ID gets the beatdown

[snoopy]

linky

I wonder what will end up coming of this. My take on it: If they are going to rule the I.D. is creationism in disguise, and thus none of I.D. can be taught evolution should be treated likewise- the theories, when applied to the question of our origins, is essentially naturalism in disguise- thus none of evolutionary theory should be permitted because it is also leads to philosophical topics.

[Sarge]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01715.html

Analysis
Defending Science by Defining It

By David Brown and Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A20

The opinion written by Judge John E. Jones III in the Dover evolution trial is a two-in-one document that offers both philosophical and practical arguments against "intelligent design" likely to be useful to far more than a school board in a small Pennsylvania town.

Jones gives a clear definition of science, and recounts how this vaunted mode of inquiry has evolved over the centuries. He describes how scientists go about the task of supporting or challenging ideas about the world of the senses -- all that can be observed and measured. And he reaches the unwavering conclusion that intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one.


His opinion is a passionate paean to science. But it is also a strategic defense of Darwinian theory.

When evolution's defenders find themselves tongue-tied and seemingly bested by neo-creationists -- when they believe they have the facts on their side but do not know where to find them -- this 139-page document may be the thing they turn to.

"That will be extremely useful not only in future cases but to the scientific community, to science teachers and others who are struggling against this tremendous pressure to bring religion into the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest general science organization in the country.

Halfway through his opinion, Jones asks "whether ID [intelligent design] is science." It is a question at the core of the case -- and he does not shy from it.

"While answering this . . . compels us to revisit evidence that is entirely complex, if not obtuse," he writes, "after a six-week trial that spanned 21 days . . . no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than are we to traipse into this controversial area."

He makes plain his hope that many months of intellectual heavy lifting "may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question which is before us."

The ruling gives two arguments for why intelligent design is not science but is, in the judge's words, "an old religious argument for the existence of God."

The first is that intelligent design invokes "a supernatural designer," while science, by definition, deals only with natural phenomena. Second, the court found that intelligent design suffers from blatant flaws in logic, one of the chief tools of science.

Since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, "science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena," Jones writes, noting that the scientific revolution was explicitly about the rejection of "revelation" in favor of empirical evidence.

Since then, he writes, "science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth."

As part of that fact-based approach, Jones emphasizes, science goes out of its way to avoid a search for "meaning" or "purpose."

By contrast, intelligent design's views on how the world got to be the way it is offer no testable facts, choosing instead to rely on authoritative statements. Adherents posit, for example, that animals were abruptly created (many in the same form in which they exist today) by a supernatural designer.


The court found that intelligent-design documents are quite open about the movement's goal of changing "the ground rules" of science to accommodate much more than natural phenomena -- a broadening so great, one witness for intelligent design testified, that science would embrace even astrology.

"Science cannot be defined differently for Dover students than it is defined in the scientific community," Jones writes.

The judge also cites several ways in which he says proponents of intelligent design failed to think logically, each example offering a take-home lesson that could prove useful to people trying to rebut challenges to evolutionary theory.

First, Jones writes, people would be well advised to remember that an argument against one thing cannot necessarily be interpreted as an argument for something else. For example, the fact that the fossil record is incomplete is not evidence that human beings must have been created in their current form.

The world, in other words, is not a zero-sum, dichotomous one in which a vote against one candidate equals a vote for another.

"Just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow," the judge says.

Another logical failing cited by the court concerns one of intelligent design's central arguments: "irreducible complexity."

That argument states that some biological systems -- such as the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike appendage that offers some microbes a means of propelling themselves -- are made of components that, individually, do not have any purpose. Because there would be no evolutionary advantage for those individual parts, they must have arisen all at once -- and expressly for the purpose of serving in that complex organ.

But Jones notes that just because a complex organ cannot work today with one component removed, that does not mean the component did not evolve independently to serve a different purpose and later took on a new role when combined with other parts. The judge notes multiple examples involving the immune system, the blood clotting system, and even the bacterial flagellum itself, in which this appears to have been the case.

Irreducible complexity is in many ways a theological argument -- and a rather old one. A theologian testified at the trial that Thomas Aquinas argued in the 13th century that wherever there is complex design, there must be a designer, and that because nature is complex, it must also have a designer.

While many of the scientists who defended intelligent design in the Pennsylvania trial stopped short of saying that the idea requires belief in God, the defense's chief expert, biochemist Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, noted that intelligent design's plausibility depends on the extent to which a person believes in God.

"As no evidence in the record indicates that any other scientific proposition's validity rests on belief in God . . . Professor Behe's assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view . . . ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition," Jones notes in his opinion.

[Lothar]

Sounds a lot like what I've said a dozen times here. (But I bet others will spend the next 3 days telling me how "I" got smacked down by this judge because I happen to want to develop ID as a general framework...)

[Palzon]

If they are going to rule the I.D. is creationism in disguise, and thus none of I.D. can be taught evolution should be treated likewise- the theories, when applied to the question of our origins, is essentially naturalism in disguise- thus none of evolutionary theory should be permitted because it is also leads to philosophical topics.

Aside from the logical fallacies and general wrongness of your statement...if you try hard enough, you can make any silly thing sound reasonable.

[snoopy]

Aside from the logical fallacies and general wrongness of your statement...if you try hard enough, you can make any silly thing sound reasonable.

I guess I'll restate that, maybe it will clarify things. What I'm saying is that very logical problems that the judge pointed out in ID's claims about origins also apply to Evolution's claims about origins.

First, Jones writes, people would be well advised to remember that an argument against one thing cannot necessarily be interpreted as an argument for something else. For example, the fact that the fossil record is incomplete is not evidence that human beings must have been created in their current form.

The world, in other words, is not a zero-sum, dichotomous one in which a vote against one candidate equals a vote for another.

"Just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow," the judge says.

The judge admits that emperical evidence does not exist to solidly prove that human beings did indeed evolve. Scientific teaching, and people as a whole, tend to see the elimination of ID as a scientific theory of origins as support for evolutionary theory of origins. The judge's point is that scienece doesn't solidly prove either. Thus, I would propose that neither should be taught as science.

Another logical failing cited by the court concerns one of intelligent design's central arguments: "irreducible complexity."

That argument states that some biological systems -- such as the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike appendage that offers some microbes a means of propelling themselves -- are made of components that, individually, do not have any purpose. Because there would be no evolutionary advantage for those individual parts, they must have arisen all at once -- and expressly for the purpose of serving in that complex organ.

But Jones notes that just because a complex organ cannot work today with one component removed, that does not mean the component did not evolve independently to serve a different purpose and later took on a new role when combined with other parts. The judge notes multiple examples involving the immune system, the blood clotting system, and even the bacterial flagellum itself, in which this appears to have been the case.

Again, people see this as a support for evolutionary theory. True, the complex organs could have evolved in a myriad of ways, but emperical evidence for such evolution isn't available. Developing a logically sound hypothesis for the means of evolution of a given complex organ is nothing more than that- a hypothesis if experimentation cannot be done. The idea that a complex organ sprung into existance is on equal standing, as an unproven (and undisproven) hypothesis.

What's my point? When you wander into the subject of origins you necessarily leave behind science, simply because there is no way to perform experiments on the hypotheses that are developed. Thus, I think that the subject of origins has no place whatsoever in the science classroom; be it evolutionary theory of origins or I.D. If you want to talk about origins, do it in a philosophy class, because that's where people's stances on origins must eminate from.

[Palzon]

snoopy, i'm glad you didn't take my somewhat sarchastic remark too seriously.

On a more serious note, I think you may be misunderstanding how science works and how evolutionary biology views science and the particular brand of science it produces. I also think you are misundertanding exactly what the judge said and why.

I'm happy to go into more detail, but perhaps someone else would like a try first since I have addressed this in the past.

On a side note, I found it interesting to learn that this judge is a judicial conservative who was appointed by Dubya himself during the 1st term.

[Sirius]

Yeah, he does have some points. I've heard a lot of people arguing over this on another forum as well... which makes me more or less sick of "no, that idea is stupid" bigots at this point.

But still. There are parts of the evolutionary origin theory that, while more scientifically-based than ID is - IOW they don't invoke anything other than known processes - are still assumptions that conflict with other people's beliefs.

[Duper]

bah.. this is typical of the science community on a whole. Every new idea that didn't compliment thier little world got slapped down (violently often), throught the centuries.

I've said this before... evolution is a bad theory, you can't get more energy out of a system than is put in or than it originated with. Plus, during the early founding of evolution in the 1880's some obvious and deliberate mistakes were made to shore up thier hypothosis. I won't go into them right now.

[dissent]

The theories of evolution stand as a valid conceptual framework for biology independent of any theories of abiogenesis.

[mesh]

On a side note, I found it interesting to learn that this judge is a judicial conservative who was appointed by Dubya himself during the 1st term.

Yeah, and somewhat Ironic.

[Mobius]

How many times is it necessary to say it: ID IS NOT A THEORY!

A theory must, by definition, be falsifiable, and it is impossible to falsify the idea of ID. Thus, it is not a theory. The judge here has done a wonderful service to the people of Dover, and hopefully, the rest of the country too.

