Kartikeya Jain

Jan 16

Creationism Environmental Humanities #2

766 words

Sober starts out his account of creationism with a fair warning against
reading older scientific theories as discarded or debunked pseudoscience
but rather taking them on their own terms, reminding us that projects like
eugenics and phrenology were considered serious scholarly endeavours in
their time and we should grant them some measure of legitimacy by
placing them in their historical context (27-28 Sober, 2000). Moreover, he
also mentions that the propositions that some of these theories hold are,
in fact, scientific in that they are scientifically testable even though
there is considerable scientific evidence against them (28).
The main claim of creationist theory is that some characteristics of living
things are the result of intelligent design by God; they deny that natural
processes suffice to account for all features of living things (ibid.). He
outlines the political agenda of creationism and that in their attempt to
limit the teaching of evolution in schools they appeal to scientific evidence
instead of biblical authority due to the constitutional separation of Church
and State in the USA (ibid.). He insists however (in a token gesture to
scientific temper), to separate the politics from the idea itself and goes on
to explicate the latter. Even though he outlines his political stance where
there is no place for creationist theory to stand alongside evolutionary
theory. The reason for this is not that the idea itself is unscientific but
because they have been refuted scientifically (29).
His first charge against creationism (and its inability to hold scientific
water) is that the theory has not been refined or tested beyond the
assertion that God is responsible for some or all features of living beings
unlike evolutionism, that has formulated and tested countless new
hypotheses since Darwin (ibid.).
Sober goes on to give an account of the intelligent design argument,
stressing on the sway it held in philosophical debates since the time of
Plato and Aristotle, taken up by Aquinas in the Middle Ages until Humes
skepticism put a dent in it (30). Although people like Dawkins argue that
Darwin was the watershed moment while creationists dont recognize
either of these. He takes up William Paleys argument for creationist
theory. He says that most of these arguments are designed as abductions
or inference to the best explanation of the fact that organisms are welladapted and the complex arrangement of all the parts is in a perfect
system (31).
Paleys argument contrasts the intelligent design argument with the thesis
that random physical forces act on matter to turn them into living things.
He raises the question that if one were to chance upon a watch in the
wild, which of the two hypotheses would be plausible whether it was
made by a watchmaker or that it was made by random physical forces
such as rain and wind? He draws an analogy from the perfectly
functioning (designed) watch to the complexity and adaptedness of living
beings. Sober analytically breaks down the argument into two parts that
of the watch and living things. He points out that it is based upon the
Likelihood Principle which simply says whether the observations under
consideration favor one hypothesis over another. It does not tell you to
believe the one that is better supported by the piece of evidence under
consideration (32). In other words, one still cannot propose an

Kartikeya Jain
Jan 16

Creationism Environmental Humanities #2

766 words

explanation that has the greater overall plausibility through this method
but only the more likely hypothesis given the observations.
For Hume, the design argument is an argument from analogy. He claims
that the logic of analogy arguments holds good only if the target (i.e. the
object of inquiry) and the analog are sufficiently similar. According to this
stance, the creationist argument starts to fall apart since watches and
organisms are very dissimilar (33-35). Further, Sober goes on to clarify in
the next section how natural selection is not random an argument used
by creationists against evolution theory (36). Randomness would imply
similar/equal probabilities for different scenarios whereas natural selection
is a process with unequal probabilities (37). Randomness becomes an
issue when there is little local variation in fitness and gene frequencies
change because of random genetic drift (ibid.). The process of natural
selection itself is not random in that after establishing variations in a
population, there can be definitive explanations for why certain genetic
traits are retained and not others (because they help the species survive
and reproduce).
Sober writes further about the different detailed aspects of the debate and
refutes the creationist theory as a science on almost every count.
REFERENCES
Sober, Eliot. Philosophy of Biology. Boulder: Westview Press, 2000.