Should ID advocates be expelled?
After concluding that ID is being suppressed,
Ben Stein asks the fascinating and absolutely essential question: but maybe it
should be suppressed? He at least
rhetorically considers the possibility - as he must, in an honest examination -
that ID might be like teaching the earth is flat in a geography class or there
was no Holocaust in a history class. Surely
it is possible for some ideas to be so thoroughly discredited and so
incompatible with academic integrity that anyone who endorses them justifiably
relinquishes credibility as a competent practitioner of a discipline. And if so,
is ID (or rejecting evolutionary common descent) such an idea?
Unfortunately, on just this question - the one
on which the entire point of the film most crucially hangs - it remains almost
completely silent. In order to assess
the point, we need to know what the idea of ID entails, and then what some of
the arguments might be that support it, and then whether such arguments are
properly scientific or perhaps better dealt with in philosophy. Even the first question is left hanging. What, besides believing that an intelligent
Creator made the cosmos, does ID actually stand for? Dont many on the other side of ID -
including committed evangelical Christians - also believe this about the
cosmos? Ok, is it that ID argues there
are reasonable grounds for believing
in an intelligence behind the universe?
But many critics of ID accept this as well. Is it that science is unable to explain the
origin of life and design is? But
Gonzalezs book doesnt claim this. Is
it that evolutionary common descent is false, and design explains origins of
taxa? But Michael Behe - perhaps the most
famous ID advocate in all the world (and not included in the film) - doesnt
believe that. Ok, is it just that there
are some things that natural law is inadequate
to explain, which point to an intervening intelligence? But fine-tuning arguments for design dont
rest on the inadequacy of law, rather on their wondrous endowment pointing to
an underlying but not necessarily
intervening intelligence.
If you dont know what the candidate stands for,
it is not clear who deserves a vote. Or
perhaps a better metaphor closer to the point of the film - if you dont know
whether someone is even a citizen of the realm, its not clear they deserve a
vote. Is ID a bona fide citizen of
scientific inquiry? I am not raising
this to be insulting, nor am I even providing an answer. The film rightly raises the question of
citizenship on its own. But it doesnt
ever seem to check for a passport.
Now one important thing the film does do in this
section, and does entertainingly, is ask whether we have an elected official,
or even a solid majority candidate, for an explanation of lifes origin. We dont.
The fun of science is in wrestling with what we dont understand, and the
danger in science is in pretending we understand when we dont. So this is a welcome point for the film to
drive home: we dont know. But it is not
actually a relevant point to the question of what ID is and whether it should
be allowed or suppressed - for several reasons.
First, it doesnt have anything to do with the
actual cases of viewpoint suppression the film purports occurred. Crocker and Sternberg didnt get into trouble
because they questioned a non-existent theory of lifes origin. They were challenged over claims that
rejected the theory of evolutionary common descent, virtually universally
regarded to be the central and one of the best established ideas in modern
biology. And the Gonzalez case had nothing
to do either with evolution or the origin of life. In relation to the only cases the film
presents, the origin of life question is a red herring. Second, the film focuses on the freedom to
challenge the Darwinism machine, and
in a scene reminiscent of the old Chic tract Big Daddy, its trailer even
opens with Ben Stein getting into trouble for challenging his evolution teacher
about where life came from. But the
question of lifes origin has nothing to do with Darwins theory of evolution
by natural selection. More red herring. Third, merely lacking an explanation of
lifes origin is not evidence for design.
[And ID advocates are sophisticated enough to agree with this
completely.] One complaint often leveled against ID is that it involves an
argument from ignorance. While this
criticism is over-employed,the films emphasis on
what we dont understand about lifes origin is vulnerable to this claim. Not having a good
naturalistic theory doesnt tell us that ID is a good theory, or whether it is
even a scientific theory of any kind.
Fourth, the film tries to avoid the fallacy of
arguing from ignorance, by another
classic fallacy: the forced dichotomy. A
major emphasis of the film is the illegitimate
either / or featured in its own promotional materials: Were we designed or are we simply the end
result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning? But having a natural explanation for lifes
origin wouldnt preclude being designed.
Setting aside the dismissive image of the mud puddle, a proposal for
just the right lightning bolt would be concordant with both natural law and
divine endowment. Ironically, this is analogous to what the
classical fine-tuning arguments propose, which Gonzalezs ideas are similar
to. The God versus lightning dichotomy
in the film is never argued for. And it
may actually exclude from the design camp the films featured expellee,
Gonzales, perhaps the most scientifically productive advocate of ID in the
world.
In any case, it turns out that whatever the
content of design theories might be, Expelled
does not give us tools for determining whether the theories as advocated by the
exemplars in the film, are in fact intellectually bogus or legitimate. And importantly, even if they are legitimate,
by what criteria would they be deemed science,
in contrast to, say, philosophy? Or
religion? These questions of how science
is demarcated are fascinating, and ID proponents and critics have interesting
things to say on the matter. But they
arent said in the film.
In fact, in the film, Discovery President Bruce
Chapman responds to the criticism that ID is not science, but religion, by
saying This is a red herring: when people dont have an argument,
they throw sand in your eyes. Leaving
aside the delightfully mixed metaphor (did the sand come off the herring?), the
criticism is not a red herring. Nearly
everyone familiar with the western intellectual tradition, and even most
critics of ID, consents that the issue of an intelligent creator of the cosmos
involves an intellectually legitimate question.
But if ID is to be taught in the science classroom, the film must at
least make a case, first off, that IDs answers to this question are reasonble,
and second - a different question - that they are reasonable science, rather than philosophy or
religion. The question cant be
dismissed as sand in the eyes.
Perhaps one of the reasons that the film does not explore
this crucial issue is because ID advocates themselves are conflicted about
it. They claim it is strictly
scientific. But they also claim "Intelligent design is just the Logos
theology of Johns Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.And the founder of the ID movement, Phillip Johnson, acknowledges "Our
strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of
intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic
world and into the schools.
It may sound like Im asking for far too much in a popular
documentary. But even just raising some
of these questions in a serious way would convey the depth of these issues and
a sense that the goal of the film is to get people to follow reason rather than
the trumpet. Without really engaging the issues of
merit, the movie ends up being a stirring story of David and Goliath - the underdog upstart
versus the powerful giant. But beyond
appealing to our inclination to root for the little guy, it doesnt help us
understand what the little guys claim
to the land really is. The majority
certainly isnt always the only voice worth listening to; but neither does the
minority deserve to be heard just by virtue of being a minority.
So in response to his own question - does it
deserve to be suppressed? - Stein never really provides us with a justified
answer. We do get a stirring tribute to
those who have given their lives to protect freedom, along with a reading from
the Declaration of Independence. We
hold these truths to be self-evident... the document famously proclaims. But of course not all truths, much less all
purporting to be truths, are self-evident.
Some require argument. What Expelled lacks is exactly that.
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