Intelligent Design - A Valid Scientific Theory?
Obviously this a very contentious issue, and my extent of biology knowledge is limited to honors biology from high school. However, it seems the whole ID issue brings up an interesting point of what should be considered “science” and also what should be taught to students in classrooms.
Unfortunately, all I’ve been able to find online are articles either completely supporting ID or completely trying to discredit it (even the Wikipedia page seems very biased). Furthermore, it seems there are different levels of ID, from the “bare bones” view that some intelligent designer crafted the laws of nature to allow for the evolution of intelligent life but didn’t interfere at all, to things like theistic evolution, to what I guess would amount to be old earth creationism.
The most common objection to ID seems to be that it does not produce any testable hypothesis, and thus is “outside” of science (thus perhaps it would better be argued in a philosophy class). However, what bothers me about this is if science must be testable, then much of cosmology would also be considered inappropriate for a science classroom (no multiverses, no accounts for natural laws-all those would similarly be outside of science and therefore not belong in a science classroom either).
What do you think?
Unfortunately, all I’ve been able to find online are articles either completely supporting ID or completely trying to discredit it (even the Wikipedia page seems very biased). Furthermore, it seems there are different levels of ID, from the “bare bones” view that some intelligent designer crafted the laws of nature to allow for the evolution of intelligent life but didn’t interfere at all, to things like theistic evolution, to what I guess would amount to be old earth creationism.
The most common objection to ID seems to be that it does not produce any testable hypothesis, and thus is “outside” of science (thus perhaps it would better be argued in a philosophy class). However, what bothers me about this is if science must be testable, then much of cosmology would also be considered inappropriate for a science classroom (no multiverses, no accounts for natural laws-all those would similarly be outside of science and therefore not belong in a science classroom either).
What do you think?
Comments (77)
Intelligent Design is religion.
Much speculative physics and cosmology would indeed fall under that heading, as you say.
I've read a bit about Intelligent Design theorists. The problem is that it is a highly culturally and politically charged debate, due to the antagonism between aggressive fundamentalism and equally aggressive secular philosophers. I'm thinking on the one side of mainly Protestant, mainly American, fundamentalists, who cling to a literalistic view of the Bible. On the other side, you have the aggressive neo-darwinian attitude (typified by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris) which is implacably hostile to any form of religion and tries to enlist science as a weapon in that battle.
My view is that fundamentalists obviously have a pre-committment to their particular beliefs, and will try and dispute indisputable evidence on the basis of tendentious interpretations. In it crudest form, it will even deny that, for instance, radio-carbon dating is accurate. Of course, many of the more "sophisticated" ID theorists won't attempt that, and will try to accomodate all of the evidence. But the question then becomes, what are they trying to prove? What actually is at issue? What does 'created by God' actually mean, or look like?
I think it's the case that none of the major Christian denominations (Orthodox, Anglican and Catholic) have ever seriously questioned the theory of evolution on doctrinal grounds. For instance, there are forms of Biblical religion that are compatible with acceptance of evolutionary theory, such as theistic evolution theory. This accepts the scientific account, but says that natural processes are ultimately set in motion by God (or a higher intelligence). Francis Collins, and the Biologos Foundation, advocates this approach (see here for instance. This article is from a Christian philosopher and scientist taking issue with the best-known advocate of 'scientific' intelligent design.)
I don't personally accept the standard 'neo-darwinian' account and it's associated materialism, or any form of Biblical creationism, but I think there's huge scope for alternatives that don't fall into either camp. See for instance https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/
The only thing the gods have intelligently designed, in a long collective effort that many drove to despair, but which unexpectedly took a glorious turn (due to a foolish philosopher god and lazy sloth animal god) and resulted in the (almost...) perfect elementary stuff for an eternally repeating material universe to appear. It took a long time to design that right stuff. A suitable quantum vacuum, with the right particles and the right coupling constants, and right divine charges, was eventually approved for creation by the wise delphin gods. And when the word was spoken, FLASH!, there it was. The rest is history. And future, fir that matter.
Anyone who wants to engage with it just hasn’t read enough yet.
