Thoughts in a Haystack

Casey Luskin's lips are moving again.

This time he is claiming that Intelligent Design Creationism is not merely a negative argument and accusing Ken Miller of "misrepresenting" (i.e. lying about) its nature. I'll summarize his "positive" arguments (with the sources he gives: Michael Behe, Scott Minnich and Stephen Meyer:

"[W]e recognize design by the purposeful arrangement of parts" and "parts appear arranged to serve a purpose" (Behe); "irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role ... we regard it as an inference to the best explanation, given what we know about the powers of intelligent (sic) as opposed to strictly natural or material causes" (Minnich and Meyer); and "experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source from a mind or personal agent" (Meyer). (Emphasis added)

In addition, Luskin assets: "ID proponents have made it clear that ID appeals to an intelligent cause, and necessarily not to a supernatural one."

Let's take a closer look at these. What is a "purposeful" arrangement of parts? What about the arrangements of the parts of a water molecule? Water is a highly unique "system" in our world with a number of properties that are not found in most substances. It exists in three different states (gaseous, liquid and solid) within a very narrow range of temperatures; it expands when both heated and cooled; it is a near universal solvent; and it is absolutely necessary for all living things. Moreover, it is irreducibly complex. Remove any part of the molecule and it is no longer water and does not serve the "purpose" of sustaining life. But does observational experience demonstrate that intelligent design or engineering invariably plays a role in water formation? Thus, we have a ubiquitous example of an irreducibly complex part of our world that needs no intelligent design or engineering to explain it (unless, of course, everything must be explained by design, in which case design is no "explanation" at all).

Furthermore, all these arguments boil down to an argument from analogy: we see things we know are designed have some traits, therefore everything with similar traits must be designed. As we have already seen, the analogy breaks down because it depends on a subjective determination of "purpose." Furthermore, it is nothing but warmed-over William Paley, who was refuted before he even wrote his more honestly entitled book, Natural Theology, because the analogy of living things to human designs is not nearly close enough to be persuasive. Even as we start to "engineer" life, it will be based on our learning about what life already was, which has never resembled what we have engineered before.

As to the claim that ID is not appealing necessarily to a supernatural agent, not only is Wilkins' epistemological hat in serious danger, but if there is a potentially natural "Designer," why does Casey (and Of Pandas and People before him) then assert that the nature and abilities of the intelligent agent is unanswerable by science must be left to religion and philosophy?

That last part is the final nail in the coffin of ID as science. Even when science does make an inference to the best explanation (which has its own philosophical problems), the last thing science does is then throw up its hands and say that's all we can do. When Darwin made an inference to the best explanation he fully expected the scientific community to go on testing it relentlessly, as he himself kept doing. (Allen MacNeill has a nice example of this in the way we have gone on testing the hypothesis that whales evolved from Artiodactyls, with no end of testing in sight.)

The fact that ID advocates try to protect their "inference" from further testing is more than enough reason to say that it is not science. That's why they have to try to change the definition of science in support of a "broadly theistic understanding of nature." The failure of its "positive" evidence to bear the scientific weight of the claims made for it renders the whole of ID nothing more than an attempt to use empiric facts about the world (such as the complexity of the blood clotting cascade) as a negative argument against evolution.

All the smoke and mirrors in the world cannot hide that fact.
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