Bad Anti-ID Arguments Demolished
John on November 21, 2005 at 1:18 pm
Recently a group of 150 professors at the University of Iowa and Iowa State signed a petition against intelligent design. Apparently 150 only represents about 10% of the faculty, but it’s still a significant number. The petition was apparently in response to a presentation at the university by Guillermo Gonzales, author of an ID book called The Privileged Planet.
One of the original co-authors of the petition against Gonzales is Hector Avalos, professor of Religious Studies at Iowa State. Apparently, Hector has had issues with The Privileged Planet for some time. He published something in the school paper about it in June of this year and a version of that piece is still available on the Iowa State website. [HT: Telic Thoughts which blogged about all of this.]
What’s interesting to me is how Avalos’ piece clearly conveys the sense that anti-ID faculty are about to come unglued at the seems. I suspect this sort of thing correlates extremely well with Bush Derangement Syndrome, which many political bloggers have diagnosed on campuses (perhaps Gregory S. Paul will do a study). But let’s take a look at Mr. Avalos insights into the questions of the ages.
After a quick summary of The Privileged Planet which makes clear that he has not read the book, he says:
One need only read theologies produced over the last hundreds of years to understand that this is not a new argument. Already in 1907, the famed Baptist theologian, Augustus Hopkins Strong stated… “
Blah, blah, blah. In other words, according to Avalos, design is an old religious argument dressed up in new language. What he fails to mention is that we could pull quotes about design from individuals who were not Baptist Theologians. Einstein, Newton and Copernicus all discussed their work in design terms (though Einstein rejected a personal God). Consider this quote from Newton:
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.
In short, Avalos idea that design arguments should be excluded from scientific discussions would thereby exclude the thoughts of some of our greatest scientists.
Avalos then tries to mock the idea of intelligent design but only manages to call into question his own rationality:
[I]f our planet were not located precisely where it is, then we might also not have AIDS viruses, congenital deformities, or death itself. So why do ID proponents think that life and intelligence were the features selected for intelligent design?
In other words, perhaps life on Earth is an accidental byproduct of the designer’s desire to create AIDS. This, so far as I know, is a view of life unique to Hector Avalos. One wonders how long he has nurtured this view. When he was a child and his parents handed him a Christmas gift wrapped in bright paper and ribbons, was his assumption that the purpose of the gift was a microbe living in the pulp of the cardboard box?
It seems to me that even the staunchest materialist, someone like Dawkins for instance, holds to a more exalted view of human significance that does Avalos. After all, if intelligence is incidental and unremarkable why bother to know anything?
Avalos returns to this same argument a moment later when he argues:
The main assumption is that the amount of physical constants and entities that “must be right” to produce any entity X is generally proportional to the amount of the Designer’s purpose for X…Yet, this assumption can be reduced to absurdity.
The argument that follows, though poorly framed, is essentially that since a computer requires all of the universe’s laws plus the addition of human technological genius, it must therefore be of greater cosmological significance than a person which requires only the laws of nature. This is in fact an example of reduction to absurdity, though not the one Mr. Avalos inended.
Mr. Avalos begins with a sound premise (that complexity of specification is proportional to value of an item to its designer) but from there quickly drifts into nonsense. The problem with his formulation is simple and the corrective is even simpler, almost axiomatic. So much so that I’m tempted to call this Foyle’s law: Design is not addative additive of the substrate and/or tools employed in its creation. Let me illustrate…
Take any work of art, say the Mona Lisa. DaVinci put all of his gifts into this painting and it is generally considered a masterpiece. However, if I take a reproduction of the Mona Lisa and paint a mustache on it, have I added to its perfection because there is now additional detail? Take it a step further…If I create a mustache in photoshop and then feed the Mona Lisa into an inkjet plotter, have I added the vast hours of design inherent in the computer, software and printer to the art?
Take another example, this time starting from the computer itself. A modern day Shakespeare might use a computer to draft a 21st century Hamlet. On the other hand, a ten year old boy might use it to write limericks about his math teacher. The fact that both used a computer does not change the fact that as far as design is concerened the results are no where near equivalent. One would not say that because the dramatist wrote on an old Pentium 3 laptop while the child wrote on the latest Pentium 4 that the child’s work was of greater overall complexity.
A computer is a piece of intelligent design, but it comes from the hand of a different designer (man) than the universe itself (God). Mr. Avalos is correct that complexity of specification is proportional to the value of an item to its designer, which is why we are correct to identify the most complex item in the known universe — the human mind — as having greater significance than a virus.
Finally, I would add that Foyle’s law above is really a kind of restatement of something found in Darwin’s Origin of the Species and in ID. If one eliminates a designer then change can only occur by slight, successive modification. Any change larger than what could be attributed to chance, would in fact indicate that intelligence had been added to the design. As I understand Dembski, this larger than average leap is precisely the thing for which ID wants to test.
Category: Science & Tech |
[...] In the wake of the Dover ID case, there have been a number of publicity stunts at colleges aimed at making some public display of displeasure over intelligent design. At the University of Iowa, 150 professors signed a petition stating that ID was not science. One of the professors who sponsored the petition wrote a really atrocious paper attacking ID, which I fisked here. [...]
November 24, 2005 @ 10:45 pmDid you see the Paula Zahn focus on Intelligent Design?
PAULA ZAHN NOW (CNN-TV)
The Debate Over Intelligent Design
November 25, 2005 – 20:00 ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/25/pzn.01.html
The Darwinian defenders did precisely what the critics of the teaching of evolution said the defenders do.
They did not answer Michael Behe. In essence they said, we are outraged, distressed, saddened, etc. The new exhibit designed to counter ID is said to “… include video testimonials [sic] from some of America’s top scientists.”
Fundamentalists arguing for a 6004 BC creation date were shown. But no one sought to respond to Behe who said: “The argument is not that Darwinian evolution doesn’t explain anything; it’s that it doesn’t explain everything.”
Einstein did not overthrow Newton; he showed that Newtonian physics was limited in its applicability. A Lehigh faculty member (throughly embarrassed by Behe’s presence on the faculty) said that the materialistic assumption has gotten scientists pretty far. Behe would not disagree. Newtonian physics got us to the moon and back, but it is not complete.
An honest answer from the Darwinian biologists would have been: “Well, frankly, we cannot explain how the fundamental processes in the cell ever got started randomly. There are a lot of things that have to go right for the most basic cell to work. And the second law of thermodynamics (that order tends to become disordered) would work again an undirected evolution, but I believe [note!] that a materialistic solution will be found.” That would be honest and would show that the defenders of undirected evolution are indeed believers, not just objective scientists.
Middle ground people, like the majority of Americans and like me, don’t mind evolution being taught. What I mind is a materialistic faith being taught in the name of science. I think that spending public money to teach that blind evolution has been proven is immoral and wrong. And, perhaps, the assumption that evolution is blind is a conclusion that is not even testable using scientific methods. So, let’s not call that conclusion “science.”
November 26, 2005 @ 9:59 am[...] So, in short, Christianity and Judaism (in general) have embraced a more rational and even intellectual approach to the symbiotic relationship between Faith and Reason. One can flow from the other without sacrificing either, as countless writers, philosophers and theologians can attest to. Recently, this is evidenced by the ongoing debates (as chronicled in this very blog) connected to Intelligent Design or Gregory S. Paul’s assertions about the negative affects of religious faith on society. In contrast, Islam has rejected the proposition that faith and reason can coexist and cohabitate within the heart and mind of a follower of Islam. There is only one thing of supreme importance…FAITH. Anything that tries to attach itself to that faith or appears to comment negatively on that faith is seen as a threat which must be eliminated. Since there is no room for reason in Islam, there is no room for discussion. Since there is no room for discussion, there is no room for debate. Since there is no room for debate, there is no room for questioning. Since there is no room for questioning, intellect atrophies and reasoning becomes weak. When reasoning is weak there is no discussion and the cycle repeats. In the end, Islam has become a religion populated by large numbers of intellectually weak, rationally malnourished people who have been taught that violent reaction is the best/only reaction against a perceived threat aimed at their religion. [...]
February 8, 2006 @ 2:26 pmMisplaced self-confidence is one of the hallmarks of the proponents of Intelligent Design and there has been no shortage of it in responses to my review of The Privileged Planet:How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004) by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards.
I have published reviews of this book in various venues, including Talk Reason (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Avalos.cfm) and on
the webpage of The Atheist and Agnostic Society at Iowa
State University (http://www.stuorg.iastate.edu/isuaas/intelligent_design_and_the_privileged_planet.shtml).
Scott Ragan and John Sexton, the pair of amateur theologians responsible for the blog, Verum Serum (VS), provide one illustrative case of such misplaced confidence. On November 21, 2005, VS published (posted by John) a response titled “Bad ID Arguments Demolished.” The response not only shows a lack of understanding of my arguments, but also a lack of understanding of both science and The Privileged Planet (TPP). Not surprisingly, the only thing VS demolishes is its own credibility.
CONFIRMING MY HISTORY
My review of TPP began by refuting the supposed “novelty” of ID. This is important because it is often argued that ID is a new concept that has yet to be given a chance in academia.
Note the novelty claim in another response to my review in the Parableman blog
(http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2005/09/a_review_of_a_r.html): “The new thing about the Privileged Planet isn’t either of these. It’s the interesting observation that the conditions for habitability just happen to coincide with those for scientific observation.”
My review of TPP traced ID arguments at least as far back as Cicero (1st century BCE). VS responded that they could find similar arguments in people ranging from Newton to Einstein. However, my historical arguments do not deny that Newton or other famous scientists expressed earlier versions of ID. So the VS objections are superfluous or plain wishful thinking (as in the case of Einstein). In fact, VS only confirms that ID has nothing new to say.
I specifically demonstrated that the supposed “discovery” of a “coincidence” between habitability and observability (i.e., the planet seems designed for both habitability and observation of the universe) is not as novel as TPP claims. It is already found in William Paley’s Natural Theology, and I provide a specific passage from Paley to show that in my TalkReason version (which VS should have found). VS, however, was strangely silent about this specific historical observation of mine.
The VS response to my historical analysis is also premised on the idea that great scientists are right in every idea they have. They are not. Newton, for one, also had a lot of absurd ideas related to biblical chronology. Such ideas have been discussed numerous times, but they are nicely summarized by Michael White, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1997). White’s discussion (pp. 156-57) of Newton’s manuscripts shows, for example, that Newton placed the Second Coming of Christ sometime in 1948, which certainly has been falsified.
Just as we do not regard Newton’s ideas about biblical chronology as “scientific,” we can also disregard his ideas about ID as “scientific” for the same reasons (which are explained further below).
AIDS TO THE RESCUE?
VS also attacks my idea that the criteria used by ID to detect Intelligent Design could lead us to conclude that AIDS viruses were designed. For example, Gonzalez has claimed that the proper distance of the earth from the Sun is one feature that shows that our planet was designed to be inhabited. Being too close to the Sun yields an Earth too hot for life; too far makes it too cold for life.
The fact remains that by using ID’s own list of the conditions needed to produce life, I could just as well argue that all those conditions (and others) are needed to produce AIDS viruses. Obviously, ID proponents don’t like this implication, but it does not refute the implication.
VS offers this limp and ad hominem response: “This, so far as I know, is a view of life unique to Hector Avalos. One wonders how long he has nurtured this view. When he was a child and his parents handed him a Christmas gift wrapped in bright paper and ribbons, was his assumption that the purpose of the gift was a microbe living in the pulp of the cardboard box?”
But whether my view is unique or not, and whether or not I have nurtured this view since childhood, does not refute my objection whatsoever. The analogy also fails to see the distinction between natural objects whose supposed purpose is not obvious and Christmas gifts, which are given by agents whose purposes we can investigate more directly or know from previous experience.
Moreover, the amateur biblical scholars at VS seem to be ignorant of their own Bible, which repeatedly claims that the most horrendous diseases are sent by God. Here is just one of many examples from Deuteronomy 28:27-28 (RSV):
“The LORD will smite you with the boils of Egypt, and with the ulcers and the scurvy and the itch, of which you cannot be healed. The LORD will smite you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind…”
Of course, many evangelical Christians tell us that AIDS is a punishment for sin, but the folks at VS apparently don’t seem to be communicating with this segment of the evangelical community.
DESIGN IS NOT ADDATIVE [SIC]?
VS also nurtures the belief that it has demolished this argument of mine: “The main assumption is that the amount of physical constants and entities that “must be right” to produce any entity X is generally proportional to the amount of the Designer’s purpose for X…”
VS argues that “Design is not addative [sic] of the substrate and/or tools employed in its creation.” First, VS’s contorted phraseology apparently misreads my review for it attributes this rationale to me, whereas I am describing the rationale used by ID proponents. Thus, VS should be directing the objection to TPP, and not to me.
Furthermore, it is clear that at the time VS response was posted, Sexton had either not read TPP, or he misunderstood it even if he did read it. My argument does not use the word “additive,” but rather “generally proportional.” Addition is only part of the equation that results in the proportional and probability calculations used by TPP and other ID proponents.
Nonetheless, the “additive” nature of TPP’s argument is very clear in a number of passages. Here is one example from the caption of figure 2.5 on p. 38:
“Complex life requires more elements than ‘simple,’
single-celled life. A bacterium needs seventeen elements,
while a human being needs twenty-seven.”
What is this if not an “additive” and proportional argument? TPP argues precisely that the number of components needed to produce any entity X is a measure of its “complexity,” and, by extension, its degree of purpose. Thus, I have correctly described how the basic design inference works for TPP.
A more glaring oversight by VS is TPP’s discussion of the so-called Drake Equation, which lists all of the things that must be right to produce a “radio communicating civilization.” In particular, TPP describes the expanded version of the Drake Equation presented in Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by Donald Brownlee and Peter Ward. TPP (p. 338) describes it thus:
“They thus imply that the original Drake Equation was at best an abbreviation of the myriad unknown and unstated factors, all of which must be satisfied to get a single, radio communicating civilization.”
This description is fully consistent with my schematic description of such ID rationales: “the amount of physical constants and entities that ‘must be right’ to produce any entity X is generally proportional to the amount of the Designer’s purpose for X.”
This rationale is “additive” in the sense that the larger the number of improbable events needed to produce an entity X, then the more one can infer that entity X is designed (and not the product of chance).
All this returns to my objection, still unanswered by VS. I object that such a procedure could apply to almost anything “complex.” Almost all of the features needed to produce “life” are also needed to produce an AIDS virus. Thus, choosing one feature (e.g., “life”) out of the millions of other features that also would not exist without the preconditions for life exposes how flawed and arbitrary ID is.
VS has yet to refute the fact that the silliest of phenomena could be characterized as intelligently designed by this method. So there is a problem with the whole ID methodology, and not with the person who reports the problems with the ID methodology.
In addition, VS later contradicts itself in stating that “Any change larger than what could be attributed to chance, would in fact indicate that intelligence had been added to the design.” So here VS seems to admit that its justification for “intelligent design” is additive.
HAMLET GETS EGGED
VS’s misunderstanding of my review of TPP is apparent in the analogy of the person who drafts a 21st century Hamlet on a computer. VS observes that this would not make the play Hamlet more complex, which misses the point of my analogy.
My response centered on TPP’s claim that design was not just restricted to habitability but rather to habitability + observability. TPP is not satisfied with just a habitable planet, but with a habitable planet that contains the further specification of inhabitants who can observe the universe.
VS confuses entities which contain features whose design is not in question (Hamlet) with entities which contain features whose design is in question (habitability + observability).
My objections to TPP center on how we can know which feature is designed within a larger set of complex entities for which no design is initially supposed. TPP claims to infer design after the criteria are applied, whereas VS presents analogies where design is already an established conclusion.
Furthermore, VS overlooks the fact that a central argument is whether you can infer design from the number of conditions needed to produce an entity. In this regard, Hamlet and a computer-generated Hamlet are two different entities, and they do require different conditions to produce them.
Indeed, the analogous product is not “Hamlet” but “a computer-generated Hamlet ” (Hamlet + computer generation). A computer-generated Hamlet further specifies the type of Hamlet that needs explanation.
For Hamlet you may just need a pencil and paper, but to produce a “computer-generated Hamlet,” you do need a computer and all of the intricate factors that are needed to make that computer (Try making a computer-generated Hamlet without a computer, and you will see the problem).
In order to be consistent, VS also would have to explain why it does not also regard TPP as adding superfluous details to something already perfect or complex enough. Why not also say that “a habitable planet” is perfect and complex enough, and observability adds nothing to that perfection or complexity? After all, the planet had no creatures capable of making observations of the universe for some 99.999% of its history.
Otherwise, VS still leaves unexplained the methodological problem inherent in its view of “specification.” VS fails to see, for example, that a human habitable planet is just making an arbitrary addition to a previous situation. This is no different from me insisting that it is not just Hamlet I want to explain, but rather “a computer-generated Hamlet” that I want to explain. By adding a further specification, no less arbitrary, my analogy still holds true.
MONA LISA GETS HAIRY
So thorough is VS’s misunderstanding of both ID and my response to TPP that it constructed this amusing analogy:
“Take any work of art, say the Mona Lisa. DaVinci put all of his gifts into this painting and it is generally considered a masterpiece. However, if I take a reproduction of the Mona Lisa and paint a mustache on it, have I added to its perfection because there is now additional detail? Take it a step further…If I create a mustache in photoshop and then feed the Mona Lisa into an inkjet plotter, have I added the vast hours of design inherent in the computer, software and printer to the art?”
First, we note that “perfection” is not the issue. The issue is how to tell what is designed and what is not designed in natural entities on the basis of the criteria provided by TPP. VS has just shifted the issue by adding this red “hairing” to the mixture.
And, once gain, VS confuses two different entities (a regular Mona Lisa versus a computer-generated Mona Lisa) which would require different pre-conditions to produce them. By not observing these distinctions, the analogy becomes irrelevant.
A similar misunderstanding of my argument is evident in VS’s “Mona-Lisa + moustache” analogy. Just as TPP argues that one has to add at least a few more features to produce a “habitable earth + observability,” there would certainly have to be at least one more feature/action to produce the “Mona Lisa + moustache.”
Besides, VS’s claim that design is not “additive,” would not work so well if we subtracted something even from the non-computer -generated Mona Lisa. For example, would VS say the Mona Lisa is less “perfect” or “designed” if the nose were missing (as it might be in a version of the painting just prior to the final one)?
But, as usual, VS misses the larger point I was making. A Mona Lisa + moustache is not really analogous to the problem I am discussing because the Mona Lisa example begins with the supposition that ALL the features of the Mona Lisa were designed by an agent. Adding a moustache would not change this conclusion.
In contrast, my objection to TPP centers on how we can tell WHICH of millions of NATURAL features are designed and which are not. Why minds, but not AIDS viruses? Why observability but not congenital deformities?
Therefore, a more appropriate Mona Lisa analogy would oblige VS to explain why an ID proponent argues that Mona Lisa’s hair on her head is designed but not the hair on her upper lip.
SIGNIFICANCE AGAIN
Having failed at constructing any rigorous scientific criteria for identifying Design in nature, the blissfully oblivious VS appeals to the usual suspect we call “significance” to explain why it identifies one feature (“minds”) but not another (AIDS viruses) as “designed.” But, again, VS seem to attribute this rationale to me, whereas I am describing the rationale used by TPP. Note VS’s phraseology;
“Mr. Avalos is correct that complexity of specification is proportional to the value of an item to its designer which is why we are correct to identify the most complex item in the known universe — the human mind — as having greater significance than a virus.”
In any case, VS here falls into the same trap as TPP. We cannot tell whether complexity matters to some grand designer anymore than simplicity does. They confirm my objection that ID ultimately rests on this circular rationale: “X is significant to me, therefore X is significant to a Designer.”
But the problem is NOT determining what is significant FOR US. This is the typical ID sleight-of-hand science that confuses laypersons. The problem is whether TPP has succeeded in SCIENTIFICALLY determining WHAT IS SIGNIFICANT FOR A HIGHER CREATOR/DESIGNER.
Saying complexity is significant FOR US proves nothing about
whether it is significant to a Designer. Indeed, VS and TPP leave the sphere of science and plunge into mere subjectivity. We certainly have no way to put a number on “significance” and plug it into a Drake Equation.
Even to say that a “mind” is more significant because it is the most complex thing known in the universe rests on dubious premises. First, it is not certain that the mind is “the most complex thing known in the universe” because the very definition of complexity is arbitrary for ID proponents.
Indeed, what makes the mind complex, except the myriad of components that must work together? But, by that measure of complexity, why can’t we complexify the mind further by combining it with yet another component? For example, what about “a mind + a computer” combination?
And how could VS ever tell that the Designer meant to create this more complex combination (by TPP’s rationale, the more components are needed to create an entity, then the more “complex” it is). Thus, how I define a “the most complex item” is just as capricious as anything else VS seems to deem significant.
CONCLUSION
The arbitrary nature of the criteria used to identify design in
nature is the single greatest flaw of TPP, and of ID, in general. The response by the pair of amateur intellectuals at VS provides a veritable microcosm of the pathetic inability of ID proponents to address those flaws. The only thing VS has demolished is its own credibility.
FINAL QUESTIONS
1. Did John Sexton and/or Scott Ragan read The Privileged Planet before the response to my review was posted on November 21, 2005?
2. Without using the subjective criterion of “significance,” what specific objective scientific criteria allows VS to determine that one NATURAL feature is designed and another is not (please do not provide examples such as art and plays which already begin with the premise that they are designed).
November 1, 2006 @ 10:50 amI wrote the above post in response to this article by Hector Avalos last November. I’m not sure why, nearly a year later, he has decided I deserve a 3,000 word response (about three times the length of the article I was writing about). In any case, I’d like to respond to a few of Hector’s points.
First of all, the piece I read didn’t mention Cicero. It quoted a 1907 theology text by Augustus Strong. It seemed to me you were rather significantly downplaying the intellectual pedigree of the design argument by relying only on the work of a turn of the century Baptist theologian. At the least you could have mentioned Aquinas. My point was merely to suggest that the idea has a much longer track record, including among some very notable minds like Newton. If you made the same point elsewhere in another version of your article, I never saw it.
Actually, my post is premised on the exact opposite idea that great scientists are not right in every idea they have. I never suggested that Newton’s support for design made it true. Nor do I think that Richard Dawkins’ dismissal of it makes it false. Again, that was not my point. My point was only to suggest that many great thinkers have either held to it or wrestled with it as a significant question.
Aids to the Rescue?
At one point you accuse me (among other things) of committing amateur philosophy. I would like to suggest that you have done the same. This is not a scientific argument you are making, but a moral one. You are not arguing about the likelihood of AIDS being designed, but arguing that the very idea leads us to a designer who is morally unappealing.
So my response to your moral and theological argument is equally moral and theological. Specifically, Christianity suggests that the world is not as God intended it to be, that it is fallen. As for the verses you cite from Deuteronomy, they are a warning against disobedience to a specific set of people who had been given unique insight into God’s expectations for them. I don’t think many theologians would see this as applying generally to mankind, either in the past or now.
Talk about ad homenim responses. This is a textbook case. On the contrary, many churches and individuals I’m aware of are working to prevent AIDS and to comfort those suffering from it.
Design is Not Additive
Thanks for correcting my spelling. Here is the argument you made in your original paper attempting to point out the absurdity of design arguments:
But in your comment today you said:
If this categorical objection is fatal to my argument, it is fatal to yours as well. But if we can get beyond the category argument for a moment, there is another problem.
With regard to the Hamlet analogy, my point was not about whether or not Hamlet was designed. Obviously it is. I would define Hamlet as a unique and particular string of English characters. Whether this is represented on a wall poster, in a book or on a computer screen makes no difference. In every case, we can identify it as Hamlet and not, for instance, Othello.
Just to clarify, I was not suggesting a “computer generated Hamlet” as in one created solely by computer. My point was that whether Shakespeare produced Hamlet with quill and ink on parchment or time-traveled to the present and typed it on an imac would not affect the content or its perceived value as a work of art. Were Shakespeare to have used an imac, we would still reward Shakespeare for the play, not Steve Jobs. And no one, I don’t think anyway, would say that writing Hamlet on an imac was somehow cheating, as if the technology got one halfway there.
The genius of the play is the result of the author and is distinct from the tools involved. Indeed, if Shakespeare were to type the whole thing up on a G5 and then copy it over onto parchment with a quill, how would you know a computer had been involved? How would you prove it? In my view you could certainly get most people to agree that an agent of genius wrote the play, but the tools involved are really beside the point.
So your suggestion that a world with computers is more complex than one without fails in two ways. First it fails to acknowledge the category distinction you point out. Second it fails to acknowledge that a particular designed thing, such as a play, is the product of the agent. A computer is a work of man, not part of the natural order. Its complexity is specifically derivative of our own, just as an AIDS virus (or any virus) could not exist without the prior existence of a more complex host with cellular mechanisms to propagate it.
The Mona Lisa thing is really the same issue in another guise. You ask:
Yes! I will state with complete certainty that the Mona Lisa would not be the most famous painting in the world if Leonardo had not given her a nose. Shakespeare’s Hamlet would not be one of the greatest plays ever written if it had no 5th act. This was exactly my point about painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It would be a crime to do so in the same way it would be a crime to add Jar Jar Binks to the text of Hamlet. Good design is not improved by more information, only by better information. But what makes it better?
It seems to me this is the issue at the core of our disagreement. What is value with regard to natural objects? Museums and theaters discriminate between good paintings and plays and poor ones all the time. All of us innately recognize that there is some design which is superior and some which is not. The design which shows superior qualities is accorded superior value. But can this apply to natural objects.
As a theist, I would say yes. If one were to imagine a gallery of biological design, the AIDS virus would be something akin to a child’s scribble in complexity. The human mind by contrast would be the Mona Lisa. A human brain is not improved upon by infecting it with AIDS any more than the Mona Lisa is improved by painting a mustache on it. Most people recognize both acts as destructive.
Indeed, you yourself implicity recognize this fact. The force of your AIDS virus argument comes specifically because your reader has an inherent sense of the value of human life. Were this not so, there would be nothing whatsoever offensive about the suggestion that AIDS was designed. In essence, you rely on value to argue against the existence of value.
Here is where I think much of your argument begins to circle the mental drain that is atheism. You are questioning the existence of any connection between value and complexity. I agree that from your perspective questions of value become non-sensical. After all, who is to say a human mind is of any more value than an AIDS virus simply because it is more complex? Who says complexity is valuable at all? The atheist can only answer: no one.
This is precisely my problem with secular humanism which posits a value for humanity but offers no basis for making such value claims. You at least seem to be honest on this point. Yet most people intuitively believe that human beings have value. My particular religion provides a reasonable explanation for the existence of this value and of human holding this value. But again, if we can only assume materialism as a starting point, it is very difficult to assign value to complexity or anything else.
In fact, reason itself is a value judgment. Who is to say reason and sound argument is of any more value than un-reason? The materialist can accept logic as valuable but not account for the value prior to doing so. And yet here you are making an argument as if reason was of value. It seems to me that the sort of argument you’re using here — the universal acid of materialism — tends to result in a very phyrric sort of victory. Ultimately, nobody wins.
Detecting Design
At the risk of continuing the analogy, many people look at Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles and see nothing but random splashes of paint. And this is even when we know from the outset that an agent was involved. In the case of that particular painting, one could reasonably argue that the whole thing was a product of chance. Just as there are many people who look at Blue Poles and snicker, I think there will always be atheists who look at creation and do the same.
Brilliant design is difficult to quantify and even more difficult to prove. Still, millions of people go to see the Mona Lisa because they find it beautiful, though few of them are trained art critics. Similarly, many people look up at the stars or at the beauty of their own existence and see the work of a genius. But I don’t claim to be able to quantify it or to prove it to you mathematically. I will say that, just like the low-brow art critic at the Pollock exhibition, I think you’re missing out on something worthwhile.
November 1, 2006 @ 3:54 pmJohn Sexton of Verum Serum cannot seem to represent an opposing viewpoint even if it is explained in 3000 words.
