Ceci n'est pas un blog
Is Intelligent Design creationism?
No.
But there is a connection.
Intelligent Design (ID), being essentially anti-evolutionism, is half of an argument for creationism.
Basic scientific arguments go something like this:
- You are wrong.
- I am right.
Or, in more detail:
- Your model does a poor job at explaining the data.
- My model does a better job at explaining the data.
So one might argue for creationism as follows:
- Your model of evolution (by random mutation and natural selection) does a poor job at explaining the data (life in all its complexity).
- My model of creationism (old-earth, young-earth, whatever) does a better job at explaining the data.
Anti-evolutionism is the first half of that argument.
So ID is not creationism. But it is half an argument for creationism, which is why creationists tend to like ID.
Incidentally, as long as ID remains as just half an argument, I don't think it will get very far. People will always believe something rather than nothing. If you tell people that the thing they believe is wrong, they will continue to believe it regardless, until you provide a solid alternative. If you decide you want to leave your current town, you don't just pack up and get in the car, but you find somewhere else to live and then you pack up and leave. ID says you should leave your current town, but it doesn't show you somewhere better to live, so I don't think many people will listen.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Anthony on 23 Nov 2010 at 2.09 pm, and is filed under Science & Faith. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
Creation and evolution: my current thinking
about 11 months ago - 7 comments
I've been pondering the issue of creation and evolution for years, and I thought it was about time to set out my current thinking on the area. This is all provisional and subject to change, but the points below are things that I'm fairly sure about. If you desperately want to label me with one…
Evidence for young-age creationism
about 11 months ago - 2 comments
It's not clear precisely what role scientific evidence plays when someone chooses between young-age creationism and evolution over billions of years. Certainly no one can approach the issue dispassionately; we would all have to declare an interest if we were called upon to examine the evidence objectively. But still, we can try to think about…
Creation or evolution: which way forward?
about 1 year ago - 4 comments
I posted this elsewhere a few months ago, but I thought it was worth posting it here too. The Christian church is still a long way from resolving the creation/evolution issue, but maybe this points in the right direction. The Colossian Forum is some new thing trying to promote discussion on issues of science, culture…
An open letter to the British Humanist Association
about 1 year ago - 10 comments
Dear BHA, After re-loading your website home page a few times, I found on it the following quote by Ariane Sherine: "All children should be free to grow up in a world where they are allowed to question, doubt, think freely, and reach their own conclusions about what they believe." As an evangelical Christian, I wholeheartedly…
Intelligent Design: a Bayesian summary
about 2 years ago - 5 comments
This post concludes my recent splurge on Intelligent Design (ID). I have been trying to argue: That ID is basically anti-evolutionism That, as anti-evolutionism, ID is half an argument for creationism That the question of whether ID is science is actually quite dull That ID proponents are right to point out the speculative nature of…
Should Intelligent Design be taught in schools?
about 2 years ago - 12 comments
I don't see why not. Many people in the UK believe in Intelligent Design (that is, they don't believe in modern evolutionary theory), 51% according to one report. This in itself is a good reason to expect children at least to be familiar with the term and what it means. They should learn about some…
Complexity and design
about 2 years ago - 19 comments
The basic argument of anti-evolutionism (Intelligent Design, ID) is that chance processes cannot account for the complexity that we see in living things. The probabilities are simply vanishingly small. That may be true, but I'm nervous about that kind of argument. The reason is that I'm not sure we properly understand complexity. There are examples…
Can science point to an intelligent designer?
about 2 years ago - No comments
I find myself in full agreement with the basic presupposition of Intelligent Design (ID): that a world in which an intelligent agent has acted might be expected to be different to a world in which no such intelligent agent has acted, and that the methods of science (i.e., empirical enquiry) might be a useful tool…
Darwinian speculations?
about 2 years ago - 7 comments
One of the quotes Michael Behe showed at Monday's Darwin or Design? evening was the following: "We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity, but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system,…
Is Intelligent Design science?
about 2 years ago - No comments
Countless hours have been wasted poring over this most uninteresting, pedantic and pointless of questions. Rather than seeking to answer the questions raised by Intelligent Design (ID), certain people seem to think it is much more pressing to determine once and for all in which drawer of the filing cabinet the question should reside. Enough!…
I live in York and I 
Loading ...
about 2 years ago
Just a thought: Does the first part of the scientific argument need to suggest that the existing model does a poor job of explaining the data? A model might do a good job of explaining the data -- but still be superceded by another, better model. I think that's one of the pitfalls of anti-evolutionism: it suggests that evolutionary biology is a failure, when it fact it is very successful. That, of course, doesn't preclude another theory (perhaps subsuming parts of the older theory) having even greater explanatory power.
about 2 years ago
I suppose the existing model would need to be poor at explaining at least some data (but maybe fantastic at explaining lots of other data). I think I was using "the data" in an ambiguous way.
The danger of any "anti-something" approach is that every model, when you look at it closely enough, turns out to be hopelessly bad at explaining certain things, and therefore a "failure".
about 2 years ago
Surely intelligent design is creationism (or rather requires some sort of deity).
Intelligent design requires a designer which is, by necessity, more complex than the life they are designing.
It would be a strange quirk of fate that would let the more complex designer come into existence first, so surely the designer must have been designed.
In this case, who designed the designer? As a designer must be more complex than the designee then this question becomes recursive and can only be ended by putting a deity at the end.
about 2 years ago
Well, strictly speaking... intelligent life could evolve on some other planet by purely natural processes, then they fly over in their flying saucers to our planet and meddle with our genomes from time to time. No deities involved.
