Science versus Intelligent Design

Science versus Intelligent Design

I belong to a newsgroup called SDANet (http://www.sdanet.org/). In two posts to that newsgroup, I made the statement that “one must do mathematics and philosophy before one can do science.”

My purpose in those two posts was to drive home the point that scientists have certain philosophic assumptions before they even engage in scientific inquiry. In fact, the process of science itself is founded on certain assumptions about the world around us.

In this article, I want the reader to realize the scientific community disregards Intelligent Design as “religion and not science” because it violates their a priori philosophic presuppositions about what they believe science is. These scientists confuse their philosophy of materialism, methodological naturalism, scientism, what-have-you with science itself.

The purpose of the current article is twofold.

First, I want to point out how certain philosophic assumptions are embedded as the foundation of the Scientific Method. From this illustration, I hope the reader realizes the truth of “one must do mathematics and philosophy before one can do science.” I am not attempting to analyze or critique every philosophy of science (e.g., materialism, methodological naturalism, etc), but just to illustrate that philosophic presuppositions come before the scientific process itself.

The second part of this article is to illustrate errors with one common approach to scientific inquiry, namely Methodological Naturalism. Methodological Naturalism can be summed up (albeit a bit simplistically) as the assertion that only naturalistic causes are to be used as explanations of phenomenon that scientists investigate.

Methodological Naturalism is the philosophic assumption (i.e., it cannot be demonstrated to true by scientific investigation itself) that is very commonly used as an argument against Intelligent Design advocates. In other words, the scientific community argues that “since (we assume) science can only appeal to naturalistic causes, and Intelligent Design by its very nature does not restrict itself to naturalistic causes, then Intelligent Design advocates are not doing true science; rather they are doing religion in disguise.”

Please note, again, this is what the scientific community presupposes ahead of time what “science really is.” It is a position that is argued for and is not demonstrated through scientific investigation. Indeed, the scientific community cannot, and does not, justify Methodological Naturalism experimentally or through scientific investigation, but by appeals to what they consider sound reasoning.

Part 1: Presuppositions Embedded within the Scientific Method

Here I attempt to illustrate how using the Scientific Method is based upon certain inherent assumed views about the world around us. I am not attempting to prove these true or false, but to make it clear that scientific inquiry is based upon certain presuppositions.

Someone might disagree with my examples of the inherent assumptions in the Scientific Method and offer alternative ones. But this still illustrates that one has some philosophic presuppositions about the world before they even engage in scientific endeavors.

There are a number of ways the Scientific Method can be outlined, but one reasonable representation of it is as follows:

Observation --> Hypothesis --> Test Hypothesis --> Conclusions

All of these steps of the Scientific Method are based on the following philosophic assumptions.


A. The External World Objectively Exists – “The external world exists, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.” If the world was merely illusionary and a figment of my imagination, it would be erroneous to investigate why certain phenomena occurred as it is merely my imagination.

Please note that one might not know the external world was imaginary and one might try to investigate this (illusory) external world anyway.

But it would still be faulty to do so because if the external world is a truly product of your imagination, there is no real need to investigate why things happened. They did not truly happen, you merely imagined it.

However, the assumption that the external world truly exists is why scientists make hypotheses to explain certain phenomenon, and why they need to test their hypotheses, i.e., we test our hypotheses because our explanation may not actually be correct, despite what we think.

In short, Reality is what you bump into when your beliefs are wrong.

B. The External World Is Governed by Consistent Laws – there would be no point in investigating the behavior of the world if the rules governing the universe were randomly changed without warning. Any discovery made today would be invalid shortly thereafter.

C. The Correspondence Theory of Truth – a true statement or true hypothesis is one that accurately describes the way the external world really is. Scientists are supposed to be in the business of determining what really is going on. Ultimately, I would argue that most scientists are not looking for an erroneous model that works, but what really is going on.

Again, Part 1 is not intended to prove the exact specifics of the philosophic assumptions embedded in the Scientific Method. It was intended to illustrate that all scientists, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, operate on certain a priori presuppositions about the world around us. They also operate on certain a priori philosophic presuppositions of what “science really is.”

Part 2. Problems with Methodological Naturalism.

One of the common assumptions about what “science really is” is called Methodological Naturalism. Methodological Naturalism asserts that only appeals to naturalistic causes are legitimate in scientific inquiry. Often they also claim to restrict this to repeatable naturalistic causes.

The first flaw with this approach to define what “science really is” is that it first assumed and argued for, not proven. One cannot demonstrate through scientific investigation and appealing to only naturalistic causes, that the only proper approach to science is Methodological Naturalism. I know of no experimental study that demonstrates the truth of the Methodological Naturalism assumption. I know of no scientists who propose Methodological Naturalism on anything other than (what they consider to be) sound logical grounds.

Regardless of whether or not their arguments for Methodological Naturalism are sound, it still demonstrates that it is philosophically argued for.

The second flaw with Methodological Naturalism is that before scientific inquiry even begins, it limits itself to only certain conclusions allowed as the product of this scientific investigation. Rather than employ the Scientific Method and then use inference to the best explanation, Methodological Naturalism rules in advance that certain conclusions are not permitted, despite the weight of the evidence and the reasonableness of the conclusions.

This is roughly equivalent to homicide investigators being told that, before the investigation even begins, they are not allowed interpret the evidence such that they conclude a woman committed the crime.

To illustrate further, suppose you placed a closed box in front of a biologist and asked her explain what is going on inside the box.
When the box is opened, the biologist clearly sees an Oreo cookie inside a glass of milk.

What would be the most reasonable way for the biologist to explain how the Oreo got in the glass? Would she restrict herself to Methodological Naturalism and only appeal to naturalistic causes? Or would she infer an intelligent cause for this phenomenon and conclude someone was putting her on?

Or, more to the point, here is a more realistic illustration. What would happen if a NASA satellite truly did intercept an electromagnetic signal from a star-system that is 500 light years away. This signal consisted of 1,000 prime numbers in the sequence, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, … etc.

Would it be appropriate to insist Methodological Naturalism is the only way NASA is permitted analyze the data? Must NASA therefore assume purely naturalistic causes for this sequence of numbers no matter the weight of the evidence to the contrary? Or would it be more appropriate to make an inference to the best explanation and suspect an intelligent cause for this sequence of numbers?

In both cases listed above, I suspect that scientists would assume intelligent causes rather than purely naturalistic causes. This is where Methodological Naturalism falters and Intelligent Design comes in. Any school-child would figure out someone put the Oreo cookie into the glass of milk. Also, once human sources were truly ruled out, any astronomer or cryptographer (or school-child) would be reasonable to raise the possibility of the signal being originated by an intelligent source outside our solar system.

However, it is very reasonable to ask, What is an appropriate algorithm for determining Intelligent Design? How can one reasonably infer Intelligent Design in an observed phenomenon? The method is based upon spotting a phenomenon that is (1) a low probability event and is, (2) specified in advance.

(1) Low Probability Event: Any event, no matter how low the probability (assuming not zero), will occur if given enough time. If I take a deck of cards, and throw them into the air, the exact order and location of how they fall on the floor is a low probability event. One would not be reasonable in inferring Intelligent Design from this. Given enough time (1 million years?) to throw the deck of cards into the air, you could replicate this event if you were patient enough.

(2) Specification in Advance: Any event specified in advance that is not of sufficiently low probability does not suggest Intelligent Design. For example, if I were to tell you the sun will rise tomorrow, you would not be impressed. If I told you there would be an earthquake in Los Angeles area in the next 50 years, you would not be impressed. Yes, I specified it in advance, but it is not exactly a low probability event.

However, both (1) and (2) combined can be used to indicate Intelligent Design.

For example, were NASA to intercept an electromagnetic signal that was a random string of 1,000 numbers, this would not imply intelligent design. Sure, the exact order of a random string of 1,000 numbers is a low probability event, but such things occur in nature (e.g., white noise).

Also, if NASA intercepted a string of the first 4 prime numbers, 1, 2, 3, and 5, they likely would not call SETI and announce contact with space aliens. Yes, it is a numeric sequence specified in advance, but the sequence is so short that it is not of sufficiently low probability to infer an intelligent source.

However, a string of the first 1,000 prime numbers is both a very low probability event, and also shows specification in advance. There is no known natural phenomenon that produces the prime numbers, much less the first 1,000 of them! I think by this time the NASA would feel confident in calling SETI and the President to report their findings. (Assuming of course, they *truly* ruled out a human source for the signal.)

In parting, I hope that I made it clear that the furor over Intelligent Design is not a conflict between empirical science and religion. It is a conflict between worldviews and what evidence is allowed to inform the discussion.

The author is deeply indebted to the folks at Stand to Reason (http://www.STR.org) and Dr. William Debski for man of the ideas and illustrations in this article. Any limitations are errors are mine alone.