ARTICLE: Oreos & Origins

[STR Ambassador]

Oreos & Origins

by Greg Koukl

I want to give a couple of illustrations to try to explain to you why making reference to a designer is legitimate in the scientific arena. As some have argued, whenever you make a reference to a designer, you are making reference to something that is not natural. It is supernatural by definition, therefore you are talking about religion. Well, I guess I have to plead guilty to that. Part of my point earlier was that it's not possible for you to avoid comments that have religious or metaphysical ramifications. Both sides have that impact, but when someone makes the comment that now you are talking about religion, what they are essentially saying is "foul". You cannot bring supernatural questions into the discussion about science because science, by definition, is limited only to naturalistic explanations.

Now, that is functionally true right now, but my point is that that is an arbitrary distinction. It implies that the only thing truthful that can be known is known through empirical studies. Science does that kind of thing, so science gives us truth and keep your religion, your metaphysics out of this discussion because it just botches up the works. The fact is, agent causation is an acceptable scientific explanation for things because we understand that in the world of natural cause and effect, there are acting agents that make decisions about things. In fact, when you try to solve a murder, this is precisely what you are trying to determine. Who was the acting agent? Not what are the scientific laws that can account for the body being in this position at this particular time. You are not concerned with that. You are concerned with the guilt and the identity of an individual who made a choice to do an immoral act, a homicide in this case. And so you are trying to determine, even using scientific evidence much of the time, who was the agent who acted.

Now that same mentality can be applied to a lot of scientific examples. For example, we have this thing called a seismograph, right? It's a little needle on a piece of paper that gets drawn across this needle that wobbles back and forth according to the vibrations of the earth and it makes a little squiggle, right? And by looking at this squiggle you can determine the force of an earthquake or what kind of seismic activity is going on. These are blind natural forces being recorded by this stylus on a seismograph.

What would happen, though, if you were looking at the etchings of the stylus on the seismograph and you saw these wobbly, side-to-side movements with an unbroken line of ink, and you saw someone's signature written in there and then it continued on with these wobbles. What would you conclude? Would you conclude that this was some really wacky earthquake? Of course not. You would see the unmistakable signs of agent causation and you would rightly conclude that someone got in there and made a conscious, intelligent choice to move the stylus and make the form a signature. In other words, you don't explain that even on a scientific instrument by naturalistic causes. You explain it by agent causation.

Now to give you an illustration about how the game is fixed by the courts and by the educational system and by the scientific community, I have suggested what I have called the Oreo Experiment. You go to your chemistry teacher and ask if he is able to look at a solution and describe, based on his scientific testing, what is in the solution and how the solution, the precipitant, came to be. The precipitate is the heavy stuff that falls out, precipitates in the solution. In a beaker, for example. It seems that someone who is well-versed in the area of chemistry and well-versed in the area of physics can look and measure and test and describe what happened in a simple kind of thing.

Your chemist teacher takes the challenge and you say, "Okay, I'm going to put out a beaker full of stuff. There you see it, and now I'm covering it. Tomorrow we'll uncover it and you'll see something that has precipitated. Then it is your job to figure out how that happened." Sure. Fair enough. I know science. I know the laws of chemistry. We'll do it.

However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word "Oreo" on it. And you say, "Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there." And he says, "Wait a minute, it's obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don't just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there." And then you say, "Foul. You've broken the rules. You've inferred an outside agent here. You're not being scientific. It's your job to be a scientist. This is a chemistry lab. Let's stick with science. You are obliged to come up with some kind of explanation limited to the laws of chemistry and physics and time plus chance to explain how that Oreo cookie got there in the last twelve hours." Now, he would be hard pressed to do so. Why? Because it was put there. You know it was. The evidence indicates it was. There was an agent that caused that, but the rules have restricted him from concluding what it obvious in the circumstances.

Now I think it's possible that the rules like that can be so hammered into one that what is obvious to a casual onlooker will not be obvious to the person who is convinced of the rules. Who will deny agent causation even when it is staring him in the face?

This is the argument of Phillip Johnson in Darwin on Trial. He says the cards have been stacked against those who would hold some form of agent causation when it comes to the issue of origins, because when you infer agent causation naturally from the evidence, they say, wait a minute you mean agent as in God? You can't talk about God here. You've broken the rules. So you might legitimately ask, well, wait a minute. What if God did it? Isn't the most important concern that we figure out what actually happened and not necessarily keeping an arbitrarily restricted set of rules? The rules are helpful in certain measure. I would suggest that you could even apply the rules consistently when it comes to historical sciences and agent causation, they allow for this kind of thing. But because the suggestion or the inference is that God might be involved, God is out of the picture, He's not a player in this discussion. Therefore, any of your conclusions which integrate that--even if they're justified by the evidence--are out of bounds and are ruled inappropriate.

The court has said so, and who could ever argue with a decision of the Supreme Court?


Stand to Reason - www.str.org

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[Soundsurfr]

[QUOTE=STR Ambassador]Oreos & Origins by Greg Koukl

Now, that is functionally true right now, but my point is that that is an arbitrary distinction.

I disagree. The distinction has to do with what is empirically discernable and what is not.

It implies that the only thing truthful that can be known is known through empirical studies.

No it doesn't. It's interpreted that way, but that is not what is intended to be implied.

The fact is, agent causation is an acceptable scientific explanation for things because we understand that in the world of natural cause and effect, there are acting agents that make decisions about things.

Indeed. In the natural world there are. We know this because we observe not only the effects, but the agents themselves. I think this is where your argument breaks down.

In fact, when you try to solve a murder, this is precisely what you are trying to determine. Who was the acting agent?

Correct. And you could hypothesize that it was a human being who did it, or a supernatural being. One hypothesis would be scientific, as it is based on prior observations about how murders tend to occur. The other would not be. Do I need to point out which is which?

Not what are the scientific laws that can account for the body being in this position at this particular time. You are not concerned with that.

The forensic scientist is most definitely concerned with that.

You are concerned with the guilt and the identity of an individual who made a choice to do an immoral act, a homicide in this case.

The court is concerned with that.

Now that same mentality can be applied to a lot of scientific examples. For example, we have this thing called a seismograph, right? It's a little needle on a piece of paper that gets drawn across this needle that wobbles back and forth according to the vibrations of the earth and it makes a little squiggle, right? And by looking at this squiggle you can determine the force of an earthquake or what kind of seismic activity is going on. These are blind natural forces being recorded by this stylus on a seismograph.
What would happen, though, if you were looking at the etchings of the stylus on the seismograph and you saw these wobbly, side-to-side movements with an unbroken line of ink, and you saw someone's signature written in there and then it continued on with these wobbles. What would you conclude?

Not enough data to reach a conclusion. I would hypothesize, however, that someone (not a supernatural being) was messing with the machine.

Would you conclude that this was some really wacky earthquake? Of course not. You would see the unmistakable signs of agent causation and you would rightly conclude that someone got in there and made a conscious, intelligent choice to move the stylus and make the form a signature. In other words, you don't explain that even on a scientific instrument by naturalistic causes. You explain it by agent causation.

We understand what human "agent causation" looks like because we observe it. And observing a signature, we would not be remiss to assume human agent causation - it's consistent with what we observe on a daily basis. How do we know what "supernatural agent causation" looks like? When should we assume it, and when shouldn't we?

Now to give you an illustration about how the game is fixed by the courts and by the educational system and by the scientific community, I have suggested what I have called the Oreo Experiment. You go to your chemistry teacher and ask if he is able to look at a solution and describe, based on his scientific testing, what is in the solution and how the solution, the precipitant, came to be. The precipitate is the heavy stuff that falls out, precipitates in the solution. In a beaker, for example. It seems that someone who is well-versed in the area of chemistry and well-versed in the area of physics can look and measure and test and describe what happened in a simple kind of thing.
Your chemist teacher takes the challenge and you say, "Okay, I'm going to put out a beaker full of stuff. There you see it, and now I'm covering it. Tomorrow we'll uncover it and you'll see something that has precipitated. Then it is your job to figure out how that happened." Sure. Fair enough. I know science. I know the laws of chemistry. We'll do it.
However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word "Oreo" on it. And you say, "Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there." And he says, "Wait a minute, it's obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don't just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there." And then you say, "Foul. You've broken the rules. You've inferred an outside agent here. You're not being scientific.

You either know very little about science, or very little about logic, or both. One can (and must) infer an "outside agent" if the "outside agent" is a natural occurence that would be a best-fit explanation of the (natural) phenomenon. Your silly example would only be relevant if the scientist assumed the Oreo got there by supernatural means.

This is the argument of Phillip Johnson in Darwin on Trial.

It is the drastically flawed argument of Philip Johnson in Darwin on Trial.

He says the cards have been stacked against those who would hold some form of agent causation when it comes to the issue of origins, because when you infer agent causation naturally from the evidence, they say, wait a minute you mean agent as in God? You can't talk about God here. You've broken the rules. So you might legitimately ask, well, wait a minute. What if God did it?

Then someone else might legitimately ask - What do you mean by "God"?

What would be the answer to that?

Isn't the most important concern that we figure out what actually happened and not necessarily keeping an arbitrarily restricted set of rules?

Absolutely. Which is why we keep arbitrary supernatural explanations out of our scientific study.

