Is suboptimality a sound argument against Intelligent Design?
Abstract : Based on Elliott Sober’s What’s wrong with intelligent design I will demonstrate why the argument from suboptimality is not a good one to use against ID, and what we can do about it.
Man it’s annoying that creationists can always say “God did it” even if we prove evolution to them. What can we do about it?
We often see suboptimality used in ID debates. This argument states that since living beings are badly designed, they are more likely to be the product of evolution’s long copy-and-paste, trial-and-error process than the work of a Creator.
For instance, the creationist will bring up a complex organism or structure, and conclude that it is « too well made » to have evolved « at random ». The evolutionist will mention a few design flaws or vestigial organs, and try to make the point that it is, in fact, « unintelligent design ».
I must admit this argument does make a point in some way (that there is imperfection in nature) and can be used to counter arguments that rely only on alleged perfection in nature. However, as we shall see, it should not be used to address the scientific status of ID. Following the steps of Sober’s article, I will give two reasons here. When you use the suboptimality argument, you are actually :
1) admitting that ID is scientifically testable, therefore paving the road for your ID opponent;
2) making the assumption that the Designer would have liked nature to be optimal, something we usually accuse them of doing.
Imagine another kind of ID. Sober gives the example of purple-ID : the designer made everything purple. By pointing out that not everything is purple, we are admitting that purple-ID is actually a valid theory about the natural world, which it is not. And we don’t want that.
The problem is, besides the fact that we should not assume that the Designer wants everything perfect of purple, is that the argument from suboptimality relies too heavily on classical Popper-ian epistemology, which is really not suited to address ID.
For Popper, a theory is valid if falsifiable, and falsifiable if it makes affirmations about the world that can be true or false. According to this epistemology, ID is a valid scientific theory : it makes affirmations about the world (« God designed it, mutations and selection is not enough ») and we can falsify them (« No, look at that vestigial tail bone! »). Idists can say that the eye was designed, it is an affirmation about the world (hey, we don’t have eyes, don’t we?) that can be falsified (« Just check out that video Dawkins made about the eye »).
In other words, old-school Popperian epistemology is big no-no here. To solve this problem, Sober experiments with another approach, that you will often see in debates, too : ID can’t be verified empirically. But there the creationist can simply answer (and they will) that ID does not need to be verified. It is a scientific paradigm, they will say, that serves to orient further research.
And they are right : general theories are not verified per se. Something along the lines of «gravitation » can’t be verified in itself, it is an abstract concept. But you can throw a rock and notice that it’s falling, because that’s a pragmatic instanciation of the theory. In other words, what we verify empirically are the auxilliary (down-to-earth, concrete) hypothesis, that support the (abstract, conceptual) theories.
Does ID have auxilliary hypothesis that are testable? No. Sober states, not without sarcasm, that saying « complex information needs a Designer » is like saying that « lightning bolts need Zeus ». Creationists of the ID kind will not deal with particular cases, ones that could be refuted. They’d rather stay in the comfort of general, impressionist statements, clear from the threat of refutation. That makes ID impossible to refute, and therefore un-scientific.
So, please, do not give Idists the illusion that they do have testable hypothesis by abusing the argument from suboptimality. Do not make assumptions about their « Designer », let them do it themselves. Do not address unscientific arguments as if they were scientific. Attack the theory itself by showing that it has no scientific status at all because it does not say anything about the world that could be verified.
In fact, ID is so irrefutable that even if we had a complete explanation for everything from Big Bang to this day, creationists could still postulate a Designer outside of time and space, and say that He did it. And that’s not science, my friends, it’s just annoying, empty rhetorics.
Tags: Creationism, Elliott Sober, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Popper
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