Dilbert Designer Strikes Again
[Updated for clarity] Scott Adams begins his Intelligent Design, Part 3 post by saying:
In reality, not many of the die-hard critics of ID like to trumpet the fact that they do occasionally present scientific evidence explicitly against intelligent design to biology students, because such arguments create a vulnerability in their position. Their position is not merely that intelligent design is incorrect; they argue that it's not even an incorrect scientific hypothesis in the way, for instance, that the steady state model of the universe proved to be an incorrect scientific model. They argue that ID is something else all together--muddled philosophy or religion in disguise.
But if they take time in a high school science class to present scientific evidence against ID, then they're treating it as an incorrect scientific hypothesis, one formulated in such a way that scientific evidence could count against it. If scientific evidence could count against it, then at least in principle, scientific evidence could count in favor of it.
I would like ID critics to go down this road. I want them to present the scientific evidence against ID because I think the scientific evidence against it is weak and the scientific evidence for ID is strong. This is corroborated by the behavior of ID critics: a remarkable number of them prefer to talk about hidden agendas and definitions of science rather than the evidence. This strategy of steering everyone away from an evidence-based debate is breaking down, however, thanks to the internet and blogging, in conjunction with the media's weakness for covering a controversy even when told it doesn't exist.
Adams concludes his post with a thought experiment:
It's also true that the lightning strike pattern, repeated around the world, isn't enough to confirm the Biblical God as the source of the patterns, or even that the statements found in the patterns were true. All we could safely infer from the lightning and the patterns alone is that an extraordinarily capable intelligent agent or agents caused the lightning strike patterns. Everyone would do this intuitively, and we could run it through William Dembski's design filter and make the inference in a mathematically rigorous fashion as well. Then we could all retire to our blogs (or break rooms or village gates) and begin arguing about whether the patterns were caused by the Biblical God or by some trickster agent performing an elaborate practical joke.
Somebody might say, "But if we let a divine, omnipotent foot in the door, then anything is possible and we can't safely infer anything about anything. The designer could make anything look like anything. The universe might be five minutes old with all of us walking around with false memories." This very objection was raised by an expert witness at the Dover intelligent design trial.
There are at least two problems with this argument when it's used to rebut design inferences about things like the bacterial flagellum or the fine-tuning of the physical constants of nature.
First, what possibilities we choose to entertain or ignore won't affect whether there actually is an omipotent designer. If such a designer is out there, we could ignore him all day and the designer would go right on existing.
Second and more specific to this thought experiment, the trickster objection is self-refuting where it is used to refute a design inference concerning the lightning strike messages: the deception would itself require design.
I understand the argument for excluding Intelligent Design from science classes. Most scientists believe it doesn’t meet the definition of science. You can't argue with the people who MAKE the definitions. If the vast majority say it doesn't have enough substance to qualify as science, that's okay with me. But I have to wonder if that’s the real reason most scientists oppose including it in schools. I would expect scientists to welcome such a clear model of something that is NOT science, as an example of exactly that.Actually, some standard high school biology textbooks already do take swipes at intelligent design. See for example, Raven & Johnson, Biology: 6th edition, and Mader, Biology: 8th edition. The relevant material is discussed here, beginning on pages 17 and 27 under the subtitle, "Comments on the Book's Non-Scientific Contents." One might suppose, then, that leading ID critics would be saying something like this: "Oh I'm not opposed to taking a minute or two out of biology class to debunk ID. We just don't want it presented as well-supported science."
“Kids, astronomy is science and astrology isn’t. Here are some more examples of things that aren’t science...”
Sure, it might confuse the dumb kids, but they aren’t the ones building the spaceships of tomorrow anyway. I learned about not using "ain't" in English class and that didn't hurt me too much. So it just seems fishy to me that scientists are so worked up about Intelligent Design. Could their true fear be the slippery slope argument? If you let ID in the door, before long we'll all be wearing scraggly beards and beating ourselves with prayer paddles.
In reality, not many of the die-hard critics of ID like to trumpet the fact that they do occasionally present scientific evidence explicitly against intelligent design to biology students, because such arguments create a vulnerability in their position. Their position is not merely that intelligent design is incorrect; they argue that it's not even an incorrect scientific hypothesis in the way, for instance, that the steady state model of the universe proved to be an incorrect scientific model. They argue that ID is something else all together--muddled philosophy or religion in disguise.
But if they take time in a high school science class to present scientific evidence against ID, then they're treating it as an incorrect scientific hypothesis, one formulated in such a way that scientific evidence could count against it. If scientific evidence could count against it, then at least in principle, scientific evidence could count in favor of it.
I would like ID critics to go down this road. I want them to present the scientific evidence against ID because I think the scientific evidence against it is weak and the scientific evidence for ID is strong. This is corroborated by the behavior of ID critics: a remarkable number of them prefer to talk about hidden agendas and definitions of science rather than the evidence. This strategy of steering everyone away from an evidence-based debate is breaking down, however, thanks to the internet and blogging, in conjunction with the media's weakness for covering a controversy even when told it doesn't exist.
Adams concludes his post with a thought experiment:
Imagine that lightning suddenly carves into the side of the Washington Monument the words “I am God. I created you. Darwin was a nut.” And let’s say there are hundreds of witnesses who all have video cameras and capture it from multiple angles.I can only make an educated guess at what Adams is driving at, so I'll set that question aside and just offer my own reflections on the thought experiment. Of course science teachers should be allowed to tell their students about it. Any scientific methodology that wouldn't let scientists consider intelligence as a possible cause for the lightning strike pattern is a methodology that needs revising.
Now imagine that the same phenomenon repeats every day for a month, each time on a different monument. Scientists study the phenomena and conclude that humans probably didn’t cause it, but beyond that, there are no further scientific clues about how lighting could seem so directed.
If I crafted my thought experiment right, no one would have any idea how to devise a test that would confirm or exclude the possibility that God really did it. Hypothetically, being omnipotent and all, he would be capable of leaving no clues, other than signing his name. Therefore, any speculation as to the cause is not science.
Here’s the question: Should teachers be allowed to tell science students about the lightning messages?
It's also true that the lightning strike pattern, repeated around the world, isn't enough to confirm the Biblical God as the source of the patterns, or even that the statements found in the patterns were true. All we could safely infer from the lightning and the patterns alone is that an extraordinarily capable intelligent agent or agents caused the lightning strike patterns. Everyone would do this intuitively, and we could run it through William Dembski's design filter and make the inference in a mathematically rigorous fashion as well. Then we could all retire to our blogs (or break rooms or village gates) and begin arguing about whether the patterns were caused by the Biblical God or by some trickster agent performing an elaborate practical joke.
Somebody might say, "But if we let a divine, omnipotent foot in the door, then anything is possible and we can't safely infer anything about anything. The designer could make anything look like anything. The universe might be five minutes old with all of us walking around with false memories." This very objection was raised by an expert witness at the Dover intelligent design trial.
There are at least two problems with this argument when it's used to rebut design inferences about things like the bacterial flagellum or the fine-tuning of the physical constants of nature.
First, what possibilities we choose to entertain or ignore won't affect whether there actually is an omipotent designer. If such a designer is out there, we could ignore him all day and the designer would go right on existing.
Second and more specific to this thought experiment, the trickster objection is self-refuting where it is used to refute a design inference concerning the lightning strike messages: the deception would itself require design.
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