On Thu, 17 Jun 1999 14:22:06 -0700, Brian D Harper wrote:
[...]
BH>Some time ago I was lucky enough to stumble
>across a book by the great C.H. Waddington in a used book store,
>picking it up for the outrageous price of 30 cents :).
Brian is lucky. Mine cost $4.50 and its in poor condition!
BH>This book
>has, IMHO, the clearest presentation of the reasons that scientists
>put aside the design argument.
Good! Refute that and the design argument is established? ;-)
[...]
BH>#"We can postulate a super-human designer, a creating God.
>#If he is conceived of as outside the Universe, then his
>#purposes are not open to our understanding as are those of
>#the human designers of vehicles, and it becomes senseless
>#to try to use them as a framework for a general rational
>#understanding of the world as we find it. On the other
>#hand, if the Creator's purposes are expressed in the world,
>#then we have to examine it to see what they are, since
>#we have no possibility of interrogating him as we can
>#interrogate a human designer. Thus, an appeal to a purposeful
>#Creator as an explanation for the nature of living things
>#either abolishes the possibility of rational biology, or
>#leaves us just where we were before, faced with the need to
>#account for the phenomena of life in terms of the happenings
>#which we can see preceding in front of us."
>#-- C.H. Waddington <The Nature of Life> Atheneum, 1962.
Waddington's argument is fallacious. Basically he has set up a false
dilemma. The first horn of his `dilemma' is that given that the
Designer's purposes "are not open to our understanding as are those
of the human designers of vehicles", he claims it necessarily follows
that "it becomes senseless to try to use them as a framework for a
general rational understanding of the world as we find it."
Granted that the Designer's intentions may not be as easy to work out,
as would be those of a human who we can go to and ask. But that does
not mean that a Designer could not have designed the cosmos, and our
minds, in such a way that His purposes could be worked out by humans.
Indeed, ID would say that is what science is doing in discovering out
the fine-tuning of the universe, even if in doing so "they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him..." (Rom 1:21).
That is in fact the answer to the second horn of the Waddington's dilemma:
"On the other hand, if the Creator's purposes are expressed in the world,
then we have to examine it to see what they are."
Indeed ID would claim that it can, in principle, explain better than
materialism-naturalism what Davies called "The Unreasonable Effectiveness
of Science", which is related to Einstein's famous remark that "the only
incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible."
Davies points out that "This is all the more mysterious on account
of the fact that human intellectual powers are presumably determined by
biological evolution, and have absolutely no connection with doing
science." (Davies P., "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science", in
Templeton J.M, ed., "Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator",
Continuum: New York, 1994, pp44-45,54-55).
An Intelligent Designer could design man's mind in eternity to understand
the underlying principles of the cosmos He was going to create, and then
realise that design in time by guiding (both naturally and supernaturally)
the building of man's mind through natural processes which He would set in
train.
Moreover, ID claims it can explain better than materialism-naturalism why
there is a cosmos at all, why it is fine-tuned to permit life, and why the
human mind is `pre-adapted' to understand the underlying structure of that
cosmos.
Waddington's conclusion "that an appeal to a purposeful Creator as an
explanation for the nature of living things...abolishes the possibility of
rational biology" is a claim materialists make often and Phil Johnson
comments on in some of his tapes. Phil's point is that this claim of
materialists' amounts to saying that if the universe is the product of a
rational Mind, then it cannot be rational, but only if it is the product
of non-rational particles can it be rational!
BH>Now I would like to argue that at least some Creationists have
>recognized the problem addressed by Waddington above. For this
>I will turn to the NTSE Final Report prepared by the organizer,
>Rob Koons [NTSE = Conference on Naturalism, Theism, and the
>Scientific Enterprise held at the University of Texas at Austin,
>February 20-23, 1997]
>
>#"If theistic science or intelligent design theory is to become
>#a progressive research program, it must do more than poke holes
>#in the evidence for Darwinism: it must acquire auxiliary hypotheses
>#about the intentions and preferences of the designer from which we
>#can generate specific, testable predictions and informative
>#explanations." --Koons
>
>OK, first let me reiterate the main point, i.e. this quote
>recognizes the validity of Waddington's argument in the sense
>that if a design approach is really to be a design approach,
>then it needs to consider "...the intentions and preferences
>of the designer."
>
>Ever since reading this paragraph I have wanted to ask whether
>this statement by Koons is one generally agreed upon by people
>associated with the ID movement. So, I guess here is my chance.
>Any takers? Quite honestly, that statement sends theological
>shivers down my spine. But, from a scientific point of view,
>I'm not going try to limit an approach because I'm queasy about
>it theologically.
Koons also said in the same report that this ID paradigm is going to take
*time* to develop:
"Most participants would also agree that the emerging design paradigm needs
to be given adequate time to mature and develop before a definitive verdict can
be rendered. The core idea of intelligent design must be supplemented with
auxiliary hypotheses and generalizations about the structure of the design and
about at what points the design makes contact with the natural world." (Koons
R.C., "Conference on Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise:
Reflections from an Organizer, University of Texas at Austin, February 20-23,
1997.
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/ntse/report.html)
My personal view is that ID should not be rushed into a hasty laying of all its
cards on the table, because it doesn't even know what they all are yet! It took
Darwinism about 70 years to develop the modern Neo-Darwinian theory of
evolution, and 120 years if we take into account Gould and Eldredge's
contribution.
BTW, some of those who are anti-ID on this List might want to take on board
another point resolved at the NTSE conference:
"I should mention at least one other point upon which we reached a firm
consensus: that the time has come to conduct the debate on methodological
naturalism and theistic science on the merits (indeed, on the scientific merits)
of the case, and we should no longer tolerate ad hominem attacks on Prof.
Johnson, with attendant name-calling, bullying and intimidation ("he's just a
lawyer... he doesn't understand how science works...", etc.)." (Koons R.C.,
NTSE, 1997).
Steve
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"...chance has no power to do anything because it simply is not anything. It
has no power because it has no being...Chance is not an entity. It is not a
thing that has power to affect other things. It is no thing. To be more
precise, it is nothing. Nothing cannot do something. Nothing is not. It has
no `isness.' Chance has no isness. I was technically incorrect even to say
that chance is nothing. Better to say that chance is not. What are the
chances that chance can do anything? Not a chance. It has no more chance
to do something than nothing has to do something." (Sproul R.C., "Not a
Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology," Baker:
Grand Rapids MI, 1994, p6)
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