Report on the Castle Rock conference

So I attended the Castle Rock Intelligent Design conference over the past couple days — it was, in a word, fascinating. The summary of the conference by John West (of the Discovery Institute) is here and here, and Doug Groothuis’s summary is here. I’ll just add a few further thoughts.

In the days leading up to the conference, people had trouble getting access to the web site for the conference — apparently someone was executing a Denial of Service attack on the site. This is a bad strategy for intelligent design opponents to follow because (A) it’s petty, (B) it looks like a suppression of free speech, and (C) to put it bluntly, it furthers the Christians’ persecution complex. There were rumors that some atheists were going to show up to protest, but fortunately that didn’t materialize, as far as I saw. I was surprised though that there weren’t many critical questions from the audience — the two questions that West identified as critical didn’t strike me as especially so. Here’s West:

During the question period that followed, two people offered long-winded “questions” to Behe that seemed to come straight from the talking points of the National Center for Science Education.

The first person offered a laundry list of the ways Judge Jones and the Darwinist witnesses in the Kitzmiller case supposedly refuted intelligent design (including the shibboleth about the Type-Three Secretory System). The second person read off a list of scientific organizations such as the AAAS that have denounced ID and then demanded to know how ID claims could be scientifically tested.

Perhaps the people were trying to be critical, but they weren’t especially eloquent at doing so. Pretty much every question was long-winded, so that didn’t distinguish these two. I wouldn’t have described the questions in quite the way that West did; I got the sense, for the second question, at least, that the questioner could well have been an intelligent design sympathizer who had heard some anti-ID talking points and were looking to Behe for advice on how to respond. Anyways, those were the only two semi-critical things that happened during the whole conference, and they weren’t especially critical.

The conference started Friday night with Steve Meyer’s talk. I think that was my favorite part of the conference — there was a lot of good biology in the talk, before Meyer got to anything about intelligent design. The audience seemed to be full of non-academics, families, etc, and I could picture a conference like this 20 years ago where unwary Christians showed up to hear people lecture about young-earth creationism. We’ve come a long way from there, and it’s to the credit of intelligent design proponents like Meyer that they’re helping to move the biology-based design arguments in a more science-friendly direction. Indeed, at the end of the conference I was chatting with Meyer at the book-signing table, and a teenage boy came up to get Meyer to sign his book; the boy talked about how interested he was in science, and Meyer encouraged him to study further. I contrast that with some students I had when I was a professor at University of Kentucky, who told me that their families encouraged them not to study science in college, because they would learn non-Christian beliefs.

Behe’s talk the next morning was fine — it was an overview of material from his two books. Berlinski’s conversation with Meyer came next — that was entertaining, though it jumped from topic to topic rather quickly. I must admit that I’m one of the many people who gets a bit mesmerized listening to Berlinski speak, so I didn’t mind. (It’s easier to be critical of Berlinski when he writes, which I’m certainly willing to do.) I hadn’t thought of this before, but Berlinski reminds me of William F. Buckley — slouching in his chair, not enunciating as well as one could, but being amazingly eloquent regardless.

I was less happy with John West’s talk — he basically argued that Darwinism leads to social evils like eugenics. Throughout the talk I think he was making a huge error, ignoring the is/ought gap. It may be evolutionarily advantageous for creatures like us to behave a certain way, but it doesn’t follow that that’s how we ought to behave. Standard evolutionary theory doesn’t have anything to say about how one ought to behave, and those people who claim that it does are just mistaken. West talked about those people, but instead of pointing out the mistake, he tried to take it as evidence against standard evolutionary theory. West said that “Eugenics was the consensus view of science”, and used that to criticize science, where what he should have said is that eugenics is a moral theory, not a scientific theory, and the people who try to read moral theories off of scientific theories are mistaken.

The original version of the program that I saw listed prayer sessions between the talks. That seemed rather unfortunate, given that they were encouraging non-Christians to attend. I started to plan strategies for how I could come and leave in such a way that I could avoid the prayer sessions, but fortunately, the final version of the program didn’t include that. Instead we had Christian music from Danny Oertli, which was fine. At the beginning of the program, Craig Smith, the executive director of Shepherd Project Ministries, the group that put on the conference, wrote:

While the Shepherd Project is a Christian initiative — and the conference will naturally reflect this commitment — we also recognize that there are a variety of faith positions present at the conference this weekend and we will be sensitive to this fact. We ask everyone in attendance to be similarly respectful.

At the end of the conference, there was one prayer, but Craig didn’t start it by saying “let us pray”; he said “would you let me pray for you?” A fine line was clearly being toed at this conference, but I think they did a good job finding the right balance.

 

Debate moderator

I’ll be the moderator at the Is Intelligent Design Viable? debate that will take place at Indiana University on November 5. The debate will be between philosopher William Lane Craig and biologist Francisco J. Ayala. You can get more information about it here.

 

Podcast part 3

The third and final part of my latest podcast interview with Casey Luskin is now available here.