First, note that John Sexton did not really answer my final question about whether he had read The Privileged Planet at the time he posted his review on November 21, 2005. Why is he not answering this question? Could it be that he knows that not reading a primary source at issue is a mark of an poor philosopher?
But let’s consider Sexton’s response to my AIDS virus argument again to see how thoroughly Sexton’s arguments depend on misrepresenting the opponent.
I stated that TPP uses the number of preconditions that must exist to produce an entity X as a measure of how purposed X is.
I noted that, by using this procedure, I could also conclude that AIDS is designed because it needs just as many, or more, preconditions to produce it. For example, it not only needs all the preconditions to produce life on earth, but also human beings to maintain it (it is also called the HUMAN Immunodeficiency Virus, after all).
To counter this obvious implication of using preconditions to infer design, Sexton offers us this response:
“This is not a scientific argument you are making, but a moral one. You are not arguing about the likelihood of AIDS being designed, but arguing that the very idea leads us to a designer who is morally unappealing.”
But how is mine a moral argument? Where do I state that AIDS is designed because it is bad or good? On the contrary, there is nothing moral about noting that the preconditions needed for AIDS are equal or more in number to those needed to produce human life.
In fact, what I am trying to expose is how ID proponents
inject a moral argument in their Design inferences. What THEY regard as “good” things are designed but not “bad” things, despite the fact that what THEY call bad things could satisfy the same criteria for the Design inference. That was the point of my response to TPP.
Sexton has switched the issue again by crediting me with using morality to apply TPP’s criteria. Moreover, Sexton seems to regard such a view of the Designer as “morally unappealing,” as though being “morally unappealing” refuted the logical implication I was drawing.
I mentioned Deuteronomy 28 specifically to show that what Sexton might regard as a morally unappealing view of a Designer is exactly what you find in Sexton’s own holy scripture.
It is also meaningless and irrelevant to argue, as Sexton does, that many theologians don’t view Deuteronomy 28 as applying generally to mankind, either in the past or now.
Whether many theologians view Deuteronomy 28 as applying generally to mankind or not, the point remains that a biblical author found it conceivable to have a Designer who CAN use disease for his own purposes, and so you cannot just arbitrarily accuse atheists of harboring such a strange idea. Sexton seems to have a problem with his own scriptures on this issue.
To avoid the obvious problem that AIDS poses for a design inference based on preconditions, Sexton injects Christian ideas about the Fall. But that only tells us (and federal judges) what we have suspected all along. ID is a theological construct, and not a scientific one. ID proponents must rely on the Bible (contrary to repeated denials) to complete their inferences.
ID DOES NOT offer any scientific criteria for a Design inference without having to inject moral, theological, and subjective
valuations (e.g., “significance”). Note how Sexton constantly confuses valuational arguments with scientific ones in every one of his counterarguments about Hamlet and the Mona Lisa, where he misrepresents my arguments again.
To argue, as Sexton does, that reason (logic) is itself “a value judgement” is to use postmodernist rhetoric that not only results in a case of self-referential incoherence, but it also fails to address TPP’s own (inconsistent) claim that it is NOT using arbitrary value judgments but rather objective ones.
My reference to evangelicals who believe AIDS can be sent by God to punish sinners is not an “ad hominem” response, but a factual one. There ARE evangelicals who think AIDS is a punishment sent by God, and so, by their logic, it might be reasonable to posit that God designed this virus as punishment (unless Sexton wants now to appeal to “evolution” to explain the origin of natural entities he finds “morally unappealing”).
In any case, the existence of evangelicals who do think AIDS is sent by God refutes Sexton’s suggestion that only I, as an atheist, could possibly have thought of a Designer who uses diseases for his own purposes.
AIDS continues to beg the question of why a Sexton
cannot bring himself to admit that the design inference could
lead to concluding that AIDS viruses are designed.
So my question remains unanswered. What SCIENTIFIC criteria allow Sexton to infer that human life and observability are designed, but not AIDS viruses, on the basis of the NUMBER and IMPROBABILITY of the preconditions needed to produce those entities?
If Sexton cannot do this, then he agrees with me in saying that ID is not a scientific endeavor but rather a theological, moral, and aesthetic endeavor.
November 2, 2006 @ 2:54 amMr. Avalos,
WOW, after a year and complete silence on my blogging partner’s post, you have certainly come out of the woodwork with a vengeance! I would like to make a few observations and/or pose a few questions:
1) As I’ve done some research on you, I see that you are a religious studies professor at Iowa State University. You are also an atheist. How does that happen…an atheist who, by definition disdains belief in God and thus also disdains religion, ends up teaching about religion and religious studies? In your teaching, do you find it difficult to be impartial about religion, the various world faiths, etc and in how you present your material? Or does staying impartial not enter the equation in your lecture hall?
2) I also see that at Iowa State you were part of a group of faculty who wanted to silence Guillermo Gonzalez, a fellow Iowa State faculty member, from expressing his views in support of Intelligent Design theory. First of all, how does a religious studies professor feel qualified to publicly make judgments of value and worth against and/or about a professor and scientist who has expressed his belief in a theory well within the realm of his field of study and expertise. (Obviously, you might have opinions (as we all do), but to step out of your area of study into another discipline and to challenge a scientist “on his own turf” so to speak seems odd/ballsy/arrogant (I’m not sure which).)
3) Since you are an atheist, Intelligent Design theory flies in the face of everything you believe. This isn’t just an academic exercise for you…you live this debate because you have taken the opposing side and embraced it as your paradigm. This being the case, how is it that you are a good spokesman as relates to this position because your chosen paradigm will force you to seek out that which you deem foolish and attempt to discredit it, even if it means going head-to-head with others who are much more qualified on a scientific and/or clinical level than are you.
Thanks for your time,
Scott
November 2, 2006 @ 6:11 amHello, Mr. Ragan,
Thanks for your post. I have waited nearly a year to answer VS because, unlike bloggers, those of us in academia need to produce peer reviewed research, and my two books published in 2005 kept me very busy.
But I try to answer every objection that is published in due course and in order of priority. No offense, but your website is not considered the most important venue for discussing ID, biblical scholarship, or theology.
Now, for your comments:
1. Yes, I used to be a fundamentalist preacher, and a staunch
advocate of creationism. I grew up reading Gleason Archer,
Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell, Walter Martin, Charles Hodge, etc. I have formally debated William Lane Craig, etc.
Studying the Bible certainly made an atheist out of me, a subject on which I have written extensively. If you had done more research, you would have found those writings where I explain my reasons. I suggest you start with Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence (2005).
Teaching what people say they believe poses no problem for me anymore than it needs to pose a problem for a Christian describing the beliefs of Muslims or Buddhists. Describing beliefs and prescribing beliefs are two different things to me in a classroom.
Are you unable to describe accurately what your opponents believe? That is what I have seen so far in Verum Serum posts, but it does not have to be that way.
2. I do not know what your source is for the statement that I wanted to silence Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. Could you quote an article of mine where I say that? Are you always so lax in you research before making such accusations?
The facts are the opposite. We wanted Dr. Gonzalez to debate the issue, and repeatedly invited him do so on an equal-time basis. He consistently refused.
So, ironically, it has been the pro-ID folks at Iowa State who did not want to debate ID, and it was the anti-ID folks who were eager to have the opportunity to discuss and debate the merits of ID in an academic setting.
Yes, ID proponents often say they want this idea to be discussed in academia, but at ISU it was just a bluff that evaporated when we called them on it.
Given the debacle at Dover, you can understand why pro-ID folks do not really want to debate the scientific merits of their theological claims in venues where they can be directly challenged in a sustained manner.
3. I would be against ID even if I were a theist. If you are familiar with the clergy letter project, you would see that many Christians are also strongly for the idea that evolution is a core scientific theory that belongs in our science curriculum:
http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/religion_science_collaboration.htm
Indeed, one can be a theist and still recognize that a particular argument for theism is bad (e.g., Roses are pretty to me, therefore, God exists). The arguments for ID are poor, regardless of whether you believe in God or not. I am glad to see that even some Christians recognize this.
My vigorous efforts against ID are much like yours in that you want to defeat what you believe is not true and dangerous for humanity. Nothing shocking there.
November 2, 2006 @ 8:24 amMr. Avalos,
Yes I read the book in early 2005.
You never state it. You do not need to. AIDS has a moral dimension whether one states it or not. The argument you are making gets its force from the understanding of the reader that AIDS is a devestating disease. Otherwise, why use AIDS as your example when you might just have well have made the logical argument with any common probiotic bacteria.
For instance, Lactobacillus Acidophilus appears to help digestion and makes the intestinal environment less friendly to harmful bacteria. Why not use this as an example? By choosing AIDS, you have injected a hot-button, value-based argument into the discussion.
But put that aside. It seems to me you have a basic confusion that is represented in your original article and in your repsonses here. In your original article you said:
You then go on to cite AIDS as an example of one feature which might not exist. You continue:
Why? Because, for most people, these are not the most remarkable features of life on earth. Admittedly, I have religious reasons for my views of the value of life. But even if one did not share my particular religious views, most people on earth appreciate the value of life, especially human life. Only a nihilist, it seems to me, would argue that congenital deformity outweighs the value of healthy births or that death outweighs life. Yet this does seem to be exactly the argument you were making in your original article:
So you have just concluded that TPP is a circular argument. But please notice it is only circular if you are not willing to grant them the following presupposition: Complex life is valuable. Defeating that presupposition is the lynchpin of your argument against them. But in order for this to serve as a defeater, you must be willing to take, at a minimum, an agnostic position on the value of life. And in your original paper this is exactly what you did when you suggested that AIDS might just as well be presumed to be the “reason” for our existence as human life. You have in fact taken a definite position on this question of life’s value and yet in your response to me above you said:
I’m sorry, but it was you who raised the issue of value as an argument against TPP. I was merely pointing out that this is what you had done. These are philosophical arguments, not scientific ones.
If no such value of life can be assumed you may in fact win the argument about TPP, as I would agree the entire argument fails without an assumed value of life. But again, you win the argument only by retreating into utter nihilism. It won’t work to say that one can not assume the value of life and then turn around and assume it yourself. Otherwise all you have presented is a counter-factual idea, i.e. if the moon were made out of green cheese, we could all eat our fill. In your case the argument is: If life had no intrinsic value, this would be a circular argument. Sorry, but who actually believes that? Forget Christians, I don’t know any atheists who would accept that view. Morally, this is a flat-earth view of life.
On the other hand, if you are not a nihilist and do believe in the value of life then your argument against TPP falls apart. You simply can’t have it both ways.
Again, I don’t think I’m the one confused here. This is not a scientific argument you are making, but a philosophical and moral one about the presumption of value. This is not a subject in which science can make any judgment.
Finally, I can’t let this one go:
You need to check into the definition of ad hominem argument. According to Wikipedia, it’s structure is:
1. A makes claim X.
2. There is something objectionable about A.
3. Therefore claim X is false.
This is precisely what you did:
1. Evangelicals claim God created the world.
2. There is something objectionable about evangelicals (they believe AIDS is a punishment).
3. Therefore the claim that God created the world is false.
Just to make it clear for those who weren’t following, here are your exact words again:
Textbook.
As for it being factual, other than the execrable Fred Phelps and his 25 followers, who says this? With an evangelical population of perhaps 80 million in this country, name one significant individual who holds this view.
