As a card carrying creationist, I’ve sometimes wanted to post about my reservations regarding the search for evidence of Intelligent Design (ID) and some of the rottenness in the search for evidence in young earth creation. I’ve refrained from speaking my mind on these matters too frequently lest I ruffle the feathers of the few friends I have left in the world (the ID community and the creationist community). But I must speak out and express criticism of my own side of the aisle on occasion.
Before proceeding, I’d like to thank Elizabeth for her hospitality in letting me post here. She invited me to post some things regarding my views of Natural Selection and Genetic Algorithms, but in the spirit of skepticism I want to offer criticism of some of my own ideas.So this essay will sketch what I consider valid criticism of ID, creationism in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular.
Take any of the accepted laws of physics, like say the classic one, F=ma in classical mechanics. The physical behavior requires no Intelligent Designer. This is true of every physical law. I recall a professor of physics saying, “after Newton there was no need of witches or of God”. What she meant, it seems to me, is God was irrelevant to understanding physical law. Invoking God doesn’t give further insight to understanding physics.
Only in some controversial interpretations of Quantum Mechanics will some physicists even dare to argue God exists. Such arguments have been put forward by Richard Conn Henry, John Barrow, Frank Tipler, FJ Belinfante etc. See:
But that is the crux of the problem. If the Intelligent Designer is not the focus of physics, and physics underlies all the sciences, then how can ID then be incorporated into science? In that regard, I’m mostly ambivalent to arguing whether ID is science or not.
Like the play “Waiting for Godot”, we are “Waiting for the Intelligent Designer”. I reject the notion that one can apply stone henge as evidence of intelligent design and then make an equally believable case that one can look at the intricacies of the cell and conclude the Intelligent Designer exists. When I was an engineering student, I would be subject to examination to demonstrate that I could make designs. Human made designs are thus subject to independent verification. We can subject those sort of intelligent designers to field laboratory testing, we cannot do so regarding the supposed Intelligent Designer of the universe and life. This lack of direct testability will always leave quite a bit of room for skepticism, if not some inclination for outright rejection, no matter how powerful the arguments are against chemical and biological evolution.
If God were continually making miracles like he did in the time of Moses, we might not be having these debates, but as for now He has chosen to remain hidden from observation and experiment which are the foundations of science.
These criticism of ID will apply to creationism and particularly young earth creationism. Even supposing miracles are real, by their very nature, miracles will elude repeatability (that’s why they are miracles!). The most we can hope for is to use science to demonstrate that an unusual mechanism had to be responsible for certain phenomena. You can pretty much forget being able to create experiments that will require the Intellgent Designer to appear in the laboratory or in the field. Not even creationists will argue for that possibility.
But that is not my worst complaint about the enterprise of YECism. The community appeals to Biblical authority to “prove” its case. But that is no proof whatsoever, and I’d argue that even the Bible doesn’t teach this as a method of proof. Is there biblical thermodynamics, calculus, electromagnetism, classical mechanics, linear algebra, or any major field of research that can be resolved by theology? No.
For example, some YECs will come around and preach that if you don’t believe the Earth is Young, then you’re compromising the word of God. To which I respond, well what does the book of Genesis have to say about what the right form of Maxwell’s Equations should be or how do your resolve the conflict of YEC with the Einstein-Planck equation that is related to the photo electric effect and thus all of Quantum Mechanics. At that point, the preachers have little to say. They’ll then proceed to make disparaging comments about my character.
The major problem of YEC (and there are many) is the problem of distant starlight. Some will invoke temporally and spatially varying speeds of light. Some will argue light was created en-route that gives the appearance of age (GAG!). The problem with varying speeds of light is in order to preserve the energy of the Einstein-Planck equation, one has to then invoke a varying Planck’s constant, which would mean the undoing of Quantum Mechanics. So YECism flies in the face of Maxwell’s Equations (electromagnetism), Relativity (which is related to Maxwell’s Equations), and Quantum Mechanics — no small pillars of real science! Though YECism might stand on its own against evolutionism, it collapses under the weight of modern physics.
But that is not even the end of the story. YECists like Ken Ham routinely demonize other Christians who disagree with him. This is personally distasteful because many in the ID community who have even been expelled and suffered career loss for their criticism of Darwin are also demonized by the likes of Ken Ham. Even supposing YEC is true, this is no way to treat fellow Christian who have shown a lot of courage in speaking their conscience.
Does his organization spend lots of money on real science? Well relative to the millions they spend on amusement parks which they pass off as the “creation museum”, they don’t do much on behalf of answering scientific questions. I’ve mentioned three major problems which are utterly neglected in favor of building amusement parks of no scientific value.
If YECists consider it sinful to believe in an Old Universe, then they’ll have to come to terms with the work of creationists like Maxwell, who ironically has given the best line of reasoning to argue against YECism. Using intimidation, demonization, and appeals to theology will not make much of a persuasive case, even to card carrying creationists like me. In fact, it only reinforces the view they have no facts to stand on, only blind belief.
Sometimes the way YEC “research” is conducted reminds me of the geocentrists that attempted to influence my denomination, the PCA. [incidentally physicist Dave Snoke is an Elder in the PCA, and Dave Heddle is deeply sympathetic to the PCA]. It was disgusting to try to reason with geocentrists. I know many Christian believers, who are in the aerospace industry. That industry wouldn’t achieve its success if it accepted geocentrism. I even met a Christian creationist astronaut who walked on the moon (Charles Duke). This would not be possible if the biblical geocentrists had their way. But some people are so committed to their own theology, they are unwilling to be reasoned with, nor will they seriously engage reasonable objections to their claims. If you want a taste of geocentrism, go here:
Though YECs one the whole aren’t as bad as the geocentrists, there are pockets of them that are as bad, imho. I don’t want these sort of people on my team, and hence I have chosen to affiliate myself with the ID community because of some of the rotten tomatoes in creationism.
So then, in light of these things, why do I accept ID as true and hold out a smidgen of hope that YEC might be true? That obviously will be the subject of future posts at the Skeptical Zone, but all this to say, one can’t accuse me of not recognizing serious difficulties in some of the ideas I’ve promoted and explored. And that is what I would hope the skeptical zone is about.
Yet you still promote them. Why?
And why do you affiliate yourself with “the ID community”? Why do you feel the need to affiliate yourself with a “community” or “team”? And why “the ID community”, since you’re a card carrying creationist? Are you admitting that “the ID community” is actually a bunch of card carrying creationists?
“But that is the crux of the problem. If the Intelligent Designer is not the focus of physics, and physics underlies all the sciences, then how can ID then be incorporated into science? In that regard, I’m mostly ambivalent to arguing whether ID is science or not.”
Then again, why do you affiliate yourself with “the ID community”?
“Invoking God doesn’t give further insight to understanding physics.”
Invoking an imaginary god doesn’t give insight into anything except that many humans are ignorant of and afraid of reality.
Yes, that is very much the point. And I’m glad you see it that way.
Science is atheistic in the mundane sense that whether or not there is a God is not a question that science consider. It is neither pro-God nor anti-God. And that’s the way science should be.
It used to be well understood that the Bible was not a science text book. If you believed God created everything, then studying science as a way of studying what God had created was the way to understand that creation.
Ordinary common sense tells us that the Bible itself was written by humans. They may have been inspired to write it. But what they wrote was unavoidably colored by the preconceptions of their culture.
As for ID: Personally, I have no problem with ID as philosophy, nor with ID as a speculative hypothesis. My only objection to ID, is that it’s proponents use politics to try to get it into the science curriculum. There’s a standard way of getting ideas into the science curriculum. It starts with doing genuine scientific research, and getting results from that research that are compelling enough that they cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, there is almost no real scientific research into ID. There’s mostly politics, apologetics and rhetoric.
I say this to the ID proponents: Call off your political lapdogs. Do the research if you can. If you are not willing to do the research, then by all means continue the philosophical arguments. But keep it outside of the science class room. Leave the politicians out of it.
My problem with the modern ID movement is they have no respect for history.
There was a time when honest and dedicated scientists doubted “Darwinism” for good technical. During this period most scientists were also churchgoers.
All these concerns of yours were hashed out in excruciating detail between 1860 and 1940.
If you want an intellectual center, get yourself some books from this period and acquaint yourself with the way these issues were resolved.
I don’t expect the essays of Stephen Gould will appeal to you, but his list of references is important.
I may have come across as more rude than I intended, but I remain irritated by the assertion that ID advocates have some new line of reasoning that hasn’t been explored by the mainstream.
When tens of thousands of PhD level minds debate an issue for a century, few things get missed.
there is, of course, no way to prove that biology isn’t the result of desing, or that some particular structure isn’t the result of intervention.
The question is why would you want to believe that?
Every other branch of science seeks to find regularities.
