ID proponents often portray ID critics as “materialists”, and recently someone asked whether a force was “material”. Well, if a force isn’t “material” then there are no “materialists”. So yes, is the answer to that question. A force that can move matter is a material force. A force that can’t move matter isn’t a force at all.
And this matters for the Intelligent Design argument, because when we infer that an object has been intelligently designed, we are also inferring that it was fabricated according to that design. And to fabricate an object, or modify it, the fabricator has to accelerate matter, i.e. give its parts some kinetic energy it did not otherwise possess, by applying a force.
While ID proponents are often reluctant to speculate much about the nature of the designer, they rarely even mention the fabrication process. But the ID proposal implicitly postulates that a force was applied to matter by the designer, or her workforce, in order to make it do something other than what it would have done had that force not been applied.
I’d like to ask ID proponents here: what is your preferred hypothesis as to how the putative designer of living things actually made them? What material force accelerated the required molecules into position in the first living cells, converting potential energy into kinetic energy, and since then, guides the nucleotides into the required positions to produce novel proteins and enzymes as required?
What is, in other words, the energy source for the “poof”?
Richardthughes,
Note please that in The Wedge it is framed as ‘design theorists’ vs. ‘Darwinists’. The DI really seems to think they have a majority of ‘design theorists’ on their side, when quite obviously they don’t.
And here is the assymmetry, phoodoo: we “materialists” are not claiming the scientific evidence indicates that God does NOT exist.
You ID proponents ARE claiming that the scientific evidence indicates that God DOES exist, and is evident in the configuration of living things.
So the onus is on ID proponents to demonstrate where God (or some other designer) found the energy to move matter around in order to configure living things according to the design.
This is not about whether or not God is the Prime mover. I am happy to accept the argument that all forces are created by God, and so whether an apple falls to Newton’s head, or star collapses to a black hole, all are actions of God. However, those actions can be described by a set of Laws.
The ID argument (or one of them) is that somehow life emerged from some process outwith those Laws, and we can infer God’s (or some other designer’s) hand in the process precisely because we can reject Law and Chance.
In which case, those making the case should provide at least some hypothesis as to where the energy came from that applied the necessary forces. Because you can’t alter the kinetic energy of mass without getting it from somewhere else, and if you don’t alter the kinetic energy of a molecule you can’t move it into position in the cell or the gene you are trying to create.
Gregory, I’ve moved your post to Guano. Please read the rules.
Or, alternatively, if the energy came from nowhere, would they accept the conclusion that every time the putative designer alters the trajectory of a molecule in order to implement his/her desired design, that energy is created, and the law of conservation of energy violated?
The answer is: the energy comes from the same place as the energy necessary to produce an effect that would have been otherwise described as the result of natural laws and stochastic processes. IOW, what you described – you putting your foot on the pedal to make the car go, is the force intention is using in that part of the process to move matter to reach its goal.
I would not ask where the energy comes from. It obviously is poofed into existence by an omnipotent deity. That part is easy.
What’s more difficult is accounting for the lack of evidence for such a phenomenon. Where are the contrails of the divine mover? Doesn’t the sudden appearance of physical energy imply a divine contravention of thermodynamics? Why isn’t this measurable?
ETA:
The continues success of science in finding regularities means that the space available for the necessary irregularities are growing smaller. I would expect the next wave of creationism to locate miracles at Planck lengths and times. that should be safe for a while.
EL said:
The same place humans find the energy – it’s built into the system. Chemicals, by their nature, contain energy or energy potential. Humans can direct that energy towards teleological ends without violating natural laws.
Another ID breakthrough! *points and laughs*
WJM, you are slowly becoming Joe Gallien. Commiserations.
Petrushka said:
Do humans need to “poof” energy into existence in order to move matter intentionally?
William J. Murray,
No, it is held within their physical substrate.
Is the designer physical?
Where does the energy come from when gravity pushes (pulls) matter around?
Why wouldn’t it be? Lots of designers are physical and the move matter around using the energy in the system.
William J. Murray,
No, it is held within their physical substrate.
Is the designer physical?
ID breakthrough – I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this.
You’d be wrong to assume that. “Moderation issues” is a dedicated thread for discussing moderation issues and “Sandbox” is a thread for discussing matters that would be off-topic elsewhere. If you check, you will see that I responded to you in both “Sandbox” and “Moderation issues”.
