My second question to Steve Meyer was the one question I most wanted to ask him, both out of personal curiosity and because I thought the answer would help demystify many of his claims. The exchange that resulted was memorable – on that, everyone seems to agree. But the nature of my comments has been profoundly misrepresented by Meyer's hired guns. I hope that this will be crystal clear when I'm done here.
It's probably best to start with my explanation of the question I asked, because Meyer mistook it for something else. (That's not his fault, as near as I can tell.) My question can be paraphrased as follows:
I'm a Reformed Christian, and I think you are too. I'm a biologist, who knows a lot about the science you discuss; in fact, I know a lot more about it than you do. And yet I disagree with you. I reach a completely different conclusion, despite the fact that I'm perfectly well-qualified to understand the scientific issues, and religiously inclined in similar directions as you are. Why do you think that is?
Meyer took this to be a "baited" question that was designed to get him to admit that his case is weak. His case is laughably weak, that's for sure, but that wasn't the point of the question. After he dealt with what he thought was the "bait" he started to discuss the real issue, concluding that "people are different." This was exactly what I was aiming at, in hopes of helping the audience to see that Christians disagree concerning views of the world, and that such things can be decisive when weighing the merits of natural explanation. (That, I assert, is quite different from the "my explanation is better" claim that Meyer illegitimately advances.)
That was the point of the question, and the only point of the question. And Meyer and I did indeed agree to disagree, even agreeing on "the locus of our disagreement" (which is our "philosophy of science").
But in the course of the discussion, I attempted to explain why Meyer's reasoning process is just as easily applied to natural/material explanation as it is to intelligence/design. Meyer's argument is that the "specified complexity" in the digital code of DNA is the kind of thing that we regularly see created by minds (he uses the metaphor of computer programming, for instance). He continues like this: because we don't have a complete natural explanation, and because we know that minds today can create that kind of "complexity," then we are justified in extrapolating our current explanation into the past, and concluding that a mind could well explain the origin of genetic information systems. My response to this can be paraphrased as follows:
Your claim that a mind could explain the origin of genetic information is a sound explanation, and it is irrefutable. But your reasoning works just as well for natural explanation. Because natural explanation is highly successful in the present, we might assume that it will be similarly successful when extrapolated into the past. The reasoning is the same – it's exactly the same. The only difference between us, then, is our preference for particular patterns of explanation.
Now, I don't think I was very successful in making my point clear. Some who were there did understand it, but they report (accurately) that the audience overwhelmingly did not. (Links at the end of this post.) And this was apparent when they burst into laughter and applause when Meyer inaccurately remarked:
Which, in a strict sense, concedes that the [explanation] I've offered is currently best.
Well, that's not right at all. I never claimed that his explanation is best. I asserted that it can explain what Meyer wants it to explain. Later in the exchange I referred to design as an "excellent and irrefutable explanation," my point being that a superintelligence will always work as an explanation, for anything, anytime. I've asserted as much on several previous occasions, and I think it should be obvious that this is a problem for design explanations, not a strength. If you're offering an irrefutable explanation, you're in danger of offering a vacuous explanation. It is for such scenarios that the concept of Last Thursdayism was invented.
I think that captures the substance of our conversation. Now some comments.
1. You can go to my Google site to listen to audio of the exchange. You will note that it differs somewhat from the transcripts that have been discussed in the blogosphere, but there's no substantive change that I can see. I'm eager for comments, and I think that you'll find the exchange to be different from how it has been portrayed.
2. The first report of the exchange appeared the following Monday on a Seattle-based propaganda website. The author, who I assume works for Steve Meyer, wrote this:
Meyer met two of his critics head-on, one of whom essentially conceded that intelligent design is a better explanation than an unguided process like Darwinian evolution.And this:
Matheson basically conceded that ID is the best explanation currently on the table, but not one that he likes.That first one, especially, is pretty close to an all-out lie. The poor guy who wrote it must not be used to openness and candor at his workplace, since he described my words as "amazingly candid" while referring to the exchange as "amazing" and "incredible." Secret message for Robert: this is the price of living in an intellectual ghetto.
I'm not sure what else to say about the quote mining, which was repeated on the sites of a couple of other ID bottom-feeders. One ID defender has decried (in comments here on the blog) the naked duplicity of these culture warriors, and I'll be happy if a few honorable folks like him will take the hint and read a little more widely. As for Meyer's role in the ongoing dishonesty of his movement, I'll address him directly in my next and final post on the event.
3. Although Meyer mocked the idea of "waiting for a natural explanation," he is happy to wait for a design explanation when a coherent one is currently inferior. I made this point in my response to his zinger, and I was referring to one of the twelve predictions of ID at the end of his book. Meyer predicts that "bad designs" in biology will someday be shown to be... not bad. Does this mean that he's conceding that the Darwinian explanation is currently best?
4. Some links to comments in the blogosphere:
- One person who was there said it better than I did. See first comment on this post.
- Kent commented here (he found the Q&A unsatisfying) and describes the scene in a comment at Jim Kidder's blog.
- Josh Rosenau gets it, though he focuses on whether ID is "outside science," which I don't care as much about.
36 comments:
Hi Steve:
I can't get the tape to play. Is it ready?
Thanks,
Jim
Meyer doesn't come across well to me in that little discussion. He seems far too willing to score cheap points, and miscontrue your words, but maybe it's just me.
It also seems rather weird the way he and other ID advocates present their case about "information" and "complexity" as if these were things that have only just been discovered, and that once biologists accept this reality they'll all adopt some form of ID. Is it just me or has it been obvious for quite some time that living organisms are complicated and contain "information?"
I also wish someone would really pin him down on the whole "information only comes from a mind" stuff. As others have pointed out there are numerous counter examples to this, from meteorology to seismic signals. These types of arguments have become increasingly pervasive among ID advocates. They appear to have a 'common sense' appeal, and so people simply refuse to accept that they are clearly false. As a refrain it is almost on par with "no transitional fossils" and mutations only causing a "loss of information."
Hi Jim,
It works for me, but if you can't get it to play in your browser, you can download the mp3 file here.
Ben,
You're right about the confusion about "information," although I do think that genetic information requires a more robust explanation than weather and the like. And while it's plainly true that Meyer is dressing up common-sense appeals to laypeople with fancy-sounding lingo, I think it's also true that his question about the kind of information that genetic systems display is an interesting question.
No, it's not just you. His presentation was a masterpiece of pseudoscholarship, and his lay audience ate it up.
Steve,
I'll accept your view of the incident, without even listening to the recording, since you would be the best judge of what you were trying to say.
From the set-up (Meyer speaks at length and then responds to very limited number of questions from only two experts), I wouldn't expect a fair debate of the issues. But don't take that to mean I agree with your assessment of them.
Ben, "...maybe it's just me" and "Is it just me...?" sound rather like a preacher appealing to the audience: "Can I get an amen?"
Your post really highlights the sociological aspects of this debate, I believe. Somehow, the participants seem to be blind to this dimension...but it's quite obvious to many of us sitting here in the bleachers.
It seems to me that that's what "Expelled" was trying to highlight (gasp!).
But Dave, the sociological aspects go both ways, as exhibited at the Meyer event and in "Expelled," from one who is also sitting in the bleachers.
Your account of your remarks is what I hypothesized (a comment on Jim Kidder's blog) you to have meant when I first read the Disco 'Tute's quote-mined and distorted version. I didn't know then how badly it was distorted, but I was sure it was.
Quite right, Bilbo...each tends to see only the other side's, not their own.
When I saw that hackjob description, I immediately thought "An irrefutable explanation is nothing to brag about." But this is completely consistent with many, many other encounters I've had. The subtleties and nuances of careful discourse are lost on people trying to score argument points. If you want to get an idea through, you have to beat them over the head. Had I been you, I would have appended your comment with "Design is also ad hoc and therefore doesn't really explain nature so much as it explains away nature." Or something to that effect. At least my meaning would have been missed only by the most dense.
Hi Todd. I wanted to applaud your recent posts on RTB's response to recent scientific reporting of modern human and Neanderthal interbreeding. I really enjoyed reading it and I would recommend it to others. I considered sending you an e-mail as you often invite your blog readers to do, but was unsure as to whether you would really be interested.
As an aside, I was particularly interested in Hugh Ross's claims that the Neanderthal genome didn't change over tens of thousands of years, and that they considered this essentially a 'disproof' of evolution. I looked back over the RTB literature and found they had made this claim before. I realise you Todd were commenting from a YEC viewpoint, and so didn't really make much of it, but are there any theistic evolutionists around who would like to comment on it?
P.S. Sorry to sidetrack the discussion here but I thought I'd take the chance to let Todd know that his blog provides thoughtful commentary and analysis, and is a welcome exception at a time when so much of the dialogue is often invidious and unedifying.
What is the actual relationship between Biola and DI? I find it odd that a Christian university would ally itself with what amounts to a rather dubious PR firm. DI seems to have few qualms about using any means necessary to achieve their ends.
In his recent Christianity Today article, Meyer name drops Phil Skell and Norman Nevin insinuating that his book led these credentialed scientists to the design camp. Skell has been floating around DI circles at least since the Kansas BOE flap in 2005 when his letter was posted on their site. Nevin is a long-time YEC involved with the Truth in Science group in the UK. He has recently edited Should Christians Embrace Evolution? which is emphatically answers that question with no.
Gerald, thanks for your kind words.
Michael, Biola has a long history with the ID movement. The 1996 Mere Creation conference was held there, and one of the RAPID conferences was also held there. They now have M.A. in science and religion program, with prominent ID folk and/or creationists as faculty and adjunct faculty: Dembski, Paul Nelson, Cornelius Hunter, Fuz Rana, and Kenneth Samples. More info here:
http://www.biola.edu/academics/sas/scienceandreligion/
http://www.biola.edu/id/about/
Private message for DM: I'm deleting your comments. Take the hint and go away.
As far as the "design is irrefutable, therefore unfalsifiable," argument goes, I'm not buying it. Mike Gene has offered very reasonable criteria for determining design or non-design:
1) How much Discontinuity from natural processes?
2) How close an Analogy with known design?
3) How Rationality does it exhibit (does it make sense)?
4) How much Foresight does it exhibit?
Todd,
I have looked at their site before, but it still doesn't explain why they have such a close relationship.
Michael,
Why do colleges and universities align themselves with any authors/speakers/public-attention-getters? PR. I'm not knocking it either. Keeps me employed.
OTOH, I guess your question might be why are they aligning with those particular attention-getters? ID movement must have a fan in the university's administration. It generally takes one fan and no opponents to get the outcome we're observing.
OTOH it might just be convenience. Given my understanding of Biola, they're pretty theologically conservative, but they're not young-earth. ID makes a nice position for them to take without taking a definite stand on Genesis that might draw the ire of some supporters. Despite the antipathy of AIG, ICR, and CMI, creationists generally love what the ID movement is trying to do. So they're unlikely to protest Biola's alignment with ID.
OTOH I've run out of hands.
Bilbo, those are interesting criteria, for sure, but what do they have to do with falsifiability? My assertion is pretty simple, and it's similar (or identical) to one made by Eugenie Scott: the activity of a sufficiently gifted superintelligence, much less an omnipotent deity, can never be ruled out. Never. It doesn't get any less falsifiable than that.
Those of us who worship an omnipotent God have to be a lot humbler in our claims about his work. Skeptics are right to scoff at seemingly detailed attempts to demonstrate that he has "designed" the biosphere or the cosmos. Given his omnipotence and given our cluelessness about his ways, essentially any claim about his work or intentions is unfalsifiable. I'm not sure why you don't buy that. I think it's obvious.
Hi Steve,
The problem is that the converse is also true: We can never rule out a non-intelligent causal explanation for anything, either. For example, your comment. It seems exceedingly improbable that there could be a non-intelligent cause for it, but we do not have exhaustive knowledge of the unoverse. So there may be such a cause, and we are just unaware of it.
So how do we make a determination of whether something has an intelligent or non-intelligent cause? We try to find reasonable criteria and use them. Will some conclusions seem more certain than others? Sure. It seems much more certain that your comment was intelligently caused than that the first cell was. Could we be mistaken? Yes. Welcome to the empirical world.
1) How much Discontinuity from natural processes?
If a particular natural process is unknown or as yet not understood, what then?
2) How close an Analogy with known design?
Analogies are instructional tools, not evidence.
3) How Rationality does it exhibit (does it make sense)?
Rube Goldberg contraptions didn't really make sense, but they were designed.
4) How much Foresight does it exhibit?
Question begging.
Mike Gene/Julie Thomas should have quick when he/she was ahead.
Bilbo, my point was that any claim that an omnipotent being is at work, especially if her/his ways are considered inscrutable, is necessarily unfalsifiable. The only way to change that is to specify the nature of her/his action, the way one must specify causes when advancing scientific hypotheses.
It seems you agree, since you claim that my criticism "works both ways," which it does whenever an explanation (whether or not it involves intelligence) displays the kind of vague structure that invites the "ad hoc" descriptor.
And it's good to have that straight. Because when you said you didn't buy my assertion, I took that to mean that you disagree. Apparently I was mistaken.
Steve, did you notice this from Richard Sternberg today? I never go over to 'Evolution News and Views' but just happened to see a link to it from somewhere else and saw your name in the title.
Just noticed it's mentioned on Sandwalk, and you posted a brief comment so you obviously were aware of it.
Hi Steve,
After I posted my response, I wished I hadn't, because I think all I accomplished was to muddy the waters.
So let me try again.
If I understand your argument, there is no way to tell when an all powerful being has designed something or not.
First, we have this problem on the human level. Here's an experiment. Place the following in a room with a ream of computer paper:
1) A paper airplane.
2) Place the other sheets of paper on the floor in exactly the pattern indicated on an accompanying diagram (the pattern looks completely random).
3) Keep the diagram to yourself.
Now invite people into the room and ask which sheets of paper exhibit design and which exhibit non-design.
I predict that most people will pick the airplane for design and the "random" configuration of paper on the floor as non-design, even though both were designed.
So in regard to our all powerful designer, yes it is possible that everything is designed, even if most of it looks random. What ID claims is that some things exhibit enough properties of design that it is reasonable to believe (or at least suspect) they were designed, regardless of how powerful the designer is.
Steve
Having read Van Till many years ago my mind is a bit fuzzy but my strong recollection is that he seemed to have a strong theological motivation for his proposal of "Fully Gifted Creation or Robust Formational Economy" Principle. Van Till assumed that God only acted in the sustaining aspect of Providence and not in the governing aspect (here I am using language from Berkouwer at the Free, as best I recall). In other words God acted to create space-time, the shape of the laws, their constants and the initial conditions but after that God only sustained what he had created ages ago (expect possibly until the development of hominids and the implantation of things like the moral law or possibly the soul/spirit which is something I would like to exclude from this particular discussion).
Van Till seemed to object a-priori to the idea of God taking any kind of action to further the development of life up to at least the development of hominids.
While I would find RFE a more impressive method of creation, as I see it God may have brought about life, however, he chooses and I see no theological arguments against a relatively small number of God's direct actions. My view is that we need to look at nature and attempt to understand what in fact God did.
What are your thoughts in this area?
Dave W
Bilbo,
I don't pretend to speak for Steve, but I think the problem w/ your paper design analogy is that people have seen paper airplanes before. Of course, they'd choose the paper airplane as designed. As an aside, the record for longest time aloft for a paper airplane was broken last year. It's something like 27.9 seconds now.
In relation to your question about falsifiability of natural vs. supernatural processes, it's helpful to think of Imre Lakatos' research program(me)s. I'm very roughly paraphrasing here, but... The "hard core" of a program might indeed not be directly falsifiable. To be a good research program, there need to be auxiliary hypotheses generated which are themselves testable and some of which seem to be the best available explanation. When data contradicts an auxiliary hypothesis, part of the theory can generally be changed to explain the new data. The difference between a progressive and regressive research program is whether that change does more than just explain the new data. i.e. in a progressive program, the change should generate a new hypothesis which has not yet been tested in addition to explaining the data already observed.
In my opinion, it's not that the core belief of ID necessarily precludes a scientific research program (though it might); it's in the generating and verifying of auxiliary hypotheses that ID isn't doing well.
Hi Kakapo,
Yes, people would choose the paper airplane, because they already know that paper airplanes are designed. But now let's pretend that the paper airplane was designed not by a human being, but by God. Would they still choose the paper airplane? Of course they would. So the problem of identifying design has nothing to do with supernatural causation. It's a red herring. By the way, if you see a really good paper airplane, and the only two possible designers are God or me, pick God.
Now generating a good ID research program depends upon your hypothesis. It needs to be specific enough that it can generate testable hypotheses. Mike Gene's Front-loaded Evolution is a good one, and is generating quite a bit of positive results.
Oh, and though most IDists believe that God is the designer, most of them think the evidence is insufficient to show that God is the designer. They're not trying to prove that God is the designer, just that some things were designed by somebody.
Bilbo wrote
But now let's pretend that the paper airplane was designed not by a human being, but by God. Would they still choose the paper airplane? Of course they would. So the problem of identifying design has nothing to do with supernatural causation. It's a red herring.
They would do so because they know human beings make paper airplanes, and they would attribute that one to human design! That is, we identify it as "designed" in part because we have independent evidence of the existence of entities that we know from experience actually design (and manufacture--don't forget manufacture) things like paper airplanes.
We have no independent evidence of the existence of entities capable of designing and manufacturing, say, a bacterial flagellum. Therefore to attribute it to "design" (and don't forget manufacturing) is an attribution in a vacuum and explains precisely nothing. "Intelligent design" has no explanatory power in the absence of testable hypotheses about the existence, nature, intentions, knowledge, skills, and abilities of a putative designing and manufacturing agent(s). Note that one doesn't require identification of the specific designing and manufacturing agents(s), but one does require more than "it's an intelligent agent."
All of intelligent design creationism fails on two points:
1. No objective definition of "design."
2. No objective metric to measure "design."
Meyer's book is based on two points, both of which fail.
1. We know design when we see it. Fail.
2. In our experience design comes from mind. Fail.
Experience is a very bad measure. In our experience the Earth does not move and the Sun moves across the sky. That's what experience tells us. Only by application of measurements that anyone can understand and do can the actual physics of the Earth and Sun, in this example, be demonstrated.
ID proponents always fail on this question because they can't answer it and it's not a surprise. If Dembski and Behe, the two leading ID advocates can't produce the goods then that leaves ID totally empty.
Without a definition and metric for design, it's impossible to attribute objects in nature as being designed or not.
Hi RBH,
Let's do another thought experiment. This time we travel to a distant planet (we're the first people from earth to make it there) and find a paper airplane. Do we still attribute it to human design?
Bilbo,
We'd start looking for evidence of the existence and presence of material entities with the capability of making that artifact.
Bilbo, merely labeling something "designed" provides no explanatory leverage at all absent the conditions I described above. IDists like to invoke archaeologists. Well, they don't go around looking at things and shouting "designed!" or "not designed!" And in cases where there's doubt about whether a candidate artifact is the product of an intelligent entity, they also look for things like debitage fields and other evidence of the manufacturing process. Merely attributing an artifact to "design" is uninformative; we want to know the causal history of an artifact and labeling it "designed by some unknown entity(its)" is opaque, uninformative, vacuous.
If IDists would get off their butts and formulate an actual theory, as opposed to waving a label around, then maybe one could do some actual useful research. But none seem inclined to do so. Until then ID is a vacuous concept, empty of explanatory content.
Hi RBH,
Yes, I agree that we would start looking around for the natives, Why? Because we would be pretty sure that the paper airplane was designed, largely because it looked like (Analogy) the ones we designed and manufactured back on earth, and because we wouldn't know a non-intelligent way to design it (Discontinuity). If it looked well-designed and flew really well (Rationality), and if it set off a trap and we were caught and eaten (Foresight), we would be very confident that it was intelligently designed.
I agree that unless we can turn ID into some kind of useful research program, then it won't be much fun for scientists. As I mentioned previously, Mike Gene seems to be having at least some success with his Front-Loaded Evolution hypothesis. Richard Sternberg seems to be pursuing some kind of DNA as genetic engineer hypothesis (I think), though obviously not impressing anyone, yet. Behe's last book was an attempt to find the boundary between random mutation and design, again not impressing many, though every so often somebody comes out with a paper refuting him. So at least he's offered a challenge for biologists to try to overcome. And that provides some fun, I would think. Not sure what Dembski and Marks are up to with all that computer stuff.
But maybe we should compare it with SETI. Right now they're having fun looking for radio signals. But what happens if they find one, but it's too far away to communicate with in a reasonable time frame? How do they have fun with that? But at least they could say they found good evidence of ETI, even though we couldn't verify it independently.
The difference is that ID thinks we've aleady found the "radio signal." Now the fun is trying to prove it. Or disprove it, depending which side you're on. Think about it. Isn't this fun? It's kept me entertained for years.
@Bilbo
You write: If I understand your argument, there is no way to tell when an all powerful being has designed something or not.
That's sort of right. The key words are: "or not." Because an omnipotent God can do anything, such as hide his tracks or create things de novo that look like they have a long history, then the absence of design is impossible to establish in the presence of such a God. The only way to fix that is to learn all about the preferences and limitations of said deity. Your argument about whether design can be positively detected is one I've repeatedly endorsed and is not relevant to my point.
@gringoro aka Dave W.
Like you, I like RFE a lot and have always had very high regard for Howard and his ideas. But like you, I'm in the "never say never" school when it comes to delimiting God's action. I'm a very strong materialist, not because I have any doubt that God can act supernaturally, but because experience teaches me not to expect it. And that might point to some differences between Howard and I on the implications of RFE.
Bilbo,
Now the fun is trying to prove it. Or disprove it, depending which side you're on. Think about it. Isn't this fun? It's kept me entertained for years.
I wish so much more people at the DI embraced your approach, rather than their political agenda. Not to be patronizing, but it would be so much better for everybdy if they had your cheerful enthusiasm.
"Which, in a strict sense, concedes that the [explanation] I've offered is currently best."
What a load of horse poo. I'd like to say that he clearly didn't understand what you were saying at all, but I think it's worse. I think he knew exactly what you were saying, exactly what he was saying, and all the implications of both. He knew exactly what to say to that particular audience as well. Shame on the audience for being ignorant enough to cheer after such a ludicrous comment.
Steve,
I have to admit I don't understand you response to Meyer regarding work of an intelligence vs. natural explanation. Meyer clearly states that we see intelligent minds create codes all the time. ( That's my job in fact, creating complex computer codes ).
And your example of a natural process that creates a code similar to a computer program is...?????
I can't think of one. Can you?
Post a Comment