The ID debate (II)

(Continuing The ID debate. This was my reply to Peter’s initial comments.)

The necessary distinction is between design that is empirically detectable by given criteria and design that is not thus detectable…Hence, even if we interpret ID within a theistic framework which is not part and parcel of the theory as a scientific hypothesis – we do not end up dividing nature into a dualism of ‘designed’ and ‘not designed’, but rather into different modes of divine causation.

I think that, here, you’re either using Intelligent Design in an unusual way or misunderstanding some of the implications of what you’re saying. What I understand from your reply is that you believe that everything is in fact designed (controlled) by God, but that this design is only evident in certain cases. In the first section of the reply below, I address this possibility. (I assume that design and control are close synonyms because the one implies the other – if God has a design, it is worthless unless God has the control of Creation needed to make it come about. If we need to debate this question separately then just say.)

To start with, then, you are essentially saying that ID is a variant of Creationism – that God directly controls every aspect of speciation from the small to the large. (This is not how ID is usually presented, however. Usually, ID is said to be scientific in that it accepts the mechanisms of science as operating in most cases.) This has some important consequences. The first is that ID is clearly not any sort of science, and those who promulgate it should stop claiming that it is. It might belong in a philosophy or religion classroom, but not in science lessons. (This says nothing about whether it’s correct or not, merely about the sort of argument it is.)

The only difference, under this understanding, between the large examples that Behe quotes (of molecular mechanisms that are “irreducibly complex”, for example) and the smaller ones is that we can see the design of the large ones; the design is always present but is not always visible. However, this is saying that there is no such thing as “natural” causation – it is an illusion caused by the consistency with which God acts within Creation. The distinction here between natural and divine causation is crucial. Science deals explicitly in natural causation; any event that does not arise from natural causation would be outside the competence of science. This is, of course, the central thesis of Behe et al.‘s theory – that certain features of living organisms defy natural explanation and require an extra-natural Cause. However, you seem to be saying that, in fact, there is no natural causation at all, that every event is actually divinely controlled. Not merely sustained by God but actively planned and carried out. (Notice that this aspect again emphasises that ID would not, in fact, accomodate the scientific theory of evolution at all, for it contradicts the basic contention of evolutionary theory that the driving force is natural selection.)

This leads to the second, and more serious, problem that I see, which is that this approach calls for direct divine control over speciation. Now, because ID uses the language of science and is explicitly talking about the findings of science, this necessarily implies that God controls all variation, not simply speciation – for speciation is no different to any other variation in its essence; a new species is merely a variation that doesn’t die out quickly. If God is responsible for all variation, this means that God must directly control the creation of every individual gamete by every living organism, which requires the control of cell divisions and DNA rearrangements. It requires that God control which sperm fertilises which egg, and whether the embryo formed lives, reproduces and dies. In other words, it requires that we live in a puppet Universe in which every event from the subatomic scale on up is determined and controlled by God. No other Universe can accomodate the level of control implied by what you seem to be saying. Needless to say, this has troublesome theological consequences. This problem arises because ID is attempting to use the language of science. If it stuck with standard Creationism, it would avoid these problems because Creationism ignores the fine details and simply claims that God creates new species, without making specific claims about the mechanisms. ID, by accepting that evolution appears to take place, needs to control all variation and selection. That is, one can either ignore the science and say that God is God and any evidence in Creation cannot contradict God, or deal with the evidence presented by Creation in detail. Dealing with the evidence means that all of it must be addressed; we can’t simply extract speciation as though it was a privileged activity different to all other molecular events.

The only escape from this consequence of imposing Design at the molecular level is to say that God invariably acts in accordance with natural laws. In which case, we are essentially saying that God does not act at this level at all. If God is following natural laws, God is not truly controlling at all. Rather, God is following the rules God designed into the Universe. Which is precisely what standard scientific theories would claim, with the sole exception that they don’t assume that God is acting directly at all (following Ockham’s razor).

However, I might have misunderstood you, and you might not mean that all causes are divine in origin in the sense of God controlling their outcome. This position means that some causes are natural (following from the natural laws and not requiring any divine intervention to occur); this would mean that the “smaller” adaptive changes can be truly explained by the theory of evolution – random mutation and natural selection leading to adaptive change to suit the environment. This cures the “puppet Universe” problem, but at the expense of creating a new problem. For we must still deal with the “large” changes that ID claims are evidence of Design.

Now, you said that there is no fundamental distinction between the small and the large changes, which implies to me that (if we are accepting that small changes are, in fact, non-divine in origin but follow from natural laws) the large events must also be explicable by natural law, without direct divine control. However, this collapses the theory of ID into the theory of evolution – it means that “ID” is not in fact a design theory but an attempt to place evolution within a Christian framework (in which case, its attempts to create definitive “Design” events are inappropriate – it would be a poor theory because it tries to do too much).

Alternatively, they you might be saying that these large changes are actual Design events – but this creates precisely the dualism I was talking about in my original message. If small changes are not individually divinely willed but the large changes are, there is a difference in kind between them that is sufficient to sustain my original criticisms.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:41pm on 17 April 2006
Category: Faith, Musing, Science