Impressions of the Forrest Report
I downloaded and read Dr. Barbara Forrest’s Expert Report on Intelligent Design from the Dover trial and it’s a rather interesting read.
Somewhere along the line in perusing the 50 or so pages of the report I realized that what we really have here is a layered question that needs to be considered rather carefully.
Dr. Forrest addresses three major areas. Note that Forrest’s report is NOT organized this way and she covers many, many additional areas; I am reacting to my overall interpretation of the report.
Area #1 – The motives of the ID proponents is religious.
While this is clearly the case, and in fact not only religious but overwhelmingly Christian, I’m not certain that it matters. One can still pursue pure science for religious reasons. The motives of ID proponents are sort of irrelevant to the case. The motives of the Dover School Board are not, but the motives of the Discovery Institute are.
Area #2 – ID Rejects the Metaphysical Concept of Materialism as the sole existence.
Yeah, that it does, but then I know lots of people who accept evolution that reject it also. The existence of the supernatural is not, and never has been, incompatible with science, it’s simply that the supernatural is beyond the scope of science.
Science cannot deal with the supernatural and it must, by definition, act as if the totality of existence is the material world. Religion on the other hand can, and does, go beyond the natural into the supernatural. In other words, this is an accepted, even necessary, limitation that science voluntarily places itself under. Even if all the known evidence pointed to a supernatural cause, science MUST continue to look for a naturalistic conclusion or else it ceases to be science.
ID, by a logical extension of its conclusion that existence cannot come about by purely naturalistic processes, attempts to establish a supernatural conclusion as science. To do so would change the fundamental definition of “science.”
Area #3 – ID rejects the methodology of science.
This is, to my mind, the most damning indictment of all. In science one arrives at conclusions by analyzing the evidence at hand. ID starts with conclusions and then proceeds to search for evidence to substantiate those conclusions.
So the reality of the situation is that the proponents of ID would like to redefine science. First they would like to include acceptance of the supernatural and then they would like to side step the scientific method which calls for the evaluation of evidence. If one encounters a fact that contradicts a hypothesis, it is the hypothesis that must be abandoned and not the fact. ID however, with its foundation solidly entrenched in religious faith, can never accept any fact which potentially contradicts the existence of God. It would have to be rejected or explained away. Therefore rather than adjusting the hypothesis based upon the fact, the fact would have to be adjusted based upon the hypothesis. That being the case, I guess you COULD look at ID as a branch of Apologetics which Dr. Forrest points out its treated as in some places.
Once one has managed to bastardize the concept of science in this way, it’s a hop skip and a jump to dogma driven “scientific” conclusions. Science, as we know it, would cease to exist.
Somewhere along the line in perusing the 50 or so pages of the report I realized that what we really have here is a layered question that needs to be considered rather carefully.
Dr. Forrest addresses three major areas. Note that Forrest’s report is NOT organized this way and she covers many, many additional areas; I am reacting to my overall interpretation of the report.
Area #1 – The motives of the ID proponents is religious.
While this is clearly the case, and in fact not only religious but overwhelmingly Christian, I’m not certain that it matters. One can still pursue pure science for religious reasons. The motives of ID proponents are sort of irrelevant to the case. The motives of the Dover School Board are not, but the motives of the Discovery Institute are.
Area #2 – ID Rejects the Metaphysical Concept of Materialism as the sole existence.
Yeah, that it does, but then I know lots of people who accept evolution that reject it also. The existence of the supernatural is not, and never has been, incompatible with science, it’s simply that the supernatural is beyond the scope of science.
Science cannot deal with the supernatural and it must, by definition, act as if the totality of existence is the material world. Religion on the other hand can, and does, go beyond the natural into the supernatural. In other words, this is an accepted, even necessary, limitation that science voluntarily places itself under. Even if all the known evidence pointed to a supernatural cause, science MUST continue to look for a naturalistic conclusion or else it ceases to be science.
ID, by a logical extension of its conclusion that existence cannot come about by purely naturalistic processes, attempts to establish a supernatural conclusion as science. To do so would change the fundamental definition of “science.”
Area #3 – ID rejects the methodology of science.
This is, to my mind, the most damning indictment of all. In science one arrives at conclusions by analyzing the evidence at hand. ID starts with conclusions and then proceeds to search for evidence to substantiate those conclusions.
So the reality of the situation is that the proponents of ID would like to redefine science. First they would like to include acceptance of the supernatural and then they would like to side step the scientific method which calls for the evaluation of evidence. If one encounters a fact that contradicts a hypothesis, it is the hypothesis that must be abandoned and not the fact. ID however, with its foundation solidly entrenched in religious faith, can never accept any fact which potentially contradicts the existence of God. It would have to be rejected or explained away. Therefore rather than adjusting the hypothesis based upon the fact, the fact would have to be adjusted based upon the hypothesis. That being the case, I guess you COULD look at ID as a branch of Apologetics which Dr. Forrest points out its treated as in some places.
Once one has managed to bastardize the concept of science in this way, it’s a hop skip and a jump to dogma driven “scientific” conclusions. Science, as we know it, would cease to exist.
posted by Alencon at 1:40 PM
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