[asa] CSI and ID

John,
    I think your point warrants a little further discussion.
John Walley wrote: "My friends point in his presentation is that here is an example of how the govt uses science and probability arguments to convict a man of a capital murder charge for which he could have been executed, so it is therefore disingenuous for Dawkins and others in academia to deny design in the universe in the face of the same massive amounts of circumstantial evidence. Granted neither case is totally airtight and they both come down to whether or not we can rationally infer a cause beyond a reasonable doubt but we seem to have different criteria in play here. It seems like Dawkins gets away with what Wayne Williams couldn't.

To me this has always seemed like a very reasonable argument. So Dawkins want to make the metaphysical claim that evolution has no distant targets so therefore he gets to throw out all the complexity and probability evidence against him. How is this different than Wayne Williams attempting to come up with some claim to get all the carpet evidence against him thrown out that we would never buy? Why do we seem to allow this theoretical scientific ideal in academia but in the real world of the courts where people's lives are on the line, we don't? "

At first glance it seems inconsistent that we would expect a CSI-style judge to rationally infer that "the butler did it in the kitchen with a lead pipe" based on circumstantial evidence but not consider it reasonable for someone to infer that "God did it in the beginning and perhaps a few times along the way." I think there is a crucial distinguishing difference between the two. In the CSI-like approach, all possible scenarios are composed of cause and effect elements which have or can be confirmed independently of the specific case. Some may be probabilistic or psychosocial in nature while others may be based on classical mechanistics or whatever. However, the judge would be unlikely to rule in favor of a scenario that includes an element such as "the butler liquified the lead pipe in the freezer" or "an angel forced the butler's hand." For ID, the common element in all scenarios is the "action of an intelligent agent" which is not verifiable or demonstrable independently. It is primarily for this reason that the ID inference is not accepted on the same level as a forensic CSI conclusion.

For almost 15 years I've been trying to find a fair and comprehensive articulation of ID. I think I finally drafted one, though I have not yet vetted it with the ID community. I would propose the following:
"There are patterns in nature that are best explained by the action of a supernatural agent"
where the term "patterns" is broadly interpreted to include, for example, the values of physical constants, the universal existence of moral law, or the existence of consciousness or perhaps the appearance of flagella, resistant strains of malaria, ultra-low probability events, etc.

Most of the debates on ID have centered on specific examples, like the flagella, and whether they constitute a valid instance of such a pattern in nature. It seems that the more fruitful debate would be on whether the core assertion is valid. I suggest that it may have a fundamental flaw, namely that God's action (as George says, let's no longer be coy and use the euphemistic 'intelligent agent' since it didn't lead anyone to think ID was non-religious) is at the same level as and competitive with other causal explanations. However, such an action is not and cannot be independently verified. It also implies that God's action is mutually exclusive to other explanations. The implication is that only some patterns in nature reflect God's action.

An alternative assertion for intelligent design (lower case version as Owen Gingerich would say) would be: "The entire pattern of the universe (or multi-verse if you prefer) reflects the action of God." This is universal and covers everything we can and cannot describe through some cause and effect relationship. Would a judge accept that in preference to the alternative, which I presume would be "...the action of 'nothingness'"? Not sure. Might someone claim the difference was trivial? That we simply gave the label "God" to "nothingness?" Perhaps, but then, as George has repeatedly reminded us, the story, and the real differentiation, begins with the incarnation and the cross.

Randy

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Received on Sun Nov 25 14:50:23 2007