Lydia McGrew on Testability, Likelihoods, and Design

Here.

Del Ratzsch on design arguments and the ID debate

Here. 

We will not pursue that dispute here except to note that even if the case is made that ID could not count as proper science, which is controversial,[24] that would not in itself demonstrate a defect in design arguments as such. Science need not be seen as exhausting the space of legitimate conclusions from empirical data. In any case, the floods of vitriol in the current ID discussion suggest that much more than the propriety of selected inferences from particular empirical evidences is at issue.

The Jones Decision: Evolution's Trojan Horse?

The decision by Judge Jones excluding intelligent design from public education has been lauded by defenders of evolution, including atheistic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who use evolutionary biology as a launching point for a defense of atheism. However, it seems to me that if we look carefully at the foundations of the Jones decision, the decision really makes sense only on the basis of arguments that decisively undermine the attempt to base a case for naturalism on evolution.

The Evolutionary Argument For Naturalism (EAFN) goes like this:

1.       If naturalism is false, and theism is true, then we should be able to find evidence of design through biological investigation.

2.       But we do not find that evidence of design through biological investigation. Instead, (to use the phrasing found in the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker), the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design.

3.       Therefore evolutionary evidence supports naturalism, and provides evidence against theism.

Now let’s look at the basis on which Jones rejects ID. He maintains that ID fails to be scientific on the grounds that “it violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.” In other words,  the problem with ID is methodological.

This methodological argument gets ID out of the way all right. But it’s a poison pill for the EAFN. If you are maintaining that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design, then you are perforce presupposing that the evidence of evolution could have revealed something else had the evidence been different. But it does so at a heavy price for the EAFN. It effectively supports a very different argument, an argument I shall call the Methodological Argument for the Metaphysical Neutrality of Science, or MAMNS.

A good statement of MAMNS is found in the philosophy of religion textbook Reason and Religious Belief by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger. They write:

“As we try to assess ID, it is difficult (to) feel the force of its criticism of methodological naturalism per se. Methodological naturalism is simply the process of looking for natural causes for natural phenomena, a disciplined focus that has been the secret of science’s success. Methodological naturalism is neutral about whether any nonnatural phenomenon or supernatural reality exists. The fact the some atheistic scientists---such as Dawkins and others---believe that methodological naturalism favors philosophical naturalism reflects their own misunderstanding of the neutrality of science.  Ironically, this misunderstanding is shared by ID thinkers! So the theme of conflict between religion and established science is very strong in both groups.”

MAMNS could be formalized as follows:

1.       Evolutionary biology is the result of the application of methodological naturalism to biological phenomena.

2.       If evolutionary biology is methodologically naturalistic, then it is not equipped to adjudicate between naturalism and theism, without begging the question.

3.       Thus while the evidence of evolution is not free to mention design as an explanation for biological phenomena, neither can it actually establish the lack of design. All it can do is to provide the best account of biological phenomena that we can come up with without appealing to design.

It is important to remember the context of this decision. The plaintiffs in the case were trying to impugn ID as violation of the Establishment Clause. Now if you accept the EAFN, then just as you have to worry about ID violating the Establishment Clause if you teach it in school, you would then have to also worry about the claim that the teaching of evolution in school violates the establishment clause, since the evidence of evolution would then be used to support a religious position, namely atheism. Such a difficulty could be avoided if Jones were to embrace MAMNS, however. Under MAMNS, evolution is just science doing its job, but ID is an overstepping of the boundaries of science. The Jones decision (made by a churchgoing Republican judge) makes sense only if MAMNS is a good argument.

If the argumentation here is correct, then you can accept the Jones decision, or you can accept the EAFN. But you cannot do both. 

Should scientists who believe in ID be excluded from science positions?

Jerry Coyne thinks so.

In a funny sort of way, these sorts of statements support one of the claims made by ID supporters. For example, the lack of peer reviewed science articles is supposed to be a reason for rejecting ID. But if all the peer reviewers are going to lose their jobs if they approve articles supportive of ID, then the lack of peer reviewed articles has an easy explanation that doesn't undermine the credibility of ID at all: namely, even if there were good evidence for ID, no peer reviewer would allow such articles for fear of losing their jobs.

Let me play back to you what Loftus just said about keeping an open marketplace of ideas.

In fact, it's this kind of democratic freedom which is the undoing of your faith. For without state sponsored censorship or social pressures against minority viewpoints the believing majority cannot stay uniformed about the evidence against their faith. We know atheism will win in the marketplace of ideas, and if not, we know that only with these freedoms can we ever know the truth. So it stands to reason we would want to grant everyone these rights in a democracy.


OK, then let's show a little trust in the marketplace of ideas, and stop behaving like such a control freak when ideas like ID are put forward in that marketplace. If ID really is the bollocks that Coyne thinks that it is, then why is he so afraid of it? 

Defining ID

This is a definition of intelligent design by Jay Richards of Discovery Institute.

ID proponents argue, on the basis of public evidence, drawn from natural science, that nature, or certain aspects of nature, are best explained by intelligent agency. Most ID proponents are critics of neo-Darwinism as an adequate explanation for the adaptive complexity of life, and of the materialistic theories of the origin of life and biological information. Since ID is minimal, it is logically consistent with a variety of creationist and evolutionist views, but is identical to none.

I wonder if some people (Feser perhaps) conflate intelligent design with certain ways of arguing for it.

