In a post on Panda's Thumb Evomathematician Joe Felsenstein justifiably criticizes North American Intelligent Design (NAID) pundits Eric Hedin and Granville Sewell for the weakness of their anti-evolution arguments. See Felsenstein's article here: Eric Hedin, meet Granville Sewell
I have critiqued the work of both Sewell and Hedin myself. Below are links to some of the articles I've written.
ON HEDIN
Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID pundit William Dembski on AI
Quantum Non-Linearity: North American Intelligent Design's response to my last two posts. Part 1
ON SEWELL
Quantum Non-Linearity: Make it IDist proof and along comes a better IDist
Quantum Non-Linearity: Caution! You are about to enter Intelligent Design's false dichotomy zone!
Quantum Non-Linearity: Western Dualism in the North American Intelligent Design Community. Part 2
Quantum Non-Linearity: Once More into the False Dichotomy Zone: "Naturalism vs. Design".
Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution and Computation
Quantum Non-Linearity: Granville Sewell; Still Getting it Wrong.
Quantum Non-Linearity: Thermodynamics and Evolution – Again.
And while I'm here: I have also critiqued IDists Nametti and Holloway for their halfcocked notion of "Algorithmic Specified Complexty". See here:
Quantum Non-Linearity: Breaking Through the Information Barrier in Natural History Part 5
And again, while I'm here it's unfair to miss out Casey Luskin:
Quantum Non-Linearity: Naive Intelligent Design: Part III
***
Felsenstein presents two examples of the kind of hand waving arguments we get from these two NAID pundits. About Hedin's hand waving Felsenstein writes:
Eric Hedin’s argument [against evolution] boils down to simple incredulity, without any logical proof of a barrier to evolution by ordinary evolutionary processes.
In my opinion that sums up much of the anti-evolution polemic one gets from the NAID tribe as a whole. But although one can criticize NAID thinking at a technical level (as does Felsenstein) it is also possible to criticize them from the very theistic basis which we know motivates most NAID endeavors; that is, NAID logic has internal incoherence. As a Christian myself this approach interests me (But of course one can't expect an atheist like Joe Felsenstein to respect a theistic approach).
As I've repeated so many times in this blog the NAID community as a whole are intoxicated by a blind natural forces versus intelligent design dichotomy. The irony is that the concept of Intelligent Design itself actually undermines the NAID community's dualistic dichotomy: For if one posits a creator God (as I do) then the very concept of blind natural forces becomes problematic; if an Omniscient, Omnipotent God has created those highly contingent and very special "natural forces" with the foresight of omniscience they can hardly be usefully labeled as blind and natural. See the following link where I suggest it is at least arguable that even standard evolution (if, repeat if, it has occurred) is not only highly unnatural but in fact constitutes creation with a vengeance....
Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part IV: Evolution: Creation on Steriods
See also the link below for Christian biologist Denis Alexander's comments which are in effect critical of NAID....
Just as the NAID folk have irreversibly committed themselves (unnecessarily) to an outright anti-evolutionism they have similarly committed themselves (unnecessarily) to an outright and dogmatic anti-Junk DNA position. Again, ID itself undermines NAID's absolute certainty of this position: For even if we allow that life entailed an Omniscient, Omnipotent God directly tinkering with DNA during its long natural history we know so little about the methods and motives of that inscrutable intelligence that it is quite possible that like a human programmer this entity, for whatever mysterious reason, decided to leave or even insert dormant and redundant code in the DNA. None of this is to say that junk DNA exists (or doesn't exist), but the absence of junk DNA isn't a necessary implication of ID.
I've come to the opinion that NAID thinking has less to do with a dispassionate intellectual position than it does the taking up of a variety of polemical postures which have more to do with tribal political badging (and badgering) than the studied detachment of heroic investigative thinking: See my article here: Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part V: Politics and North American Intelligent Design. Linked to their political branding are politically contrarian and anti-academic-establishment notions connected with climate change, vaccines, masks, gun law, sex & gender and paranoia about a large deep state and regulation of capitalist excesses (*1). One also has to throw into the mix young earthism, flat earthism and even conspiracy theorism and Trumpism, all of which are tribal subdivisions within the broad church of what is essentially an anti-establishment popularist movement.
The arrogant atheism of someone like Richard Carrier is fueling the politically polarizing fires with his own very flawed version of "natural forces". Carrier simply doesn't understand probability and randomness which to his mind can be (ab)used as the ultimate logical truisms, the ultimate insentient creative "natural force". For him probability is at the heart of an atheist mythology about the aseity of a creative source which stands in as a kind of god-dynamic. Interestingly Sea of Faith theologian (and atheist!) Don Cupitt also gets carried away with the subliminal but spurious & curious assumption that the "mechanical universe" entails a self-sustaining efficacy; see here: Quantum Non-Linearity: The Sea of Faith and Don Cupitt. Part I.
For more on the popularist vs establishment polarization see here: Views, News and Pews: Religious Popularism vs Academia).
Finally let me make this clear: Along with Christian physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne I can claim to be an intelligent design creationist, but I reject the NAID community's entrenched, dogmatic and highly politicized popularist version of ID. In the early days of this blog I was sympathetic, but no longer.
ADDENDUM 19/12
I was interested to read this quick report by David Klinghoffer on a NAID conference at the prestigious wood-paneled Cambridge University (UK)...
“Doesn’t the Fossil Record Prove Darwin Right?” | Evolution News
He raises well known challenges to standard evolutionary theory (e.g. The fossil record doesn't appear to provide strong evidence of that necessary implication of standard evolution, namely evolutionary gradualism). It's no skin off my nose if the current proposed mechanisms of evolution are false since I haven't put down big stakes (either way) in bog-standard evolutionary mechanisms.
But of course, NAID has huge stakes in anti-evolutionism (They have also put down big political stakes). With its intoxicating "natural forces vs evolution" dichotomy it has inextricably tied their version of ID to an anti-evolutionary position (*2). This of course means that should a successful development mechanism of natural history gain sufficient evidence their dichotomy would imply that ID is false and atheist Richard Dawkins who is enamored of the same dichotomy wins!
Klinghoffer betrays his intoxication with the NAID dichotomy when at the end of an otherwise agreeable post writes of the discontinuities in the fossil record.....
Such explosions of creativity are just what you’d predict
from the activity of a designing mind, a source of biological information
outside nature that has shaped the long history of life.
Sorry David that's not a necessary prediction of ID. As I've said so often, even bog-standard evolution requires careful design. But like Richard Dawkins NAID is having none of it: According to NAID, if evolution has occurred then we must all become atheists like our Richard!
Footnotes:
*1. Anger at private health insurers: Fuel for Marxist agitators!
The dark fandom behind CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione - BBC News
*2 I'm of the opinion that NAID has driven its stakes so deeply because they are now part of an anti-establishment popularist political trend with Trump-world as the chief bellwether.
INTERESTING LINKS
1. May be not!
A scientist may have just proven that we all live inside a computer simulation
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