withallyourmind.net

Access Research Network, an organization which seeks to provide accessible information on science, technology and society from an intelligent design perspective, has launched a new website called ID Arts. As an ID supporter who also has an interest in the arts, the site looks quite interesting. The website contains the following explanation about their site:

Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If philosophical and scientific concepts of intelligent design (ID) are valid, we believe they will both inspire, and be reflected in, our art, music, literature and film.

This is not a brand new observation, of course. Francis Schaeffer has written numerous books explaining the relationship between worldview and art and culture. ID Arts further explains its goals:

We’ve been talking with artists, musicians, authors, poets, and filmmakers about these ideas and we’ve discovered several who are already producing creative works that fit into the ID Arts category. This website features the work of some of these artists and we hope will inspire others. Our desire is that the ID Arts initiative will open up a whole new dialogue in our culture about whether we live in a world of chance or a world of design.

The homepage of the site contains a small reproduction of apainting by Salvador Dali called Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (See below). I’ve actually seen this large painting in person at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. It also links to this interesting commentary on the work by Jonathan Ashar. In it, Ashar concludes (you’ll have to read more of the commentary to see his support for his conclusion):

The Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid is essentially a tribute to lives lost in the Barcelona flood. However, Dalí makes the painting into a synthesis of the ideas of science and religion. I see two possible interpretations of Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid: either, God has the ultimate higher significance, or, religion and science are parallel and balancing. This is certainly not Dalí’s first painting without a single clear meaning.

I’ve only briefly looked at the site and hope to spend more time examining it later.

I’ve just finished Angus Menuge’s excellent book Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science. I began the book with the ambitious goal of providing reviews of each chapter as I read. This lasted for a couple of chapters. The book is much more rigorously philosophical than many books which are intended for a more popular audience. I found it increasingly difficult to summarize a chapter’s worth of philosophical argument in a quick blog post. So… you’ll just have to read it yourself. It was quite good though and I think he is successful in applying many of the principles of intelligent design as used in the physical and biological sciences to rationality and the mind.

John DePoe states in his Amazon review of the book:

Angus Menuge has written an excellent book defending the concept of “agency” against the most challenging arguments raised by contemporary materialists. Menuge shows that the Christian worldview gives an account of human agency that is not available to the most sophisticated accounts materialism. For example, Menuge engages Dan Dennett, Paul Churchland, Jerry Fodor, and other key figures in contemporary philosophy of mind. The criticisms Menuge brings to light show the breaking points in leading theories of mind. I read this book as a philosophy graduate student taking a philosophy of mind seminar, and I found that Menuge’s criticisms and scholarship can run with the best of them. His carefully documented work of scholarship was a valuable tool for me as a student even in graduate school.

But Menuge’s book is not just a piece of critical scholarship. He also advances some constructive theories that explain crucial features of human agents. A theistic worldview provides tools for maintaining a robust theory of personal agency that are unavailable to materialists, which Menuge brings into focus with rigorous logic and clarity.

Being the economic and social conservative that I am, I will periodically head over to the National Review Online to peruse the offerings. I was disappointed to read John Derbyshire’s flawed review of the recent movie (which he hasn’t even seen) Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. I was glad to see David Berlinski, who not only saw but appeared in the movie, respond at NRO today. Berlinski is the author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.

I received an email a few weeks ago from Marc who asked if I would be willing to answer two main points which ID critics cite when attempting to label ID as unscientific. Today, I’ll take a look at one of the two, that is, “Isn’t ID internally inconsistent because it invokes the existence of something even more complex to explain the complexity of life on earth?” This is an objection that Dawkins refers to in his book The God Delusion. No explanatory advance is made in such a case as now one would be left with an even more complex entity needing explanation.

William Lane Craig addresses this issue in his evaluation of the Dawkins’ central argument of his book which can be found here. Here are a couple of take home points in answering this objection.

First of all, this objection cannot be fully answered without considering how one is to weigh competing explanations for a phenomenon. This is not a simple question and has been the subject of much philosophical reflection. It is implied in this objection that simplicity is the most important criteria. However, there are other important criteria which must be weighed, such as, explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so on.

Second, if one grants that simplicity is the most important criteria in this case, the objection contains a fatal flaw in its assumption that a divine designer (I must interject that ID as a scientific endeavor does not identify the designer as a divine being, but many understand the designer to be divine, and the objection implies the designer is divine.) is an equally complex or more complex entity than the universe. Craig states:

As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity.

So, this objection confuses a mind’s ideas, which may be complex, with a mind itself, which is a simple entity. Therefore, the objection fails since an advance in simplicity is acheived by positing a divine mind.

One of the most controversial aspects of the recent movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is the attention given to the alleged link between Darwinism and the Holocaust. I think that this link is legitimate. No one that I’ve heard, including those interviewed in Expelled, actually believe that all Darwinists are Nazis or that Darwinism inevitably leads to such horrific deeds such as those perpetrated by Hitler. In fact, this point is made clear in the movie. Berlinski, in Expelled, rightly points out that Darwinism was not a sufficient condition for the Nazi atrocities, but it was a necessary one.

Tom Gilson has an excellent discussion of the issue in his post: Darwin-Nazi Link: Fundamentally Wrongheaded? He responds to a charge that this whole linkage is unimportant. He raises a few major points:

1. It is important not to ignore this link because it is important to learn from history. He suggests that the potential for similar consequences are present in a number of contemporary issues.

2. It’s not quite true that there is only a historical link and no philosophical link from Darwin to Hitler.
a. Naturalistic Darwinism, if taken to be the sole explanation for all of life, erases all ethical requirements.
b. There is an ontological implication in Darwinism: humans are the same kind of thing as animals.

Hitler treated humans like animals; Darwinism says that’s what we are.

3. Ideas matter. They have consequences.

4. Influencers certainly can be blamed for the actions of others that follow. In this case, Darwin opened an ideological or ethical door which would not otherwise have been opened.

Here is Angus Menuge’s powerpoint presentation for his recent debate with P.Z. Meyers. It is titled, “Does Neuroscience Leave Room for God?” It is a nice resource with some interesting quotes pertaining to the subject. Among them is this one which causes one to question the materialistic commitment of many modern scientists:

“[A] rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.” - William James, The Will to Believe.

HT: Dangerous Idea

This is the final post in a series of blogs looking at the question of whether intelligent design is merely religion masquerading as science as so many critics charge. I’ve answered several assertions so far, and today, I turn to one final objection - that intelligent design wishes to ban the teaching of Darwinian evolution from the public schools, replacing it with religious dogma. This may, at first glance, seem legitimate because the term “intelligent design” has been used by some groups in some local school systems to advocate the teaching of young earth creationism using the Bible as a text, but most advocates of the intelligent design movement don’t hold this view.

For example, the Discovery Institute, perhaps the leading intelligent design advocate, does not advocate that schools should cease to teach Darwinism. Instead, they contend that…

… evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned.

Presently, Darwinism is taught as if it has no weaknesses and is universally accepted. ID critic, BarbaraForrest states:

There is no controversy in the mainstream scientific community about either the fact of evolution or the major aspects of evolutionary theory.

This begs the question, since to make such a claim one must classify anyone who doubts Darwinism as a scientist out of the mainstream. It also commits the fallacy of consensus gentium. However, truth isn’t decided by a majority vote.

Although one would not think so based on the rhetoric of intelligent design opponents, the major intelligent design organizations actually recommend the teaching of Darwinian evolution, including both its strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, however, The Discovery Institute’s policy emphasizes that there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntary discussion of the scientific theory of design in a classroom, and that teachers should not be persecuted or harassed if they choose to discuss the scientific evidence for design.

The Dover decision of December 2005 which classified intelligent design as religion, not science, perpetuated the confusion that intelligent design is identical to creationism. Michael Behe, in his response to that decision, sums up the issue well, stating that the courts mistaken ruling was premised on…

… a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; an incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID.

This is the 5th in a series of posts considering the charge by ID critics that ID is nothing more than camouflaged religion. I’ve already considered several assertions offered in support of this claim. Today, I look briefly at another, specifically - Does the observation that a theory may have religious implications mean it is nothing but religion disguised as science?

Critics reject intelligent design as science because of its religious implications. It is certainly true that intelligent design may have religious implications, but so does the science of Darwinism. It is unfair to criticize intelligent design as unique in this. The Big Bang has religious implications, but that does not disqualify it as a scientific theory. Michael Behe, in his testimony at the Dover, PA intelligent design trial, made reference to an editorial in the prestigious scientific journal Nature which…

… carried the title “Down with the Big Bang”, and called the Big Bang a ‘philosophically unacceptable’ theory which gave succor to “Creationists.”

