Thinking Christian

The responses to my question, “Why The Debate?” on Intelligent Design and Thomist theology have been most instructive for me. Blogging is for learning, too. Holopupenko disagreed with my characterization of Intelligent Design as a reductio-like approach, asking,

How do you think Meyer or Behe or Dembski would respond if you pressed them to re-characterize their efforts to a reductio argument? How far do you really think you’d get? (With acerbic Dembski, I doubt you’d even be given the opportunity to complete your sentence.)

As came out later in the discussion, I didn’t put Meyer’s approach in the same category as Behe’s and Dembski’s. Whether they would agree with me or not is up to them, and I think Holopupenko is right to say they would be hesitant to accept the appellation I put on them. If they said, “we’re not offering reductio arguments,” I would have to agree; that’s why I called them reductio-like. What they have in common with a reductio is pressing an opponent’s assumptions to see how far they can go. The Thomists’ objection (as it seems to me) is that ID accepts the wrong assumptions. What’s really going on instead, as I see it, is that ID accepts those assumptions for the purpose of testing them, and showing where they fail. If in my earlier post I communicated a stronger resemblance to reductio than that, I stand corrected. (Blogging is for learning, too.)

And since blogging is for learning, with some trepidation I’m going to take the risk of challenging some good Christian philosophers even further. This may be oversimplified, and if it is, then I expect it will be another occasion for learning; but it seems to me the objections to ID on that thread to boil down to two:

1. ID inappropriately plays by the rules of the modern empirical sciences (MESs), and
2. ID is a weak or inconclusive proof for God and/or design.

With respect to the first of these we have Holopunko’s observation,

Nowhere do I see [ID proponents] reducing their efforts to a reductio. (No pun intended.) In fact, quite the opposite is true: they bill themselves as a scientific (read: MES) THEORY. Once they do this, they MUST play by the rules of the MESs.

As well as Luke’s:

I’d have to agree with Holo… something like the MESs have a sandbox (a nice one) but it says nothing beyond the sandbox. IDT attempts to play by the sandbox rules while at the same time incorporating rules from outside the sandbox, which really doesn’t work if you can only join the sandbox by agreeing to its initial rules.

What’s wrong with ID following those rules? Holopupenko says,

One cannot possibly re-characterize ID Theory as a mere reductio argument when ID Theorists themselves are proposing it is much more: ID Theorists are NOT just trying to infer design–they’re trying to observe final causality by means of the MESs by proposing MES-based research directions, etc. NONE of which has produced a shred of strictly-MES based evidence.

The MESs are simply NOT qualified to address teleology or teleonomy.

and

One most certainly CAN infer design from nature, but one can NOT do it directly from the MESs: one needs (1) a rational agent, (2) philosophical reflection. But if that’s the case, then why are IDers hell-bent on introducing philosophical reflection into the science classroom?

…

What possible MES-based research program could be instituted to “see” a final cause–a being of reason only existing in the mind of a rational agent? Answer: none.

I hope that’s enough to represent the case fairly. Now, I have two concerns with this. First, ID is not limited to playing according to the MESs’ rules of naturalism, whether philosophical (which ID roundly rejects) or methodological (which ID, shall we say, handles with caution, since it often bleeds over into philosophical naturalism).

Second, although ID bills itself as science, it does not claim to be purely scientific, i.e., science not philosophically informed. We have encountered scientists here who seem to think science can operate without philosophy, but that is just false, as Holopupenko and other commenters here know very well. I have always understood ID to be both a philosophical and scientific program, as I laid out in some detail three years ago.

I have no idea where the ID literature says it is trying to observe design by means of the MESs. Instead ID theorists in the Dembski-Behe camp, through philosophical consideration, have proposed conditions that accomplish two simultaneous objectives: to support an inference of design, and to defeat a contrary non-design inference. They have proposed philosophically-based answers to, “Are there any conditions that, if they obtained in nature, would support a conclusion of design over against a conclusion of non-design?” Thus the Explanatory Filter; and thus Complex Specified Information and Irreducible Complexity.

Later Holopupenko writes,

It takes a human being (i.e., a rational agent) to demonstrate the existence of God (i.e., Existence itself… and it has been done) through philosophical reflection upon sensory-accessible knowledge.

It seems to me that’s a great description of Intelligent Design. I think he probably intends “sensory-accessible knowledge” to refer to ordinary and everyday experience, but I’m not sure on what basis we can draw a line between that and science for these purposes. The role of science in ID (as in every other context) is to amplify and to refine observations (“sensory-accessible knowledge”), and to draw conclusions therefrom. ID amounts to rational agents observing nature, reflecting upon it philosophically, and inferring design. IDers are not hell-bent on introducing ID into science classrooms, of course; that’s an old misconception. What they do want to do is to correct the philosophical reflections already present in science classrooms, and the conclusion that non-design has been demonstrated by the MESs.

