[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
Does the Pandas Thumb refute intelligent design? I'm Casey Luskin with the future, and today we have on the show with us Dr. Stephen Dilley. He is academic Mentoring Center's coordinator and senior fellow at Discovery Institute, and he holds a PhD in philosophy from Arizona State University. He was also a professor of philosophy at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas for 14 years. So, Steve, thank you so much for joining us again on the show today.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, great to be back, Casey.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: So Steve, last year you published, this was 2023. You published a peer reviewed paper in the journal Religions titled God Gould and the Pandas Thumb, where you critique the famous arguments from the Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould that the panda's thumb, sometimes called a pseudo thumb, is a poorly designed structure that refutes design and points to evolution. And the pandas thumb argument, of course, is an example of what we call dysteliology, the idea that there are certain features of nature that cannot be explained by design, and therefore blind material causes are the only way to explain them. And we've encountered and faced these kinds of dysteliological arguments numerous times over the years. In fact, I find it interesting, Steve, that one of the most popular anti ID blogs out there decided to name itself the pandas thumb. And I think this reflects the fact that many ID critics think that what they believe are quote unquote, poorly designed features like the pandas thumb somehow refute intelligent design. But in your paper, you tackle the argument from Gould that the pandas thumb was poorly designed, and you really dissect it on philosophical, theological, and even scientific levels. It's a very nice paper. We'll link to it from the podcast description here. But first, let's start off by asking, who was Stephen J. Gould? Why is he such an important guy to talk about? Can you give us some background on Stephen J. Gould?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Gould was a scientist and a historian of science at Harvard, and in many ways larger than life.
He passed away Young, 2002, at age 60. But prior to that, he had published nearly 500 peer reviewed papers, two dozen books, 300 essay, of course, many book reviews. He was an excellent writer, and of course had won numerous awards, MacArthur fellowships, the Darwin Wallace Medal, the Lena Society.
In fact, in 2000, a couple of years before his death, he was even deemed by the US Library of Congress living legend.
Not an accolade that many of us achieve.
He was also quite a personality, not just in his accomplishments, but a weighty figure, one Myrna Perez Sheldon, who wrote her dissertation about ghoul at Harvard. He did her PhD in history of science at Harvard on Ghoul. The perfect place to do it. She once commented that in looking over some of Gould's archives that he would write notes, he'd write marginalia in the margins of 17th century manuscripts.
Which tells you a little bit about his personality. Quite a figure. Quite a figure.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: He is a great writer. Having read a number of his books and papers I found his work really helpful for understanding evolution and explaining the ideas. One little random side note, my family, when I was younger, we would watch, this is back in the 90s, watch Stephen J. Gould on TV giving some talk about evolution. And we would joke that my dad, if you were to basically maybe put about 30 or 40 pounds on him, would be the spitting image of Stephen J. Gould. I think we're all from the same sort of ashkenazi jewish genetic stock. And I'm not trying to put myself in Gould's category. It's just kind of funny. We used to joke about this when I was a kid as a family watching Gould. But anyway, Gould wrote a book titled the Pan is Thumb. And I believe it's based upon an essay he wrote of the same title. So what is the pan is thumb argument and why is it so interesting and important in the lore of evolution versus intelligent design?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah, as you nicely said, Casey.
It's a beautiful illustration of a broader class of arguments, broader class of arguments that are framed around the idea that poor designs or bad designs or flawed designs or designs of that sort are what we would expect, or at least they're more expected on an evolutionary view, on a nature red tooth and claw kind of view than are what we would expect on a divine design kind of view or an intelligent design kind of view in which one would expect better designs, higher levels of functionality and so forth. So the pandas thumb nicely captures in a sense a whole category of arguments. And Gould certainly he championed it from his early, right, 1978 all the way till his magnum opus the structure of evolutionary theory in 2002. So consistently really raised this. In fact he thought this was his favorite argument for evolution based on a single structure. This was it, the pandas thumb. And as you noted, it's been widely cited, Richard Dawkins and so on. So it loomed large in Gould's mind and writings and certainly been influential elsewhere. And it's a marker or an iconic instance of a broader class of arguments.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: So it sounds like ghoul took this argument pretty seriously. Could you maybe elaborate on how important was this argument? And who else has taken this argument seriously and how big a deal is.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: It's been. It's been widely cited. And you mentioned Panda's thumb website in the literature. It comes up over and over, in fact. So it's a particular type of argument, and it's a particular type of argument that contains what seems to be a theology laden premise, namely something along the lines that if God existed, he wouldn't have made or allowed a suboptimal pandas thumb. So there's a theological premise there that God wouldn't do something like that or wouldn't allow something like that. And fascinatingly enough, that kind of argument, whether it's about poor design or common ancestry, the idea of what God would or wouldn't do comes up a lot in the defense of evolutionary theory. We see this right in the origin, we see it in the present day.
And I can say a word more about that, too. But the panda's thumb is a nice example of that broader class, not just of dysteological arguments, but broader arguments for evolutionary theory that invoke theology of one kind or another. It's quite interesting.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, are there other theology laden arguments for evolution that people take very seriously?
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah, there really are. And some really good scholarship has been done by Cornelius Hunter and Paul Nelson. I've written a bit on this, too. And just briefly, what we find over and over in these theology laden arguments for evolution are five characteristics. Number one, the theological claim in question is indispensable. It could be that God wouldn't create or allow something suboptimal. It could be that God would create species de novo, not from a common design fill in the blank. But they have the characteristics where the theology in question is indispensable. If you remove the theology, you'll lose the argument. Number two, over and over, these are positive arguments for evolution. They're not just critiques of design or of theism or of special creation. They're actually part of the positive case why we should accept evolution.
Number three, the theology contained in these arguments is sectarian. It's not based on, say, what special creationists say that God would do or what young earth creationists are fill in the blank. It usually is a preference or a commitment on the part of the evolutionists making the argument for a sectarian, maybe not idiosyncratic, but sectarian view of what God would or wouldn't do. It's fascinating. They bring their own theology to bear.
Fourth, these arguments, they appear in textbooks, they appear in encyclopedias, they appear in context in which the writer purports to just sort of give this straightforward scientific evidence for evolution.
For example, a couple of years ago a colleague and I did a study of 32 textbooks, biology textbooks, evolution textbooks, including the top twelve. And we found that 80% of them use theology in their case for evolution in some problematic or questionable way.
And of these many uses of theology in the positive case revolution, Casey, you can bet how many of them justified their sectarian theology.
About as many as you would expect. Unfortunately.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: It's just amazing. And I've also done reviews of textbooks and found how frequently they will use dysteliological arguments that involve theology. It's really quite striking. So I guess there are two key elements in Gould's arguments. There's the empirical claim that the panda's thumb is suboptimal sort know treating it as if this is an objective scientific question. And then there's the theological claim that God wouldn't create or allow that kind of a structure, that kind of a thumb to exist. What do you make of the empirical claim of Gould? Is it true that scientifically, empirically speaking, that this is a suboptimal feature?
[00:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. And in many ways the correct very first question to ask the two most detailed studies that have been done on the pandas thumb on living pandas were by. The first was in 1985, published in 1985, led by George Schaller, they published the results in a book, the Giant Pandas of Wulong. And then the second was published in 1999 by a team of japanese scientists. And both found not simply that the thumb is not suboptimal, they found quite the opposite. They talked in laudatory terms about the thumb. So Shahler's team said, for example, pandas, quote, efficiently bring food to the mouth with their forepaws. Notice the emphasis on that. They efficiently did so. They also said, quote, they handle bamboo stems with great precision, end quote. The japanese team said the pandas, using their thumb, quote, manipulate objects with great dexterity, end quote. And in fact, this japanese team, which has given the most sophisticated analysis of them, called the thumb, quote, one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems, quote unquote, in the mammalian world.
So now think about Gould's framing for a moment. His framing is lousy. Design indicates evolution by blind processes, whereas ideal designs are what we would expect of a creator. That's why he thinks his suboptimal thumb favors evolutionary theory over divine design. But if it turns out that the best analyses say it has great dexterity, precision, efficiency, indeed, it's extraordinary, then in a really funny way, one could put together a case that the pandas thumb, this radial sesame, is in fact a strong argument for design, for intelligence design. It's quite interesting.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a heads you win, tails I lose kind of situation.
