Hello, I'm starting "slow": Intelligent Design and its implications

My topic is "intellegent design" as it relates to evolution. A topic which has appeared in the news recently in the wake of the President's commented that it should be taught in public schools.

I have posted on this topic in the Hannity boards and have found some of misunderstanding there (at least on the part of a number of forumites) as to what intelligent design is and what its scientific merits are.

The short, short version is that intelligent design is not scientific (in any sense of rigor) because it is philosophical in nature: it is either the belief or the acquiescence to the possibility that a creator may be responsible for all that we see. Also, intelligent design accepts the theory of evolution and the long view of pre-history as valid.

But if intelligent design accepts evolution then why is there such a fuss about it?

It is because intelligent design is not the foil of evolution but, rather, the foil of naturalism.

Naturalism is the belief that everything in the universe exist, and would have existed, either apart from any supernatural cause or without the continued intervention of any supernatural cause. It is the philosophical construct that relates applied science to athiesm or diesm respectively (which are forms of and approaches to "theological" truth). The first principals of naturalism are not scientifically testable because they relate to a belief about God as a nonentity or as an uninvolved observer.

Naturalism, like intelligent design, is not scientific. This is where I've come to loggerheads with other forumites in Hannity ... one actually going so far as to suggest that athiesm is scientific.

But, and here's the rub, naturalist have based their hopes on the science proving their world view correct. They cannot allow evolution to be neutral to their cause and accepting even the possibility of intelligent design accomplishes just that.

And please forgive me for any improprieties or inaccuracies of fact, since I'm a mere "standup philosopher" after all.

I suppose before I can go about comparing naturalism and intelligent design, and asserting that both are unscientific, I should establish a basis for my contention (as I understand it) that these are, in fact philosophies if rigorous, but mere world views otherwise.

I'll start by opining how science and inquiry as we know it grew out of classical and Christian/Jewish philosophy, how in it's inception it was a valueridden approach to the world.

The basic idea is that truth about the physical world can be reasoned out and the scientific method is the tool in the hands of men to perform this task.

For this to be a true statement human reason must be valid. This is part of why C.S.Lewis said that you cannot use reason to debunk reason. If human reason is deemed invalid then the basis for deeming it invalid is itself invalid, meaning (for one) we can't know anything in a scientific sense. Such a transformation of understanding humans would give rise to a supercilious form of skepticism and invites rational madmen and civil-like savages into humanity's midst.

Back up a bit, philosophy and theology are actually deemed sciences (just not applied sciences) because these deal with the subject of human reason itself, its validity and its relation to the universe and any potential source for that universe. Theology in particular is focused on the question of, to borrow Pilate's words, "What is truth?"

Naturalism takes on a number of specific views of ultimate truth which may vary depending upon the base theology behind the naturalist's philosophy. In short, people are naturalist because they sanely believe the things that they believe––they have a reason to think as they do.

But not all naturalist, indeed not most of all people, are aware of their beliefs in the rigorous sense. This is because not many humans are what the Greeks called "philosophos" ... a term that needs some explaining ("just enough" should do).

"Sophos" is the word used to describe the full knowledge of what it means to be a man. "Sophist" were a class of moral teachers who believed that a man could indeed know the full measure of what it means to be a man (full and accurate self knowledge). These were opposed by a second group of teachers who, noting the spotty and often disasterous results of the Sophist's teachings, decided to break the elements of human reason and communication into forms ... they were chiefely known as grammarians and included the likes of Socrates. Among their "accomplishments" was the separation of human virtue (or excellence) into ethics-less morals and moral-less ethics which could be learned by rote.

Side note: I would suggest the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Piersig (sp?). It doesn't have much to do with either Zen or motorcycle maintenance but it is a good read with useful insights here and there into the distinctions between sophist and grammerians.

This meant that the grammerians could never promise a patron that their student would become "sophos" (that was deemed impossible anyway); but, they could reasonably assert that their student could become a "philosophos" ... in short they aimed lower to get more consistant results.

Now, the world "philosophos" was coined out of respect for the term "logos" (knowledge of truth or word of knowledge) as it relates to a specific time and place, the town Pilus where the latter term was said to have been coined. Thus "philosophos" is a limited knowledge of self, an attainable knowledge of what it means to be man. A philosopher is one who applys his reason to this goal.

Now notice what the grammerian philosophers actually did, they broke reality apart into forms and ideas which could be construed, compared and tested. They gave birth to (essentially) the first non-mystical science of recorded history.

However, their pagan world view was at loggerheads with the reason they sought to bring to bear. This is because the pagan religions were hardly ethical, or moral, or even reasonable. The gods of their myths were, if anything, super-men prone to excesses of personality relative to regular men in proportion to their attributed power in comparison to a man. In short they, and by extention the universe they created, were round the bend bonkers at times. Thus the universe these early scientist studied was itself deemed somewhat irrational, which helped to give rise to a number of odd views (everything from stoicism and its foil epicuranism (sp?) to a belief that common knowledge of the dodecahedron––the familiar d20 to gamers––could cause a breakdown of civilization).

In a related matter, rational men believing in irrational gods also gave rise to new forms of skepticism and dualism too.

Thus far the classical contribution to the rise of the scientific method (and the limits of that contribution).

Into the classical world strode the Christians with a very different and Jewish view of divinity. God is holy, a view that roughly parallels the Sophist idea of excellence with no division between moral and ethic, and what's more, God is reasonable. In a thread on the Hannity forums I have used the term "Deusophos" to attempt to describe the claims and implications of the incarnation, i.e. "God fully Man."

A rational God creates a rational universe. When Christianity exploded into the ancient world it did pull some of the old irrationality of paganism into its wake; however, there still was an emergent realization that the basis for nature was rational (because God was rational) waiting in the wings. In time this idea transformed the somewhat tottery classical philosophies and sciences in to the forms we know of today.

The birth of the scientific method came about as men sought to study their rational world in an applied way, thus the applied sciences.

Now, modern science, once born, did not expressly need religion in order to test the various proposed hypothesises that came along. Scientist are rationalist, they don't need to seek out a higher authority when they do their thing. But saying that a scientist doesn't need religion to be a scientist is not the same thing as saying he doesn't draw from the theology he accepts and that his world view doesn't shape the questions he ask or the answers he gets.

Remember the ancient scientist, how an irrational world shaped irrational and yet reasonable beliefs, for comparison.

So there is no sense that even applied science can be value-less since men are not without values. The beauty of the scientific method is that the values brought to the table are, at best, mere seasoning. That the underlying reason remains valid no matter if the person in question is a thiest or an athiest.

This leads into other assertions I have made about evolution: that saddling the science of evolution with the requirement that it prove a contention about ultimate origins of life is both a disservice to science and an impediment to drafting evolutionary laws which, in theory, could be construed.

But philosophical naturalist cannot allow evolution to be neutral to their cause. With them the science is subbordinated to a belief.

Well, to again borrow from Lewis: you can't put God in the dock. The fundamental aspects of naturalism is an assumption about origins of life (if not the universe). Where is the laborotory test for the composition of ooze or the timescale needed to demonstrate or disprove this contention?

The problem is that even the most strident naturalist/evolutionist admit that the transformation of Earth's atmosphere from a reducing form to an oxidizing form led to the wholescale elimination of evidince (not that simple cells, bacterium and viruses leave much evidence behind after billions of years anyway). This is because their theory requires Earth's early atmosphere to be chemically friendly to organic compounds in what is called chemical evolution.

This means we can't test the hypothesis in the same sense that we can compare the DNA of various breeds of cats (all of which have 38 chromosomes) or the domestic horse (64C) to Petawalski's (sp?) Horse (66C). This introduces at least one distinction into evolutionary theory: micro-evolution vs macro-evolution.

Micro-evolution could be considered the mere diversification of lifeforms without one kind of life (or unlife) evolving into another kind or life. Given the taxonomical record (which includes the fossil record) this is the only "observed" form of evolution.

Macro-evolution, on the other hand, deals with the transformations of all sorts which have only been speculated about. Taxonomy is almost meaningless to macro-evolution (especially that part dealing with origins of life itself) because there is a literal gap of billions of years of "nothing" from the time the Earth formed to a relative moment in time that life existed everywhere on the planet.

So even if we can test for the possibility of "chemical evolution" in the lab we can never demonstrate how life actually began––that we have to take as a matter of belief.

This is where "intelligent design" enters into the picture. Rather than dogmaticly adhere to the naturalist's conventional wisdom, intelligent design "fixes" the science of evolution by allowing that the science need not answer the ultimate questions of life, the universe and everything.

The universe is still billions of years old and evolution is still the mechanism for the diversification of life ... but by accepting the idea that we don't really know (though we may suspect) we allow scientist to concentrate on what they know and can observe rather on what they can't know or observe.

(Incidentally, intelligent design as I've presented it here is lousy Christian theology. That said, there is nothing in the Genesis account that disallows micro-evolution since all such evolution would occur within a common "kind".)

