Interestingly, your response here very closely resembles a common creationist trope, colloquially referred to as The Third Law of Creationism:
- The Law of Reproducible Results : Anything found in nature was Designed, unless it can be reproduced in the lab. Corollary: Anything intentionally done in a lab is not natural; it’s a purposeful result. Therefore, all lab results are evidence of Intelligent Design.
The reader may make of that what one will.
You could at least strive to achieve, at a minimum, a Wikipedia-level understanding of the cases you have chosen, though. Reading critiques by ID proponents won’t get you there. If you had been curious, you’d know that:
For most of us who understand the science, the most rational conclusion is that these false claims were not errors, but deliberate attempts to deceive laypeople like you. Starting with their critiques as the ground floor is a good way of avoiding them!
But see, there you go again, taking the nonexpert armchair critic’s view as the ground state (and the truth), despite having zero academic justification for doing so.
Moreover, if you had read them and checked the facts, many of those responses from practicing scientists do, in fact, clearly note and prove beyond any doubt that the IDers (the true critics here) misrepresent the evidence itself. I have searched in your books, but haven’t found a single case in which you address/defend a single one of those objective misrepresentations. If I am incorrect, would you kindly point me to one? If not, I would propose that we look at one of Meyer’s together.
I am doing nothing of the sort; that was merely a vivid example of the defect in your overall approach–which you didn’t address at all while reflexively invoking it (“ID critics”) in your response. Here is my main point again:
You are easily blinded to the many ID misrepresentations by taking such a shallow approach to the science.
One of the specific, and most painfully obvious, cases of this is your treatment of Axe, who extrapolates globally from a single, incredibly bad experiment he managed to publish alone in 2004, while ignoring a study he did in 1996 (with senior coauthors) that had far more depth and completely contradicts the ridiculous 2004 one. Your citation of a paper cited in Axe’s paper suggests that you haven’t looked independently.
Are you even familiar with Axe’s 1996 paper? Wouldn’t it be an obvious part of any research in this case? It’s not like Axe has a large scientific output.
Also, in your defense of Axe you completely ignored a massive amount of science by conflating activity with structural stability; this is simply, objectively false. Are you really unaware that prion diseases, Alzheimer’s disease (at least a major component) and diabetes kill people by fundamentally and literally increasing protein stability?
We’re trying to have one with you, but you’re avoiding addressing the fact that ID rhetoric is nothing more than nonacademic criticism by branding responses to it as criticism.
What’s so wrong with my treatment of Axe? You mention two problems: (1) That I do not cite the 1996 paper, and (2) that I do not mention that too much protein stability can also be a problem, and that I allegedly conflate activity with structural stability.
On (1), I guess there could always be more citations. But there are already plenty, so why is that such an issue for you? I could understand not citing the 1996 paper as being an issue if I did not cite any other research that contradicts Axe, or if I did not make critical points about it. However, I cited Axe’s estimate of the relative frequency of functional proteins only as one in the literature, out of a range of estimates. And I pointed out reasons why it is not easily generalizable, as well as responses to Axe’s (and others’) critique of evolutionary explanations on the basis of his estimate.
On (2), the distinction between functional activity and stability was important for my consideration of the rarity of functions-issue. Re-reading my text, I still do not see any place where I conflated them, but perhaps the text was unclear? I pointed out that stability is not sufficient for function, which means that relying just on stability would give a too generous estimate of the prevalence of functional proteins. Mentioning that too much stability can also be a problem would have helped the case for the rarity of functional proteins, not hurt it - so I do not see why you see this a dreadful omission.
The whole section on proteins is only four pages in the book, and the conclusions would be the same even the few references to Axe were deleted. But I did want to engage with the ID argument from proteins and consider the relevance of this issue for the evolutionary design argument. I am happy to read further literature on the topic and use it in further work, if you have in mind some references you think I should have read. You can see the reference list of the chapter here.
I will try to make some time to read and respond to this discussion for a couple more days - then I will focus on other stuff.
Why? In what sense is it better explained?
Whether the evolutionary process just “happens to have” the capacity, or it just happens that God designed it to have that capacity, it then has that capacity regardless, so what does God add to the picture that makes it better explained?
My favorite discussion 
of the problems with Axe’s work and interpretations by the ID community. Contrary to Axe’s claims (and others at the Discovery institute), the main issue I raise has never been addressed, not by Axe, not by any one else at the DI.
@Rope, enjoy! Feedback and comments are more than welcome.
One more try for a brief explanation on the “laws of form” that some people saw as a mischaracterization:
I used this as a shorthand not only for the arguments of the structuralists, but also for stuff like Wagner’s “library of forms”, McGhee’s “geometry of evolution” and “morphospace”, Conway Morris’ claims about the tree of life being written into the laws of nature, the ongoing study of physical constraints influencing evolution, etc. In my view all this comes close to the structuralist concept of “laws of form”, even where the phrasing is not used. In each case, I also discuss the critique, and I do note that structuralism is a minority position - so I hope that the reader who goes through the whole chapter should not be left with a false impression, despite my claim that talk of things of this type is increasing. I also point out that the evolutionary design argument does not depend on the success of these considerations - although I do find them helpful.
I suspect that people will want a deeper explanation, and I think this much might have been clear already from the previous messages. But maybe this will help someone get it a little better.
What is your evidence that “talk of things of this type is increasing” among biologists currently? The fact that none of the biologists engaged in this present discussion seem to even know what you are talking about would appear to argue against that.
Interesting question, posed to anticipate an answer in the affirmative. I would actually, with some conditions, answer in the negative, that a cosmos in which evolutionary processes might fail to produce eyes would not be likely. In that case, no particular explanation would be needed for their success in our world.
Of course, first, it is necessary to have a universe in which life as we know it is possible and actually emerges. But then, given time and a stable enough environment, vision would be inevitable. This because, one, all organic matter interacts with EM radiation, absorbing, emitting, and ionizing, at various frequencies. So long as there is light, there will be effect. Two, much of that effect will have significant selection implication. Three, rudimentary response to light will result in saturation of basic ecological niches, and while evolution itself is not a march to complexity, the exploitation of further niches will advantage adaptations in light processing. And so forth.
Now all sorts of people take issue with the adequacy of the scenario above, but I do not see, by way of your example of an eye, that much is assisted by any appeal to additional impetus of form or structure, or why that would be required. Given that the end product, an eagle’s vision, can be had as a specific example of shaping by evolutionary success, and further explanation may be superfluous, that reflects on the whole exercise of positing additional evolutionary mechanisms.
What exactly is the evolutionary design argument, and what does it depend on?
And if “laws of form” includes every mention of constraint, bias, contingency, or canalization in evolution, it’s a very bad term that obfuscates its fuzziness.
He isn’t a scientists. It behooves us to explain the science helpfully and clearly to him. He isn’t an ID advocate, so I don’t see why it would need to be contentious.
I’m not sure what your treatment was, but most scientists do not find his argument to be well grounded or compelling. It is possible you work just nods to Axe in an effort to build bridges. As long as it doesn’t depend on his work, I think you are fine.
Though the allergic reaction you are getting @Rope is the reality of how most biologists assess Axe’s work.
That’s an interesting answer. I am inclined to agree that, other than imagining extreme conditions such as a universe that consists of nothing but an empty void bereft of anything resembling matter or energy, it is actually difficult to imagine a world in which evolution could occur but in which vision could not be a result of evolution. That this is so hard to imagine would argue against any need for “design” (If the entire thrust of “design arguments” warrants serious consideration in the first place. I am far from convinced of that.)
Thanks for this! Including a reference to this article would have made the chapter better, because as written I did not include discussion of Axe’s methodology itself. I was glad to read the paper does not make much difference for the variance in the estimates of the proportion of functional proteins - I referenced a similar range of estimates as well.
God as Creator has the capacity to purposefully order nature in order to enable such evolution, which makes the emergence of this type of order less surprising on theism than on atheism. Evolutionary biology, although it provides complete explanations on its level, nevertheless leaves some explanatory questions unanswered, such as “what explains the ability of evolution by natural selection to produce organisms possessing complex teleology?.” Or perhaps “why do we live in a world where evolution-promoting fitness landscapes (and other features required by evolution) are actual, rather than one where evolution goes nowhere interesting?”
Maybe your point is to argue that if God provides a good stopping point for explanation, we might as well stop with the universe and be done with it? That’s one of the old objections to the design argument presented by David Hume. I think there’s lots of reasons why the universe itself is not a good stopping point - such as those stated in cosmological contingency arguments. Andrew Loke and Edward Feser have good some good statements on this, I think.
However, for the purposes of the compatibility of evolution and design, those objections don’t really matter. If you think the old Humean objections to design arguments are compelling, then that gives you a philosophical reason for rejecting them, independently of evolution. My purpose in the book was to investigate whether evolutionary biology itself is compatible with design arguments - someone could well admit the thesis of compatiblity while still rejecting design arguments for philosophical reasons, such as the alleged nonexplanatory nature of theism, the “who made God” objection, or the problem of evil. Meanwhile, someone who thinks those are bad objections could continue to see design arguments as compelling. For a good overview of the traditional objections and formulations of design arguments, I recommend the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
If he needs the relevant science explained to him by people on an internet forum, he should not be writing articles that purport to draw philosophical conclusions from an understanding of that science.
IMHO, any scholarly publication that mentions Axe without being absolutely clear that his work on protein evolution is entirely without merit, and may well have been deliberately deceptive, helps promote the idea that his work presents a serious challenge to the theory of evolution. Someone who is not an ID advocate ought not want to do that.
I have not done some sort of statistical analysis of the literature on this. This is given as my own impression based on comparing the newer and older biology literature I’ve read, as well as listening to biologists and philosophers of biology at conferences.
It’s not meant to include contingency. Terms used to capture a variety of phenomena are going to be vague and in need of further specification, I guess. In the chapter, I do talk about those more specific examples to make it clearer.
The evolutionary design argument (or evolution-compatible design argument) was described in the original article on PS, in the pieces by Glass and Wahlberg, as well as my response in Zygon. The basic idea is that the evolution of complex organisms through the processes studied in mainstream evolutionary biology provides evidence for a Creator who ordered nature in a way to make the process possible, than by the supposition that nature just happens to have that kind of order by chance or necessity. This means that the order of biology provides evidence that supports theism over atheism. Just how strong the evidence - weak, moderate quality or strong - can be disagreed on by proponents on evolutionary design arguments, as can the precise mode of divine action.
I am not sure how to make this basic idea clearer - you stated that the original PS piece and the responses to my book made nothing clear and contained no claims, but when I read them I see claims all over. Maybe by claims you meant “scientific claims”? I suspect it’s not a matter of anyone being an idiot here - probably communication is just hard, and people tend to read any claim of a designer or design argument through the lens of the creationism/ID debates.
OK, thanks for the answer.
I’m afraid that God offers no explanation for why things are as they are rather than something else, since God, being omnipotent, could as easily have produced that something else or any something else. We have no clue as to the nature or probability distributions of things God might have done. Thus God explains anythiung equally well and equally poorly. Nothing can be said to be either more or less likely given God. On the other hand, we have no way, given current physics, to say whether the universe could have been different, so can’t say that the current universe is of high or low probability. We currently can have no explanation for why the universe is as it is. We can’t even say whether it’s a meaningful question. And God is of no help there.
Then again, given a universe with physics the way it is, and given life, evolution going somewhere interesting is hardly surprising.
This is a term that needs to be explained before any progress can be made: what does it mean for evolutioin and design to be compatible? More importantly, what do you mean? Behe and Denton both advocate a sort of compatibility. Is yours different?
I will allow that you may think so, but I was unable to find it expressed clearly.
What is at least some of this evidence? What is the sort of ordering you’re talking about?
What I see is more like a menu of allusions to claims that somebody might make rather than any claims themselves. Is there anything you would like to own?
I also develop this common objection to the explanatory power of theism / design in the book, and provide several replies. First, I think the objection would prove too much, if correct, and falls to a reductio ad absurdum. If theism has no explanatory power because we cannot form a probability distribution of the actions of God, then no conceivable phenomenon could ever provide evidence for a Creator, no matter how obvious. Choirs of angels coming down singing hallelujah, particles arranging to form “GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE”, you name it, nothing could provide supporting evidence for theism.
Second, while explanations involving personal agents commonly have to trail the data, rather than make predictions, there are several ways to argue that certain phenomena are more apt to explain by reference to such agents than otherwise. For example, theists can argue that God’s moral goodness leads us to expect certain properties of the universe, such as life capable of interaction. This is also what the problem of evil is based on. But developing a more robust account of the Creator is an advantage that theism and major religions have over a minimalist ID hypothesis. The second way is to argue that certain types of properties, such as apparent teleology, are “mind correlative” in the sense that we know from experience that such properties commonly require the use of intelligence to produce, and such properties are part of the evidence base we use to determine that something was intentionally produced, rather than an accidental byproduct. There’s arguments in the literature for / against both of these ways - my own judgment is that both are valid.
Third, it can be argued that theism does not have to give the data a high probability, since naturalism is such a terrible explanation of the data - so theism giving at least some explanation means the data favors theism over naturalism. I take it you would disagree that evolution going somewhere interesting is hardly surprising or in need of explanation - defending that statement would be one way to argue against the evolutionary design argument.
Finally, however, the point of the book is not to go in depth on these philosophical objections to design arguments, but to study whether design arguments are compatible with evolution. It would be completely possible to agree with that thesis, while continuing to criticize design arguments on philosophical grounds (based on the lack of explanatory power, for example).
But that is assuming a lot! In my view that is precisely what is not given, but what is at issue in this argument.
Yes - As far as I can tell, while Behe thinks design is compatible with common descent, but random mutation + natural selection + other evolutionary mechanisms cannot be sufficient within science, and there cannot be evolutionary pathways to develop all of life’s complexity through these mechanisms, otherwise he thinks the design argument would fail. On Denton, I am sympathetic to his structuralism but I think he makes the compatibility of evolution and design depend on structuralism, whereas I do not.
Life’s apparently teleological order, basically. Even just stuff like the evolution of the eye through standard evolutionary processes - the kind of stuff that many humans have intuitively seen as designed in biology anyway. In my view having an evolutionary explanation for these things does not invalidate the design intuition or the design argument. Secondarily, evidence of fine tuning required by evolution.
Part of philosophical research is actually mapping out possible positions. I think I’ve made plenty of claims both here and in the article already. And I think both Glass and Wahlberg do indicate pretty well which claims are core to my position, and where there is more room to disagree. In my own response to their articles, I do clarify some things, though.
Thanks for the comments, @Rope. Just so things are clear in this discussion here: