What is the contradictory of the claim that all aspects of all forms of life can be explained as being the result of chance and necessity (henceforth CN)?
Teleology.
But what kind of teleology? The kind that originates with a First and Ultimate Cause, a being that in some way directs all other beings to their goals?
It depends on who is answering the question. Let us suppose what I believe is the case: that one can demonstrate the divine causality of the teleology found in nature. That sort of argumentation belongs to philosophy rather than natural science. If a natural scientist offers the just mentioned demonstration then he would acting as a philosopher rather than a natural scientist.
This applies to proponents of ID (intelligent design). When reasoning within the confines of the scientific method, they cannot demonstrate (at least according to the strict sense of the word "demonstrate") that any phenomena or aspects of phenomena are caused by God (nor would some IDers even pretend to be able to do so).
Let me add that proponents of CN are likewise unable (inasmuch as they are reasoning as a scientist) to offer an argument against divine action having an effect in nature, be it miraculous or non-miraculous.
Neither of these two proponents, however, is interested in science alone. Nor can either of them help but see how scientific discoveries nourish philosophical inquiry. It is right for both of them to go beyond what can be quantified via the scientific method as they inquire about how their scientific knowledge relates to the question of God. But when they do so, they must philosophize, for science, inasmuch as it focuses on the quantifiable, provides them no reliable compass, let alone vocabulary to discuss questions that are meta-scientific. And in philosophizing they do not enter into some domain of esoteric thought: they simply refine the common sense notions that lie at the basis of science and philosophy.
******
Dembski points out that scientists engage in forensics to demonstrate at least the probability of an intelligent designer of some sort (be it super-human, demi-god, or divine). He could at most proceed in a manner analogous to how a forensic "scientist" reasons toward the conclusion that an event (e.g., a crime) was probably deliberately caused. Fine: forensics is a scientist or an application of science that gives such probabilities. It does not seem absurd to imagine that some day, under certain circumstances, these forensic methodologies could be adapted to support the conclusion that a non-human (or more precisely supra-human) personal being engineered an observed event. The being referred to by such a forensic argument could end up being God. But I don't see how any forensics could determine on its own that ONLY God could have engineered this. In my opinion, such an argument can only be developed by philosophy rather than science.
Problem: Behe's (and probably Dembski's) approach treat organisms as mechanisms.
***another approach (not exactly consistent with the above)*********
If we grant that CN is unlikely to suffice to explain the evolution of the species, then we can conclude that some sort of teleology, either inner or outer (or both), is needed as an additional explanatory principle. The purely scientific criticism of CN ends with this disjunctive: either inner or outer teleology is involved. It cannot determine which. To go further requires one to philosophize.
Of course, outer teleology would likely be engineering by a suprahuman demigod be created by God.
If inner teleology also implies God, it does not do so through purely scientific reasoning. So it would be legitimate to propose, as one solution to the purported inadequacies of a strong natural selection position (i.e., CN) that nature possesses an inner teleology that drives it to evolve, without initially mentioning a personal being. One can argue toward the existence of a personal being later on, while doing philosophy rather than merely doing science.
********************
An aside in partial defense of ID: evidence against CN is in principle as acceptable as evidence for CN. To say that there can only be evidence in favor but not against is to be ideological.
But of course, ID claims more. It attempts a kind of forensic argument for evidence of engineering in living things qua mechanisms. But such an argument is ultimately of the "it looks like a duck.... therefore it is a duck" but with the handicap that one of the terms you are comparing is in many ways unlike anything you have experienced. It doesn't address the nature of such a "duck," which is what is needed to answer the question definitively.
Comments