Of course no one with any sanity believes that kind of thing, but it's consistent with the claims of ID.
about 2 years ago
Maybe I was misunderstanding ID. The reasoning I've heard for it is that life is too complex to evolve via evolution and therefore requires a designer. This doesn't really fit with the idea that complex life could evolve on a different planet and then do the intelligent designing.
I should add that nobody who has explained the necessity for intelligent design to me has had anything more than a poor understanding of evolution, so maybe I shouldn't give too much credence to their views on the requirements for ID.
about 2 years ago
That's the basic idea. But the ID proponents themselves are very careful not to overstate their case, and try not to say anything at all about the identity and nature of the designer, only that the data suggest some kind of intelligent designer has been involved.
about 2 years ago
I don't find the who designed the designer argument persuasive at all. If Christians claimed to believe in a God who was a created or evolved entity then it would be a devastating critique. However, the point is that the God of the bible, he is by definition eternal. Asking who designed the designer is akin to asking 'who made the unmade?' or 'Where is the batchelor's wife?'
about 2 years ago
Of course the real reason Intelligent Design is really a form of creationism is that it was invented to get unscientific views on the origins of the diversity of life (i.e to oppose evolutionary biology) into US schools. It was invented by the Discovery Institute as a wedge strategy.
Check out the final ruling on Kitzmiller vs Dover School Area District and the Wedge Strategy. Wikipedia has good articles on both.
about 2 years ago
The reason ID isn't science is because it is too vague;
"Sometime, somehow, something was designed by somebody in someway."
You need to fill in the gaps or you can't test it.
It is because it is so vague that it can in fact explain absolutely anything at all. So you can't test it.
about 2 years ago
I'm not how if simply changing the dictionary actually counts as addressing the issue.
Also God is vulnerable to the same tactic.
If no creator is needed for god because you just say it isn't then why don't we just agree that the universe is eternal and doesn't need explaining.
No room for god then.
What do you think?
about 2 years ago
not *sure*
not
not how
silly me
about 2 years ago
"I don’t find the who designed the designer argument persuasive at all. If Christians claimed to believe in a God who was a created or evolved entity then it would be a devastating critique. However, the point is that the God of the bible, he is by definition eternal. "
This is exactly my point.
I was arguing that ID is the same as creationism because the designer (or meta-designer) must (now I'm not sure of the correct tense to use here, but here goes) have been eternal.
I can see Anthony's point; perhaps an evolved designer could look undesigned, but I think Robert's reason is the most accurate.
about 2 years ago
You've got a nice logical separation, but I think it's flawed: the only people who believe there is a problem with evolution are those with a creationist agenda to push. Hence they are the same thing.
If it really was true that "evolution does a poor job of explaining the data" then there would be a lot of scientists exploring alternatives (and ID might hold up as a hypothesis) -- but they aren't!
about 2 years ago
Edwin - thanks for the comment (and hi!).
If evolution is not correct, that has huge ideological implications, so there are strong motivations either way. Atheists and humanists are essentially constrained by their religious beliefs to believe in evolution, so that could be part of the reason why not many scientists are exploring alternatives. (Wanting to keep their jobs, funding and reputations might be another reason.)
And it's certainly the case that those who reject evolution most confidently will almost inevitably have strong creationist beliefs of one kind or another.
I'm trying to make a distinction between a belief (that evolution is wrong) and the implications of that belief (that some kind of intelligent designer, deity, aliens exists). Maybe it's a helpful distinction, maybe not...
about 2 years ago
(Hi Anthony!
Have you met our mutual cosmologist friend yet? Dave who moved to Sussex while ago...)
I guess I was saying that your distinction is indeed helpful, but biased. I disagree that most scientists are "constrained by their religious beliefs to believe in evolution" -- the point of science is to make deductions based on observations, regardless of your beliefs. The comparison you should make is with the *agnostic* scientist (unbiased wrt religion), who will deduce that there is overwhelming evidence in favour of evolution.
about 2 years ago
Hi Anthony,
You said a few things there which will take a little unpacking;
"Atheists and humanists are essentially constrained by their religious beliefs to believe in evolution, so that could be part of the reason why not many scientists are exploring alternatives. (Wanting to keep their jobs, funding and reputations might be another reason.)"
What religious beliefs? I am an atheist (well an agnostic if you want a strict definition) and a humanist and this description doesn't apply to me. I don't have "belief's" i just follow the evidence as it appears to me. I am delighted to change my mind about things. I haven't met a fellow humanist or atheist that doesn't agree with that.
What are you basing this assumption on?
Slurs about jobs and funding seem a little beneath you. This type of argument is normally used by AGW deniers and anti-vaccine types - surely that's enough reason not to use it
"And it’s certainly the case that those who reject evolution most confidently will almost inevitably have strong creationist beliefs of one kind or another."
Yes I haven't met anyone that doesn't fit into both camps.
If you do want to know what atheists/humanists think I will be happy to give you a few personal anecdotes if you like - fire away.
Cheers,
Psi
about 2 years ago
Edwin - I hadn't realised we had a mutual friend. I'll alert him to the fact next time I see him.
Edwin and Psi - no one is unbiased and everyone has beliefs. Wasn't the idea that we are objective unbiased observers completely demolished in the past century or so?
And Psi - that wasn't a slur about jobs and funding, it's just the way things are. There is always a compromise between doing what you really want to do and doing what people will pay you to do.
And, surprisingly enough, these internal and external factors do make the scientific enterprise considerably less objective than we would like to believe it is.