Is ID a science stopper?

Many scientists (including some Christian ones) argue that introducing God or a “designer” as a valid scientific explanation will be a “science stopper” – that it will stifle research or produce only trivial “god of the gaps” (or what Dawkins calls “incredulity”) type of answers. I think this view is flawed, and would like to offer some initial thoughts along these lines.

First, I believe it is important to point out some historical facts. It is now widely recognized that modern science developed in the West – and not anywhere else – because of the unique Judeo-Christian understanding of the world. In this view nature was not deified (as in animistic or pantheistic religions) nor held to be necessary (as in Greek thought), but rather considered contingent and good because it was created by a transcendent God. So not only was it able to be studied, but that was understood in the early days of modern science as a Christian responsibility. Note here that a) belief in the actual design of nature was present and b) it was more of a science-starter than a science-stopper. If belief in design gave rise to scientific inquiry, belief in design cannot be sufficient to end scientific inquiry.

Second, it is important to clarify that ID does not necessitate that every biological structure be designed. Adaptation to environment is readily acknowledged by design theorists, and there would be many cases where pursuit of a naturalistic explanation would be totally appropriate even given design as a valid option. It would only be those cases in which the structures, objects or events in question met the strict criteria of specified complexity that ruled out non-design explanations in principle, that naturalistic explanations would be abandoned.

However, even this wouldn’t mean the end of scientific inquiry in these cases. A forensic pathologist doesn’t stop examining a dead body once it has been determined that the cause of death was murder (design) – there is still the question of how it happened. Scientific inquiry in other fields (such as forensics) is almost always stimulated by the detection of design, and there’s absolutely no reason why the same thing wouldn’t happen in physics, cosmology or biology. Moreover, there is no actual sociological evidence of actual cases of design theorists stopping their scientific endeavors. In fact, there are contemporary examples of research programs investigating aspects of design. Should design be granted scientific status with equal opportunity for research, you would see rigorous science being done to explore this new avenue of scientific inquiry.

What about producing trivial “God of the gaps” types of answers? The purpose of science should be to give us accurate knowledge about the world as it is. This type of fallacy happens when an extraordinary explanation is given when an ordinary one suffices. If, however, it can be shown that it is impossible in principle for an ordinary explanation to work, then the ordinary would not suffice, and the scientifically responsible thing would be to investigate the extraordinary explanation. Moreover, the charge of incredulity misunderstands the design argument – it’s not that a naturalistic explanation in these limited cases is possible but unknown; it’s that a naturalistic explanation is not possible even in principle. This whole objection hinges on a presupposed naturalism; but such a stance is not logically implied by the empirical data and is not arrived at via some scientific process. It is a philosophical commitment that then colors how we see things. Science existed without naturalism before and it can exist without it again.

Bad Design in Nature - an argument against evolution

Note of explanation: this post is an entry of mine on a discussion board for my Scientific Apologetics class regarding some of our reading. I'm trying this out as a method of integration for my studies and my blogging (actually, this is my first attempt to find a way to keep my blog alive in the midst of juggling the new demands of being back in school whilst trying to fulfill all my other commitments). We're having pretty good discussions in our online class forum, so I thought I'd bring some of that here to kick around. Expect to see more of these.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (or something like that...)

In The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould worked hard to show that less-than-ideal design in nature is an argument against a divine designer and an argument for evolution (Dawkins' "blind watchmaker"). I think his argument is horribly circular, and so is quite invalid, though it is often rhetorically effective. My claim, on the other hand, is that less than ideal design is just as much an argument against evolution. Here's why:

Dembski, in arguing against the need for larger brains for human intelligence in The Design of Life, made note of the evolutionists' answer to the problem of anomalies in relation to brain size - that the brain must contain tremendous amounts of redundancy. He then made the following counter-argument:

If the brain is redundant, then why didn't we evolve the same cognitive abilities without developing larger brains? Redundancy carries hidden costs. Big brains make it difficult for humans babies to pass through the birth canal, which, historically, has resulted in heavy casualties - many mothers and babies have died during delivery. Why should the selective advantage of bigger brains with lots of redundancy outweigh the selective advantage of easier births due to smaller brains that, nonetheless, exercise the same cognitive functions, though with lowered redundancy?(p. 12)

The point is a good one, and not only in response to the specific argument in the text. This "design" is less than ideal enough to argue against the likelihood of its evolutionary origin. Natural selection would have weeded out such a considerable cause of high infant mortality long before it became the norm for our species.

There are many examples touted by the mainstream bioscience community as evidence of the "tinkering" of evolution rather than design by immeasurable intelligence. One problem seems to be that there are examples of poor and harmful design that seem statistically incompatible with the proposed evolutionary process. Proponents of evolution sometimes even use these (ironically) as evidence against a creator. In fact, I've heard the "big head vs. small birth canal" used in just this way before.

An adaptive, "tinkering" approach to design as an answer to such things as, say, Gould's panda thumb, seems a lot more rational to me than holding the statistical demands of evolution in tension with obvious counterexamples.

Am I on to something here, or am I missing something?

Dawkins In the Crucible, Part 1

As I was sitting in the doctor's office (after finally admitting the need for antibiotics) last month waiting to have my three minute, $75-out-of-pocket appointment, I picked up the November issue of Time magazine which featured the debate between atheist Richard Dawkins (Oxford professor, New York Times bestselling author of The God Delusion, and one of "New Atheists") and Christian geneticist Francis Collins (director of the National Human Genome Research Institute). Besides immediately noticing the writer's bias in the opening paragraph ("In recent years, creationism took on new currency as the spiritual progenitor of "intelligent design" (I.D.), a scientifically worded attempt to show that blanks in the evolutionary narrative are more meaningful than its very convincing totality"), the article got me thinking about Dawkins' arguments and, though rivers of virtual ink have been spilled elsewhere on the blogosphere on this subject, prompted me to post some responses of my own to some of Dawkins' reasoning and the exchange in general. This post will be dedicated to one point he made; others will follow examining some of his other claims and how Collins responded (in no particular order other than what strikes my fancy first).

At one point in the interview/debate, Dawkins made the point he has made elsewhere (as have others in recent years) regarding the problem that the apparent fine-tuning of the laws of physics to enable the existence of life has posed for naturalists:

TIME: Both your books suggest that if the universal constants, the six or more characteristics of our universe, had varied at all, it would have made life impossible. Dr. Collins, can you provide an example?

COLLINS: The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance. But if you are willing to consider the possibility of a designer, this becomes a rather plausible explanation for what is otherwise an exceedingly improbable event--namely, our existence.

DAWKINS: People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable.

This remark only goes to show how limited and wedded to his own philosophical naturalism Dawkins truly is - it is a straw man, but judging from what I have read of Dawkins, he is incapable of seeing this due to his commitment to naturalism. Why is it a straw man argument? First, the concept of "vast improbability" needs to be contextualized. When we say this fine-tuning is "vastly improbable," we mean it is improbable given a closed system of natural causes. In other words, probability (in loose and simplified terms) refers to the likelihood that such-and-such would happen given the laws of nature. We cannot lose sight of this context in this discussion.

The second and third points follow from the first: no thinking Christian theist worth his salt is going to claim that God is subject to natural causes for an explanation of his existence. Hence, labeling God as an "improbability" is simply a category error - God is not the kind of thing that is subject to the laws of nature, even in principle (note: I am not arguing for the existence of God here; I am saying that God as conceived and argued by Christians, which is what Dawkins is trying to refute, cannot in principle be refuted by appealing to improbabilities. Though the probability of a naturalistic explanation for the laws of physics being fine-tuned to allow for life can be argued against validly, in that it fulfills the category requirements of probabilities - which is the starting point for Intelligent Design). So Dawkins is arguing against a straw man in that he is positing a God no Christian theists (barring possibly Mormons) believe in, though it seems to me that there is a bit of slight-of-hand going on here on Dawkins' part that makes this hard to see.

So, to sum up: 1) Probabilities are things that apply only to natural phenomena; 2) God does not exist as a natural phenomenon; therefore 3) probabilities do not apply to the existence of God, and any arguments against the existence of God based on his supposed improbable nature commit a category error and are fallacious. Moreover, if all natural explanations for the fine-tuning problem fall prey to vast improbabilities or unverifiable/unfalsifiable assertions (see my next installment for more on this), and invoking an intelligent designer as an explanation does not in fact appeal to an even greater improbability, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the theist offers the better explanation for this problem.