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Monday, May 13, 2019

Giving up Darwin

This is from a generally sympathetic review of Meyer's book. The reviewer, a Yale computer science prof., seems to agree that the theory of naturalistic evolution, as currently formulated, can't deliver the goods, but he remains unpersuaded by intelligent design as a satisfactory alternative:

If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural. But then we still haven’t explained the Cambrian explosion. An intelligent designer who interferes repeatedly, on the other hand, poses an even harder problem of explaining why he chose to act when he did. Such a cause would necessarily have some sense of the big picture of life on earth. What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose? And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on? An intelligent designer makes perfect sense in the abstract. The real challenge is how to fit this designer into life as we know it. Intelligent design might well be the ultimate answer. But as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go.


That raises a number of general issues, as well as issues specific to intelligent design theory:

i) The reviewer erects a false dichotomy between deistic providence and continuous divine intervention. But it's not as though there can't be something reasonable in-between those two extremes. There's a sense in which the degree of divine intervention is arbitrary inasmuch as God could intervene one more time or one less time. There's no absolute logical cutoff for exactly the right number of times God should intervene. 

ii) Moreover, divine intervention involves tradeoffs. It can be a good thing, but it also has a disruptive impact on the future. As such, there can be too much divine intervention as well as too little. Human existence needs a fair measure of stability and predictability. 

iii) If we view evolution as the process by which life originates and/or diversifies, then evolution is an inefficient process for achieving a long-range goal. Of course, that takes the truth of evolution for granted, which is the very question at issue. 

On this view, some organisms are the means by which other organisms come into existence. So their purpose, if they have a purpose, is instrumental. And if we cast that in terms of theistic evolution, the process is very convoluted and "wasteful", as a way of reaching the final outcome. If, on the other hand, we're talking about naturalistic evolution, then that's not a goal-oriented process to begin with. Species are the incidental byproduct of a blind process. 

iv) If, however, we reject an evolutionary narrative, then life on earth is not primarily a process for deriving newer species from prior species. Prior species don't exist as a bridge to more advanced species. On that view, doomed organisms aren't evolutionary dead-ends, since it never was the primary way of producing new species. 

To take a comparison, sometimes a family line dies out. There are no more descendants. But it doesn't follow that that linage was a waste of time. There's value in individual human lives even if the linage terminates at some point. That's not a blind alley–as if the value of the linage was instrumental, in producing decedents for the sake of descendants. 

v) Suppose we consider old-earth creationism as an alternative to naturalistic evolution or theistic evolution. On that view, species may become extinct, species may be phased in and phrased out, not because God lacks foresight and repeatedly backs himself into a corner (although that is a realistic scenario in open theism), but because not all species can coexist. For one thing, there's not room enough for all species to coexist. 

In addition, some species require a different biosphere. A different atmosphere. Different ratio of oxygen to nitrogen or carbon dioxide. Fauna that require a different kind of flora (e.g. tropical swamps). In that event, creation will be diachronically staged, in part to make room for new species, and in part because the conditions for the life of certain species are variable. 

vi) As for disease prone or heartbreak prone, in Christian theology that's not a design flaw or artifact of creation but a consequence of the Fall. And the Fall has a purpose, too. 

vii) It would still be the case that intelligent design theory is guilty of postulating ad hoc divine interventions to resolve unexplained problems in the fossil record. I'm not commenting directly on that. 

7 comments:

  1. Like Darwin himself, the objection(s) boil down to a theological objection, not a scientific or data-driven objection. This is telling.

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    1. "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars." - Charles Darwin

      What Darwin and many objectors forget is that according to the Bible, there is ANOTHER powerful intelligent designer apart from God - one who is evil, destructive, and was allowed temporary authority over this world.

      The devil is a fitting candidate for the Evil Intelligent Designer, corrupting God's creation using sin as the mutagen, guiding evolution along inventively cruel paths.

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  2. Excellent post! I'd add:

    "If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural."

    1. I mean Meyer did write an entire book arguing for intelligent design at the origin of life: Signature in the Cell. So Gelernter just needs to read Meyer's prequel to Darwin's Doubt. :)

    2. Gelernter might reckon with Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False when it comes to consciousness.

    3. To be fair, Meyer's schtick is inference to the best explanation. That's the primary basis for his arguments against neo-Darwinism and for intelligent design. As such, I think Meyer is excellent at destroying neo-Darwinism, but in my view it's a harder slog for him to argue for intelligent design. Not that they're necessarily mutually exclusive, but I'd prefer something more tangible (if that's the right way to put it) like Dembski's specified complexity, though that's not without its limitations too.

    "What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose?"

    1. I guess this is the "if God exists, then why did he allow 99% of all species to die out" question. If so, I wonder how that figure was ever derived in the first place. Is it based on evolutionary assumptions?

    2. If there's no creator, then it's pointless for Gelernter to even ask about purpose in the first place. Not only in the origin and diversity of life, not only in human life, including consciousness, but the entire cosmos and all it contains is the blind product of chance. Its fate is death. In the long run, we're all dead. In the end, it was all just a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. So, even if we don't know what the purpose of the creator is, so long as there is a creator, there is at least the possibility of purpose. By contrast, it is ultmately purposeless if there's no creator or intelligent designer or God.

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    1. 3. Supposing the Christian God, just because an organism or creature is "doomed" doesn't entail its existence was purposeless. As Steve has noted in the past, take the fact that a younger brother might not exist if his older brother hadn't died. That doesn't imply the older brother's existence was without purpose despite his inevitable "doom" due to (say) stage 4 cancer. However, because his brother died, and his parents wished to have another child, then they were able to make love and eventually have another son.

      4. What's more, suppose the older brother lived a model life in the short years he had on earth. As such, through stories the younger brother heard from his parents, suppose the younger brother lives his remaining days in memory and in honor of his older brother. In that respect, the "doomed" brother's life made a significant impact on the younger brother. So much so that he lived in honor of his older brother, to live up to the memory of his good name.

      5. It's not necessarily either/or situation, but it could be both/and. That is, a creature could have an inherent purpose in and of itself, but be instrumental in other respects. For instance, a person could have inherent purpose, but likewise be a means to an end in the lives of their children. There's nothing necessarily wrong about this, is there?

      6. Moreover, suppose no creatures ever went extinct. Or suppose most creatures weren't doomed to extinction, but that the vast majority survived. How much of the present would be different if that was the case? Would we - you and I - even be here? Life on earth is an interconnected web. A web that stretches back in time. If a piece of this web were altered, then that could impact the web as a whole. For example, would mammals exist if dinosaurs hadn't become extinct?

      "And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on?"

      Plenty of good responses to dysteleological arguments.

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    2. "would mammals exist if dinosaurs hadn't become extinct"

      Or rather would mammals possess the preeminence they do if dinosaurs hadn't become extinct.

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    3. Maybe you and I discussing these things here would still be you and I, just reptillian?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKU_RGgndTQ

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    4. I knew what this was going to be before I even clicked it.

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