Is ID scientific ? Yet another approach to the question.

edit 6-9; changed the text a bitI know the core reasoning of the "rebuttal" below is present in many of these arguments, but I haven't seen it worded exactly like this. Probably also because it is worded a little more simplistic than usually (due to me being a relative layman and not English-speaking). But (if it makes enough sense) it could be a useful approach towards a public of people who are less knowledgable in some of the rocket-science that is used to fight around ID?My reasoning goes like this:First of all, we have to acknowledge that,IF ID is true, then the final consequence inevitably is that some questions simply can't be tackled by science. And the reason is, that the answer "intelligent designer" is an end-point. The answer "it was designed" is a black box, with no opportunity to ask further questions. What further questions are there to be asked? There simply aren't any openings left, any hooks available. You could think of it as a roadblock: "Do not tresspass; further investigation is futile. What lies behind this, is unknowable". This, of course, resembles a lot the infamous "God of the Gaps".Yes, ID-proponents who don't want to be labeled as religiously inspired, might point towards the possibility of for example extraterrestrials in the role of "designers". But in the end that is just a relocation of the problem, not fundamentally changing the issue. It's either ending up in an infinite regression of different extraterrestrials designing each other, or putting "God" at the end to break through the vicious circle, and thus setting up the "roadblock"The first obvious thought is of course that this is very untypical for science. Absolute "roadblocks" aren't exactly a motivating idea, and quite opposite to what we normally recognise: an answer that is produced by science, tends to cause a whole lot of new questions, which we didn't even know could be asked before. In some sense, science that way continuously increases our ignorance, since it probably produces more questions than answers, reducing the ratio of answers to questions... But at first sight, one could argue that there needn't be anything impossible, in principle, about finding out inherent limits to science (the "roadblocks") through science itself. Maybe that is indeed possible, and ID has discovered one of those "roadblocks"? After all, Gdel's Incompleteness Theorem kinda does the same for mathematics.I guess that is exactly what ID claims, although it doesn't like focussing on it this way. ID likes to focus on the fact that they found an answer ("design"), not on the fact that the answer is of a type that excludes future questions.The fundamental problem that I see with it, is this:History shows, and surely the prominent ID'ers will (have no other choice but to) agree, that science has faced quite a few situations in the past where "final answers" or "roadblocks" turned up. Only to find out that this was misleading. In fact, right here and now there are probably thousands of unanswered questions standing open. So, clearly, the discovery of one "roadblock" does in no way indicate that all the currently open questions can be expected to ALSO be "roadblocks". In fact, from experience we can say that most of them (or even ALL of them if you accept that ID is the only exception thus far) will not be "roadblocks" at all.How can we discern currently unanswered questions that coincide with a "roadblock" (like ID supposes to identify) from the questions that DO have answers waiting to be discovered just behind the corner?Since we do not have some magical source available which tells us where the "roadblocks" are, continuing the scientific inquiry is the only available option. You simply have to continue asking the questions and trying to answer them. There is no other option, because there is no absolute certainty in science. Every conclusion is tentative. The nature of science is such, that it keeps driving and HAS to keep pushing. When it stops, it stops being science.This of course means that, if ID is science, it also can't claim to be infallible or absolutely certain. Which, in turn, HAS to leave open the possibility that it is a flawed conclusion. Which, in turn, means that it can not possibly adapt a stance of "that was it, we've had it!".One would think that, seeing how many of the supposedly "irreducibly complex" structures have been explained in a plausible way since they were first proposed, ID would recognise this. Instead, its main goal seems to be to stiffle the increase of understanding. What ID seems to be aiming at is nothing more but giving a negative proof of the ToE, and leaving it at that. There is absolutely no interest in making progress. Establishing a "roadblock", no matter what shape it takes on, seems to be the single most important goal that ID is working towards.If, on the other hand, ID were science, it would consider itself as a preliminary conclusion that should not stand in the way of continued research. In fact, the possibility that ID might be a final answer, shouldn't in any way be supposed to discourage further attempts to remove that "roadblock".Therefore, it is abundantly clear that ID can not be considered scientific. Even without anything like a detailed look into the arguments presented. In practice, the ID argument is reduced to a "roadblock" that is always on the move (it moves a step back with every next plausible explanation that science offers). As such, it is pretty much meaningless, vague and useless in the scientific sense. It is simply "God of the Gaps" dressed up differently.This message has been edited by Annafan, 06-09-2005 10:49 AM

Mr.Jack wrote: Farva wrote: I disagree with this view.I would be able to agree if, and only if, there were other, independant indications of the existence/availability of such a "non-God" designer. Like, finding remains of artificial structures that are billions of years old. Or detecting signals from candidate ETs. This still wouldn't prove that life on earth is engineered, but would at least open up the possibility that it is a sensible alternative. In the absence of these, suggesting a "non-God" designer is unnecessary ballast. Why complicate the issue by introducing an "intermediate level" for which there is no need? As long as there are no independant indications for such a "non-God" designer, the question "how did life arise and evolve on earth" is essentially 100% equivalent to "how did life arise and evolve in the universe". And only a naturalistic answer to that is scientifically acceptable.I wonder whether someone could suggest ANYTHING we could possibly find out about a "designer". Is there ANY scientific way to open up, or at least peek inside that black box? If we don't forget what we know now, and nevertheless accept an "intelligent designer", what would our knowledge tell us about that "designer"? Remember that it should be more than just speculation, it needs to have some sort of scientific ground.It's nothing more than a roadblock, period.

Well, I certainly don't automatically consider every ID proponent a religious fundy. It doesn't have to be that outspoken. It can just as well be a more hidden, fundamental desire for "skyhooks", as in the analogy used by Daniel C. Dennet.Science looks for naturalistic explanations, in a sort of "bottom-up" approach. In Dennet's analogy, those naturalistic explanations are considered "cranes". They firmly stand on established knowledge and step-by-step build up new knowledge, or new "cranes". Proposing an intelligent designer, in contrast, is referring to a magical "skyhook" that doesn't have, or need, any foundation at all and can carry all weight that is desired, as far up as is desired. Essentially a deus ex machina that doesn't contribute anything useful.

Sorry that I'm a bit late with this one... Well, I can't but agree of course. But it remains difficult to imagine a legitimate reason to suspect that a structure could indeed not have been caused by evolution. That is, a reason other than belief in a supernatural being, which was the requirement.The point is that, if we hold on to that requirement, we still at all times hold up that the final origin does not lie in an intelligent designer, but is supposed to be naturalistic. And this principle in itself always automatically leads to the conclusion that "intermediate" designers just unnecessarilly complicate matters.Let's go back to the supposed extraterrestrials who could have designed us.Let's say we are in a situation thata) despite a lot of study, we have still not been able to show how evolution produced certain structures in life on earth; to such point that it almost looks like evolution COULDN'T have done(of course, there will never be a way to be 100% sure; what makes things so hard is that evolution has a strong historical component, that pretty random and almost impossible to reconstruct circumstances often determined the specific directions it took)b) we have undisputable evidence of the existence (present or in the past) of very advanced extraterrestrial or even prior terrestrial intelligent beings
c) we can at this point not exclude that they engineered us, or the lifeforms we descend from, but we also can't prove this beyond reasonable doubt (like, there is no unambiguous 'designer signature' available; the possibility of being engineered is left open exclusively by our own inability to reconstruct through pure evolutionary ways)This situation looks like one you would accept as a reason to seriously consider, let's even say "give precedence", to an ID theory approach instead of a continued evolutionary approach (no matter how difficult).So you say "ok, we give up trying to explain life on earth all on its own, and instead concentrate on the extraterrestrials because that seems a better bet".The result is that you've merely made the task... HARDER in the end. At first the theory gives an advantage because it helps you overcome explaining the features that hadn't been explained yet. But after that, you will have to look for a naturalistic origin of a species that ITSELF was advanced enough to engineer the FIRST species for which you had to find naturalistic origins! You're even further from home.That's why I said: unless you have extremely strong indications of ID at our origins, AND very convincing candidates available for the designer, it makes absolutely no sense.[.....]I still argue it IS worse off, because in studies into cognition, you probably simply have no alternative approach available. You're forced into that kind of approach. This is not the case for the investigation into the origin of biological structures: there we have the approach of random mutation and natural selection.