November 2, 2006 @ 3:23 pmHello, Mr. Sexton,
I will answer your other objections to my arguments on TPP in due course, but first allow me to address your contention about the ad hominem argument you seem to be attributing to me.
You are misrepresenting my entire argument, which is apparently the only way you think you can “win” any argument. This is your representation of my argument:
1. Evangelicals claim God created the world.
2. There is something objectionable about evangelicals (they believe AIDS is a punishment).
3. Therefore the claim that God created the world is false.
But that is NOT my argument. I don’t claim that ID (or the existence of God) is false because it can lead to the conclusion that AIDS is designed or because there is something objectionable about evangelicals.
Rather, what I claim is that TPP refuses to admit that the design of AIDS would be a valid inference if I applied its criteria objectively and without ANY moral evaluation (as the authors claim their criteria can be applied).
My reference to evangelical beliefs about AIDS is meant to refute YOUR accusation that I am unique in raising the possibility of a designer who sends horrible diseases, such as AIDS, on purpose. As you may recall, you had this response to my observation about AIDS in your November 21, 2005 post:
“This, so far as I know, is a view of life unique to Hector Avalos. One wonders how long he has nurtured this view. When he was a child and his parents handed him a Christmas gift wrapped in bright paper and ribbons, was his assumption that the purpose of the gift was a microbe living in the pulp of the cardboard box?”
What I understood you to mean by “unique” is that I am the ONLY one that could conceive of a God who sent disease on purpose, and that such a belief is somehow odd or twisted.
To refute the charge that I am not unique, all I need to show is that there is at least ONE MORE person who believes as I do. Mathematically, unique = 1; Not unique = > 1. Therefore, I need not point to a million or even 4 more persons to show that I am not unique.
I constructed my refutation by citing:
A. Deuteronomy 28;
B. Other evangelicals who have that view.
Indeed, you do seem out of touch with the evangelical community. If you consult the PEW Research Center, which is known for doing reputable demographic polling, you will find this report
(http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=757):
“White evangelical Protestants (42%) and black Protestants (36%) are more likely to feel that AIDS is God’s punishment than are white mainline Protestants (20%), white Catholics (18%) and the non-religious (14%). Still, moralistic interpretations of the AIDS disease have dropped among all groups about equally.”
Using your own figure of some 80 million evangelicals, 42% of that number would be 33.6 million people even if restricted to “white evangelical protestants.”
Therefore, my claim is factual (not ad hominem), and refutes effectively your contention that I am unique in even thinking that a God could have designed horrendous diseases.
So it is apparently you who seems to have trouble with the idea that God could design/send diseases on purpose. I also presume you think that biblical authors (and the millions of evangelicals) who believe diseases can be sent on purpose are as morally twisted as you thought I was for even suggesting such a possibility.
November 3, 2006 @ 2:40 amHector,
First of all, I think I represented your argument fairly. You said:
I said:
I further said:
So I believe I have understood, restated and in fact agreed with your argument so far as it goes. My objection to this argument has remained consistent from a year ago when I said this:
Until yesterday, when I said this:
Again, I don’t think most agnostics or secularists would accept the proposition that AIDS was as significant as human life. As I’ve pointed out earlier, this is the argument you were making, i.e. there is no reason to assign significance to complexity. But again, I think this is a rather basic value which in no way impedes scientific pursuit.
At base I reject the idea that science can not rest on values. For instance, it is an oft-remarked upon feature of mathematics that the “elegant” answer often turns out to be the right one. This is a view that Einstein held, yet so far as I know no one has given a reason for making this sort of value judgment in science. In fact there are some landscape-theorists who argue that we should toss out this idea.
Take medical science as another example. Would medical science exist if we set aside the assumption that complex life has value? Could we do animal testing with mice if we assumed their lives were of equal value? Yet these assumed values don’t in my view affect the actual science being done, even as they drive the science in a particular direction. We seek cures for the most deadly diseases or the most common ones (admittedly economics plays a role here as well, making this a more utilitarian excercise). But my point is that values often guide science. I don’t think this makes the science itself questionable.
Ultimately, even the most speculative science is based on human curiosity and the very human desire to understand whatever we don’t currently understand. It is possible to imagine a society which does not share these values or prioritize them as ours does, something I think we both can agree would be a shame. Furthermore, in performing science we assume the value of logic and reason. Again, there have been significant groups which argue even these values should be abandoned in favor of romantic ideals or outright absurdity (cue Seinfeld music). Science rests on the assumption of certain human values. To remove all human values is to put an end to science as a human endeavour.
Therefore, I don’t find your argument that assuming the value of complex life undoes TPP or makes it un-scientific very convincing. No doubt it is an argument one can make, but I maintain that it only succeeds if one retreats into abject nihilism. Certainly one can not be a “secular humanist” and hold such views.
Finally, as I read it your statement about AIDS had no real connection to the argument I was making. It is one thing to say AIDS is created and something entirely different to say it is of equal value to mankind. The former view may have some dwindling support (foolish though it may be). The latter view I still believe is limited to very few individuals, even among atheists.
But in all fairness, I can see how you may have misunderstood what I was saying and therefore not intended your statement as an ad hominem attack. Given the argument I was actually making, I hope you can see how it nevertheless came across that way.
November 3, 2006 @ 12:42 pmLooks dudes, the argument from design will always be flawed becasue to recognize design it take the abstract reasoning of our brain and people can always deny design in nature.
But look, the argument from forms is undeniable, noone can say that a Bird or the aids virus is not formed, through the proccess of evolution, which is a radiation, from the Holy Light of gods Hands.
You also have to think about the criterion for design within a designed universe, if the basiv building bloks are designed, then it is impossible to give an example of something that is not designed, EVERYTHING IS DESIGNED DOWN TO THE PARTICLE LEVEL.
July 9, 2007 @ 10:01 am