Sober on ID

Philosopher says intelligent design theory can't be put to test
By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian

Fans of creationism and "intelligent design" theory would do well to leave evolution alone until they get their own ideas in order, a noted philosopher argued Monday.
Using the same logical tool, University of Wisconsin philosophy professor Elliott Sober derailed cases claiming that God either did or didn't design what we see on Earth. The problem, he told several hundred people at the University of Montana Henry Bugbee Annual Lecture in Philosophy, was that we can't test scientific assumptions about God.
"I'm not trying to undermine faith in existence of God," Sober stated early in his lecture. Neither was he trying to mount a defense for Charles Darwin's scientific theory of evolution. Whether one believes that God created the world or not does not bear on how we interpret and predict what the world is doing, he said.
"The theory of evolution is not an atheistic doctrine," Sober said. "It's about life once it gets started. How the universe began is not a problem for biologists. It's a problem for physicists."
Sober presented two famous cases against and for God's involvement in designing the world.
In what he called "the panda's thumb," Sober recounted science writer Stephen Jay Gould's observation that the small knob of bone on a panda's wrist, which it uses to prepare bamboo for eating, is so inefficient that it argues against an "intelligent designer's" involvement.
That argument is false, Sober said, because it assumes we know what God was trying to do with the panda's thumb. Nature is full of imperfect creations as well as remarkable ones. But we have no way yet of learning God's motives, if there are any.
On the other hand, Sober went through the analogy of William Paley known as the Rock, the Watch and the Eye. It states that if you find a rock in a field, you might not assume its presence there had any intelligent design involved. But if you found a pocket watch in the same field, you would automatically presume a craftsman rather than some random chance shaped its gears and fitted its mechanism together.
Because a human eye is even more complex than a watch, Paley argued its existence implied an equally complex designer. But Sober pointed out that Paley's claim has the same problem that Gould's does. It assumes that we know what God did or didn't want to do.
"The problem is not solved by saying: 'The designer is God,' " Elliott said. "We need independent evidence. What doesn't work is simply inventing assumptions that allow us to get to the conclusions we want to have."
In an interview before the lecture, Sober said intelligent design advocates were using the issue as a "Trojan Horse" to put religious leaders in charge of public school curriculums.
He argued biology classes shouldn't be wrapped around a particular religious doctrine any more than geology classes should ignore geological evidence of planetary structure and change.
"Intelligent design theorists are trying to do something very ambitious," Sober said in the lecture. "They're trying to show intelligent design beats all possible mindless processes. That's more ambitious than any scientist will be able to do, and I don't think intelligent design theorists will be able to do it either."

Missoulian