Thoughts in a Haystack

A thought:

A thought:

... Dembski's ["explanatory filter"] works like this: If you cannot think of a way for natural regularities and/or chance to explain something, then say that a "designer" did it. Dembski's "design inference" is nothing more than a formalization of a simple god-of-the-gaps argument. It is the standard argument from ignorance put in the form of a flow chart.

In the past, Dembski has tried to deny the charge that his is an argument from ignorance (e.g., Dembski [Intelligent design: The bridge between science and theology], 1999, p. 276) but in a recent statement in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he admits but tries to excuse this approach, saying, "An argument from ignorance is still better than a pipe dream in which you're deluding yourself. I'm at least admitting to ignorance as opposed to pretending that you've solved the problem when you haven't" (Monastersky, ["Seeking deity in the details. Chronicle of Higher Education. 48 (17)] 2001) .

However, design theorists do not just "admit to ignorance" but rather claim to find a transcendent designer in the purported gaps in our knowledge. When arguing against evolution, Dembski and other anti-evolutionists are fond of quoting the old saw that nothing can come from nothing. However, in this basic, recurring argument, they ignore their own rule and make an exception for design, which they leave unexplained. Given the religious assumptions that underlie the ID movement's hope for a "theistic science," it is not surprising that we find at its core this epistemic counterpart of creation ex nihilo.

- Robert T. Pennock, "God of the Gaps: The Argument From Ignorance and the Limits of Methodological Naturalism," Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond

There was a fine example on February 13, 2008 of the fact that the Discovery Institute was, for once, being completely truthful when it said of its "blog," Evolution News & Views:

The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site.

The piece, entitled "What They Didn't Tell You about the National Academy of Sciences," by Cornelius Hunter, does its very best to confuse several different concepts and, in the process, to confuse those all too willing to accept confusion if it will conform to their religious beliefs. The topics Mr. Hunter wants to jumble include philosophical naturalism, the methodological naturalism of science and the tentativeness of science (as opposed to the dogmatism of religion). Mr. Hunter's complaint is with the supposedly "dogmatic naturalism" of "evolutionists," as exemplified by the National Academy of Sciences' recently revised booklet, Science, Evolution, and Creationism.

Evolutionists have always been dogmatic about naturalism. They believe that science must, in principle, be absolutely constrained to naturalistic explanations. This is a philosophical position — there is no scientific evidence that could make evolutionists think twice.

Like the creationist who mandates a particular interpretation of the scientific evidence (according to scripture), the evolutionist also mandates a particular interpretation of the scientific evidence (according to naturalism). All explanations must be thoroughly and completely naturalistic, no matter how contorted those explanations become.

It is, indeed, part of the philosophy of science that only natural causal processes can serve as scientific explanations. However, as Eugenie Scott points out, in the selection I quoted yesterday from her article, "Creation Science Lite: 'Intelligent Design' as the New Anti-Evolutionism," in Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond, this insistence on natural explanations is a methodological one, applied only within the scientific enterprise, not a commitment to philosophical materialism, "the belief that matter, energy, and their interactions comprise the universe; no gods or supernatural powers exist." Of course, not a few scientists are also philosophical materialists and claim support for their philosophy from science. But it is equally true that many fine scientists, including biologists such as Ken Miller, Francis Collins, R.A. Fisher and Theodosius Dobzhansky, have been and are devout theists.

Mr. Hunter asks "how did life evolve?" and then presents chopped up phrases from the NAS booklet exhibiting the tentative state of research into the chemical origin of life (or "abiogenesis"). He then leaps precipitously to the conclusion "this hardly constitutes 'compelling' evidence for the 'fact' of evolution." But Mr. Hunter manages to jump over this part of the statement:

But the principles underlying life's chemical origins, as well as plausible chemical details of the process, are subject to scientific investigation in the same ways that all other natural phenomena are.

In other words, if a scientific explanation is to be found for the origin of life, we must look for it the only place that science works -- among the natural processes that are "amenable to solution" by science.

Mr. Hunter, though, cavils:

While [the claim that history shows that even very difficult questions may become amenable to solution as a result of advances in science] certainly is true, scientists also need to evaluate theories according to what is known. We can always hope our favorite theories will be saved by future findings, but this is no substitute for accurate theory evaluation according to the known data. It is simply misleading and irresponsible to state that it is a scientific fact that life evolved from non-living chemicals.

Of course, Mr. Hunter somehow conveniently forgets that, contrary to his claim that the NAS is presenting abiogenesis as a "scientific fact," he had, just a paragraph or two above, quoted all the tentative language in the NAS booklet. More importantly, Mr. Hunter is trying to convince the unwary that the very tentativeness he highlights one minute and denies the next is a basis for changing the very fabric of science. Mr. Hunter is backhandedly trying the maneuver that is well described in Robert T. Pennock's (author of the excellent Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism) contribution to Scientists Confront Creationism, entitled "God of the Gaps: The Argument From Ignorance and the Limits of Methodological Naturalism":

... ID creationists (e.g., Meyer, "The Return of the God Hypothesis") promote [the design argument] under a second interpretation, discussed by philosopher of science Elliott Sober ([Philosophy of biology,] 1993) as what is known as an inference to the best explanation. This form of confirmation works by weighing the explanatory merits of competing hypotheses and concluding that the hypothesis that best explains the data is the true one.

Ordinarily, when a scientist infers a certain "best explanation," the inference draws on contrasts among different causal hypotheses grounded within a strong body of background knowledge. Under certain conditions, ... we can sometimes make a good case that a human being designed something. However, this interpretation of Paley's argument is even weaker than the [watchmaker analogy] when explanations are not constrained by natural causal processes. The moment one rejects the evidential requirement limiting appeal to lawful causal processes and opens the door to supernatural interventions -- which is what creationists do when they reject methodological naturalism -- explanatory chaos breaks loose. Since there are no known constraints upon processes that transcend natural laws, a supernatural agent or force could be called upon to "explain" any event in any circumstance; that is what miracles supposedly can do. However, the concept of a transcendent designer or other miraculous force that can explain any event under any set of conditions is no explanation at all (Pennock, [Tower of Babel], chap. 6). Moreover, because such a hypothesis neither makes any specific or general predictions nor rules out any possibility, no observation could count for or against it; it is in principle untestable. Thus, if the design inference is construed as the best explanation while rejecting methodological naturalism (as ID creationists do), it cannot possibly win in a comparative assessment of hypothesized explanations.

In short, no matter how "contorted" Mr. Hunter may find science to be, within science itself, there is no reason to choose his preferred "explanation" of a putatively unknown "Designer," with unknown powers, operating at unknown times and by unknown means, over the best explanations we have of how known natural processes, like chemistry and physics, might have resulted in what we see around us in the natural world.

Just as our knowledge of how life began is limited but our evidence for the evolution of that life over time is massive, our understanding of how gravity actually works across distances is tentative at best but its connection to mass is obvious. Would Mr. Hunter have us stop accepting the "dogmatic naturalism" of physicists and believe that apples will fall up unless some mysterious "Grappler" pulls them down?
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A thought:

From the beginning, the core of individuals who built the ID movement was concerned with the materialist focus of American society and of science, which they associate with materialism. For example, science explains events and observations through natural causes; the principle of methodological materialism rules out appeals to divine cause in science. Methodological materialism is distinct from philosophical materialism -- the belief that matter, energy, and their interactions comprise the universe; no gods or supernatural powers exist. But ID proponents claim that methodological materialism is merely a front for philosophical materialism; they see a slippery slope between the former and the latter. ...

ID's antimaterialism leads its proponents to propose radical changes in how science is done. In 1984, the authors of The Mystery of Life's Origin [Charles B. Thaxton. Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen] distinguished between regular (or "operational science") and a supposedly different kind of science, "origin science," which requires or at least permits an alternate sort of scientific methodology. Like future ID proponents, the authors attributed historical and biological events to "intelligence," where the "intelligence" was understood as operating supernaturally. Origin science is defined as the science used to explain singular, unrepeatable events (the origin of life, for example), which supposedly are untestable and thus outside of science. Therefore, attribution of causality to God is acceptable in "origin science," but not in "operation science."

The abandonment of methodological materialism in science was also championed by creation-science advocates; it appeared only three years later in a book by two young-earth creationists, Norman L. Geisler and J. Kerby Anderson [Origin Science, 1987], with a foreword by Waiter L. Bradley. Geisler obliquely claimed precedent for the distinction between "operation science" and "origin science" (which he called "science of origin") in an obscure 1983 publication, but in general, both ID and creation-science proponents cite Thaxton and others as the source of the distinction. Of Pandas and People in 1993, included a "Note to Teachers" by Mark Hartwig and Stephen Meyer in which they similarly distinguished "inductive sciences" and "historical sciences" and defended the idea of broadening science to include "intelligence" as a cause.

Other ID proponents have encouraged "theistic science" [Alvin Plantinga, 1991. "When faith and reason clash: Evolution and the Bible"] as a way of broadening science beyond methodological materialism. The argument is made that if we "arbitrarily" limit science to only natural cause, we may miss the true explanation -- which is direct or indirect supernatural design. [J.P. Moreland, in "Is Science a Threat or Help to Faith?"] has proposed that the essence of theistic science is

... a commitment to the belief that God, conceived of as a personal agent with great power and intelligence, has through direct, primary causation and indirect, secondary causation created and designed the world for a purpose. He has directly intervened in the course of its development at various points (for example, in directly creating the universe, first life, the basic kinds of life, and humans). And these kinds of ideas can enter into the very fabric of scientific practice.

[T]he abandonment of methodological materialism in science is part of the strategy of reviving a theistic -- in particular, a conservative Christian -- understanding of the world and humanity's place in it.

- Eugenie C. Scott, "Creation Science Lite: 'Intelligent Design' as the New Anti-Evolutionism," Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond, Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R. Godfrey, eds., 2007

A thought:

[P]rotestations often come from both creation-science and ID proponents that they are not trying to remove evolution from the classroom. They claim that they merely want to give students "all the evidence" or "the complete range of scientific theories" -- which, of course, in practice includes giving them creation science and/or ID along with evolution. But given their view that evolution is evil in and of itself, or at best a stalking horse for philosophical materialism, it is difficult to take such pronouncements at face value. I believe that creation-science and ID proponents deliberately avoid trying to ban evolution because they know such approaches are illegal (as in the 1968 Supreme Court case Epperson v. Arkansas). They also are savvy enough to realize that the public equates efforts to ban evolution with backwardness: the state or community that attempts to do so becomes a source of ridicule in editorial cartoons and late-night talk shows, as did Kansas in 1999 when its state board of education attempted to remove evolution from the state science education standards. A strategy promoting inclusion of alternatives to evolution is far more publicly palatable.

- Eugenie C. Scott, "Creation Science Lite: 'Intelligent Design' as the New Anti-Evolutionism," Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond, Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R. Godfrey, eds., 2007