Intelligent Design Creationism Evolves Again

1
Intelligent DesignCreationism Evolves Again

• Taner Edis
• Truman State University
• www2.truman.edu/edis

2
Recent History

• Religiously motivated anti-evolutionary thought
  has always accompanied evolution.
• Early on, old earth, or even evolution as
  progressive development was acceptable among many
  theological conservatives.
• Young-earth creationist revival in mid-20C.
• Today, Intelligent Design creationism is in the
  news Ohio 2002, Missouri 2004.

3
Landmark Books YEC

• Though having an anti-intellectual reputation,
  the history of creationism can be summarized
  through landmark books.
• Whitcomb Morris 1961. Revive YEC.

4
1990s ID Begins

• 1991 Phillip Johnson, Berkeley law professor.
  Leading ID spokesman.
• Not fundamentalist in tone, looking for
  broad-based opposition to evolution.
• Issue naturalism.

5
Irreducible complexity

• 1996 Michael Behe, Lehigh biochemist. Leading
  ID biologist. Catholic.
• Accepts common descentagainst Darwinian
  mechanism.
• ID movement.

6
Specified complexity

• 1998-now William Dembski, mathematician and
  philosopher. Leading theorist of ID.
• ID irreducible form of explanation, distinct from
  chance necessity.
• ID is a revolution.

7
Books, books, more books

• Dembski has 3 books, 4 edited books on ID.
• Not just biology but physics, AI, theology,
  morality, law,
• Broad, information-theoretic objections to
  naturalistic evolution.

8
Dembskis filter

9
The Wedge Strategy

• ID politically ambitious. Well-funded.
  Discovery Institute. Wedge strategyID
  dominance by 2019. Many media, popular, and
  scientific productions foreseen.
• ID is involved in battles over evolution in
  secondary education.
• Politically tied to Religious Right. Pre-modern
  ideals (Forrest Gross 2003).

10
Intellectual Creationism?

• YEC too sectarian, too absurd-appearing.
• ID downplays age of earth, scripture, even God.
  It appeals to grand theistic themes relies on
  intuition that order comes from intelligent
  design. Tries for a broad base.
• Could appeal beyond scientific community?
• Why such a narrow constituency for ID? Why a
  failure in intellectual life?

11
Islamic Creationism

• Looking at Muslim world puts ID in perspective.
• Outright creationism is popular and successful.
  Harun Yahya in Turkey.
• Obvious design in nature.

12
ID Muslim high culture

• Creationism and design in nature still part of
  Muslim high culture.
• Religious intellectuals, especially those into
  Islamization of science, attack Darwinian
  evolution. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Osman Bakar,
  Muzaffar Iqbal
• The religious high culture takes an generic
  ID-like view of nature.

13
Grand Themes

• ID, Muslim and Western, is not centered on
  biology for its own sake. It is concerned with
  the irreducibility of intelligence, of
  creativity. It defends mind-matter dualism, a
  hierarchical view of nature. Grand themes of
  Near Eastern monotheism.
• ID no longer implicit in Western intellectual
  culture. Need to reestablish it. Science!

14
War of the theologians

• ID attracts many religiously conservative
  philosophers Dembski, Plantinga, Meyer,
  Moreland, Nelson, etc. etc.
• Theological liberals notably cold. Few examples
  of sympathy to ID.
• Still, some examples of ID-like themes of
  information, top-down causality surface among
  liberals.

15
Information from above

• Example John Haught, 2000. God as the ultimate
  source of the novel informational patterns
  available to evolution.
• Also John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke.

16
Common concerns

• Could ID bridge the conservative-liberal gap in
  theology? Shared themes about top-down
  causation, purpose, information, etc.
• ID does not necessarily reject all evolution.
  Common descent OK. Guidance and progressivity
  appeals to liberals.
• Some liberals willing to endorse scientific
  fringe. E.g. parapsychology.

17
Never the twain

• But neither side seeks a common ground.
• ID debate falls into old creation/evolution
  pattern conservative culture warriors against
  liberals as best allies of science and modernity.
• There is a cultural split the dispute over
  science is just one point of contention.
• Even so, what scientists think is decisive.

