Speaking of the intellectual collapse of ID, its other major blog, the Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News and Views” also seems to have fallen on hard times. How else to explain the presence of this article, by Steve Laufmann?
Laufmann addresses the question, “Is Intelligent Design Science?” He divides his answer into five parts. We shall come to them in a moment.
Now, as I discuss at some length in Among the Creationists questions about what is, and is not, science generally leave me cold. Lately there’s been some hand-wringing among certain physicists about whether string theory and the multiverse should be considered scientific. Such discussions are unimportant. What matters is whether the ideas are reasonable, not whether they meet some particular criterion for being considered science.
Mostly I feel the same way about ID. What I care about is whether its defenders have a reasonable argument to make. If they do, then any worries about demarcation criteria, religious implications, or political agendas are beside the point. Since they do not, we can just end the discussion right here. I say mostly, however, because the question cannot be ignored entirely. Periodically the ID folks try to have their ideas taught in science classes, you see. When that happens, it is perfectly reasonable to point out that ID bears none of the hallmarks of actual science. Instead it offers only a thin coating of science jargon on top of a right-wing religious agenda.
In other words, ID is not science, but that is the last of its problems
Which brings us back to Laufmann. Here’s his first point:
1. The answer is yes, intelligent design is science, though not everyone knows it yet.
However, the reasons behind this are understood neither widely nor well. In my experience there are two common areas of misunderstanding:
First, many people try to apply demarcation criteria that are not appropriate for historical sciences. Demarcation criteria, such as observability, testability, falsifiability, predictive capability, and repeatability, do not generally apply to the causes of unobserved and non-repeatable events in the past. This is as true of the random events in Darwinist theory as it is for the actions of an intelligent agent in ID. Further, philosophers of science have largely abandoned demarcation criteria because there are too many exceptions to such rules.
Second, relatively few people are versed in the methodological nuances of historical sciences, so fail to properly apply these to ID.
This argument is an old stand-by of young-Earth creationism, but it is rarely put forth by ID proponents. And for good reason! It is a good example of an argument that is really so foolish that it embarrasses the whole cause of anti-evolutionism.
Evolution easily meets all of Laufmann’s criteria. For evolution to be plausible, we must find certain patterns in the fossil record, in anatomy, in genetics, in biogeography, and in many other fields besides. Patterns, mind you, then have no plausible explanation under any rival theory that has ever been put forward.
This is obvious. It also explains why ID folks, when presented with the standard litany of evidence in support of evolution, do not generally reply by arguing that, actually, evolution makes no predictions or is non-testable. Instead they usually argue that scientists have misconstrued the evidence in some way. These arguments are not successful, but of greater importance just now is the fact that they are in direct conflict with what Laufmann is claiming.
Which brings us to his second point:
2. The dispute over ID has more to do with the definition of science than with any particular scientific merits of ID.
A central question lies at the heart of the origins debate: Are unintelligent causal forces capable of producing the complex orchestrations of information and processing machinery that we see in biology? These orchestrations occur at multiple levels, from molecular machinery within a cell to complex body subsystems (like the skeletal or circulatory systems) to the human mind.
Darwin’s proponents argue that the answer is yes, unintelligent forces can do all the necessary work. ID proponents argue the other way. (See “Evolution’s Grand Challenge” for my take on this question.)
As historical sciences, both Darwinism and ID deal with past events in space-time history. All historical sciences apply a similar rational process to infer the best explanation (cause) for observed outcomes (effects).
The rules are the same. The process is the same. The reasoning follows a similar path. Clearly, there is methodological equivalence between Darwinism and ID. How then can the Darwinian view be science while ID is not?
At this point we have simply left reality behind altogether. Evolution proceeds in the manner of all sciences. It puts forward a clear, detailed theory of what happened, deduces the consequences of that theory, and then carries out the necessary experiments and investigations to verify that those consequences hold.
ID, by contrast, does nothing remotely like that. This is because the ID theory is, in its entirety, that an intelligent designer of unspecified motives and abilities did something at some point in the course of natural history. There is nothing more to it than that, and there is nothing here that scientists can use to guide their research.
This is why ID literature consists almost entirely of “in principle” assertions regarding the sufficiency of natural causes. That is, rather than test the consequences of their theory against evidence, they try to establish design as the default explanation when one particular naturalistic theory is falsified.
For example, they claim that it is not plausible that an “irreducibly complex system” could evolve gradually by natural selection, and that therefore we must attribute it to design. Or they claim that various mathematical techniques they have devised can be used to eliminate chance and natural causes as explanations, thereby leaving design as the only alternative. Both of these claims are absurd, for reasons that have been explained many times. More to the present point, however, is that this is not the method of argument used by scientists when defending evolution.
Methodological equivalence would be if scientists argued, “We know that God does not exist because of all the evil and suffering in the world, so evolution must be correct by default.”
The fact is, we no longer need to speculate about whether ID is science. Earlier I said that I mostly don’t care about demarcation questions, but that is not because I think they are intractable. Most of the time it is really very easy to determine whether something is science. A good minimum requirement is that the idea be fruitful. The ID folks have been telling us for more than twenty years that their ideas will revolutionize science and lead to profound new discoveries. They have had more than enough time to prove the skeptics wrong. But they have produced nothing. That is why their various attempts to produce their own research journal have all failed. Their latest attempt, BIO-Complexity, has produced nothing in 2016, and produced little in the previous few years.
For a comparison, the young-Earthers have managed to maintain their own research journal for more than thirty years.
Laufmann goes on for three more points, but we have seen enough. ID is not science. Worse, it is a vacuous idea supported by arguments that fail for obvious reasons. Small wonder it has produced nothing but rhetoric for more than two decades.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1U9TdPZ
Speaking of the intellectual collapse of ID, its other major blog, the Discovery Institute’s “Evolution News and Views” also seems to have fallen on hard times. How else to explain the presence of this article, by Steve Laufmann?
Laufmann addresses the question, “Is Intelligent Design Science?” He divides his answer into five parts. We shall come to them in a moment.
Now, as I discuss at some length in Among the Creationists questions about what is, and is not, science generally leave me cold. Lately there’s been some hand-wringing among certain physicists about whether string theory and the multiverse should be considered scientific. Such discussions are unimportant. What matters is whether the ideas are reasonable, not whether they meet some particular criterion for being considered science.
Mostly I feel the same way about ID. What I care about is whether its defenders have a reasonable argument to make. If they do, then any worries about demarcation criteria, religious implications, or political agendas are beside the point. Since they do not, we can just end the discussion right here. I say mostly, however, because the question cannot be ignored entirely. Periodically the ID folks try to have their ideas taught in science classes, you see. When that happens, it is perfectly reasonable to point out that ID bears none of the hallmarks of actual science. Instead it offers only a thin coating of science jargon on top of a right-wing religious agenda.
In other words, ID is not science, but that is the last of its problems
Which brings us back to Laufmann. Here’s his first point:
1. The answer is yes, intelligent design is science, though not everyone knows it yet.
However, the reasons behind this are understood neither widely nor well. In my experience there are two common areas of misunderstanding:
First, many people try to apply demarcation criteria that are not appropriate for historical sciences. Demarcation criteria, such as observability, testability, falsifiability, predictive capability, and repeatability, do not generally apply to the causes of unobserved and non-repeatable events in the past. This is as true of the random events in Darwinist theory as it is for the actions of an intelligent agent in ID. Further, philosophers of science have largely abandoned demarcation criteria because there are too many exceptions to such rules.
Second, relatively few people are versed in the methodological nuances of historical sciences, so fail to properly apply these to ID.
This argument is an old stand-by of young-Earth creationism, but it is rarely put forth by ID proponents. And for good reason! It is a good example of an argument that is really so foolish that it embarrasses the whole cause of anti-evolutionism.
Evolution easily meets all of Laufmann’s criteria. For evolution to be plausible, we must find certain patterns in the fossil record, in anatomy, in genetics, in biogeography, and in many other fields besides. Patterns, mind you, then have no plausible explanation under any rival theory that has ever been put forward.
This is obvious. It also explains why ID folks, when presented with the standard litany of evidence in support of evolution, do not generally reply by arguing that, actually, evolution makes no predictions or is non-testable. Instead they usually argue that scientists have misconstrued the evidence in some way. These arguments are not successful, but of greater importance just now is the fact that they are in direct conflict with what Laufmann is claiming.
Which brings us to his second point:
2. The dispute over ID has more to do with the definition of science than with any particular scientific merits of ID.
A central question lies at the heart of the origins debate: Are unintelligent causal forces capable of producing the complex orchestrations of information and processing machinery that we see in biology? These orchestrations occur at multiple levels, from molecular machinery within a cell to complex body subsystems (like the skeletal or circulatory systems) to the human mind.
Darwin’s proponents argue that the answer is yes, unintelligent forces can do all the necessary work. ID proponents argue the other way. (See “Evolution’s Grand Challenge” for my take on this question.)
As historical sciences, both Darwinism and ID deal with past events in space-time history. All historical sciences apply a similar rational process to infer the best explanation (cause) for observed outcomes (effects).
The rules are the same. The process is the same. The reasoning follows a similar path. Clearly, there is methodological equivalence between Darwinism and ID. How then can the Darwinian view be science while ID is not?
At this point we have simply left reality behind altogether. Evolution proceeds in the manner of all sciences. It puts forward a clear, detailed theory of what happened, deduces the consequences of that theory, and then carries out the necessary experiments and investigations to verify that those consequences hold.
ID, by contrast, does nothing remotely like that. This is because the ID theory is, in its entirety, that an intelligent designer of unspecified motives and abilities did something at some point in the course of natural history. There is nothing more to it than that, and there is nothing here that scientists can use to guide their research.
This is why ID literature consists almost entirely of “in principle” assertions regarding the sufficiency of natural causes. That is, rather than test the consequences of their theory against evidence, they try to establish design as the default explanation when one particular naturalistic theory is falsified.
For example, they claim that it is not plausible that an “irreducibly complex system” could evolve gradually by natural selection, and that therefore we must attribute it to design. Or they claim that various mathematical techniques they have devised can be used to eliminate chance and natural causes as explanations, thereby leaving design as the only alternative. Both of these claims are absurd, for reasons that have been explained many times. More to the present point, however, is that this is not the method of argument used by scientists when defending evolution.
Methodological equivalence would be if scientists argued, “We know that God does not exist because of all the evil and suffering in the world, so evolution must be correct by default.”
The fact is, we no longer need to speculate about whether ID is science. Earlier I said that I mostly don’t care about demarcation questions, but that is not because I think they are intractable. Most of the time it is really very easy to determine whether something is science. A good minimum requirement is that the idea be fruitful. The ID folks have been telling us for more than twenty years that their ideas will revolutionize science and lead to profound new discoveries. They have had more than enough time to prove the skeptics wrong. But they have produced nothing. That is why their various attempts to produce their own research journal have all failed. Their latest attempt, BIO-Complexity, has produced nothing in 2016, and produced little in the previous few years.
For a comparison, the young-Earthers have managed to maintain their own research journal for more than thirty years.
Laufmann goes on for three more points, but we have seen enough. ID is not science. Worse, it is a vacuous idea supported by arguments that fail for obvious reasons. Small wonder it has produced nothing but rhetoric for more than two decades.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1U9TdPZ
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