Our thoughts on Judge Jones' decision in the Dover ID trial continues. In this installment we continue our look at his reasoning on the question of whether or not ID is true science. In his opinion he makes this comment:
Each of the Judge's assertions is dubious.
1. Judge Jones suggests that modern science excludes non-natural causes. This is not quite accurate. It doesn't exclude them, or at least it has no business doing so, it simply seeks to explain as much as it possibly can by means of natural causes. The problem is that some scientists argue that because naturalism is methodologically useful that therefore it is metaphysically true. They glide from its usefulness as a heuristic platform to the conclusion that only naturalistic hypotheses can be admitted into science. They assume that because non-natural causes can only be inferred and not empirically discerned, that therefore they're irrelevant. When scientists draw such conclusions they have wandered beyond the bounds of science into the realm of metaphysics.
There's an irony here incidentally. The assumption that only natural causes should be considered by scientists is not itself a scientific proposition, it's a philosophical preference. Nevertheless, it's a philosophical preference to which the Judge is willing to give free reign in science class, to the exclusion of any other philosophical alternative.
2. His second assertion is strange. In a passage we'll cite below, Judge Jones separates Irreducible Complexity (IC) from ID. He asserts there that IC is testable, but that it is a distinct theory from ID and so its testability doesn't assist ID rise to the level of true science. Now here in this passage he asserts that IC is central to ID. Are we confused or is the Judge?
But that aside, what, exactly, is flawed and illogical about inferring design from irreducible complexity? The problem with IC, if it has one, is that it's difficult to demonstrate that a particular system actually is irreducibly complex. If, however, it could be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that a system is indeed irreducibly complex, should we nevertheless ignore the telic implications of that finding simply because it would suggest a non-natural provenience. Judge Jones demands that the answer be "yes." He says, in effect, that we should deny ourselves scientific knowledge because the process of acquiring that knowledge conflicts with the philosophical preference for naturalism. Only naturalistic explanations can be permitted into Judge Jones' science classroom even if they're known to be inadequate and no non-natural explanation may be admitted even if it's believed to be highly probable. In his attempt to banish philosophy from the classroom he actually allows one philosophical position to prevail over another.
3. Judge Jones is confusing a response to a challenge with a refutation of that challenge. Just because scientists suggest logically possible answers to some of the questions raised by IC doesn't mean their answers are correct, plausible, or even physically possible. Much less does it mean that they've refuted IC. Since Michael Behe wrote Darwin's Black Box and posed his challenges to the scientific community many people have tried to come up with answers to the questions he raised, but whether the answers are adequate is not a judgment Judge Jones is qualified to make. Nor can he simply rely on the testimony of those who have suggested those answers that they have sufficiently refuted Behe. The scientific community as a whole must make that determination and that takes time. As of now, the outcome is uncertain.
The Judge goes on to make several more questionable claims:
If the judge thinks this is a refutation of ID, he's mistaken. No ID theorist would disagree with it. Design is itself an inference from confirmable data. It's an explanation based upon the empirical evidence of the natural world. It would be well, though, for physics teachers who explore with their advanced students cosmogeny, string theory, and the existence of other universes, to take note that they are running afoul of the Judge's guidelines for what they are permitted to teach.
Well, no, it's not a "science stopper." Would the Judge repeat this assertion to Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Galileo, or any of dozens of other scientific worthies who continued to seek the natural causes of phenomena even while convinced that their ultimate cause was God? Of course not. All these men believed that the causes they were seeking to discern were proximal causes. The ultimate cause may be intelligence, but that is no reason to stop searching for the means by which the designer accomplished what it did.
This is incorrect. ID looks at natural phenomena such as genetic information, bio-machines, and complex biological processes and instead of accepting inadequate explanations, i.e. those which seek to explain these phenomena as just an incredible fluke of nature caused by blind, purposeless mechanisms, asks whether the ultimate explanation might not involve intention and purpose. Intelligence is not proffered as proximal causes for natural entities. Rather it's considered an ultimate explanation of phenomena for which there is no plausible naturalistic explanation.
This is philosophically naive and tendentious. Surely the Judge knows that neither science nor philosophy proves anything. To fault the concept of irreducible complexity because it falls short of being a proof is to hold it to a standard that nothing else in science must meet. Nor is the Judge's statement that "irreducible complexity is a negative argument against evolution" correct. Michael Behe, the chief advocate of IC, is himself an evolutionist. Irreducible complexity is an argument not against evolution but against naturalism. This point has been made so often by so many different people that it's astonishing that the Judge still hasn't grasped it. Nor are IC arguments merely negative arguments. Irreducible complexity, if it truly exists, is a powerful affirmative argument in support of the proposition that intelligence undergirds the fundamental architecture of life.
Not only does this paragraph contradict what the Judge said in the paragraph at the beginning of this post, it is simply ridiculous on its face. The argument appears to be that since IC only seeks to show that three systems are intelligently designed, and since ID argues that all of life is ultimately designed, therefore IC is not ID. If, however, only one of Behe's systems could be shown to be intelligently designed then that would confirm not only IC but also ID since it would entail that there is, in fact, an intelligent designer.
The Judge doesn't think that IC makes it's case, though, because Dr. Miller says that it doesn't:
The conclusion the Judge should draw from this is that there is serious scientific debate as to whether Behe is right. The jury is still out. Just because some people say that the flagellum might have evolved solely through unguided mechanisms and blind chance doesn't mean that they are correct. Once again, Judge Jones is content to consider a conjecture to be a refutation.
Behe said they're not good enough because he believed these articles and books failed to show that the immune system could have evolved through purely natural means. The quantity of speculation about something is not evidence of its facticity. There've been many books and articles written about the possibility of other universes. Does Judge Jones think that we should accept the existence of such universes based on the copious speculation about them? And why does he think that demanding plausible explanations is an "unreasonable burden of proof"?
Wouldn't it be incumbent upon those who believe ID is false to conduct this test? If a flagellum were to appear in a laboratory environment that was only minimally affected by the intelligent input of the researcher, it would pretty much falsify ID, at least in the minds of most people. The reason no such test is conducted is because none of the opponents of ID really thinks that such a structure could ever be produced in the laboratory by chance and physical mechanisms alone in any reasonable amount of time.
In other words, not only do ID opponents believe they can't falsify ID, they tacitly acknowledge that their own theory is untestable. If a flagellum failed to arise in whatever amount of time was spent trying to have one appear the researcher could always plead that naturalistic evolution takes more time. But no matter how much time was granted, even billions of years, if the organelle still failed to materialize, the same plea for more time could be made. Put simply, naturalistic evolution is unfalsifiable and by Judge Jones' lights should be banned from science classes.
Judge Jones repeatedly trots out the Pandas textbook in order to discredit ID, but this is a straw man argument. It's easy to find bad science in books which endorse naturalistic evolution, too, but that's not a compelling reason to reject the theory. Any fair-minded person should base his judgment not upon the worst arguments that are offered on behalf of a proposition, but upon the best.
Of course, as we've argued above, it is possible that it's neither science nor theology but rather that, just like its Darwinian alternative, it's philosophy of science. However, to make the claim that it's not science requires of the Judge that he separate IC from ID because, as he's noted, IC is testable. The attempt to affect this divorce is philosophically awkward, though, and at the very least calls for a more modest conclusion than the Judge's confident assertion that ID is not science. He may be right, but much of the reasoning that leads him to his conclusion is deeply flawed.
For previous posts in this series on the Dover trial see here, here, and here.