Science should proceed to investigate and explain the natural world without regard to the theological or philosophical implications which may follow. Some critics of modern science think that a dogmatic commitment to certain philosophical underpinnings and a distaste for certain philosophical implications is detrimental to the quest of better understanding the natural world. If one excludes an entire subset of answers a priori, one runs the risk of making the data conform to the wrong explanation. As Alvin Plantinga has observed:

If you exclude the supernatural from science, then if the world or some phenomena within it are supernaturally caused — as most of the world’s people believe — you won’t be able to reach that truth scientifically.

Next, I’ll consider a final objection critics offer in their efforts to paint ID with the brush of religion.

This is the 4th in a series of posts considering the objection of ID critics that ID is nothing more than religion. In my last post, I answered two assertions put forth in support of this claim. What about a third, that is, that because some intelligent design scientists are religiously motivated in their work, their work must be considered religion.

The claim that intelligent design is religious rather than scientific because intelligent design scholars might have religious motivations for their work is found everywhere. In fact, opponents typically spend much time publicizing the Christian beliefs of many of the leaders of the intelligent design movement when attempting to discredit intelligent design.

But, if one’s religious beliefs are enough to disqualify one as a scientist, then wouldn’t the public have to dismiss much of the progress made during the scientific revolution? Many great scientists of the time, including Galileo and Newton were motivated by religion do their work. Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton state that…

… the driving impulse of Newton’s scientific work was… to defend Christian faith against what he saw as an encroaching mechanistic explanation.

Others were also overt in the role their Christian faith played in their scientific discoveries. Morris Kline states that science was a religious quest in which…

… the search for the mathematical laws of nature was an act of devotion which would reveal the glory and grandeur of (God’s) handiwork.

Instead of trying to refute the arguments of intelligent design scholars, opponents commit the genetic fallacy and reject the claim on the basis of their suppositions that its origins are religious.

Additionally, all scientists have some philosophical and religious commitments in their lives. Atheism, after all, is a philosophical supposition about the nature of the universe. Should we reject science performed by an atheist because of his religious worldview? Of course not. We judge the science on its own merits and do not discount his work because of his religious views.

Next, I’ll consider another objection by ID critics attempting to equate ID with religion.

This is part 3 of a short series examining the question, “Is Intelligent Design nothing more than disguised creationism?” In this post I will consider another assertion made by ID opponents who wish to equate ID with creationism.

A related criticism to the one considered in the last post is that ID is a religious movement, not a scientific one. Forrest argues that…

… intelligent design (is) a term that is essentially code for the religious belief in a supernatural creator…

and that…

… it represents an attempt to promote religious belief.

Much of my answer to the previous objection would be applicable to this criticism. Nonetheless, it might still be possible that intelligent design is a religious movement even if it does not espouse young earth creationism. I will make three further observations in response to this objection.

The initial observation, and perhaps the most important, is that intelligent design is based on science, and not on any religious text or teaching. Intelligent design scholars do not appeal to the Bible, nor do they start with any sacred text and look to nature for support. Intelligent design scientists attempt to empirically detect evidence of design in nature. The starting point is observations in nature. Arguing that intelligent design is not science, the American Astronomical Society claims that…

Intelligent Design fails to meet the basic definition of a scientific idea: its proponents do not present testable hypotheses and do not provide evidence for their views.

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore just what counts as “science,” it is important to note that there is and has always been much disagreement among scientists and philosophers of science as to what is scientific and what is not. Del Ratzsch states that there is “no standard, accepted definition.” Intelligent design is at least as scientific as Darwinism unless one arbitrarily excludes intelligent agency from science. The dual concepts of irreducible complexity and complex specificity, along with the informational content present in the cell, are rigorously defined and are subject to empirical verification.

The next observation is that many special sciences employ the scientific methodology of intelligent design. For example, archaeologists assume that one can differentiate between artifacts of intelligent beings and the results of blind material forces. Similarly, the goal of forensic science is to determine whether someone’s death was caused by the actions of an intelligent agent or from natural causes – they assume that one is able to differentiate chance from design. Also, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) assume that humans can recognize design. Scholars and educators assume the same in order to detect the actions of intelligent agents in fighting plagiarism and data falsification. The underlying scientific methodology of intelligent design is the same as that used by many other modern sciences.

In my next post, I will make a third observation concerning the assertion that ID is a religious movement and not a scientific one.