Moving on to the second summary set of objections raised against ID in that thread, we have Holopupenko’s statement,

Later Holopupenko says,

Worse, the question has already been addressed by a realist philosophy of nature and metaphysics: design is fundamentally teleological–end of story. No MES-based arguments can add to or change that truth, and no MES-based knowledge is needed to validate that truth.

And Brandon noted,

If we take the reductio-like approach seriously, with the structure you suggest in 1-4, or something like it, then a striking feature of the approach is that it does not — and cannot — prove the existence of an intelligent designer; rather, it merely identifies gaps in naturalistic explanation. Indeed, neither intelligence nor design shows up in any of the steps. Since it works on naturalistic assumptions, which are to be shown wrong or problematic by the end of the argument, it can’t prove anything positive about the world….

Thus ID requires, by its very nature, a positive inference. In Dembski and, if I recall correctly, Behe it is inductive; in Meyer you note it is abductive. But it has to be there or ID fails to manage to include any intelligence, design, or complete refutation of naturalism. And the positive inference has to be based on a correct view of natural objects and of intelligence; for the Thomist there are serious problems on both points.

I freely grant that ID cannot prove the existence of an intelligent designer. It’s hard to imagine an ID case being made any stronger than it is through cosmological fine tuning, and the naturalists have found a way to evade the design conclusion through multiverse theory. I also freely grant that ID is not needed to add to or change the truths we know about God and design through other means. Or rather, I grant that for some of us, ID doesn’t show us anything we didn’t already know through other means. But it still has considerable value.

For one, it helps focus the issue. If I may be allowed to quote myself,

The psychology, the motivation for it all could hardly be clearer than it is in this from cosmologist Bernard Carr. “If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”

“Don’t want God.” Indeed.

For another, ID has the potential to speak to those who are not moved by scriptural or other philosophical evidences for God and for design. If some regard it as superfluous, others may not. If it is less conclusive to a Thomist (or a Baptist) than philosophy or Bible, it may be more conclusive to a modernist.

But is its persuasiveness to the modernist based on invalid assumptions or arguments? Perhaps, if its point is to prove God; for ID really cannot do that. But that is not what ID is about. ID is not even about validating truths regarding design, truths that are apparent to thinkers in the Thomist tradition. ID is about making an argument in favor of design, a supporting if not conclusive argument, for those who know little about Aristotle or Aquinas and care about them even less.

God is not proved by ID. Yet if naturalism is proved absurd, self-contradictory, or (more the case here) unreasonably unlikely to have done what is claimed of it, then one is forced to think through what else might explain the universe and its many complex features, especially life. I ask the obvious question: what directions might that lead?

Further, then: What if ID hints at God? And what if its hints are less definite than Scripture (which I certainly hold to be the case) or philosophical arguments for God (or intuitions of design such as Holopupenko wrote of yesterday)? Does ID’s being less conclusive or definite make it contradictory to other arguments? And is there not something to be said on its behalf, in that it employs the very tool, science, that some falsely claim has disproved God?

Does ID provide means for a positive inference, as Brandon says it requires? I think so. I do not agree that in either Dembski or Behe take an inductive approach to it, if by that one means that Dembski or Behe see a cumulative trail of design as such in nature. Instead, as I noted above, they have proposed philosophically based answers to the question, what features in nature, if they obtained, would support an inference of design over against an inference of non-design. They have gone looking for those features, and they think they have found them. Maybe they are wrong, as the Darwinists say they are. If they are, they are not wrong theologically. They are wrong philosophically, having proposed flawed criteria for what features of nature might support a design inference; or they are wrong scientifically, misidentifying the features that they think meet those criteria. But as far as I can tell they are wrong neither philosophically nor scientifically in the way Holopupenko, Brandon, and Luke have suggested they are.

Blogging is for learning. Have I missed something important, perhaps it is in what Brandon was hinting toward here?

Thus ID requires, by its very nature, a positive inference…. it it has to be there or ID fails to manage to include any intelligence, design, or complete refutation of naturalism. And the positive inference has to be based on a correct view of natural objects and of intelligence; for the Thomist there are serious problems on both points.

I await your responses.

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I’m only partway through my reading of the long debate on theology and ID, but some patterns seem to be falling into place already. As I read it, the Thomists in the discussion (all of whom are far better philosophers than I) object to Intelligent Design because ID is mistaken regarding what life is in itself, and how life relates to God in himself. I think that’s fair as a very brief summary. They say, for example, that ID commits to a mechanistic view of life, and that it fails to recognize the teleology or final causation that inheres not only in life but in all substances (life’s teleology being of course of a different order than inanimate objects’). ID is said to err in accepting false, non-teleological, reductionistic or mechanistic assumptions of modern empirical science. The result of this, they say, is that ID gets God wrong, it gets life wrong, and it even gets molecules, cells, and everything else wrong with respect to what they actually are

All of this might be true. I know very little of Aquinas. Thomistic language of final causes and natures and etc. remains rather opaque to me. I’ll have to keep working at it. But unless I’m severely mistaken in what I do understand, all that is beside the point anyway, because it misconstrues who ID is for and what ID is for. Intelligent Design, as I understand it, starts from a different place altogether and has different purposes. Its argument (as I understand it; I speak for myself) has a form similar to a reductio ad absurdum. If it allows naturalistic assumptions into the picture, so what? That’s how reductio arguments are conducted: by starting with the opponent’s assumptions, and in the end showing they fail.

The ID question in its current form could never have arisen before Newton. Democritus may have proposed an essentially lifeless and purposeless vision of all reality, but it was not until Newton (himself a theist) that theoretical foundations were laid to make such a world plausible. LaPlace expressed it as well as anyone: nature works mechanistically. At least inanimate nature did, in his mind; but his machine-picture had a gap that remained for Darwin to fill. The Origin of Species completed the picture: all the cosmos was explainable by purposeless principles of law plus chance, leaving room for no transcendent intelligence whatever. Ultimate being was no longer considered to be God. Eventually, ultimate reality was understood as a handful of fundamental particles and forces. Reality was explainable—and defined—by and through all these tiny, mindless, insignificant forces and particles repeated ad nauseum throughout the galaxies. That was all there was.

Such a picture is only true, however, if those forces and particles really are “all there was.” The Bible tells us God is a jealous God (often misinterpreted, but never mind that for now); no other god can stand next to him. But God’s jealousy is at least matched by that of mechanistic naturalism: no god, no minor angel or demon, no imp or leprechaun, no tiniest hint, even, of any supernaturalism can stand next to it. This is not because naturalism cares about supernaturalism; such an anthropomorphism would itself violate naturalism. It is because either naturalism is the whole story or else it is the wrong story. There is no middle way.

Intelligent Design takes naturalism, in all its jealously, quite seriously. This bothers the Thomists. But in fact ID can be conceived of as an investigation into what must be true if naturalism is true. Should that investigation lead to a dead end—if naturalism turns out to entail facts that cannot be true—this provides strong evidence that naturalism itself is a dead end. (Whether it does indeed lead to such a dead end is a different question not at issue in the current debate.)

To restate the point, naturalism presumes that chance plus law acting on purposeless initial conditions led to life and all its diversity. If it should turn out that chance and law can’t do those sorts of things with any reasonable likelihood, then that would pose severe problems for naturalism. Roughly stated the reductio-like approach goes this way:

1. Assume the truth of naturalism, which entails that all of the cosmos and all life and its diversity came about by some set S of circumstances characterized by purposeless law and chance acting on likewise purposeless initial conditions.
2. Using methods and constraints entailed by naturalism (including methodological naturalism as a guidepost for inquiry) explore the likelihood that all features of the the cosmos and life can be explained through S.
3. If there is at least one feature F of the cosmos, life, and/or its diversity that cannot, in principle, be explained by S within bounds of reasonable probability, then
4. Naturalism is false in either assumptions, methodology, or both.

The argument hinges on (3). (If there is more than one such unexplainable feature F, then ID’s case is all the stronger.) But the test for (3) must be conducted on naturalistic assumptions. To introduce Thomistic conceptions of substance, being, and causation would be inappropriate. It would invalidate the argument—and this is so even if Thomism (in any form) is exactly the truth about God and reality. A reductio argument must remain within its own parameters. This is what Dembski and Behe have been working on.

Now, you have likely noticed that this does not represent all of Intelligent Design. (It seems to me that it does cover the part the Thomists have most often identified as being objectionable.) Stephen C. Meyer’s approach is different. For him ID is not just a negative argument; it is a positive inference to intelligence, based on the fact wherever we see information of the sort coded in DNA, it always has intelligence as its source. His argument for ID is not a reductio, it is abductive, an inference to the best explanation. It begins at the same starting point Dembski and Behe use, however: the findings of the natural sciences, in all of their details and particulars. This to the Thomists is a fundamental error. But Meyer is not making his argument to directing his argument toward the Thomists primarily, or to any other theists.* Neither are Dembski or Behe. They are making their arguments to directing their arguments toward the world of science—people who couldn’t tell a final cause from their “final answer,” and who don’t care that they can’t. They are speaking the language of their audience those on the other side of the argument.

The Thomists start with certain observations and assumptions going back to the thirteenth century (Aquinas) or some some 1500 years before that (Aristotle). Meyer starts with 21st century biochemistry. Is there something wrong with starting with biochemistry? Does it not represent real data? And if the path he takes from there does not land him where Thomas landed, does that necessarily signify a contradiction? I don’t see how it does. Or, if starting from naturalistically conceived biochemistry, he arrives at the conclusion that naturalistic biochemistry cannot be the whole story, does that put him at odds with Thomistic beliefs about causes and natures? How does it do so?

