Logan Paul Gage, guest blogging at Jesus Creed, is writing a series on Intelligent Design and the Artist's Soul. The argument is not entirely clear, but he suggests that an ID scientist isn't like a scientist but more like an art historian trying to ...what? Quote (em mine):My friends in the ID movement have doctorates from Cambridge, The University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, CalTech, etc. They’ve done post-docs at Columbia, Harvard, and other major institutions. So let us re-imagine the narrative for a minute, wipe away the horizion, you and me.The second paragraph suggests that proper attribution is the issue the art historian is trying to solve. So let's take that question first. Gage would argue that while we might look at many things like materials of the paint and canvas, it is, in the end, the job of an expert to make a best guess based on his previous experience. This is true in the art world even if the work is signed--most forgeries are 'signed' of course. [I highly recommend the book I Was Vermeer for an entertaining look into the issue of forgery and fraud.]Let us see the ID theorist the way we see an art historian at the Smithsonian who has just received a heretofore lost and unsigned Renaissance masterpiece. She must do some detective work. Are there not systematic and scientific ways for the art historian to learn about the cause(s) of this painting?
I propose that this is the way we should view the ID theorist. Returning to nature, in this view we see the ID theorist looking for positive signs of intelligent design and running tests to see if mere material causes are adequate to explain the artifact. In the case of the painting, material causes will never be adequate. Perhaps nature is like this, too.
Of course, the art expert intuits that the painting of unknown origin is Vermeer by comparing it to other Vermeers of known origin. An expert might compare the unique brushwork of artists, something now considered non-scientific [a la Blink]--but it doesn't seem crazy to think that computers would one day be able to analyze the thousands of brush strokes, too.
At what point does this fit as an analogy of an Intelligent Design scientist? Does he want us to accept the idea that the ID perspective is more of an intuition, a 'feeling' we get after spending many years as intelligent creatures (making us experts at spotting intelligence)? The art historian has to compare the unknown to something known. And in the case of ID we would have to compare our universe to universes that we know for sure are designed by God. If we only have one Van Gogh painting in existence and we are trying to find out if it's painted by Van Gogh we really have nothing at all to 'gogh' on, not even our gut.
Unless you think a painting popped into existence out of nothing there's no reason to think that 'material causes are inadequate' for describing its origin. I recommend watching Antiques Roadshow [see below]. What else is there to go on but materiality and the material history (known or unknown) of the object itself?
Furthermore, I feel there is a false distinction being made here in the argument. It says, 'maybe nature is like this painting... that is in nature.' I think that Gage's above argument is trying to be halfway an argument of finding a watch on the shore. The argument usually runs on the assumption that humans are very good at distingushing between what is designed and what not designed. Sand: not designed. Pocketwatch: designed. Forest: not designed. Garden: designed. The ID movement rests on this assumption: Humans are pretty good at differentiating between what is designed and not designed.
But this assumption is based on our experience of the natural world. In other terms, Humans are pretty good at differentiating between design (human-made) and not designed (the natural world)! You can't first assume that we can pick out the garden from the forest and then use that to argue that we know the forest is designed. Even if you argue that we couldn't know the natural world was designed until we developed science and technology to study it, it still leaves us with the conclusion that humans really aren't very good at differentiating between design and not-design. We are only good at defining human-made from not-human-made--but we simply don't have any intution when it comes to comparing our universe to other universes.
To return to the analogy, if you lived inside a painting, why do you think you would be good at differentiating between painting and non-painting? If all of nature is designed, why do you think we would ever be able to describe it that way? Can you spot the white polka-dots on a white background?
Conclusion:
If an ID proponent thinks that the entire universe is designed, then the White Polka Dot question is raised. Alternatively, once the ID thinker differentiates between designed life and the rest of the universe, ID is dead in the water:
"Well, life is designed," says the ID thinker. "But a rock isn't designed."
"So life was created by God but not a rock?"
"No, the rock was created by God."
"But isn't designed."
"Correct."
"So why can't humans be created by God and not designed?"
"Because they actually look designed."
"But they don't have to be designed to be created by God?"
"No."
"So God can create undesigned things."
"Yes."
"He could've made a totally undesigned universe full of rocks."
"Yes."
"So if we discovered that life wasn't designed that wouldn't really rule out the idea that God didn't make it?"
