Intelligent DesignCreationism Evolves Again

Taner EdisTaner EdisTruman State UniversityTruman State University

www2.truman.edu/~edis

2004 Intelligent Design 2

Recent History

Religiously motivated anti-evolutionary thought has always accompanied evolution.

Early on, old earth, or even evolution as progressive development was acceptable among many theological conservatives.

Young-earth creationist revival in mid-20C. Today, “Intelligent Design” creationism is

in the news –– Ohio 2002, Missouri 2004.

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Landmark Books –– YEC

Though having an anti-intellectual reputation, the history of creationism can be summarized through landmark books.

Whitcomb & Morris 1961. Revive YEC.

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1990’s –– ID Begins

1991: Phillip Johnson, Berkeley law professor. Leading ID spokesman.

Not fundamentalist in tone, looking for broad-based opposition to evolution.

Issue: naturalism.

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“Irreducible complexity”

1996: Michael Behe, Lehigh biochemist. Leading ID biologist. Catholic.

Accepts common descent––against Darwinian mechanism.

ID movement.

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“Specified complexity”

1998-now: William Dembski, mathematician and philosopher. Leading theorist of ID.

ID irreducible form of explanation, distinct from chance & necessity.

ID is a revolution.

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Books, books, more books

Dembski has 3 books, 4+ edited books on ID.

Not just biology but physics, AI, theology, morality, law, …

Broad, “information-theoretic” objections to naturalistic evolution.

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Dembski’s filter

Günaydinlar!

Bugün hava iyi,

ancak yarin daha

kötü olacak gibi.

Bulut çok, ama ne

yapar, belli degil.F G

m1m2

r12

contingency

contingency

complexity

specifi-

cation

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The “Wedge Strategy”

ID politically ambitious. Well-funded. Discovery Institute. “Wedge strategy”––ID dominance by 2019. Many media, popular, and scientific productions foreseen.

ID is involved in battles over evolution in secondary education.

Politically tied to Religious Right. Pre-modern ideals (Forrest & Gross 2003).

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Intellectual Creationism?

YEC too sectarian, too absurd-appearing. ID downplays age of earth, scripture, even

God. It appeals to grand theistic themes; relies on intuition that order comes from intelligent design. Tries for a broad base.

Could appeal beyond scientific community? Why such a narrow constituency for ID?

Why a failure in intellectual life?

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Islamic Creationism

Looking at Muslim world puts ID in perspective.

Outright creationism is popular and successful. Harun Yahya in Turkey.

Obvious design in nature.

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ID & Muslim high culture

Creationism and design in nature still part of Muslim high culture.

Religious intellectuals, especially those into “Islamization of science,” attack Darwinian evolution. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Osman Bakar, Muzaffar Iqbal…

The religious high culture takes an generic ID-like view of nature.

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Grand Themes

ID, Muslim and Western, is not centered on biology for its own sake. It is concerned with the irreducibility of intelligence, of creativity. It defends mind-matter dualism, a hierarchical view of nature. Grand themes of Near Eastern monotheism.

ID no longer implicit in Western intellectual culture. Need to reestablish it. Science!

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War of the theologians

ID attracts many religiously conservative philosophers: Dembski, Plantinga, Meyer, Moreland, Nelson, etc. etc.

Theological liberals notably cold. Few examples of sympathy to ID.

Still, some examples of ID-like themes of information, top-down causality surface among liberals.

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Information from above

Example: John Haught, 2000. God as “the ultimate source of the novel informational patterns available to evolution.”

Also John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke.

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Common concerns

Could ID bridge the conservative-liberal gap in theology? Shared themes about top-down causation, purpose, information, etc.

ID does not necessarily reject all evolution. Common descent ~OK. Guidance and progressivity appeals to liberals.

Some liberals willing to endorse scientific fringe. E.g. parapsychology.

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Never the twain…

But neither side seeks a common ground. ID debate falls into old creation/evolution

pattern: conservative culture warriors against liberals as best allies of science and modernity.

There is a cultural split; the dispute over science is just one point of contention.

Even so, what scientists think is decisive.

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“Here we go again!”

Reaction to ID within scientific community: overwhelmingly dismissive.

ID seen as nothing but old-fashioned creationism revived and given a more intellectual-appearing veneer.

ID attracts attention as a nuisance for education, not as a new idea to debate.

ID’ers need excuses for this rejection.

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Interfering philosophers

Scientists not overly anti-religious. But science has a naturalistic bias?

Robert Pennock: science must follow methodological naturalism (MN). Excludes ID, protects liberal religion.

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Is science naturalistic?

Philosophers dictating what science must be do not have a great track record.

Historically strange: Biologists adopted evolution as better explanation––they didn’t suddenly decide creation was not allowed.

Explanations involving design and intent not odd, e.g. in history. Nothing wrong with ID in biology as a hypothesis.

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Practical naturalism

Philosophical ID supporters attack MN, as illegitimately excluding ID.

They’re right. Politically bad move as well. Better view: Naturalism has been successful

in recent history. The best-supported broad description of the world. We expect this to continue––naturalistic ideas are favored.

ID could succeed in science. But difficult.

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How could ID succeed?

ID’s critics have to learn ID to criticize it effectively. Critics coming over gives boost to new ideas––including Darwinian evolution in its time.

Young Turks might buck establishment. Scientists would be impressed most by new

research driven by ID, which produces results not anticipated by evolutionists.

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What has ID achieved?

Scientific critics aplenty; no converts. No Young Turks in research. Plenty of popular outreach, but no scientific

production and no increase in respect among scientists––the only glaring failure in the “Wedge Strategy.”

Intellectual output focused on complaints about mainstream science.

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ID: a scientific failure

No crisis in biology. Darwinian mechanism can produce information. “Irreducible complexity” not an issue.

Physicists also have a lot to say about producing complexity, none ID-friendly.

AI, cognitive science full of evolutionary ideas––our own “intelligent designs” are enabled by Darwinian mechanisms.

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Morefit

Lessfit

If you are not running this on a Macintosh, you may have to skip this slide.

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No preset goals!

Evolution is not a search for a preset “best solution.”

Genuine creativity can arise from rules and randomness, but again, the lack of a preset goal is crucial (Edis 1998).

Though ID raises occasional interesting questions about complexity, these are largely answered already.

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Where does ID go from here?

ID has made very little headway among intellectual circles.

But the same constituency for old-fashioned creationism also supports ID.

ID movement is likely to continue drawing on this constituency for support. The real battle has always been political.

Keep watching school boards.

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The political motivation

The motivations to push ID are the same as those which drive YEC.

ID proponents themselves argue that evolution is a social disaster.

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ID resources on the web

Discovery Institute: www.discovery.org International Society for Complexity,

Information & Design: www.iscid.org Intelligent Design Network (grassroots):

www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org www.origins.org

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ID critics on the web

The National Center for Science Education (your first resource for anything creationism-related): www.ncseweb.org

www.talkorigins.org www.talkreason.org

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Shameless plugs

Taner Edis, The Ghost in the The Ghost in the UniverseUniverse (Prometheus 2002).

Matt Young and Taner Edis, eds., Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism (Rutgers University Press 2004). This summer!

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My web site

www2.truman.edu/~edis Contains all sorts of articles on ID,

creationism and other topics, including the slides of this talk.

My e-mail is edis@truman.edu

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In Short

ID is intellectually sophisticated creationism. It touches on all our sciences, not just biology. It defends grand themes.

Rejected by scientific community. Few allies even in wider intellectual culture. We will keep encountering the ID

movement, as part of the culture wars of religious conservatism.

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Thanks for listening!

Any questions?