Expelled

I finally got to watch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed last night. I have to tell you, the movie is aptly titled. But not for the reasons the creators of the film thought. The film opens up, after the initial credits, with Ben Stein sitting in his dressing room very thoughtfully going over a speech he is about to deliver, while it cuts away periodically to some quote mined phrases from some scientists who support evolution.
Dawkins: "the battle over Evolution is just one skirmish in a much larger war."
Dennett: "Science simply makes no use of the hypothesis of God."
PZ Myers: "Ask yourself what has Intelligent Design given us? Nothing."
"We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory."
"They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time."

With all due respect to Dawkins I have to agree with what David Berlinski says later in the documentary. Dawkins does not appear to have the philosophical background to really back up his comments about religion which is what this quotation was certainly about. In Dawkin's opinion, as he confirms later in this film, Intelligent Design vs Evolution is really just a skirmish in the larger war of Religion vs Atheism. This is not an opinion that many scientists agree with. It's also not an opinion that I agree with. Of course the idea that Intelligent Design is a watered down version of creationism is not without foundation. Ben Stein himself confirms what he and the Discovery Institute spend the entire documentary trying to deny towards the end when he concludes "If the Intelligent Design people are right, God isn't hidden. We may even be able to encounter God through science."

Dennet's quotation is accurate, it is true that science makes no use of the hypothesis of God, and with good reason. Falsifiability is important to any scientific hypothesis. Due to the nature of the subjects being investigated by science it is impossible to prove anything correct directly, the only means of proving a scientific theory correct is to try to prove it wrong. Thus all scientific theories or hypotheses need to be falsifiable. How do you falsify the hypothesis of God? The very nature of the concept makes the concept impossible to disprove. The reason this is important is because it's also impossible to prove, thus the concept could be wrong, but its specific conceptualization makes it impossible to disprove. Thus we could waste an infinite amount of time pursuing this line of inquiry with no results if we ignore falsifiability and never have any reason to think we could be wrong. If science did not limit itself to those questions which can be falsified science would never make any progress. Scientists would find themselves bogged down with inquiries they could neither prove nor disprove. Yes science is today bogged down by inquiries it cannot prove, which is why it is essential that science be able to disprove them in order to eliminate those lines of inquiry that will never be productive. The quotation by Dennett here is intended to imply that there's no reason why science doesn't make use of the hypothesis of God. I hope that I've done a good job of dispelling that impression.

Concerning the quote by PZ Myers, it's a valid question, what has Intelligent Design given us? What predictions does Intelligent Design make? How is Intelligent Design applied to increase our standard of living? The theory of Evolution is behind countless advances in medical science. Contrary to Michael Egnor's post responding to the Alliance for Science essay contest that apparently really bothered him, evolution is taught in medical schools, for example in just about every course with the word "comparitive" in it.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/03/egnorance_combo_arrogance.html

And the as yet unknown scientist who said "We cannot accept Intelligent Design as an alternative scientific theory." Again the viewer is supposed to get an inaccurate impression from this statement. You're supposed to assume that the reason we cannot accept this is because scientists don't want us to. The reality is that we can't accept it because the "theory" or more accurately assertion or conjecture of Intelligent Design is not scientific. It's foundational assumption is that there is an intelligent designer, which is unfalsifiable. They may argue that this is the conclusion, but that would be false. We can put it another way, the foundational assumption is that there is design in nature, this implicitly assumes a designer. Thus their fundamental assumption is, implicitly, that there is an intelligent designer. Let's briefly explore this further. If a scientist were to approach the subject of intelligent design with no preexisting assumptions how would he proceed? Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to try to find evidence of design in nature. This seems to be what Intelligent Design proponents say they are doing. How do we go about finding evidence for design in nature, though? The way the Intelligent Design proponents do this is by making assumptions. They point to complexity and argue that complexity implies design. This could be true and it's easy to support the assertion with anecdotal evidence, such as a car engine or a watch, we know these are designed and we know these are complex. However We also know something about the process of designing a car and a watch, and we also know who designs cars or watches, generally. We have potentially first hand knowledge of the people responsible for these designs, and this in no way proves that complexity cannot be the process of complex and undirected processes. One could argue that this is the case even in human design, since the human thought is a complex undirected process. Human interaction even more so and most designs were joint projects or the process of improvement upon existing designs. One could even argue for a form of selection being responsible for the modern designs in the marketplaces, of watches, cars, anything. But that is not my intention here. The Intelligent Design advocates have to prove now that complexity is only possible if something is designed. How do they do that? Well so far they don't do that. In fact Intelligent Design advocates do nothing to try to convince scientists to take them seriously. They write books for the lay person, and lobby politicians to try to get schools to force them to be taken seriously. But they don't try to get the scientific community to take them seriously by doing real science. They don't generate testable hypothesis, they don't publish peer reviewed articles, they don't contribute anything that can be applied to do anything that might, for instance, improve our standard of living. I am aware of the Discovery Institute's list of peer reviewed articles on Intelligent Design if the list still exists. The articles in that list were either not about Intelligent Design, or not peer reviewed. Michael Behe's book, for instance, Darwin's Black Box, was not peer reviewed. Stephen C Meyer's article on the Cambrian Explosion that was published by Richard von Sternberg in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington was not peer reviewed, if it had been peer reviewed it would not have been published, it was substandard work, but most importantly it was about the Cambrian Explosion (and more specifically bioinformatics, which is the origin of the higher phyla), which is not the topic of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. That publication deals with Systematics which is the study of Taxonomy.

Then finally the last quote I also don't know who to attribute it to, "They will never accept that we have a better argument. They just pester us and they waste our time." This quote also is true. Intelligent Design advocates do willfully refuse to accept that evolution is a much better argument. They base their entire argument on flawed assumptions about complexity and design and negative attacks against evolution, essentially god-of-the-gaps arguments. But also a lot of straw man arguments, showing a lack of understanding of the theory they claim is so flawed. In reality if the theory of evolution actually said what they claim it says no one would believe it, but this is primarily what I meant when I said Intelligent Design advocates are not trying to convince the scientific community. Their goal is to convince people who don't understand evolution, people who will actually be inclined to believe their inaccurate characterizations of evolutionary arguments. And most importantly people who will not take the time to objectively research the assertions they make. Afterall why would they lie? Of course that question begs the question that they are lying, a sufficient reason to research all claims is to recognize that although these people claim to be experts they can still be mistaken. Take for instance Michael Egnor, again, he is a neurosurgeon. That's an impressive qualification, of course, so people are inclined to think he knows what he's talking about. Why? How does neurosurgeon qualify him to comment on evolution? William Dembski is a mathematician, that's impressive isn't it? But once again how does that qualify him to comment on evolution? Michael Behe is a molecular biologist, so he is somewhat more qualified to comment on evolution, but why can't he be wrong? Yes he studied the field, but did he understand it? How well did he have to understand it to be sufficiently good as a molecular biologist to be hired as a professor? How often do people ask these questions when a supposed expert gives them their opinion about a subject? In my experience not very often. Pointing at Behe and saying, "He's amolecular biologist and he doesn't believe in evolution" would be like pointing at Einstein and saying "He's a very brilliant physicist and he doesn't believe in quantum mechanics or the Big Bang." That's true, but so what? Einstein was still wrong, his own theory of relativity predicts the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics is a branch of science that relies on nothing unfalsifiable, makes predictions, and is applicable to improve our standard of living. Everyone reading this blog can thank quantum mechanics for that. The transitors that make your computer possible would not be possible without quantum mechanics. Thus if Einstein could be wrong about things so closely related to his own work, why can't Behe?

This has gotten long so I will conclude this post here will just the analysis of the opening quotations. I'll continue this analysis of the logic and accuracy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed in my next post.