Here in summary is what I am saying: Intelligent Design cannot tell the story of God as theology can (whether Thomistic, Scotistic, or Baptistic or Presbyterianistic). If that were its purpose, yes, it would be a dismal failure, just as the Thomists are saying it is. Aristotelian-Thomism might have it in its capacity to go further than that. Biblical theology certainly does. But just because ID cannot go where they go, does that mean it is fundamentally wrong-headed? ID can’t get very far at all into an understanding of God’s nature, or even the nature of nature itself. What it can do, though, is point to the absurdity of naturalism, and hint at the necessity for an intelligence behind nature. It can do it using language that modern Westerners generally understand. These are eminently worthwhile projects.

Perhaps I’ve utterly misunderstood the Thomists’ position. If so I’d be glad to be corrected. As I see it now, though, ID’s validity has nothing to do with Scholastic conceptions of causes, natures, being or any of the rest. There are valid reasons behind ID’s non-theological, non-Aristotelian assumptions. I find it hard to see why there is any debate at all.

*See here regarding the edits.

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While I was away on my blogging break, a simmering debate between Intelligent Design proponents and certain top-notch Catholic thinkers broke out into warm (I would not say heated) dispute. The Catholics’ Thomistic approach probably mirrors that of Holopupenko, a frequent commenter here who has often told us he considers ID poor theology. I’ve asked him to lay out his extended reasoning for this position, which he said he was working on. Little did we know an extended (very) discussion on this topic was about to surface on the Internet.

For someone who wants to catch up on this debate, the first step is to map it out. That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far.

If you decide not to read it all (understandable), at least see it for what it is: a lively, reasoned theological debate, and a living refutation of prejudicial anti-theistic claims that Christianity dogmatically rules out all doubt or dispute.

I’ve probably missed some posts in this list. I would welcome additions and corrections.

2009:

September 6, Edward Feser, Manzi on the Wright-Coyne dispute

September 24, Edward Feser, Teleology revisited

September 30: Edward Feser, Four approaches to teleology

November 4, Edward Feser, The trouble with William Paley

November 6, Edward Feser, The Greek atomists and the god of Paley

2010:

March 19, Francis Beckwith, Intelligent Design and Me, Part I: In the Beginning

March 20, Francis Beckwith, Intelligent Design and Me, Part II: Confessions of a Doting Thomist

March 23, Scot McKnight(?) What Role Naturalism? 2 – Insights from Thomas (RJS)

March 27, Thomas Cudworth, What Francis Beckwith Gets Wrong About Intelligent Design

March 28, nlwrad, Thomism and Intelligent Design

March 30, Brandon Watson, Thomism and ID

April 8, Edward Feser, “Nothing but”

April 10, Edward Feser, Intelligent Design theory and mechanism

April 11, V.J. Torley, A Response to Professor Feser

April 11, Francis Beckwith, Comment on A Response to Professor Feser

April 11, Brandon Watson Thomism and ID II

April 12, V.J. Torley, Comment to Edward Feser on A Response to Professor Feser

April 12, V.J. Torley, Comment to Brandon Watson on A Response to Professor Feser

April 16, Edward Feser, ID theory, Aquinas, and the origin of life: A reply to Torley

April 18, Thomas Cudworth, Professor Feser’s Puzzling Assault on ID

April 18, William Dembski, Does ID presuppose a mechanistic view of nature?

April 20, Edward Feser, Dembski rolls snake eyes

April 22, V.J. Torley, In Praise of Subtlety

April 25, Edward Feser, ID, A-T, and Duns Scotus: A further reply to Torley

April 26, Michael Sullivan, Is Intelligent Design Scotistic?

April 26, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts and Machines 1

April 27, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts and Machines 2

April 27, Michael Sullivan, “Intelligent Design” and Scotism

April 27, Edward Feser, Scotism and ID (UPDATED)

April 27, V.J. Torley, What a living thing is, what an artifact is, and why the first living thing would have been one (Part One of a Response to the Smithy)

April 28, Michael Sullivan, Nature, Artifacts, Meaning and Providence

April 28, V.J. Torley, Living things, Machines and Intelligent Design (Part Two of a Response to the Smithy)

April 30, Michael Sullivan, Reply to Dr. Torley

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Yesterday Tom Woodward sent me an encouraging email about this article, which I originally posted just over three years ago, and I’ve decided to re-post it today. What follows is the same material, with half a sentence added on Stephen Meyer’s recent work and some dead links removed.

Update 6:50 pm: when I first posted this earlier today, comments were turned off. That was an error that I have just now seen and have corrected.

_______________________

I had a powerful “aha moment” one night last week, in which I believe I actually felt the revulsion many ID opponents have toward Intelligent Design. I was reading Thomas Woodward’s Darwin Strikes Back. He’s certainly not to blame for any bad feelings I felt; I think it was instead a kind of gifting moment, through which I was able to take on the other side’s perspective and gain new insight.