Of course this means that the science would be "broken" as an agency to prove the naturalist's world view.

Well, part of what is at stake is the rigorous form of secularism fomented during the early 20th century in this country. The secular idea is not just that the state should be impartial and uninvolved in matters of faith but rather that it should also promote a scientific understanding of the world through education as part of its duty to promote the general welfare.

But if naturalism is revealed as an unscientific philosophy as a result of the possibility of intelligent design being allowed for, then the basis for assuming secularism to be, well, secular is undermined too.

So instead of seeing their world view exposed, naturalist have redoubled their assertion that they arbitrate what is or is not scientific. It's life or death to them.

And President Bush, wiley Texan that he is, seems to understand that that dog won't hunt anymore.

"So, are you saying we can observe and demonstrate the origins of life?

Why yes you can, if you try hard enough. Hypothysize, collect evidence and shoot for the theory.

" I'm talking about organic ooze becoming living organic ooze. Ooze that begins to devour the unsuccessful leftovers in the organic soup as it reproduces itself."

You financing?

"If such an idea (central to naturalism) can only be inferred but not tested then it is a mere belief."

Theories are not beliefs. They are not faith, nor are they religion.

C'è 'na luna mezz'u mare
Mamma mia m'a maritare
Figlia mia a cu te dare
Mamma mia pensace tu

Se te piglio lu pesciaiole
Isse vai isse vene
Sempe lu pesce mane tene
Se ce 'ncappa la fantasia
Te pesculia figghiuzza mia

Là lariulà pesce fritt'e baccalà
Uei cumpà no calamare c'eggi'accattà

I like it. By my rights, you're welcome to post these ideas for discussion. I agree that there is at least as much proof of some degree of intelligent design as there is of spontaneous generation of life, and that neither case can be proven (without color of prior acceptance of a belief system which describes the events, of course), with information currently available. For example, how could it be possible to make a babe like Jessica Alba without divine intervention?

Isn't religious doctrine merely another theory to the scientific mind? I see no reason why science not could consider both "life on Earth was created spontaneously out of primordial ooze" and "life on Earth was created by an intelligent being". The former statement is at most a hypothesis; there is nothing substantial to prove it. Even if one believes there is no substantial evidence to prove the latter, it doesn't make it less scientific to investigate the possibility - it's certainly favored by Occam's Razor.

"Isn't religious doctrine merely another theory to the scientific mind?"

No. Religious doctrine is most often pure dictate. Scientific theory is a hypothesis supported by evidence.

"I see no reason why science not could consider both "life on Earth was created spontaneously out of primordial ooze" and "life on Earth was created by an intelligent being". The former statement is at most a hypothesis; there is nothing substantial to prove it.

No one has a good enough idea to teach any kind of abiogenisis outside of college. The hypothesis says nothing more than life somehow came about naturally. That's it. This intelligent being stuff is not science whatsoever. I've already posted what the proper subject for science is. If you want to have the forces of the designer taught, bring him in for examination, so we can quantify his action and motivations. Else, he's stays in the religious class.

" Even if one believes there is no substantial evidence to prove the latter, it doesn't make it less scientific to investigate the possibility - it's certainly favored by Occam's Razor."

The latter is not a proper scientific subject, nor is it favored by Occam's razor. Occam's razor: "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." The physics is sufficient.

"When it gets disproven by God then I will show an interest. Otherwise, disproven by human intelligence is a far cry from factual."

What was disproven was not that God didn't create the universe. What was disproven absolutely was the claims made by certain theologians. Since man was made in the image and likeness of God, human intelligence is sufficient for man to know what is.

But there's no evidence that says life arose spontaneously from organic chemicals rather than any other way, either. If you define that as "nature", then you are basing your judgement on an unproveable belief of what nature is - which is exactly what religious doctrine does. A truly objective scientist can accept neither one as incontrovertibly established fact.

Why is it scientifically inconceivable that, if not God, some elder, sentient, and spacefaring race created Man and deposited us here, on a world suited to our needs? There's no evidence of that, but there's no evidence that life spontaneously generated here either.

I'm using the words "spontaneous" and "generated" here because the idea that life was created by chance out of non-living molecules is very similar to the last theory known as spontaneous generation. Seems sensible from a practical point of view, but that's not necessarily the case in reality.

With respect to spontaneous generation as the creator of life on Earth, to me - and I think also to our hypothetical objective scientist - that is no less fantastic than aliens or God as an explanation.

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