NPR, Scopes, and McLean

It’s important that a lot of people read and understand the decision Judge William Overton wrote in McLean. That’s the decision that Francis Beckwith and other Discovery Institute favorites cite as having authorized the teaching of intelligent design.

Perhaps Beckwith should have, uh, read the decision first …

Regarding Overton’s decision and the “scientific theory of ID”:

From my website:

in the 1982 Maclean v Arkansas case, the federal court listed the characteristics of what constituted “science”. That list consisted of:

“More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are:

(1) It is guided by natural law;

(2) It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law;

(3) It is testable against the empirical world;

(4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and

(5) Its is falsifiable. (Ruse and other science witnesses)”

Let’s see how Intelligent Design “theory” measures up to those criteria, shall we?

1. “It is guided by natural law.” Alas, the IDers lose already. Not only is ID ‘theory’ NOT “guided by natural law”, but ID “theorists” explicitly, clearly and plainly REJECT the idea that science SHOULD be based on “natural law”. Indeed, their most fundamental complaint (pardon the pun) is that science in general and evolution in particular are “philosophical materialism” (their code word for “atheism”) and that this, they say, unfairly rules out the IDers’ NON-materialist or NON-natural “explanations”. Hmmm. It sure seems to ME as if the only entity that is even capable in principle of using “non-materialistic” or “super-naturalistic” mechanisms is a deity or god (and if the IDers want to argue with a straight face that the space aliens are capable of using supernaturalistic methods, I’d pay good money to sit in court and watch that). Now I’m no theologian, mind you, but I’m pretty sure that “deities” and “gods” and other “supernatural entities” are religious in nature. I’m no lawyer either, mind you, but I’m also pretty sure that arguing that a supernatural entity or deity designed life using non-materialistic methods, has the intent and effect of advancing religion. Hence, not only is ID “theory” NOT based on natural law, it explicitly REJECTS natural law in favor of supernatural methods. I.e., in favor of religious doctrine. The IDers lose right out of the starting gate.

2. “It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law”. See above. ID loses again. Not only does it NOT explain anything by reference to natural law, it tries to argue that it DOESN’T HAVE TO. What the IDers are complaining about in the first place is that science, they say, unfairly rejects anything BUT reference to natural law – i.e., that science rejects religious explanations. By arguing AGAINST the need for science to be “explanatory by reference to natural law”, the IDers are doing nothing more (or less) than arguing that science should be forced by a court order to accept references to NON-natural or SUPER-natural mechanisms. I.e., they are arguing that science should be forced to advance religion. Like I said, I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure there’s a law against that.

3. “It is testible against the empirical world”. ID loses again. ID ‘theory’ makes NO testible statements. None at all. It can’t tell us what the designer did. It can’t tell us what mechanisms the designer used to do whatever it did. It can’t tell us where we can see these mechanisms in action. And it can’t tell us how to go about testing any of this. ID ‘theory’ consists simply and solely of various random arguments against evolution, coupled with the already-rejected-by-the-courts “two model theory”. ID makes no effort at all to produce any positive arguments on its own that can be tested. Indeed, ID ‘theory’ can’t (or won’t) even make any testible predictions about how old the earth is, or whether humans evolved from apelike primates. The best ID can do is declare “evolution can’t explain X, Y or Z, therefore we must be right”. I.e., the same old “two models” that the courts have already rejected.

4. “Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word”. Well, we don’t know whether ID passes this test, since ID ‘theory” refuses to MAKE any conclusions. As I noted before, ID can’t even give a coherent hypothesis, or even tell us how to form one. What do they think the Intelligent Designer might be? They, uh, don’t know. What do they think it did? They, uh, don’t know that either. What mechanisms did it use? Beats the heck out of them. Heck, ID “theory” can’t (or won’t) even reach conclusions on such basic questions as “how old is the earth” —- billions of years, they say. Or maybe it’s just thousands of years. We, uh, aren’t sure. “Did humans evolve from apelike primates?” Yes. Or, uh, maybe not. Does ID think its conclusions are “the last word”? Well, I guess we won’t know until ID actually MAKES some conclusions.

5. “It is falsifiable”. Well, again, we don’t know if ID’s conclusions are falsifiable, because they go to great lengths to avoid MAKING any conclusions that might be capable of being falsified. I suspect that is deliberate.

However, the core argument of ID ‘theory’, that God – er, I mean “An Unknown Intelligent Designer” – created life, is inherently unfalsifiable. After all, if we know nothing about the Designer, nothing about its nature, and nothing about what it can or can’t do, then there is simply no way we can falsify any statement made about it. If I say that the designer does not have the physical or technical capability of manipulating biomolecules, how the heck could we know whether it really did? On the other hand, if I say that the designer HAS manipulated biochemicals, what sort of evidence could we point to which would indicate that it DIDN’T? The whole idea of ID is unfalsifiable. After all, the entire “argument” of ID boils down to “we think an unknown thing did an unknown thing at an unknown time using unknown methods”. How the heck can anyone falsify THAT? How the heck can anyone, in principle, demonstrate that an unknown thing did NOT do an unknown thing at an unknown time using unknown methods?

So there you have it. ID does not meet ANY of the criteria listed by the federal court in determining what is or isn’t “science”. In every conceivable legal sense, ID simply is not science.

PLEASE, IDers, make this argument in Dover. PRETTY please, with sugar on it.