Why Intelligent Design is a Logical Fallacy

This might be too much, too late, but one of the interesting aspects of where I work is that we have some high-powered scientists who stop by to chat. Related to Drew's note on research at Harvard and MIT, I received the following invitation interesting.

Note that a lot of this is happening in Florida, where they only just recently recognized evolution by name in the state science standards - and then started a move to turn over state funds to religious schools that won't have to teach it! I wonder how many of Benner's associates were educated in Florida schools? I guess its possible - miracles do happen!

"One of the prime directives in NASA's mission program is to deliver vehicles and instruments throughout the solar system to detect signs of life, past or present. This would be easiest if we believed that the life (or its remnants) that might be encountered had chemical similarities to the life that we know on Earth, either in their genetic molecules, their catalytic molecules, or their metabolisms. Recent experiments in the laboratory in the area of synthetic biology have identified many chemistries that, at least in principle, could support life, however. This means that our search for life should not be constrained by tools that would identify only the life that we know. This talk will discuss alternative molecular structures that might support alien life, what laboratory studies suggest that they might be plausible in alien life forms, the interplay between chance and necessity in the emergence of life, and how missions might be designed to not miss such "weird" life.

"Steven A. Benner is a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida. He has BS and MS degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard University.

"The Benner group has Initiated synthetic biology as a field. The Benner group was the first to synthesize a gene for an enzyme, and used organic synthesis to prepare the first artificial genetic systems. These systems have been used to direct the synthesis of artificial proteins having unnatural amino acids, in FDA-approved clinical assays for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C that improves the medical care of over 400,000 patients annually, and to support the first artificial chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.

"Benner’s group invented dynamic combinatorial chemistry, combining ideas from molecular evolution, enzymology, analytical chemistry, and organic chemistry to generate a strategy to discover small molecule therapeutic leads. A German company, Alantos, is today using this technology to develop drug leads.

"The Benner group established paleomolecular biology, where researchers resurrect ancestral proteins from extinct organisms for study in the laboratory, The strategy allows scientists to connect chemistry to function in biology, which is defined by an organism's fitness in a complex and changing environment.

"The Benner group helped found evolutionary bioinformatics, in 1991, launched one of the first web-based bioinformatics servers with Gaston Gonnet, generated the first naturally organized protein sequence databases, and helped develop the MasterCatalog that generated ca. $4 million in sales. This work also supported the first exhaustive matching of a modern protein sequence database, the first convincing tools to predict structure in proteins from sequence data, strategies to detect distant homologs using structure prediction, and "post-genomic" tools to detect changing protein function.

Might also want to take a look at this post from James McGrath discussing recent reviews of Behe's latest book. The link to a synopsis of Ken Miller's review is quite good.

To add to what Ann said -- ID does not represent an acceptable scientific explanation because it does not attempt to explain all of the data available. If ID was laid out in a way that explained why kangaroos are in Australia and not in the US, and why the cambrian explosion created so many different body plans which were not carried forward, etc., then it might be considered a valid "hypothesis". But to even be considered it would need to be tested -- And I think everyone knows what would happen, this is why ID remains a fuzzy idea that can be entirely described in a paragraph.

Good catch Ann. I think part of the problem is that people don't know much about what evolution is unless it is filtered through a creationist-sort argument. Evolution proceeds from natural selction not the other way around as you have noted. I think people need to learn two things: A) what a scientific theory actually is since so much common language confuses theory with either inference or hypothesis and B) what the process of evolutionary biology actually is. I am not sure that our science classrooms are doing a good enough job of this, or dogmatic pastors are un-learning many at a far more successful rate reinforcing ignorance to why evolution on many levels is a rather brute fact of existence to couch it in philosophical language.

It is a real puzzle

RE: “ID doesn’t represent an acceptable scientific explanation, therefore non-ID does represent an acceptable scientific explanation”

This is not the argument for natural selection, and natural selection cannot be characterized simply as "non-ID". Natural selection is a genuine, original and highly productive scientific explanation for the observed fact of evolution (decent with modification and the progression of life from simpler to more complex forms), not simple a negation of "God did it."

In fact, characterizing the theory of natural selection as an "argument" is wrong, because it is not some sort of a logical construction, it is a scientific theory. It is true that it is logically consistent and cohesive - so are most theologies - but that is just a basic entry requirement, not anything to brag about. It can be supported by evidence, observation, experimentation, but it cannot be proven or disprove in the way that a mathematical or logical theorem is.

ID does not, in fact, represent an acceptable scientific explanation, but natural selection is not accepted simply because ID is not scientific. The alternative is to shrug and say, "We do not yet know the (scientific) answer." Other than the fact that they really are interested in coming up with an acceptable scientific explanation and will keep trying, most scientists are comfortable with simply not knowing for the time being. Darwin did not "make up" natural selection simply "due to the distaste for God" and the desire to promote atheism. He was just doing his part to advance our scientific understanding of God's creation. And he did a damn good job.

In the context of biology, evolution means more than just change. It means adaptive change or, to use an older, more loaded term, progressive change. This is why teleological causes have always had an intuitive appeal in biology. At least since Aristotle.

Even used metaphorically, it makes sense to talk about the evolution of computers and theological systems of thought because we are referring to efforts to make them more useful and . Characterizing a car accident as evolution is funny for exactly this reason. The car didn't get better!

Properly speaking, evolution is the observation that requires explanation. Natural selection is the theory that Darwin proposed to explain evolution. The significance of the theory of natural selection is that it successfully explained evolution (including the seemingly teleological aspects of it) with a wholly materialistic mechanism. It allows biology to be wholly scientific in that it can be fully approached through scientific "methodological materialism."

This, I believe, is why it is often said that "evolution" (the theory of natural selection) is the foundation of biological science. Without it, biology is outside of methodological materialism, and therefore not, at its most basic level, scientific.

Of course, methodological materialism is a methodological assumption. You do not have to be a materialist in order to confine yourself to materialistic explanations in the scientific domain.

Ok, but I'm looking for an explicit detailed description of how that change occurred. The "Theory" of evolution does just that, that is why it is a "Theory"; because it explains the available evidence the best. It does more than just say:"it... um.... evolved", it provides explicit detail on just how and why.

ID does not to my knowledge propose any kind of specific explanation of the available data.

If you would agree that God created the universe and designed it with specific rules in place so that by their action the Earth evolved and through natural selection humans evolved. Then I don't have anything to say.

However if you call on the action of an intelligent being to do things at particular times outside of these rules then I would challenge you to provide an explanation of what happened with some detail.

Otherwise we are just talking in circles.

Paul, the word "evolution" is just a synonym for "change". Yes, change explains everything.

Father to daughter: "Why did the car become all crumply looking?" Daughter to father: "The shape of the car, um, like it evolved."

Evolution simultaneously explains everything and also explains exactly nothing.

I can also say that God evolved the universe and life in 6 24-hour days about 10,000 years ago and I am still completely within the scientific usage of the word evolution. That is why we talk of the evolution of computers and operating systems, or even the evolution of Christian theology.

I guess I don't really understand the arguments against evolution here. You claim that we will never actually observe life being formed in the lab so we can't claim that is what happened. Science is about finding the best explantion for the evidence at hand. Evolution explains almost all of the evidence quite well -- and since it is such a huge propostion of course you are going to be able to poke holes in it. But please explain the alternative theory -- ID really doesn't exist beyond some fuzzy inclination to believe that someone designed the universe -- If so, then please explain how that happened -- why did it take 4.5 billion years on Earth? How about the fossil record -- why did we start with bacteria and then gradually increase in complexity through the cambrian explosion, then move onto land etc.? Please provide the details here because I haven't seen them anywhere else.

OK. I can buy the argument that ID needs some more development as a philosophical concept. What I don't accept is an argument that is of the form, "ID doesn't represent an acceptable scientific explanation, therefore non-ID does represent an acceptable scientific explanation". This is where I think Dawkins is at.

As far as science and origins in the classroom goes, I am for a neither creation nor evolution approach. It seems to me better to decouple origin speculations from science altogether, rather than fight over which ideology owns the science curriculum.

Regardless of any of that and regardless of anything we can do in a lab, it is still a logical fallacy to posit therefore that all properties of the known universe were instantiated by an intelligence. Now to be sure, I do believe in a God that performed such creative activity. But that is a claim of faith and not of deductive logic, nor of scientific inquiry. It is this confusion of a speculative principle of faith with a logico-deductive argument that I am calling into question with the post. It is where ID fails and is simply not a theoretical construct by any means other than that of theology or philosophy engineering argument notwithstanding.

It seems a bit dubious to say that the experiments at Harvard and MIT don't involve ID, given the intelligence of the researchers standing around in the room! They really didn't tweak things a wee bit?

Of course we can cause silicon atoms to spontaneously rearrange into crystals. It is still quite a leap to say that therefore computers (hardware+software) formed without an intelligent designer. Even if I accept the experiments forming proteins, this is comparable to random crystals forming in silicon.

Most of the high energy physics experiments are related to speculative hierarchies of theories that would seem to preclude any hope of making sensible deductions. When I was studying upper division college physics, the main thing that impressed me was how the bizarre behaviors were necessary to deal with issues that were given terms like "the ultra-violet catastrophe". It seems that without all of these strange complexities, the material structures of the universe will either blow up or collapse in a few nano-seconds.

"No one has ever seen basic chemicals rearrange to form life, nor will they ever, due to the time involved."

This actually is not true. Experiments both at Harvard and at MIT have been developed in which proteins have been formed out of the recombination of amino acids in different solutions. They are currently working on using this to develop an artificial DNA.

Moreover, there is plenty of countervailing evidence in terms of heat death in stars, black holes, and so forth that point back to the quantum inflationary period. Particle physicists experiment with these energy forms and forces on a daily basis.

And using a machine analogy in a textbook does not therefore mean that a designer must have designed the universe. There is no evidence to suggest that this is necessary to understand how the universe works. ID is a moot point at best for empirical observation. Hence it is an article of faith or philosophy and ought to remain there.

Of course we also have the fact that the engineering paradigm is the only one that really exists - that is we can actually see it in action from start to end as a new widget is created. The other one involving millions and billions of years is impervious to experiment. No one has ever seen basic chemicals rearrange to form life, nor will they ever, due to the time involved. Evolution in the sense of daily change certainly exists, but evolution as a substitute for ID? No one has ever seen this. It's existence has only been postulated due to the distaste for God.

The other item is that if you spend enough time in the molecular biology texts, it is apparent that life really is a complex machine, and even the biologists use complex machine ideas and ID analogies to explain how biology works, while then attributing the ID attributes to evolution. ID is really inescapable, even for the atheist biologist. My favorite is Dawkins comparison of bat echo location to sonar (ID'd) and radar (ID'd), and then declares that the similarity proves evolution! That was from The Blind Watchmaker. Do they teach how to form an induction argument in the UK?

There is one more argument: Intellectuals (read scientists) can't argue against ID because it is an all pervasive part of their subconscious being and thus it is impossible for them to properly conceive of how things might work without it.