Below is Timaeus' reply to Randy Isaac, concerning the "god-of-the-gaps" issue. I will reply myself briefly to the final paragraph, where Tim says: "No sensible person denies that “God of the gaps” reasoning is a risky way of establishing design; but too often this war cry – No God of the gaps! – is used simply to avoid considering serious, non-gap-based arguments for design (from life-science Ph.D.s like Michael Denton, Richard Sternberg, Michael Behe, etc.), and in such cases, ID people have every right to wonder about the motivations of those TE people who keep shouting it."
I don't see this as a fully accurate portrayal of the conversations that I have had myself with ID advocates on this issue. I do think that many of the specific ID arguments I have encountered in biology employ a "god of the gaps" strategy, while avoiding a "god of the gaps" theology (for this distinction, see my review of several ID books on my web site). That is, many ID advocates who push the "irreducible complexity" of some aspect of biological organisms are indeed arguing that what we don't know about how something was formed (that is, our ignorance of the actual process that produced it) forces or encourages us to invoke "design" as part of the *scientific* explanation; and, nearly all of those who make this argument are convinced that the relevant "intelligent designer" is God. In their new book, "Origins," the Haarsmas (see chapter 10) aptly summarize the situation as they find it (and as I have found it). All too often, ID advocates all but claim that design *mu!
st* be detectable in biology, at the level of science itself (ie, as part of the scientific explanation), or else the atheists are right and there is no God. (This is IMO no more helpful than when a TE claims that design *must not* be detectable in the universe, that God would never "show himself" in a detectable way.) If it is left more tentative, then I would say that a "god of the gaps" objection is not applicable. But, I rarely encounter it stated quite that tentatively.
Especially, it's the point about whether "design" must be made part of the scientific explanation itself, where I would dissent. I think design inferences--modest ones, not the "knockdown proofs" of the old natural theology--can indeed be made *from* science, but I don't see them as alternative explanations *within* science. I gather this is id, not ID. I just see it as "design," but you have to be clearer about this in the current politicized environment. I'm not looking to change biology books, but I am looking to make a reasonable case for theism. (I sense that many ID advocates don't think you can do the latter without doing the former.)
As for "front loading," I'm all over that. I don't think it is subject to the "god of the gaps" objection; I don't think (for example) that the multiverse is genuinely scientific, and if we want to argue instead about metaphysics than I would say that theism is a better explanation of the whole shebbang, whether or not the multiverse is a useful hypothesis in cosmology. In any case, I see an asymmetry here: biological and cosmological design arguments are not completely identical. One is about the very possibility of biology, whereas the other is about the details of biology. But, when I say such things in ID circles, they circle the wagons and push for my motives about making that valid distinction. My motives are various, including a reluctance to make a GG argument, but my motives are specific reasons that do not equate with avoiding non-gap arguments (which I embrace, as indicated). One might perhaps disagree with the distinction I draw, but I don't match the descr!
iption in Tim's final paragraph. Nor does Owen Gingerich, and nor does Francis Collins or Ken Miller. Owen and I have probably thought about this particular point more than Francis or Ken--I don't see them dealing explicitly with the kinds of things I've said here, for example--but I think they would come down on it in the same way, though I'm reluctant to assume too much. Owen however is very clear about this, in "God's Universe."
Ted
Now, Timaeus speaks:
*******************
Mr. Isaac:
In your original posting, you asked me to explain how ID avoids “God of the gaps” reasoning. You asked me to explain how it could be valid even if all “gaps” were closed. One of the key sentences in your posting was:
“If the assertion is true, then the ID argument would remain intact even if all gaps were to be hypothetically closed.”
The context of this sentence made it clear that you regarded this proposition as dubious. Therefore, in my answer, I clearly confirmed that ID does indeed assert this proposition,
and gave extensive discussion to explain why it was not so dubious.
Your general line of questioning appeared to me to be implying that ID could not avoid “God of the gaps” reasoning, i.e., could not avoid postulating miraculous divine intervention in the chain of causality at some point. It appeared to me to be implying that, if all causal gaps could be closed, design theory would have nothing left to stand on.
Thus, I undertook to show you why there is no logical implication of miraculous intervention in a theory of design, and why ID inferences could, in principle, be correct even in cases where every step in a process is explicable by completely naturalistic processes; I therefore showed you how ID could, in principle, avoid all “God of the gaps” reasoning. If you can point out a flaw in my logic, I would be glad to listen, but if you cannot, then I think you should yield the point that a natural process or phenomenon could be completely explained in naturalistic terms, with no causal “gaps” to be filled in, yet still be designed.
I believe that I gave a thorough answer which directly addressed the point which you asked about. If you are still dissatisfied, you are going to have to be clearer. Are you challenging the soundness of my argument and general conclusion? Then you are going to have to answer me in my own terms, i.e., in terms of the very careful argument that I spent about three hours preparing in order to help you understand ID, and which you have treated as irrelevant. In that case, I would expect you to take up particular sentences and passages from my posting, and provide counter-arguments.
Or are you accepting the general soundness of my argument, and asking for a practical application of the conclusion to a biological system, e.g., a cell, or a flagellum? So that you want me to show that the design of some biological structure or system can be established, without any appeal to miraculous causation?
If you are asking for examples of specific biological systems, I am not the best person to give you details. If you want examples from people who know much more about biochemistry, biology and mathematics than I do, I would suggest that you read the following works, in their entirety: Darwin’s Black Box, The Edge of Evolution, No Free Lunch, and Nature’s Destiny. I realize, of course, that all of these works have been criticized, and their conclusions challenged. That is reasonable. But whether they are right or wrong, these are the books that I know of in which design theorists attempt to give detailed arguments, qualitative and/or quantitative, for the design inference. None of the arguments in these books depends on the use of “miracles” to fill in “gaps” in causal explanation. They argue instead that the very nature of the structures in question requires design.
I repeat: ID theory, as such, does not require or depend upon filling in “gaps” in causal explanation with miracles. But the real argument, for anyone whose interests are theoretical rather than theological, should not be about miracles and “God of the gaps”. The true theoretician, the true scientist or philosopher, who wants to know what is true about nature, does not want to wrangle about the existence or non-existence of miracles, or literal versus non-literal interpretations of the Bible. The scientist or philosopher who is interested in the question of design should be interested in design as such. What are the characteristics of design? How do we recognize it? How do we determine design in ambiguous cases? Is design “provable”, or can it only be intuited? Are there mathematical ways of detecting design? Why have biological systems always struck human beings as designed? Is the apparent design in biological systems analogous to the design of arti!
ficial systems? If not, what are the differences? If design is formally detectable in artificial systems, but not in biological systems, why not? And could the differences be adjusted for, and a way of ascertaining design in biological systems be developed? Etc.
These are theoretical questions requiring scientific and mathematical handling, and ID at its best, when it doesn’t get sidetracked by culture war polemics (as it too often does), is interested in these questions. I think all scientists should be interested in them. The only kind of scientist who will not be interested in them will be the kind that has decided, a priori, that there cannot be design in living systems, that they must be entirely explicable in terms of chance, natural selection, etc. But that would be a metaphysical decision, unjustifiable by any of the results of science. A scientist who decides, in advance of having proved it, that there is no design in biological systems, is not speaking as a scientist, but as a metaphysician or theologian. And I would think that all Christian scientists, even those who do not accept particular arguments made by Behe or Dembski or whomever, would be very much open to the notion of design, especially given the fact tha!
t the stance of anti-design has been used, since 1859, to tear out the heart of Christian faith in Western culture. That a Christian scientist would not be at least initially attracted to the notion of design in nature is almost incomprehensible to me. Thus, the fact that so many Christian scientists join with the atheists (Dawkins, Coyne, Myers, Dennett, etc.) in belittling even the attempt to investigate design, and in shouting “God of the gaps!” at every available opportunity, strikes me as theologically perverse.
No sensible person denies that “God of the gaps” reasoning is a risky way of establishing design; but too often this war cry – No God of the gaps! – is used simply to avoid considering serious, non-gap-based arguments for design (from life-science Ph.D.s like Michael Denton, Richard Sternberg, Michael Behe, etc.), and in such cases, ID people have every right to wonder about the motivations of those TE people who keep shouting it.
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Received on Mon Nov 10 14:16:11 2008
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