I was reading this passage on the Cambrian Explosion, which was a period during which (according to the fossil record) many thousands of new species suddenly appeared in a short period of geological time, about 530 million years ago. Woodward writes,

The name ‘explosion’ is used widely in the literature of professional paleontology in describing this dramatic fossil debut…. where we find not just gaps between slightly different forms but fossil chasms between different phyla that abruptly appear in the rocks…. The Cambrian gaps are persisting [in spite of new fossil finds]; with a defiance and stubbornness that is now legendary. What’s worse, those chasms are not just enduring; they are steadily increasing in number through discoveries of new bizarre creatures… in recent decades.

ID theorists point to the Cambrian explosion as evidence that gradualistic evolution does not explain the fossil record. Now, this was not new information to me, but it somehow struck me this time just how this must appear to some people. Here we have something like 200,000 species among the fossils, most of which arrived suddenly 530 million years ago and are now gone. ID (usually) says that each one of them, or at least each group or “kind,” required a special intervention to appear as a new species. What kind of an intelligence would do that? Why would this intelligence build up to these new species with a series of simpler forms, most of which are also gone now? Why would this intelligence create a dinosaur world that’s now been wiped away? I believe I have a sense now (though I still don’t agree, as I’ll explain later) of what some people say when they consider this intelligence as some kind of fictional bumbler mucking about in the world, creating in fits and starts, not getting it right for the longest time. It’s so much more pleasing–especially to our Western consciousness–to think of things coming and going through time in a natural way.

What kind of intelligence would do that? Intelligent Design theorists say they are making an inference to the best explanation: that we can draw a valid analogy from our everyday experience, which shows us that information and design always originate from intelligence, to some kind of intelligence behind the natural order. But why stop there? I wonder if it’s really possible to do as ID theorists do, which is to start from the natural evidence, and reason from there to bare intelligence. I don’t think it’s entirely wrong–in fact, it’s correct in a very powerful way. I’ll come back to that in a moment. For now, though, I’m suggesting that we shouldn’t stop there. Why just just reason to intelligence? Ought we not at least also reason to mystery? For if there is something analogous to human intelligence there, there is also something about it that is very hard to understand. It’s a theory of Mysterious Intelligence.

Then, as we continue to puzzle over why this intelligence would develop all those thousands of creatures, there seems to be another important analogy we could safely draw. When we see new people building things being built for no apparent purpose, it’s usually the result of some creative impulse. Art doesn’t have to have a purpose, other than to delight the beholder. In the case of natural history, if the creative impulse is part of the explanation, it seems playful and wasteful at the same time, or profligate. This mysterious, creative intelligence has resources to spare, and no compunction about using them! It seems to be leading us to a richer theory than simple ID; it’s a theory of Mysterious, Profligately Creative Intelligence.

But not just that. This intelligence seems likely not to be part of the natural world, yet it intervenes here. The world of the Cambrian explosion was stepped into frequently from outside. It’s haunted by this other-worldly intelligence. Otherwise, how would these 200,000 or so new species have arisen? So we seem to be moving toward a theory of Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligence.

Finally, we might as well recognize that just about every ID theorist speaks of purpose, and great power is assumed; so we’re talking about a Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligence

This is anathema to modern man. A Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Intelligent Outsider does not belong in our mindset. No wonder ID draws so much fire! We’re all naturalists to some extent. Even we who believe in God are so highly influenced by the scientific mindset, it’s hard to shake free of it for even a moment! African or Pacific Island tribes they may see spirits in every tree and rock–we see atoms and molecules and energy, and we know how they interact. We know what’s really going on, and it’s not spooks!

This is the problem with Intelligent Design. The opponents of ID keep pushing ID proponents to name the intelligence we’re talking about. We’re shy to do that from the scientific perspective, but this Mysterious Creative Outsider haunts every mention of ID. If you’ve been watching carefully, of course, you’ve noticed that if there’s an objection to this kind of Intelligence, it’s mostly emotional or aesthetic: we dare not countenance such a possibility because it just doesn’t fit the way we have thought the world is and we don’t like it. There are rational arguments along those lines too, but they’re nothing new, nothing that ID hasn’t already dealt with from the philosophical side of its efforts. But this exposes more clearly what ID is about. It’s not about bare intelligence: it’s aboutPurposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligence. From my perspective as a Christian, it’s about God.

At this point I must change the subject slightly for a moment, for an aside that makes things better in some ways and worse in others. Phillip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies and History at Penn State. He says that the most under-reported, possibly the most significant social movement in the entire world in the 20th Century was the global rise of Christianity, especially south of the Equator, in Asia, and in Muslim countries. J.P. Moreland quotes credible research showing that in the last 30 years of the century, serious Christians increased worldwide by a factor of 10, and the number of Muslims coming to faith in Christ in the last few decades is greater than in all previous history combined. Much of this explosion is fueled by miracles: dreams, vision, healings and the like. These things are credibly reported in sources like the Washington Post and the Orange County Register [the links have expired since this was first posted].

It seems that the world is not so immune to intervention by an intelligent outsider as we have thought. Maybe we Westerners are wrong about some things. (And maybe, as Moreland says at the end of that talk, it’s happening more in our part of the world than we’ve recognized.)

But the scientist says, “If God is doing this all the time, how can there be any such thing as science? If God is always intervening–interfering–how can we count on any regularity anywhere? Yet, clearly we can! So this does not add up.” That question is actually not so hard. Part of God’s intention in doing these things is to communicate himself to people. If he were always interfering, such that there was no such thing as a reliable natural order, there could be no communication in it. It’s a signal-to-noise ratio thing. God’s communication has to be different from the regularities of the world if it’s to be actual communication; thus there must be regularities. Those regularities define the way we usually experience the world, and God’s interventions to change that order are rare exceptions.

Aspects of God’s character enter in here that I don’t know how to derive as an inference from nature. Biblical believers know him as good, trustworthy, and faithful. To the extent that ID is intimating a Powerful Outsider whose goodness and faithfulness unknown, I can see how that would be just opening a conceptual door to chaos.

That, as I said, was somewhat of an aside, for I started out talking about ID from an empirical perspective, and then I looked at divine intervention from a theological perspective. The two views unite in this: the whole idea is an affront to the mindset of a universally predictable, controllable, regular, universal, natural reality. It’s a terrible assault on philosophical naturalism (PN, the idea that there is no reality except matter and energy and law and chance). That’s the emotional impact. The emotional effect of this does not mean it’s not true.

Lurking behind ID is what I would call PPMPCHIOID: Purposeful, Powerful, Mysterious, Profligately Creative, Highly Involved Outsider Intelligent Design. Opponents accuse ID of being disingenuous when it says it makes no claims, other than intelligence, regarding the identity of the designer it seeks. But don’t we all have PPMPCHIOID–or God–in mind? Isn’t ID being dishonest when it denies this?

I don’t think so. In fact, this apparent weakness of ID is also its strength. It offers so little about the Designer it seeks; but it does not try to offer more than its tools allow. To look for Design, signifying purposeful intelligence, is something we can do from within the empirical sciences. To look for the rest of it is beyond the reach of science.

You see, we have conceptual tools for identifying purposeful design in nature. Yes, I know this is the very point that’s most in controversy. There seems to be at least one such tool that is to be universally accepted, though: Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity (IC). Many scientists have taken Behe to task over this, but in very specific ways. They have said that his examples of IC are not really irreducible, or they have doubted that instances of IC in nature can really be proven. They have not (to my knowledge) ever credibly denied that IC–if reliably identified–signals the action of intelligence. So we have at least that one conceptual tool, going back all the way to Darwin himself. I believe William Dembski’s complex specified information (CSI) is also a strong indicator of intelligence, as is the origin of biological information, as discussed by Stephen Meyer in Signature in the Cell.

We don’t have empirically-based tools in biology* for identifying and discriminating other features of the designer, like Profligate Creativity, or even being Outside the natural order. At least, we can’t identify those things directly. If intelligence is identified, the philosophers can go to work and discuss whether what I have written here is true, that other characteristics inexorably accompany a finding of intelligence. So when an empirical research program says it’s only trying to identify intelligence, it is being both careful and honest. (It is not thereby trying to sneak God into the public schools.) It is trying to do just what it can conceivably do through its tools.

What’s both wrong and right about ID, then, is its bare minimalist claim of looking for purposeful intelligence in a designer of life. It is right in looking only for what it has the conceptual tools to potentially find. That there may be a PPMPCHIOID–an active creator God–lurking there raises all kinds of emotional reactions, which I think I understand better now. It’s hard to like ID if you don’t like the idea of a God being involved in the natural order.

And it’s really hard to like ID if you see it as a way to sneak God back into American public education. That’s the other rampant conspiracy theory surrounding ID. Plain statements of facts from ID leaders don’t seem to have lessened fears of this. To repeat those plain statements: as a scientific research program, ID is a minimalist theory, seeking only to identify instances of purposeful design in nature. Its educational agenda is even more minimalist: ID leaders aren’t trying to get ID taught in the public schools. (It’s been said a thousand times.) We’re only asking for a more complete accounting of evolution to be presented, including empirical challenges facing it. That’s all. How evil is that?

Well, for those who are guided by an emotional response guiding them. It’s also convenient: opponents routinely distort ID into something other than what it is; saying it’s a religious and political campaign. It’s a rhetorical hurdle that ID has to repeatedly clear on its path to doing actual science. But rather than focusing there, I want to give proper credence to the emotional and aesthetic challenge ID presents to people of a naturalistic mindset. As I said, I’ve had a taste of that feeling, and it’s powerful. It doesn’t determine the truth of ID, but we have to recognize it as a significant and real part of this controversy’s landscape, and treat it with respect.

*William Lane Craig and others argue to other personal characteristics of the Creator in their versions of the cosmological argument for God. I think they are right to do so. That situation is entirely different, however, from the biological one, and the same arguments do not necessarily transfer over into biology.

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The end of Intelligent Design is not where Stephen Barr thinks it is. Though I hesitate to contest anything written in First Things, a journal I hold in highest esteem, it seems to me Barr has missed several crucial distinctions in his recent article there pronouncing ID’s end.

The thrust of his piece is theological, and I must begin by recognizing he makes some excellent points. This, for example, is certainly true:

The older … form of the design argument for the existence of God—one found implicitly in Scripture and in many early Christian writings—did not point to the naturally inexplicable or to effects outside the course of nature, but to nature itself and its ordinary operations—operations whose “power and working” were seen as reflecting the power and wisdom of God.

Nature as a whole tells of God’s glory and his work as omnipotent, creative designer. Barr adds later,

The emphasis in early Christian writings was not on complexity, irreducible or otherwise, but on the beauty, order, lawfulness, and harmony found in the world that God had made. As science advances, it brings this beautiful order ever more clearly into view…. As Calvin wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “God [has] manifested himself in the formation of every part of the world, and daily presents himself to public view, in such manner, that they cannot open their eyes without being constrained to behold him.”

This is historic natural theology, and it is biblical (Psalm 19:1-6). From a Christian perspective, it would be a significant loss if ID were to obscure this. Thankfully, ID proponents have written books that keep it in view, like Wiker and Witt’s A Meaningful World: How the Arts And Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature.

This is undoubtedly safe to say, too, since “some religious people” could be few or many:

I suspect that some religious people have embraced the ID movement’s arguments because they want “scientific” answers to the scientific atheists, and they know of no others.

People do want answers, and don’t always know where to look for them. Hence the need for better Christian thinking and for apologetics in general. It certainly doesn’t take Intelligent Design to refute the New Atheists—there are far easier ways to accomplish that—except where they specifically argue that science has disproved God’s having acted within nature. For that, ID’s arguments are relevant. Barr sees it differently, though:

The ID claim is that certain biological phenomena lie outside the ordinary course of nature. Aside from the fact that such a claim is, in practice, impossible to substantiate, it has the effect of pitting natural theology against science by asserting an incompetence of science.

How serious a problem is this assertion of incompetence? Barr acknowledges that science isn’t qualified to speak in all spheres of knowledge. That’s good. As a Catholic, he would probably also agree that there have been historical phenomena outside the ordinary course of nature: the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for one. He ought to be comfortable with the idea that God works in ways not explainable through science; not always, not even often, but occasionally. Still, he sees a problem related to this:

The ID arguments effectively declare natural science incompetent even in what most would regard as its own proper sphere.

What sphere is does he think that is? He doesn’t say directly, but we can infer it from this:

Whereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed. In the famous “explanatory filter” of William A. Dembski, one finds “design” by eliminating “law” and “chance” as explanations. This, in effect, makes it a zero-sum game between God and nature. What nature does and science can explain is crossed off the list, and what remains is the evidence for God. This conception of design plays right into the hands of atheists, whose caricature of religion has always been that it is a substitute for the scientific understanding of nature.

The sphere to which Barr refers seems to be that in which law and chance explain everything. That is indeed science’s proper domain, within which science is and ought to be regarded as the most competent mode of inquiry. That sphere is not all-encompassing, though. It is here that Barr’s argument begins to fall apart, and I wonder if it’s because he has bought into the anti-ID caricatures of Intelligent Design. There is no zero-sum game.

To see why, first note the illegitimate shift in terminology: he was talking about science vs. ID; then he shifted to God vs. nature, as if there were equivalence between the two expressions. But if ID defeats “science” (forget for now the tendentious exclusion of ID from science), does that mean nature has lost to God? Only a confirmed philosophical naturalist could think so.

Then what if “science” defeats ID? Barr has told us himself that historic, biblical natural theology is not part of the game at all, but he doesn’t seem to have caught what that means here. If there are positive signs of God’s reality in the whole of nature, then they stand as such regardless of what ID shows or fails to show. Intelligent Design could never subtract from those positive signs; not even if every argument of Behe’s, Meyer’s, and Dembski’s should fail, and if the Discovery Institute should fold and donate all its assets to the BioLogos Foundation. To the extent ID succeeds, however, it increases confidence in our inferences of design in nature. ID can only add to the truth given us though the historic natural theology that Barr holds to. It cannot take away from that truth. If there is a zero-sum situation in anyone’s mind, it is only among the philosophically or apologetically naive. Should that naivete be addressed? Certainly—by explaining ID’s contribution accurately. Not by eliminating it.

There’s an excellent example of the natural theology’s resilience in David Heddle’s take on the fine-tuning argument. Suppose physicists find some over-arching law that explains our the universe is so perfectly fitted for complexity and life. Fine! (Pun intended). Robin Collins has argued that even the atheists’ favorite resort to escape design in cosmology, the multiverse, must be fine-tuned if it exists. If ID’s assumptions about the small things proves wrong, that need do no damage to inferences regarding the whole.

Barr quotes Calvin again, and responds,

And, “[W]ithersoever you turn your eyes, there is not an atom of the world in which you cannot behold some brilliant sparks at least of his glory. . . . You cannot at one view take a survey of this most ample and beautiful machine [the universe] in all its vast extent, without being completely overwhelmed with its infinite splendor” [emphasis Barr's]. Note that “atoms of the world” are not irreducibly complex, nor is “every part of the world.” Irreducible complexity has never been the central principle of traditional natural theology.

It’s risky at best to conclude anything from John Calvin’s silence on irreducible complexity. He was also silent on in vitro fertilization. Would Barr say Catholics today should be, too? Calvin was also silent on the information content of DNA, a central aspect of ID that Barr somehow seems not to recognize anywhere in this article. I think if Calvin had known of the fine machinery in the cell, he would have said of it, too, “You cannot at one view take a survey of this most ample and beautiful machine in all its extent, without being completely overwhelmed with its infinite splendor.” Calvin saw God’s handiwork in what he could see, not in what he could not see. Now we can see on much smaller and larger scales than Calvin could. How does it violate historical natural theology to recognize God’s handiwork in what we see today?

Barr has still more to disagree with in ID. I quoted this previously, but there’s more to be said:

But whereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed. In the famous “explanatory filter” of William A. Dembski, one finds “design” by eliminating “law” and “chance” as explanations.

“Science must fail for ID to succeed?” Nonsense, I say (with all due respect). Dembski’s filter, if it works, eliminates law and chance as explanations, but it certainly does not eliminate science as a means of investigating nature. Suppose science discovers a boundary beyond which law and chance cannot suffice as explanations. Is that a failure for science? Only if science defines its success as explaining everything in terms of law and chance.

Let us instead consider science’s success as explaining in terms of law and chance that which can accurately be explained in terms law and chance. It succeeds if it discovers all that it can discover, and doesn’t mislead us into thinking it can do more than that. Doesn’t that seem reasonable? If science explained x in terms of law and chance, when x could not accurately be explained that way, that would be a failure, not a success; for it would be false.

Then if science discovers a boundary beyond which law and chance are insufficient explanations, how is that a failure for science? If such a boundary exists in reality, and if science can find and identify it, that’s success for science. I’m sure broader philosophical disciplines would also have to take part in such a discovery. Regardless, what an important discovery about nature that would be! What a win for science!

If, on the other hand, the success of science were to hang on its explaining everything by law and chance, that sort of success could come only if philosophical naturalism were true and theism were false. Is that what Barr is pulling for? I don’t think so. So his perspective here is confusing.

I wonder whether this is the real nub of it for Barr:

The ID movement has also rubbed a very raw wound in the relation between science and religion. For decades scientists have had to fend off the attempts by Young Earth creationists to promote their ideas as a valid alternative science. The scientific world’s exasperation with creationists is understandable.

Of course. There is a relational issue here, or one might call it a political problem. There’s a black sheep, creationism, in the fold. And the white sheep, mainstream scientists, say that ID reminds them of the black sheep, or that ID and creationism are boh the same black sheep. ID and Young Earth creationism do have some things in common: most broadly, a rejection of philosophical naturalism; and strong doubts that unguided processes could have produced our cosmos, the first life and everything since. So there is some relational indelicacy here, some embarrassment. Perhaps the only seemly thing to do is for ID to back away with apologies, let philosophical naturalism have the stage, and just quit worrying its little head about whether unguided processes could have gotten us where we are. Mainstream science must be right; but even if it isn’t, still we must pay it full respect. Otherwise we’ll lose friends:

Religion has a significant number of friends (and potential friends) in the scientific world. The ID movement is not creating new ones.

That’s how Barr closes his article. It’s a disappointing thing to hear from a fellow believer in Christ. Making friends was one of Jesus’ goals (John 15:12-15), but never at the expense of truth. He was willing to make enemies for the sake of truth — see for example the epic conflict in John 8:31-47. He made truth one of the central issues of his own trial (John 18:37-38); it was one of the things that got him killed.

If Barr’s other objections to ID had carried more weight, then I would be much more sympathetic to this one. There’s no point in making enemies in pursuit of some completely untenable goal. Barr has tried to persuade us on theological grounds that ID is one of those untenable goals. It doesn’t seem to me that he has succeeded.

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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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