Chris
Not necessarily. It would *still* have to meet all other criteria for a
scientific article. That's the big failure of ID theory so far: It is unable
to propose an empirically meaningful concept of design that distinguishes
design from non-design *and* that does not simply beg the question of
whether Nature is the result of design or not. We distinguish design by
reference to features that make it *different* from Nature, so to claim that
*Nature* is designed is effectively to claim that Nature exhibits features
that make it different from Nature -- that Nature is different from Nature.
This is not a very good premise. What ID folks have to do if they want
regular scientific journals to publish their views is come up with some that
really *are* scientific. Positing a designer doesn't work, because it is
simply the assertion of the existence of an *entity*.
What science wants is a *causal principle*, such as that bodies in motion
tend to stay in motion, that heating a substance increases the kinetic
energy of its molecules, etc. One such principle is that organisms reproduce
with accidental or non-directed variations, and that some of these
variations are more fit for their environment than others (this is why we
don't see many camels that must have large daily intakes of water). The
*implication* of these principles is that, given time, *some* of these
variations will be cumulative and will produce novel organisms, as long as
the selection forces are not so strong as to virtually eliminate all
variation.
But, what ID theory offers is *not* causal principle. It is merely a kind of
claim of historical fact, but with nothing to actually *explain* (except in
a "Just So" story way) the facts. It's *not* scientific explanation if it
does not *imply* the facts. Newton's theory of gravitation not only offered
an explanation in the shallow "Just So," sense, but also in the sense that,
given two planets moving in space, and certain knowledge about their masses,
etc., it would *imply* that they would behave in a fairly specific way. The
theory *implies* that a cannonball dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa
will take a certain time to reach the ground and that it will hit with a
certain speed. The ID approach would not be able to say more than, "Whatever
happens, the designer caused it." How useful is *that*? Could a "designer"
theory of physics make any predictions at all? No, not without introducing
some sort of causal *principle* like the theory of gravitation, or a claim
about the designer's motives and methods. Of course, if it does *that*, the
designer himself becomes superfluous unless there is some proof that he is
necessary for their to be such a principle (this latter approach has
actually been tried, but without success, for a number of reasons).
So, if ID theory is to have a future in journals and science generally, it
has to get off the stupid religion kick and actually *be* science. It has to
do something more useful in a *scientific* sense than provide a
non-predictive, non-implicative "Just So" story. This is actually
theoretically possible; I can think of several ways in which design *could*
be exhibited in Nature (and I'm sure I could find many more, if I put my
mind to it). It's truly design-specific evidence that needs to be found. For
example, if someone found that a major portion of the genetic material of
the human genome consisted of a ludicrously simple encoding of the digits of
pi to ten million decimal places, I would be *very* impressed (I do *not*
mean such silliness as "The Bible Code" or whatever it was. I mean,
"3.14159265 . . . " for ten million digits worth of pi). I would take this
as proof of a designer (though not a non-naturalistic designer; I cannot
even imagine how a true proof of a non-naturalistic designer would be
logically possible).
> For example, intelligent
> design is excluded from science not because it has discredited the notion;
> the question is simply ignored and in the rare cases where it may be
> raised, it is usually pompously and flippantly dismissed.
>
> Remember, science is simply what scientists do.
Really? Scientists get married, have children, eat dinner, etc. Is this all
science? No, science is not just what scientists do; that definition is
essentially circular, since then we'd have to define scientists as those who
do science, which is defined as what scientists do. This same nonsensical
approach has been used with respect to mathematicians, too, with the same
illogic.
> And scientists do
> what Dickerson and Todd do.
Chris
And often for very good reason. Since design is generally defined as
*appearing* designed, and *appearing* designed is determined by reference to
the speaker's personal views rather than by objective criteria, it is no
wonder that it tends to be scorned by scientists. Since Nature does *not*
appear to many of us to be designed, we need something other than people's
feelings about it. We need a definition of what it would be for something to
be designed and a way to distinguish that from non-designed order. I chose
the pi example above precisely because the representation of pi as a string
of digits *is* the sort of thing we don't see in Nature, and would not
*expect* in Nature, given ordinary naturalistic theory about how we got
here. Therefore, if such a representation were found accurately embedded in
our genomes, we'd have to suspect that we were in fact put here by aliens,
or that our universe is a virtual reality in some truly-to-be-coveted
computer system, or that, at bare minimum, some aliens passing by inserted
it into our genes in such a way that it would be maintained intact for
generation after generation, etc.
But, until the ID folks can come up with such evidence, or *at least* a
proposal of what such evidence might be and where to find it, etc., they
really don't have anything.
Incidentally, my table comparing naturalistic evolution and designer theory
has been improved, to some extent in response to Stephen Jones' criticisms.
I'm not at all convinced he will like all the improvements, however. :-)
The items are numbered now, and some overstatements have been trimmed, and
I've added several new items. I still have a long way to go before it will
be what I want it to be, but you may find it interesting nevertheless.
Here's the URL:
http://www.sfo.com/~ccogan/Evvsdes.htm