How Future Scholars Will View Evolution
| June 6, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Centuries from now, here is how a history book is likely to describe the theory of evolution:
As with many new paradigms, evolutionary thought developed over a lengthy period. Within the period known as Modern Science, which had its beginnings in the middle of the second millennium, evolutionary thought began to emerge in the mid seventeenth century. At that time theologians and philosophers from various traditions strenuously argued that the world must have arisen via strictly naturalistic processes. These schools of thought contributed to what became known as The Enlightenment period in the eighteenth century which marked a major turning point in Western intellectual thought.
In The Enlightenment period theological and metaphysical positions became codified in Western thought. These positions became sufficiently accepted and familiar so as to be no longer in need of justification. Instead, Western thinking rapidly incorporated these positions as new truths. This new theology made strong commitments in the area of divine intent, action, and interaction with creation. The impact on science was profound as this theology mandated that God’s interactions with the world was to be strictly via secondary causes (i.e., natural laws), and that all of history must be governed solely by such causes. This paradigm later became known as Evolutionary Thought.
In Evolutionary Thought, science implicitly incorporated these theological and metaphysical commitments. Western, and by now worldwide, thought entered a dark age of anti intellectualism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this period all findings were described as evolutionary. Needless to say this was cause for ever more strained explanations of the evidence. Nonetheless, a rigid social and financial structure enforced adherence, complete with implicit penalties and harassment of dissenters.
Continued here
125 Responses to How Future Scholars Will View Evolution
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The critique of pure reason was about synthesizing metaphysics and materialism.
Here he once again defends the use of reasoning to a nonmaterial unknown explanation but he points out that what that explanation is (God? or Designer) must be shewn as either a suffcient or insuffient idea based on it’s on rational nature. And this leads immeadtly to theology as then the arguemnt becmes about what the nature of that designer is and if it is rational to accept one description of it over anotehr.
ID does not get into that all ID does is claim to infer design- and if one thinks that the designer must be a super natural one then on those grounds alone one cannot dismiss the theory simply based on a undefined inference. One must argue about why a supernatural cause “cannot” give rise to design in nature- which leads us to theology.
Firthermore, Kant says,
And so this idea of supernaturalism is not even possible to be argued against- by Kant’s observation the questions must ultimately only be about the system which points to the object being investigated of the nature of conception of the object itself.
So your quarrel might be either with the theory of ID or the nature of the designer, but the inferred connection to the designer, which simply fallows as a necessary extension of the theory, is unwarranted. And so if we are not challenging the theory we are challenging it’s object and that leads us once again into the real domain of ID’s demurrers which is theology- and of which ID does not make any claim there of. ID’s object is intelligence/information and design which the theory claims can be inferred by it’s effects in nature. To attack the object of the design is to pose a question about the nature of the designer. So say that in inference to intelligence is “supernatural” is false as intelligence is a naturalistic acting force. For one to challenge the inference of intelligence one must make the case that there can be no intelligence great enough to design the world- and that is an attack upon the nature of the object of the theory.
Interestingly enough Kant rules out ID as an explanation of things….
So Kant is fine with possibility of supernatural causes but thought the inference to them must be supported by evidence and must useful in lending insight into the better understanding of things. He clearly thinks that just speculating a transcendental explanation is not useful- there must be evidence and reasoning supporting that inference.
But in his time there was no scientific model being laid out for the theory of ID- one that used biology and cosmology as the object of investigation through trying to find the limits of the three rational mechanisms of empirical scientific explanation (chance, contingency, necessity). ID fallows Kant’s rules of induction and reasoning but makes the case that intelligence is a supported explanation by the evidence and such an inference to ID can lead to greater insight in how things came into being as well as there functioning nature. Newton arguably used reverse creation or reverse engineering thinking in his search for the laws of motion and cosmology. The ID template is not just inspiring but puts empirical science into a perspective where it can often more easily become illuminated. Francis Crick certainly thought DNA, due to its specified complexity, really made it clear that information is a now a fundamental force of nature and that information requires intelligence. He believed this so much so that he saw ET intelligence as being the most likely explanation for it’s origin.
So admittedly Kant did not know all of this at his time- but overall the science has come a long way since then and there are good reasons for now inferring the role of active intelligence supported by empirical evidence- and that is all ID claims to do.
kairosfocus says:
In short, Icon has here utterly misinterpreted an inductive argument, trying to turn it into a question-begging syllogism. And instead of providing an empirical counter-example, you sutgtgest that it is an adequate rebuttal that it is logically possible that the key induction is false.
Sure, as with any significant body of scientific reasoning.
Now, all you have to do, Icon, is provide one clear counter-example.
Of which, we find nowhere the faintest trace.
Perry Marshall presents his two premises and conclusion as a “proof” of his god. If it’s supposed to be a proof, it shouldn’t be treated as an inductive argument. He assumes his conclusion in his second premise.
That’s not your fault, obviously, so if you want it treated as an inductive argument, let’s have a look at it as you present it:
(Kairo quoting Marshall with his own parentheses)
1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism. [True]
2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information. [the second sentence makes the inductive context of the assertion plain. An empirically anchored and well-supported induction is not a begging of the question. Such inductions are the foundation of science, which of course is provisional knowledge of our world based on observation, inference and testing.]
Here you say you have an empirically anchored and well supported induction. Firstly, what evidence do you have that conscious minds are not natural, and that the creation of codes by them cannot be described as a “natural process known to science”? Secondly, even if we agree for the sake of argument that “there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information”, how does it follow that all codes are intelligently designed? Why should anything not currently understood by science require intelligent design. How do you conclude that from “observation, inference and testing”?
3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind. [Inductively based logical inference]
Based on what?
If you can provide an empirical example of a code or language that occurs naturally, you’ve toppled my proof. All you need is one. [Note the provisionality that is here explicitly stated.]
Any code you care to mention fits the bill. Why should any known code be unnatural?
If you want something specific, the spoken English language will do. Not only is it natural, it’s also not designed.
As we’re discussing observation and inference, observation would tell us that codes always precede intelligent designers, without known exception. From that, and the English language example, we could infer that codes can exist being intelligently designed, and can be produced by evolutionary processes (English evolved and continues to evolve unpredictably).
iconofid, R0b:
My apologies for being away during the past couple of days.
R0b, you asked me if I thought Perry Marshall’s statement of his argument was invalid. I would say that it was a little muddled, that’s all.
Actually, I can’t see anything wrong with a deductive version of Marshall’s argument, as I proposed in #112:
(1) DNA is a code;
(2) All codes have to be created by a conscious mind;
(3) DNA (a code) must have been created by a conscious mind.
Notice that the above syllogism makes no mention of Marshall’s natural-supernatural distinction. Thus iconofid’s question, “What evidence do you have that conscious minds are not natural?” is not relevant here. Whether you regard conscious minds as natural or not, the point of premise (2) (in my recast version of Marshall’s argument) is that only a mind can create a code.
Kairosfocus threw down a challenge to iconofid:
I would re-word that slightly:
The example offered by iconofid was a very interesting one: the English language.
With the greatest respect, iconofid, I have to disagree. Spoken English is the collective creation of the people who use it – all of whom have conscious minds. The patterns that are found in the spoken English language did not spring into existence out of the blue; some individual (or individuals) created them.
It need not concern us here what that person’s reason was – euphony, ease of use, misconstrual of an existing pattern or sheer laziness. All that matters here is that for any given pattern in the spoken English language, there was a time t in history when someone made a conscious choice to use a new pattern, either to convey a new meaning or a meaning previously conveyed by an earlier pattern. That person may not have known that he/she was creating a new pattern. However, insofar as that person intended that the new pattern be used to convey a particular meaning, what he/she did was certainly an act of design.
As I see it, the English language is a bit like Linux. It’s a work-in-progress, whose designs (the patterns embedded in our everyday speech) are continually being upgraded. With English, as with Linux, there are absolutely no restrictions on who is allowed to generate new patterns, or “improve upon” (i.e. modify) existing patterns used by speakers. I guess you could regard it as open-source software.
Here’s an example. In Shakespeare’s day, the question “Where does he live?” would have been asked as follows: “Where lodges he?” (see Othello, Act III, scene 4). Somewhere along the line, the pattern “Where ____s he?” changed to “Where does he ____?” Why was a modal auxiliary verb introduced? I have no idea. Most likely it was a very gradual change, which was accomplished over several decades, as more and more people came to like the new pattern. But why shouldn’t the creator of the new pattern be called a designer?
Iconofid, you make the point that “English evolved and continues to evolve unpredictably.” But that does not entail that it is not a designed product; all it means is that the designers do not collude amongst themselves. There is no grand plan for English, because no single individual or team is in charge of it. So what’s the problem?
As far as I can tell, my modified deductive version of Marshall’s argument still stands. I explained in #112 why I think that the principle that codes have to be created by a conscious mind, has to be true.
If you think premise (2) of my argument is wrong, iconofid, then I’d like to ask you this question: is there anything at all which you believe that only a conscious mind can do? I’m just curious.