Don’t discuss stuff! It hurts our academic reputation!

By inviting a proponent of ID to speak on your campus, you are giving others the impression that you view ID to be a serious academic topic, worthy of academic discussion. However, the vast (and I mean vast) majority of scientists–theistic or otherwise–do not view ID as a legitimate scientific theory. Perhaps a philosophic or religious one, but not a scientific one–and its proponents always try to pass it off a scientific challenge to materialistic Darwinism. So the very act of hosting such a speaker is liable to ostracize many of your own biology faculty, and liable to give your institution a suspect reputation among other campuses.

I’m trying to think of an equivalent in math so you can understand why this is a real problem. What if a group of math professors went around saying that there are phenomena–biological or physical–that can never, ever be described solely with mathematical models and must instead call for poetic or psychic models? Now, I happen to agree with this assertion, but I wouldn’t for a minute suppose that it should be treated as a serious branch of mathematics. This is what the IDers are trying to insist about biological complexity–that it can not be accounted for using materialistic, impersonal physical forces and we must therefore invoke intelligent, personal forces. Moreover, they often try to use this argument to overturn or invalidate evolutionary explanations. That’s either kooky or belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the ground rules of science. (Don’t get me wrong–I like challenging the ground rules of science, but the IDers claim that’s not what they’re doing; they claim to be doing good science and that that is why they deserve a hearing in the science classroom).

I’m going to have to disagree with you. Universities strive to promote an environment where the best of scholarship is discussed. By “best”, I don’t mean the most popular or uncontroversial scholarship, but that which nearly all members of a given discipline would agree at least abides by certain ground rules of methodology. The concept of a standard method of scholarship, for all its shortcomings, is foundational to the idea of the university. Only if we agree upon methods of discovering and justifying “knowledge” can we claim to be discussing a single (“uni”) reality. Most IDer’s come from outside the accepted norm of biological method, and therefore I believe billing their discussions as a legitimate intramural challenge to Darwinian evolution violates the sanctity of the university pulpit.

As I think more about this, I realize that my kneejerk resistance to such a talk isn’t the talk per se, but how it is presented. If it is hosted by the philosophy or religion departments, and billed as a discussion of the limitations of the current philosophy of scientific method, I would be fine with it. ID talks are seldomed couched with such humility, though, and I think the faculty at Samford are prudent to be concerned.

PS> a “preview” function for comments would be nice. It’s hard to proof long comments in this tiny little box. Particularly with that nasty quote graphic riding over my words.

I think the fact that evolution and ID are both being evaluated by the general public on the basis of stereotypes, media reports, and preconceived notions rather than on the strenghts and weakness of their scientific methodology is a very good reason for Samford to have this event. The general public doesn’t really have a clue what constitutes good science or bad science. Instead, things like this get evaluated in terms of reactions: People of faith react positively to ID and negatively to evolution because they see scientists as anti-faith, which often happens because of situations like this at Samford where the faculty come off as being totally unwilling, perhaps even afraid, when it comes to hearing alternative views to evolution. And non-religious types react negatively to ID and positively to evolution because they have a certain image in their minds about people of faith that tends toward the “pointy-headed fundy moron” end of the spectrum rather than something, well, more realistic.

This is also why housing the talk in a department is counterproductive. The whole question is, is ID science or not? If you stick it in the religion department, you (as the university) are answering the question FOR the audience rather than let the audience hear and decide for themselves. I don’t see anywhere in the article that the talk is housed in ANY department, science or otherwise, and I think that’s a wise choice.

David, I would imagine that the person giving the talk, if he’s a mathematician, does something with information theory. Even if he could explain information theory in a coherent way, it’d be worth the price of admission.

Some of Dembski’s work relies on information theory, which is why I find it appealing (my PhD work involved some information-theoretic techniques to prove lower bounds in complexity theory). Lennix may be doing something similar — I’ll have to check it out.

As for the preview function, it came with the theme I chose. I’ll have to look to see how the theme author made it happen.

My only problem with the big quotes is that it covers up the left side of the top line of text as you’re wrting — I first thought something was wrong. Otherwise, I think it’s cute.

Does this mean I won the shouting match? David: you should know I was being somewhat rhetorical and tonque in cheek, a debating tactic that is less effective on blogs than in person, since you can’t read my expressions.

Seriously, though, I struggle with the somewhat artificial turf boundaries the academy has imposed between “knowledge” and “faith.” I think the boundaries are pragmatic and should be respected in a democratic society, but I don’t for a minute suppose they delineate reality from mythology. Truth is more complicated than that.

My apologies if I offended.

David wrote:

Let me digest that while typing. The core assertion of the IDers is that current neodarwinian, natural-selection-driven evolutionary theory is not sufficient to explain the information and complexity of biology as we know it. I think the IDers are absolutely correct in that assertion, and the assertion itself is scientifically testable. In fact, many evolutionary biologists concede that current evolutionary theory does a very poor job describing how a single living cell could have evolved. So on that level, there is broad consensus and I see nothing wrong with discussing those limitations in a broad academic context.

It’s the next step of ID reasoning that gets sticky. When presented with an incomplete theory, you have two broad options. Prior to the renaissance and the scientific revolution, the most common option was to say “it is unexplainable; therefore it is the hand of God at work.” The second, modern (but not necessarily correct) option is to say: we need a better theory, one which delves deeper into the evidence available and attempts to reconcile more of it. Generally speaking, western science is resistant to the idea of invoking supernatural causes to explain natural effects. This is a philosophical bias, I’ll admit, and as such is untestable. But scientists like to point out that it’s been a remarkably fruitful philosophical bias, in that we have been able to come up with natural causes for almost all the natural effects we’ve studied in detail.

So to get back to your question: I believe the IDers are correct about evolutionary theory’s inadequacy. And we owe them (particularly Michael Behe) a debt for having the guts to talk about the naked emperor and his elephant sitting in the middle of the room. Many evolutionist are now engaged in trying to describe step-wise Darwinian processes that can explain the complexity of life, with some fruitful results. This will over the long run have profound implications for the way we think about evolution.

But I think the urge to “explain” complexity by pushing it off on a putative Intelligence (be it God or aliens or whatever) has profound negative implications for the enterprise of science in general. What if Newton had been content to say that the planets move the way they do simply because God moves them? What if Mendel had been content to write poems about the grandeur of God as displayed in the varied colors of pea flowers? What if Einstein had thrown up his hands and declared that only God can understand how matter and energy interrelate in our universe? What if Jenner had concluded that those who die from smallpox were falling under God’s judgment, and that to interfere would be anathema?

My concern is that a generation of future biologists will stand in front of the enigma that is biological complexity and, instead of forging ahead to understand how it came to be, dismiss it as the unintelligible gift of and Intelligent Designer. What future benefits to mankind would be lost to such a choice?

David wrote: “If the IDers are right (are they allowed to be right?) about evolution, it certainly has profound implications for science, doesn’t it?”

Let me digest that while typing. The core assertion of the IDers is that current neodarwinian, natural-selection-driven evolutionary theory is not sufficient to explain the information and complexity of biology as we know it. I think the IDers are absolutely correct in that assertion, and the assertion itself is scientifically testable. In fact, many evolutionary biologists concede that current evolutionary theory does a very poor job describing how a single living cell could have evolved. So on that level, there is broad consensus and I see nothing wrong with discussing those limitations in a broad academic context.

It’s the next step of ID reasoning that gets sticky. When presented with an incomplete theory, you have two broad options. Prior to the renaissance and the scientific revolution, the most common option was to say “it is unexplainable; therefore it is the hand of God at work.” The second, modern (but not necessarily correct) option is to say: we need a better theory, one which delves deeper into the evidence available and attempts to reconcile more of it. Generally speaking, western science is resistant to the idea of invoking supernatural causes to explain natural effects. This is a philosophical bias, I’ll admit, and as such is untestable. But scientists like to point out that it’s been a remarkably fruitful philosophical bias, in that we have been able to come up with natural causes for almost all the natural effects we’ve studied in detail.

So to get back to your question: I believe the IDers are correct about evolutionary theory’s inadequacy. And we owe them (particularly Michael Behe) a debt for having the guts to talk about the naked emperor and his elephant sitting in the middle of the room. Many evolutionist are now engaged in trying to describe step-wise Darwinian processes that can explain the complexity of life, with some fruitful results. This will over the long run have profound implications for the way we think about evolution.

But I think the urge to “explain” complexity by pushing it off on a putative Intelligence (be it God or aliens or whatever) has profound negative implications for the enterprise of science in general. What if Newton had been content to say that the planets move the way they do simply because God moves them? What if Mendel had been content to write poems about the grandeur of God as displayed in the varied colors of pea flowers? What if Einstein had thrown up his hands and declared that only God can understand how matter and energy interrelate in our universe? What if Jenner had concluded that those who die from smallpox were falling under God’s judgment, and that to interfere would be anathema?

My concern is that a generation of future biologists will stand in front of the enigma that is biological complexity and, instead of forging ahead to understand how it came to be, dismiss it as the unintelligible gift of and Intelligent Designer. What future benefits to mankind would be lost to such a choice?

Doc writes (!):

In fact, many evolutionary biologists concede that current evolutionary theory does a very poor job describing how a single living cell could have evolved.

I believe the IDers are correct about evolutionary theory’s inadequacy.

Are you, like, allowed to say this? Won’t you get thrown out of the club or something?

Seriously, if other biologists opposed to ID are making these sorts of statements, they are drowned out by the cries of “flat earth” and “creationism!” that usually accompany criticisms of ID.

Are high schoolers hearing that Darwinism has problems? Is the National Center for Science Education making this case? If so, I’d be encouraged, but so far, the debate has been awfully shrill and the reaction on the Darwinist side rather knee-jerk (witness the subject of the original post).

I understand your concerns about how attributing natural phenomena to God could lead to a dismissal of scientific approaches (that’s probaby an unfair characterization), but I’m not sure I buy them (your Jenner example seems particularly extreme). It discounts the countless Christian scientists (as opposed to Christian Scientists) who have not lost their inquisitiveness despite their belief in God’s interventions.

Still, I’m encouraged by your latest retort. I’m just not convinced that your gentler view of ID is shared by your colleagues.

Let’s call Doc a “reformed evolutionist.” Or maybe an Arminian evolutionist (hee hee). Or is he a post-tribulation premillenial evolutionist? Now there’s a concept!

And Robert, I think it’s OK for you to jump in. I seem to recall you having some connection to this whole discussion, but after 16 comments, I’m a little fuzzy as to exactly what that connection is.

OK, it’s clear to me that i have no clue how to use this darned blockquote tag. I tried treating it like a standard html tag, closing it with a /blockquote cite but that didn’t work.

Let’s play with this and see if I can get it to work.

Let’s call Doc a “reformed evolutionist.”

Did that work?

I’m off to my dictionary to look up consilience.