But, yeah, if it's true that the poor design of the pandas thumb points for evolution, then why shouldn't good design point towards intelligent design? Okay, well, I think it's very interesting, though. You've cited some very compelling sources there that have not argued. When they actually look at this without, I would say, an evolutionary agenda, they are saying, look, this is a well designed structure that works very well. What about the theological claim by Gould that the pandas thumb is poorly designed and God wouldn't have done it that way? No sensible God would make this. What are his theological claims and what do you make of.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: You know, the claim revolves around the deeper question of what God would or wouldn't do. And presumably ultimately there's a right and wrong answer to that claim for a given person. Of course, answering that claim depends on their background beliefs, his or her background beliefs about what they think God would or wouldn't do, or who they think God is, or even if one can even reason about God at all in this kind of context. So I think the more proximate question is who's rationally obligated to accept this claim that were God to exist, he would not have designed a suboptimal thumb. Supposing for a moment that the pandas thumb is suboptimal. Well, it turns out that there are many people directly involved in the discussion of biological origins who would not be obligated to accept that claim. In other words, they wouldn't be obligated to say, yeah, if God existed, he definitely wouldn't create or wouldn't allow a suboptimal thumb. So take, for example, a couple of key works in the young earth creationist camp. The Genesis flood by Whitcomb and Morris in 1961, and then the earth's catastrophic past two volumes. Quite a comprehensive work published much more recently by Andrew Snelling. Both of those young earth creationist texts are really clear in their read of Genesis that we would expect because of the fall, we would expect decay. We would expect nature not to work as well as it was originally designed. We would expect some inefficiencies and poor designs. Now, I'm not claiming that their views are right or wrong. I'm just saying on their own view, they would not be obligated to accept that God would never allow a suboptimal phone. In fact, their models actually predict a notable level of suboptimality in the created world.
If we switch gears and think about design theory generally. Design theory, of course, generally predicts good design, but it also allows some level of devolution.
Think of a paper that Scott Minnick and Steve Meyer published years ago on the bacteria flagellum, in which they analyzed a type three secretory system and posited that it could be a devolution of an originally well designed bacteria flagellar motor. So ID certainly allows for some degree of suboptimality.
And in fact, if one even looks at, say, the 19th century grades, ogasy, of course, who. His views are venerable on some things and repugnant on other things. But if you look at his perhaps most theoretic publication is essay on classification, published near the time of the origin. Augusty is really clear that he rejects optimality.
He thinks that some things are clearly suboptimal, and that was intentional.
He's quite clear about that. He has a kind of more of a structuralist view of design that thinks that some adaptations are not, in fact, well adapted at all. Or even, if you look even farther back, at Paley's natural theology, Paley, although he thinks that suboptimality should be rare, on his view, extremely rare. Nonetheless, he also allows it. So, again, this is not to take too many shots here at Gould, but it is to say, if one's going to claim that God definitely wouldn't create or wouldn't allow something suboptimal, so much of answering this question depends on what else you believe about the divine. And even some of the key parties involved in the discussion have resources at their disposal to accept some degree of suboptimality.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: So, basically, Steve, you would argue that suboptimality is not necessarily a refutation of design. And I'm also thinking, know, when I talk to my friends in the engineering research group, engineers would say that engineers and designers have to often optimize a structure they're building at some piece of technology for certain design constraints, but that may come at the cost of other design constraints. And so the very universe that we live in, you can't always optimize for everything. You can't always have everything at sort of the peak performance you'd like it to be. And so there are essentially your trade offs. And so just because something is not optimal in one way, there might be a reason for that. It might be a trade off to allow optimality in another way. There's the other claim you raised, which I think is a very good one, that structures have very complex histories and something could be the result of both design and natural processes. I often use this very just simplistic example. If I took my laptop and put it on the top of Mount Everest, it's going to stop working. Of course my laptop doesn't work half the time anyway and it's just sitting in my office. But if I were to put it out there and subject it to the elements of the natural world, it would stop working over time. Does that mean it wasn't originally designed? No, it just means that it has a complex history that reflects both design and material processes. And so you raise some really good points here that design structures don't necessarily suboptimality in some sense does not necessarily refute design. But okay, here's an objection that somebody might make to your thesis that Gould was really talking about all this not to refute design but to critique adaptationism. The idea that everything in biology has been perfected by selection for some purpose. And he was really attacking adaptationism rather than special creation. How would you respond to that argument that this really isn't about design or special creation, this is about adaptationism?
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah, Gould definitely. He held a vision of evolution that emphasized contingency and rather than the finely sculpting hand of natural selection with its ability to adapt features so well to their environment. Famously he said if you rewound the tape of life you would come up with more than likely different outcomes. I tend to think that good writers, good thinkers like Gould, can have more than one target.
And I do think adaptationism was in his sights. It's well known that he was no fan of it and that he raised deep criticisms of it. But what's fascinating is Gould's view of adaptationism has a conceptual link that's similar to his view of special creation. He thought both of them would tend to make creatures or organs that were well fit for their environments. More so in the case of divine design, obviously. But he viewed natural selection as a substitute for the designer using that kind of finely sculpting selective ability, I guess you could say. So when he's raising points like the panda's thumb and suboptimality, he's raising those, I think, both against adaptationism and against special creation because he thinks on both of those views they would tend to favor and produce ideal designs. Whereas on his understanding of evolution with a higher degree of contingency, chance evolution is just clumsier. Process.
And so I think there's good contextual evidence that he's really attacking both at the same time, which includes, of course, attacking divine design. That's part of the package.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: That sounds very reasonable. So could the pandas thumb argument be a problem for advocates of evolution?
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I think in three ways. One is what we've touched on. If in fact the very best studies commend the thumb for its efficiency, its dexterity, its precision, they use words like extraordinary. Then if we accept Gould's framing, that really fine designs point to a divine designer, then by his own framing, the panda's thumb would pose a problem. But there are two other ways in which it might pose a problem. The first is because the panda's thumb argument contains a theology laden premise. God wouldn't create or allow a suboptimal thumb. The first problem is that anybody, they're an evolutionist, maybe one who's agnostic or atheist or whomever. But any evolutionist who accepts compartmentalism or complementarity or methodological naturalism, those are views that in a sense, say, within science proper, we appeal to only natural causes, natural explanations, naturalistic propositions. We don't appeal to any God talk at all. We don't allow theological propositions in the, quote, scientific conversation. If somebody accepts any of those three positions, then they can't also say that the pandas thumb argument is a good scientific argument for evolutionary theory because they think theology doesn't belong in science proper. Well, it turns out that some of the folks who think the pandas thumb argument is a good scientific theory also adopt compartmentalism. That's what Google did. Noma or complementarity or methodological naturalism. So they face a strong binary. They have to choose there. And insofar as they're committed to Noma or something like it, then the pandas thumb argument would have to be adjusted.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: So basically science and religion don't interact, except for when science is refuting religion.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Is that kind of the idea? Yeah. Yeah, I think you used the phrase earlier, heads I win, tails you lose.
That's nicely put. Yeah, Casey. And then the final area, I think, is if you take some versions of evolution seriously, such as Gould had, in which human beings came about by a process that did not plan them, that did not have them in mind. On that view, it might be very surprising that human beings could reliably do theology, that we could know what, on this view an imaginary being would have done in particular slices of organic history.
We'd be doing a lot of subjunctive reasoning, were this God to exist, what he would have done in certain cases, for whatever purposes this being would have had in mind on Gould's own view, or the view that human beings were not designed by God in order to know God, in order to do theology, it might be surprising on Gould's view that we could justify certain theological claims about what God would or wouldn't do on an evolutionary view. So insofar as the pandas argument depends on claims about God, but insofar as a materialistic version of evolution raises skepticism that we could justify, under a materialist view that we could reliably know what an invented deity would or would not do, then the pandas thumb argument, at least in one sense, it ends up cutting off the very branch that's sitting on it. It ends up being forming a basis for a worldview that ends up pulling the carpet out from under it. And in that sense, it may be a problem for some evolutionary theory, evolutionary theorists.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So, Steve, any final comments about your very interesting paper again, that you published in 2023 in the Journal of Religions titled God, Gould and the Pandas Thumb?
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Just to one, Gould is he's a great writer. In some ways. I can't commend his essays enough. Fascinating. He had this infectious intellectual curiosity, and they're still so many ways evergreen. And second, I do think it's notable that theology laden arguments of which the pandas argument is an example, are they're out there and they're influential, and I think they're more influential and pervasive than one might expect. And I think the scholarship of Cornelius Hunter and Paul Nelson and others really is increasingly apropos to assessing these types of arguments.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Yes, as you and others have shown, including Cornelius Hunter, Paul Nelson and you, these kinds of theological arguments for evolution or against design, they're very common, and in fact, they even go back to Darwin. Darwin himself used these kinds of arguments quite a bit. He kind of set off the whole field of evolutionary biology on a tradition and a trajectory to use theology, and it continues to this very day. So, Steve Dilley, thank you very much for your time on the podcast today, discussing the his thumb and why it's not a very good argument against intelligent design. I'm Casey Luskin with idthefuture. Thanks for listening.
Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
