Intelligent Design- an evolution vs fundie problem- not a Catholic problem

[papau]

Intelligent Design is a natural common feeling that is usually part of the discussion of God - as in God the creator, I do not understand it's use in a discussion of evolution. I do not believe the Catholic Church takes any position on the usefulness to science of "evolution"

It appears to be a war between the fundies and the no-God crowd - and not central to our faith.

There are at least 2000 and perhaps more years of "God the Creator because I see intelligent design" thought from very learned folks. I am always amazed by those no-God types that I consider intelligent who reject what I consider obvious, and fall back on the no path to anywhere logic of "it is because it is" - occassionaly re-package as the Anthropomorphic Principle -

Why do folks fear others seeing the existence of a teleological universe - a universe made with a purpose? It does not affect the science that they do.

Now I grant you that both sides - fundie and no-god - have tried to use the fact that the fundamental constants of the universe are within the narrow limits that allow life - one side saying we exist to observe this fact simply because if those constant were different, we would not exist - - - - while the other side says those constants are our constants because our universe was set up specifically for the purpose of our life.

And as with all matters of faith, there is no bridging the logic gap between the two camps. The No God camp says that thermodynamics explains how ordered structures will form spontaneously if the ordered structure has lower energy than the unstructured alternatives, and the faith camp says that is a law that is true in this universe that was given to us - God as law giver - or if you like - as the designer of the rules of the game.

The response is by the No God folks is that God could have done a better design if he was trying to favor humans - LOL - - followed by the power of infinity to overcome many arguments - as in infinite budding universes, or infinite contraction/expansion big bangs that eventually get around to the set of constants that permit life - and if that fails to convince, the no-God folks fall back on "faith" - LOL - and say there are laws yet to be discovered that will explain all - and most certainly they will explain all without reference to a God.

So do you - the no-god folks - feel you have an adequate explanation of the universe - with laws to be discovered to fill in the obvious gaps, and therefore you feel there is no "need" for God, - so there is no God?

Since science can not provide a proof of a universal purpose or the creator of such a purpose (or disprove such), the rules of science would seem to permit folks of faith to be scientists

But I come back to where I started - I do not understand ID's use in proving - or disproving - the usefulness of evolution.

What am I missing?

[Princess Turandot]

1. There's an op-ed piece in today's NY Times which might interest..

you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/07behe.html

ID, which is not a new theory, did not originate as a religious notion. I think its primary difference with Darwin's laws are relate to how things evolved, not evolution itself: it takes issue with the (perceived) trial and error system of natural selection more than anything else. Since it suggests that elements of life were likely 'designed' by someone/something as process of 'how things evolved', it's been latched onto by religious groups lately, since it sounds a bit more rational than talking abt how the dinos were in the Garden of Eden but that they all went down in the Great Flood. I think they are using it as a ploy to show another 'reasonable' theory of the origin of life, which in their minds automatically 'downgrades' the evolution to being another 'theory' as opposed to a widely accepted scientific principle. Thus, they think it will help 'disprove' that evolution is a fact and will thus open the door to the teaching of other 'theories' such as creationism.

FYI, JP II has effectively said that he has no issue with the notion that humans got here through evolution and natural selection. His objections would only be to suggestions that it was not a process began by God, or that human beings were not endowed with immortal souls at some point in the process. I don't think the Church views the mechanical details of the development of life as a religious issue, beyond those 2 points. They probably still keep in mind that Galileo turned out to be right in the end!

[Stunster]

2. ID, DE, and AI

ID = Intelligent Design
DE = Darwinian Evolution
AI = Artificial Intelligence

Let's start with this question: In general, what would count as evidence of something being intelligently designed?

As regards living species, DE theorists say the data has not been provided by ID theorists, and can all be explained by mechanisms other than intelligent design. But what about the logically prior question: "What sort of data would it have to be?"

It is not an essential part of the ID thesis that there was no evolution, or common descent. Let me quote a leading ID theorist, Dembski, on this point:

"Nor can design theory strictly speaking be said to be anti-evolutionist. This may sound surprising, especially since design theorists tend to dislike the term "evolution," viewing it as a weasel word that serves more to obfuscate than clarify. The reason design theorists dislike the word is not because they repudiate every possible construal of it, but because they regard it as a Protean term which, much like the process it describes, adapts itself too readily to any situation. Although design theorists regard the word "evolution" as assuming too many distinct meanings that are too easily confused, the notion that organisms have changed over time hardly upsets them. Design theory places no limits on the amount of evolutionary change that organisms might have experienced in the course of natural history. Consistent with classical views of creation, design allows for the abrupt emergence of new forms of life. At the same time design is also consistent with the gradual formation of new forms of life from old.
The design theorists' beef is not with evolutionary change per se, but with the claim by Darwinists that all such change is driven by purely naturalistic processes which are devoid of purpose."
http://www.origins.org/articles/dembski_theologn.html

Ruined castles are not living organisms, and sand and pebbles are not watches. But, what is interesting is that as science unfolds, it finds that living organisms are in a way even more complex and ordered than ruined castles, and that the physical laws necessary for there to be such things as sand and pebbles display a profound, mathematically intelligible order. And at this point we do indeed ask the question, why did we notice the castle and the watch, when everything else is just as, if not more, ordered-looking when we investigate it more thoroughly?

There is a clear link between the order observed in one pair of cases (ruined castles, watches) and intelligent agency---So why, therefore, are we not connecting the dots in an analogous way in the other?

Obviously, we do not literally observe the intelligent agency that ID posits as having created living organisms, or the universe as a whole. But we do not literally observe the intelligent agency that was behind the construction of the pyramids either, and yet we infer that there must have been some.

And let me say something even more to the point: we do not literally observe the intelligent agency that we infer is responsible for making watches, even if we are standing at the shoulder of a master craftsman as he goes about making watches. What we literally see when we're standing at the craftsman's shoulder is a complex series of material, bodily movements---hands moving, picking up things, using things they have picked up to put other things together, etc, producing in the end a watch. Is this any more 'artificial' or 'complex' (other than as a matter of degree) than what we observe when we watch DNA at work, producing and reproducing cells? Oh, and if we opened up the craftsman's skull and looked at his brain, we'd see.... more of the same---complex, material, functional, bodily movements. In other words, we never literally observe 'intelligent agency' except as an inference from complex bodily movements, even in cases where we're watching a human being building a castle or making a watch! Nor do we physically observe our own minds. We are consciously aware of them, however. (I suggest that God is like our own and other people's minds in this respect--God is known by inference, and sometimes by more direct conscious awareness.)

The whole Artificial Intelligence movement raises interesting questions in this regard. By asking the question, "What degree of complexity in material movement or functional performance requires us to posit intelligence?", the AI idea forces us to consider this as a scientific issue. Well, if the AI folks are right, then there is some finite degree of that kind of thing which does require us to posit intelligence, and they're making this claim as a purportedly scientific statement. Yet oddly, they are not targetted for the same degree of hostility as ID theorists are. I say 'oddly', because ID can be construed as doing the same general sort of thing as AI is doing. It can be construed as asking, "What degree of complexity in material movement or functional performance requires us to posit an intelligent designer?"

In other words, both AI and ID are in the business, or trying to be in the business, of investigating what thresholds exist for there to be a reasonable scientific inference from observed complexity and material order to conscious intelligence and to design. One is celebrated as cutting edge science (AI), the other is denounced as a load of anti-scientific gibberish (ID).

But if you think about it hard and deeply enough, I suspect you'll see that they are both formulating a type of question that science ought to be able to address, and possibly answer. If science cannot say anything about intelligence, or design, then it would appear that science is not even in principle a complete account of reality. But if it can make correct statements of the form, "such-and-such = evidence of intelligence", and "such-and-such = evidence of design", then it seems to me that ID should be given a hearing within the scientific community, at least in principle.

If the question, "Does anything observable ever count as evidence of intelligence or intelligent design, and if so, what exactly?" is in general a respectable scientific question (which I believe it is), then all the ID theorists are doing in principle is asking, "Does anything observable in the world of biology ever count as evidence of intelligent design, and if so, what exactly?" If the first and general question is legitimate, then so is the second, specific one. And what worries me is that DE might be trying to answer the second one negatively, not on scientific grounds, but on a priori philosophical grounds, by simply ruling out of court in advance the possibility that anything found in biology will suggest a threshold for positing a designing intelligence.

Go back to the AI comparison. Suppose someone designs an intelligent computer or robot. Then we all blow ourselves up in a nuclear war, or die out through global warming. But these robots survive, and are so intelligent that they can make other robots. Etc. Now, along come humanoid-type aliens, and they see the robots all over the planet Earth, engaged in complex material movements and functional behavior. Would the aliens be unscientific in positing that these robots as a species originated through the action of some intelligent designer(s)?

I think it's that kind of issue that ID essentially addresses.

