. I got the argument wrong last time. I’m stating it here in a corrected form. I’ll borrow some of my wording from the previous version so that this article can stand alone, though I’m going to change terminology somewhat for clarity’s sake. This article divides naturally into three separate sections, so I am going to divide it into three posts published simultaneously. For those who followed the earlier discussion, there is some new material in this post, and I would draw your attention especially to the fifth through seventh paragraphs (counting this as number one). The second and third sections are quite different from what I posted previously.

The question is whether it is legitimate to regard evidence against evolution as evidence in favor of ID. Evolutionists often complain that positive arguments for ID are lacking, and that ID offers nothing but negative arguments against evolution. I’m going to refer to that as The Complaint. It is indeed true that ID makes part of its case (though certainly not all of it) on the basis of arguments against naturalistic evolution, so ID proponents must take The Complaint seriously. Is there something inherently wrong with ID arguing its case this way? Can a negative argument against evolution really be a positive argument for ID? Or is negative argumentation conceptually flawed from the start?

I’m going to begin with the simplest level of analysis and work upward from there to a fully realistic level. This argument becomes complex later on. I have placed a tree-diagram representing the whole of it at the end of the third post in this series. You may skip ahead and use it to guide you through if you like.

I begin by noting that at this time there are only two possible explanations for biological origins on the table: either some intelligence was guiding it, or there was no such intelligent guidance. If the first is true, then some form of Intelligent Design is the true explanation. If not, then the only explanation currently on offer is undirected random variation coupled with natural selection, which I will refer to here as Naturalistic Evolution, or NE.

At the end of the movie Expelled, Richard Dawkins speaks of the possibility that life on earth was designed, and opines that ID could explain earth’s life if the designers were some alien creatures. That raised some hearty chuckles from ID proponents, but in our laughter many of us missed what else he said: that those aliens, if they existed, must have come about by Darwinian processes. For Dawkins there is only one route up “Mount Improbable” (the term he used for life’s increasing complexity in his book The Blind Watchmaker). That one route is the gradualistic path of natural selection acting on random variations.

If he is in fact right about there being only one naturalistic route to biological complexity, then there are only two options open for consideration: Intelligent Design in some form (which of course is not an option Dawkins would consider), and NE. These are fully dichotomous: if one is true, the other is false, and vice-versa. Mainstream evolutionary scientists insist that NE is fact, and that we know it is fact. One helpful way to express their certainty is to express it in terms of probabilities: their view is that p(NE)=1 and p(ID)=0.

For this analysis I define evidence E for theory T as any information that, if true, increases the probability that T is true. I distinguish evidence from proof: it is that which adds to the probability of T, not that which proves T. Evidence is not unidimensional or unidirectional; there can be evidences for and against T, and each piece of evidence E must be considered in light of its own virtues and faults, in context of all other evidences for and against T. Further, there is a time factor factor involved. E is evidence for T if p(T) at T2 is greater after the introduction of E than at T1, before the introduction of E. This before/after relationship could be logical rather than chronological; whether E existed or was known at T1 is not as important as whether it was included in the probability analysis at T1.

There are many mainstream scientists who insist, as Michael Ruse has, that “Evolution is fact, FACT, FACT!” In other words, the matter has been settled, and regardless of any possible future evidence,  p(NE)=1. There is no possibility that ID is true: p(ID)=0. I can’t fathom how they can take that position. Evidence has to have some capability of influencing a theory, doesn’t it? Or is evolution true regardless of evidence? That’s hardly science.

Since “fact, FACT, FACT!” in that form is therefore fallacious reasoning and also bad science, I’ll proceed by entertaining the possibility that there is at least conceivably some evidence E that could reduce our confidence in evolution (even by the smallest fraction) such that  p(NE) < 1. That’s not assuming much. It’s a lot more reasonable than insisting that NE is true no matter what evidence might surface.