No. Michael Behe is not a creationist, neither is David Berlinski, both of whom are part of the ID inner cricle. In ID circles, even in private discussion, theology is rarely mentioned. Most of us simply find philosophy and religion less interesting than science.
Behe’s books are representative of how the ID community thinks. Contrast this with the YEC community and Ken Ham and the creation museum:
http://creationmuseum.org/
He says, “prepare to believe” as if a playground is reasoned evidence.
The YECs have been critical of Behe’s work because he is not a creationist. ID books are not prominent in YEC circles. If you doubt this, go to the answersingenesis website and you see what I mean:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/publicstore/
Compare that to the ID bookstore at ARN:
http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/php/book_show_catalog.php
The distinction between the communities is there. There is a cultural devide. Did you notice which side Todd Wood (a YEC) took on the Tenn monkey bill?
Even though I’m a creationist, I don’t get along with my own creationist family. It’s shouldn’t be surprising that people may not get along with their own family should it?
The subject of future posts.
I see my post asking Sal about Darwin’s puppy beating has been moved to “Guano” and I take great exception to this. Sal has the audacity to to post about “Rotteness (sic) in Creationism” and yet for many he exemplifies this. Whilst this may be regarded ad ad hominem, we are talking about character and integrity.
Please review:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/03/darwin_racism_and_puppies.php
and
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/05/sal_cordovas_rank_dishonesty.php
So I’d like an answer, what are Sal’s current views on Darwin beating puppies? If you’re going to post on rottenness in creationism, your record is fair game.
OK, I thought it was some generic kitten barbecue comment. Sorry.
Would you mind if I moved this to the Sandbox, though, to keep this thread OT?
I’d like Sal to answer. If he wants a clean slate here, he can make clarifications, corrections, apologies or whatever. I’ll accept his response as genuine as heartfelt, whatever he replies. But I’d like a reply, and for my comment to remain.
Thanks.
This sounds like another attempt at “denaturing” creationism to produce ID. We’ll keep the Intelligent Designer, but we’ll omit any mention of the scriptural source from which that Designer is derived, along with anything else associating ID with the keywords of religion. Just so long as everyone understands the legal requirements, so they know who the Designer is and why it’s necessary to speak out of one side of the mouth in church and another side in court.
So OK, what Sal has regurgitated here is Yet Another Laundry List of why ID is preposterous and unscientific, and why gods are the very opposite of being “explanations” of anything. In fact, they short-circuit explanation. As though anyone didn’t already know this! And why would anyone, recognizing all this, continue to pride themselves on falling for it? Ahh, that’s off-topic, don’t you know.
I guess anything interesting is being postponed for sometime in the future. So we wait.
If you assume that I’m more rotten than any of the people I’ve criticized, it won’t change empirical facts or theoretical considerations from empirical facts.
I might be a nasty person, I might be mistaken, but people’s track record and track record ought only to be of passing interest.
If people want to assume I’m a scoundrel, they are free to do so. We have creationsists like Ted Haggard and Kent Hovind (who are now in federal penetentiary). Did the undoing of these individuals have any impact on the debate? Hardly, because the debate isn’t about people’s character. I posted on that here:
You may not like me. You may think I’m rotten. My crticism of the rottenness in creationism has to do with the lack of scientific research and argument and the substitution of theology for science, not the character of my colleagues.
With respect to creationism, I’d take a nasty rotten person that actually did good science over a preacher that says its a sin to believe the world is old despite many evidences to the contrary.
If my creationist colleagues like Ken Ham were doing research instead of building amusement parks to prove creationism, I’d have less issue. Instead they demonize ID proponents (or even opponents) who may think the world is old and ID proponents (opponents) who have done far more to advance the case for a creator than he did.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg comes to mind as far as good, repsected scientists who aren’t creationists but have advanced the case for a creator. Atheist biologist Jack Trevors, physcist Fred Hoyle, Jerry Fodor and Masimo Piatelli, agnostic Michael Denton, agnostic David Berlinski, Darwinist Hubert Yockey have offered better scientific insights than Ken Ham does with his playground.
Darwinist Hubert Yockey has been far more influential in my views about creation, than Ken Ham. The same can be said of my former professor James Trefil. Trefil is not a creationist, he has opposed ID, but his scientific work has furthered my belief in ID and my suspicion that the hypothesis of creation is correct.
The claim of rottenness was not so much about people’s character as much as about the appeal to theology and playgrounds rather than facts in defense of creation.
Actually Sal, I’m interested in if you’ve changed, if you feel remorse, if I can read your posts and take them at face value, if I can accept quotations from you without checking they’ve been grotesquely twisted from their original meaning.
Are you worth bothering with? Because it would be a waste of all out times to engage ‘Darwin beats puppies Sal’, and you get off on the attention. But if you’ve changed, perhaps not. So, tell us.
Even supposing ID’s sole reason for existence was to sneak past the courts, that doesn’t change my interest in the topic, Mike Gene’s, nor many others who don’t have a political or legal stake in the issue.
Interest in ID continued even after Dover. The reason ID interests me is not because I want the Darwinist courts and school boards to sign off on creationism, I simply find the topic interesting. I make no money doing this, nor does it help me in my profession (the financial industry). I like the topic, I like debating, I like some of the polemics — its almost as fun as video games.
The only political activity I might be accused of is showing up at a Tea party rally for an hour.
I don’t recall that I was ever involved in organizing a creationist pettition or writing a political leader.
But even supposing, the motivations were political, it doesn’t change the criticism of evolutionary theory (either chemical or biological) from the likes of:
Michael Denton
Fred Hoyle
Jack Trevors
Hubert Yockey
Marcel Shutzenberger
Jerry Fodor
Masimo Piatelli
Masotoshi Nei
Motoo Kimura
nor will it change the deep suspicion by some that MIND is the ultimate reality. Such are the views of
Frank Tipler
John Barrow
Richard Conn Henry
FJ Belinfante
The case for a creator doesn’t depend on the outcome of political processes. In the end it is either true or false, and the question is interesting and of personal value regardless of what Judge Jones had to say.
Sal:
No Sal, we cannot test the designers of Stonehenge. We cannot test the designer(s) of the Antikathyra mechansim. And if we could test the designer of the universe then we wouldn’t have a designer inference as deign would be a given.
Sal, understanding and testing teh design of objects/ events/ structures that are equal to or less than our current capabilities is easy compared to designs that are well above our current capabilty.
Say a scientist left a laptop behind in some remote part of the Amazon River basin. A native finds it. She knows it ain’t part of the jungle, ain’t something nature made, hey she cannot test its designers, but she sure can determine is an artifact of some kind.
stcordova,
Behe and Berlinski are both creationists. Anyone who pushes ID or any other religiously based agenda is a creationist, whether they call themselves one or not. It is logically impossible to promote a designer/creator god and not be a creationist.
This is one of the things that irritates people like me. I’m am fed up with all the distortions and willful lies that IDiots and other religious zealots spew. I wasn’t born yesterday and I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck. I, and many others, can easily see through your dishonest facade. As long as you religious zealots present yourselves and your beliefs and agenda dishonestly, you are going to get called out on it. If you or any other IDiots want to be treated with any respect, earn that respect, and a good START would be total honesty.
Sal, ALL of us are here because the topic interests us.
Among other things, I’m interested in your pejorative “Darwinist courts and school boards.” Now, if your OP was honest (and you made it sound that way), what the courts and school boards are doing is respecting the methods, findings, and enterprise of science. And what you have done is take ordinary, thoroughly established science, and injected superfluous ideological insinuations.
I’m also interested in the list of those whose authority you hide behind who “criticize evolution.” I’m not intimately familiar with all of them, but some (like Hoyle) are long since resounding refuted, some (like Denton) have changed their minds upon informed reflection, others I think are actually engaged in extending our understanding of biology. And at the cutting edge, there is always legitimate disagreement (quite different from ideological rejection). So again, you are dishonestlhy creating a false impression and hoping nobody will notice.
(And incidentally, your little unannotated list of names is kind of comical, compared to the Steve List. So if you MUST rely on appeal to authorities whose expertise you do not understand anyway, why attempt to pick a list of ideologists? Why not the Steve List? It’s much better documented, far far longer, and (of course) honest.)
I posted to give context, since it might mean more to some to hear criticism of ID and creationism coming from a creationist than from a evolutionist. I felt that was in the spirit of the Skeptical Zone to be critical of views one espouses. I offered what I think are accurate criticism of ID and creationism.
Reservations about ID will remain so long as the Designer doesn’t show up in the lab.
Creationism will fail to be convincing even to sympathizers (like me) to the extent playgrounds like Ken Ham’s “museum” are offered as reasons to believe versus empirical facts and theoretical arguments.
I’m frankly surprised, few have said, “good job Sal, those are some devastating arguments against ID and creationism.” Well maybe I didn’t do a good job criticizing ID and creationism, but I offered what I think are correct criticism of ID (versus those offered by Ken Miller and Nick Matzke).
The significance of the list is the strength of the arguments, not the number of people. Kimura and Nei pretty much destroyed the premise that Darwinian selection can be the main mechanism of change at the molecular and organismal level. No one has overturned Yockey and Trevor’s criticism of the OOL endeavor. These are dissenting mainstream scientists, not creationists.
Name dropping? Appeal to so-called authority? Can you speak for yourself?
I’m obviously not here to get your respect. I’m here for a chance to improve my arguments and my personal understanding of the issues. I occasionally change my mind . I was Darwinist once upon a time. I changed my mind.
I look forward to engaging opposing opinions, and if personal swipes at me and misrepresentations are the bulk of criticism, then in my view, the opposing side of the debate is having a hard time coming up with substantive counter opinions.
Now, those who wish to shine scientifically against me (an uneducated creationist) in debate are welcome to offer evidence and theory in opposition to my ideas. People come to blogs like this for spirited debate.
There are two major issues: chemical evolution and biological evolution. I hope we’ll have a chance to debate these issues here. Some will assert these topics are settled science. I don’t think so.
I’m working on a post about GA’s and natural selection in the wild. I made this post first to articulate all of my personal reservations about ID and creationism just to get that out of the way so as not to clog up the post about GA’s and natural selection with complaints about the lack of a designer or the rottenness in creationism.
You can put such complaints about ID and creationism here so that we can actually talk about theory and evidence when I raise the discussion about GAs and natural selection in the wild.
No one except Joe has criticized my comment about the absence of a designer. Aren’t any of you actually going to agree with me on that one?
So you are saying you reject evolution altogether, because all of the mechanisms by which evolution operations are not fully understood (and some may remain to be identified)? Seriously?
Sal, if you wish to have any credibility here, you must understand a couple of things.
FIRST, ID is religion. Nothing else, nothing but. It is (as you point out) not science, and cannot be science. Not now, not ever, never. It is PURE religion. Now, you might be a follower of that religion, and that’s fine. But if you persist in pretending ID is anything else BUT religion, you will be dismissed as dishonest.
Second, you really ought to understand that (as I wrote earlier but apparently it didn’t register), at the cutting edge of research there is ALWAYS dispute. It can accurately be said that if there is no dispute, there is no science being done. But dissenting with specific details of a very extensive, very well established model, is NOT the same as dissenting with the basic theory. This is like saying that if an umpire makes a wrong call, there’s no such thing as baseball! This is DISHONEST.
Really, Sal, if you are trying to say that you reject evolutionary theory altogether because there is a range of hypotheses at the margin, you are not being truthful. And nobody here is fooled.
Then present the specific arguments, not a list of names.
Joe,
I let one of your comments through, but held 2 up. I appreciate your willingness to engage the other side, but I’d ask the polemics be kept to a minumum. You’ll notice that one post I let through was one critical of my ideas. I liked that one.
If you’ll hold off on polemics against my detractors in this thread, I’d appreciate it.
Sal
Not in this thread. The topic was reservations about ID and rottenness in creationism.
Do you agree or disagree with my criticism of ID and creationism?
If you propose that some evolutionary mechanisms have been misidentified, or not properly weighted, or that the overall model can be tweaked, that’s all well and good but what the hell does it have to do with ID?. We first need a mutual understanding that you reject all religious aspects of ID, leaving nothing but ordinary mainstream science. THEN we can look at your fieldwork, your hypotheses, your experimental methods, your tentative results.
So far, you’re off to a god start. There’s no Designer, there’s no science to ID, there’s no credibility to creationist criticisms of established theory, which are purely religious and ideological and in no respect scientific. Great, we have the religioius red herring out of the way. ID is bunk.
Now, you’ve mentioned two subjects for future study: Actual SCIENCE, based on actual fieldwork. And your own personal inability to reject bunk. The former sounds more interesting.
You presented your view and opinion and that is what is being responded to and criticized. If you want responses to specific points about biology or evolution, make some.
And are you saying that there is no designer?
Oh, and it apparently hasn’t occurred to you that we non-IDiots have long ago figured out all of the things that you brought up about ID/creationism. Maybe if you assume that we’re smart, educated, realistic people instead of ignorant rubes who just fell off a turnip truck you might get less hostile responses.
My honesty is not the topic. The topic is Reservations about ID and Rottenness in Creationism. Do you agree or disagree with my criticism of ID and creationism?
Yes, we understand that ID is religion, that religion is not science, that pretending religion is science is dishonest. We GET all that. You don’t have to repeat it for us.
But why belabor the obvious at such length?
Message is the medium. Your credibility gap isn’t our fault, Sal. What would Jesus do?
In other words, you’ve got nothing.
“our current capabilities” or future capabilities for designing things have nothing to do with whether life, life’s diversity, or the universe were designed/created or not. Just because humans can’t design/create universes, or life (yet), doesn’t mean that your god did it.
When you find a laptop inside a living thing or a star, let me know.
I’m asking whether you think the absence of seeing an Intelligent Designer is a sufficient reason to reject ID?
I offered “the absence of seeing an Intelligent Designer” as criticism of ID. Do you agree or disagree that this is a legitimate crticism, and is it a sufficient criticism to reject ID out right or one that just gives you reservations?
Not many have taken to commenting on my claim.
This the chance for critics to come out and say, “unless I see the designer, no matter how compelling the circumstantial evidence, I probably will reject ID.”
I think that is a respectable position, but I’m amazed few critics of ID want to come out and say it. I only recall two critics who have said this (Allen Force and Robert Shapiro). I respect them for saying it.
Well maybe I’m dense. Do you think ‘absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer” is sufficient reason to reject ID out right or give someone reservations.
Clearly, I’m in the “reservations about ID” camp. Where do you stand?
Sorry Sal, it seems folks know you too well.
ID isn’t a scientific hypothesis subject to doubt due to lack of a designer. ID is an attempt to insert creationism into public life and public education. It is a trojan horse to smuggle religion where it doesn’t belong. It has no substance. No theory, no hypotheses, no research, no findings, no tests. It is defended only by religious creationists. This isn’t all that complicated, Sal.
As for “reservations about ID”, I think my position is pretty clear here. ID is pure religion. You either swallow it on faith, or you do not. It has nothing else to recommend it. It was invented for sheer public relations purposes, by religions creationists. It is constructed ENTIRELY of lies.
If I were shown credible, testable evidence of “the designer” or intelligent design I would likely accept it, whether I could see “the designer” or not. So far I haven’t seen any evidence that convinces me. Until and unless someone comes up with some actual evidence, intelligent design of life and/or the universe should not be accepted by science.
The “ID movement” should be rejected by everyone, because it is a dishonest religious and political agenda.
Kindly go to Yockey’s web site where you will see his explicit disavowal of support for ID and his statement endorsing the importance of natural selection in explaining evolution.
I knew or know both of these guys (I’m not claiming Kimura considered himself a friend of mine, but I was an invited speaker at Nei’s 80th birthday celebration recently). Kimura was the most important proponent of the importance of neutral mutation in molecular evolution. Nei emphasizes the importance of mutation.
But neither of them argued or argues that natural selection is not the reason why we see so much adaptation in biological systems.
If you set the bar so low for being on your list that all someone has to do to get on it is have some “criticisms of evolutionary theory”, well, you can add to the list most evolutionary biologists. We argue all the time about the ins and outs of evolutionary theory. Every one of us has some changes we want made in the body of evolutionary theory. I guess that makes us all “critics” of evolutionary biology.
It seems to me that the list doesn’t have anywhere near the meaning you imply.
The reason for scientists to reject ID is that ID simply isn’t science. ID, as practiced by the likes of Dembski and Behe and all, can be completely and accurately summarized in two sentences which sum to less than 15 words. One of these sentences is…
…and the other is…
What this means is that as far as science is concerned, “there’s no ‘there’ there”. ID is solely and entirely a (set of) negative, evolution-can’t-do-it assertion(s) with an accompanying set of the-Designer-done-it stickers which ID-pushers slap onto anything they think they can portray as a problem with evolution. You say you’re an IDist and you think ID is misrepresented by my two-sentence summary? Groovy. Where, exactly, does my two-sentence summary go wrong? What part of ID isn’t covered by my two-sentence summary? If you think somehow, somewhere, somewhen, somebody intelligent did something missed some part of ID, fill in at least one blank; clue us all in re: what ID has to say about the “somehow” (i.e., the tools/methods/techniques the Designer used when She/He/It/They was/were doing Her/His/Its/Their thing. Or what ID has to say about the “somewhere” (i.e., the physical location(s) at which the Designer(s) did whatever She/He/It/They did. Or what ID has to say about the “somewhen” (i.e., the time period(s) in which, or during which, the Designer(s) did Her/His/Its/Their thing. Or what ID has to say about the “somebody intelligent”, other than the bare assertion that She/He/It/They is… or maybe ‘was’, if the Designer(s) isn’t/aren’t alive and Designing any more, and by the way, what does ID have to say about that, hmm? …anyway, the bare assertion that the Designer(s) is/are Intelligent. And (a) Designer(s). Or what ID has to say about the “something” (i.e., what the Designer(s) was/were trying to accomplish when She/He/It/They was/were doing… whatever the hell it was She/He/It/They did.