No.
:rofl:
From what I understand, intelligent design isn't considered a scientific theory because it can't be refuted.
Yes. It depends on the theology used.
As expected... :lol:
And the big bang can be refuted? Why should science be refutable? What if you just know the truth?
Thank you, I really appreciate your insight. I agree with what you’re saying about the militant neo-darwinians like Harris, Dawkins, etc. To me, their view is quasi religious or at least fundamentalist in a similar way to the biblical literalists. Unfortunately, it seems both extreme sides tend to get a majority of the attention in media, public debate, etc. It begs the question why (at least to me) there is an implied assertion that “religious views are irreconcilable with science.” Biblical literalism, sure. But arguing that science and biblical literalism are in conflict does not mean (mainstream) religious views are irreconcilable with science.
This was my thought too. But along with saying
We arrive with an issue at how to define “science.” If science only concerns itself with making testable hypothesis, then plenty of theories put forth by scientists are not “science.” I tend to think this more restrictive definition of science is a good thing for the field, because it forces theories to undergo tests-everything else is philosophy. The issue here is that “science” is a loaded word, and plenty of people take that to mean “knowledge” or even “truth.”
If we relegate only empirically verifiable things to science, then we also need to acknowledge that any attempts to extrapolate these studies to what happened in the past involves (by this definition, non-scientific) justification. And as a result, we further must admit that the best explanation for data may indeed be a non-scientific, non-testable one. Perhaps this is what we should be teaching children about science-it’s a reliable way of understanding the natural world for these reasons, but by construction will exclude possible explanations that could be the most philosophically justified. And at first glance, this feels somehow “wrong” to me because I want science to “be” this way we arrive at truth.
Great question! As always, you have grokked the heart of the issue.
Or uncle Tom dressed like a duck, quacking like a duck, and swimming like a duck! It gets difficult when it comes to flying away though... :smile:
Wolf in sheep's clothing!
Agree. And also that dogmatic materialism and religious fundamentalism are kind of mirror images - not in terms of content but attitude.
Quoting Paulm12
I don't go along with that. As far as fossil evidence is concerned, there is abundant fossil evidence to validate in broad outlines evolutionary history. Sure there are big gaps and unknowns but there's also a lot of solid data. But the facts of evolutionary history are one thing, but the meaning of it is another. I think there's a lot of misuse of evolutionary biology as a kind of catch-all explanation for everything about human life, beyond what the theory actually says.
Quoting Paulm12
There's a lot of argument in the scientific community about speculative physics and cosmology and whether or not it really amounts to science. There's a powerful school of thought that at least some of this speculative physics is not science at all - I've got a book called Farewell to Reality by Jim Baggott, who's a science writer. There's been plenty of criticism of those tendencies. But human nature being what it is, it's inevitable that questions will get thrown up for which there can't be any answers.
What about Last Thursdayism?
One of the things science is is a method for determining truth. One aspect of the scientific method is that explanations identified as possibly true, hypotheses, must be tested. If it can't be refuted, it can't be tested.
Or hunting season, I imagine.
I don't think that's true. There are a couple of candidates I can think of - the quantum multiverse comes to mind. The cosmic inflation multiverse might be another, but people are starting to try to find evidence for that in the cosmic microwave background. String theory is another, but people are currently looking for evidence at CERN.
Thomas Malthus, eugenics, are alive and kicking... :scream:
Eugenics is not science. It's engineering, i.e. using science to implement actions.
The genetics is very real. Not falsified. Then there is the unproven central dogma in biology.
If this is claimed, I already smell something... Why is it bad to be sure of what you hold to be there? Is it false humility?
Nothing wrong with it, but if it can't be tested, it ain't science. It's something else.
But you can test if it is true and confirm it.
Of course. But you can test to confirm also.
Who that then? Mr. Clark? Nu nu, cant be. Mr. Clark said that I said that he said I might be raight actually. I like sushi but mi mouth cant take too hot. Though Robbie from first will deny that.
For sure, and I apologize for not being clear if I implied that evolution or evolutionary history was somehow not reflective of reality.
