Dinesh D’Souza speaks out against ID
| April 1, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
In reading Dinesh D’Souza’s WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, I was surprised at how uncritical and historically uninformed is his view of evolution. For instance, he lumped C. S. Lewis with other notable 20th century Christian intellectuals as accepting evolutionary theory, but in fact toward the end of his life, Lewis regretted his earlier support for evolution (go here).
With even less apparent knowledge of his subject, D’Souza is now weighing in against intelligent design:
The Failure of “Intelligent Design”
Posted Mar 31st 2008 9:38AM by Dinesh D’Souza
Filed under: Science, Christianity, Atheism. . . Today some Christians may be heading down the same path with their embrace of “intelligent design” or ID. This movement is based on the idea that Darwinian evolution is not only flawed but basically fraudulent. ID should not, however, be confused with bible-thumping six-day creationism. It does not regard the earth as 6,000 years old. Its leading advocates are legal scholar Phillip Johnson, biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician David Berlinski, and science journalist Jonathan Wells. Berlinski has a new book out The Devil’s Advocate that makes the remarkable claim that “Darwin’s theory of evolution has little to contribute to the content of the sciences.” Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” provides horror stories to show that the case for ID as well as critiques of evolution from an ID perspective are routinely excluded or censored in the halls of academe.
ID advocates have sought to convince courts to require that their work be taught alongside Darwinian evolution, yet such efforts have been resoundingly defeated. Why has the ID legal strategy proven to be such a failure, even at the hands of conservative judges? Imagine that a group of advocates challenged Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity. Let’s say that this group, made up of a law professor, a couple of physicists, several journalists, as well as some divinity school graduates, flatly denies Einstein’s proposition that e=mc2.
How would a judge, who is not a physicist, resolve the group’s demand for inclusion in the physics classroom? He would summon a wide cross-section of leading physicists. They would inform him that despite unresolved debates about relativity–for example, its unexplained relationship to quantum theory–Einstein’s theories are supported by a wide body of data. They enjoy near-unanimous support in the physics community worldwide. There is no alternative scientific theory that comes close to explaining the facts at hand. In such a situation any judge would promptly show the dissenters the door and deny their demand for equal time in the classroom. This is precisely the predicament of the ID movement. . . .
What an incredible comparison. D’Souza here gives no evidence of knowing even the rudiments of the debate over ID — he merely repeats the worst propaganda against ID. I encourage anyone who has personal contact with him to provide him with better information. A point of leverage is that D’Souza presumably wants Christians, many of whom support ID, to buy his book.
172 Responses to Dinesh D’Souza speaks out against ID
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Phineas,
I understand your comments about the misunderstanding of terms. Eric B made the same argument. But I am trying to introduce a new way of understanding that will promote a dialogue with those out there who haven’t a clue as to what the issues are. They don’t have a problem with Darwin and they are mostly right. So why be so negative about Darwin. He was wrong on the big issue but right on a lot of relevant things.
So I believe that those here or anywhere promoting ID should have the same understanding as those they want to convince. Many of Darwin’s ideas work and can account for 99.5% + of the life forms, species, total biological matter. Take your pick. That is why Darwin’s ideas are so acceptable and reasonable and why it represents a big challenge to ID to communicate clearly what is not reasonable and just plain bogus.
But the worst way to convince someone else is to trash something that is obvious and actually true. If instead you start out with how ID agrees with some of Darwin’s ideas than it will be easier to get to the parts that Darwin just made up and has no proof.
Anyway that is what I believe and will continue to push it and will probably use Darwin’s special theory from now on even though most have never heard of it. But it is about time everyone did. It is essential the current modern synthesis without the macro-evolution assumptions.
Dave,
I don’t think geology has anything to do with design detection here on earth but geology gets brought up now and then when we discuss the age of the earth. It could theoretically be part of design if someone could come up with how certain geological events were improbable based on law and chance and could thus slip through the EF. Mount Rushmore comes to mind. n science fiction think Death Star and you see the remains a million years later. Or suppose we went to Mars and found a tunnel that had been sculpted.
—–Jerry: “Microevolution is responsible for 99.5% of speciation.”
Jerry, could you stretch out on that a little bit more. Most people define microevolution as change within a species and macroevolution as change from one species into another
What do you say about those who define speciation as microevolution extended into macroevolution. Relate that to your comment that microevolution is “responsible” for 99.5% of the species.