18
Here we go again!

• Reaction to ID within scientific community
  overwhelmingly dismissive.
• ID seen as nothing but old-fashioned creationism
  revived and given a more intellectual-appearing
  veneer.
• ID attracts attention as a nuisance for
  education, not as a new idea to debate.
• IDers need excuses for this rejection.

19
Interfering philosophers

• Scientists not overly anti-religious. But
  science has a naturalistic bias?
• Robert Pennock science must follow
  methodological naturalism (MN). Excludes ID,
  protects liberal religion.

20
Is science naturalistic?

• Philosophers dictating what science must be do
  not have a great track record.
• Historically strange Biologists adopted
  evolution as better explanationthey didnt
  suddenly decide creation was not allowed.
• Explanations involving design and intent not odd,
  e.g. in history. Nothing wrong with ID in
  biology as a hypothesis.

21
Practical naturalism

• Philosophical ID supporters attack MN, as
  illegitimately excluding ID.
• Theyre right. Politically bad move as well.
• Better view Naturalism has been successful in
  recent history. The best-supported broad
  description of the world. We expect this to
  continuenaturalistic ideas are favored.
• ID could succeed in science. But difficult.

22
How could ID succeed?

• IDs critics have to learn ID to criticize it
  effectively. Critics coming over gives boost to
  new ideasincluding Darwinian evolution in its
  time.
• Young Turks might buck establishment.
• Scientists would be impressed most by new
  research driven by ID, which produces results
  not anticipated by evolutionists.

23
What has ID achieved?

• Scientific critics aplenty no converts.
• No Young Turks in research.
• Plenty of popular outreach, but no scientific
  production and no increase in respect among
  scientiststhe only glaring failure in the
  Wedge Strategy.
• Intellectual output focused on complaints about
  mainstream science.

24
ID a scientific failure

• No crisis in biology. Darwinian mechanism can
  produce information. Irreducible complexity
  not an issue.
• Physicists also have a lot to say about producing
  complexity, none ID-friendly.
• AI, cognitive science full of evolutionary
  ideasour own intelligent designs are enabled
  by Darwinian mechanisms.

25
More fit
Less fit
26
No preset goals!

• Evolution is not a search for a preset best
  solution.
• Genuine creativity can arise from rules and
  randomness, but again, the lack of a preset goal
  is crucial (Edis 1998).
• Though ID raises occasional interesting questions
  about complexity, these are largely answered
  already.

27
Where does ID go from here?

• ID has made very little headway among
  intellectual circles.
• But the same constituency for old-fashioned
  creationism also supports ID.
• ID movement is likely to continue drawing on this
  constituency for support. The real battle has
  always been political.
• Keep watching school boards.

28
The political motivation

• The motivations to push ID are the same as those
  which drive YEC.
• ID proponents themselves argue that evolution is
  a social disaster.

29
ID resources on the web

• Discovery Institute www.discovery.org
• International Society for Complexity, Information
  Design www.iscid.org
• Intelligent Design Network (grassroots)
  www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org
• www.origins.org

30
ID critics on the web

• The National Center for Science Education (your
  first resource for anything creationism-related)
  www.ncseweb.org
• www.talkorigins.org
• www.talkreason.org

31
Shameless plugs

• Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe (Prometheus
  2002).
• Matt Young and Taner Edis, eds., Why Intelligent
  Design Fails A Scientific Critique of the New
  Creationism (Rutgers University Press 2004).
  This summer!

32
My web site

• www2.truman.edu/edis
• Contains all sorts of articles on ID, creationism
  and other topics, including the slides of this
  talk.
• My e-mail is edis_at_truman.edu

33
In Short
Conclusion

• ID is intellectually sophisticated creationism.
  It touches on all our sciences, not just biology.
  It defends grand themes.
• Rejected by scientific community.
• Few allies even in wider intellectual culture.
• We will keep encountering the ID movement, as
  part of the culture wars of religious
  conservatism.

34
Thanks for listening!
QA

• Any questions?

?
?
?