He has articulated the truth of the matter: that ID is nothing but repackaged creationism, and is surrounded, and supprted by liars, religious nutcases, manipulators, fools and morons.

Putting ID up against Evolution is a no-contest. Evolution makes the KO in the first round, by default: asking anyone to believe something without a single shred of evidence, when placed against the weight of corroborating evidence for evolution gained over more than 100 years of thoroughly sound scientific enquiry, is simply absurd.

Duper, your pleas to the violation of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics show you know nothing about the subject. There is no violation. Mistakes in science are frequent, so is ego, falsehoods and misadventure. However, the difference in science, as opposed to religious dogma (or ID dogma) is that the truth comes out in science, eventually, and in all subjects.

Falsehoods within science do not last long.

Evolution has stood the test of time, and while ALL the details are not yet known (and may never be known, due to the amounts of time separating the events from our observations) the basic theory is sound: WE EVOLVED FROM LOWER LIFE FORMS. GENETIC MUTATION IS THE DRIVEN ENGINE, AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST IS THE MECHANISM WHICH OPERATES IT.

The rock solid foundation (not pun intended) of evolution is confirmed in the fossil record, and while scientists may argue for punctuated equilibrium, or the "standard model" the fact that scientists do not always agree on the details does not mean the underlying theory is not sound.

That IDers and Creationists simply refuse to accept that "half an eye" is not an eye cut in half, is symptomatic of a non-logical world view. Every aspect of every creature is explainable (in full) by theories and observations based on evolution. ID offers nothing except (It was done by god-like aliens).

I'm so happy for you lot: admitting ID into the realm of the class room, or the laboratory would be the biggest mistake the US has ever made.

[Dedman]

I'm so happy for you lot: admitting ID into the realm of the class room, or the laboratory would be the biggest mistake the US has ever made.

Huh, and here I thought it was slavery. Silly me.

[snoopy]

On a more serious note, I think you may be misunderstanding how science works and how evolutionary biology views science and the particular brand of science it produces. I also think you are misundertanding exactly what the judge said and why.

I'm happy to go into more detail, but perhaps someone else would like a try first since I have addressed this in the past.

Go for it. I currently see the topic of origins as philosophical. I think the "scientific" theories surrounding the subject really boil down to an exercise in probability and statistics. Don't worry too much about addressing what the judge said, I had come to these conclusions before he came along.

I think the general framework of ID has a very valid place in education. It's really isn't a scientific subject, at all. But it is a valid application of probability, and a somewhat interesting one.

Finally, I'd like to draw one more parallel between evolution and ID. Their origins are very similar. Both have been rejected in the scientific community as they started. Both have a general framework behind them that is fully valid. (I would say ID's weakness of not being able to confirm irreducible complexity runs parallel to Evolution's inability to confirm macro evolution.) Both where born out of a philosophical desire to change science's view on origins; Darwin wanted to get them to stop believing in creation, ID tries to get them to start believing in creation again. Both where rejected in the scientific community as a product of people's reaction to a challenge to their philosophical stance, not because the general framework is invalid. The question we have yet to answer: will people realize that ID's general framework has a lot of potential and start to accept it, or will they remain blinded by their emotional response to the philosophical ideas that are being automatically attached to the idea of ID?

[mesh]

A theory must, by definition, be falsifiable...

I am going to disagree. Some definitions:

dictionary.com
OED.

A theory may or may not have hypothesis, and those hypothesis are falsifiable. It is too general to suspect that a theory just contains hypothesis.
There are also laws of nature. If one drops a ball and it does not fall to the earth, another would be inclined to think that one was in orbit, rather than suspect a refutation of gravity.

wait... here is something refutable in the name of hypothesis, and something approximately immune to refutation in the name of... theory? law of nature?... both are "scientific", what gives?

I assert that what is happening is by no means proof, but something one of my friends likened to graph coloring (how many colors do you need so that no country on a globe has an adjacent country with the same color?). He was talking about local consistency.

What is basic in science is evidence, experiment and repeatability. Granted it is impossible to completely repeat something, one would have to go back in time and be at the same place in order to do that. But there is reasonable repeatability in our experiments. In our experiments we test hypotheses. Any implication can take the form of a hypothesis, and any conditional/sufficient implication can be falsified.

An implication is not just to two elements, antecedent and consequent (if p then q, respectively). Both of them contain a slough of entailments and assumptions. The fact that we can falsify implication rests on us being able to show that p is the case and that q is not the case. This at least implies reference to ~q and whatever theories we have that lets us know ~q.