What I meant to say is that if we require science to require all theories to be empirically testable, then philosophical naturalism is not a scientific view, and further under the same arguments for why ID should be kept out of the classroom apply to naturalism as well.
Furthermore, the claim that all life came about by unguided evolution is therefore not scientific either, as it cannot be falsified. Assertions of teleology, and similarly, lack of teleology, would fall under this umbrella.
To which ID-ers say that the evidence was designed.
In a rational humanity devoid of hypocrisy, in a word, yes.
There are two typical understanding of "science": One is any branch of learning. Here mathematics can be construed a science, as can technology, archeology, etc. But then so too can mythology (it’s a branch of learning). Or, else, fartology as the branch of learning how and when to properly fart. The other understanding is that it is shorthand for the empirical sciences. Here, all conclusions are inductively obtained from empirical data that can be replicated by others - lest it be illusory or else outright deception - itself derived from falsifiable hypotheses which the data either evidences/verifies (but never conclusively proves) or else falsifies (thereby conclusively proving the one or more hypotheses false). Without this system/methodology that incorporates falsifiability, anything could go: including an in-depth theory/paradigm accounting for all aspects of the universe in terms of invisible unicorns with magical powers that surround.
Where there is confusion between the two understandings of science, the empirical sciences lose their efficacy and, in turn, their validity. At the very least in the public eye.
Since this is a philosophy forum, the methodology of the empirical sciences is itself founded upon philosophical principles. Nevertheless, in so far as these amount to the methodology of the empirical sciences, the empirical sciences will themselves be utterly distinct from the branch of learning termed philosophy at large. The empirical sciences are also greatly reliant upon non-empirical-science branches of learning, in particular that of mathematics (here first and foremost in terms of statistical analysis of data).
Because the empirical sciences are limited, in part, to data that can be replicated by any other, they by default cannot be applied to things such as the reality of anything spiritual - if there might be one - which by its very nature of so being (if it in fact to any extent occurs) is not ubiquitously profane and thereby equally observable by all in principle.
Gravity and natural selection are in and of themselves theories regarding broad spectrums of data obtained or else confirmed by the empirical sciences - but are not in and of themselves applied empirical sciences. Nonetheless, as theories they are falsifiable by potential empirical data (a replicable observation of apples that move upward into the skies or, else, a replicable observation of a lifeform in the fossil record devoid of any taxonomical lineage - like the discovery of a fossilized griffin), and as theories are furthermore evidenced/verified by all empirical data.
Not that this presents a complete picture, nevertheless:
Neither philosophical naturalism nor Intelligent Design can be empirically falsified via observable data that is necessarily replicable by all others. Neither are, nor can be, integral aspects of the empirical sciences proper. But both can be deemed sciences, by those who uphold them, in the generalized sense of “branches of learning”.
So no, Intelligent Design is not a valid scientific theory (if one is addressing the empirical sciences).
That’s a very interesting point. What ‘naturalism’ has come to mean is ‘can be accommodated within the epistemic framework of science’. And science, or at any rate modern science, operates from certain assumptions about what is real, what counts as evidence, and so on. It’s implicitly physicalist in outlook - ‘implicitly’ because physicalism may not be explicitly stated or defended as a philosophical tenet, but simply assumed.
I was going to write some more, but @javra more or less beat me to it! ;-)
One of those people created the universe(probably some poorly put together illusion that'nt nearly as big as it seems).[/I]
I don't know- right- but I do believe.
Thank you, good night.
The technicality of the universe begets that something simpler came first. If we are talking about beginnings- nothings becoming something's, why does nothing auto become the universe? Isn't there more probable states? And thus, intelligent design is a mere stepping stone; one that's probably required to make sense of this junk verse.
This got me thinking. According the Pew Research Center, about half of all scientists are neither atheists nor agnostics. This is much lower than the proportion of spirituality in the general population. And I haven't read the entire article. But still, to me this evidences that the empirical sciences do not require an assumption of physicalism in order to be successfully engaged in.
I rather see it as the empirical sciences tend to only hold efficacy regarding physicality - this excluding notable exceptions such as that of the cognitive sciences (which research cognition in empirical manners). So for the philosophical naturalist, if the only tool at one's disposal is a hammer ...
Physicalism is a metaphysics. But they like to think it is not.
Yes, agreed.
Likewise, Galileo torpedoed scholastic physics - as had to be done, because it was archaic and not even remotely informed by observation. But with that, went much else besides, including Aristotle's final and formal causes. That is where the taboo on teleological explanations goes back to. Everything was to be explicable in terms of the paradigm of the emerging new physics (which is now 'classical' or Newtonian physics.) Ideas of purpose were abandoned, and intentionality relegated to the subjective domain of the observing mind.
I think that strictly speaking that style of old-school materialism belongs to the modern period, as distinct from post-modernity. (I bracket the modern period between Newton and Einstein.) As soon as quantum mechanics was discovered the classical paradigm of separate bodies in space obeying rigidly deterministic laws started to fall into question. That's why many of the first-generation of modern physicists - Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger in particular - were philosophically deep thinkers who explored Greek and Indian philosophical ideas. They were fishing for a metaphysic (for which, see Tao of Physics.) But the influence of that form of materialism remains deeply embedded in today's culture, albeit implicit a lot of the time. It seems highly influential in the writings of the so-called 'new atheists'.
There had to be only a simple entropically timeless 5D quantum spacetime to let it all happen. On this space, the only thing that can happen, is the emergence of two two closed real 4D mirror universes one of which is ours..
Which is why Bohm posited non-local hidden variables. His talks with Krishnamurti show his involvement with Eastern philosophy which so emphasize the relation between the parts and the holes. In his book "Wholeness and Implicate Order" he gives us a glimpse in his fascinating holographic universe.
I'm still thinking that it's, should I say "technically", distinct from the methodology and outcomes of the empirical sciences per se. In other words, I for example find that in a different possible world where the prevailing cultural view is that of idealism, the empirical sciences would still be indispensable for optimally appraising the truth of that which is universally observable by - and which universally affects - all in principle if not also in practice (hence, what we term the physical ... or what in Peircean philosophy of objective idealism is deemed effete mind).
I got that book when it came out. I also got Krishnamurti's book with the Bohm dialogues when it came out. I'm dubious about his hidden-variables theory, but let's not get into that - it's a guaranteed de-railer.
Quoting javra
:100: I often say, the distinction that has to be made is between methodological naturalism, and metaphysical naturalism. Methodological naturalism is the prudent restriction of hypotheses to include only that which can be observed or validated/falsified empirically. But it easily spills over into metaphysical naturalism when it then declares that whatever can't be observed is not real or cannot be considered.
The hidden variables would destroy you whole view on the consciousness related view. It sweeps the relation between consciousness and QM under the carpet. So I can see why you not want to go into that... :smile:
Like I said. The pilot wave is a real wave, pushing the particle determined along within it's bound. The particle always has a well determined position and momentum. No consciousness involved during collapse. The wave just shrinks simultaneously over it's extent. But feel free to think what you like. I have stated my case and retire in my cave.
"Philosophical naturalism" – a speculative principle – is not a hypothetical explanation whereas Intelligent Design purports to be a "theory", so they are not epistemically comparable and, while neither is falsifiable, the latter claims to explain facts of the matter which is does not explain – thus, is pseudo-science at most.
Good point of contention. In math, there is a point at which we cannot determine an exact answer to a problem due to the enormity of the amount for which we don't have the proper device to calculate -- at least not yet. I forget the terminology they use. But, maybe @jgill knows something.
Intelligent design could be reworked as a paradigm shift (this is a special expression for something that requires rework of assumptions, hypotheses, and conclusions of a framework) so we have something to use to explain the unexplainable, for example the WHY questions of the universe. Of course, the issue is the testability of assumptions, etc. So this would have to be handled by theorists. But there should be an attempt at least to make room for something that science cannot fully explain due to lack of testable assumptions. Sans proof, ID, just like the big bang, should be accommodated but with a paradigm shift.
What am I comparing it to?
The mind. Science can explain the brain and brain processes, but not the mind using proof. Know this.
For intelligent design to become of much use, it would have to (stabilize and) make reliable predictions.
[sup]By the way, I don't think it's in the cards that intelligent design can (ever) derive, say, the 10 commandments, that one should pray to the Sun for inspiration and atonement, that Muhammad was the (final) messenger of Allah, or whatever. That's the marked gap from these sorts of apologetics to the (elaborate) religions that have adherents.[/sup]
Not necessarily. The big bang does not have falsification qualification, but it's scientific.
I was typing up a follow up post to mine and meant to say that people should stop cutting corners by inserting "god" as their conclusion if they want their theory to be accepted. It doesn't mean that they have to sacrifice their belief that it is god. But they have to rework their thesis if they want to be taken as scientific. I mean, they should write it so that the only logical conclusion is god (that is, if they want other thinkers to follow this conclusion). I don't know. I'm throwing some ideas here.
If I remember right, it does. Something to do with recombination, that's fairly specific. Or, I guess it could just be shown that the universe isn't expanding after all, or only started expanding, say, 10 billion years ago. Or, a 100 billion-year-old galaxy could be found, ...
By the way, we already know that the theory only can go so far (at the moment), since it relies on relativity for the most part. If relativity was to be falsified, then it could take big bang with it.
(? edited a couple times, past my bedtime, Zzz)
I'm most amazed at how powerful mathematics is and what a stroke of luck that our universe is mathematical (re Max Tegmark).
But you're forgetting, relativity does not prove the big bang, it only supports some testable hypotheses. I said this in another thread, there is no proof for the big bang. Only evidence that's testable.
:snicker:
The whole conversation about physicalism and metaphysical naturalism is a very interesting one, and as mentioned is very much ingrained in our culture. I'd love to continue this line of thinking more, either in this topic or in another.
Agreed. One of the assumptions that is made by methodological naturalism is that nothing "supernatural" will happen during the time in which an experiment is conducted. However, I think even most people who believe in the supernatural would find this to be a fair assumption. The issue becomes whether this assumption can be applied to everything within the world, for all time. At the end of the day, metaphysical naturalism involves an assumption of ergodicity about the state of the world, which to me is difficult to philosophically justify. That's not to say I think metaphysical naturalism is an indefensible position, or shoudn't be held, or anything like that-instead that the claim "nothing supernatural has ever happened" is unfalsifiable and probably shouldn't be held with complete certainty.
Science spends a lot of time generating (falsifiable) models that describe the natural world. As George E. P. Box said . A useful model is one that not only describes the events of an experiment, but can extend to other observations about the world too. But to me, these models are always an approximation of reality to a useful degree, not a claim to describe it exactly as it is (the latter is the job of philosophy).
I think the same could be said for naturalistic accounts for abiogenesis, the multiverse, an account for the natural laws, etc. However I also think if intelligent design explains certain aspects of reality better than purely naturalistic accounts, regardless if it makes reliable predictions or not, then it should be taken seriously. Once again, I don't claim to know anything about ID theory or biology. However, from what I've heard, the modern formations of the teleological argument for the existence of God take a probabilistic approach (I believe it was Swinborne, who I admit I haven't read, along with others), that argue the existence of intelligent life is better explained through a design argument than pure naturalistic accounts.
That is similar to the much-vaunted 'principle of causal closure', which is that every event has a physical cause. But that is where the observer effect in physics has put a cat well and truly among the pidgeons, as it attributes to the act of observation a fundamental role in the experimental outcome. That is the sense in which consciousness enters physics - not as mysterious substance, but as the act of observation, which always entails an observer. And the observer is always separate to what is being observed.
Even aside from that, however, as first Kant, and later Husserl, understood, the observing mind is not itself among the objects of naturalism. As Husserl put it, 'Consciousness is not a thing among things, it is the horizon that contains everything.' Of course all the resident materialists will freak out when you say something like that but that's because they can't understand what it means.
