On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:08:24 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> > Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - November 23, 2005
> >
> > U. of Kansas Draws Media Frenzy With News That It Will Offer
> Course
> > on Intelligent Design as Myth
> > By THOMAS BARTLETT
> >
>
> > Intelligent design is the theory that some aspects of living
> > organisms are so complex that they could not have evolved
> according
> > to the principles of evolution laid down by Charles Darwin 150
> years
> > ago, but must have been designed by some superior intelligence.
> > Critics of the theory say it is little more than creationism,
> which
> > considers God to have been the designer, and is in any event not a
> > scientific theory.
>
> Why do the liberal media such as The Chronicle of HIgher Education
> keep referring to intelligent design as a "theory"? That's a wrong
>
> term used in this context, because it creates an unwarranted
> association between intelligent design and a scientific theory which
>
> it isn't.
It's that infamous liberal "on the one hand . . . and on the other hand . . ." syndrome at work. The trouble is, that sort of thing does not work in science. And yes, ID does not qualify as a scientific theory. While I do not want to get too Popperian about it, it seems to me that requirement for being a scientific theory, is that it ought to be possible, at least in principle, to specify the sorts of evidence that would one to reject that theory. ID theorists, to the best of my knowledge, have never done this.
And the whole logic of their theory is an appeal to what theologians would call a "God of the gaps" argument. In other words, what they do is point to one kind of natural phenomenon or another, claim that we are lacking in a good naturalistic explanation for it, so we are left with appealing to an intelligent designer in order to explain it. Even in cases where we are in fact lacking a good naturalistic explanation, whether in terms of evolutionary theory or some other theory for the phenomena in question (and contrary to the claims of ID theorists some of the stuff that they claim cannot be explained in naturalistic terms, we do in fact have good scientific explanations), this is hardly a defensible move. It's no better than explaining cancer in terms of evil spirits, in other words not the sort of explanation that promotes further inquiry.
Also, ID theorists are curiously inconsistent in their explanatory strategies. They allege that the complexities of living organisms, especially so-called irreducible complexities, can only be explained in terms of the actions of an intelligent designer. While many ID theorists like to play cute and refuse to publicly specify the identity of the alleged intelligent designer, it seems apparent that any such putative designer must be even more complex that the organisms that it allegedly designed. But if it is the complexity of living organisms that requires us to appeal to an intelligent designer for an explanation, then what explains the complex design of this intelligent designer? Who or what designed the intelligent designer(s)?
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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