Moreover, it's a mistake to think that ID is illegitimate in that it attempts to come "to the conclusion before the facts, and then tries to bend the facts to fit its own preconceived notion." Exactly the same charge could be made against DE---its conclusion is that there is nothing in the biological data that involves intelligent design, and then it fits every bit of data into the mould of purely natural mechanisms, in particular genetic variation plus natural selection. No matter how complex or functional are the observed data (and don't forget the data include us), DE says that it must be the case that only natural mechanisms produced the data.

To me, it looks like Darwinians are trying to close off these questions by fiat deriving from a naturalistic worldview. But it strikes me that if science is supposed to be about everything there is, then it ought to be about intelligence, and about design, among many other things. We think we know that there is intelligence, and we think we know that there is design. What makes us think this in general? And could whatever makes us think this in general be applicable to an understanding of the biological world? I don't see what is unscientific about that in principle. Nor do I see any questions being begged.

Rather than ID coming to the conclusion before the facts, it strikes me that it is DE that's determined to come to the conclusion before the facts, namely the conclusion that "No, there's no intelligent design involved--none whatsoever, no way, no how." By contrast, ID is construable as asking---"What would be scientific evidence of intelligent design in general? And do we find any such evidence in the biological world?"; which is not the closing-off of anything at all. The answer could be yes, or it could be no. With DE, the only permissible answer is no.

A lot of DE runs along the lines of, "Assume only genetic variation and natural selection....we don't know *exactly* how this would have produced all the data.....but it could have and it might well have... we're just not sure of all the details". In other words, it says that all living species could have been produced solely by Darwinian mechanisms. It doesn't show that all species actually were in fact produced in that manner--that is, that they were not in fact intelligently designed in any fashion.

Let's go back a bit, though, and just ask a general scientific question again. What is the correct science of design? We know that welcome signs and cars and watches and watchmaking factories are intelligently designed. What is the scientific basis of this knowledge? Well, one might say we simply observe intelligent designers designing these things. But how do we know that what we are observing is an instance of intelligence design? When we look at a watchmaker at work, for instance, what do we literally see? We see a body in complex forms of motion. Similarly when we see an architect designing a skyscraper. We don't literally 'see' the watchmaker's or the architect's intelligent consciousness. And when we see subhuman species, that's also all that we see---bodies in complex forms of motion. We very naturally infer that the watchmaker's and architect's bodily motions and actions and the watches and skyscrapers they design are determined by the activity of conscious intelligence. But what properties precisely do complex bodily motions, actions, and products have to possess in general in order to license an inference to the existence of an intelligent consciousness?

Artificial Intelligence is a young science that suggests we could design an intelligent and, in some versions of AI, conscious physical structure. This idea in turn suggests that there must be some scientific way of deciding whether some physical structure is a) living (since I take it that if something is intelligent and conscious, it is living); and b) artificially and intelligently designed and produced. If that idea is on the right lines, then there must be some scientific answer to this question. Let's say there is such an answer. Ok, says the ID theorist, let's take that answer and apply it to the realm of pre-human biological history to see what it might yield. I don't see anything unscientific about such a project in principle.

How would we know the difference between something "designed" by a complex interaction of natural processes, and something that is the product of an intelligent designer? Is design by humans simply a complex version of purposeless natural processes? Is there, ultimately, a difference between a skyscraper and a bacterium? Is there a possible science that would give us the answers to these questions? And if so, can this science be applied to the task of detecting the presence of design in biological history? Again, I see nothing wrong or unscientific with such questions in principle.

Are human designs different in kind from the 'designs' produced by ocean waves lapping at a beach? Is there any scientific basis for any distinction between the two?

These are all, I think, very good questions. Notice that if science is capable in principle of answering all meaningful questions about reality, and if these are meaningful questions (which I believe quite firmly they are), then science ought to be capable of answering them in principle.

ID theory can be construed very simply as asking, "What is the correct science of intelligent design?" After all, we know, or think we know, that there is such a thing as intelligent design in reality (welcome signs, cars, watches, skyscrapers, AI robots, etc). If this is true, then there ought to be some scientific way of differentiating instances of intelligent design from instances which are not those of intelligent design. What are the differentiating criteria? We don't know yet, is how I would answer. But there might well be some such criteria which a science of intelligent design could discover. If there are, and we discover what they are, then we could look at the data of biology to see if these criteria are instantiated in those data.

As regards the nature and origin of an intelligent designer, that's a whole different question. But there is a good argument for thinking that order must be primitive at some level, and that it cannot all be produced merely by natural selection. Here is the relevant argument in a nutshell:

1. For natural selection to work at all, it must work upon some domain.

2. To identify any domain whatsoever in the first place, science must find order of some kind pertaining to that domain.

3. Hence, every domain upon which natural selection is to operate must already be ordered in some way.

4. Hence, natural selection cannot be the sole explanation of order in nature, unless one posits an infinite unobservable or an infinity of unobservables, which defeats the purpose of relying on natural selection in the first place, which was to explain phenomena without positing anything infinite and/or unobservable.

I.e. Some order, at some level of scientific analysis, must be primitive. It can't all be generated by natural selection. Or else, one must posit an infinity of some kind, which by definition must be scientifically unobservable by finite scientists.

But returning to the more specific idea of natural selection with respect to living species... Suppose we found that when magnified sufficiently, the subatomic particles making up living organisms repeated a pattern which we could read as saying "Hi there. My name is God---yeah, that's right, Yahweh/Adonai/Father of my only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. I intelligently designed this and all other living species". What would we have to say, as a matter of scientific conclusion from this data? That it was a coincidence? Hmmmm. If that's what would or should be said, how would Darwinian naturalism be a falsifiable theory? And if it's not falsifiable by any empirical finding, how can Darwinian evolution be considered genuinely scientific?

ID, it seems to me, is not in the same boat, for the following reason. ID suggests that there must be scientific criteria for positing design. Once these are established (and I admit that they are not well established scientifically as yet), then the ID theorist would investigate the biological data with these criteria in mind. Let's suppose nothing in the data fulfilled the criteria of design. Well, that would tend to falsify the ID hypothesis. But I can see no DE theorist agreeing to anything counting as evidence of design. They say, it looks designed perhaps, but it's not really. We can get any appearance of design whatsoever just from genetic variation and natural selection. But how on earth does one falsify such a claim, even in principle? The only way to verify or falsify the presence of design is to have some scientifically fixed criteria of design, and then see if the data being investigated conform to those criteria or not.

Would readable subatomic messages apparently from Yahweh count? Of course, no such discovery of messages from Yahweh seems even remotely likely. But still, the thought-experiment raises a crucial issue, which is not unknown in science already, as any Egyptologist would tell you.

DE claims that no intelligent design was involved in the emergence of living species, and that it all happened solely via random genetic mutation, natural selection and genetic drift, without any conscious purpose being a causal factor. Or at least, isn't that the basic idea--the claim that no conscious design was involved---which people understood Darwin to be implying, and hence made Darwin and Darwinism so controversial?

Well, if that is a genuinely scientific claim, as against a philosophical one, then it ought to be empirically falsifiable and so Darwinian scientists ought to tell us what kind of evidence would tend to falsify it--preferably in advance of any such evidence being found. If it is the case that what appeared to be subatomic written messages from Yahweh could always be arguably explained by a natural selection mechanism, then how could Darwinian naturalism ever be falsified--and if it can't be, then how does it count as a genuinely scientific theory? The worry is that the 'no intelligent design was involved" claim is being made on a priori grounds, not as the result of a prior, well-defined criterion of design being found not to be instantiated in the empirical data.

As standardly taught, Darwinian evolution says "no intelligent design--it all happened without that." Ok, well what would tend to falsify that claim? Well, evidence of intelligent design, of course!
But then it's absolutely crucial that we have a clear idea of what such evidence would look like, were it ever to be discovered. Without that clear idea, then it strikes me that Darwinian evolution is just as incomplete and philosophically biased as ID is accused of being--unless it actually shows that all living organisms not only could have, but really did come to be without any intelligent design involved. But I really don't see how it has shown that. (Nor am I sure how it could show that, given the lack of a of intelligence and design.) In which case, it's not much more than a working hypothesis.

Some will retort, "NO! It's not just a working hypothesis. It's a fact!" What they usually mean is that evolution of some kind is a fact. But one can accept this fact without accepting that it's a FACT that all evolution occurred without the involvement of any intelligent design whatsoever, and *solely* on the basis of purposeless genetic variation and purposeless natural selection. I.e. evolution may well be a fact, but the nonexistence of any intelligent design doesn't strike me as being a fact at all, let alone a scientifically established fact, because we don't as yet seem to have any mature science enabling us to distinguish between structures that are intelligently designed and structures that aren't.

If the question, "Does anything observable in general ever count as evidence of intelligent design, and if so, what exactly?" is in general a respectable scientific question (which I believe it is), then all the ID theorists are doing in principle is asking, "Does anything observable in the world of biology ever count as evidence of intelligent design, and if so, what exactly?" If the first and general question can be answered in the affirmative with respect to watches and skyscrpers, then there must be some scientific criterion for counting as being intelligently designed. Hence, why not apply that criterion to the second, specific question about living species?

[Maeve]

3. Greeley's column this week on the subject

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel11.html