Quoting Paulm12
It's true that science doesn't explain metaphysical principles. For that matter, science isn't even in the business of explaining scientific laws! Most scientistic types are convinced that science is somehow responsible for scientific principles, which is like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise.
Questions such as how do scientific laws arise, what is the origin of life, is there intentionality in the Universe, are not scientifically resolvable. Popper's criterion of falsifiability was intended to delineate scientific propositions by saying that they must in principle be falsifiable by further discovery. If they can accomodate everything, then they're not empirical hypotheses, and if they're not empirical hypotheses then they're not scientific, in modern terms.
The very simple point at the back of this is that 'naturalism assumes nature'. In other words, naturalism is not a metaphysic, concerned with the first and grounding principles of being. It works from a perspective of the intelligent subject in a domain of objects, ascertaining causal relationships and trying to uncover grounding regularities and principles. But understanding why science is not metaphysics is itself an exercise in metaphysics, not a scientific one. (See The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss, Neil Ormerod.)
Which is only the case in the standard QM. Of course does our consciousness projects onto the dark physical world, but it has no causal power. Observing doesn't collapse a wavefunction. Just had to mention this, cause you present a questionable, and probably wrong premise.
Incidentally just scrolled by ...
In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem (May 5, 2022)
Quoting Wayfarer
Just to nit-pick, I think says that physical effects have physical causes.
Interesting RNA story. When can they can replicate that with only the elements from the periodic table, then they'll really be on to something.
I which we can read:
How frustrating for the atheist scientist. They just can't figure out how the hell it's done...
I agree. In fact, my guess is the ID movement specifically avoids explicitly referring to a God (capital “G,” as in the Abrahamic sense) so it could be allowed to be taught in schools as not advocating for a particular religion.
Maybe in some ways it comes from more from Natural Theology perspective than presupposing any claims of divine revelation, or having an explicit religious affiliation
Of course, once you make the argument for there being an intelligent designer or God, then it becomes much easier IMO to advocate for the possibility of miracles, divine intervention, etc.
If ID tried to go any further and justify any religious or supernatural claims, I think it would be explicitly religious (depending on how one defines religious, it may already be). But I don’t know or think it would want to, given that this would fracture the relatively small base it already has and how much commonality different religious groups could use the core of ID to ground their beliefs.
A better title for this thread might have been 'Intelligent design - a reasonable hypothesis?'
Science can entertain any hypothesis; because an hypothesis is different from a theory.
An hypothesis is a supposition; for example, suppose life on earth began because an alien dropped a cheese sandwich. There's no evidence for this hypothesis; it's not a theory.
In science, a theory is a logically coherent framework that explains a variety of evidence. Evolution is a theory; an underlying mode of explanation - which becomes valid, the more it explains.
Intelligent Design is an hypothesis; a supposition for which there's no evidence. That doesn't mean Intelligent Design is an invalid hypothesis; just that there's no evidence that supports or refutes it. It may be that the universe within which we exist was created, and designed in just such a way as to allow life to exist. But equally, it maybe that life on earth sprang from an alien's misplaced lunchbox!
Suppose life on earth began because of primitive amino acids and other proto-genetic material arrived on a comet. That hypothesis is called 'panspermia'. It's damned hard to prove but it has its proponents.
Quoting karl stone
I don't personally accept intelligent design, but it's completely mistaken to say it has 'no evidence'. There are people who support the hypothesis with pretty elaborately-argued books. There's a line of argument called the argument from biological information. You may say that it's incorrect, the evidence doesn't support the theory, but you can't say there's no evidence.
1. You think normally inside a box. You ponder abstractly outside a box, and then make theories in the box.
2. To think outside the box, we need an ordinance.
[I]Tesseracts, C3, C4, are not box environment but are technically more complex box-type environments.[/I]
Ordinances are like a VIP jet with three ordinance fighter jets nearby in formation, or a satellite.
1. We have an ordinance, classically another box shape.
2. Here is a model for thinking outside the box, and because this model is consistent it supports intelligent design, but super-partially, as mirror of out of a box thinking.
I could knuckle possibility to the mirrored process of out of box thinking.
Though this support is super partial, and doesn't prove anything, intelligent design is a credible hypothesis and shouldn't be ruled out, we all may concave under it's zeal.
To reiterate, to ponder and have abstract theories about what happened before the universe requires thinking in a box alone, however thinking about what happened before the universe, and not just pondering, requires, hypothetically, a external environment for thought, a new box perpendicular to the original. That's where God is, that's where intelligent design is. I measured it as a consistent model, and said it supports intelligent design super partially.
However, like one very astute member once said (paraphrasing) "I'm not at all inconvenienced by the infinite regress; all I want you to do is make you admit that this universe had a creator!" Makes sense in a way, but that the question "who created the creator?" can be asked is not something we can sweep under the carpet; sooner or later it's gonna pop up in a rational analysis of the origins of the universe, if attributed to a deity of some sort.
The alternative - it just happened! (by fluke, for no apparent reason and without purpose) - is what we'll have to go for. This won't go down well with some of a particular bent in mind; the other option (infinite regress) is even more difficult to digest in my humble opinion. An infinite chain of gods creating gods creating gods creating gods....ad infinitum/ad nauseum :vomit: isn't, let's just say, a very good way of solving the problem (reminds me of procastination and/or kicking the can down the road).
The irreducable complexity of DNA argument is not a theory either; because an inability to explain how DNA formed is not evidence of ID, anymore than it's evidence for the alien lunchbox supposition; which is rather the point!
One of the more interesting ideas is 'fine tuning' of physical constants, but that runs into the anthropic principle - namely, if the universe weren't just so, we wouldn't be here to notice that it's just so. So again, that's not evidence.
This has relevance to an interesting distinction made recently by Ricky Gervais of all people, between knowledge and belief. He said, 'We're all agnostic because we don't know; but that's knowledge, not belief.'
I don't know, and I know I don't know. So I'm agnostic on epistemic grounds. I believe in agnosticism because I'm an epistemic philosopher, and beliefs should be formed, as justified true beliefs.
But proponents of ID; they believe God exists, and seek to justify that belief - and call those post rationalisations evidence. Similarly, atheists believe God doesn't exist; someone mentioned Krauss above, and suggested he seeks to post-rationalise his belief. I believe 'I don't know' is the only legitimate position.
[i]A better title for this thread might have been 'Intelligent design - a reasonable hypothesis?'
[/i]
I think about that too, but in my experience hypothesis is used to refer to things that are falsifiable (this could be regional usage). It really comes down to definitions here, but I agree that the wording wasn't the best. What I meant to ask was whether people thought ID was a philosophically viable position.
As you mentioned, I think saying "I don't know" is pretty much the only reasonable position to have, as neither strict naturalism (and any historical accounts for abiogenesis from this starting point) nor intelligent design can be falsified. Of course, one can lean one way or another given arguments in either direction, and try to assign fuzzy probabilities either way, but at the end of the day, we can't really be sure.
I do think John Leslie's firing squad brings up an interesting point about, despite this being the only universe we can observe, we would (and maybe should) still be surprised that we are alive. Then again, what does it mean to try and assign probabilities to things like universal constants, or spacetime itself? We want to have certainty about all these things, but I don't think there's anything wrong with saying "I don't know" or "I believe this but I could and may be wrong"
I think the assumption is that the "creator" of the universe must exist outside of time (as from what I understand time as we know it started from the big bang). And this creator, according to some of what I've read, exists necessarily and eternally (at least in the abrahamic religions, where God is often held as the sole agen?tos (unoriginated being)). As you said, it doesn't seem like we can regress infinitely (although maybe with universes or god(s) we can).
No, it is not. It is just theology.
I think it's a valid argument about the limitations of naturalism even if not the existence of God. There seems to be an almost universal assumption that as the Enlightenment freed us from belief in God, then it's reasonable to presume that life sprang into existence through something very much like a spontaneous chemical reaction. But that hardly seems a reasoned belief, either, even though it also seems to carry portentious philosophical ramifications.
Quoting karl stone
It's a very glib way of dispatching a highly complex and technical line of argument. In fact, so-called 'fine tuning' doesn't 'run into' the anthropic principle - it is a paraphrase of that principle, first articulated in 1973 and subsequently the subject of a lot of literature. That dismissal trivialises the issue, which is this: as noted above, it is widely accepted that, in the absence of an act of intentional creation, life arose as a consequence of chance - the so-called 'million monkeys' effect. But the anthropic principle shows rather that the causal chain that makes the emergence of life possible didn't simply begin on a warm pond on the early planet earth, but that it stretches back to the formation and dissolution of earlier stars, back to the mysteriously happy apparent coincidence of carbon resonance, and ultimately back to the small number of fundamental constants which allowed stars and matter to form from the inchoate chaos of the early cosmos.
Well, the Kalam cosmological argument is self-refuting: It first assumes that the everything must have a cause and then it goes on to claim that that would imply an infinite regress. It rejects the infinite regress in favor of an uncaused cause (primum movens). See what happened there?
Why not "unintelligent design"? Are not all biological entities examples of unintelligent design. Could not one argue, for example, that cancer research is a concerted effort to address and correct the deadly effects of the unintelligent design of the human body?
Quoting Paulm12
From ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) I got the following description of ID:
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific set of beliefs based on the notion that life on earth is so complex that it cannot be explained by the scientific theory of evolution and therefore must have been designed by a supernatural entity.
And from Wiki:
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".
It seems that ID says that whatever (traditional, conventional) science cannot explain, must be taken as a proof for the existence of and the act of (some) God. I don't find this plausible at all. There are hundreds of things --both in the physical and the non-physical world-- that science cannot explain or provide a proof of or evidence for. At least not yet. It would be very easy then to prove the existence of (some) God just base on our inability to undestand or explain things! Moreover, this reminds me that Man had always the tendency to refer to gods things he could not undestand or explain: fire, thunders, sun & moon, desasters, plagues, and so on. Which with time were explained by science. Myths that collapsed.
So the story continues ...
So, what I think is that ID is not even a "pseudoscientific" belief. It's just an absurd and useless concept.
Agree, you can't argue on lack of ability to test for one thing but get over for another thing.
If lack of the ability to perform tests is what determines what is science and what is not then a lot of the mainstream science is not science at all.
A more appropriate argument against intelligent design is that ID is not perfect, or that we (humans) see how to make it more perfect.
or that ID is somewhere in between 2 extremes: order and chaos.
Then we could argue where in between ID is, and why is it where it is, why not more toward chaos or why not more toward order?
Would we have three (and counting) pages of discussion of this if we would be discussing Flat Earth Theory?
Surely we could, it is a fascinating even if lunatic objection to modern science and a spectacular conspiracy theory, but I don't think a theory that can be disproven by anyone simply by going to the seashore to note how large ships start to "dip under" at sea when sailing farther away would then have an opening paragraph like this:
Quoting Paulm12
If we take the criterion of falsifiability, then flat earth theory is a very easy one to debunk for most people-satellite images, boat routes, etc. I don’t know if any prominent, highly cited scientists in any field who accept that the earth is flat, perhaps as a result of this and the amount of evidence for a spherical earth that a flat-earther would need to explain (no offense to any flat earthers here).
I tend to stick to Popper’s falsifiability criterion to demarcate science, but I am aware there are other interpretations and definitions. Otherwise, without it, “pseudoscience” isn’t even a useful word.
I think the greatest flaw in Intelligent Design is simply that it goes against religion if the conclusion made (by ID proponents) is that by scientific methods you could argue creationism. It's the basic flaw in all ontological arguments for god: it goes against the actual teachings of religion. Religion is about faith, and religions understand that themselves.
I think it's extremely well and clearly stated in the Christianity, in the Bible, and in other religions too. Way to God is through faith, not reasoning. The metaphor is of opening your heart to Jesus, it is not about opening your brain to Jesus. Yet the interviews that I've seen of ID proponents is that they are really anticipating some kind of scientific proof of the existence of God with ID. That proof, if even hypothetically possible, basically would be in every way an Idol, the thing that all Abrahamic religions are really against.