[HRG_new]

<snip>

However, just before the chemist comes into the room the next morning to begin his experiments to look and observe the precipitate and begin to measure it to solve the problem, you lift the cover on the beaker and drop in an Oreo cookie. He walks in, you remove the cover to the beaker, and there is this discolored solution, but clearly visible is this rapidly decaying Oreo cookie. Very obvious. You can still see the word "Oreo" on it. And you say, "Okay, now using the laws of physics and chemistry, explain to me how that Oreo cookie got there."

Easy. It dropped, according to the laws of chemistry and physics/gravity - it followed a geodesic in the gravitational field of the Earth. How did it get to a point where it would drop? Because, according to the laws of biochemistry, molecular biology and physics, actin fibres slid against myosin ones. Why did they slide ? Because, according to the laws of biochemistry, molecular biology and physics, acetylcholin permeated the end plate ofthe fibres. Why acetylcholin ? Because of motoric nerve impulses. Etc.

Of course, scientific explanations are not restricted to the "laws of chemistry and physics"; and there is no actual boundary between chemistry and physics, nor between biochemistry and molecular biology.

IOW, the presence of the Oreo is explained via a chain of purely natural - and mostly well-understood mechanisms.

The enormous gap which separates this explanation from the "mere design"-explanation (some unspecified intelligent entity, using unspecified and unlimited powers and for unspecified and inscrutable motivations, did it) should be obvious to any unbiased reader.

And he says, "Wait a minute, it's obvious that someone put it there because Oreo cookies don't just manufacture themselves out of nowhere in the middle of a beaker. You are playing a trick on me. Someone dropped it in there." And then you say, "Foul. You've broken the rules. You've inferred an outside agent here. You're not being scientific. It's your job to be a scientist. This is a chemistry lab. Let's stick with science. You are obliged to come up with some kind of explanation limited to the laws of chemistry and physics and time plus chance to explain how that Oreo cookie got there in the last twelve hours."

Now, he would be hard pressed to do so. Why?

Perhaps because you limited him to a subset of scientific explanations ? That would be like requiring to explain a chemical reaction on the basis of the laws of acoustics.

Because it was put there. You know it was. The evidence indicates it was. There was an agent that caused that, but the rules have restricted him from concluding what it obvious in the circumstances.

What "agent causation" ? I only see a perfectly natural sequence of natural causations, according to the processes/mechanisms of biology, chemistry and physics. That these processes were not understood in the times of Aristoteles and Thomas Aquinas should not deter us from using our current understanding.

(I use "processes/mechanisms" instead of "laws", because the latter induce a false impression of determinism. That's why the term has been quietly buried in physics some 100 years ago).

Now if you had telekinetically manufactured your cookie from flour, chocolate and eggs (and what else is needed) and deposited it in the beaker by the same telekinetic powers - that would be agent causation. And it is this kind of causation which is invoked by the ID crowd as explanation - without saying so explicitly, of course.

[lee_merrill]

Hi everyone,

And you could hypothesize that it was a human being who did it, or a supernatural being. One hypothesis would be scientific, as it is based on prior observations about how murders tend to occur. The other would not be.

There being no observations of what could be considered supernatural? Such as fulfilled (and falsifiable!) prophecy, for example, Babylon will never be rebuilt or reinhabited (Isa. 13:19-20, Jer. 25:12, Jer. 51:26). You can solve the Gordian knot here by rebuilding this city! If the attempt fails (as Saddam's did), where he could well have succeeded, if Alexander's attempt failed as well, I think we have some evidence for supernatural causation. Answers to prayer, such as being healed, also fit in this category.

And why do they look for signals in SETI research? Isn't that close to what you are objecting to, an agent caused this signal, yet we have no prior observations of such agents?

We understand what human "agent causation" looks like because we observe it.

And there are examples of observing what God does, too! Such as a book with the stamp on it of fulfilled prophecy:

Edom will never be rebuilt or reinhabited (Isa. 34:9-10, Jer. 49:18).

The Edomites would disappear as a nation (Oba. 1:18).

The Caananites would disappear, most notably the nation of the Philistines, which lasted the longest (Ex. 15:15, Isa. 14:31, Amos 1:8, Zeph. 2:5).

There will always be Jewish people (Jer. 31:35-37; 33:24-26).

There will be Egyptian and Assyrian people up until the fulfillment of Isa. 19:16-25.

Egypt will never again rule the other nations (Eze. 29:14-15).

If we accept this signature as authentic, then this book tells us quite a lot of about God's methods and his ways, and we can match them up with our observations.

Then someone else might legitimately ask - What do you mean by "God"?

See the previous comment!

What "agent causation" ? I only see a perfectly natural sequence of natural causations, according to the processes/mechanisms of biology, chemistry and physics.

Then I wonder why you ascribe meaning to your (or my!) post, if all anyone says is the inevitable output from some very complex chemical/biological machine. Would you listen to a reporter whose words, you knew, were all being dictated by an unknown source, with unknown objectives? The source might not even have any objectives at all...

Blessings,
Lee