Human Genome Project - Part 2

Filed under: ID — Barry Carey at 11:45 am on Friday, January 26, 2007

Yesterday, I provided several quotes from experts and others concerning the implications of the findings of the human genome. There was an obvious disagreement about the signficance of the resulting research. Why do two equally trained scientists look at the findings and differ over the meanings? Furthermore, why is there not vigorous debate in the scientific community over whether the appearance of design is real or illusory, and how biology bears on the proposition that all men are created equal, have certain rights by nature of that fact, and are superior to all other forms of life? These are important societal and cultural questions.

Phillip E. Johnson, in The Right Questions, answers this question by claiming that the intellectual culture of our time enforces a dichotomy between “belief” and “knowledge” and between “faith” and “reason” which makes it almost impossible to ask the right questions. Science is thought to give “knowledge” while religion only provides “beliefs”. Scientific reason is contrasted with religious faith, which modern society takes to be belief withoutreasons. Following this same logic, science has an a priori commitment to explaining all phenomena in terms of natural causes only. This, in theory, leaves open the possibiility that the vast, complex information contained in the genetic code is due to an intelligent mind. However, in practice, this will not be conceded because this implies giving up on science and embracing ignorance. Johnson states:

Because philosophical naturalism is thus incorporated in the very definition of science, most biologists think it is as much a scientific fact that the genome is the product of natural causes alone as it is that DNA is composed of organic chemicals.

Scott C. Todd explained in a letter to Nature:

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.

I must say that I grew up in a state of naivete regarding science. I always assumed that science was interested at getting at the truth about our natural world. It turns out that science is not committed to the best explanation of the data and observations, but is instead committed to a philosophical worldview called naturalism. Integrity demands that the so-called “experts” go where the evidence leads. Integrity, unfortunately, is today sacrificed at the altar of naturalism.

6 Comments »

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Comment by doctor(logic)

January 28, 2007 @ 11:39 pm

It turns out that science is not committed to the best explanation of the data and observations, but is instead committed to a philosophical worldview called naturalism.

Science is committed to the idea that an explanation has to be more than a restatement of the data one is trying to explain. ID makes no predictions, so it can only restate observations, not explain them.

The question we are answering is this: “What is X such that X predicts the observations?” You’re not answering this question because your X (God) predicts whatever we observe, no matter what we observe. You’re just restating the question.

It may seem like commonsense to you that you have an explanation, but it’s actually not sensible at all.

If you have some data points on a chart, an explanation is a curve that passes through the data points. A curve interpolates and extrapolates. It predicts.

However, what you are doing is drawing dots over the data points on your graph and claiming that you’ve explained the data. If you observe a new data point, it can never contradict any of the dots you’ve drawn so far. When you “explain” your data this way, you can never be wrong. If you subtract the observations from your conclusions, you’re not left with a discontinuous curve, you’re left with nothing at all.

Prediction is vital to science and vital to explanation in general. ID fails to make predictions because it fails to specify enough about the designer to make any. In principle, ID could be specific enough to do so, but when the designer is God, there’s a reluctance to say what the designer was constrained to do.

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Comment by Barry Carey

January 29, 2007 @ 1:10 pm

Doctor Logic, Do not accuse ID of doing exactly that which scientific naturalism does. It also “explains” everything! No piece of evidence is evidence against naturalistic explanations. It must fit, so it will be made to do so. It is an explanation which explains everything and hence is no explanation at all.

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Comment by Jeremy

January 29, 2007 @ 3:24 pm

This little discussion almost helps illustrate the way that I’ve been becoming to see the concept of intelligent design. Scientific naturalism itself can be made to fit any sort data, but at the same time, we may expect to see certain sorts of things if it were true. The same seems to be true of the concept of intelligent design. The idea by itself can be made to fit any data, but also, if it turns out that nature is designed, then we might expect to see certain features instead of others. But it seems to me that scientific naturalism isn’t a scientific theory at all…it is a guiding belief that many scientists have about nature that may or may not affect how they do their science. The same seems to me to be true of design. Although we may see things in certain ways that gives the appearance of design which we would expect to see if there were design, design inferences don’t seem to be made in the same way that scientific ones are made. This isn’t to say that design inferences are not rational or justified, but that perhaps they function the same way scientific naturalism does, namely, as a presupposition that guides the way we look at nature. That being said, and I’m not overly strong about my views at this point, there may be danger in believing that either sort of guiding belief functions as a scientific conclusion rather than a scientific presupposition.