Are you being ironic? You know gravity isn’t a force, don’t you, although it can be very accurately modelled as one.
William J. Murray,
It’s possible, but the problem then becomes explaining how a complex physical designer came into being without its own atoms having been pushed around by a Designer of Designers, and so on. Design is the go-to explanation for some quality of ‘unlikelihood’ among ID proponents. But such a designer does not seem to them remotely in need of equivalent explanation, depite being the acme of unlikelihood on the face of it.
A more accessible question would be, where does the energy of attraction come from in magnets. If you think magnets make free energy available, join the parade of clueless cranks and perpetual motion hucksters.
Gravity doesn’t push or pull. It is generally thought of as a curvature of spacetime.
Love the equivocation, William. Classic! Anyone in doubt now that Gregory has a point with the Designer/designer distinction?
Potential energy is converted to kinetic energy with no total change in energy. Never took a college physics course?
Alan Fox said:
Then what is gravity? And please, explain it to me without referring to a model that describes the behavior of matter.
JonF said:
Where does the potential energy come from?
IMHO the object’s potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, no transfer from the attracter to the attracted.
Note that any object that has potential energy relative to an attracter must be subject to a force or forces which prevents the acceleration between the to, and for the acceleration to happen a sufficient set of the force(s) must be modified appropriately. Note also that the attracter’s potential energy relative to the attracted converts to kinetic energy, although we are often talking about a situation where M1 >>> M2 so the attracter’s acceleration is negligible.
Re-reading, that was badly phrased. The proceedings at Harrisburg clearly demonstrated the duplicitous nature of the ID movement and the claim that “ID” is science was thrown out in no uncertain terms.
As it appears WJM has elected to not inform us, let me point to his latest post around this subject at UD:
Will this be a hit like “non materialistic science”, one wonders?
I didn’t say anything about free energy. I asked where the energy comes from. Where does magnetic energy come from?
How does a curvature of spacetime cause variations in the trajectory of matter?
She has argued that this site, which does have some moderation, is a better place to discuss than a site which has arbitrary and excessive moderation which can and does wipe out a particular poster’s entire history with no explanation, and other egregious offenses.
She’s right.
So many creationists can’t figure that not everything is black or white.
One observation about gravity – that it acts instantaneously – rules out it being a force. A force is limited by the speed of photons in a vacuum.
I can’t. Einstein’s theory of relativity, where gravity is postulated as a curvature of space-time due to the presence of mass, happens to model observations more accurately. Thus it is generally accepted as a good predictive model.
I know, how do magnets work eh?
At what level do you want the explanation pitched?
Gregory has a point, but his point is addressed every time we point out that ID is based on theology rather than science.
There are at least two potentially scientific avenues for ID research. One would be to to produce a theory of design — a grammar and syntax for the genetic code that would enable producing novel biology de novo without trial and error.
One can code for computers without trial and error. (I will grant this isn’t practical for most people, but I have met and worked for a guy who could write error-free code in business applications). My point would be that one can analyze computer code and figure out what it does. This is not possible for DNA. A decompiler would make a nice ID project.
ID as an institution has not even discussed this.
Another project — one that gets a lot of attention — would be to characterize the designer the way archaeologists characterize ancient civilizations, so that one could indeed detect the products of design.
IDists have also ignored this one.
What they have spent their time doing is devising elaborate Bible Code scenarios in which certain magic DNA sequences contain the fingerprints of an omniscient Designer (did I get the capitalization right?).
Alan Fox,
I believe gravity can only propagate at the speed of light, but things might have changed / new models emerged,
Alan Fox said:
Thank you for that honest admission. Natural laws are descriptions of behaviors. They are not explanations of that behavior.
Let’s move on to forces:
Can you tell me where magnetic energy comes from, or how it pushes/pulls matter, without referring to a model describing the behavior of matter (or the energy)? Can anyone do the same thing wrt, say, the strong or weak nuclear forces?
petrushka,
All good advice for ID researchers. But, as you say, who is listening?
WJM – you’ve made my day with your argument. But you should give attribution:
Not without reading it up. Not my field. I suggest you try a book on magnetism or an internet resource. Or ask a friendly physicist. Is there a physicist in the house? Paging Oleg!
I asked, where does the potential energy come from.
Also: Can you tell me what causes the potential energy to be converted to kinetic energy without using a model that describes potential energy being converted to kinetic energy?
The fact that two objects with mass are separated and the curvature of space induces what we see as a force. AFAIK we don’t have a deeper explanation. Is that a gap into which a God can be squeezed?
Newtonian gravity acts instantaneously. GR gravity is limited by the speed of light. AFAIK nobody has experimentally measured the speed of gravity.
As I said I’m no physicist. But wouldn’t be more correct to say that the Newtonian model of gravity assumes instantaneous action. And if gravity were a force, would not it require the exchange of photons that can only travel at the speed of light. I must have misheard or misunderstood that gravity is observed to act instantaneously.
I’m not sure about this.
Yes, that would be a better statement of the Newtonian model. Gravity seems to require an interchange of gravitons which always travel at the speed of light, like photons. That’s the best explanation we have now albeit lacking the experimental confirmation we want. However, when and if we unify GR and the Standard Model a lot of applecarts could be upset.
{ABE} Interesting write-up at http://www.davidyerle.com/gravitons-yes-or-no/, for the layman.
JonF,
Who are you calling a layman? 😉
Thanks for the link. I’ll do some reading.
It comes from the potential energy it had before the object moved, and usually from some other source that dislodged whatever was stopping it moving.
If I put a vase on a shelf, I give it first kinetic energy, then potential energy. To do so I have to eat some Shreddies.
If the cat then jumps on the shelf and moves it a bit sideways, she converts some of her kibble to kinetic energy. And, if she’s lucky, and I am not, she will dislodge it sufficiently that her energy combines with the potential energy I gave it, and gravity will pull it off the shelf, converting that potential energy into kinetic energy, and, when it reaches the floor, into sound and heat.
Now, it’s possible that your answer to my question is that God set the universe up at the beginning like one of those Rube Goldberg set ups where all She had to do at the beginning was give it a slight nudge, and everything else would happen because of the potential energy she’d given all the parts at the beginning.
That, if you like, is the “fine tuning” argument. But it’s rather a special one, because it turns out that the universe we inhabit is a bit unpredictable at the very level at which it would need to be predictable for that kind of scheme to work. So one possibility is that God simply selected, from all possible quantum worlds, one in which her desired result was actualised Or alternatively, set in train possible worlds going, knowing that in one of them she’d get her result.
Is one of those what you had in mind?
If so, fine, but it’s a deist, non-interventionist sort of theology. Not one that a Christian ID proponent would be likely to hold, I would have thought.
No need to be kind, Rich. 🙂 I just found this which seems pitched at my level of understanding.
Seems I was wrong about the speed of gravity. Apologies to all. I’ll get me coat.
Jon F said:
No, it makes my point that physical laws and forces are reified models that describe the behavior of matter & energy, used as if they causally explain those behaviors.
EL wants an explanation of what energy a designer uses to make matter move; a designer uses the same energy that is physically available in the system. The only thing that is different is that the “trajectories” (patterns of outcomes of interacting matter) said to be caused by (reification of a model) intention are substantively different from those said to be caused by standard physical laws and forces.
While those “trajectories” are possible given known natural laws and forces, they are neither expected nor scientifically plausible without reference to intention (whether or not intention can be subsumed under those natural laws and forces). In the same manner that physical laws and forces and stochastic processes are descriptions of the patterns of the behavior of interacting matter, so too is intention. They all use the same energy and matter, they are just said (reification) to cause matter to behave in different ways in different situations. Not because some different energy is employed or poofed into existence.
Humans do this all the time – they intentionally manipulate matter and energy into patterns we would not expect to occur otherwise.
You can’t use a property of the system to make the system.
The only thing that is different is that they are different? William, that makes no sense.
OK, so you are going with the deist solution. I mean, if I set up a Rube Goldberg machine, the forces are perfectly normal, it’s just the outcome is unlikely without positing a Rube Goldberg fan. So your God set the thing up at the beginning so that with no departure from the laws of physics a very noteworthy result would occur?
But they do so using straightforward forces. When I intend to write this post, I apply forces to the keys of my keyboard.
Are you really a determinist, William?
You could if you set it up at the beginning. But I don’t think you’d get the universe William thinks we have. You certainly wouldn’t get the Christian universe.
For example? Please, be as specific as you can. And don’t forget to show your working!