Upon falsification of "if p then q", it is correct to assert that ~p is the case. But it is not just the element p that is negated. There are a list of assumptions that are questionable. Let us assume that I have a theory which predicts that a volcano will explode in two days. My assertion is "if my theory then explosion". Let us also assume that no explosion occurred. This does not falsify my theory, but it causes one to investigate what went wrong with it. Lets just say that I had an off by one error in some recursive function.

Theories don't go away just because their predictions are not witnessed. They can be reduced in scope or reserved as something to look for.

Going back a couple paragraphs I mentioned a theory of reference. In addition to the scientific method, which in this case I am "just" going to say that it is "generally a good method", I am instead going to assert that it is the ability to describe what we are looking for which draws the line between ID and scientific explanation. The definition of scientific concepts are based on Laws of Nature, in other words, defined by those things that are necessary in nature as opposed to accidental in nature. Whereas the referent in ID is largely semantic and contradictory at best.

I am still struggling with the last part. Argue it with me if you want to =D. Let me touch a different angle and a conclusion. It is possible to save a theory (albeit in a ad hoc fashion) to the point where it cannot predict anything, but at the same time still be seen as a theory. Thus it is possible for me to have a theory of God, or of intelligent design and still be a scientist. The issue is, I would struggle for some predictability with these theories. The reason that predictability is hard for these theories is based on the lack of empirical reference in the antecedent and consequent.... hmm this seems rather trite. I will try again later.

If God then I exist. If I did not exist then I would not be writing this right now, which is absurd.

[Lothar]

ID IS NOT A THEORY!
A theory must, by definition, be falsifiable

a SCIENTIFIC theory must, by definition, be falsifiable.

People can have all sorts of theories about anything. I can have a theory about blue monkeys with rocket packs manipulating world events, or a theory about Iceman and Dedman really being the same person, or a grand conspiracy theory about Diebold and Bush, or a theory about whatever I want to have a theory about. All of these things qualify as theories. But they can only be classified as scientific if they can be tested and possibly falsified.

-----

The general framework of ID (by which I mean, trying to detect design in any context) is a theory ABOUT science -- it's a theory that says intelligences can be scientifically detected. It's perhaps best to call this a paradigm, not a theory.

The ID-applied-to-origins-conclusion-that-life-was-designed is a theory that doesn't fall within the realm of science yet. We don't have scientific methods for detecting intelligences yet, so the theory can't be confirmed or denied by science.

I find it ironic that the second *could* be falsified if people worked a bit more on the first. ID-as-an-origins-position could be falsified if people studied ID-as-a-framework more. If we had good methods for detecting intelligences in general, then we'd be able to come to scientifically sensible, responsible conclusions about whether or not life in particular was designed. So, if you are really bothered by people who say "life is designed", the BEST response you can have is to go out and develop good machinery for detecting design (the part of ID I think is cool anyway), and then show that the machinery doesn't reveal design in life.

[Suncho]

My brain just inverted.

[mesh]

machinery seems contingent upon design... its equivocal for me to replace "design" with "total/omnipresent/infinite" understanding... our words seem to have no direction when we talk about infinity in relation to discrete knowledge... unfortunately there is no well ordering when dealing with the empirical.

The fact that suncho's brain inverts is evidence for disparity.

[mesh]

...

[mesh]

Well I triple posted, but I am going to replace redundancy with something frugal.
Suncho, understanding is relatively simple, I think this is necessarily the case. Any one of us will tutor you on any question you have, and we will answer that question in so far as you are willing to accept that:
1. your level of understanding is up to you (it may take a lot of practice). and
2. you acknowledge that our "answers" are likened to ignorant conjectures.

I believe that intelligence (human intelligence because we are talking about intelligent design), is vocalized with the awareness that anything another person says about a subject is at best taken with a grain of salt. No one individual has the answers and that understanding is something personal even if we can communicate it.

} // end frugal.

[Mercury]

ID-as-an-origins-position could be falsified if people studied ID-as-a-framework more. If we had good methods for detecting intelligences in general, then we'd be able to come to scientifically sensible, responsible conclusions about whether or not life in particular was designed.

First, I think you should distinguish between ID-as-origins and ID-in-biology. ID-as-origins includes the idea that our universe is fine-tuned for life, while ID-in-biology is based on the idea that our world is not sufficiently fine-tuned for life, so a Designer needed to intervene to start it and move it along. The two concepts are not necessarily contraditory (one can believe the universe is fine-tuned to a degree, but life or certain stages of life still required intervention), but I think it's a mistake to equate the two. After all, I know how much you desire clarity when it comes to defining ID.

Second, what I've heard from a number of people is that biological ID is about seeing if there's detectable intelligent design in biological life. Even if it can't be detected, it doesn't falsify design. We can never rule out a design that was built through natural processes (and why would a God who made nature be prevented from using it to accomplish his purposes?), or a design perfectly built to look like the result of natural processes.

Even William Dembski has hinted in this direction:

For instance, just because I hold to both Christian theism and ID doesn?t mean that God directly designed and implemented the bacterial flagellum by specifically toggling its components. It could well have happened by a process of natural genetic engineering of the sort envisioned by James Shapiro. The design would be no less real, but God?s role in the design would be distant, not proximal.

[mesh]

Excellent contributions Lothar and Mercury.

[Suncho]

I understand what everybody's saying. My brain just inverted because both sides are turning an argument of ideas into an argument over language. =)

Oh and hi Mesh! How are ya???

[mesh]

Hi Suncho, I'm good and Thank You!

What's an idea?

[snoopy]

I find it ironic that the second *could* be falsified if people worked a bit more on the first. ID-as-an-origins-position could be falsified if people studied ID-as-a-framework more. If we had good methods for detecting intelligences in general, then we'd be able to come to scientifically sensible, responsible conclusions about whether or not life in particular was designed. So, if you are really bothered by people who say "life is designed", the BEST response you can have is to go out and develop good machinery for detecting design (the part of ID I think is cool anyway), and then show that the machinery doesn't reveal design in life.

This is being picky, but I'll bring it up just to clarify things. No amount of development of ID will ever conclusively show that life wasn't design, it will simply remove evidence that it might have been designed. One of the basic truths about something that has been intellegently designed is that the author could have desired to mask the fact that it was designed. A couple of examples of this would be cryptology, or camoflauge. The point of encypting something is to make it appear to be so random that no one can decipher design in the message. Or take camaflauge, it is designed such that any random pair of eyes looking at it in a forest will completely miss the fact that there is a man made item present. The end result of what Lothar is saying is the same, the theory of designed origins is weakened, but I think it's noteworth that this is true due to a lack of positive evidence, rather than an uncovering of negative evidence.

[Lothar]

First, I think you should distinguish between ID-as-origins and ID-in-biology.

I'm speaking of origins in the sense of The Origin of Species, not the origin of the universe. But, yes, the positions of ID-universe and ID-life are different from each other. Thanks for pointing that out.

what I've heard from a number of people is that biological ID is about seeing if there's detectable intelligent design in biological life. Even if it can't be detected, it doesn't falsify design.

Right... but it does falsify the claim that there is detectable design, which is the claim most ID-life-origins people make. If someone claims "life is designed, but there's no evidence for it" there's no point in arguing -- it's a philosophical position based upon external beliefs, and it's not very persuasive. Claims like "life is designed, and we can tell because of IC systems" can be falsified, though, by demonstrating that none of the systems actually show signs of design.

What you're falsifying is not "design", but rather, "detectable design". And that's all it would really take to end the whole controversy, anyway.

[Mercury]

If someone claims "life is designed, but there's no evidence for it" there's no point in arguing -- it's a philosophical position based upon external beliefs, and it's not very persuasive.

I agree it's not a view to be argued scientifically. I disagree that it's unpersuasive. It's persuasive when it gets to the level of the universe itself, where the odds can only be made reasonable by appealing to things like a multiverse with infinite universes. But, once one adds an infinite variable, whether the multiverse or God, Occam's razor no longer clearly favours one or the other.

As for internal consistency, I think it makes sense that a God with the ability to create this universe would create it with the natural processes necessary to do what he/she/it desired it to do. So, the evidence isn't found in various ways the universe is broken and in need of external help, but in how elegant the universe itself is. (When it comes to humanity, I do think it is broken and in need of external help, but that's a separate issue from how I look at creation itself.)

Claims like "life is designed, and we can tell because of IC systems" can be falsified, though, by demonstrating that none of the systems actually show signs of design.

Ah, so all we have to do is examine every biological system at every level -- biochemical to populations -- in the universe. Sure, I'll get back to you next week.

In any case, a more likely way to falsify it is by showing that natural processes can build systems that appear to be IC. Again, something that is now irreducible may have had an earlier stage with extra parts -- the "scaffolding" or "exaptation" explanation (for instance, see the judge's decision, pages 74-75).

What you're falsifying is not "design", but rather, "detectable design". And that's all it would really take to end the whole controversy, anyway.

You're too optimistic. How does one distinguish between detectable design and detectable-with-today's-methods design?

Anyway, I'm going to be gone for a few days. Have a great Christmas Lothar -- and everyone else too!