Now, if Dawkins is right that NE is the only possible naturalistic route up Mount Improbable, the probability equation for origins must include only the terms stated so far here; thus, p(NE) + p(ID)= 1. These are the only options on offer. If the probability of either term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases by some degree n, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by n. 1 – p(NE) = p(ID), and 1 – p(ID) = p(NE).

ID theorists argue that certain features of the natural world are inconsistent with NE. The Cambrian Explosion is one of them. It is hard to explain on NE terms how it came about. This is an example of a negative argument against NE. This post is not about whether that argument is true or not; it is about whether, if there is merit to the argument, it counts legitimately as an argument in favor of ID.

And it seems to me that given a binary, dichotomous relationship between ID and NE, it must; for p(NE) + p(ID)= 1. Suppose for the sake of argument there is some merit to ID’s concerns about the Cambrian Explosion. The effect of that must be to reduce confidence in NE by some non-zero amount. Now suppose also that before this argument was presented, the universal consensus was that p(NE)=1. To the extent that the Cambrian Explosion argument has merit, confidence in NE must be reduced by some degree n, with the result that p(NE) = 1- n, and p(ID) = n. (The degree of change, n, depends on how successful the argument actually is.) Increased confidence in ID (its increase in probability) must be numerically identical to the decrease in confidence in NE, because the sum of the two probabilities must equal 1.

Therefore any evidence E that reduces the probability of NE as an explanation for origins increases the probability of ID as an explanation.

That brings us to the end of the first stage of this argument. To recap:

1. The Complaint is that ID’s negative argumentation against NE is somehow illegitimate, unscientific, or otherwise weak or wrong.
2. ID and NE are mutually exclusive.
3. On Richard Dawkins’ view, NE is nature’s only available method for developing biological complexity.
4. Therefore on that view, ID and NE fill the entire probability space for origins: p(NE) + p(ID)= 1.
5. And therefore any successful negative evidence against NE is successful positive evidence for ID:

That is the simplest view of the argument, and it seems pretty cut-and-dried if random variation coupled with natural selection (NE) is nature’s only option for building biological complexity, as Dawkins thinks.

But when I have written of this before, some have objected to my considering only two possibilities: ID (in some form) and NE. “How do we know these are the only two possibilities?” they ask. “Science marches on, and who knows what we might discover? Why do we assume that ID is the only alternative to NE? How could we know that?”

That question takes us to the second section of this article.

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This is the second stage of an argument responding to what I have called The Complaint: that Intelligent Design’s (ID’s) negative argumentation against naturalistic evolution (NE; defined here as the development of life and its complexity through undirected random variation coupled with natural selection) is somehow illegitimate, unscientific, or otherwise weak or wrong. If you have not read the first stage, that would be the place to begin.In it I showed that in the simple case where we assume there are only two options on the table, negative evidence against NE is quite clearly positive evidence for ID. I expressed this in the probability equation 1 – p(NE) = p(ID), where p(NE) is the probability that NE is the true explanation of origins, and p(ID) is the probability that ID is the true explanation.

Now we must examine the possibility of more than two options. As I said last time, this argument becomes complex. I have placed a tree-diagram representing the whole of it at the end of the third post in this series. You may skip ahead and use it to guide you through if you like.

Recall that ID stands for origins being brought about by a designer. If there is a third option it cannot involve a designer, for that frame is already filled by ID; it must be another naturalistic explanation. At this point there is no naturalistic explanation on offer besides NE, so it must be an unknown naturalistic explanation. I will refer to it as the Unknown Naturalistic Theory, or UNT.

If we are to grant the entirely reasonable assumption that science could develop some other, new naturalistic explanation for the development of life and its complexity, then the probability equation we started with must be expanded:

p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1

We have no way of assessing UNT’s probability, but we can deal with that by considering two possibilities.

A.
p(NE) + p(UNT) = 1;
  p(ID) = 0

B.
p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1;  
0 < p(ID) < 1;
0 < p(UNT) < 1

I will deal with A in this post and save B for the next in this series.

A is a mathematical restatement of, “We won’t claim we’re absolutely certain that NE explains life’s origins; but we’re certain that whatever the explanation is, Design had nothing to do with it.” Often coupled with this statement is something to this effect: Science has made continuous progress in finding naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. Attempts to use God (or some other Design process) to explain natural phenomena have consistently had to give way to naturalistic explanations. Therefore we think it’s reasonable to conclude that science will eventually demonstrate that the origin and complexity of life have fully natural explanations, whether NE or some other theory not yet conceived of.

The question there is, what evidence is adduced for this opinion? There is one kind of evidence that is offered, and another kind that is not even in the picture. What is offered is the history of science, and what is inferred from that is an extrapolation to the future of science. What is not even in the picture is evidence from nature. No matter what evidence E might surface in nature at any time in the future, E can only count as evidence for naturalism (NE or UNT), for p(ID) = 0, world without end, Amen. The probability of naturalism today, T1, is 1; the probability of naturalism tomorrow T2 will be 1, and the probability of naturalism at T3, T4, T5 … to infinity is 1. And this we are assured of, regardless of what evidence E might be introduced at some time Tn in the future.

That is either begging the question, simply stating ID is wrong and that’s that, regardless of what evidence should ever appear! or else, if it is not begging the question, it is placing enormous load on the evidence that has been offered on its behalf: the history of science. We must recall that science has not had uniformly increasing success in explaining what we observe in the world. It has gotten nowhere with explaining realities like consciousness, reasoning, purpose, meaning, free will, moral responsibility and even the origin of the first life. (Claims to the contrary abound, but as I — and many others — have argued elsewhere, they are philosophically uninformed.)

But even if that were not the case, extrapolation in a matter like this is hardly more than an expression of faith. To extrapolate without a supporting theory is bad statistics and bad science, and the only theory that could support this particular extrapolation is one that begs the question: the theory that all of life’s features will someday be explainable naturalistically.

So version A above is unsuccessful. To introduce p(UNT) into our probability equation that way is logically fallacious. We’ll have to pUNT (I’ve been saving up for that pUN) to version B and see whether it works. That will be the topic of the next post.

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This is the third post in a series exploring The Complaint of evolutionists: that Intelligent Design’s (ID’s) negative argumentation against naturalistic evolution (NE; defined here as the development of life and its complexity through undirected random variation coupled with natural selection) is somehow illegitimate, unscientific, or otherwise weak or wrong. (This is not the place to begin if you have not read the first two posts; start here instead.)

So far I have shown that if NE and ID are the only explanations on the table for discussion, The Complaint is unjustified. I have also begun to address the possibility that NE and ID are not the only options; we have to consider that some currently unknown naturalistic theory (UNT) could surface someday as a third possibility. Using probability math, I have expressed two ways UNT could enter into consideration:

A.
p(NE) + p(UNT) = 1;
p(ID) = 0

B.
p(NE) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1;
0 < p(ID) < 1;
0 < p(UNT) < 1

And I showed in the last post that A is question begging.

But there is a non-question-begging way to introduce UNT into analysis, and that is B. It doesn’t assume ID is false and naturalism is true. So on first appearance it seems more hopeful, for those who would want to justify The Complaint. Could they be right, under B? Let’s take a look at this.

First, let’s recall that The Complaint has to do with how ID theorists use evidence against evolution in favor of ID. So let’s introduce our term E now. We’ll assume that at time T1 our confidence in NE was perfect: p(NE) = 1. But now we consider E, and find that it is evidence against NE, so that at time T2, our confidence in NE is reduced by n: p(NE) = 1 – n at time T2.

We can substitute 1 – n for p(NE) in our equation from B:

(1 – n) + p(ID) + p(UNT) = 1

Which is equivalent to

p(ID) + p(UNT) = n

Both terms on the left side of this equation are greater than 0 and less than 1. The question that The Complaint addresses is, can we rightly conclude that p(ID) varies directly with n? If p(ID) increases when n increases then negative evidence against evolution is positive evidence for Design.

It’s possible, mathematically, for p(ID) not to vary directly with n. It could happen in either of two ways:

Mathematically it’s possible that p(ID) is constant. In that case p(UNT) varies directly with n. Whatever evidence E appears that counts against NE, counts equally in favor of UNT. That’s really just a special case of what I argued in the previous post, however: no matter what evidence comes in at any future time, it cannot under any conditions count in favor of ID. All evidence is evidence for one naturalistic explanation or the other. For the deliverer of The Complaint to resort to that as support would plainly be question-begging.

It’s also mathematically possible that p(ID) varies inversely with n. That would require p(UNT) to vary directly with n, with some multiplicative factor such that when n increased, p(UNT) increased even faster. But that would be strange, to say the least, especially since UNT is by definition unknown. To assume that its probability varies with n that way is to assume that we know something quite unexpected and remarkable about the unknown. For The Complaint to rely on that would be nothing but special pleading.

But it’s worse than that, in reality, for in fact we do know something about UNT: it hasn’t been thought of yet. Richard Dawkins says it doesn’t even exist. So while we can’t eliminate the possibility of UNT completely, we can safely set its value near zero. And the closer p(UNT) is to zero, the more likely it is that p(ID) varies directly with n.

So how shall we assess The Complaint now? We have to allow that it is conceivably legitimate, but only if p(UNT) varies directly but multiplicatively with n. Only if we resort to special pleading, in other words. My conclusion is that negative evidence against evolution can legitimately be taken as positive evidence for ID.

This has been an extended argument with multiple branches. I have attempted in my ham-handed way to illustrate it through the following diagram, which may be useful as a guide to you in re-reading and re-evaluating these three posts. Or (since my space was limited, and so is my experience with these things) it may not be that helpful.

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Evolutionists complain that positive arguments for ID are lacking, and that all ID offers are negative arguments against evolution. Without granting all of that, I want to address whether there is something wrong with arguing for ID by arguing against evolution. I have done this before, but I’ve developed the argument further since then. This is adapted from a comment I posted on another thread earlier today.

I have argued in the past that there are only two possible explanations for biological origins on the table: either there was some intelligence guiding it, or there wasn’t. If the first is true, then some form of Intelligent Design is the right explanation. If not, then the only explanation on offer is unguided neo-Darwinian evolution (hereafter NDE).

At the end of the movie Expelled, Richard Dawkins speaks of the possibility that life on earth was designed, and opines that it might have been if the source of that design were some alien creatures. Many ID proponents found that a funny position for him to take, but in our laughter many of us missed what else he said: that those aliens, if they existed, must have come about by Darwinian processes. For Dawkins, at least, there is only one route up what he calls “Mount Improbable,” and that is the gradualistic road of natural selection acting on random variations.

So if he is right, then there are only two options on the table: Intelligent Design (in some form), or NDE. Now, these are dichotomous: if one is true, the other is false. Mainstream evolutionary scientists insist that NDE is fact, and that we know it is fact. One helpful way to express this certainty is to express it in terms of probabilities: p(NDE)=1 and p(ID)=0.

Because there are no other options on the table or even on the horizon, it would appear that the probability relationship must include only the terms stated so far here. That is, p(NDE) + p(ID)= 1. If the probability of either term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by like measure.

ID theorists argue that certain features of the natural world are inconsistent with NDE. The Cambrian Explosion is one of them. It is hard to explain, strictly on NDE terms, how it came about. This is an example of a negative argument against NDE. This post is not about whether that is true or not; it is about whether, if there is merit to the argument, it counts legitimately as an argument in favor of ID.

And it seems to me that given the binary relationship between ID and NDE, it must; for p(NDE) + p(ID)= 1. Suppose there is some merit to ID’s concerns about the Cambrian Explosion. The effect of that must be to reduce confidence in NDE by some non-zero amount. Supposing also that before this argument was made, the universal consensus was that  p(NDE)=1. To the extent that the Cambrian Explosion argument has merit, that confidence would be reduced, and the result would be that p(NDE) < 1, and p(ID) > 0. (How much those probabilities change depends on how successful the argument actually is.) Confidence in ID (its increase in probability) would be numerically identical to the decrease in confidence in NDE, because the sum of the two probabilities must equal 1.

Thus a negative argument against NDE is a positive argument in favor of ID.

But when I have written of this before, some have objected to my considering only two possibilities: ID (in some form) and NDE. “How do we know these are the only two possibilities?” they ask. “Science marches on, and who knows what we might discover? Why do we assume that ID is the only alternative to NDE? How could we know that?”

We can deal with that this way. Let’s grant that there could be Unknown Possibilities, and call them UP. In that case we would have to say, p(NDE) + p(ID) + p(UP) = 1. That certainly ought to cover all the possible explanations.

There must be some number between 0 and 1 that expresses the probability of Unknown Possibilities — p(UP) — explaining biological origins. How shall we assign that probability? How slippery is that number? Does it always adjust to p(NDE), such that p(NDE) + p(UP) always equals 1? It seems to me some participants in this debate or so opposed to ID, that’s what they would insist: “ID is not the answer. If NDE turns out not to be the answer either, then there must be some other unguided, naturalistic explanation for life.” That’s equivalent to saying p(NDE) + p(UP) always equals 1, and p(ID) always equals 0.

But treating unknown possibilities that way is nothing more than a “no-design of the gaps” argument. It starts with ignorance with respect to the unknown possibilities and moves to an assumption that if NDE is not the answer, then UP is. It does so with no knowledge: “unknown” means unknown, after all. That’s not very impressive reasoning, and in fact I can’t think of any scientific or logical reason to accept it.

What if we take a more balanced view, then? What if we admit the possibility of UP, and we do so in a way that avoid the “no-design of the gaps” error. In that case the most reasonable way to proceed would be to assign p(UP) some more definite value, like, perhaps, 0.2. The number we choose really doesn’t matter, in view of the point I’m trying to make here, which is that a negative argument against NDE can be a positive argument for ID. We could simply call p(UP) an unknown constant and make the same argument we made above, adding K into the equation for that constant. My central point above remains identical to what it was before:

p(NDE) + p(ID) + K = 1. If the probability of either non-K term is 1, then the probability of the other is 0; if the probability of either term increases or decreases, then the probability of the other term decreases or increases by like measure. A negative argument against NDE is still a positive argument for ID.

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I have just updated my Monday blog post on the reviewers of Signature in the Cell. Please see the footnote there for an explanation.

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Geoff Arnold had some very significant trouble with my recent statement about the Noachian flood. He said,

Do you actually, literally, believe this? The complete lack of any physical evidence for this amazing claim doesn’t trouble you? Do you reject all of science, and if not, how do you disentangle the bits you accept from the bits that are contradicted by your religious beliefs?

Good grief. If this is a thinking Christian position, I shudder to think what an unthinking one might be like….

What shall we make of a criticism like this? I could give a directly worded statement of my position regarding the Flood, which I have done. But that’s not all that Geoff was getting at in this comment. We need to tear apart his premises, some of which are unspoken; for it is often the unspoken premises that most severely undermine good thinking, since we tend to let them enter unprocessed and unfiltered. Here are some of them:

• The Noachian flood is “an amazing claim.”
• There is absolutely no physical evidence for it.
• To believe in the Noachian flood is to reject at least some science.
• That rejection is based on “religious beliefs.”
• There must be some mysterious principle by which I “disentangle” the parts of science I accept and the parts I do not accept.

Let’s examine that last one before proceeding. Science itself, like all of knowledge, involves considerable disentangling, does it not? Consider for example the Tree of Life as constructed under Darwinian principles. On what principle should the branchings be determined? Morphology or genetic similarity? If the latter, then which genes? Different methods yield different results. Don’t these different results require some disentangling? Disentangling is a fact of life, even within science or a single branch of science. Therefore the hoot of derision we hear in Geoff’s, “how do you disentangle…?” is either misdirected or misinformed, or else it’s based on some principle that says that in this case it’s a different kind of problem altogether.

Of course it is the last of those: Geoff obviously thinks disentangle “religious beliefs” from scientific knowledge involves something of a different sort than what happens within science. Let me now suggest that Geoff probably takes these as additional though unspoken premises:

• Science produces knowledge on the basis of physical evidence.
• If there is no physical evidence for the Noachian flood, then there is no evidence for the Noachian flood.
• “Religious belief” is not really knowledge.

The first statement in this set is true but incomplete. Science certainly produces knowledge on the basis of physical evidence, but not only on that basis. Its knowledge is also the product of interpretation, which is filtered through worldview. Uniformitarianism, for example, is an interpretive lens through which historical geology is viewed. It’s not the only one that’s possible. Now, I happen to think uniformitarianism is generally a trustworthy lens, except as it exists as a scaled-down version of methodological and/or philosophical naturalism, which exclude a priori any possibility that the flow of natural history could have experienced some non-linearizing intervention. There are multiple lines of converging evidence to support (not prove, but support) uniformitarianism. There is no physical evidence whatever for naturalism. It is purely a worldview lens.

The last statement in this latter set is just wrong. There are, to be sure, religious beliefs that are false and therefore do not qualify as knowledge. But I don’t think that’s all Geoff probably means, reading between the lines of what he said. There is a rather common view of religion and knowledge that I suspect Geoff would buy into: that religious “belief” and actual knowledge really have little to do with each other, except that where their subject matters overlap, religious “belief” must always yield to actual knowledge. I can “believe” anything I want, but if there’s some actual knowledge out there that my “belief” conflicts with, my “belief” yield to “knowledge.”

But that’s not what religious belief is, at least not in the case of Christianity, the only religious belief system I have in mind here now. I believe that Jesus Christ lived, and died, and rose again. Why do I believe this? Because I know it to be true. How do I know it? On the basis of evidences, reasoning, logic, and so on. I believe that there was a vast flood that destroyed almost all of humanity. How do I know this? On the basis, again, of evidences, reasoning, logic and so on.

The evidence set I’m relying on for both of these is, of course, not primarily scientific, but that doesn’t mean it is not knowledge. I have written at great length on my reasons for believing in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection: reasons based in evidence leading to knowledge. Some say it’s false and therefore not knowledge; I say (and have supported with evidence) that they are wrong: it is true and it is therefore knowledge. Knowledge that I believe; belief that is knowledge.

The Flood is a belief I hold based on evidences as well. The evidence set for it is more complex and involved than that regarding Jesus Christ. It has to do with reasons (reasons!) to believe that God has produced a trustworthy record for us in Genesis. I could go into more detail on this, but I think it would detract from my main point here.

So let me state that main point in full now. (I have been heading toward it but I have not articulated it yet.) Geoff mocks my position here, apparently on the basis of some apparent stupidity revealed by my having to disentangle religious beliefs from scientific knowledge. That’s not what’s going on at all, though. Yes, there is some disentangling to be done, and it’s not all simple or obvious, which is also often the case within science itself, as I have shown. What I am disentangling, though, is not “belief” and “knowledge.” It is knowledge and knowledge.

Do I reject all of science? Heavens, no! But I will doubt—and possibly reject—any part of “science” that is clearly contradicted by other solid knowledge I have. And where there is disentangling to be done, whether it is all within science or whether it involves multiple disciplines of knowledge, I will recognize the questions and confusions for what they are and refrain from jumping to dogmatic conclusions. I am not the least bit embarrassed to claim that as a thinking Christian position.

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