Intelligent Design theory
Sep. 13th, 2005 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
undyingkingI've been musing about this interesting 'theory' just lately. Essentially it claims that there are some things about life (in the biological sense) that are just too complicated to have evolved by natural selection, and so instead they must have been designed by some more powerful agent.
It's been claimed that this is just creationism in pseudo-respectable guise, and certainly it's seems to have been treated that way in the Kansas State Board of Education. But I guess we can do the proponents the politeness of taking at face value their claim that the Christian God is not a necessary component.
My interest is in the actual structure of the argument. It's actually very old (Thomas Aquinas I believe put it forward) and so presumably has a lasting appeal, but it seems to me to be impossibly weak. The weakness is that it seems to take the arguer's own paowers of imagination / reasoning as axiomatic of the system. It's saying "I can't imagine how this could have arisen by non-designed means, therefore it can't have." You would think it could automatically be refuted by someone else saying "Well, I can quite easily imagine it, so boo sucks to you." Although a philosopher would probably put that more elegantly.
In the 19th century opponents of Darwinism cited the eye as an example -- saying that part of an eye provided no benefit, therefore natural selection could not have evolved it gradually towards its current form as Darwinists suggested. This was quite easily shot down by showing that just by looking around the animal kingdom of today we can identify a whole spectrum of optical structures which are less complex than our own eyes but which provide benefit to their users.
Today's intelligent design advocates use things like the bombardier beetle, the blood clotting sequence, and the bacterial flagellum as examples of things which only work at all when fully realized. I don't know enough biology to be able to counter these examples, but presumably it can be done?
The more practical question though is about whether ID should be taught in schools. Richard Dawkins has said that this would be equivalent to teaching flat earth theory, and of course Flying Spaghetti Monsterism also has its advocates. However it seems to me that it would be useful if schools gave a bit of perspective on how science arose and the intellectual battles it had to fight, rather than just handing it down on stone tablets. The Victorians were presented with Darwinism as an alternative to the prevailing creationist theory, and they were intelligent enough to (mostly) see that Darwinism was more likely to be right. Won't our children understand natural selection better if they work out for themselves why it's superior to what came before, rather than just being told that it's right because the syllabus says so?
It's been claimed that this is just creationism in pseudo-respectable guise, and certainly it's seems to have been treated that way in the Kansas State Board of Education. But I guess we can do the proponents the politeness of taking at face value their claim that the Christian God is not a necessary component.
My interest is in the actual structure of the argument. It's actually very old (Thomas Aquinas I believe put it forward) and so presumably has a lasting appeal, but it seems to me to be impossibly weak. The weakness is that it seems to take the arguer's own paowers of imagination / reasoning as axiomatic of the system. It's saying "I can't imagine how this could have arisen by non-designed means, therefore it can't have." You would think it could automatically be refuted by someone else saying "Well, I can quite easily imagine it, so boo sucks to you." Although a philosopher would probably put that more elegantly.
In the 19th century opponents of Darwinism cited the eye as an example -- saying that part of an eye provided no benefit, therefore natural selection could not have evolved it gradually towards its current form as Darwinists suggested. This was quite easily shot down by showing that just by looking around the animal kingdom of today we can identify a whole spectrum of optical structures which are less complex than our own eyes but which provide benefit to their users.
Today's intelligent design advocates use things like the bombardier beetle, the blood clotting sequence, and the bacterial flagellum as examples of things which only work at all when fully realized. I don't know enough biology to be able to counter these examples, but presumably it can be done?
The more practical question though is about whether ID should be taught in schools. Richard Dawkins has said that this would be equivalent to teaching flat earth theory, and of course Flying Spaghetti Monsterism also has its advocates. However it seems to me that it would be useful if schools gave a bit of perspective on how science arose and the intellectual battles it had to fight, rather than just handing it down on stone tablets. The Victorians were presented with Darwinism as an alternative to the prevailing creationist theory, and they were intelligent enough to (mostly) see that Darwinism was more likely to be right. Won't our children understand natural selection better if they work out for themselves why it's superior to what came before, rather than just being told that it's right because the syllabus says so?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 02:48 pm (UTC)That is true, although I guess it slightly opens up the larger question of what schools are really supposed to be doing anyway -- just teaching 'stuff', or also training thought? Maybe if we think training thought is useful, then it would be worth investing time and effort into doing so properly before starting on the stuff-cramming.
It could be argued that parents with certain beliefs and lifestyles disadvantage their kids by passing them on. If true, this provides the basis for a very messy conflict between the parents' wish to bring up their kids as they choose and the wish of society to adopt preventative measures against problems which ultimately result in disadvantaged citizens (who may then require subsidy).
I am ruthlessly authoritarian about this (as many things) -- I think society has the duty to ride roughshod over parents' wishes and beliefs if such would disadvantage the child or the society it is to join. (Of course, deciding whether something really is disadvantageous or just unfashionable / prejudiced-against is hard.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:08 pm (UTC)The trouble is that it's only useful for the top N% of students (where N probably isn't all that big).
Then again, I have objections to the widespread use of the word "useful" in such contexts - I'd like to see it done for other reasons.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 04:20 pm (UTC)That seems a natural assumption, but I wonder if it's really true?
I have objections to the widespread use of the word "useful" in such contexts
I guess the meaning has been debased -- I probably should have said something like 'valuable' really, ie. I meant to imply broader criteria (personal fulfilment, socio-cultural enrichment, etc) rather than just narrow utilitarian socio-economic benefit. Although you may object to that just as much... What would your reasons be?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-13 05:56 pm (UTC)For me, the fact that it's interesting and mentally stimulating is reason enough to teach it.
Taken to extremes then one wouldn't want an education completely devoid of practical work-related skills, but there's no danger of that any time soon.