GroshLink

About 80 people nearly filled F&M's Stahr Auditorium to participate in a thoughtful and sympathetic reflections led by Ted Davis, History and Philosophy Science at Messiah College. Ted lives 15 miles from the federal courthouse in Harrisburg and 15 miles from Dover. And he put aside a number of other responsibilites to provide commentary of the Dover case, because he owed it to himself and his profession (note: he believes that he was the only academic to attend more than 1 day of the trial, to sit among an audience largely comprised of journalists), as "the trial was fundamentally about my own discipline, history and philosophy of science." In addition to attending 4 out of the 12 days of the trial, Ted followed transcripts and reviewed press coverage. So according to Ted, what is Intelligent Design (ID) and what can we learn from the recent trial (fyi: my notes are below, here's an audiofile for the presentation from the F&M Philosophy Department's Event Website)

1. ID is a movement w/political and cultural goals, heavily influenced by religion, aimed at toppling "Darwinism" (to be understood as a broad cultural mindset, not simply "evolution").

2. ID is a set of ideas about detecting design within science, coupled w/a critique of "Darwinism."

ID is not "creationism," despite Judge Jones' decision and the testimony leading to it. ID clearly lacks some crucial distinguishing features of creationism and the specific religious concerns that drive creationism.

1. ID takes no stance on the central theological issue that drives creationism, "death before the fall" (related to the question of theodicy). If one does not understand this, one does not understand what creationism is.

2. ID does not "explain" the fossil record by claiming that the Biblical flood accounts for it.

3. ID does not deny the Big Bang theory -- indeed, some of the most interesting "design" arguments assume the truth of the "Big Bang" theory and use aspects of it to argue design, ID does not deny the great antiquity of the earth and the universe (10-12,000 years age, death before the fall, the Flood).

What is ID? Currently, the ID movement is, to use its own language, a "big tent" under whose sprawling canvas there is plenty of room for differences of opinion about theological and biblical issues related to the age of the earth. ID does however resemble creationism in its tone -- evolution is often seen as a false scientific theory and as the leading cause of moral and spiritual decline in modern America. Furthermore, ID adherents have often been reluctant clearly to admonish creationist allies. E.g., a few years ago creationists in Kansas removed the "big bang" theory from state science standards, and many of the same people are allied w/ID advocates now in ongoing efforts to change science education in Kansas. Much confusion about what ID is, relative to creationism, at the popular level. E.g., The Privileged Planet (Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards had their book adapted to DVD, which was given a controversal June 2005 Smithsonian showing. Their book critiqued the Copernican Principle, i.e., we are simply mediocre, there is nothing special about the earth, but this not ID. The DVD also left out material on the "old age" age of the earth, thereby giving it a larger "creationist" audience).

This has led to situations such as the one in Dover, in which the school board members themselves were clueless about what ID actually is. They were unable to answer question from journalists about what ID is, yet they voted to refer to it in the curriculum.

ID is not, at least not yet, an alternative theory to evolution, an alternative "theory of everything" in a certain sense. ID, unlike creationism does not purport to be such a theory. It does not, for example, offer an answer to such questions as how and when dinosaurs came into existence or whether the sun is a first generation star.

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962): "once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place . . . The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneiously the decision to embrace another" (p.77).

Presently there is no ID "theory to teach," i.e., no alternative explanation of the history of the universe and the life it contains.

ID is, however, a philosophical critique of the explanatory efficacy of evolution, i.e., Darwinism is not proved.

ID is not (yet) discussed in professional scientific literature (for the most part), but it is in philosophical journals and academic presses.

What are key ID ideas? 1. Design is evident in nature, and science can detect it. How? William Dembski: when we find, in some aspects of nature, "specified complexity," i.e., enormously improbably events that fit a specific pattern. The explanatory filter faithfully represents our ordinary practice of sorting through events. Where? Driving past Mt. Rushmore, amazing storm last week? SETI: film Contact, human algorithm can find E.T.

2. Design is evident in the universe itself. Fine tuning of the cosmos (linked with big band and strong anthropic principle, and cosmic singularity).

3. Design is evident in the origin of life, the most compelling case is still found in The Mystery of Life's Origin (Charles Thaxton, NY: Philosophical Library, 1984).

4. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, "Irreducible complexity of cells," unguided forces of nature cannot produce some complex structures, e.g., bacterial flagellum.

Steven Meyer (philosopher of science and former geophysicist): design in the Cambrian explosion, the "big bang of biology."

Paul Nelson (On Common Descent, forthcoming from U. of Chicago Press), We need more explanatory tools to account for biological diversity and complexity. That is, we need a "design tool" to supplement "natural causes." Here, "natural" contrasts with "intelligent," not "supernatural."

What are some goals of the ID Movement? 1. A narrower goal: to replace Darwinian evolution as the dominant paradigm in biology, in this present generation if not the next. 2. A wider goal: cultural transformation (E.g., Philip Johnson's The Wedge of Truth. Johnson was enraged by Richard Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker; ID is "Centering wedge of truth, splitting the foundations of naturalism." A critique of Methodical Naturalism)

Dembski believes that ID's challenge to evolution and naturalism is "ground zero of the culture war." Because of Kitzmiller vs. Dover, school boards and state legislators may tread more cautiously, but tread on evolution they will.

Text of the ID statement Dover, PA, teachers were instructed to read to their students, but refused to and the administrators came in to read it: Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence . . . ID is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view . . . Of Pandas and People available in the library.

One thing was entirely clear from the testimony and the judge's decision: the local history of events in Dover linked ID with creationism inseparably -- in Dover, at least. The judge's ruling went further than this, however, and controversy has erupted over "the evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." Both sides desired this ruling. As a result, "it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom." Creationism's Trojan Horse critique Of Panadas and People (the evolution of a piece originally titled Creation and Biology) was crucial to the decision.

Where does Judge Jones' decision leave us? At the moment it applies to 2 area codes until we have a Supreme Court decision. Edward Larson (now at Pepperdine, the leading scholar of creationism and the law) held that a science teacher could teach ID as long as it was for a secular reason. Similarily the ACLU has said that ID can be discussed in a public school classroom as long as it is not the science classroom.

During question-and-answer it was discussed that it is generally true that the leaders of ID movement are modern version of 19th century old earth creationists such as, Edward Hitchock and William Buckland which separate creation of man from the universe/earth after many years. The exception is Michael Behe who has almost the same in position as Asa Gray, "the superintending principle in nature," i.e., nature has been led along certain beneficial lines. Owen Gingerich, Harvard, has recently written God's Universe, in which he argues "the universe looks as if it knew we were coming." Ted pointed out, agreeing w/John Polkinghorne, this is not a knock-down proof for the existence of God and knock-down arguments cannot be mustered for metaphysical conclusions.

"Don't tell God what to do," was Bohr's response to Einstein's quip, "I, at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice."