On December 20, Judge John Jones released his decision in the case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board. The decision appeared to be a devastating defeat for the intelligent design movement. Now the Discovery Institute--the leading think-tank promoting intelligent design--has published its critique of Jones' decision: David DeWolf, John West, Casey Luskin, and Jonathan Witt, Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2006). Reading the trial transcripts, Jones' decision, and this book allows us to see the general character of the debate over intelligent decision. Although I posted a statement about this case a few days ago, I deleted it because I decided that I was oversimplifying a complex case.
The Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania, had required that a statement be read to students in the ninth grade biology classes, a statement indicating that there there was controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution, and that they could consider "intelligent design" as an alternative theory by reading a reference book in the library--Of Pandas and People. Parents sued the school district, arguing that this was an unconstitutional establishment of religion, because "intelligent design" was not a genuine scientific theory but a religious doctrine.
Judge Jones decided in favor of the petitioning parents, concluding that those promoting the teaching of "intelligent design" in the school were motivated by religious doctrines of creationism, and that "intelligent design" was not really science at all.
Many American conservatives have criticized Judge Jones. Ann Coulter ridicules him as a "hack judge." Coulter and others see this as an attempt of the federal judiciary to indoctrine students in a liberal philosophy of atheistic materialism as rooted in Darwinian reductionism. I and some other conservatives disagree, because we think Darwinian science supports traditional morality and the general principles of conservative social thought, and because we think Darwinian science is supported by extensive evidence and logic.
From my reading of the trial transcripts, the judge's decision, and the Discovery Institute book, at least four points become clear.
The first point is that it is hard to disentangle the intelligent design movement and biblical creationism. The members of the Dover school board who instituted the disputed policy wanted the biblical account of creation to be taught as an alternative to Darwinian evolution. When they were advised that this would be clearly unconstitutional, they adopted "intelligent design" as a substitute for overt creationist doctrine. The Thomas More Law Center took over their legal representation. Initially, the Discovery Institute supported them and arranged to provide expert witnesses for them. But then shortly before the trial began, the Discovery Institute announced that it opposed the policy of the school district, becaused they feared that the case would be too hard to win. In the book published by Discovery Institute, the authors indicate that "the instigators of the policy were supporters of Biblical creationism, not intelligent design" (p. 8). So here they actually agree with Judge Jones's decision that this policy had a purely religious purpose and the claims of interest in scientific debate were just a cover for their religious agenda. The proponents of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute want to employ the rhetorical strategy of asserting that "intelligent design" is utterly different from Biblical creationism, but the Dover case illustrates how difficult this is to maintain. It is true, however, that advocates of "young Earth creationism" like Ken Ham scorn "intelligent design" as an attack on Biblical literalism.
The second point is that the establishment clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court is flawed if it requires an absolute separation between science and religion. Of course, most of us would agree that a literal reading of the Biblcial creation story is religion and not science. But something like "intelligent design theory" is harder to classify. It can have religious implications if one believes that the "intelligent designer" is God. But I think the Discovery Institute folks have a good point when they say that many scientific theories can have religious implications even when the theories themselves are not necessarily religious. The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe has religious implications if one believes that the cause of the Big Bang must have been divine. But we can judge the scientific evidence and logic supporting this theory without taking up the religious implications. Similarly, why can't high school students study "intelligent design" reasoning as a scientific theory without deciding the religious issues?
The third point is that intelligent design reasoning is predominantly, but not entirely, negative rather than positive. In other words, most of the argumentation for intelligent design is an attack on Darwinism, with the assumption being that as long as Darwinian science is not conclusively proven, intelligent design remains as the only reasonable alternative. As I have argued, this is a weak position. Michael Behe and others argue that intelligent design does have a positive argument: if we see the purposeful arrangement of parts in living mechanisms, we can infer intelligent design as the cause. But this kind of reasoning is very vague, because we cannot infer from this exactly who (or what) the intelligent designer is, and we cannot infer exactly how this intelligent designer works in nature. (Behe argues that the same could be said about the Big Bang theory: that it happened does not tells us how it happened or what caused it.) The reasoning is also dubious because it works by analogy with human intelligent design. We have all seen human intelligent design at work. But we have not seen how a divine intelligent designer could create "out of nothing."
The fourth point is that Kenneth Miller distorts Behe's position by attacking a straw man. Behe's central argument in Darwin's Black Box depends on the idea that Darwinian evolution cannot explain any "irreducibly complex" system, which is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). The problem for Darwinian evolution is that "an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Behe concedes, however, that this leaves open the possibility of "an indirect, circuitous route" of evolution by which mechanisms serving one purpose might be incorporated into more complex mechanisms with different functions (pp. 40, 66, 111-13, 177). And yet he thinks the probability of this happening decreases as the complexity of the mechanism to be explained increases.
When Miller tries to refute this reasoning (at the Dover trial and in various published writing), he attacks a straw man, because he ignores what Behe says about the possibility--even if unlikely--of an "indirect, circuitous route" of evolution. Miller shows, for example, that the type III secretory system of bacteria resembles some parts of the bacterial flagellum, which shows that one can take away many parts from the flagellum and still have a functioning system, although it will be serving a different function. This reasoning about "exaptation" is a standard response of Darwinian scientists to Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument. But this does not refute Behe's position, unless one ignores what Behe says about the "circuituous route."
It is true, of course, as I have indicated in previous postings, that Behe and other IDers set up an unreasonably high standard of proof for Darwinian science. To show rigorously and in precise detail the step-by-step evolutionary pathway for the emergence of the bacterial flagellum is extremely difficult. If students were permitted to study this debate, they would see this as belonging to what Darwin himself called the "difficulties" for his theory. But they might also see this as an example of the inevitable limitations of scientific reasoning, so that hardly anything is ever conclusively proven in science, although we can still judge theories as more or less plausible by weighing the relevant evidence and arguments.
9 comments:
"The fourth point is that Kenneth Miller distorts Behe's position by attacking a straw man. Behe's central argument in Darwin's Black Box depends on the idea that Darwinian evolution cannot explain any "irreducibly complex" system, which is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (p. 39). The problem for Darwinian evolution is that "an irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Behe concedes, however, that this leaves open the possibility of "an indirect, circuitous route" of evolution by which mechanisms serving one purpose might be incorporated into more complex mechanisms with different functions (pp. 40, 66, 111-13, 177). And yet he thinks the probability of this happening decreases as the complexity of the mechanism to be explained increases."
You are giving Behe far too much credit. At best, Behe gives lip service to cooption, and dismisses it with hand-waving. He gives no reasons why "the probability of this happening decreases as the complexity of the mechanism to be explained increases." There is no such rule, or reason for this to be the case. He is simply dismissing cooption by his personal assertion that it is improbable.
When you read Behe's writings very carefully, you realize that he generally thinks of cooption as all-at-once assembly where all of the individual parts with different functions come together all at once, to assemble a new function in one step. If this were the case, then it would be true that complex systems would be more improbable. But in a world where penguin flippers, used for swimming, are descended from (going backwards) flying/swimming wings of seabirds, flying wings of birds, flying/grasping wings of protobird dinosaurs, forelimbs of bipedal dinosaurs, front legs of tetrapods, and the fins of fishes, it is impossible to say that cooption means all-at-once assembly.
At any rate, if Behe admits that subsystems of his IC systems can exist and function (not just individual proteins with different functions, but functional assemblies of proteins that contain some but not all of "the" IC system), then his argument against natural selection is toast, because he has admitted that it is incorrect to say "any system lacking a part is by definition nonfunctional." If subsystems can't function, then natural selection can't preserve them, and then Behe has his argument. But if subsystems can function, then NS can preserve them, and then IC is not a falsifier of NS.
Behe has basically conceded the point without admitting it, which is why he has switched to the "evolutionists need to give me an infinitely detailed pathway for IC systems detailing every mutation for billions of years" argument. This was shown to be ludicrous with the immune system example where hundreds of papers exist, and by comparing that body of research to Behe's explanation for the immune system, just "IDdidit, and I'm not saying how, why, when, etc."
All MHO of course ;-)/
Nick (Matzke)
Nick,
I agree with everything you have said.
But you have stated the point much more precisely and accurately than Kenneth Miller does, who tends to make a straw man argument by ignoring Behe's concession to the possibility of exaptation.
Some of these points are well developed in your NATURE IMMUNOLOGY article at http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v7/n5/full/ni0506-433.html
As you have probably noticed, Behe responds to the immunology incident at the trial in an appendix to the DeWolf et al. book at pp. 86-87. But I agree with you that dismissing the immunology research as "highly speculative" is little more than hand waving without specifying some precise and realistic standard of proof that would satisfy him.
As I suggest in my post, I think allowing high school students to see this kind of debate in action would help them to understand a lot about the character of scientific disputes. For example, if the Dembski and Ruse book, DEBATING DESIGN (Cambridge U Press), were assigned in a high school biology class, the students could compare the chapters by Miller and Behe and judge the debate for themselves. (I will be doing this in a class for undergraduates at my university this fall.)
But if I understand the NCSE position correctly, it would prohibit high school biology students from doing this. Am I right?
Larry
Why have them attempt to learn the nature of scientific disputes through a contest between science and pseudoscience? There are plenty of case studies of real disputes within science that would be illustrative of that process, if that is what you are really interested in.
But why isn't the debate over the evolution of the bacterial flagellum or of the immune system a real dispute within science?
What "debate"? There is no debate within science.
Scientists realize that there is presently little more information that can be extracted from nature about how the flagellum arose. Science may never be able to determine what exact route life took to the flagellum, though its similarity to the TTSS system is suggestive. The same goes for the blood clotting cascade. Scientists are quite used to that. Much of the past that we would like to know about is undeterminable by the means available to humans and probably always will be.
Science refuses to draw conclusions from that ignorance, however. That is the stuff of pseudoscience. One of the facets of how science actually works is that there is only debate within science about tractable problems, where there are possible answers. One failing of ID is that they are deliberately looking to find untractable problems. Their entire argument depends on the problem being untractable -- permanently so, they hope.
Scientists don't worry much about these kinds of problems, especially when they have known mechanisms, such as scaffolding, that can account for how they arose. The origin of the flagellum itself can be put aside until (if ever) there is a means to investigate it. If you want a lesson about that part of the scientific method, there is the much better example of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, where for some 80 years or more, scientists knew that there was something wrong with Newton's laws of motion when applied to the orbit of Mercury. There were some desultory efforts to solve it but nothing convincing. No scientist concluded that angels were pushing Mercury around because of that, however. They mostly set the problem aside awaiting further means to attack it. Einstein eventually gave them the means.
If you want to show how tentative science is and how it proceeds with testing ideas, give them the present work on the origin of feathers, which is being debated within science right now.
In short, you can teach science better by addressing what scientists actually do when acting as scientists rather than teaching what scientists do when faced by the political efforts of pseudoscientists.
As you have probably noticed, Behe responds to the immunology incident at the trial in an appendix to the DeWolf et al. book at pp. 86-87. But I agree with you that dismissing the immunology research as "highly speculative" is little more than hand waving without specifying some precise and realistic standard of proof that would satisfy him.
As I suggest in my post, I think allowing high school students to see this kind of debate in action would help them to understand a lot about the character of scientific disputes. For example, if the Dembski and Ruse book, DEBATING DESIGN (Cambridge U Press), were assigned in a high school biology class, the students could compare the chapters by Miller and Behe and judge the debate for themselves. (I will be doing this in a class for undergraduates at my university this fall.)
But if I understand the NCSE position correctly, it would prohibit high school biology students from doing this. Am I right?
I am not speaking officially for NCSE when commenting on blogs, but my personal opinion is that high school science class is a place to learn introductory science, and not necessarily to debate the random wacky ideas of random pseudoscientists. Should we debate the theory that HIV causes AIDS also? Give Duesberg's arguments 45 minutes and then spend a week explaining T-cell counts and anti-retrovirals and all of the other reasons he is full of it? It sounds nice but I think most professional educators would say that this level of material is simply too complex for introductory biology.
We really have to ask ourselves what we would cut from biology class in order to make time to introduce the quite complex suite of issues -- ID and its political/religious history, biochemistry and a specific understanding of the proteins of the flagellum and the immune system, homology and how it is detected statistically in amino acid sequences, Behe/Dembski and who these random guys are, and only then some summary of the real science involved in how these systems evolved -- that one needs to understand to get to something like the immune-system debunking. Given that even many vocal critics of ID only partially understand these issues I am pretty dubious about the pedagogical utility of getting high biology teachers to try it with 14-year olds who are still learning what "DNA" is and won't have a serious understanding of proteins and protein evolution until they take biochemistry in their third year of college.
It might work if you could clone Ken Miller and give him a week to explain it all, but I think that realistically a policy encouraging teaching such as you describe would be much more likely to be abused by creationist teachers and school board members to carry out the same old dumb "say some complex stuff and tell the students evolution doesn't work", "Teach the Controversy" nonsense. Individual teachers with a bichemistry background plus a thorough education in evolution and the history of creationist argumentation might be able to pull it off, and I wouldn't oppose that, but just kind of naively recommending this kind of teaching without considering the issues of pedagogy, teacher training, what to cut, etc., is problematic.
I notice that nobody seriously complains when students in colleges and universities study the debates about evolution, design, and religion, but pretend that doing it in high school is somehow ludicrous. There is probably a case to be made that a science class is not the place to study the debates, but people who rashly conclude that the only appropriate context to study the debates would be in a course on history or rhetoric underestimate the complexity of the issues at stake. A course on the philosophy of science could take the Dembski and Ruse book as a starting point and go from there to considerations of many of the most central problems in the philosophy of science -- problems and issues that people without the ideological associations of proponents of ID argue about all the time. Again, I don't see why the philosophy of science couldn't be studied as a part of science courses. Maybe what we need to do is to make our science education better from the beginning, so that by the time students get to their last years of high school, they can take a few weeks to read and think about these things. Until then, we'll have to hope that people like Prof. Arnhart will continue to teach courses that help people to see how complex these issues really are.
A couple of years ago, I was teaching a course at my university where the students read Darwin along with some writings by intelligent design proponents such as Bill Dembski, Mike Behe, and Jonathan Wells.
We had some lively discussions about the evidence for Darwinian evolution, the religious implications of Darwinian science, and the general creation/intelligent design/evolution debate.
Many of the students clearly disagreed with Darwin's theory. At one point, I asked, "What do you do when evolution is taught in your biology classes here at the university?" One student in the back of the room said: "We keep our mouths shut." Other students nodded in agreement.
It was clear that many of these university students were being taught to be cynical about courses in biology. You have to pretend to believe what is being taught, because you need to pass this course. But you know it's all a sham, just to get past the dogmatic biology professor who is not open to free discussion.
Isn't this shameful? Why can't we allow students to talk openly about their doubts about evolution? Why can't they be free to study the debate?
Or should they just memorize the textbook, pass the examinations, get their grade, and move on, with the thought that natural science is not open to free discussion?
Isn't this deeply disturbing?
Let's get this straight. Your university had one or more courses that allowed students to learn about and debate the religious implications of evolution and we are supposed to be disturbed because a subset of students couldn't take time away from other students by imposing their religious concerns on those who might just want to learn the science?
Should these students get to discuss their religion in classes on calculus and Shakespeare and accounting too?
As to what can be taught in public schools, there is no particular reason why philosophy of science and/or comparative religion cannot be taught in high school but the practical problems are difficult. What is going to get taken out of the curriculum to make room for this new material? Where are you going to find teachers qualified to teach the material and who is going to make sure that it isn't just a ruse to violate the Establishment clause?
There was a fiasco in Lebec, California, where the course was nothing but a blatant attempt by a preacher's wife to teach young-Earth creationism. On the other hand, there was a recent story about an ongoing comparative religion course that, if I remember correctly, was backed by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, that not only was successful in teaching about religion in a public school but actually increased tolerance among the students for people of other religions or no religion at all. Unfortunately, I can't find the reference right now.
Isn't one aspect of good teaching educating students on how to keep categories straight?
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