StephenB,
To clarify, the phrase you quoted above was my construction, not Jerry’s. Jerry originally said way back at #1: “…the Darwinian paradigm explains most of the life on the planet.”
StephenB,
You should read Denton’s Evolution: A theory in crisis. It must be the source for my thoughts since I read it some time ago and as I re read it, Denton is emphasizing what I am saying. Like a lot of things you read, you pick up things and cannot remember where.
Species is a tough term to define. The interbreeding definition has problems because there are several examples of A breeding with B and B with C but A cannot breed with C.
Micro evolution is any change in the genetic elements of a population. If a population gets separated from a parent population, for example a flock of birds end up on a new island, it could change so that it cannot inter breed with the parent population if they ever got together again so we have a new species but with little genetic differences. There are examples of insects on different types of adjacent fruit trees that are identical but won’t breed. These have become two different species. There are birds whose only difference is song patterns but they won’t breed. But there are the examples of so called different species that can inter breed such as tigers and lions, dogs and wolves, cows and buffalo etc.
So far in rereading Denton the most impressive chapter is on typologies. But I am only on Chapter 6. It is a great book. All the classes (taxonomy) are morphological distinct with no transitions existing between them. Within each class there is the possibility of producing new species but they always remain within the class or most likely the various genera within the class. There does not seem to be one example of the new species creation that generates a new genera or family. It is always downward or within but never up. Up would be macro evolution lite and across classes would be true macro evolution. There is always the odd balls within classes such as lung fish, bats and giraffes which have unique attributes but again there are no transitions to indicate where they came from. Then there is the duckbill platypus which is the true odd ball. These represent a different type of macro evolution and where they came from is a mystery. Of course Darwin and Dawkins had just so stories.
I am not sure I am answering your question but species generation seems to be always downward or across and contained with the various genera of the class. Where the classes that contain all the orders, families and genera come from or where the odd balls come from is unknown.
Someone with a better knowledge of taxonomy may be better able to answer your question completely.
Atom, (146)
Technically, you are right. Perhaps the intelligence could have originated spontaneously. But remember what logical branch we are on. The intelligence we are talking about has to be accounted for in materialistic terms (otherwise materialism is already lost). It has to be able to transport life from another star to earth, which has just recently become (possibly) within our capabilities. That means that its complexity, and presumably its order, is at least of the same order of magnitude as ours. While it is theoretically possible that such an intelligent organism could have arisen by chance, the probability of that happening without guidance seems extremely unlikely, just as it is unlikely that life here on earth arose spontaneously. I realize that this is an “argument from incredulity”, but I see no reason to believe that there is a form of life that is explained by material causes, that is capable of seeding our planet with our kind of life, and that can reasonably be expected to have arisen spontaneously. That just takes faith at present, and it is too much faith for me.
I am not giving a formal proof, like one has in mathematics. I am just doing what I do with the OOL itself, making an inference to the best explanation. It does seem to me that the OOL is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent, and if one grants that, that nature is best explained as not entirely due to material causes.
jerry, (147)
You said, “The elbow in the chain can be explained by the crashing of the India plate into the Asia plate about 45 million years ago. I presume you are using the term “crashing” very loosely, as the movements involved, under the standard geological timescale, involve speeds on the order of 1-16 cm per year. (On the other hand, a short-age chronology would imply that the movements were of the order of 10 meters per second, and crashing would be a very appropriate term.) Your statement that “Maybe there will be a better explanation some day and that is science.” suggests that maybe that explanation isn’t a good one after all, and my question would then remain. I don’t expect to convince you right now. I just ask that you avoid dogmatism.
Your observations on the terrain of the Hawaiian Islands and the Society Islands are reasonably accurate. The only question I have is what effect a flood with its accompanying weather would have on the terrain. I accept the fit between South America and Africa. The question is not so much what as when and how fast.
It may surprise you, but I accept (at present, subject to revision) that the rest of the universe is old. That requires reinterpretation of two words in one verse. That, to my mind, is much easier than ignoring or reinterpreting the first quarter of Genesis, parts of Exodus including the fourth (third for Catholics) commandment, Jesus’ comments regarding marriage, Romans 5, etc. (That does not mean that I wouldn’t try if I felt it was really necessary. But I just haven’t had the need to do so, especially when I keep running into good reasons to believe a short chronology.)
Your comments about the slow speed of geologic change at present are accurate. But geologist have to be careful not to shut their minds against the possibility of rapid change. That close-minded attitude led to their being unable to recognize the evidence for massive flooding in the Pacific Northwest (of the U.S.) for several decades after J Harlan Bretz first realized what was happening, evidence that seem obvious to us now.
Your statement that “Everything is consistent with an old earth that forms slowly over a long time period.” seems overly optimistic. Besides the problem of Mount Everest (see my next comment), there is the matter of carbon-14 in fossil carbon, which does not have a convincing explanation from the point of view of the standard geologic timescale at present. An explanation may be forthcoming, but at present, long-agers must exercise faith here.
You are right, that few consider geology an issue here. That’s because they believe that it has little (you, 152) or nothing (probably Dave, 150) to do with design detection. It could have something to do with design detection if one could make a concise, readily apparent, and convincing argument for short age, as evolution, and thus materialism, would completely fall apart without long ages. But such arguments as there are for short age are involved, require dealing with a mass of counterarguments, and are not the simplest way to break the back of materialism. That is one reason why, even as they grumble about the incompleteness of ID, most YEC’s are happy to cooperate with you if you will let them.
Finally we come to the real question. “So what is D’Souza to think?” D’Souza is to think what he wants. Our goal should not be to do his thinking for him. Give him his options, give him the arguments for ID, and let him make up his own mind. If he is not persuaded, well, that can’t be helped. Hopefully someone else will see the persuasiveness of the ID arguments.
And chasing away YEC’s won’t make ID any more persuasive. If D’Souza wants a long-age ID option, he should already be aware of it, and if he isn’t, it should not take too much to inform him. D’Souza is well aware that there are differing perspectives within both sides of most issues.
—–Paul Giem: “And chasing away YEC’s won’t make ID any more persuasive. If D’Souza wants a long-age ID option, he should already be aware of it, and if he isn’t, it should not take too much to inform him. D’Souza is well aware that there are differing perspectives within both sides of most issues.”
Paul, I agree with that. I would go one step further and suggest that they should not be regarded as second class citizens. Anyone who can identify with the design inference belongs here. I question the mind set that wants to flirt with TEs and snub YEC’s. YEC’s are not writing anti-ID articles and persecuting ID scientists.
DaveScot (149)
I understand your disagreement with a greatly accelerated rate of mountain building for Mount Everest in the past. The rates required by a short-age theory are so much faster than current rates that we find it hard to imagine them.
However, we still have a problem with the standard picture. If the rate of erosion on Mount Everest has been measured correctly at between 2 and 3 mm per year, and has been constant, and Mt. Everest has been there for at lest 35 million years, then approximately 70 to 105 km of material has been eroded from the top. One can keep renewing the material from the bottom, but in that case the peak of Mount Everest should be granite and not Paleozoic limestone as is currently observed. It is not clear why this limestone has not been eroded away given the standard geologic timescale.
But I do agree with you about one point. The connection between geologic time and ID is either non-existent or convoluted and difficult to prove. I am quite happy to make the case for ID without reference to time, except as a limiting factor. That means that despite our differing views on some subjects, we can unite on the subject of ID.
I would expect that bacterial reproduction occurs according to natural law, just like anything we commonly observe. I would say that’s the basis of science, and I wouldn’t deny the theoretical possibility of an advanced and highly intelligent, though material, being, having the ability to engineer a bacterium.
On the other hand, I was thinking more in terms of the human mind and personality. If I had an identical twin, he would nevertheless not share my identity, no matter how great the sympathy between us might be. We would still be distinct people. Do we know enough about personal identity to be able to claim that it can be reduced to merely physical elements? I would highly doubt it. But without that certainty, how can one be confident that any material agent, no matter how advanced, could produce it?
I’ll leave it to others to deal with the particulars on this; however, my own brief response is this. I suspect we all know that there are scientists who, based on their own research and that of their colleagues, doubt the conventional age of the earth. It would seem, then, that either their doubt is unreasonable or that there is justifiable cause to think the methods by which the conventional age is ascertained are unreliable.
Because it might not be taken for granted, I should be clear that it seems evident to me that a person can be both reasonable and mistaken. For instance, on the question of universal descent from a common ancestor, Drs. Behe and Wells are not both correct; however, I suspect both would be considered reasonable in the positions they hold: they merely interpret the data in different ways.
—–Jerry: “You should read Denton’s Evolution: A theory in crisis. It must be the source for my thoughts since I read it some time ago and as I re read it, Denton is emphasizing what I am saying. Like a lot of things you read, you pick up things and cannot remember where.”
Jerry, I am familiar with Denton. I have done the requisite reading on evolution. I will save this issue for another forum. My point has to do with making this subject matter accessible to the uninitiated.
Rick
re; engineering of life by material means
I don’t think we know enough about the basis for sentience to make any reasonable conclusions which is why I avoid the subject. I don’t believe the same holds true for simple forms of life that don’t exhibit any hallmarks of mind or free will. It appears to me that with reasonable maturation of biochemistry knowledge and tools that human technology will be capable of producing a functional bacteria from inanimate matter.
That said, there is an inescapable fact that when the material associated with sentience is absent or dysfunctional (i.e. the brain is sufficiently damaged) there is no longer any detectable sentience. Does that mean the sentience is gone or does it just mean that we are no longer able to detect it? I don’t know the answer to that. In my more philosophical moments I sometimes offer an analogy between the brain and a radio. A radio works by extracting the intelligence from invisible electromagnetic carrier waves and making it audible so that we can hear it. If you destroy the radio you only destroy a tuner – the intelligence remains in the electromagnetic carrier waves but you can no longer detect it. Maybe brains are like radios and they merely serve as tuners for intelligence rather than as sources of intelligence.
re; reasonable doubt about the methods for dating the age of the earth
I don’t believe there is any reasonable doubt. There are only highly contrived doubts. Dissimilar methods of dating all come up with relatively consistent approximations of age. When we fold in dating of the universe by yet other dissimilar means the results remain consistent with the age of the earth. There is no consistency in the ways that doubt are brought into all these methods. Each dating method must be individually targeted by some contrived means. While one might cast some doubt on each in a case by case basis it becomes unreasonable to suppose that all disparate methods are wrong. For instance, young earthers have to cast doubt on the speed of light being a constant across time and space. They have to cast doubt on rates of radioactive decay being constants. They have to propose that mountain uplift happened orders of magnitudes faster in the past than is observed in the present. They have to say that continential plate movement was vastly accelerated in the past. Etcetera and etcetera. And there’s no reason to doubt any of these except to make the evidence somehow fit into a young earth theory which no one would propose in the first place except for literal interpretation of one amongst many revealed religious texts. If the old testament claimed that God created the earth over a span of billions of years there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that the same scientists who try to cast doubt on various aging methods would hold those same aging methods out as indisputable evidence of biblical inerrancy.
Paul
The top of Everest doesn’t erode by weathering. It’s protected from the weather by permanent ice cover. It erodes by crumbling under the force of gravity. If you take two sheets of semi-rigid material and force them together laterally they will relieve the strain by bending and breaking piling the excess material upward. As the pile grows larger it becomes more and more unstable until gravity starts causing it to collapse. The collapse doesn’t necessarily occur from the top down. It occurs from the point where the strain exceeds the strength of the material. The lower portions of the mountain are under the most strain from the weight of the material above it. When the weight exceeds the ability to hold it up the sides will collapse outward and the top will move downward but will still remain on top. Look at how the world trade center collapsed on 9/11. The top of the structure remained at the top of the pile after the collapse. The bottom exploded outward while the top fell straight downward. There’s no mystery at all in there being marine sediments on top of Mt. Everest. It’s shielded from weathering and collapse due to gravity happens in such a way that the topmost material remains the topmost material.
StephenB,
you said
“Jerry, I am familiar with Denton.”
Anyone familiar with Denton’s first book would not question anything I said on this thread or any other thread about Darwinian processes (Darwin’s special theory) and the source of most species.
I started reading Denton again when Salvador objected to what I was saying and he used it as a backup for his comments. It turns out Denton supported everything I had said. So it is apparent that a lot of people here are not familiar with what Denton has said.
But I am glad to know that you will support my position that to criticize rv + ns (really variation generation and genetics) in total is nonsense and that most of life is due to these Darwinian special theory processes.
—–Jerry: “Anyone familiar with Denton’s first book would not question anything I said on this thread or any other thread about Darwinian processes (Darwin’s special theory) and the source of most species.”
That’s quite a statement inasmuch as the book was written twenty years ago.
—–”I started reading Denton again when Salvador objected to what I was saying and he used it as a backup for his comments. It turns out Denton supported everything I had said. So it is apparent that a lot of people here are not familiar with what Denton has said.”
Did you follow up with Sanford’s book?
—–”But I am glad to know that you will support my position that to criticize rv + ns (really variation generation and genetics) in total is nonsense and that most of life is due to these Darwinian special theory processes.”
Clearly, it is nonsense to criticize your point about rv+ns, but it is perfectly reasonable to question the interpretive comment that follows. With regard to Denton, Johnson, Wells, and everyone that followed, I don’t accept every word from every author that I read. Further, I get both sides of every issue and weight the merits accordingly. Otherwise, I would fall into the danger of judging everything I read in the context of my own pet paradigm. I have fallen into that trap more than once and there is always a danger that I will do it again. It may surprise you that someone as opinionated as me would say that, but I believe it to be true. As Abraham Maslow once said, “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
StephenB,
I have not seen one author that objects to what I have concluded, certainly not Behe, Dembski or Wells. Have you any to suggest?
I do not think Sanford’s book has anything to do with what I have said. Can you tell me which part of it is relevant”
“but it is perfectly reasonable to question the interpretive comment that follows.”
What interpretive comments are you referring to? Has any one shown evidence to question the comments you are referring to? I would be interested.
“With regard to Denton, Johnson, Wells, and everyone that followed, I don’t accept every word from every author that I read. ”
Are you implying that I do? I constantly read the literature from those who are anti-ID as well as those who are pro-ID. I often find I learn more when I read the anti-ID people. One could get schizophrenic reading all these contradictory books.
Dave,
A question and a comment about Lewontin.
What is the significance of the Lewontin article posted under “Additional Dissent?”
In the NY Times Book Review of a Sagan book where Lewontin made the comment you mentioned above, he capitalized “Divine.” Maybe that was due to an editor but it is an interesting twist.
—-”Are you implying that I do? I constantly read the literature from those who are anti-ID as well as those who are pro-ID. I often find I learn more when I read the anti-ID people. One could get schizophrenic reading all these contradictory books.”
No, the comment was solely autobiographical.
DaveScot, (163)
That’s a fascinating theory of the mechanism of erosion of Mount Everest. Did you come up with that one on your own, or did you find that one in a geology text or article somewhere?
(162) It sounds like you don’t believe that there is any reason to doubt the standard geologic timescale, and that people like me can only harbor highly contrived doubts. Perhaps we are all just ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked. In that case the less I say about the subject, the better.
However, I hope you don’t mind some of us benighted folk commenting about intelligent design, as long as we take care not to sound too stupid or ignorant.
I agree. D’Souza should have stuck to his field of expertise, and not talked a lot of ignorant nonsense. It’s a sad thing about many Christian apologists: they see right through the materialistic bias in their own areas of expertise, but just accept the establishment views in other areas, ignorant of the materialistic views rampant in those areas as well.
The same is true of many ID apologists, alas. Bill Dembski is great at mathematical evidence against biological evolution, which is right up his alley. But he is not an expert in geology, and he just swallows geological evolution, apparently ignoring the materialistic presuppositions behind the evolutionary geological views. E.g. In 1785, before examining the evidence, the deist James Hutton, ‘the Founder of Modern Geology’, proclaimed:
‘the past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now … No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle’ (emphasis added)
This is a decree that special creation and the Flood are inadmissible explanations for the geological record.
And when it comes to biblical exegesis, it is hard to believe that Bill knows better than most the Church Fathers and all Reformers, who all believed that Scripture teaches creation in six normal-length creation days. And even the Fathers who allegorized the days still taught a young earth (see The Early Church & the Age of the Earth).
I hope this frustration with D’Souza pontificating outside his field to glibly accept materialist biology will make ID proponents less eager to accept materialist geology.
[...] (In his review of Expelled, Dinesh D’Souza appears to be using arguments from Intelligent Design – despite his previous apparent opposition.)—————- [...]
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