I think there is a great deal we can learn from each other and that our mere beliefs shouldn’t prevent us from collaborating in our shared desire to seek Truth. Keep making these videos on evolution; they are excellent for referring friends to.

I live in Alabama and I can tell you that there are serious problems within our education system that have led to a scientific misunderstanding of what evolution is. After initiating a discussion on evolution with a group of Christians I was mocked and ridiculed. I feel I made some good points and I can honestly say that their argument consisted of nothing more than making monkey noises and asking me why there aren’t half gorillas/ half humans walking around.

Don’t worry though. The US might be screwed up when it comes to I.D, but the rest of the world is not (apart from Turkey). As more and more science is discovered, the I.D people will desperately cling on to their “gaps” in the theory, which will grow ever smaller, until they don’t exist.

Don’t worry. Science will always win. We beat them in Physics, we beat them in cosmology, we beat them chemistry. We beat them with Galileo, we beat them with Hubbard.

Rest assured my good friend, science will always win. But I think you already knew that.

2) I think your construal of the Intelligent Design (ID) argument is not quite right. Indeed, David Hume, a long time ago, rejected the design argument as based on an improper analogy between human artifacts such as clocks and the universe. Similar effects do not necessarily mean similar causes, and we must at least have witnessed one cause to the universe. Since we have not witnessed the origins of any universes, it is an improper analogy. This argument is certainly a strong one, but the problem is that ID, at least in some forms, is not an argument by analogy.

ID is rather an inference to best explanation. In other words, it is an attempt to devise the best explanation for the phenomena we have presented before us. ID is rejecting evolution as implausible given the great deal of complexity of living organisms, and saying that a better explanation is to infer a designer. In other words, ID is not inferring deductively the necessity of a designer given the complexity of design, but rather the convenience of postulating a designer given this complexity. It is thus an inductive, rather than deductive, argument.

I am, however, not quite sure what you mean when you say that organisms of lower-complexity are taken as evidence for ID. Without any further elucidation of this argument, I am just inclined to think that you are setting up a “straw man,” by constructing a circular argument, calling it ID, and then showing why it is circular and thus is not cogent. In other words,

1. The complexity of higher organisms is evidence for the Design hypothesis
2. According to the Design hypothesis, all organisms were created by a designer
3. All lower organisms were created by a designer (2)
4. There are lower organisms
5. These lower organisms are evidence of a designer (3 & 4)
——-
/. Therefore, there is a designer.

But this is not the argument, and is clearly circular. In fact, there is no reason to suppose that (4) should be taken as a premise (viz. as evidence) for the conclusion. Rather, it would itself be part of the conclusion. Hence:

1. According to the Design hypothesis, all organisms were created by a designer
2. The complexity of higher organisms is evidence for the Design hypothesis
——-
/. Therefore, there is a designer
/. Therefore, this designer created all lower organisms as well

3) ID proponents do give arguments about why the eye is “irreducibly complex.” Basically, they argue that the eye is constructed so that if there were even a minor difference in its structure, it would not function at all. Therefore, it would be implausible to say that the eye evolved gradually, because if it lacked even a minor detail, it would not have served its function. (Of course, there are in fact scientific explanations for the evolution of the eye.)

4) Scientific theories are judged by the explanatory gaps that they provide or resolve. If Newtonian physics is unable to account for an anomaly, we must either reject the theory, restrict its domain, or expand its domain. The latter was done by hypothesizing the existence of a new planet (which did in fact exist where they theorized it would). If the holes become so big and numerous, we are inclined to reflect badly upon the theory as a scientific account.

Further, as noted above, ID is not proposed, necessarily (and I am by no means an expert on ID), as a default alternative to natural selection, but rather as an inference to best explanation. Given the implausibility of natural selection, ID proponents argue that it is a much better (though not necessarily a necessary) hypothesis to conjecture the existence of a designer. Evidence for the implausibility of evolution (no matter how bad this evidence is) is certainly not evidence for the existence of a designer. But again, it need not be. ID proponents simply take it as the cue to develop what they take to be a more plausible hypothesis.

Moreover, you take on Daniel Dennett’s position on evolution that all traits are optimal and that if they have not been so deemed, it is because we do not have enough information about the selection pressures in which they were developed. While I find this position disagreeable, and am much more inclined to Gould’s position that traits are not necessarily optimal, and that instead they simply respond to the pressures (of variant degree) of the environment and the struggle for existence, I find another, more principled, problem. This is that of falsification. We can simply say, “Yes, but we do not know all the facts,” and use this as a rejection of any argument against an account of the development of some phenomenon. This is unscientific. We could simply discount any objection by asserting an indefinite amount of ad hoc circumstances that may have given rise to that phenomenon. But, again, this sort of argument is non-falsifiable. We can’t rely on an argument to ignorance. Indeed, while science is intrinsically future-oriented, it nevertheless does not give as premises for its theories or conclusions the fact that we do not know, but may know in the future (or, alternatively, that we do not know, but there is something there).

Theories that account for the most in the least amount of terms, with the fewest explanatory gaps, are to be seen as, if not correct, at least very nice. In fact, this was the justification for accepting the heliocentric vision of the solar system, as opposed to the serious complexity that was involved in maintaining the geocentric hypothesis (even though the results were functionally equivalent).

5) Once again, I feel that you have simply set up a straw man, knocked it down, and claim to have defeated the actual argument. You begin by asserting (not arguing) that ID is just Creationism and results in a Christian God—you acknowledge that ID proponents do not generally go so far, but you simply state this as a political strategy (more on that later). You later propose that even if we did hypothesize a designer, we could say nothing about its characteristics. But certainly this is not an objection if it is precisely what ID proponents originally argued—perhaps their belief in a Christian God is simply a leap of faith, and is not meant to be intertwined into the “scientific” account of ID.

I should also ask, does the lack of knowledge about a (causal) mechanism negate the scientific credibility of hypotheses that conjecture it? “Force” was certainly a very important notion for physics, and, as Hume pointed out (also attempting to reject “force” as an actual mechanism), we know (or knew) very little about how force operated. But Newtonian physics still gave a very scientific explanation of one billiard ball effecting change in motion of another billiard ball as due to “force.” The point here is that ignorance with respect to some sort of phenomenon is not prima-facie justification for rejecting that phenomenon as scientifically credible.

6) Your argument about the political motivations of ID does not hold. Science itself is politically motivated. The issue rests upon a fallacy of amphiboly. One can construe “political” in two ways. First, as the struggles of a specific domain of politics. Second, as the internal struggles over the appropriation of power and forms of “capital” within given social domains (hence, there are political struggles within the field of aesthetic production). In other words, we can define political struggles in terms of an internal or an external dialectic. Whereas in the internal dialectic, the immanent motions of the machine lead to its furtherance, in the external dialectic it is the interaction of the scientific or religious sphere with other domains of social knowledge.

It is clear that religion is not subject simply to the internal development of theistic thought. Religion has been interwoven into the various other domains of social knowledge and political struggles, reaching its height during the Middle Ages, but certainly still prevalent. In this sense, religion is sharply characterized by its interaction with separate political struggles.

It is nonetheless also subject to internal struggles of furthering religious knowledge. You can accuse them of playing word games in order to acquire legitimacy for their ideas, but this is a useless point. That is the very definition of a political struggle, either external or internal, and pervades religion as much as it does science.

Scientists use word-games and all other sorts of things in order to gain legitimacy for their own invested theories as well. It is the same with ID. Scientists use various methods to convey their theories as legitimate to the population at-large. So does ID. It is not clear how the political motivations at play in ID are any different than those at play with other scientific theories.

So, the somewhat convoluted point so far is this: The various strategies of legitimation that characterize ID follow the same sorts of paths as strategies of legitimation of scientific theories, hypotheses and definitions. With respect to the internal dynamics of the scientific and religious fields, this is not dubious but the very crux of their functioning (indeed, science is carried forth only by the various struggles of legitimate capital). If we grant that ID is set forth as a scientific hypothesis, then the internal political struggles are normal and to be expected in science.

