Every time Intelligent Design makes it to the news, my big question always goes unanswered:
What long-term impact should ID have on how science gets done? Suppose us radical Darwinists realize that we misundestood the true nature of science and rational inquiry, and the United States becomes the world leader in ID research. We teach it to our kids, and universities start programs in Designed Biology (as well as Astrology, Phrenology, Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts). What do folks in that program study? How do ID-ologists advance their knowledge of Intelligent Design? And how does that knowledge advance the grander progress of human endeavors?
In physical science, “how?” and “why?” are the same question. When children ask “Why does the moon go around the Earth?”, they are really asking, “How does the moon go around the Earth?” The word “why” is a question that assumes agency: what’s the motivation for a conscious agent to perform a certain action? Agency is not a part of the physical science frame, so the two words point to the same meaning.
In social science, “how?” and “why?” are very different questions. If an anthropologist sees someone make a totem pole, they want to know how the totem pole was made, but that’s an easy question to answer. More importantly, they want to explore the ‘why’ behind this creation. What’s their motivation? What goes on in their head to make them think that this totem pole is more than what we think it is? Why did they choose these totems and not others? Etc. The sort of questions that can only be asked when you’re dealing with sentient beings.
If ID were to succeed, it would change biology from a physical science to a social science. In ID, all us terrestrial lifeforms are just totems designed by God, the agent. The question “how was the eye formed?” becomes easy. God did it. We’ve answered that. But science must go on. Knowing the “how” of the formation of the eye tells us nothing about why God made it. God’s intentions, his thought processes, his psychological makeup — those become the interesting research questions. So that’s the new field of inquiry, isn’t it? That’s the next logical place to look, the subject of innumerable theses in the Departments of Intelligent Design across the country. Cognitive theology. Ecclesiastical anthropology.
Right? Don’t we want to know why God made eyes useful but left us with dangly appendices and vestigial tails that get in the way? Don’t we want to know why he (it’s safe to assume that, in ID-land, God is male) made bacteria adaptable to antibiotics? According to a Discovery Institute article,
ID doesn’t explain everything in terms of design. There is still room for chance and necessity. Furthermore, ID does not claim that design must be optimal; something may be designed even if it is flawed. Nor does ID purport to explain everything in the history of life; extinction, among other things, may be undesigned.
Wow! We certainly wouldn’t be scientists if we left those things unexplained. So why did the designer design some things and not others? What was his decision-making strategy? That’s the next question in the scientific process. Plus there are the classic questions, which ID would thrust into the realm of legitimate research topics: “what is the precise mechanism by which the designer turns his designs into reality?” and “can he design a stone so big that he can’t lift it?” and “who designed the designer?”, etc. And if the designer didn’t want me asking questions about his temperament, why did he design me to be so fucking curious? No more of this “the Lord works in mysterious ways” crap — that’s fine in Sunday School, but you waive your right to that line when you stuff God into a petri dish. You wanna be an Designologist, those must be the questions that comprise your research.
We’ll see this in Kansas classrooms immediately. Kids are great at asking questions. School isn’t the passing of information from teacher to student. There is a dialogue. Kids query, they explore, they need to know why things happen. If little Janet asks how the eye evolved in a secular biology class, a teacher can say, “well Janet, there are competing theories, but if you’re really curious, you can study that in college, and maybe you’ll be the one to settle the debate.” How are teachers supposed to nudge their kids toward even the most rudimentary answers about the nature of an Intelligent Designer?
So I don’t think the religious Right thought this through very well. They think religious belief is under attack from the secular world. But there is no attack. The traditional separation between faith and science represents the détente of that old war, and if the fundies want to pick that fight again, they’d better be prepared to accept some casualties.
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