Hello Everyone,
Since I've been on the contributors list for a little while now, I figured it was about time I posted something.
Since the intelligent design debate has been the subject of a lot of posts, I thought I could start there. I think there are at least three unrelated intelligent design arguments (or three groups of arguments, since there are different examples of each type).
1) "Fine-tuning" arguments which draw attention to the fact that if the relative strength of the four fundamental forces (strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational) had been only slightly different the universe would not have been able to support life. Since there doesn't seem to be a reason why the relative strength of these forces had to be the way it is, it is taken as a contingent fact requiring explanation and, it is often argued, the simplest explanation is that the universe was created by a designer. Possible responses to this line of argument include the argument that we shouldn't be surprised that the universe can contain life - if it couldn't we wouldn't be here to be surprised. There are subtler versions of this point, although I've yet to hear one that seemed to me to be truly satisfactory. A better response, it seems to me, is the one that says that it doesn't make sense to talk about probability here. You can specify the probability of a die rolling six 10 times in a row and if it keeps rolling sixes then sooner things will get to the point at which it makes more sense to believe that the die is fixed than that it's an unlikely accident. But the basic forces being what they are isn't like a die rolling a certain number, and we can't make even approximate judgments of the probability here, so we can't make the inference to design in the way we do with the die.
2) What, to coin a phrase, we might call "soup problems". These involve drawing attention to the difficulty of getting life (i.e. self-replicating organisms) from non-life. It's not too hard to envision how the first amino acids could have been formed, but (to the best of my knowledge, which admittedly isn't very extensive) there's a real puzzle at how the amino acids could have formed proteins by accident. Some argue that it's easier to postulate divine action/design than suppose that this just happened by chance. Obviously we can't fix exact probabilities here, but unlike the first type of argument there doesn't seem any principled reason not to think about this in probabilistic terms.
3) Finally, we have objections to Darwinian theory proper. These come in all sorts of flavors, many of which have been discussed already. One popular point is to draw attention to difficulties caused by organs that are extremely complex but which don't seem like they could have developed in increments every one of which would have given a survival advantage. Darwin himself was aware of this problem and said that it was important to recognize that you can't suppose that an organs current function was its historical function. But critics frequently point out that it's many cases we have no idea what advantage could have been yielded during its development and its only necessary to assume that there must be an answer if you already assume that Darwin's theory must be true.
Now as far as I can tell, all the recent debate about intelligent design has been about issues that come under my third category. Each category of argument is independent of the others, and whether you feel 1 or 2 provide reasons to believe that there is an intelligent designer of the universe need have no bearing on whether you agree with arguments of the third type.
Well, I've got plenty more I could say about this, but for the time being - does the taxonomy seem right to you guys? Have I missed any?
Also, you might be interested in this article by Charles Krauthammer.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701304.htmlI usually like his columns, but this one seemed both misguided and factually mistaken (it's just not true that Newton was a traditional believer - he was a member of the Church of England, but he spent much of the last part of his life trying to decipher hidden codes in the Bible in the manner of Michael Drosnin and - bizarrely - thought that this was his most important work, and the work for which he would be best remembered).
Krauthammer writes: "In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science."
But this is just illiterate (and since Krauthammer obviously isn't illiterate, I can only assume that this is one of those cases where you see what you want to see). Dropping the phrase "natural explanations" doesn't imply that the supernatural is an integral part of science. All it implies is that the supernatural isn't excluded from science, at least not by fiat of definition.
Actually, I think that the supernatural
is properly excluded from science. That is to say, I believe that the scientific enterprise is necessarily naturalistic as a matter of methodology. That doesn't mean that there is no supernatural being, it only means that once you start using God as an explanation for facts about the natural world you are no longer doing science. But what I don't believe is that being good scientists requires us to discount any suggestion that there are facts about the natural world for which a supernatural being is not only a possible, but perhaps even the best explanation.
Finally, it's no good complaining that an argument relies on "gaps" in a scientific explanation if you've already stipulated that scientific explanations must be naturalistic. I don't have a problem with that stipulation, but it should be obvious that once you've made it the only evidence for the supernatural that will show up will be "gaps" because you've already deemed any explanation involving supernatural agency to be necessarily unscientific. Talk about unfalsifiable.
