Intelligent Design Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology: A Comparison of Rival Paradigms:

The purpose of this article is to flesh out some details of the ideas at the core of the Intelligent Design movement as they apply to the field of psychology and to compare intelligent design psychology (IDP), specifically, a Christian version of IDP ([IDP.sub.C]), with its chief rival, evolutionary psychology (EP), specifically, a naturalistic version of EP ([EP.sub.N]). After providing some preliminary remarks about scientific research programs and scientific theory assessment, I shall will sketch out some of the details of [IDP.sub.C] and contrast it with [EP.sub.N]. Along the way, I will draw out various explanatory or predictive issues relevant to comparing the two, and provide an occasional critique of [EP.sub.N]. William Dembski has reminded us that the Intelligent Design movement has a four-pronged approach for defeating naturalism: (1) A scientific/philosophical critique of naturalism; (2) A positive scientific research program (i.e., intelligent design) for investigating the effects of intelligent causes; (3) rethinking every field of inquiry infected by naturalism and reconceptualizing it in terms of design; (4) development of a theology of nature by relating the intelligence inferred by intelligent design to the God of Scripture. (Dembski, 1998, pp. 28-29). The purpose of this article is to flesh out some details of the approach as it applies to the field of psychology and to compare intelligent design psychology (IDP), specifically, a Christian version of IDP ([IDP.sub.C]), with its chief rival, evolutionary psychology (EP), specifically, a naturalistic version of EP ([EP.sub.N]). After providing some preliminary remarks about scientific research programs and scientific theory assessment, I will sketch out some of the details of [IDP.sub.C] and contrast it with [EP.sub.N]. Along the way, I will draw out various explanatory or predictive issues relevant to comparing the two, and provide an occasional critique of [EP.sub.N]. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ABOUT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PROGRAMS AND THEORY ASSESSMENT Generally speaking, a scientific research program is a family of scientific theories existing through time that in one way or another are united in such ways that include: sharing a common domain of phenomena to be explained, a common metaphysical picture of what causes empirical phenomena, or a common form of scientific explanation deemed to be acceptable (Moreland, 1989, chapter 6; Laudan, 1977, chapter 3). For example, a commitment to atomism as opposed to field theory may be taken to illustrate a research program. So understood, two important things follow. First, a research program should be specified by a particular incarnation to be descriptively accurate, empirically testable and explanatorily powerful. For example, atomism has been specified by various models throughout its history (e.g., inert Newtonian corpuscularianism, dynamic corpuscularianism, the Thomsom atom, the Bohr atom). Second, research programs are generally harder to falsify than a particular theory that specifies it because if the specific theory is falsified, it does not follow that the research program is thereby falsified. It may well be that an alternative specification should be formulated. By way of application, ID is properly understood as a research program with various ways of specifying it. In this article, I will provide a characterization of one version of a Christian specification of ID. Applied to psychology, I will call this theory [IDP.sub.c]. While I think that [IDP.sub.c] is actually true, the reader should keep in mind that there are alternative formulations of IDP besides [IDP.sub.c]. Similarly, I will compare [IDP.sub.c] with a naturalistic version of EP, viz., [EP.sub.N]. It is beyond the scope of my purpose to address attempts to develop complementary, theistic evolutionary approaches to psychology, though I have raised certain difficulties for this project elsewhere (Moreland & Rae, 2000). …