Cue JoeG to punch ‘play’ on his canned oh yeah where’s YOUR evidence boilerplate.
Sal, Joe Felsenstein and Flint brought up a very good point. Any scientist worth their salt doesn’t mind discussing or debating reasonable challenges to their findings or to their opinions on scientific matters (scientists often disagree with each other), or changing their mind in the face of better evidence. However, it’s another thing altogether to be told (especially by non-scientists) that science is completely wrong, useless, and/or evil, and that certain religious beliefs are much more revealing, useful, correct, and righteous. If you want to argue with scientists, talk science, not religion, and yes, ID is religion, unless you have testable evidence and methods to show that it’s actually scientific. Do you?
I agree, although one more short sentence could be added:
I ain’t no ape!
I think it may be more helpful to ask Sal Cordova which arguments in ID he finds convincing and whch unconvincing, for example:
* Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity argument
* William Dembski’s Design Detector argument (that Complex Specified Infromation implies Design)
* William Dembski’s No Free Lunch argument
* William Dembski and Robert Marks’s Search For A Search argument
* Walter Remine’s Cost of Natural Selection argument
* John Sanford’s Genetic Entropy argument
IIt should be noted that all of these are negative arguments about what natural selection (supposedly) can’t do. None puts forward a positive case for a Designer.
Sal has promised us future posts on ID arguments he finds convincing. Are there any of the arguments on this list that he doesn’t lilke?
This is very interesting. So, you don’t like to be demonised and intimidated by YECs for your views, but you and/or the ID community do the same thing routinely.
Theistic evolutionists are marked as sell-outs, or to afraid to say what they really think. It is intimidation of Christians if you/the ID community equal accepting evolution with atheism, being amoral, prone to go on killing sprees, being in favour of eugenics, or commit genocide, and of course, it is demonising of scientists and others who disagree with your position.
I could link to several posts and probably hundreds of comments at UD that do exactly that. It is the same tactic you’re decrying when Ken Ham uses it. It is demonising your opponents instead of arguing your position, responding to criticism, or, you know, actually doing science.
stcordova,
Why do you think the designer still exists?
What information do you have about the designer that would suggest this?
stcordova,
We see intelligent designers and their artifacts every day. We see intelligently designed biological artifacts every day. We know ID exists, and that it produces characteristics of phenomena that is qualitatively distinct from all other known non-intelligent causes.
ID theory is fundamentally based on human ID. If we were to go to another planet, we could likely determine if artifacts found on that planet were better explained as naturally occurring or the product of intelligent beings.
These are trivially true points nobody seriously argues against (other than those who deny the obvious). That intelligent beings create things out of available resources that would not otherwise exist is a trivial fact of existence. To argue that this process, this known phenomena, is not subject to scientific scrutiny is patently absurd. If a universal creator exists, then of course the universal creator would, and does, show up in the laboratory – and anywhere else you’d care to conduct an experiment.
The question isn’t if god would show up; god is already there, and will always be there. The question is if those conducting the research are capable and willing to see it.
Additionally, the question isn’t if ID or creationism brings anything to the scientific table; the question is whether or not science of any sort can be conducted without fundamental assumption of the validity of ID and creationist principles, even if such principles are concepts stolen by those who deny ID and creationism.
The answer is: no. Take your example:
Perhaps it would be better said that the description of the pattern of behavior requires no reference to an intelligent designer, but that is flatly incorrect. You are missing the unspoken and unseen but necessary observer/describer: you. We have no reason to assume that any concrete, wave-function-collapsed actuality would exist, that would appear to be a physical regularity, that could be described mathematically, without an observer present. Furthermore, math is an abstract entity; we have no reason to assume that physical behavior will behave according to an abstract formula unless we consider that formula, in some way, binding. All of science is predicated upon the assumption that the behavior of physical phenomena is bound to obey, or prescribed by, abstract mathematical formulas. The argument that they are just “described regularities” is an equivocation; science and technology doesn’t treat them as “descriptions”; they treat them as prescriptions every single day.
But, what is binding the phenomena to behave accordingly? Because the formula describes the effects of the bound (patterned) behavior doesn’t mean the behavior itself “doesn’t require” some kind of explanatory agency that has bound it to such mathematical (abstract) precision and regularity.
So, in both the actuality of the behavior, and the description of the behavior, you have left out agencies that have abstract organizational (ID) natures; either something is binding the physical world itself to abstract (mathematical) regularity and precision, or something is interpreting quantum potential according to abstract (mathematical) concepts.
Either way, science cannot be conducted without ID as its necessary root, even if largely ignored or denied today. What we call nature – that which behaves randomly/chaotically, or by what we call “physical laws” is an existential category that humans intelligently designed as a dividing mechanism to express descriptions that were unlike our own intelligent, willful, purposeful actions. Randomness and Law are characteristics that describe things unlike human willful purposefulness. Nature is that which behaves differently from humans and what humans make.
Science itself is intelligently designed and purposefully conducted. The researcher/observer cannot any more claim that ID doesn’t exist, or isn’t scientific, or isn’t a necessary aspect of all scientific endeavors than anyone can rationally assert that libertarian free will doesn’t exist. It’s a nonsensical position to hold. You might as well question whether you exist.
You don’t think an amusement park is a good argument for creationism? IMO, very few people on this planet are swayed by what you might consider to be a “good argument”, but are rather swayed by emotional, visceral and habitual considerations. Few people are capable of parsing the logic necessary to address such things; fewer still have the capacity to change who they are, which is what is necessary when you change what you fundamentally believe. If the joy of an amusement park ride makes someone’s life better by moving them into a belief in god, who exactly are you to look down upon such an occurrence with apparent condescension?
This is one of the reasons why we should live as examples as best we can; more often than not, rational argument and evidence are not the tools that make the difference. If that difference can be demonstrated and made at an amusement park, so what?
Because ID is experientially ubiquitous, we notice things that are “not like” that which we are observing from – thus we have “not like” ID categories, like “physical laws” and “randomness”, or the basic distinction of “natural” and “artificial”. But every description of nature, and every claim about nature, necessarily refers to the ubiquitous “negative space” of ID.
Even if ignored or unseen, it is still essential.
William J Murray,
That’s not the way it works at all.
We see something, we describe it, but tomorrow someone else comes up with a better description.
It was commonly accepted at one time that light travels in a straight line.
Should we have closed the issue on a new description then or allowed Einstein to come up with a new one that says mass bends light?
We came up with the math and we came up with the descriptions, not god.
We know our current limitations will be lessened tomorrow, by new knowledge and descriptions that come from us.
Hi Sal
Long time since we were both able to comment in the same forum. Very pleased that you are able to change your mind on issues. Perhaps you are following the Dalai Lama in his search for enlightenment:
“If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”
Have you changed your mind on Genetic ID?
By the way, it was you that introduced me to Pandas Thumb and the whole ID controversy when I came across a comment of yours at UD (where I had been referred by an ID proponent that I encountered by chance on a site unrelated to science or ID). So belated thanks for that!
Comment on moderation moved here.
Thank you for responding to my post, Joe.
I like all the above, but the one I like the most is by Albert Voie, Jack Trevors, David Abel, Hubert Yockey. See:
Also not on the list are the arguments from Mystery of Life’s origin by the founders of modern ID, Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen.
But not on the list is the misapplication of Genetic Algorithms to Natural Selection in the wild, something I wanted to post on.
What would count as positive ID for ID in your mind short of seeing the designer in action? If that is the only thing that would count as positive evidence for you, I respect that, but it would be helpful to know that’s what you really mean by “positive evidence” for ID.
Thank you again for responding and participating in my discussion.
Of course, except for not knowing who “we” represents nor having any concept of what ID is other than a collection of negative arguments against evolutionary theory. Perhaps you could have a go at the question Joe Felsenstein directed at Sal:
For ID to be more than a philosophical view, to be in anyway Scientific, someone has to formulate a testable hypothesis. That would be a start.
Excuse me for butting in, Sal. Professor Felsenstein will no doubt speak for himself.
It’s been more than five years since the genetic ID debate. Has ID made any progress? Has anyone used the explanatory filter to demonstrate non-human design?