On Fri, 22 Nov 1996 08:49:53 -0800 (PST), billgr@cco.caltech.edu
wrote:
GB>I have been listening in for a couple of weeks, and have enjoyed
the discussion. I have a couple of questions, though, that I hope
>to understand better with input from you. To disclose my own
>viewpoint, I'm probably in what is referred to here as the "TE"
>camp.
Welcome. We'll soon change that! :-) I assume your intitials are
"GB"?
GB>First, I've seen it implied a few times (sorry, don't remember
>who), that methodological naturalism doesn't have recourse to
>hypothesizing intelligent design as an explanation for features of
>nature.
It follows from the definition. Naturalism means that nature is all
there is. So "methodological naturalism" means that the scientist,
even if he/she is not a metaphysical naturalist (ie. does not
believe that nature is all there is) must *assume* that nature is all
there is in doing science. So if there is an Intelligent Designer
who is outside of nature, the methodological naturalist cannot admit
it and still do science.
GB>I am curious how this relates to panspermia hypotheses. It
>seems to me that such hypotheses *do* appeal to intelligent
>design--namely, that of aliens--and that they *are* contenders
>within the methodological naturalist framework. That is, I don't
>see anything about panspermia, even very aggressive panspermia where
>aliens land and unload dinosaurs, that is outside the framework of
>methodological naturalism. I would enjoy hearing more about this
>(perceived, at any rate) dichotomy.
Good point! On one of his tapes, Johnson says that the Directed
Panspermia hypothesis is the naturalist version of supernatural
creation:
"Crick is thoroughly aware of the awesome complexity of cellular life
and the extreme difficulty of explaining how such life could have
evolved in the time available on earth. So he speculated that
conditions might have been more favorable on some distant planet.
That move leaves the problem of getting life from the planet of
origin to earth. ...Crick advanced a theory he called "directed
panspermia." The basic idea is that an advanced extraterrestrial
civilization, possibly facing extinction, sent primitive life forms
to earth in a spaceship....What kind of scientific evidence supports
directed panspermia? Crick wrote that if the theory is true, we
should expect that cellular microorganisms would appear suddenly,
without evidence that any simpler forms preceded them. We should
also expect to find that Ihe early forms were distantly related but
highly distinct, with no evidence of ancestors because these existed
only on the original planet. This expectation fits the facts
perfectly, because the archaebacteria and eubacteria are at the same
time too different to have evolved from a common ancestor in the time
available, and yet also too similar (sharing the same genetic
language) not to have a common source somewhere...Crick would be
scornful of any scientist who gave up on scientific research and
ascribed the origin of life to a supernatural Creator. But directed
panspermia amounts to the same thing. The same limitations that made
it impossible for the extraterrestrials to journey to earth will make
it impossible for scientists ever to inspect their planet.
Scientific investigation of the origin of life is as effectively
closed off as if God had reserved the subject for Himself. (Johnson
P.E., "Darwin on Trial", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Ill.,
Second Edition, 1993, pp110-111)
GB>Second, there is another question that the above raises. Suppose
>that intelligent design theorists are successful in proving that
>some biological features exhibit design that could only be
>'top-down' (that is, from some personal intelligent being). (There
>is an attendant question as to how that is to be isolated, but I'll
>leave that alone. :-)) How do intelligent design theorists hope to
>argue that such intelligent design is God's handiwork as opposed to
>that of some aliens? (Or do they hope to argue that?)
Another good point. Behe even discussed aliens as a
possibility:
"Crick also thinks that life on earth may have begun when aliens from
another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed the
earth...The primary reason Crick subscribes to this unorthodox view
is that he judges the undirected origin of life to be a virtually
insurmountable obstacle, but he wants a naturalistic explanation. For
our present purposes, the interesting part of Crick's idea is the role of
the aliens, whom he has speculated sent space bacteria to earth. But
he could with as much evidence say that the aliens actually designed
the irreducibly complex biochemical systems of the life they sent here,
and also designed the irreducibly complex systems that developed
later. The only difference is a switch to the postulate that aliens
constructed life, whereas Crick originally speculated that they just
sent it here It is not a very big leap, though, to say that a civilization
capable of sending rocket ships to other planets is also likely to be
capable of designing life-especially if the civilization has never been
observed. Designing life, it could be pointed out, does not necessarily
require supernatural abilities; rather, it requires a lot of intelligence. If
a graduate student in an earthbound lab today can plan and make an
artificial protein that can bind oxygen, then there is no logical barrier
to thinking that an advanced civilization on another world might
design an artificial cell from scratch. This scenario still leaves open
the question of who designed the designer-how did life originally
originate? Is a philosophical naturalist now trapped? " (Behe M.J.,
"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution", Free
Press: NY, 1996, pp248-249)
Behe cheerfully admits that ID will not be able to identify the
designer:
"Inferences to design do not require that we have a candidate for the
role of designer. We can determine that a system was designed by
examining the system itself, and we can hold the conviction of design
much more strongly than a conviction about the identity of the
designer. In several of the examples above, the identity of the
designer is not obvious. We have no idea who made the contraption
in the junkyard, or the vine trap, or why. Nonetheless, we know that
all of these things were designed because of the ordering of
independent components to achieve some end." (Behe, 1996, p196)
ID theory will never be able to show that the Intelligent Designer is
the Christian God. All it can show is that: 1. it wasn't the `blind
watchmaker of Darwinism; and 2. it is compatible with the Christian
God.
GB>That is, it seems to me that the goal of the intelligent design
>advocates is more ambitious than a demonstration that some
>biological features were designed purposefully by some person--
No. There is simply no way that "intelligent design" can be
"more ambitious than a demonstration that some biological features
were designed purposefully by some person". If you claim that
ID is doing this, you need to supply quotes from their writings
that they are. :-)
GB>I don't see how that aim is incompatible with methodological
>naturalism, as I stated above.
See above. "methodological naturalism" is *by definition* "incompatible"
with "intelligent design". MN cannot, in principle, consider "intelligent
design", because "naturalism" is the doctrine that nature is all there
is:
Nancey Murphy, a philosopher and Fuller Seminary professor, agrees.
She wrote recently in the same journal: "Science qua science seeks
naturalistic explanations for all natural processes. Christians and
atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in our era without
invoking a Creator.... Anyone who attributes the characteristics of
living things to creative intelligence has by definition stepped into
the arena of either metaphysics or theology." (Murphy N., "Phillip
Johnson on Trial: A Critique of His Critique of Darwin,"
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol. 45, no. 1, 1993,
33, in Meyer S.C., "The Methodological Equivalence of Design & Descent:
Can There be a Scientific `Theory of Creation'?" in Moreland J.P.
ed., "The Creation Hypothesis", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove
Ill., 1994, p69)
GB>It seems to me that the goal is rather to argue that *God* is responsible
>for putting the design into designed features in some particularly
>instantaneous way (as opposed to in some evolutionary way).
No again! :-) Design has got nothing whatever to do with the time taken
to give physical effect to the design:
"The third reason why Miller's argument misses the mark is actually
quite understandable. It arises from the confusion of two separate
ideas-the theory that life was intelligently designed and the theory that
the earth is young. Because religious groups who strongly advocate
both ideas have been in the headlines over the past several decades,
much of the public thinks that the two ideas are necessarily linked.
Implicit in Ken Miller's argument about pseudogenes, and absolutely
required for his conclusions, is the idea that the designer had to have
made life recently. That is not a part of intelligent-design theory. The
conclusion that some features of life were designed can be made in
the absence of knowledge about when the designing took place. A
child who looks at the faces on Mt. Rushmore immediately knows
that they were designed but might have no idea of their history; for all
she knows, the faces might have been designed the day before she got
there, or might have been there since the beginning of time. An art
museum might display a statue of a bronze cat purportedly made in
Egypt thousands of years ago-until the statue is examined by
technologically advanced methods and shown to be a modern forgery.
In either case, though, the bronze cat was certainly designed by an
intelligent agent. The irreducibly complex biochemical systems that I
have discussed in this book did not have to be produced recently. It is
entirely possible, based simply on an examination of the systems
themselves, that they were designed billions of years ago and that
they have been passed down to the present by the normal processes
of cellular reproduction." (Behe, 1996, p227)
GB>(I'd better stop before I ask more about why intelligent design
theorists are interested in *this* particular method... :-))
What "method"? There is nothing unsual about recognising design. Behe
calls it "humdrum":
"The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data
itself-not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that
biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a
humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or
science." (Behe, 1996, p193)
God bless.
Steve
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