 

The Legacy of Darwin Intelligent Design Conference

I’m planning on being an audience member at The Legacy of Darwin Intelligent Design Conference in Castle Rock, Colorado on October 30-31 (just an hour from Boulder, where I live). It should be interesting.

From the press release for secular media:

This conference is designed to help everyone understand the relevant evidence and the issues involved in this debate.

From the press release for religious organizations:

This conference is designed to equip ordinary Christians to have an extraordinary impact on our culture.

 

Podcast part 2

The second part of the recent podcast interview I did with Casey Luskin is now available here.

 

Podcast interview with me, part 1 of 3

The first part of a three-part podcast interview I did with Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute is now available here.

 

Standards for discussion and the bloggingheads.tv controversy

{I’ve added an update below.}

As a follow up to my previous post on this topic, I want to point out that the bloggingheads.tv discussion between Michael Behe and John McWhorter is now back up at bloggingheads’ web site. But as a result of disagreements over what sorts of interviews bloggingheads should air, cosmologist Sean Carroll and science journalist Carl Zimmer have decided not to participate in bloggingheads any more. This despite the fact that the editor in chief of bloggingheads, Robert Wright, said:

1) Both of the diavlogs in question had been arranged without my knowledge.
2) I would certainly not have approved both of them, and probably not either of them, had I known about them.
3) The Behe diavlog, in particular, was blatantly at odds with guidelines I’d laid down to my staff more than a year ago in discussing the prospect of Behe appearing. Namely: Behe should only appear in conversation with someone who is truly expert in the relevant biological areas, and since most such matchups would yield a conversation unintelligible to a lay audience, it was hard to imagine a Behe pairing that would make sense.
4) Since these two diavlogs were arranged, I have told the staffers who arranged them that in the future they should make sure to clear diavlogs of this sort with me before arranging them.

What was Carl Zimmer’s reason for not continuing to take part in bloggingheads? It seems to boil down this this:

My standard for taking part in any forum about science is pretty simple. All the participants must rely on peer-reviewed science that has direct bearing on the subject at hand, not specious arguments that may sound fancy but are scientifically empty. I believe standards like this one are crucial if we are to have productive discussions about the state of science and its effects on our lives.
This is not Blogginghead’s standard, at least as I understand it now. And so here we must part ways.

I take it Zimmer is implying that Behe’s arguments are specious, and sound fancy, but are actually scientifically empty. I guess I disagree — while I’m no expert on biology, I find Behe’s arguments interesting and worth discussing, even though I ultimately think he’s wrong. There’s are some wrong ideas that aren’t worth discussing (like the claim that the moon is made of green cheese), but I think Behe’s arguments are on the other side of the line. (And even with the moon claim, it is interesting to think about what evidence we have for the claim that the moon isn’t made of green cheese, and what the moon would look like if it were.)

I’m obviously not the only educated person who thinks that Behe’s arguments are worth discussing (even though I think they’re wrong). So the question becomes: how should those who think that they aren’t worth discussing behave? Should they intellectually distance themseves from those who think that they are worth discussing? Or should they adopt more of a live-and-let-live attitude, and recognize that it’s worthwhile for those smart people who think that the ideas are worth discussing to be able to discuss them?

The latter strikes me as the right answer. Given that some smart educated people think that they are worth discussing, those who disagree should nevertheless be happy that the ideas are being discussed. Science is full of episodes where a certain idea looked silly to most all the scientists, but that idea ended up being right (or at least, widely accepted). We have to be careful about restricting discussion to what’s based on peer-reviewed science. The revolutionary ideas come first, and peer-review comes later. In my opinion, a forum like bloggingheads should be a place where the revolutionary ideas can be discussed. This means that wrong ideas will end up being discussed too, but that’s a necessary consequence of open-minded intellectual inquiry. And isn’t that the best kind of inquiry?

UPDATE: For a thought-out, but wrong, reply to this post of mine, see what Joshua Rosenau has to say.

 

The bloggingheads.tv controversy

An interesting interview with Michael Behe was recently posted on bloggingheads.tv, by atheist John McWhorter, who expressed some sympathies with Behe’s positions. A summary of the interview is available in comment 9 here, and the interview can be watched here. If bloggingheads.tv had their way though, we wouldn’t be able to watch the interview, because it was pulled a few hours after it was posted. One obviously wonders what sort of pressure was put on bloggingheads.tv and/or McWhorter. Here is the bloggingheads.tv explanation of why the video was pulled:

John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.

Behe’s take on all this is here.

Sadly, this seems to be another example of open intellectual debate and discussion being suppressed because of the worry that such open debate and discussion could end up supporting intelligent design. As I argue in my book, it’s a mistake for intelligent design opponents to behave this way. What they should do instead is engage in the debate openly and honestly. Engaging in suppression tactics is just going to make it look like they have something to hide, and that they’re trying to win the battle for public opinion in ways that don’t depend on the merits of their arguments.

 

Robert Park’s problematic new book

Robert Park’s new book Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (Princeton University Press, 2008) is unfortunately disappointing. I read Park’s book Voodoo Science years ago, and I remember liking it, but this new one does way too much jumping from topic to topic, which makes the whole discussion rather superficial. Some of the topics are admittedly interesting. But when it comes to important controversial issues, Park just asserts his views; there’s almost nothing by way of argument.

 

William Hasker on intelligent design

{I’ve added two updates to the end of this post.}

William Hasker has a new paper out in Philosophy Compass on intelligent design. He’s mostly critical, but I think that some of his criticisms are unfair.

He claims that most intelligent design proponents believe in Special Creation — that the Designer has created many forms of life from time to time, and that these forms of live undergo only micro-evolution. He doesn’t say what his evidence is for attributing this view to most intelligent design proponents; he just writes:

Pretty clearly, the majority view among prominent ID supporters is progressive creationism. Michael Behe, the most highly regarded scientist associated with the movement, is an intelligent design evolutionist, but on this point he is somewhat isolated; it is my understanding that he is the only one of the Senior Fellows of the Discovery Institute who affirms universal common ancestry.

I don’t have definitive evidence the other way, but I was surprised to hear him say that Behe’s the only one who doesn’t endorse Special Creation. (If anyone does have definitive evidence one way or the other, please email me.)

Anyway, if someone like Hasker is going to criticize intelligent design, I think that, to be charitable, one should focus on the most plausible formulation of intelligent design, and that’s Behe’s position. (Behe, as I understand it, says that he has no problem with common descent, but he doesn’t say that he definitely believes in common descent; I take it his position is that he just doesn’t know.)

So what does Hasker have to say about Behe’s position? Hasker writes:

Accepting [Behe's position]   … would require a major change of viewpoint on the part of most ID supporters; in particular, it would require them to swallow what many find to be the indigestible fact of human evolution. There is also a particular problem [Behe's position]. He proposes that the origin of life and many other crucial developments in the history of life are the result, not of intervention by a designer, but of ‘fine tuning’ that carefully adjusted the initial conditions of the universe with a view to producing just those results. He writes,

“Those who worry about ‘interference’ should relax. The purposeful design of life to any degree is easily compatible with the idea that, after its initiation, the universe unfolded exclusively by the intended playing out of the natural laws.” (Behe, Edge of Evolution 232)

One difficulty with this proposal is that it seems very doubtful that information present in the initial configuration of the universe would be conserved sufficiently to guarantee the occurrence of highly specific events billions of years later. (This difficulty is especially acute if, as is generally believed, the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics is a real feature of nature.)

Hasker then moves on to a different criticism of Behe.

But the above quoted criticism strikes me as quite unfair — or at least, it needs a lot more defense. Let’s assume with Hasker that the universe hasn’t been in existence forever, and hence there is an initial configuration. If the laws of nature are deterministic, and there’s no outside intervention, then there’s a unique future the the universe compatible with the laws of nature and the initial conditions. If the laws are deterministic, then there’s just no basis for saying that it’s doubtful that the information present in the initial configuration would be conserved.

But what if the laws of nature are indeterministic? Note that that doesn’t have to be the case, even given quantum mechanics — there are deterministic versions of quantum mechanics, such as Bohm’s theory. But what if the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics is a real feature of nature?

Well, it would be surprising if quantum mechanics turned out to be true, given that it conflicts with general relativity, and that physicists are working on coming up with theories (such as string theory) that will supplant both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Given that we don’t have such fully-worked-out theories yet, we’d be hard-pressed to say how exactly indeterminism would work in such a theory. So let’s just assume, contrary to fact, that the theory of quantum mechanics is true. Could God set up the initial conditions of the universe such that God can guarantee that some outcome in the future will obtain (without intervention)?

I think this is an interesting question, and I haven’t seen it addressed in the philosophy of quantum mechanics literature. My tentative answer is “yes, God could do that — at least, God could make it arbitrarily highly probable that a future outcome will obtain, as long as the desired future outcome is an outcome that he wants to take place in some arbitrary region of spacetime in the universe, not the universe as a whole”. If God desires a particular future for the universe as a whole, he might not get that, given quantum indeterminism and God’s choice not to intervene — the chancy events could go a different way than how God wants them to. But if God just wants something to happen in an arbitrary region of the universe — for example, if he just desires for there to be a planet with intelligent life, without caring much where in spacetime that planet occurs — then God can achieve that, even given quantum indeterminism. The way God can achieve that is by having a large number of trials (perhaps an infinite number). As long as the probability for God’s desired result is non-zero, then with a large enough number of trials the result is likely to happen.

Because Hasker seemingly ignores this sort of response to his argument, I maintain that Hasker’s criticism is unfair — or at least, it needs a lot more defense.

An aside: Al Plantinga has a paper coming out on the possibility of God intervening in the universe without violating the indeterministic laws of quantum mechanics. I looked for the paper to link to, but I don’t think it’s available yet. Anyways, I get quoted in that paper, as do other philosophers of physics — it turns out that there’s a debate amongst philosophers of physics on some of these technical issues. This provides a bit more evidence that Hasker is moving way too quickly here.

See more for an update: