I grew up with a healthy suspicion of religious extremists and their bizarre concerns. I was raised in South Africa, where the main white Christian church stood solidly behind apartheid. They said apartheid was based on the Bible and ordained by God. Although religion can drive a noble cause, like anti-slavery, it's often used to further all sorts of malevolent agendas.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - dave
"1. Intelligent Design is not science. It cannot be verified with facts, like science demands of any scientific theory."
Well, you've memorized the anti-ID talking points, even if you're completely ignorant of ID itself.
Adam, the whole point of ID is to verify design with facts. It eliminates chance through small probabilities. A design claim can be falsified very simply: provide empirical data proving that a non-intelligent agent produced the object in question. And please, Adam, no just-so stories like "but they look so much alike!!!"
Darwin deserves better.
"2. Scientists don't insist that preachers put forward the arguments for evolution in their Sunday sermons. So creationists should return the favor and have their arguments in Sunday school, where it belongs -- and not in public school science curriculums, where it doesn't belong."
This is a very silly statement, Adam. Your instincts about your arguments being idiotic were right on.
Can you state, in concise terms, what Intelligent Design is? Just state the argument, as you understand it. Show the world that you have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
27 - JR
dave: Adam, the whole point of ID is to verify design with facts.
So how's that going? Can you cite any papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed science journals? (Nature, Science, Cell)
28 - ven
Great book,
I hope everyone reads it!
29 - dave
"So how's that going? Can you cite any papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed science journals? (Nature, Science, Cell)"
It's a young discipline, and up against tremendous hostility in the journals right now. The irrationality surrounding the issue is staggering -- see the case of Richard Sternberg.
That said, the philosophical basis for the argument is William Dembski's The Design Inference which was release on Cambridge Press. Stephen Myers' published an article on the specificity of information in biological information and the higher taxonomic categories in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington earlier this year.
Of course, this meant that the old cannard of "where's the published articles" argument went by the wayside.
So of course the entire Darwinian establishment, which has careers, research grants, and indeed entire departments invested in the unquestioned presumption of Darwinism went apeshit.
So, this is not an even playing field by any stretch, and it is very difficult for an ID argument to get a fair hearing in the journals.
That said, please keep making the argument. It's early in the game, and the more deeply invested the anti-ID crowd becomes in the "where's the articles" argument, the more devastating it will be when articles like Meyers become more common place.
In the meantime, expect the gatekeepers to do everything in their power to keep a lockdown on good ID science, while allowing any number of Darwinian arguments full of conjecture and just-so stories gladly through the door.
So be it. Time is on ID's side. Straw men and Red Herrings can only hold off the tide so long. The evidence of design in biology is overwhelming, and a new generation of scientists are coming up that will not have been indocrinated in the party line. Don't expect this to just go away. It's not.
The teleological argument has been around for thousands of years. Darwin has only been around for 150. It was premature to think he'd have an indefinitel lockdown on the subject.
30 - Mr O
Dave
Help me out here. I've read Behe and Dembski's work but I am still confused. You see I teach 8th grade science and I just don't see anything "teachable" here!? To paraphrase Behe, "when we look at a cell it seems far to complex and must carry out so many functions at the same time that the only conclusion is that it must have a designer." This is just speculation, peppered with probability to be sure, but where are the testable hypotheses or even theoretical predictions that I could present to my class?
Funny thin is, I'm closer to the opinion that there is INtelligence behind the Universe than as not, but you have got to back things up a bit, say within the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang when the Universal constants (examples: speed of light, relative strength of elementary particles, strength of bosons etc . . .) seem to have "miraculously" developed. But without any falsifiable predictions or hypotheses this cannot be called "Science," can it? There are no experiments that would allow me to mix test tube "A" with beaker "B" and *poof* we get a burning bush which assures my kids that an Intelligent Designer had each and everyone of them in mind when he set the Universe in motion.
31 - copygodd
dave: "A design claim can be falsified very simply: provide empirical data proving that a non-intelligent agent produced the object in question."
doesn't that also mean that a design claim can be proven very simply, by providing empirical data proving that an intelligent agent produced the object in question?
which just takes us back to our inability to prove the existence of god. it's a matter of faith, and faith isn't science.
32 - Steve S
what if God is proven? Then there is no faith anymore, there is only a ruler, at that point, just like a President or a King.
ID people don't get it, they lose if it's proven there is no Designer, and they lose if it's proven there is.
They only win as long as it's never proven.
33 - dave
"which just takes us back to our inability to prove the existence of god."
It has nothing to do with God. It has to do with whether the object in question exhibits the the property of having been designed.
People use this kind of reasoning all the time, in the legal system, in insurance claims, etc. There's no justification to rule this kind of reasoning out just because some people don't like the implications.
But do what you will with the implications. There's are Jewish, Muslim, Moonie, Christian, and agnostic (hello! Antony Flew!) thinkers who give credence to the design argument.
Only people with a deep, emotional commitment to reductionist materialism want to rule design inferences out a priori -- that is to say, before we've even begun to examine the evidence.
34 - dave
"But without any falsifiable predictions or hypotheses this cannot be called "Science," can it?"
I've never understood this objection. "Science" comes from the Latin scientia which just means knowledge. If the argument is good, based on the evidence (as Behe's example of the bacterial flagellum is) then what's the problem?
By the nature of the ID argument as you understand it, what kind of predictions should it make? As I take it, it's simply an explanatory mechanism for a given phenomena. It can't predict where design will be detected, it can only say whether an object is designed after the fact.
But, a claim of DI can be falsified -- by simply demonstrating that a non-intelligent agent cause the object in question.
35 - Mr. O
Dave wrote, "Only people with a deep, emotional commitment to reductionist materialism want to rule design inferences out a priori -- that is to say, before we've even begun to examine the evidence."
Yes Dave, you are making my point for me. How can I or anyother science teacher "teach" ID at this point? There has been no empirical examiniation of the evidence. No predictions, no hypotheses, no tests= no theory. Probability alone cannot prove an empirical fact, we need what educators call "hands on activities." Science should never be "a priori," hell that's an Aristotilian principle-the very hallmark of Scientific reasoning is that there be actual field work. I cannot wait to met the human being who emperically proves the existance of God, or Q, or whatever we call the Intelligent Designer. Talk about a breakthrough.
Cheers
36 - Duane
Dave,
Thanks for participating in this thread. You've kept things interesting with your observations.
In your post 29, you indicated that the scientific community was hostile towards ID, and that they were being kept out of the mainstream because of this hostility, which, I take it, you think is based on a dogma that has resulted from the research grant infrastructure. How would you respond to this quote?
"In the mid-1990s George Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seekingarticles on ID. Among hundreds of thousands of scientific papers, he found none. In the past few years, independent surveys by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.
"Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet, according to the editors of Nature, Science, and other leading journals, few anti-evolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some anti-evolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.In the mid-1990s George Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seekingarticles on ID. Among hundreds of thousands of scientific papers, he found none. In the past few years, independent surveys by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless."
"Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet, according to the editors of Nature, Science, and other leading journals, few anti-evolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some anti-evolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously."
--- John Rennie, Scientific American, 287 (2002)
37 - Mr. O
Evolutionary Theory can be summarized as descent from a common ancestor with modification. What predictions could we make and how might we test them?
Take a Bear and a Dog. According to Evolution they should have descended froma common ancestor. Predictions:
1. If they descended froma common ancestor then they should share commom genetic sequences. (Bears and dogs do)
2. If they descended from common ancestor then they should share analogous structures with modification. (I would suggest a dog's dew claw compared with a bears thumb)
3. If they descended from common ancestor then they should be harder to distinguish from each other at early developmental stages. (bears and dogs are practically indistinguishabile from one another in utero)
4. If they descended from a common ancestor then there should be evidence of this in the fossil record. (dig down deep enough and the differnces between canines and bears melt away until a time some 15 million years ago when an animal called the "beardog" seems to have roamed the Earth.)
Now ID needs some testible, falsifiable predictions like these.
38 - dave
"In your post 29, you indicated that the scientific community was hostile towards ID, and that they were being kept out of the mainstream because of this hostility, which, I take it, you think is based on a dogma that has resulted from the research grant infrastructure. How would you respond to this quote?..."
Well, sociological conjecture is tenuous, and difficult to prove. I'm not gonna die on that hill. I will say that I'm suspicious of anything Barbara Forrest "independently" researched. But again, not going to the mat for it.
Look, it's prima facie obvious that the majority of folks who are hostile to ID are scared to death of the theological implications. Just look at Michael Ruse, an otherwise very intelligent British expat who objects to ID because he genuinely believes that it's part of a conspiracy to put sinners into concentration camps. He actually said that. He has other arguments, of course, but this is the one he trots out on national television.
Furthermore -- look at the Richard Sternberg case. Before anyone had had ANY time to evaluate Meyers' article or Sternberg's procedures, there was an unbelievable outcry. Surely, no matter what you think of Meyers' piece or Sternberg's procedureal rigor (both of which hold up under scrutiny, imo) you have to concede that the emotions exhibited by the establishment at the Smtihsonian were far out of proportion to any kind of reasoned judgement they could have had time to make about the case. The only factor was the controversy surrounding ID.
Seriously, can anybody tell me with a straight face that a pro-ID essay, no matter how rigorous or how many PhD's back it up, could possibly make it through the gates at Nature, Science or Cell in the current political climate?
Again, it's very early in the game. Things could be very different in 5 years. But right now, it's very popular for the anti-ID crowd to say that ID isn't science because it isn't in the journals, but ID can't get into the journals because it isn't science. Where will that be in 5 to 10 years? No one knows, but I suggest that the Darwinists will eventually need better arguments than "where are the articles?"
39 - dave
"Evolutionary Theory can be summarized as descent from a common ancestor with modification. What predictions could we make and how might we test them?"
All of your examples are also consistent with the hypothesis of a common designer.
For example, a Frank Lloyd Wright building of a certain period will most likely share many traits with his other buildings of the same period.
Not only will they be "homologous" in actual structure, but if we look at the "DNA" of the buildings, the blueprints, they also share many commonalities. In their early stages -- foundation and framing -- they may actually be indistinguishable.
So, if someone cares to posit a common designer for biological entities, why on earth would they expect to see radically heterogenous structures? Everything we know about designing entities tells us that they tend to reuse good designs and make local structures mutually adaptable.
40 - Mr O
Dave
Throw me a bone here, how do you "teach" ID in Science Class without the SCience? You keep talking 5-10 years down the line. I cannat wait to see the emperical evidence for the existance of an IDer, but are you admitting that it is too early to present to my 8th grade Science Class?
Cheers
41 - Mr. O
Dave
In 39 you seem to be ignoring the gradual defferentiation in the fossil record. How about we think about humans. Were Australopithecines and Homo-Erectus "throw-away" designs? Are you suggesting that the "designer" designed them independently of one another over a span of millions of years? Is there some compelling reason to take this position in light of the other three predictions of Evolution-analogous structures, common blue print (DNA), and Developmental similarities? In other words, why assume that the "designer" didn't use Evolution through mutation and natural selection to accieve its goals?
42 - dave
"Throw me a bone here, how do you "teach" ID in Science Class without the SCience? You keep talking 5-10 years down the line. I cannat wait to see the emperical evidence for the existance of an IDer, but are you admitting that it is too early to present to my 8th grade Science Class?"
It might not be time to "teach" it in eighth grade, in the sense that you would present it as fact. I think many local school boards are jumping the gun here and causing unecessary backlash.
But I certainly think that a middle school teacher should be allowed to present ID and any other legitimate criticism of Darwinism, alongside Darwin in all his glory. I'm certainly going to have my kids read through Voyage of the Beagle, Origin of Species, Dennett, Dawkins, et. al., as well as the good ID literature out there. It's all part of the history of ideas and there's nothing to be scared of.
But I don't know if I have a bone to throw you. If you don't feel comfortable using Michael Behe's mousetrap example applied to the bacterial flagellum, then don't. Keep reading and watching, and bring it out when you think it's time. No one should dictate that to you.
43 - dave
"In other words, why assume that the "designer" didn't use Evolution through mutation and natural selection to accieve its goals?"
You don't have to. The two are mutally compatible. The fact that there may be some graduation among species doesn't negate a design argument applied to a specific structure.
In fact, most ID advocates agree that this is probably the case.
44 - Mr. O
Dave
Again, I don't think I'm too far away from you on this issue, I personally believe in a Higher Power, but as you said its too early for much of the educational world.
But you also said this, " If you don't feel comfortable using Michael Behe's mousetrap example applied to the bacterial flagellum, then don't. Keep reading and watching, and bring it out when you think it's time. No one should dictate that to you."
Bush's endorsement of this theory while still in its infancy and efforts by many school districts across the country to add ID to their curriculums seem to suggest that many proponents of ID DO want to dictate to teachers what to teach in our classrooms.
We are still gonna need hard Science before we can make ID a viable theory.
Cheers
45 - dave
"Bush's endorsement of this theory while still in its infancy and efforts by many school districts across the country to add ID to their curriculums seem to suggest that many proponents of ID DO want to dictate to teachers what to teach in our classrooms."
My read of Bush's statement is that his position is no different from that of most of the academic ID advocates: ID should not be required, but it should not be ruled out either. Legitimate criticisms should be allowed to be aired in the classroom alongside Darwin in all his glory.
46 - Susan
DAVE: "it's how we detect design all the time. How would you tell the difference between random bashing on a keyboard and Hamlet? Or between letters spilled on the floor and Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky?" (post #12)
Letters on a keyboard do not procreate. Your analogy is useless when talking about life forms. You may not be a slut, but your argument is ignorant.
47 - dave
"Letters on a keyboard do not procreate. Your analogy is useless when talking about life forms."
Your statement is irrelevant and misses the point. Design is a property of entities and events that can be detected. We do this all the time. There is nothing particular about living things that should exempt them from the application of this intuitive form of reasoning, unless you have a religious commitment to a definition of science that conveniently rules this out before you actually have to deal with the data.
48 - Susan
DAVE: "For example, a Frank Lloyd Wright building of a certain period will most likely share many traits with his other buildings of the same period."
Same problem, Dave. Frank did not design buildings that reproduced. DNA is self-replicating; blueprints are not. If Frank could have designed buildings that had sexual intercourse and reproduced on their own, then you'd have fodder for an analogy. But he didn't, and you don't. (post #39)
49 - dave
"Frank did not design buildings that reproduced. DNA is self-replicating; blueprints are not. If Frank could have designed buildings that had sexual intercourse and reproduced on their own, then you'd have fodder for an analogy. But he didn't, and you don't."
If you had read the post in context and understood it, you might have a relevant point to make.
But you didn't and you don't.
50 - dave
I'll be more charitable. Susan said:
"DNA is self-replicating; blueprints are not."
Doesn't matter. The issue was whether the fact of biological similarites could only possibly be consistent with common descent. I demonstrated, using the building analogy, that no, biological and genetic similarities are not only consistent with a design inference, but are in fact exactly what you'd expect from a designer.
The fact that cells reproduce and buildings don't has absolutely nothing to do with the point that was being made.
51 - Susan
DAVE: "There is nothing particular about living things that should exempt..."
That's my point, Dave. Evolution only speaks to living things. It's your nonliving examples, manuscripts and buildings, that render your analogy false and useless.
Bush would require ID in public schools. Reread what your president said. I'm glad you don't agree with him. Let him know you don't agree.
DAVE: "The fact that cells reproduce and buildings don't has absolutely nothing to do with the point that was being made."
