I’m currently engaged in a discussion at the Uncommon Descent blog, on the subject of Intelligent Design and its status as science. I’ve decided to share one of my comments here, in the hope that it will stimulate further discussion of what I feel are important issues. The only other observation I will make is that the responses to my comments have been roughly parallel to those I experienced after posting on the Richard Dawkins forum. Internet forums are mere anecdotal evidence, but they certainly don’t show any greater or lesser propensity of one side or the other either to insult those they disagree with, or to engage in intelligent conversation.
I have no problem with the possibility of an ‘intelligent design’ inference in principle. My principle concern is when this is used as a justification for asserting knowledge (i.e. that something was produced through intelligent agency) where admitting ignorance (i.e. we don’t at present know how something came about) would seem more appropriate. The idea that the eye could evolve was once thought ludicrous. Now it can be shown to be plausible.
How do we know at what point we are dealing with something inexplicable in naturalistic terms, as opposed to merely as yet unexplained? I do not find the appearance of irreducible complexity a persuasive basis, because it has proved an inaccurate guide in the past (see the eye, again) and does not appear to me to be as readily quantifiable as Dembski’s work maintains. To make a comparison, at what point does one give up investigating a criminal case and say that it not only has not been solved but cannot be solved in principle?
My own view is that once one is dealing with intervention by a personal agent (whether human or supernatural), one is not doing science in the traditional sense. To use an example, if a scientist is running an experiment, and a rival sneaks into his lab late at night and tampers with the apparatus, this would invalidate the experiment’s aims, which is to study what happens in the absence of such interventions.
Of course, this also leads nicely to the question of how we detect intervention by a personal agent. One possibility would be to compare this individual’s results with others conducted independently. The fact that his results were so different would probably lead him, quite logically, to suspect personal interventions.
If we find other planets at a comparable distance from their suns and with similar starting points, and they all fail to produce life through natural processes, that might be more suggestive of something other than natural processes having caused life on earth. But at present, we can only say ‘One out of one people surveyed said…’, which is not an adequate basis for assessing the probability or otherwise of life emerging through natural processes.
I am not sure why I am more comfortable than some other Christians seem to be with natural explanations for things. Perhaps it is because it seems that if one finds natural explanations threatening, then the fact that our individual form is shaped by DNA instructions rather than inexplicably by God’s hand, that whirlwinds and lightning can be explained in meteorological terms – in short, all of science should be threatening to a religious viewpoint that seeks to hold on to a prescientific view of the world. For me, science has shown its ability to explain the world adequately, and I concur with most Christians that speaking about God is another way of looking at the same events, and not a competing explanation.
I also feel comfortable acknowledging ignorance where other religious believers seem to feel the need to be able to claim certainty. This seems to me to be fundamentally about humility, a key teaching of Christianity, but also about two very different approaches to religion and to God. Some feel that God is the one who inspires inerrant Scripture and gives his followers undefeatable arguments. For me, when I speak of God, it is to humbly point to an experience of a reality so great that it makes my arguments and attempts at comprehension laughably inadequate. For someone who acknowledges this in relation to the ultimate reality, admitting that one does not have all the answers about the workings of the universe is not that difficult.
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