Intelligent design

[TwinCrier]

Is ID considered compatable with TE since it doesn't define a young earth?

 

[troodon]

Intelligent Design can be a variant on TE. I went to a lecture of Dembski's here at my university last year and I asked him if he had any problem with evolution outside of his "irreducibly complex" systems; he said no. He had earlier said he accepted an old earth.

 

[Vance]

My thought on Intelligent Design is a bit mixed. First of all, since I believe in an intelligent designer, I know that there IS a design. A plan, and that Man is the central part of that plan. And, yes, since some of the leading theorists also fully accept evolution and an old earth, I would agree with them on these points as well.

However, some ID theorists take this a step further and say that the fact that there is an intelligent designer is objectively proven by the nature of the universe itself. I think this position is wrong, since it has an anthropic presumption that only those who already believe in an intelligent designer for theological reasons will accept. I can accept the anthropic design because I already believe in the designer, but nothing in the evidence requires design that I can see. The rest of their arguments tend to be arguments from incredulity.

So, yes, I think the Intelligent Design movement is correct in their ultimate conclusion that there is an intelligent designer, and I agree with most of them that hold that this intelligent designer is the Christian God. But I have some problems with their arguments in coming to this conclusion.

Ultimately, the belief in an intelligent designer is a matter of Faith, not evidence from the natural world.

 

[Vance]

I just tracked down something I wrote about ID that explains what I mean a bit better:

I have read some of the intelligent design materials and it seems to be saying that what we have now is uniquely and amazingly well-suited to fit, well, the way things are now. "If X was even very slightly different, we would not be able to live on this planet", etc, etc. This makes a very large logical fallacy: that this end product was a necessity, which is something only someone religiously minded would accept. It is not an objectively true presumption at all, and one of ID's claims is that the design is objectively observable.

They start with the current state of things as if this state of things was the ultimate goal, and then work backwards to show that everything fits what we now have perfectly, and the ODDS of things turning out this way is so tremendously low, that it MUST have come about by design. The whole watchmaker argument.

Even though I am a Christian and believe that God DID create everything, I have to admit that the entire ID argument just doesn't hold up logically without a pre-existing belief. The presupposition is that the "current" was the "goal" (a position that is not self-evident, but a matter of belief, and a belief which I happen to hold, btw). The response is obviously that everything fits because if it did not fit, we would not be here and, here is the kicker, SOMETHING ELSE WOULD BE HERE! At each stage of possibilities, something else could have happened and the universe would then fit THAT instead of what we have now.

What I mean is that whatever path the development of the universe took, everything would fit that path or it wouldn't be there.

Now, I do believe God created the universe and everything in it. And I DO think that God designed every process that is now in place in this universe and He knew exactly how it would all turn out. And I also believe that He has purposefully intervened in His creation when and where it fit His plan to do so (a particular event 2000 years ago, for example), and that He will do so again. And yes, I can FEEL God in the many wonders of the universe and this planet.

But I also have to recognize that God very well may have created the world to work exactly as it would work without his Divine involvement. He created it so perfectly that He needs no "fine tuning" as the ID'ers like to call it.

In short, the whole ID argument can only be convincing to those, like myself, who already believe that this current state of the universe, with Man sitting here as we are, is how it had to end up. Thus, it is an argument that can only preach to the choir, but has no logical or persuasive effect to those who do not share this pressuposition. Atheists, I must reluctantly admit, are right to reject it.

"But then how do we know God exists?!", the Christians exclaim (and atheists too, for that matter).

Faith. The evidence of things NOT seen.

Experience. The personal relationship with the all-powerful.

The Word. God's timeless message to all of us.

If we are to reach the non-believer, Chrsitians must do so on a theological, philosophical and relational level, not by an attempt to "prove" God must have designed everything.

 

[gluadys]

At the urging of a fervent IDer on another board

http://www.theapologiaproject.org/forum/

I have started to read some of Dembski's articles.

I find them very difficult, but intriguing.

As Vance says, we Christians necessarily believe, at some level, in Intelligent Design, for we believe in the Christian God. So the question is not whether an intelligent designer exists, but whether Dembski's arguments show this successfully. And also, whether or not design and evolution are in any place incompatible.

As far as I can see so far, Dembski believes he has found limits to what natural selection alone can achieve, yet he is also very open to a fusion of intelligent design and evolution.

For example, here is his conclusion to "Why Natural Selection Can't Design Anything" along with my comments.

Darwinian Evolution in Nature (This is the heading of the last section of the article.)

I love this section. I'll be using it to complete my history.

The lesson, then, for intelligent design is that natural causes can synergize with intelligent causes to produce results far exceeding what intelligent causes left to their own abstractions might ever accomplish (this view is, of course, highly congenial to an incarnational theology).

Amen!!! This is very consistent with theistic evolution. It's interesting to see Dembski saying that intelligent causes may actually need natural causes to enhance their results.

Too often design is understood in a deterministic sense in which every aspect of a designed object has to be preordained by a designing intelligence. Evolutionary algorithms underwrite a nondeterministic conception of design in which design and nature operate in tandem to produce results that neither could produce by itself.39

Exactly!!!

I close with a quote by Michael Polanyi very much in this spirit:
"It is true that the teleology rejected in our day is understood as an overriding cosmic purpose necessitating all the structures and occurrences in the universe in order to accomplish itself. This form of teleology is indeed a form of determinism-perhaps even a tighter form of determinism than is provided for by a materialistic, mechanistic atomism. However, since at least the time of Charles Saunders Peirce and William James a looser view of teleology has been offered to us-one that would make it possible for us to suppose that some sort of intelligible directional tendencies may be operative in the world without our having to suppose that they determine all things. Actually it is possible that even
Plato did not suppose that his "Good" forced itself upon all things. As Whitehead has pointed out, Plato tells us that the Demiurge, looking toward the Good, "persuades" an essentially free matter to structure itself, to some extent, in imitation of the Forms. Plato appeared to Whitehead to have modeled the cosmos on a struggle to achieve the Good in the somewhat recalcitrant media of space and time and matter, a struggle well known to all souls with purposes and ends and aims."40

Do you ever have the experience of thinking something through to a conclusion and then finding that someone else has thought through to the same conclusion and published it already? That's how I felt when I read this quote from Polanyi. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes sense in a paradigm of theistic evolution. Since Dembski sees it as also making sense in the paradigm of ID, I expect the two concepts are actually very close and not mutually exclusive.

Some of the ideas I find pertinent here is that modern philosophy is moving away from a tight deterministic teleology. This is matched in science by the discovery of quantum indeterminacy and the new work in chaotic systems. The conclusion of such loosening of the strings of determinism is essentially free matter.

I think this is a very important concept. If the actions of material particles are set in stone from the beginning, then the only way God can intervene in nature is by overriding what he first created. But if matter is essentially free, it is open to persuasion; it can respond to the beckoning of the Spirit to do this and not that. And that means that God can accomplish his purposes by working in nature instead of against nature.

I'm not sure yet where ID fits into this if it does. In spite of Dembski's words and his approval of Polanyi's, it seems to me that the essence of ID is that God must intervene against nature at some points instead of persuading and empowering nature to accomplish God's will.


btw the forum I linked to above is a brand-new one with only six members so far and most boards with no postings in them at all. So if you would like a place to spread your apologetic wings on many different topics, come on over and join the conversation. It's not just ID and evolution. It's all sorts of topics of interest to Christians crying out for input.

 

[tryptophan]

I believe in intelligent design, but as a Christian and not as a scientist. I believe that evolution is how we got to where we are today and that God designed it in some way, which we are not capable of knowing about. That's from my own beliefs. However, I don't believe that it can be objectively and scientifically proven that there was a designer.

One big support for this idea is that it took scientists a relatively short while to create the conditions required for life: amino acids, lipids, etc. Many who hold the ID view say that since it took an intelligent individual (a scientist) to create these conditions, it should have also taken an individual (God) to create conditions for life on Earth. Now, I have no problem with this being a theology. I actually accept it. However, from a scientific perspective, you have to understand that these processes take place over billions of years. Can somebody even contemplate the thought of billions of years. Especially when you consider that all of human history has been in roughly 6,000 years or so, that's a lot. So, objectively, it's possible that these conditions could have come about over many years on their own. Is it possible that God created the conditions? Of course it is. But science cannot objectively prove this. Whatever science cannot test, it has no opinion of. It doesn't say it is or isn't possible, it says nothing.

Especially since I am planning on teaching high school biology, this is a close issue for me. ID might belong in a religious studies or philosophy class, but it does not belong in a science class.

 

[Vance]

Very well said, Tryptophan.

 

[tryptophan]

Very well said, Tryptophan.

Thank you.