Getting Acquainted With the ID Vocabulary
Before we proceed with our analysis of
Dembski’s case regarding the bacterial flagellum, however, we need to invest a
substantial effort to become familiar with the fundamental goals and vocabulary
of the ID movement. Knowing the broad goals of the movement will help us to
understand some elements of its rhetorical strategy. Knowing the vocabulary of
the movement is essential because of the strategic manner in which familiar
words are often assigned specialized or unusual meanings in ID literature.
The many faces of naturalism
In large part, the ID movement is a reaction
to its leaders’ perception that the worldview of naturalism
has effectively dominated the worlds of higher education and professional
science, and that it is now providing the religious framework for the pre-college
public educational system as well. The ID movement is
committed to the defeat of naturalism. But naturalism comes in many
different versions that must, I believe, be carefully distinguished from one
another. I find the following distinctions to be essential.
-
I use the term maximal
naturalism (or ontological
naturalism) to denote the comprehensive worldview built on the premise that
Nature is all there is - there is no other form of being, no God or gods - and that
there is no ultimate purpose in its existence, character, or historical
development. This point of view could also be identified by such labels as materialism (the material/physical world is all there is) or
atheism (there is no transcendent God as
envisioned by any of the theistic religions).
-
I use the term minimal
naturalism (it could also be called metaphysical
naturalism, but that name has additional connotations) to denote the family of
worldviews that reject the idea of supernatural
action by any deity. All actions (processes and events) in the universe are
presumed to fall entirely in the category of natural
actions - actions performed by members of the natural world in ways that are
wholly consistent with their own character and capabilities. Although the
existence of God, or gods, or purpose is neither affirmed nor denied by minimal
naturalism, the idea that any divine being would act supernaturally - that
is, coercively overpowering or superceding the natural actions of members of
the universe, thereby interrupting the flow of natural phenomena - is rejected.
(Intelligent Design advocate Phillip Johnson frequently uses the term scientific naturalism, which appears to be minimal
naturalism, as here defined, substantially modified by adding the assertions
that natural actions are purposeless and that science provides the only reliable pathway to knowledge. Given these additions,
Johnson’s label, scientific naturalism, comes very
close to what we are calling maximal
naturalism.)
-
The term methodological
naturalism is often employed to denote the idea that the natural
sciences have the competence to investigate natural actions alone and must
remain agnostic with regard to any form of
divine action.
-
Naturalistic theism
builds its worldview on the premise that there is a God who acts purposefully
and effectively in the world, but this divine action is always persuasive and
never coercive. In contrast to the several forms of supernaturalistic
theism, naturalistic theism rejects coercive supernatural intervention as
something that would violate the essential natures of God, the world, and the
God-world relationship.
The ID movement, we noted, is committed to
the defeat of “naturalism.” But toward which form of naturalism does it aim its
rhetorical guns? There may be some variation in the ID literature, but the
consensus seems to be that it doesn’t really matter very much. In the judgment
of most ID proponents, the distinctions outlined above are effectively
meaningless because all of these versions of naturalism agree on the key proposition
to which the ID movement takes exception - that there is no way to detect divine
action empirically. The distinctions noted above are judged by ID spokespersons
to be hollow rhetorical distinctions without
an empirically discernable difference.
Among the chief claims of the ID movement is
that design is empirically detectable. In
Dembski’s words, “Design is detectable; we do in fact detect it; we have
reliable methods for detecting it.... As I have argued throughout this book,
design is common, rational, and objectifiable.”That being the claim, then each and every one of the forms of naturalism listed
above - because they uniformly reject the empirical detectability of divine
action - is the target for defeat. To the ID movement, to be a God who is not empirically
detectable is to a dispensable God. Any God whose actions are not empirically
detectable would be of no value in defeating naturalism. Naturalism would
always be able to say, in effect, “A God who can never do anything that makes a
difference, and of whom we can have no reliable knowledge, is of no importance
to us.”The God envisioned by the chief proponents of ID, on the other hand, is a God
who makes an empirically detectable difference.
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| Contributed by: Dr. Howard Van
Till
|
