Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What is wrong with intelligent design?
EurekAlert! ^ | 22-Feb-2007 | Suzanne Wu

Posted on 02/22/2007 6:22:34 PM PST by Boxen

In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.

Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.

ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.

A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.

This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.

Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.

"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this." In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.

Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.

###

Sober, Elliott. "What is Wrong with Intelligent Design," The Quarterly Review of Biology: March 2007.

Since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology has been dedicated to providing insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creationisminadress; crevo; crevolist; evolution; fsmdidit; goddidit; id; idjunkscience; intelligentdesign; itsapologetics
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 641-649 next last
To: Boxen

Someday we'll all find out.

Till then, what I think about it has no function.



21 posted on 02/22/2007 6:56:32 PM PST by Ramius ([sip])
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: festus
"...there is [a] thing I've never been able to explain.
Al Gore.
Seems to contradict the whole thing"
You can think of him as of a well designed object lesson. Alternatively, as a freak of evolution. I'd go with the latter explanation.
22 posted on 02/22/2007 7:09:02 PM PST by GSlob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Boxen
I try to delve into that discussion of competing theories and have to conclude the article is a bunch of superficial hooey. I am never impressed when scientists go beyond what they actually can determine, and start debating the philosophical reasons a theory should be accepted or rejected.

I thought intelligent design was a theory that certain designs were put in place at the beginning so that the universe tends toward certain results - life, intelligence, etc. Not that God specifically designed a panda's thumb, or the bamboo the panda eats.

This universe seems to tend toward life and awareness, two very great mysteries. The scientists say this is all just the result of random physical interactions, and I say hooey. A universe that can be aware of itself is more than random.

23 posted on 02/22/2007 7:09:05 PM PST by Williams
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boxen

"Hey, Mr. Stephen Jay Gould, you egghead, God too smart for ya?"


24 posted on 02/22/2007 7:10:43 PM PST by rusureitflies? (OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD! There, I said it. Prove me wrong.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rudder
A third and valid criticism is that Intelligent Design has no empirical data to support it.

All complex biological structures are emperical data supporting ID. Complex structures do not, however, support TOE. There is nothing in TOE to require change from simple to complex. All such arguments are based on assumptions that can only be explained by ID.

25 posted on 02/22/2007 7:11:33 PM PST by Louis Foxwell (here come I, gravitas in tow.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Boxen

Ah, yes.

Everything came out of Nothing from Nowhere for no apparent Reason.

Life is just a curious side effect of an unknowing, uncaring Cosmos.

When we die, we are just so much compost.

So the best thing we can hope for is a life of self-gratification and a painless extinction.

Lovely belief system, that.

In a different day and age it would be called Nihilistic Hedonism, or is that Hedonistic Nihilism.

I can't really quite remember, but it doesn't matter because even my Logic is the result of chance, random collisions of unthinking atoms having no design or purpose.

.


26 posted on 02/22/2007 7:13:14 PM PST by Westbrook (Having more children does not divide your love, it multiplies it!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boxen; WestVirginiaRebel; Sopater; Coyoteman; Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek; rickdylan; ExtremeUnction; ...
My friend Stan Tenen, someone who definitely believes in one God, has made the best argument against "Intelligent Design" on the basis that ID is anti-one-God. INTELLIGENT DESIGN -- INTELLIGENCE vs. INFORMATION

Here is a little bit of his argument:

Intelligent Design claims that cellular structures cannot have evolved, because they are too complex, and require simultaneous mutations.

This claim is specious. There are two fundamental problems. First, it's bad science; and second, if the logic presented is followed through on, it inevitably leads to a compound god (incompatible with the Unique God of the Ten Commandments). Opponents of Intelligent Design claim it is a stand-in for either "creationism" or "alien" design.

With regard to the appearance of impossible simultaneous coordinated developments -- sadly, the cell biologists and bio-chemists have not kept up with developments in physics and math. Only a few years ago, mathematicians thought it was impossible to produce Penrose tilings, because they required simultaneous coordinated developments. It was thought that there was no possible way for different parts of a developing crystal, for example, to coordinate with other parts, so that the overall structure would be complete without fissures, defects, and faults.

As it turned out, even after the mathematicians had cautioned that these patterns could not occur in nature, they were discovered in nature. And no "intelligent designer" was required. The Penrose tilings are naturally adjacent in a higher dimension -- which is apparently where they organize. So the impossible became possible.



. . . some good stuff left out ...



In Jewish tradition, Hashem/Elokim ("Lord God") is undifferentiated and utterly Singular. This is the proclamation of the Sh'ma: "Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One". (Hashem="The Name"=Lord; Elokim=Elo-him="God"). This ideal "Echad" ("One"; singular, unique Unity) tolerates no differentiation ("a jealous God"), and no qualities knowable to us (beyond Singular All-Inclusiveness).

In Torah tradition, the information gradient that leads the natural world to the evolution of life (and us) derives directly from the fact that Hashem/Elokim is undifferentiated. If there were any differentiation, then the negentropic information gradient would be degraded, and we wouldn't have "All-there Is". There would be gaps in reality, and gaps in nature. It is only because Hashem/Elokim is utterly Singular and Unique that the universe can contain the full span of diversity. (What I mean by this is that there is a complementary transform relationship between the singularity and the spectrum.**)

Intelligent Design requires god to apply a structured logic to the world, in order to force evolution. This structured logic, which is claimed to lead to the logic of DNA, must come from a structured logic. Logic has components, or it's either trivial or not logical. The proponents of Intelligent Design are thus attempting to walk us down a garden path to an embodied (compound) god.

God is the source of information -- and this information*** is the fuel of intelligence.

Bible tradition -- monotheism -- requires a Singular and unembodied (non-compound) God.

I think it's important to discuss the implications of Intelligent Design, because Intelligent Design is now being promoted by the President of the United States. Science classrooms all over the country are being assaulted with what amounts to a teaching that claims that one belief system is scientifically true, and the public -- almost all non-scientists -- is buying it.

This is an assault on science, which means it's also an assault on the future of our society -- and on the true roots of our traditions of faith. The fact is, when all is said and done, Intelligent Design "damns by faint praise."

(c) 2005 Stan Tenen

------------------------

My take is that the world is much weirder than anyone can imagine, but it is our job to try and figure it out.
27 posted on 02/22/2007 7:14:02 PM PST by SubMareener (Become a monthly donor! Free FreeRepublic.com from Quarterly FReepathons!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sopater

I don't bother bumping crevo threads. Foregone conclusion they'll still be active fir at least a few days.


28 posted on 02/22/2007 7:15:20 PM PST by ReignOfError (`)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Amos the Prophet

A third and valid criticism is that Intelligent Design has no empirical data to support it and, thus, has generated no hypotheses nor has it published any scientifically-generated results in scientific journals.


29 posted on 02/22/2007 7:18:02 PM PST by Rudder
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: SubMareener

One could argue that a divinity could not spontaneously appear, but had to be designed/imagined by humans, and not too intelligently at it.


30 posted on 02/22/2007 7:20:28 PM PST by GSlob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: rickdylan
An evolutionist is somebody who could open the hood of a car, look at the engine, and say to himself: "Gee, isn't that a hell of a thing for all that aluminum, steel, porcelain and rubber and what not to have gotten blown into something that looks like that!!"

And to the evolutionist this would deny ID in the case of the engine since it fells falsification since they went out and found one that actually ran.

31 posted on 02/22/2007 7:22:58 PM PST by taxesareforever (Never forget Matt Maupin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: SubMareener

An evolutionist is somebody who could open the hoods to TWO cars, a Ford and a Chevy, and figure the engines in BOTH of them just kind of drifted together. The question of who or how many people or what kinds of people it takes to make Ford or Chevy engines is pretty irrelevant, neither one of them just happens.


32 posted on 02/22/2007 7:23:33 PM PST by rickdylan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Boxen

"What is Wrong with Intelligent Design,"


ID is thought to be the opposite of evolution. What's wrong with evolution guided by ID? It seems that those who object to the concept of ID do so because to accept ID opens up a pandora's box.

After having accepted ID question #1 has to be "Who is the Practitioner of the ID?". To do so the questioner already admits that there is a BEING superlative to the questioner whose actions transcends all knowledge he/she possesses up to that point.

Things are now getting slippery. Question #2 will be "What does this BEING want from me and how will I know when IT contacts me?" For many it is easier, at this point, to end the search for truth and turn to the concept of evolution because the latter is easily more acceptable.


33 posted on 02/22/2007 7:24:09 PM PST by 353FMG (I never met a liberal I didn't dislike.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boxen

Why do people assume "intelligent design" refers to some god? Space aliens are as likely a source of the intelligence as a god. Or does the ID theory specify "god"? I've heard of ID but have not read about it and I'm curious to know if a god is the only assignee of the intelligence behind intelligent design


34 posted on 02/22/2007 7:24:58 PM PST by Panzerfaust
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boxen

What is wrong with Intelligent Design?


Its based on a fable, relies on blind faith, is untestable and non verifiable, and there is no body of evidence in existence to prove it.


35 posted on 02/22/2007 7:26:31 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser (Never Let a Theocon Near a Textbook. Teach Evolution!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Boxen
I post these articles with the aim of spurring intelligent, thoughtful debate. Yet all to often, these threads descend into name-calling and irrelevant discussion.

I look at this thread, and I am disgusted. I get the feeling that many of you see "intelligent design" in the title and go into some sort of battle mode. This article is not about god or godlessness or even Stephen J. Gould. It's about testability, falsifiability, and Intelligent Design as a scientific theory. That is all.
36 posted on 02/22/2007 7:29:33 PM PST by Boxen (Branigan's law is like Branigan's love--Hard and fast.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rickdylan

A creationist would open the hood of the car and say "I can't explain it, its a MIRACLE"


37 posted on 02/22/2007 7:29:39 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser (Never Let a Theocon Near a Textbook. Teach Evolution!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: rawcatslyentist
Well what has god like genius Gould created?..... Thought so!

Has Gould ever proclaimed himself a creator? Moot point.

38 posted on 02/22/2007 7:31:14 PM PST by Central Scrutiniser (Never Let a Theocon Near a Textbook. Teach Evolution!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Panzerfaust

Intelligent Design seems to have several flavors. The intelligent design that this author speaks of does not specify an intelligence.


39 posted on 02/22/2007 7:31:32 PM PST by Boxen (Branigan's law is like Branigan's love--Hard and fast.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

Comment #40 Removed by Moderator


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 641-649 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson