09 April, 2009

Intelligent Design Flaw

Well, there are many reasons why this particular branch of pseudoscience is wrong and their core arguments have been refuted time and again, but I'm just going to focus on one aspect of ID here. Specifically, I am addressing the infinite regress of designers necessary for ID to hold true. Now IDists may claim that this infinite regress isn't a necessity (ie the designer is eternal) but this isn't the case if you follow ID logic to its conclusion...

ID proponents claim that "Intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause". This seems reasonable for such things as Mt Rushmore, mousetraps and computers but IDists claim it also applies to 'living things' such as eyes, flagella, immune systems, etc. The problem is that we already know the designer in the case of the former examples, but crucially we do not have such knowledge for the latter.

Now, ID states that "one need not fully understand the origin or identity of the designer to determine that an object was designed". Instead, we can infer design from our experience: "Such research begins by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists investigating design then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence."

Herein lies the problem.

Human knowledge of design is derived from experience of.........wait for it..........human design. There is no evidence to suggest that knowledge of human design can extrapolate to supernatural design. This is simply not an assumption that can be made, although the ID crowd are happy to do so. I'm not saying that supernatural design does not exist, although I doubt that it does, but just that knowledge of human design does not qualify us to recognise it.

So, if we base our knowledge of design on human design, as ID proponents do, then we must logically base our knowledge of intelligent designers on humans. So if ID is true, this means that intelligent designers (humans) are themselves designed by a intelligent designer. But crucially this 'earlier' intelligent designer is subject to the same criteria and so must also have been designed. This inevitably leads to an infinite regress of designers and a continual begging of the same question. As was famously said to Bertrand Russell, "But it's turtles all the way down!"

I'm not trying to show that ID is wrong here (although it is). Instead I'm trying to show that if ID were true, based on our current knowledge, we must conclude that there has been a never-ending series of intelligent designers, which creates a paradox. So, if one were to claim ID as evidence of God, this would mean that God was created by an intelligent designer, meaning there is a higher higher power. Now since most if not all IDist are practicing Christians, the implications of their theory actually directly contradicts their faith. Either they don't realise this or they are burying their heads in the sand.

Come to your own conclusions. I have.



5 comments:

Rod said...

This is a really good argument that even the scientifically-handicapped like me could use confidently. I'm not religious, thanks to open-minded parents who taught me to try to think for myself, and I'd prefer to treat religion as either a matter of opinion or a mildly embarrassing eccentricity, at least in large parts of the UK. But not any more. The increasing vehemence and intellectual dishonesty of far too many religious people is impossible to nowadays, sadly.
PS I studied languages. I have never heard of any linguist atheist, agnosticm, or religious, who would deny that languages evolve.

Michael said...

Rhiggs,

You wrote, “Now IDists may claim that this infinite regress isn't a necessity (ie the designer is eternal)” – Sure they may (and they might even), but ID doesn’t say that the designer is eternal. ID doesn’t even say who the designer is.

Despite your introduction, you are aware of this as evidenced by the 3rd paragraph in your post. It’s at this point that the flaw in your argument is revealed. You wrote, “There is no evidence to suggest that knowledge of human design can extrapolate to supernatural design.” Whence the adjective “supernatural?” You’ve supplied extra information here . ID makes no claim to the supernatural, and as such, your argument falls apart. You’d have to rework this argument if your conclusions here regarding ID and its assumed proponents are to hold any weight.

rhiggs said...

Michael,

Thanks for your comment.

You said: "Sure they may (and they might even), but ID doesn’t say that the designer is eternal. ID doesn’t even say who the designer is."

And that's why I said that IDists may say that.

You see, IDists claim that ID says nothing about this or nothing about that. This is because if they try to expand upon the theory of an intelligent designer it quickly turns into religion. So they prefer to make only one claim, and a flawed claim to boot, and then refuse to expand on that claim. From your comment, I see you have also adopted this ambiguous position with regards any direct prerequistes or consequences of ID being true.

This does not stop others from exploring the shaky scaffold that props up the notion of ID, as I have done here.


You said: "Whence the adjective “supernatural?” You’ve supplied extra information here . ID makes no claim to the supernatural, and as such, your argument falls apart. You’d have to rework this argument if your conclusions here regarding ID and its assumed proponents are to hold any weight."

If you are an ID proponent, and I assume you are, then this is just another refusal on your part to admit what you actually believe.

Sure ID makes no direct claim to the supernatural, but this is by design (pun intended). As I have explained it is being propped up by a supernatural scaffold which IDists refuse to discuss.

What is the alternative to the designer being supernatural?

A natural intelligent designer created certain parts of living organisms.

If this is true, then ID proponents need to also explain where this designer came from, as it is, or was, also a living organism. If ID were to posit another designer, then we are back to square one.

An answer which necessarily asks the exact same quesiton it is supposed to answer is useless.

So ID essentially answers nothing, adds nothing to science and should be discarded from public discourse before it makes any headway in corrupting more young minds.

Michael said...

Whether the logic of your argument fails has nothing to do with my beliefs. My post was mainly concerned with the internal consistency of the argument you were bringing against ID. For that I am charged for withholding details of some other untenable positions that I might hold and think support my house of cards? I don’t have a problem laying those out there. Theist? Check. Christian? Check. Corrupted young mind? Perhaps. What does any of that have to do with science?

rhiggs said...

It has nothing to do with science Michael, yet it props up ID. That's the problem.

And thanks, I agree that my argument was internally consistent!

You claim my argument is illogical because I charge ID with something it does not claim. Do you never wonder why no further claims are made by ID proponents? Real scientists are eager to explore all avenues of research stemming from their ideas.

The problem with ID proponents is that they refuse to explore the possiblity of who the designer is. As I explained, this is a dishonest position to hold, as they know they are doing so in order to keep ID separate from religion. This automatically renders ID a pseudoscience.

Real science does not make a claim and then refuse to hypothesize and study prerequisites or consequences of that claim. To do this is simply pseudoscience. I'll explain why...

Saying an intelligent designer made a flagellum is unfalsifiable. Nothing can ever disprove this. If we were able to find the exact evolutionary pathway step by step, the ID proponent could simply say that the intelligent designer designed the step-by-step pathway.

The only way to refute, or even explore, ID is to imagine that it is true and then look at the prerequisites and consequences of that. This is the only way that ID could potentially be considered real science - if ID proponents try to disprove it. They don't (for obvious reasons) but others are happy to do so.

Many wacky hypotheses are dismissed simply by exploring their implictions and realizing that they are untenable ideas. ID is untenable as it would require an infinite regress, so no questions are answered that do not ask the exact same question.


What if I say to you that I have formulated a new branch of mathematics where 5x10=51...?

You might explain that 5x10 actually equals 50 by showing me 5 separate bundles of 10 things and combining them all to give 50 things. But then I would just say:

No, I didn't claim that 5 times 10 things equals 51, just that 5x10=51.

You could try to convince me all day using logic but you can never prove me wrong if I say that this is a new branch of maths. It is unfalsifiable because any attempt to disprove it is not acceptable as it includes things that I did not claim.

This is the same as ID. It purposely makes it impossible to disprove by not allowing for anything to be examined. This makes it pseudoscience.

So when someone like me attempts to explore the necessary conditions for ID to be true and finds error in it, I will always get someone like you telling me I am wrong because I have added extra information.

Well Michael, 5*10=51...teach the controversy