"Correct."
There's no such thing as ID scientists, because ID = MAGIC, and real scientists don't invoke magic to solve scientific problems.
ReplyDeleteReal scientists don't invoke magic, but most of our science today came originally from magic. Early astronomy was astrology. Early chemistry was alchemy. (Issac Newton, founder of classical physics and calculus, was deeply fascinated by alchemy--and that was the 1700s!) Early mathematics was extremely mystical.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, people had to develop models to explain phenomena that couldn't be explained by any current scientific observation. Imagine a renaissance scientist trying to define life: Well, there's this energy that seems to be within people, and when someone dies it disappears--where does it go? How does something get life? Should we say that the material is possessed by some kind of invisible soul that escapes the body?
I don't think it's crazy to develop a theory to explain phenomena that currently has no way to be observed, confirmed or refuted. I *do* think that that theory has no value other than curiosity. For example, string theory. It's fun to think about--but it's all just games unless it can hook up to the observed world.
All that said, I just take "ID scientists" to mean scientists--people doing science--who believe in Intelligent Design.
By the way, I enjoyed the video on your link. Did you make it? Either way, thanks.
Ryan
The thing about ID is this: it is NOT neccesary to explain ANYTHING. It's not like ID scientists are on the cutting edge of something, like the renaissance pseudomagicians mentioned in the above comments. Evolution circa 2009 has got most of it nailed. It just so happens that you need a grasp of molecular biology for it to make any sense, thus it gets conflated to "theory" by the mainstream.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need God to explain ANYTHING. Christian "scientists" like the ID crowd are just trying to sneak God back into the equation in the second half of the game. It's silly, it's all their problem, and not the problem of real scientists. Real scientists get irked about it every so often, they talk about it sometimes for a laugh, but none of them really give a hoot becuase it's the natural world's equivalent of conspiracy theory. Yes we DID go to the moon, no Elvis IS not still alive, and no you do NOT need "God" to explain the wonders of bacterial flagellum.
ID scientists are just about as much "scientists" as the guys who do sound editing on local television comericals are "filmakers." Yeah, they're doing stuff, they have skills, you might even want to hire them. But, let's get real here. A biologist that denies evolution is like a physicist that thinks Einstein was wrong and still adheres to a Newtonian worldview. Or a doctor that wants to come up with a 21st century way of "letting out the humors."
I challenge EVERY creationist OR ID design proponent to find a college level evolution text book and read it. Or else, pass over these matters with silence, for we have not the words with which to discuss them.
Excellent post Ryan. It inspired a couple of thoughts, and I thought I'd run them by you:
ReplyDelete"To return to the analogy, if you lived inside a painting, why do you think you would be good at differentiating between painting and non-painting?"
While most (all?) paintings are designed by an artist of some sort, that doesn't mean that all aspects of any given painting are designed. We usually say that a painting was designed when the overall theme and composition of a painting was designed. But all sorts of other features of the painting--the exact sweep of a brush-stroke, the color of that splotch of paint in the corner, the fact woman in the background looks like my grandmother--may be entirely due to chance.
This is particularly clear in the work of any of the 20th century artists (Pollock is an obvious example) who incorporated chance into their works. If you lived inside a Jackson Pollock, you would have plenty of chancy features to look at. You could then run around and try to figure out which features were designed and which ones weren't.
I think that one common problem is thinking of intelligent design as being primarily about dividing up objects into two different boxes: the designed box and the non-designed box. Is Mount Rushmore designed or not designed? Well I don't know. It has certain features that are designed (the four heads, the roads, the restaurant and gift shop) and certain features that aren't designed (basically everything else).
ReplyDelete"You don't need God to explain ANYTHING"
Strangely enough, modern atheism and new england protestantism seem to have much in common. Both emphasize the virtue of scraping by, of making due with as little as you can, of above all avoiding extravagance.
Don't have such extravagant clothes...and don't have such extravagant theories about the world. Be more parsimonious. What great theoretical excess you religious folk live on! You don't need theatre, you don't fiction, you don't need God...it all starts sounding familiar. But what if at bottom, the universe wasn't just about scraping by?
Fantastic beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend your
ReplyDeletesite, how can i subscribe for a blog website? The account helped me
a acceptable deal. I had been a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast provided bright clear
concept
Here is my page - race and sports