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Comment by doctor(logic)

January 30, 2007 @ 10:38 am

It’s time to stop this oversimplification.

Neither ID nor neo-Darwinian evolution are scientific theories. They are classes of predictive scientific theories. The difference is that the class of evolutionary theories is not an empty set because there are predictive scientific theories that belong to the class of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theories (many of which have been verified). In contrast, there are no predictive scientific theories that belong to the ID class.

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Comment by Barry Carey

January 30, 2007 @ 1:12 pm

Doc, Would you please explain what you mean by “classes” of theories? Then, please tell me what examples of neo-Darwinian theories have been verified?

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Comment by doctor(logic)

January 31, 2007 @ 2:01 am

Barry,

Biologists have made a number of discoveries about evolution, including natural selection, common descent, genetics, and random mutation. None of these discoveries are controversial, not even among ID advocates (the sane ones anyway). Both IDists and evo-biologists have incorporated known facts about evolution, but neither makes specific predictions about the outcome of a particular experiment.

We can imagine two predictive, neo-Darwinian theories (call them T1 and T2) that predict different outcomes for the same particular study. For example, T1 might claim that rate of acceptance of mutations is environmental-stress-independent, while T2 claims that it was environmental-stress-dependent. So, while neo-Darwinism encompasses theories that agree on verified facts of biological evolution (T1 and T2 both predict common descent, etc.), those theories can be mutually inconsistent. Thus, neo-Darwinism is a class of mutually inconsistent theories that meet certain criteria (natural selection, common descent, etc.).

I think ID advocates are willing to accept the verified results of evolutionary biology. So, two theories of ID (call them D1 and D2) would both predict common descent (or they’ll be inconsistent with the data). However, D1 and D2 would differ in their claims about the rate of acceptance of mutations as a function of environmental stress (something measurable in a specific experiment). So, like neo-Darwinism, ID is a set which includes mutually exclusive theories that feature intelligent design.

Notice now that it is relatively straightforward for the neo-Darwinist to devise an actual, predictive theory. The biologist simply makes observations, then proposes a corresponding physical mechanism that predicts (using verifiable laws of physics and biochemistry) a specific outcome in an experimental test.

Yet the ID advocate runs into trouble. His designer isn’t just an intelligent agent with limitations. His designer is God. There’s no need nor advantage in God using the same technique twice. So, the ID advocate is reluctant to say that the designer preferred one technique over another (D1 vs. D2). Besides, making such a distinction means talking publicly about the designer, and the ID advocate knows he’ll be laughed out of the room if he starts talking theology. For this reason, no experimental prediction (choice of D1 over D2) ever gets made by the ID advocate.

In principle, ID could be predictive and scientific. It would need to take one known experimental result, then devise an intelligent design rationale that predicts the known result and an unknown one. ID advocates don’t do that.

The claim that naturalistic science will never explain a thing is not itself a scientific claim. Today, that is what ID is doing because it cannot devise any actual scientific theories of ID.

One more thing. The modern evolutionary synthesis isn’t just consistent with common descent, natural selection and so forth. The observed facts are pretty much the only possibility consistent with the synthesis. In contrast, there are an infinite number of possibilities consistent with ID. There was no need for God to have relied on common descent, mutation, natural selection and the like. ID does not explain the observations so far. ID is consistent with them, but does not explain them because ID does not generically predict them. Of the billions of possible ways of designing living things, God chose the one way that can be explained by the class of neo-Darwinian theories?

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