On Hume, Skepticism, and Intelligent Design Creationism

In thinking about epistemological skepticism, I had a further thought (or two). Cornelius Hunter, over at idthefuture, as he makes the typical whine against evolution and godlessness in talking about intelligent design creationism (IDC):

Miller's misrepresentation of evolution was serious because his testimony influenced the judge, and was cited in the opinion. Evolutionist's arguments entail metaphysical premises, and this is how they can claim their theory is a fact. Without their religious arguments they would be left merely with empirical evidence which fails to support evolution as a fact because there is substantial negative evidence.

Evolution's use of metaphysical premises is well documented. And Miller relies on these heavily in his own writings. But so long as legal testimony represents evolution as just science, courts will continue to miss the elephant in the room.

Cornelius, show me your room, with your (apparently) metaphysically-neutral premises. I would love to see it. Please. Ironically, the sort of intelligent designer implied by IDC is far from metaphysically-netural, as it is implicitly supernatural: IDC claims that our place in the cosmos is "privileged" -- the anthropic principle -- this would require the "designer" to have tuned the very physical constants that any naturalistic designer would be controlled by, ergo, being supernatural or the next best thing to it.

Hunter also complains about the appearance of poor design and the implicit evil in designing parasites and things like malaria.

In addition, please hone in on exactly what is "religious" about the smackdown you received in court in Dover?

Speaking of religious, Hunter goes on to say that:

Obviously Darwin needed a naturalistic explanation for the species—his religious beliefs ruled out design.

There are a few problems with this:

1. At the time of his journey on the Voyage of the Beagle, he was certainly not a naturalist [link]
   
2. Darwin only lost faith in the existence of God much later in life, after his daughter's death, and only then became an agnostic [link]
   
3. Even he said that there was no incompatibility between theism and evolution, saying it was, "absurd to doubt that a man can be an ardent Theist and an Evolutionist" [link]
   

Hunter wants to say that induction, or the expectation of naturalism, is a bias that ought to be erased, in the vein of Moore's argument:

...today scientists will admit that no one knows enough about 'natural law' to say that any event is necessarily a violation of it. They agree that an individual's non-statistical sample of time and space is hardly sufficient ground on which to base immutable generalizations concerning the nature of the entire universe. Today what we commonly term 'natural law' is in fact only our inductive and statistical descriptions of natural phenomena. (James R. Moore, Christianity for the Tough Minded, 1973, p.79)

In considering what Moore, and others, attempt to do here, a few points should be made about "today's science" as it is supposed to be qualitatively different than "yesterday's". In particular, theists often seize upon the overturning of Newton's mechanical universe by relativity and quantum physics as some sort of "evidence" that miracles are more likely to occur. This premise is very poorly thought out. The sorts of evidence that were uncovered with paradigm shifts like quantum theory and general relativity did not conflict with the observations made prior to their time; they dovetailed with and explained all the data! OTOH, Hunter's view of IDC would render much of the observed evidence for random mutation and natural selection as the driving forces of evolution from genetics and biology false.

Also, the idea that we should have a sort of expectation of, or at least make room for, miracles in science is almost prima facie evidence of a misunderstanding of the nature of science and of miracles. It isn't just that the scientific method demands skepticism of miracles, it demands evidence to substantiate any claim, inversely proportional to how well-established a claim or observation is:

1. A miracle is by definition a rare occurance
2. Natural law is by definition a description of regular occurance
3. The evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare.
4. Wise individuals always base belief on the greater evidence.
5. Therefore, wise individuals should never believe in miracles.
(Norman Geisler, Miracles and the Modern Mind, 1992, p.27-28)

Geisler then goes on to present Hume's "Problem of Induction" (PoI):

Hume speaks of "uniform" experience in his argument against miracles, but this either begs the question or else is special pleading. It begs the question if Hume presumes to know the experience is uniform in advance of looking at the evidence. For how can we know that all possible experience will confirm naturalism, unless we have access to all possible experiences, including those in the future? If, on the other hand, Hume simply means by "uniform" experience the select experiences of some persons (who have not encountered a miracle), then this is special pleading. (ibid, p.28)

So at best, Hunter can say that our metaphysical bias must be that we demand an absolute uniformity of nature that is not warranted by induction. Granted. The question is -- does he have evidence of these breaks in uniformity? No.

While a naturalist may not claim that design (natural in appearance or otherwise) is a priori impossible, the absolute lack of explanatory value or mechanism on the part of IDC advocates is a sign that there is simply a lack of evidence in favor of their position. He can argue bias in interpretation all day long, but the dearth of evidence subject to interpretation speaks for itself.