Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection

On 24/02/2025 6:10 am, Ernest Major wrote:

On 23/02/2025 11:43, MarkE wrote:

ID is described as "a pseudoscientific argument" on Wikipedia [1], there's clearly no love for it here, and as far as I know ID has limited recognition within mainstream science. The general public's awareness and support of ID I believe is higher but still constrained.
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ID has been accused of being a creationism Trojan Horse, and at times it seems to have pursued a political agenda, especially with education.  From to time to time, the Discovery Institute and Evolution News promote a misplaced right-wing perspective.

 In principle Intelligent Design could have been a legitimate scientific research program, albeit one that I would not expect to be productive. In practice it's a religiously motivated political movement.
 ID's studied agnosticism (when not addressing a friendly audience) about the identity and nature of the designer or designers is what makes it clear that it's not a scientific research program. A scientific research program would asking be who, what, why, when, where and how, or at the least how to investigate who, what, why, when, where and how.
 The aim of science is to explain (if you're a philosophical realist) or model (if you're a philosophical anti-realist) the world. By eschewing questions of who, what, when, why, where and how, what ID does is explain away observations, not explain them.

Noooooooooooo. You're ignoring the asymmetry I describe below. With respect to a scientifically inferred designer, questions of who, what, when, why, where and how are the province of theology, philosophy, experience etc. In this context, science functions as a prompt and pointer to other epistemological domains.

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Personally, I have a degree of ambivalence toward ID. For example, I think the 'information problem' claimed by ID is real, but I'm a bit surprised that people like William Dembski have not been able to progress it further after several decades (I've briefly but fruitfully corresponded with him regarding this in the past). More recently, on the topic of junk DNA, I get the impression that Casey Luskin and the Long Story Short episode on this may have oversimplified and/or overstated arguments against junk DNA (I've made a corrective comment on LSS's YouTube channel in relation to this).
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ID itself is a broad-ish church, for example with a range of views on common descent and the extent of evolution (e.g. from micro to macro).
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So, given all this, why would I speak in support of ID and claim it has gained and sustained traction [2]? My comments here are somewhat subjective, but with supporting references where applicable. To be clear, this is intended as a more a personal reflection and not a rigorous treatise (in contrast to other TO posts where I believe I attempt to argue consistently and from evidence).
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First, the question of origins - either life on earth or the universe itself - is all-encompassing, multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted, complicated, etc. One would expect strengths and weakness with opposing arguments and interpretation of evidence, as fallible humans grapple with these ultimate questions. So the shortcomings of ID are not in and of themselves unexpected or disqualifying.
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At its best, I think that ID correctly and non-deceptively infers a non- specific intelligent agent from an interpretation of scientific evidence (while acknowledging many ID proponents are Christians). This aligns with my own position and I suspect a growing number of Christians who sit somewhere between YEC and theistic evolution.
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The traction that ID has I think partly flows from this genuinely "agnostic" stance when it comes to comes to inferring a designer. This enables it to focus on the science alone.
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Something that needs to be understood is the inherent asymmetry between the positions of naturalism and supernaturalism in terms of how each applies science. Naturalism is seeking to prove a positive, i.e. to identify at least one plausible naturalistic explanation of origins. Supernaturalism, in this context, is required to prove a negative, i.e. on the basis of science demonstrate that all possible naturalistic explanations are impossible or extremely doubtful.
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One misunderstanding of this logical asymmetry is demonstrated by the supposed counter-argument, which says that positing God merely shifts the question to 'Who made God?', which is declared to have no explanatory power, and therefore can be discounted. Dawkins is fond of this approach. Sorry Richard, but you can't make God vanish in a puff of pseudo-logic and disingenuous wishful-thinking.

 If you have the choice between an uncaused universe or an uncaused god, or between an eternal universe and an eternal god, plumping for the god doesn't in itself add any explanatory power, and would be provisionally shaved using Occam's Razor.

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In any case, ID has endured now its modern form for about three decades, and of the various creationism streams is, as far as I'm aware, by far the most credibly and substantially engaged with current science. The DI claims a research program and over 250+ peer-reviewed papers published in mainstream journals [3]. Of course, the validity of these may be disputed - as are most perspectives and papers in contentious areas (e.g. string theory).
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While ID has not delivered a knock-out punch (obviously), it does seem to continue to track progress in science and develop its arguments accordingly. Examples include:
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1. OOL. Although I've mentioned some specific criticisms of the Long Story Short video series, overall the fact that they can be made today is revealing. The series critiquing naturalistic abiogenesis [4] (claimed to made by five "PhD scientists") directly challenges OOL on the basis of current science, and exaggerated claims of progress (IMO). Along with this are books like The Stairway to Life [5], and many others. And James Tour has waded in to this issue, as an ID sympathiser at least, and despite his shouty and sometimes dismissive manner, I think his work very much reinforces what ID is saying [6]. YMMV.
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2. Stephen Meyer on most things. He is now the public face of ID, and its most prominent intellectual spokesperson, debater, and book author. His guest appearance on Joe Rogan confirm his popular positioning. His genteel conversations with skeptic Michael Shermer I think point to the substantive arguments ID presents. And Meyer's books have deserved infleunce and impact across topics like first- case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information, Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
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4. The whole complexity thing. Yes, I understand (for example) PZ Myers' frustration with ID veering toward "complexity therefore design". However, the complexity problem is real and growing. Science is discovering more and more complexity in living cells and living things. This correspondingly increases the challenge to OOL and macroevolution, and ID knows this and is rightly pressing the point.
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4. Behe's IC, and more recently his waiting time problem analysis. Your mileage well vary on this one.
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5. The information issue. Biology is as much about information storage, processing and maintenance as it is about physics and chemistry. Naturalism has not come to grips with this IMO, and I think ID is on the right track with the focus it has on this.
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6. ID taking on first-case, fine-tuning, OOL, complexity, information, Cambrian explosion, macroevolution, etc.
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That's an incomplete and uneven summary. As I hope I've made clear, YMMV; I acknowledge that. This post is not an opportunity to dive down the hundred rabbit holes that this overview touches on. That is something I've been demonstrably (laboriously) willing to do in many other threads. Rather, this is an invitation for conversation about your own journey, perspective, doubts, convictions etc. I'm happy to consider correction and criticism, within the framework described.
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If you are convinced that ID (or creation in general) is not something that can be meaningfully discussed with reference to science, this is probably not the thread for you.
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If I haven't been able to convince you in some of my previous posts that my own faith is definitively not dependent on ID being correct, so be it, but that's not my interest here.
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Thank you for reading this far if you've managed that. As always, I welcome open-ended, open-minded civil dialogue.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
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[2] From a recent TO post of mine titled "To sum up":
"And what of the Origins debate? My contention is that progressive discoveries with the complexity and precision of life are making Mt Improbable higher and higher. ID has gained and sustained traction because this trend is real. I would add to this arguments relating to first-cause, fine-tuning, the Cambrian explosion, etc."
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[3] Discovery Institute - ID research and responses to criticisms:
https://www.discovery.org/id/research/
https://www.discovery.org/f/10141
https://www.discovery.org/id/responses/
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[4] Long Story Short - YouTube playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS0AfFPsMAUYr_VVkpU13uv9
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[5] The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check
https://www.amazon.com.au/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life-Reality/dp/1734183705
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[6] James Tour cf. William Bains
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/RwhAxtqls4A/m/eQFJbd-5AgAJ
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