1

The question concerning 'Creationism' vs 'Evolution' is often distorted by the type of macroscopic postulations made by Dawkins in the quote. These are often the wild speculation of macro-evolution which does not rest on the firm foundation of microevolution, which has been tested and validated in the laboratory. Creationists or 'Intelligent Design' Neo-Creationists want to tear down the whole of evolution science not on the grounds that these speculations are too far reaching, but because they fundamentally dispute the bulk of scientific research and the conclusions about our physical world that can be drawn from them.

As a scientist, I see no conflict between G-d and science. I will dispute the nonsense of the 'Young Earth' crowd tooth and nail, but I don't view our world as meaningless because we might be the result of random fluctuations of molecules. If you understand science, you understand the beauty and complexity in this world, and how magnificent the physical laws of nature and their manifestations are. We are not pushing materialism, we are advancing critical thinking and anaylsis. Who am I to claim to know the power and intelligence of G-d, and to say that his hand is not in what I observe? Perhaps G-d in his insight and wisdom realized that at the time the Bible was given to humans that they were not ready to understand quantum physics and evolution and so he did not couch his explanation in that language. Who knows? But I think it is a terrible thing to push a side our G-d given ability to reason and analyze and dismiss the facts that are before us.

2

Joshua,

These are often the wild speculation of macro-evolution which does not rest on the firm foundation of microevolution, which has been tested and validated in the laboratory. Creationists or 'Intelligent Design' Neo-Creationists want to tear down the whole of evolution science not on the grounds that these speculations are too far reaching, but because they fundamentally dispute the bulk of scientific research and the conclusions about our physical world that can be drawn from them.

I don’t think that ID’ers dispute the bulk of scientific research. In fact, I think that – like you – they simply think that most macro-evolutionary claims are “wild speculation.” They may be wrong about “design” being detectable but it is certainly an issue that shouldn’t be dismissed based on an a priori bias, as some members of the scientific community would do.

My point, though, wasn't really whether ID'ers are right or whether they are wrong. It was merely to point out the absurdity of claiming that they do not fit in the tradition of the Enlightment.

3

In response to my own post I add this prediction: my main point will be ignored and this thread will eventually degenerate into the typical bashing of ID theory.

I would be pleasantly surprised if I were proved wrong. But I won't be holding my breath.

4

My concern is that ID is Creationism dressed up in the language of science and it is being used as an incremental step on the way to the teaching of Creationism. The main 'think tank' of the ID movement, the Discovery Institute, derives most of its funding from the hardcore "Christian Reconstructionist" Movement. In particular the Maclellan Foundation, who gives only to groups that work to "subdue the institutions of man to the authority of Jesus Christ," as it says on its Web site. In that way it is intellectually dishonest and does not fit into the Enlightenment.

5

"The fact that a theory that can explain everything ends up explaining nothing seems to have eluded this "bright" Brit."

I wrote about this phenomenon recently. I do not think it is devestating to evolutionary theory, though. Del Ratzsch points out in his book "Nature, Design, and Science" that overly flexible theories like this are allowed in science as long as they are at a high enough hierarchy of science. Newtonian physics does the same thing - if a planet has 4 moons, Newtonian physics could explain it just as easily as if it had 5 or 6 or 7. Ratzsch says that this is because "the core structures of evolutionary theory and Newtonian physics operate far enough up their respective heirarchies that demands that htose core components have direct ties to the empirical are inappropriate. That is not their role. Their function is to define general boundaries (metaphysical, ontological, epistemological) within which specific explanations are to take shape."

BTW, Ratzsch writes this in the context of defending ID from the same charge (that ID'ers can say "God did it" no matter what actually does occur).

6

I happened to attend the national ID symposium in Albuquerque a few months ago. The talks were very much hard science (some of them over my head, even).

One was by an alumni of my school (John Bracht). This will probably bore everyone to the grave, but for those of who are interested, this is my best recollection of his talk on sliding polymerase clamps:

Sliding polymerase clamps are used by DNA polymerase during replication, they are loaded onto the DNA by a clamp loader and can move along the strand (hence the name). The shapes for both Beta (prokaryotes) and PCNA (eukaryotes) are so similar they are superimposable. Beta is a dimer and PCNA is a trimer, but there are three globular domains corresponding to each Beta monomer and two to each PCNA monomer, so you have six regions either way.

Bracht was interested in genetic analysis of the development of the sliding clamps. He showed that they were extremely similar with regard to eukaryotes with respect to each other and likewise of prokaryotes (slightly more divergent). In fact, within individual families it is not even possible to distinguish the variation. However, there remains the rather large difference of the Beta being a dimer and the PCNA a trimer. In order to get from one to another you have to move against selective pressure, which means selective pressure is low. There is a certain cut off point below which it is not possible to move, because beyond this cutoff the sliding clamp is no longer functional and the organism cannot survive. However, selective pressure must also be very high to explain the tightness with which the sliding clamps are similar within their respective groupings. (The wording is getting kind of confusing, but I mean prokaryote sliding clamps are extremely similar to prokaryote sliding clamps, and eukaryote sliding clamps are extremely similar to eukaryote sliding clamps). I don't recollect all of the details, but the result is either the sliding clamps evolved at the exact same rate for a period of time, suddenly started rapidly evolving in different directions, and essentially stopped evolving; or they arose independently and have only been diverging very slowly. Well, the data is only compatible with the latter.

So, Bracht's conclusion for the talk was that the only sensible explanation of the data was that Beta and PCNA arose independently.

Anyone else who is interested in the real science behind ID would find a valuable resource here http://www.iscid.org/. Bracht was actually one of the founding members.

7

Where do I begin?

How about: yep, the "Designer" part of "Intelligent" "Design" not science- it's metaphysics.

It also appears, as I've seen before, the root of the problem is the pride and narcissism of the "creationist."

I'd also note, yet again, this whole subject is irrelevant:

1. The "Intelligent" "Design" premise- intelligence is contradicted by, uh, science.

2. This subject feeds not one hungry person, clothes not one naked person, nor reduces anyone's suffering. Instead, it is essentially an attack upon - gasp!- scientists, independent thought, and reason. It is, at its core, not driven by anything that I see as good.

Finally, I'd note that:

Because Richard Dawkins may be wrong about some things doesn't therefore mean all of evolutionary theory is wrong.

This post, to me, illustrates the grave moral condition the world finds itself if the religious right is not engaged, confronted, and defeated with loving kindness, wisdom, and generosity.

8

In response to my own post I add this prediction: my main point will be ignored and this thread will eventually degenerate into the typical bashing of ID theory.

I would be pleasantly surprised if I were proved wrong. But I won't be holding my breath.

Oh, so that was your point?

You quote Voltaire giving an argument from ignorance ("You don't know how this works, so there must be someone we have to worship who does"), and paint that as reason?

It ain't the best tradition of the Enlightenment, to use an argument from an authority that is an appeal to ignorance.

And, as I've said before, it feeds no one, it clothes no one, it reduces nobody's suffering.

9

Joshua :

My concern is that ID theory simply is not science, and it is, (the words "lie from the pit of hell" seem to come to mind) dishonest to claim otherwise.

William Dembski should know this- and indeed has never been able to show any scientific basis for claiming ID is a science.

The problem is akin to detection of a signal- you have to know what you are going to detect before you actually detect it.

The ID'ers want to claim they can detect something essentially supernatural - using natural observations.

The fact that what they would be claiming to detect is, by its supernatural nature inherrently ineffable relegates their business to metaphysics, not science.

10

The materialists, however, not only believe that our intellects are formed by a “crude, blind, insensible being” but think that to claim otherwise is contrary to “science.” The very idea is quite ludicrous but still believed by many intelligent people.

Joe I've mentioned to your before. Your terminology is garbled. Materialism was one side of an old, now defunct, debate. Materialsts believed that all living things were a result of substance/chemistry and functions therein. The opposing view was
Vitalism which proposed that living things were infused with a Vital ess`ence. Sort of like a soul I take it, but for all living things, bacteria, trees, etc. In Mary Shelly's Frankenstien the monster was brought to life by infusing dead matter with vitalism portrayed as a mysterious electrical like phemonena.
What most modern pseudoscience writers mean by 'materialsm' is actually called by most philosophers I've discussed IDC with 'physicalism'. Your terminology might work OK among the antiscience crowds or with people like myself who understand your objections. But if you're going to have a discussion with folks who do philosophy for a living outside of that venue, you might confuse them if you're not clear about what you mean. Just a heads up.

Many antiscience advocates also complain about something they call 'naturalism'. They think that science excludes supernatural possibilities or initial causes. Science does not exclude such a possibility and I'm sorry if we give the impression that it does. In fact there's a supernatural explanation called "Theistic Evolution" which is 100% fully backed by science. Theistic Evolution, or TE, is the idea that God used Evolution the same way He used Chemistry or Physics to work His Will.
Note-With theistic evolution we eliminate concerns about the process being 'blind' or driven by 'chance' and purely 'naturalistic'. Pffft! That objection is off the table never to return Joe! And at this point then the only question remaining is which supernatural explanation is most consistent with the evidence: Common descent via theistic evolution, or creation of each species or taxa separately?

Let's briefly compare a few broad categories of evidence side-by-side under both IDC, which rejects common descent, and theistic evolution (TE), which accepts common descent:

1. Why is the fossil record biostratified in such a way as to seemingly support common descent?

IDC- It's not, they're all wrong, or we don't know.
TE- God used common descent as a mechanism to work his will and we see that preserved in the history of life on earth.

2. Why are plants and animals arranged into familiar hierarchies which are consistent with the biostratification noted in q1?

IDC- God made them that way .... Because errm... we don't know. They're not!
TE- Because God used common descent to work his will and this is easily seen by the relationships between and among existing taxa and the fossil record.

3. Why is the genetic material in both nuclear and mtDNA consistent with the hierarchies and biostratification pointed out in q1 and q2 and why do these biota share functional and non functional sequences including ERV's, viral transposons, and repeats elements such as LINEs and SINEs, which are consistent with both the above?

IDC-Maybe common design for the functional sequences, on the non functional sequences...maybe there's a function we don't know about yet ... basically we don't know for sure. Prove they have no function!
TE-Because God used common descent and those sequences were passed down via heredity into lineage's which, when they speciated, retained them in some cases regardless if they were useful or not.

4. Why do we often find fossils showing transitional morphologies between two lineage's in the right place and time?

IDC-We don't ... err... there are no transitionals! Or...they're not good enough!
TE-Because God used common descent and some elements of that process have been preserved in the fossil record.

5. Why do we observe speciation on small scales within single human lifetimes, and why can we breed for vastly different morphological characteristics in plants and animals over just a few hundred generations?

IDC-No one has ever observed speciation, all we've observed is micro-evolution!

TE-Because God created the process of common descent just as he created chemistry and stellar nucleosynthesis. And so humans can, if they're clever, observe components of that during their lifetime, work it out, and can even harness elements of those processes to their own ends.

So you see Joe, Theistic Evolution explains those observations under a single unifying supernatural, non naturalistic, framework which provides testable predictions, while IDC alternately gives up, makes untestable claims, resorts to special pleading, or denies the observations even exist! All the while providing no testable non-evolutionary alternative.

Regardless of how attached one may be emotionally to the non-evolutionary theology, the evolutionary theology explains the observations and unites them under common descent point by point. Until a non evolutionary theology can do the same thing at least as well, we've no choice but to consider the evolutionary theology as more likely and certainly more useful in explaining the observed biodiversity.

Thus I submit that regardless if one would like to credit a supernatural designer or a teleology as the Architect of the natural world, from the creation of the universe through the history of life on earth, as far as biodiveristy theistic evolution makes far, far, more sense than IDC when it comes to explaining the evidence we find in the biological world. Furthermore, if what we think of as natural processes, chemistry or evolution or quantum mechanics, are designed from the get go to produce intended end results, as complex as humans or butterflys, over rivers of time, then I can't imagine a greater tribute to the Brilliance of such a Creator[s] than Theistic Evolution. Thus, there is no conflict between common descent and what you refer to as materialism for common descent could simply be the observable portion of supernatural theistic evolution. This removes the objections of 'chance' or 'blind insensible' events and replaces it with an Intelligent Creator.

11

Mumon,

1. The "Intelligent" "Design" premise- intelligence is contradicted by,
uh, science.

Really? So how does science manage to do without intelligence?

2. This subject feeds not one hungry person, clothes not one naked person, nor reduces anyone's suffering. Instead, it is essentially an attack upon - gasp!- scientists, independent thought, and reason. It is, at its core, not driven by anything that I see as good.

Non sequiter. Your response doesn’t do any of those things either. Can we dismiss it as irrelevant then?

Because Richard Dawkins may be wrong about some things doesn't therefore mean all of evolutionary theory is wrong.

No, it doesn’t. It just makes him a pseudo-mysticalist.

You quote Voltaire giving an argument from ignorance ("You don't know how this works, so there must be someone we have to worship who does"), and paint that as reason?

You seem to misunderstand the meaning of an argument from ignorance. The ignorantiam fallacy occurs when it's argued that something must be true simply because it hasn't been proven false. Voltaire is not claiming that it must be true because it has not been proven false. He is claiming that intelligence cannot come from non-intelligence.

My concern is that ID theory simply is not science, and it is, (the words "lie from the pit of hell" seem to come to mind) dishonest to claim otherwise.

So it is not science because…you say so?

The ID'ers want to claim they can detect something essentially supernatural - using natural observations.

ID doesn’t invoke the “supernatural” anymore than superstring theory does.

The fact that what they would be claiming to detect is, by its supernatural nature inherrently ineffable relegates their business to metaphysics, not science.

And do scientists not use reason when they apply the scientific method? If so they are relegating it to metaphysics since the mind is a metaphysical entity.

DS I'll get to your response later today.

12

In response to my own post I add this prediction: my main point will be ignored and this thread will eventually degenerate into the typical bashing of ID theory.

I'd guess that's because the interesting and important question about ID is whether it is a good explanation of the available data. In other words, is it correct?

Whether or not the "neocreationists" are the true heirs of the enlightenment may be useful as a rhetorical flourish during an argument, but it is essentially trivia. If they are wrong, it doesn't matter who they are the heirs of.

Personally, I find ID to be neither consistent with the evidence nor compatible with Christianity, so whether or not Voltaire might have admired it doesn't seem important.

13

In response to my own post I add this prediction: my main point will be ignored and this thread will eventually degenerate into the typical bashing of ID theory.

What is the Theory of Intelligent Design, Joe? Where has it been independently tested and verified? You mock scientists who want the study of science to stay out of the business of metaphysics and the supernatural in scientific pursuits, yet you (nor any other ID'er) ever show any cohesive theory that has been independently validated and verified. This would be akin to alchemists scoffing at the world of chemists because the chemists were trying too hard to stick to the observable interactions of chemical compounds.

14

Joe:

So how does science manage to do without intelligence?

It doesn't. See my reply to Joshua.

Non sequiter. Your response doesn’t do any of those things either. Can we dismiss it as irrelevant then?

By trying to bring your awareness back to these things, I am hoping that indeed my response helps feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc. So, no, I'd say it's relevant.

Voltaire is not claiming that it must be true because it has not been proven false. He is claiming that intelligence cannot come from non-intelligence.

It is an argument that presumes ignorance of Voltaire and his presumed opponent.

Note that in all of this - which is another way back to the point I made with Joshua- the notion of "intelligence" is not defined.

Know why?

So it is not science because…you say so?

I put this here for a reason: it's not a science because it presumes to be able to detect something that by its nature is not detectable.

What is intelligence?

Are dolphins intelligent?

Are dogs intelligent?

If I set in process a random process which creates a computer with an inference engine, is that "intelligent design," or is it (as it's set up to be) the product of "random chance.")

I can do all these things, and to you, without further knowledge, you could not tell the difference.

Thus, there is no significant difference between theistic evolution, non-theistic evolution, and "intelligent design," insofar as we could ever observe.

ID doesn’t invoke the “supernatural” anymore than superstring theory does.

And there's a lot of us who question the utility of theories that are untestable, even if they are from physics.

And do scientists not use reason when they apply the scientific method? If so they are relegating it to metaphysics since the mind is a metaphysical entity.

They use reason because it works within the system.

What I think many non-scientists fail to understand is that science is silent on things about which it cannot say.

Science, insofar as it considers the "mind" (what's that?) confines itself to that which is observable.

As to "why" observation is at all possible, or the nature of conciousness beyond what can be observed is indeed metaphysics, and is not the subject of science.

15

mumon: Because Richard Dawkins may be wrong about some things doesn't therefore mean all of evolutionary theory is wrong.

Joe: No, it doesn’t. It just makes him a pseudo-mysticalist.

He'd be in the company of some very good pseudo-mysticalists too--namely Newton, who to his dying day pursued the study of alchemy. A scientific theory stands and falls on its own merits eventually, not on the merits of the person proposing it.

16

Note on the above:

If I set in process a random process which creates a computer with an inference engine, is that "intelligent design," or is it (as it's set up to be) the product of "random chance.")

I can do this with "genetic algorithms" which themselves would be instantiated and updated completely randomly (say, by sampling "white noise").

So this would be an entirely random process which would result in something

designed by the purely random chance.

17

Joe: ID doesn’t invoke the “supernatural” anymore than superstring theory does.

String theory has a mathematical foundation that is the realm of exploration right now. Just because the math works out doesn't mean that that is what really happens though. The bottom line is that there is still a cohesive theory that can be independently validated and verified by other scientists. Where is the same thing for ID theory? The closest thing you get is Dembski's filter which has yet to succeed in detecting anything!

And there's a lot of us who question the utility of theories that are untestable, even if they are from physics.

Much of what was untestable is now testable. Quantum mechanics, black hole theory, superconductivity, and the list goes on and on. Just because we can't test it today doesn't mean it won't be testable tomorrow. Whether it is worth someone spending their whole life on it is another matter, but at least that's their decision to make.

18

BTW when I say "not testable" I mean not testable outside of mathematical simulations. All of the above I listed were proven years or decades before their physical observations in the laboratory or in nature. I'll add lasers to the group too, since that one has the most direct impact on our modern culture

19

Mr. Moderate :

Some variants of superstring theory, at least today, require absurdly large particle accelerators O(size of a galaxy) to verify theories.

So I'm not convinced of their utility.

And Dembski, yeah. Here is an amusing debunking (if you have a background in the area, as I do), in Dembski's latest attempt at respectibility.

Me, I was using K-L information measures while Dembski was still in college. I admirably quote from that first reference:

Dembski's paper seriously mis-represents the nature and use of information theory in a wide range of fields. What he puts forward as a new construction is in fact a particular case of a far more general idea, which was published forty-four years ago. That construction is extremely well-known and widely used in a number of fields in which Dembski purports to be an expert, namely information theory, hypothesis testing and the measurement of complexity. The manuscript contains exactly no new mathematics. Such is the work of a man described on one of his book jackets as "the Isaac Newton of information theory". His home page says this is the first in a seven-part series on the "mathematical foundations of intelligent design"; I can't wait. Or rather, I can.

20

How 'bright' is it to deny the Light of the World?

21

Not a problem Joe. BTW I don't mean to come off like I know anything about philosophy. In fact most of what I've picked up as has been because of the IDC debate and talking about it with you and others on that context. I took like three philo courses in college and they were pretty basic stuff. I'm just saying poking around on all the different kinds of 'materialism' and 'vitalism' there's like four or five different versions of each, and some of them are very dissimilar. I thought your piece was pretty good, especially considering the material is fairl deep stuff. I'm just trying to get through to you that science/common descent=/=materialism/athiesm.

22

Yeah Mod. The big issue with string theory is testable low energy predictions. They're few and far between. In some versions, supersymmtery predicts very very weird particles, and they could possibly be detected at low energies because they would sitll interact through gravity and they might interact among themselves in some way we can detect. But most of it would take a zipper the size of a solar system and the output of a star to test.

23

DS & mumon

I was addressing the statement questioning the worth of exploring physically (not mathematically) untestable theories in general. I was not addressing whether superstring theory in particular will ever be testable or observable.

24

"For anyone to claim that materialism is the true progeny of that period is laughably misguided and a sad example of the decline in liberal education."

1. Who has made that claim?

2. Why do we care?

3. What is your view on the claim that the cuurent Pope is a far more legitimate heir to the natural theology of the enlightenment than any ID theorist. See in particular:

http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

25

When has information ever been added to matter without intelligence? Mutations decrease genetic information, so where does the added information come from to change species? There is no known instance of information ever being added without intelligence being present to add the information, there is no know scientific law or rule that allows for information to be added to matter without intelligence. There isn't even an observable instance of macroevolution, simply variations within species.

It is not science vs. creationism. It is interpretation of facts vs. interpretation of facts. There are many scientist who fall under the Intelligent Design category, even the Youth Earth realm. You give away your worldview and presuppositions when you dismiss everything you disagree with as against science. There are evidences that can be used to support both evolution and creationism, both old and young earth.

It comes down to interpretation of science instead of science itself.

26

Mutations decrease genetic information,

No they don't, at least, not as a general proposition.

so where does the added information come from to change species?

What makes you think speciation requires an increase in information? Hint: speciation and the generation of novel structures or functions are not the same thing.

27

BlueDevils:

When has information ever been added to matter without intelligence? Mutations decrease genetic information, so where does the added information come from to change species? There is no known instance of information ever being added without intelligence being present to add the information, there is no know scientific law or rule that allows for information to be added to matter without intelligence.

Ah, no.

Actually, we cannot, in a scientific sense speak about information unless we speak of randomness.

Please see any basic text on information theory.

In an information theoretic sense, the only kind of information is that produced from random processes.

Now if you want to define some other, non-random information theory, that's as useful as the theory developed by Shannon and Kolmogorov, have at it.

28

I'm not going to weigh in on the science because I haven't kept up with it all very much in the last year or so.

However, there seems to be an argument that part of what is "wrong" with ID is that it drifts into (or dives into, depending on your view) metaphysics, and that somehow removes it from serious consideration by serious people.

Whether ID is right or wrong, why isn't metaphysics given more respect among "serious people"? Metaphysics provides a toolset for talking about an area that the physical sciences don't have tools for. You can't talk about logic, the mind, the soul, etc etc without a metaphysical toolset and you can't talk about geology and biology without a scientific toolset, but are there not areas with overlap?

When talking about "intelligence" and "teleology" and things like that, you need the tools of metaphysics to go there. So, if ID theorizes that biological life points to intelligent design, then it very necessarily needs both science and metaphysics. Why is that not okay?

Or am I just reading some of these responses incorrectly?

-Phil

29

Blue said When has information ever been added to matter without intelligence? Mutations decrease genetic information, so where does the added information come from to change species? There is no known instance of information ever being added without intelligence being present to add the information, there is no know scientific law or rule that allows for information to be added to matter without intelligence.

You're wrong:
Your Premise: No mutation can increase information, information can only be decreased by mutation
Let I(X) be the value of the Information in genome X. Let Y be a mutated version of the genome X. Then according to the more simplistic old fashioned claims that mutations cannot increase information we have
A. I(X)>I(Y)
Now let genome Y suffer a reverse mutation producing the original genome X, a back mutation it’s called. Then because no mutation can increase information:
B. I(Y)>I(X)
Taking A and B together gives
I(X)>I(Y)>I(X) … which violates the definition of inequality as well as the definition of a metric. QED; the original premise is clearly false.
Blue your statement is falsified, formally, regardless of you define genomic information, next?

30

This is all clanging gongs and empty noise.

One of the reasons being that ID has to now and forever bear the reputation (deserved or not) of being a "stealth creationist" position, a fallback from the "Six Day Zap Scripture Scripture Scripture".

DS:

ID per se and TE are not contradictory. TE is a specific subset of ID, as human understanding of reality is a subset of Reality. (For that matter, the Six Day Zap is also a subset of ID.) And for what it's worth, of all the specific types of ID, TE fits known reality and biology the best.

31

Phil Aldridge:

I have no problem with metaphysics; just don't call it science.

The pretense that metaphysics can be the same as science is my big objection. It's bad science, and it's leads to suspicions about the metaphysics.

32

Agreed Ken.

33

~DS~ :

Well, actually the ToE is not a strict subset of ID;
it is true that I can posit any number of metaphysical alternatives (including, but not limited to "naturalism") that admit the ToE, but not ID.

34

Why is everyone still arguing about this? Bevets clearly spelled out the answers for everyone!

Joe:

The fact that a theory that can explain everything ends up explaining nothing

35

Yes, I understand that rather subtle point Mummon. Theistic evolution however is most certainly a subset of ID and I hope it's clear that's what I'm suing throughout this discussion. In fact, TE is the one and only way to go if you're an IDCists and you give a hoot about evidence. Not that that stops them of course, but from the stanpoint of intellectual honesty there's currently no competition between TE and non evolutionary IDC as far as ID goes.

36

Well, actually the ToE is not a strict subset of ID;

I assume that in context, "TE" stands for theistic evolution.

37

My point, though, wasn't really whether ID'ers are right or whether they are wrong. It was merely to point out the absurdity of claiming that they do not fit in the tradition of the Enlightment.

Three objections. First, the meta: There's no one "tradition of the Enlightment." There are many. It may be that ID'ers could fit into one or the other of those traditions; I haven't studied them all. But it's wrong to suggest a monolith when there are in fact several standing stones.

Second, as others have pointed out, your terminology and logic are more than a bit messed up. Materialism and ID do not stand on opposite sides of a divide; one can be a Christian -- even a conservative, evangelical Christian -- and believe that evolution best explains the diversification of life on this planet. (Admittedly, though, you cannot be a scriptualist and believe in evolution.)

Finally, to your point that ID'ers embrace "reason" (one of the traditions of the Enlightenment) in a way their opponents do not, you're seriously mistaken. ID offers a critique of evolution. Some of the critique is based upon mistake, obfuscation (some knowing), and misunderstanding -- but leave that for another day. Of primary concern here is ID's steadfast failure to offer evidence in support of its proposed alternative. Indeed, by and large refuses even to subject its critique of evolution to peer review. A critique of a theory is not a theory; and an argument that because X does not explain Y, the answer must be Z is not a logical (or "reasonable") proof. Evidence that you are wrong does not mean that I am right; perhaps we're both wrong. Yet, that is exactly ID's argument, at least as currently formulated (and I can best understand).

Best regards,

von

38

In response to my own post I add this prediction: my main point will be ignored and this thread will eventually degenerate into the typical bashing of ID theory.

To be fair, I think the post asks for it. The reasoning can be summed up thusly:

1. The Enlightenment was all about reason

2. ID or creationism is more reasonable than materialism

3. Ergo, ID or creationism has a better claim to be the heir of Enlightenment

The third is just a syllogistic conclusion, so it's unassailable. Personally, I think the first is more interesting (what is reason?), the standard narrative of part of which is that it's the gradual abandonment of supernatural explanations. Of course, you didn't really offer a counternarrative (isolated citations of Voltaire aren't really a counternarrative), so it's only natural that second gets the most focus.

39

I agree with jpe - the way Joe has set up "The Enlightenment" and ID is not correct. My view of the Enlightenment (while noting the stipulation by von that it contains various threads) is that it was primarily about shifting the locus of authority from the Church to "mankind". This entailed a variety of arguments, and a variety of types of authority, but the idea that the Church = obscurantist/the Enlightenment = the bright light of reason is propaganda of proponents of the Enlightenment. Like most successful propaganda, it has grains of truth to it, but it is mostly hyperbole.

To the extent that the Enlightenment was about challenging the authority of the Church, it seems the analogy with ID is the opposite of what Joe said: ID is an attempt to challenge the authority of secular science. It is, in effect, (part of) a counter-Enlightenment. Just as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation each had good and bad effects, I think the same is true of the Enlightenment and the larger counter-Enlightenment movement of which ID is a part. Challenging the idea that secular ideas are the only ones allowed authority in the public square is imperative; challenging the methods and conclusions of science based upon shoddy reasoning and mischaracterizations is harmful to this imperative, especially when it is driven by religious believers.

40

Joe, I don't think Voltaire's words mean what you think they do. First, Voltaire's primary method of argument and attack is satire, which alone should be enough to give anyone pause in taking anything he writes at face value. Second, a substantial portion of his work was directed at religion and religious attitudes in the world of the time. If you doubt it, remember that the word Panglossian is taken from the name of a character in Candide. Third, his "ANSWER" to the "REASONS OF THE ATHEISTS" is a demand that you read Spinoza. Spinoza, even though his work is rife with God-specific language, actually creates the foundations of an atheistic representation of God which forces you to marginalize (search for "atheism") that theistic entity. Spinoza's work isn't exactly friendly to most religions, especially Christianity, and I bet Voltaire recognized that, hence the satirical argument he's making.

41

Um...in your equations DS that's not new information, that is old information added again. And there absolutely has to be information added to get from a simple single cell organism to reach human beings. One of the evidences people give for evolution is that humans share 80% (or what ever the number is) of their genetics with apes, so that means they are related genetically, according to evolution. Where does the other 20% come from?

Where do the differences between different animals come from? When has a dog ever been anything but a dog or ever produced anything but a dog? Excluding things like wolves, which all are part of the same family. When do they produce something like a horse or a cat or whatever the next evolutionary animal should be?

Everyone one of us, scientist including, are all making assumptions on things we can not possible know. No one was there when the Earth came into exsistence. We can all look at the facts and intrepret them, accordingly. But you show ignorance of the facts and issues, if you blindly proclaim that all science points to evolution and millions of years. All the science that is stressed and given as examples of evolution may indeed lead someone to believe in evolution. But that is an assumption based on an interpretation of one certain set of facts.

Most of you arguing that intelligent design is not possible, probably spent most of your lives in high school, college, etc. studying how evolution has to be true and that creationism is just a bunch of crack pot people. You may have looked at creationism, but you looked at it with your mind already made up that it was false because you "knew." For someone to be a creationist, most have to go through the same evolution indoctrination, yet they look at the evidence and see something different.

Evidence for a young earth can be found, such as galaxies wind themselves up too fast, comets disintegrate too quickly, not enough sediment on the sea floor, not enough sodium in the sea, the Earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast, many strata are too tightly bent, radiohalos shortens geologic ‘ages’ to a few years, helium in the wrong places, etc.

Facts and science can be looked and interpreted to support young earth and creationism, just like they can be interpreted to support an old earth and evolution. It is funny that the Christians are the supposed "close-minded" ones, but it is others who refuse to acknowledge anything that could differ from their preset beliefs.

42

Ah, even better, an explicit statement of such in the very document that you linked to.

43

DS:

Actually, there is one form of Six Day Zap ID that fits the physical evidence even better, but which has always been dishonest: Omphalos, the idea that God created the universe with a ready-made false past.

Though this does reconcile the Six Day Zap with the physical evidence for a much older and grander universe, it also has major problems:

1) It's unfalsifiable -- since the universe was created with an airtight false past, how do you know it wasn't created 30 seconds ago and you and all your memories are part of that created false past?

2) This assumes God, Absolute Truth by definition, is engaging in a deception from (literally) Day One. Since Creation vs Evolution ("DIE, HERETIC!") has replaced Christ as the core of Christianity and the litmus test of salvation, the corollary is that God is deliberately leading us to Hell with created physical evidence.

44

not enough sediment on the sea floor, not enough sodium in the sea,

Plate tectonics pretty much explain this, and it does it quite well.

the Earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast

You imply that it is a permanent decay, while there is evidence that the electromagnetic field has been seen to shift and even turn off and on. The shift itself is used by some archaeologists as a means for checking carbon dates in hearths.

45

~DS~ & Nick:

Points taken.

BlueDevils:

Wow. All I and others here have been saying is that ID - and creationism- are not sciences.

I guess you've never visited the talkorigins website.

I'm not a biologist, and don't pretend to be an expert in those areas, but in the field in which I do possess knowledge, communication and information theory, I can tell you that it's not some prejudice by which I wrote what I did.

I'm only tellin' you the truth about information theory.

46

BlueDevils:

I would add, though, that the fact that we can see things billions of years old kinda makes mincemeat out of young earth creationsim.

47

I would add, though, that the fact that we can see things billions of years old kinda makes mincemeat out of young earth creationsim.

And before anyone tries to bring up some "assumptions" B.S. creationist argument on how far away those distances are, I have a link below to an article from 1999 that had us using radio telescopes to measure the distance to a galaxy 23.5 million light years away using nothing but geometry. Now "standard candles" or anything else. That puts the lower limit on universe time, by the logic used by the YEC's that is, at over 23 million years. All the "white hole" and other creationist cosmic theories have yet to account for the apparent age of the universe, whether it is the lower bound of 23 million years (assuming you will only accept direct geometry measurements for distances) or the more widely accepted billions of years.

http://www.nrao.edu/pr/1999/distance/

48

Mr. Moderate :

Nice pickup.

But I want to raise the ante:

All you YEC's out there, or ID'ers: How do you know you're not, when you insist on a more or less literal reading of Genesis, that you're not reading:

*metaphor

*allegory

*irony or, (!)

*satire

49

Getting back to Joe's initial claim, I admit to not knowing enough about the "Enlightenment" and what it was about to determine whether "ID theory" does or does not fit within the "tradition of the Enlightenment".

But if the Enlightenment has anything to do with the application of the scientific method to solve problems, then ID does not fit in. As others have pointed, it's an argument from ignorance cloaked in bogus math, and sold like snake oil to evangelicals who can't tell the difference by evangelicals who can. This latter group is clearly worthy of contempt and, if they were actually trying to sell their product as science, they'd be guilty of fraud.

Way up above someone wrote this about the sliding clamp which helps to maintain the processivity of the polymerases which replicate DNA:

"the result is either the sliding clamps evolved at the exact same rate for a period of time, suddenly started rapidly evolving in different directions, and essentially stopped evolving; or they arose independently and have only been diverging very slowly. Well, the data is only compatible with the latter. So, Bracht's conclusion for the talk was that the only sensible explanation of the data was that Beta and PCNA arose independently."

I did a google search for Bracht and PCNA and the top hit was a discussion on the ARN discussion site. There were no other sites which mentioned John Bracht.

Let me tell you something about cranks in science, folks. They don't get very far. If you aren't able to contribute imaginative but rational explanations for your data, you end up going nowhere. For example, you end presenting your "theories" at UFO conventions, psychic phenomena conventions, Holocaust denier conventions, and creation science meetings.

Mike O'Donnell is a professor of molecular biology who worked with the great enzymologist Arthur Kornberg (the man who first isolated a polymerase responsible for replicating genomic DNA). Mike O'Donnell is quiet self-effacing man. Among other accomplishments, he contributed substantially the elucidation of the mechanism of the sliding clamp protein via a series of extraordinarily elegant experiments.

Do a google search for Michael O'Donnell and PCNA. Note the difference between the same search for John Bracht and PCNA. Now do the same searches at PubMed.

Now, why not write Mike at odonnel@rockefeller.edu and ask him whether he thinks that the only way to explain the amino acid sequence and other differences between Beta protein and PCNA is that they were created entirely independently by an intelligent designer at some point in the not-so-distant past, and have been "diverging" slowly since then.

Or you can just call him up.

Go ahead. I mean, I think Mike might be interested in knowing that the protein he's lived with and slept with every day for the past fifteen years or so hold the key to debunking evolutionary biology and scientifically proving the existence of God. That's kind of a big deal, in case you've never thought about it seriously. We're talking Nobel Prize in physics, medicine, and philosophy and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So go ahead. What are you waiting for? I mean, I would think John Bracht's "discoveries" would be a very very big deal for you folks. Almost as huge as when John Edward revealed that he could talk to your dead grandma in heaven.

50

Larry Lord :

But don't you see? O'Donnell's been brainwashed by that e-vo-lution-ary propaganda! He would also, since he has not, uh, seen the light of the world, probably lie about the ID claims!

;-)

51

Larry Lord :

But don't you see? O'Donnell's been brainwashed by that e-vo-lution-ary propaganda! He would also, since he has not, uh, seen the light of the world, probably lie about the ID claims!

;-)

But you're right. Michael Dembski is not a member of the IEEE Information Theory Society. I am.

I haven't published much (only 3 papers) but that's because I get paid to generate patents...

I have over 25 patents issued in the field Dembski? Ze-ro.

52

I never said there weren't issues (such as distance of the stars) with creationism. There has been some research done on that and there are some plausible explinations (which have been been already dismissed by Mr. Moderate).

But you are fooling yourself, if you think there are no holes, no issues with evolution. There are problems with every theory of the origin of the Earth. Each position has different areas that present problems which need a little more work to explain. But no, there are no problems with evolution. No issue that need to be addressed. Why don't we just stop doing research now, since we have everything figured out?

But again, you can spend all day spouting off why you are right and everyone else is ignorant "evangelicals." Go ahead, I won't stop you. But you do yourself a disservice by dismissing everything that doesn't agree with your presuppositions. I never said anyone was brainwashed, but everyone does evaluate information through their own worldview. Creationist spend their entire lives challenging and defending their beliefs. Most evolutionist don't allow themselves that priviledge.

53

BlueDevils

"But you are fooling yourself, if you think there are no holes, no issues with evolution."

No scientists believes that we know everything there is to know about the history of life on earth.

You are fooling yourself, Blue, if you think that any scientific explanation for any phenomena has "no holes" or "no issues" if you look at closely. That is the nature of science. Every question that is answered raises more questions. That's what makes science FUN. That's what draws many of the most intelligent people in the world to science.

According to your "argument", we must question the sun-centered model for the solar system because we can't predict how much rain is going to fall in San Francisco next Tuesday between 5 and 7 a.m.

Or because we've never seen a solar system with planets being born from beginning to end.

It's a freaking joke. If you lived your life the way you talk about evolution, you'd never get out of bed because, who knows, your floor might have turned into molasses over night. After all, we don't understand everything about the fundamental units of matter of which those floorboards are composed.

There is nothing "enlightened" about living in denial of reality and crapping on the hard work of other people because the facts about life which they have discovered are inconsistent (according to your preacher) with the poetry in your holy book.

Understand, Osama? Try to get along with good hard working intelligent people instead of trying to destroy what they accomplished. After all, those same scientists you trash have increased the likelihood that your precious babies will survive to adulthood. Or isn't that important to you today?

54

BlueDevils, I think you misunderstand. As I read the above, no one is saying that the theory of evolution is perfect or that it cannot be improved (and even proved wrong!) -- perfect theories do not exist in Science. What folks are saying (and is, in fact, true) is that evolution is well supported by the presently available evidence and is far and away the best explanation for the diversity of life on this planet based upon that evidence. They're also saying that ID (1) is not a theory, but a critique, and (2) as a critique, it relies on faulty or just plain bad evidence as well as misdirection and obfuscation.

55

There has been some research done on that and there are some plausible explinations (which have been been already dismissed by Mr. Moderate).

They've been dismissed, by myself and others, because their mathematics don't work out the way they said it was supposed to. They claim that these theories are consistent with modern physics, which has been thoroughly validated, and these theories simply don't align with the laws of physics when looked at by other researchers. Their math is just wrong and when it is corrected their theories fall apart. BTW I also dismiss geocentricism and alchemy on similar grounds. Ignorant, close minded, me for not "considering" them too?

Each position has different areas that present problems which need a little more work to explain. But no, there are no problems with evolution...Why don't we just stop doing research now, since we have everything figured out?

The only people who spout out that scientists say there are "no holes" in evolution are the creationists. The overall framework has been repeatedly validated and there are thousands of scientists directly and indirectly adding to the data to figure out all the fine point details on it. The "holes" you are thinking of though might be straw man arguments (such as incorrectly invoking the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) which have been fully dealt with by scientists some century ago. How does that compare to the state of "creation science" research or even ID research? Some ID'ers are finally starting to try publishing in peer journals. Unfortunately none of their work has stood up in the end. I give them credit for trying, unlike their creationist brethren, but it doesn't negate the fact that they have yet to develop a theory of the mechanism of ID that is successfully repeatedly independently validated and verified.

56

Joe,

[Disclaimer]

I am a believer in the resurected Jesus Christ.

With this question, I mean no offense to your practice of the Christian faith. Or the people that think they're monkeys but insist we shouldn't throw our excrement at one another...

Do you, as a professed believer, think that talking with unbelievers about a Creator, or the God of the Bible, etc., is really going to benefit them in anyway? Or maybe benefit you?

This is a sincere question. Some Christians believe it does, do you?

Thanks.

57

Um...in your equations DS that's not new information, that is old information added again. And there absolutely has to be information added to get from a simple single cell organism to reach human beings.

Umm ... sorry Blue Devil but that proof is airtight and you're toast. The information is new to genome Y until after the mutation. You said that 'no mutation can add information it can only decrsease it'. You hung yourself.
You and I both know you don't have the foggiest notion what information genomic is and you thought you could pose a vague challenge and get away with it because no one could define. You were wrong pal.
And the reason you're wrong is because of a concept called in mathematics a 'metric'.. In any set in which you can lose, you can also gain. This is a fundamental concept in math. Since I showed without doubt that a mutation can add information, and since I picked arbitrary values for that quantity, there is no reason why it cannot be added indefinetly, again, no matter how you define information. Wasn't that fun? I guess the creationist source you got that soundbite from didn't bother to explain that to you eh? {chuckle)

58

DS: What most modern pseudoscience writers mean by 'materialsm' is actually called by most philosophers I've discussed IDC with 'physicalism'.

While “physicalism” is often used now instead of “materialism” I prefer the older term because: (a) Most people that aren’t scientists or philosophers understand what I’m referring to and (b) because it doesn’t have the connotation that physicalism does that the “laws of nature” are “physical” entities that have some sort of ontological existence of their own.

fact there's a supernatural explanation called "Theistic Evolution" which is 100% fully backed by science.

Theistic evolution is only backed by science 100% if the modifier has no actual bearing on scientific claims. If it is used to imply that this theistic influence is actually detectable then it is shuffled off into the realm of pseudoscience.

Nick: Personally, I find ID to be neither consistent with the evidence nor compatible with Christianity, so whether or not Voltaire might have admired it doesn't seem important.

What version of Christianity does not imply an “intelligent designer” created the universe?

Moderate: What is the Theory of Intelligent Design, Joe?

There isn’t only one version of ID (just as there isn’t just one version of evolutionary theory). ID is simply an umbrella term that covers all theories that posit an intelligent (and possibly detectable) cause for some or all of the universe.

DS: I'm just trying to get through to you that science/common descent=/=materialism/athiesm.

I agree. I will even go so far as to admit that ID may turn out not to be a valid, testable theory. My only contention is that it shouldn’t be excluded on an a priori basis, as some people tend to do.

Joe McFaul: 1. Who has made that claim?

I would say numerous people but I’m too lazy to dig up the claims.

2. Why do we care?

Who says you have to? It’s just a blog post. If no one is interested in the topic they don’t have to be. I won’t be offended if they don’t comment.

3. What is your view on the claim that the cuurent Pope is a far more legitimate heir to the natural theology of the enlightenment than any ID theorist.

My view is that the Pope is an ID theorist. He does believe, after all, that an Intelligent Designer created the universe.

Mumon: The pretense that metaphysics can be the same as science is my big objection. It's bad science, and it's leads to suspicions about the metaphysics.

I don’t think anyone is claiming that metaphysics is the same as science. But without metaphysics there is no science. It can’t simply be discarded without destroying the entire scientific enterprise.

Von: But it's wrong to suggest a monolith when there are in fact several standing stones.

True, but at their core they all put an emphasis on the trustworthiness of reason.

can be a Christian -- even a conservative, evangelical Christian -- and believe that evolution best explains the diversification of life on this planet.

I never said they couldn’t. My problem isn’t with evolution but with materialism/physicalism.

Finally, to your point that ID'ers embrace "reason" (one of the traditions of the Enlightenment) in a way their opponents do not, you're seriously mistaken.

Oh, I think that my point is fairly solid on that one. ID’ers may be wrong but at least they have a reasonable basis for trusting in the reliability of reason. That is something that the atheistic physicalist does not have.

JPE: the standard narrative of part of which is that it's the gradual abandonment of supernatural explanations.

Supernatural explanations should naturally be abandoned when a natural one will do. But that does not mean that supernatural explanations are any less rational than natural ones. Also, the reason that I believe that the ID’ers are more “rational” is that they posit a move from “rational being to rational being” rather than the materialist’s shift from “irrational matter to rational being.”

Mike S ID is an attempt to challenge the authority of secular science. It is, in effect, (part of) a counter-Enlightenment.

Exactly the opposite is true. “Secular science” has become as dogmatic as the Catholic Church was in the 18th century. The ID’ers are attempting to reinstate reason rather than a priori dogma which is perfectly in keeping with Enlightenment ideals.

Joe, I don't think Voltaire's words mean what you think they do. First, Voltaire's primary method of argument and attack is satire, which alone should be enough to give anyone pause in taking anything he writes at face value.

While it is true that Voltaire often used satire, I doubt you’ll find a single scholar who claims that his writings in the Philosophical Dictionary were anything less than serious.

Second, a substantial portion of his work was directed at religion and religious attitudes in the world of the time.

True, Voltaire was a staunch deist.

Spinoza, even though his work is rife with God-specific language, actually creates the foundations of an atheistic representation of God which forces you to marginalize (search for "atheism") that theistic entity.

The reason that Spinoza was often referred to as an “atheist” is the same reason that some people use the term “neocon” – as a code word for “dirty Jew.” Spinoza was not a true atheist but a panentheist (or at least a pantheist).

Spinoza's work isn't exactly friendly to most religions, especially Christianity, and I bet Voltaire recognized that, hence the satirical argument he's making.

While he was often hostile to Christianity, I assure you that Voltaire wasn’t being satirical in that particular work.

Larry: …it's an argument from ignorance cloaked in bogus math,…

I really wish people would stop claiming that ID is an “argument from ignorance” because it does nothing but show that they misunderstand what that fallacy means.

CDM: Do you, as a professed believer, think that talking with unbelievers about a Creator, or the God of the Bible, etc., is really going to benefit them in anyway? Or maybe benefit you?

Obviously, I’d have to answer “yes.” I couldn’t be considered an “evangelical” if I didn’t talk to others about God. How much actual good it does is another question.

I believe (as the Bible says) that everyone has knowledge about God and that they simply “suppress” it by an act of will. My hope is that I may, in some small way, help others to remove some of the intellectual deadwood that they may have piled on their unbelief and cause the light to spill out enough for them to recognize it.

59

Or the people that think they're monkeys but insist we shouldn't throw our excrement at one another...

What makes you think we feel that we should throw our excrement at one another?*

(Pass for the moment, of course, that if you had a High School level understanding of evolution, you'd know that evolution does not hold that we're "monkeys".)

Best regards,

von

*Or, for that matter, that we do not believe in JC?

60

AAARGH. A typo screwed up my (lame) joke.

What makes you think we feel that we shouldn't throw our excrement at one another?*

61

cdm

Talking with us heathens (and knowledgable christians) about scientific facts will surely benefit you and others. It might prevent you from spreading falsehoods to, e.g., children about the "crisis in Darwinism" or the scientific validity of "ID theory."

Some of us really care about the truth and confronting issues (particularly scientific problems) in a sober thoughtful and rational manner, even it means acknowledging facts that do not support our idealized view of how the world "ought to be" or accepting that some matters are intractable to summarization in the form of a cute absolutists slogan (e.g., "Allah said so").

62

"What is the Theory of Intelligent Design, Joe? Where has it been independently tested and verified? You mock scientists who want the study of science to stay out of the business of metaphysics and the supernatural in scientific pursuits, yet you (nor any other ID'er) ever show any cohesive theory that has been independently validated and verified. This would be akin to alchemists scoffing at the world of chemists because the chemists were trying too hard to stick to the observable interactions of chemical compounds."

Could it be that all of you think too much? What makes any of you assume that ID is a scientific question at all and not one of historicity, which cannot by definition be proved scientifically? If ID is a historical event that can never be re-created for study (e.g. Kennedy being shot), then your premise is faulty. Creation already occurred. You cannot scientifically prove what you had for breakfast last week. There is a reason that Bibles are now printed in the place where Voltaire declared the demise of Christianity, his reasoning was flawed as well.

Finally, the anti-IDers are nothing more than atheists. Atheism assumes a universal negative and therefore is illogical on its face. That is why it is a religion of fools.

Lex Rex

63

Thank you for the response, Mr. Carter. I think that you're still conflating a couple of concepts -- and employing an extremely unusual definition of "reason" -- but I do appreciate that you've got a half-dozen other arguments to tend. Best of luck. And nice blog, by the bye.

64

"I really wish people would stop claiming that ID is an “argument from ignorance” because it does nothing but show that they misunderstand what that fallacy means."

It shows that? Because you say so?

Well, educate me. I think an argument from ignorance is an argument that says "I don't know how it happened, but it could not have happened the way you said it did."

The problem, of course, with "ID theory" being that the second assertion in that statement is an argument from incredulity.

Regardless, Joe, you've made a rather insubstantive criticism of my position that ID is pseudoscientific bunk with as much scientific clout (and utility) as your average alien abduction story. For that, I don't blame you.

I am just looking forward to the day when you, as an obviously literate and thoughtful individual, recognize at LEAST that modern science is just a tad too useful and self-correcting to foist a bogus yet universally recognized theory on the public. Or at least understand that the arguments that ID nothing more than an empty front for getting some religious views in public schools are rock solid.

I would do this sooner rather than later, if I were you. Why? Because as the ID political game gets exposed to the spotlight and as the smoke clears, the average American is going to understand that ID is bogus. And when the average American has accurate information, the average American is pretty good at telling right from wrong. The average American is not going to make an ass out of himself because Philip Johnson tells him that is the best way to "turn the train around".

65

Lex Rex --

Your purported distinction between "science" and "historicity" is a false one. Science is not defined by any requirement to conduct experiments; rather, what is required is the use of observations to construct a theory, which is then tested against further observations, etc. Whether the observations are generated by experiment or by merely looking is immaterial.

Astronomy, for example, is a science without (many) experiments, as is meterology, geology, etc.

66

I don’t think anyone is claiming that metaphysics is the same as science. But without metaphysics there is no science. It can’t simply be discarded without destroying the entire scientific enterprise.

I beg to differ. Both in professional and worldview, I am more or less an existentialist phenomenologist- as such such metaphysical issues are "bracketted," that is, not considered greatly because there are other problems on which to work that can get results that are useful insofar as we can observe.

This bracketting by the way is one of the most interesting aspects of probability theory; about "original causality" of an observed event probability theory cannot say.

67

Lex Rex, evidently just born into the world yesterday, asks

"What makes any of you assume that ID is a scientific question at all ...?"

Umm, because the evangelical folks who are peddling it claim that it is an alternate explanation for the diversity of life on earth that should be taught in public school SCIENCE classrooms alongside evolutionary theory.

That's why.

"You cannot scientifically prove what you had for breakfast last week."

Please send me your address. I'm going to send you something that will scientifically prove to you what vegetable I had for dinner last night.

Seriously, that's a real "trippy" view of the world you have, my friend. You can have a lot of fun drinking beers and discussing the nature of reality. But try calling your boss the next morning and telling him that you're not going to have that presentation ready because, after all, nothing can be known for certain and we're all going to die anyway.

Shmuck.

68

Joe: I think it would be really exciting if there was a theory of ID (non human) that made testable predictions. There are in a sense theories of ID used by code breakers and signal box makers, a friend of mine does that. It's all very hush-hush of course.
But for common descent to be replaced, the candidate theory would have to be more than simply a theory of ID, it would have to be a theory of ID which explains the evidence for common descent under a non common descent framework. I can also see you have your hands full so I'll defer until you wish to discuss it some more. TY for the response.

69

Or, to take an example, Lex Rex writes: "You cannot scientifically prove what you had for breakfast last week."

Actually, you might be able to. You can examine the contents of your cubboard and compare them against last week's shopping list (which you find following an excavation in your study). You could look at your on-line credit card receipts. You might find a stain on the kitchen floor that looks like tomato sauce. As a result of all of the foregoing, you may begin to theorize that you had spaghetti last week. You then test the theory by going to the local store to see if they have the correct ingredients and by careful examination of the half-empty spaghetti carton in the pantry to determine if it was recently purchased and opened. And so on.

70

Lex Rex:

What makes any of you assume that ID is a scientific question at all...

I don't, and I don't think many of us do on this board. So....don't teach as it an alternative to evolution, OK?

There is a reason that Bibles are now printed in the place where Voltaire declared the demise of Christianity, his reasoning was flawed as well.

Because some folks are willing to a) negatively react to the Enlightenment, or b) because you wanted to illustrate the argumentum ad numerum fallacy?

Finally, the anti-IDers are nothing more than atheists. Atheism assumes a universal negative and therefore is illogical on its face. That is why it is a religion of fools.

1. What's wrong with being an atheist? Are you assuming it's illogical to believe in the nonexistence of unicorns? And didn't Jesus inveigh against folks who called folks "fools?"

2. BTW, I am not an atheist. I merely assert that the question is irrelevant.

71

If Rex is postulating that science cannot 'prove' events with the metaphysical certainty available to formal systems, he's correct. However that wouldn't advance the scientific case for ID over any other explanation as it would suffer from the same shortcoming.

72

I wrote: Personally, I find ID to be neither consistent with the evidence nor compatible with Christianity, so whether or not Voltaire might have admired it doesn't seem important.
Joe replied:
What version of Christianity does not imply an “intelligent designer” created the universe?

Modern "neocreationists" don't seem to spend much time talking about the intelligent designer of the universe. They are more interested in critiquing evolutionary biology and postulating an intelligent designer of living things or biochemical systems, and they are usually coy about identifying the designer as God. Thats where they get into trouble, IMO.

I see two problems with the modern intelligent design movement from a Christian point of view:

1. Intelligent design creationism depends on a comparison (which can be either implict or explicit) between things that we know to be designed and things that are undesigned. There are things that are designed (e.g. pocket watches) and things that are undesigned (e.g. rocks). Since living organisms and watches seem to share characteristics that are not shared by rocks, the conclusion is that organisms, like watches, are designed.

The problem is that, as you point out, Christians believe in a God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe and everything therein. That means that rocks and snowflakes are just as much objects of design as watches and automobiles. The comparison at the heart of ID is ruled out by Christianity. This objection also implies to things like Dembski's complex specified information. If we accept that everything in the universe is created (i.e. designed), then Dembski's CSI, if it indicates anything at all, can't be an indicator of design, because there are some things that lack CSI.

2. Neocreationists and paleocreationists both object to evolutionary biology because it functions by random events (mutation) and an impersonal mechanism (natural selection). This, we are told is inconsistent with the idea of God as creator and sustainer of the Universe who works out His will in the world. The problem is that in other situations, Christians accept that random events and impersonal mechanisms are compatible with a God who is active in his creation. Take genetics, for instance. We know that genetics involves impersonal mechanisms (independent assortment of alleles)and chance events (specific sites of meiotic recombination, which particular sperm cell reaches a particular egg first). This is demonstrably true. If you don't believe me, sit down with a copy of the American Journal of Human Genetics and work through some of the pedigrees. Either chance and impersonal mechanisms are in some mysterious way part of God's will, or God jiggers the math so that the results look like chance. If we accept that chance events in genetics are consistent with an omniscient, omnipotent, active God, then what's the problem with evolution?

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Dear Larry,

"Shmuck"? I can scientifically prove I am not one, but I cannot for sure know that you have one. Personal attack lock off. In all seriousness, I do not think that a historical event lends itself well to scientific proof. That is not to say that it cannot be looked at with a science like examination, rather, it just cannot be proved, scientifically. This clarification answers Von's point of inferring something like a particular meal was eaten the week previously, much like a trial using circumstantial evidence. I do believe creationism can be inferred from an examination from evidence, but not proven. We would have had to exist at the time creation happened in order to prove it, as with any event that has passed into history. Discuss among yourselves.

Lex Rex

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mumon,

"1. What's wrong with being an atheist? Are you assuming it's illogical to believe in the nonexistence of unicorns? And didn't Jesus inveigh against folks who called folks "fools?""

Last first, Jesus/God said that "a fool says in his heart there is no God" so, no, He did not inveigh against people who quote Him.

Assuming universal negative is illogical in the case of Atheism. 1. Athiests say there is no God. 2. In order to make this statement, you must be omniscient, how else would you know there is no God in all the universe? 3. If you are omniscient, then there is a god, it's you...

Atheism just doesn't make logical sense, unlike agnosticism, which I disagree with but the belief is at least logical.

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Lex Rex writes

"Discuss among yourselves."

Take a hike, stinky. I already discussed your inane 6th grade philosophy arguments about Absolute Truth.

You just got a serious education, friend. Let's see if you make the same mistakes and ask the same stupid questions again.

My guess is that will. You've already shown your willingness to pontificate and retreat. What irrelevant worthless script will you recite the next time the door to your cuckoo clock opens?

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Larry: Well, educate me. I think an argument from ignorance is an argument that says "I don't know how it happened, but it could not have happened the way you said it did."

The argument from ignorance is a fallacy that occurs when someone claims that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. ID does not say that it is true by default. Rather it claims that certain structures are irreducibly complex, that they are unevolvable.

ID’ers are not saying that certain tenets of evolutionary theory are wrong because they have not been able to proven but that it is not even in the realm of possibility for it to occur by the blind process of natural selection.

DS: But for common descent to be replaced, the candidate theory would have to be more than simply a theory of ID, it would have to be a theory of ID which explains the evidence for common descent under a non common descent framework.

But this subordinates all of ID to a dispute over common descent. There are certainly other areas were ID could (and has) produced testable theories. Whether the general scientific community agrees with those is another matter entirely.

Nick: The problem is that, as you point out, Christians believe in a God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe and everything therein. That means that rocks and snowflakes are just as much objects of design as watches and automobiles. The comparison at the heart of ID is ruled out by Christianity. This objection also implies to things like Dembski's complex specified information. If we accept that everything in the universe is created (i.e. designed), then Dembski's CSI, if it indicates anything at all, can't be an indicator of design, because there are some things that lack CSI.

I think you’ve misunderstood the ID position. It is not claiming that certain objects in the universe are designed while others are not. All it claims is that certain objects with high information content show evidence of having been created by an intelligent designer.

2. Neocreationists and paleocreationists both object to evolutionary biology because it functions by random events (mutation) and an impersonal mechanism (natural selection). This, we are told is inconsistent with the idea of God as creator and sustainer of the Universe who works out His will in the world. The problem is that in other situations, Christians accept that random events and impersonal mechanisms are compatible with a God who is active in his creation.

Again, I think you misunderstand the “neocreationists” position. It is not that we reject the idea that biological functions could have been created by random and seemingly impersonal mechanisms but rather that these mechanisms are insufficient to explain all of the evidence.

Either chance and impersonal mechanisms are in some mysterious way part of God's will, or God jiggers the math so that the results look like chance. If we accept that chance events in genetics are consistent with an omniscient, omnipotent, active God, then what's the problem with evolution?

I don’t have a problem with “evolution”, per se, but with t