Nagel on ID and Public Education

Here.

I really think the ID message is getting skewed, partly, by the debate about public education. Still, the attempt to suppress discussion of questions concerning Darwin's theory strikes me as troubling.

Doctor Logic and Lydia McGrew on Likelilhoods, Design, and Probabilities

Doctor Logic: If an all powerful being were designing life, we don't expect descent, common descent, common composition or a gradual appearance of features and species. How many ways can a God create life in a universe? The number of ways a God can do this is vastly greater than the number of ways unguided evolution can do so. For example, gods don't even need to create life consistent with physical laws because they can create ghosts. There's no need for descent (birth) because God can make animals outright or create factories (no car has ever been born to another car). Even keeping the species the same and changing their natural histories and genomics gives a God vastly more options than evolution. I think theists would be tempted to say that there are infinitely more ways God could create life than ways that evolution could create life.


This is a simple problem in Bayesian reasoning. Finding ourselves in a world that is consistent with unguided evolution implies that the probability that we're designed is extremely close to zero.

In other words, if God exists, then there are a million ways in which God could create things, including Young Earth Creationism, etc. If atheism is true, then if intelligent life is going to emerge, it's got to emerge through naturalistic evolution. So, if the evidence is compatible with naturalistic evolution, then the evidence very strong supports naturalistic evolution, since this evidence is very likely given atheism and vanishingly unlikely given theism.

Lydia McGrew's paper on design and likelihoods might serve as a way for theists to respond here. Because God could do it a certain way doesn't mean that it would be reasonable for God to do so.

Darwin's nominalism

"I look at the term 'species' as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other." (Origin of Species).


Does Darwinian theory commit you to nominalism? Logan Paul Gage, in his essay "Can a Thomist be a Darwinist," gives this as a reason why Thomists shouldn't embrace Darwinism.

From God and Evolution (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2010).

Is evolution past its prime?

This is by Douglas Axe.

Several definitions of evolution

Jay Richards delineates six definitions of evolution. Can a Christian accept all six? Should a Christian do so

The Magician's Twin

I have a contribution in this Discovery Institute volume, which is another presentation of the AFR.

Coyne attacks Nagel

Here is a discussion of Jerry Coyne's reply to Nagel. He considers it outrageous that an atheist would admit any legitimacy whatsover to Intelligent Design.

Robin Collins on ID

A redated post. 

This is a paper by Robin Collins, who seems sympathetic to the overall goals of ID but does not consider it to be a scientific theory per se.

If there is intelligent design, science may be the last to know

It seems to me that if there were an intelligent agent guiding evolution, it would be one whose activity was less predictable and less tractable to science than the other kinds of forces that science is pretty good at predicting and explaining. So, it seems to me to be sensible for science to go as far as it can analyzing and predicting discoveries without taking design into consideration. Only when these sorts of explanations run into trouble should science look for something else. 

If I understand a particle, I know what the particle is going to do, always and everywhere. If I am dealing with an agent, there is some predictability, but such an agent is less predictable than a particle. It's not as if I can't make any predictions for form any expectations, I can. If I am playing chess with a world title contender, I have some idea of what they will do, but surely not a perfect idea, otherwise I would be as good as my opponent. So, if there is a God, I think we should expect science not to be able to bring it in until we had everything else understood. And, I suspect, that will be be awhile.

ID wins in court---for once

Laudan's commentary on the Overton decision

This is a redated post.

Way back then, the judge decided he had to define science. This seems to have happened all over again. This is the text of a philosopher of science's critical response to that.

On defining the natural, and the supernatural

In order to understand what the supernatural is, we need to understand what it is to be natural. I have developed a definition of what is natural, which has to do with there not being any mental explanations at the basic level of analysis. If something normative, subjective/perspectival, purposive, or intentional is at the basic level of analysis, then it isn't naturalistic according to my definition. This is, I take it, the basis of what I call the skyhook ban, based on the cranes/skyhooks distinction from Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I have also developed the argument that if everything is natural in this sense, then reasoning and science itself are impossible.

However, I am open to the possibility that this definition of the natural might be rejected. It is the naturalist who needs the notion of the supernatural, because they need to know what to exclude from their worldview. If it turns out that my Christian ontology is real, but that it's all really natural in some sense and therefore not supernatural, I don't really care. Thus, for example, the attempt to exclude all theistic explanations from science on the grounds that they are supernatural is, I believe, a fundamental error. Therefore, I am inclined to reject all "demarcationist" arguments against creationism and intelligent design, even though I don't necessarily advocate those positions. We could in theory discover laws governing what to expect from God, and include those in science. The fact that that would "naturalize" God doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Bradley Monton's Blog

Bradley Monton is an interesting philosopher, an atheist who is opposed to the witch-hunt against Intelligent Design.

I would put atheists in three categories. There are hostile atheists that make it their mission to smash religious belief. There are apathetic atheists who simple don't put a lot of effort into what they don't believe. And then there are sympathetic atheists who are willing to dialogue with Christians. Monton is clearly of the third type.

Would Lewis have supported ID?

Michael Peterson argues that he would not.

Groothuis on Multiverses and Intelligent Design

Why is the multiverse theory science, and ID not science? Can we appeal to the unobserved and unobservable, so long as it's not personal? Can one, with a straight face, reject theism because of Ockham's razor, and then believe in the multiverse?