But the other point is this, that just as religion and ID are subject to external political struggles, so too is science. Science is not a special domain of knowledge that is carried forth only by the internal movements of its constituent parts. It is thoroughly situated within social, political, economic, and even religious domains of struggle. Ptolemy’s geocentric system could perfectly predict the movement of the planets. In fact, the Copernican system had a great deal of doubts placed upon it, for various reasons not just political, but also scientific. The reason the Copernican system became accepted stems largely from the political and religious revolution spurred by Martin Luther, and battles over the power of the papacy. The point being that science is strongly influenced by external struggles, and this cannot be avoided. In fact, just to note this, science and religion were and, to a lesser extent, are strongly interlinked. Without religion, science would not have emerged. The projects of scientists such as Newton were aimed at discovering the absolute truths of the universe, but more than this, the absolute truths of God’s universe.

Science is not purely objective. It is a domain of political struggles over the legitimacy of certain products. If one is to accept science, one must accept that it can only be perpetuated by the internal struggles for the legitimacy of certain concepts. One must further face the inexorable fact that science is intertwined with external struggles as well (to some degree or another). In the face of the first, it would be in bad faith to reject the attempt to legitimate ID in certain ways (although many forms of rejecting this attempt are propitious to the development of science, as a space of cross-checking each others positions). In the face of the second, it would be dubious of us to place science on a pedestal by counter-posing it with ID and religion.

7) It is generally well-taken that we should not take a conclusion and try and fit our data to it. But Clark Glymour points out that it is a scientifically valid practice to assume a hypothesis in testing the theory to which that hypothesis belongs. “Confirmation, then, is a three-termed relation linking a piece of evidence E to a hypothesis H by way of a background theory T, with the proviso that H might be included in T. It is the last feature, that a hypothesis may be assumed in the course of testing it, that leads Glymour to claim that a hypothesis can and often does support (or ‘lift’) itself by its own bootstraps” (Lemert & Brittan, 1992, p. 77). Two hypotheses regarding force in Newton’s theory (F=ma and Second Law of Motion) can confirm accounts of force, even though they derive from the same theory. The same sorts of instances can be found in Darwin. Hence, while it is bad practice to assume a conclusion and fit data to it, it is credible to, so to speak, pull oneself up by the bootstraps and assume various hypotheses derived from a theory in order to confirm that theory.

8) Science does not reinforce atheists in their beliefs. This is because the atheistic claim is, as mentioned elsewhere, a fundamentally metaphysical claim, and thus is not germane to the realm of scientific inquiry. If you simply mean a rejection of ID, this is correct, but does not have the same implications as strong atheistic accounts. This is because of the major gap in ID, between the existence of a designer and the ontological status of that designer. Just as ID cannot infer conclusions that cross the gap, so too rejections of ID cannot thereby reject further ontological claims regarding, say, a Christian God.

9) You seem to be conflating scientific explanations that answer why-questions (and it can argued that most scientific explanations do not, or can not answer why-questions) with those that answer how-questions. This is the flaw of the “because god made it that way” point. ID is an attempt to answer a how-question (i.e. “How did such complex elements come into existence?”), not a why-questions (“Why did they come into existence?”). In fact, when you think about it, one could make the same sort of remark concerning evolution. Why do we have thumbs? “Because selection pressures made it that way.” These amount to little more than just-so stories. But the fundamental point is that the theory of natural selection is chiefly a response to questions of how things came in to being, not why. Now, various sorts of predictions and, more significantly, retrodictions, can be made based on our knowledge of the mechanisms of selection pressures, resulting in something like just-so stories, they are nonetheless scientific in that they enable better understanding (and even prediction/retrodiction). Simply put, evolution is the fact, and natural selection is the theory—it is the theory of how evolution operates, not why.

I myself am a little skeptical with respect to this point about evolution. I think you can answer why-questions using the theory of natural selection. But we should not mistake this diversion as a key point. And the real key point is that ID as an answer to a how-question, not a why-question. Note the difference: The theory of natural selection poses mechanisms for evolution without yet providing a teleological/purposive framework for their coming into being. Similarly, one can assert the same for ID. It is not a fault for a scientific explanation that it cannot say why, just so long as it is able to say how a phenomenon came about—and in many instances scientific accounts are just as blind as the ID account as to why (certainly, scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries may well have just said, “Because god made it that way”).

Oh, I see, BENTRT. Thanks. Neil