Er, yes it has everythign to do with it. You have no examples of intelligence making living things. Evolution has examples of living things making living things without intelligence (sexual intercourse is fun, but you don't need a PhD to do it). Don't use an analogy that avoids the very thing you want to prove. We are all aware of Mount Rushmore and watches and we see evidence of their makers, but we have no science that provides evidence for ID. Let it go until you get some science. It's faith. Why are so needy of it becoming science? Does science have cachet that religion doesn't have?
Yes, I suppose it does.
52 - dave
"You have no examples of intelligence making living things."
This is a common objection to the design inference known as "false analogy." But it has nothing to do with the analogy I was making. I wasn't defending the design inference with my analogy. You're not reading carefully, you're rushing to judgement, like so many ID critics. Read slowly and carefully and make sure you understand the argument being made before you make an objection.
If you want to talk about the "false analogy" objection as applied to the design inference, we can do that. It just has nothing to do with the point I was making.
"Why are so needy of it becoming science? Does science have cachet that religion doesn't have?"
I don't need it to "become" anything. It is what it is. There is no competition between the two as long as there are no artificial, ad hoc barriers erected between the two, as in Gould's "magesteria" or the philosophical slight-of-hand known as "methodological naturalism." Science, properly understood, should merely be defined as the knowledge man can gain from observing the natural world. Any attempt to restrict the *kinds* of conclusions that are allowed from these observations is gratutitous and philosophically tyrannical.
53 - Susan
Dave: "But it has nothing to do with the analogy I was making."
Yes, it does. The idea behind ID is about how complex things are. Some complex non-biological things were designed by intelligent humans. But there are no examples of complex living things designed by intelligence. So analogies of blueprints and manuscripts are not relevant when one is speaking of "biological similarites" (your words).
Dave: "Science, properly understood, should merely be defined as the knowledge man can gain from observing the natural world."
What observation about my appendix makes you think of an intelligent designer?
54 - Baronius
Blogcritics ID topics are like trains, if you miss one there's another every 15 minutes.
Mr. O - The scientific support for ID theory is typically statistical. Around here, someone else usually discusses that. I've been mainly talking about Behe's analysis of irreducible complexity. It looks like you're familiar with Behe, so I'll probably sit this one out. But ID is more of a critique of current evolutionary theory than a fully-formed theory of its own.
It's been many, many years (many) since I've been in 8th grade. When you teach a theory, do you typically discuss its possible weaknesses and alternatives? That's non-rhetorical (many, many years).
Adam - Glad to see you're feeling inclusive toward the stupid troglodytic ignorant dumbass shiteating radical viruses.
55 - dave
"Yes, it does."
No, it doesn't.
"The idea behind ID is about how complex things are. Some complex non-biological things were designed by intelligent humans."
It's good to see that you have a rudimentary grasp of the design inference. I was not making a design inference when I employed the building analogy.
Analogies are wonderful things. They can be employed in all sorts of ways. Sometimes people use analogy in poetry. Sometimes they use analogies in a philosophical argument. Sometimes they use them to explain things. I was using it in this last manner.
You seem to think that since I was talking about ID and using an analogy, then I must necessarily have been using it to defend the design inference. I have been known to do that, it just wasn't happening there.
Susan, are you being willfully dense, or are you simply incapable of reading slowly with comprehension?
"What observation about my appendix makes you think of an intelligent designer?"
I have no observations to make about your appendix.
56 - Susan
Dave: "It's good to see that you have a rudimentary grasp of the design inference. I was not making a design inference when I employed the building analogy. "
The design inference is rudimentary. I think we are both done explaining it. Do you have more?
Analogies in poetry are called metaphors. In argument and science they are never proof. But they are useful in arugment and sicence if the characteristics of the two compared items are similar to help draw similar conclusions. If they are not similar, a debator should refrain for using them. You, Dave, need to refrain.
Dave: "I have been known to do that, it just wasn't happening there."
What was happening there for you, Dave? Maybe it was just you, off in a corner being willflly dense. That's okay, but no need to share. We understand.
Dave: "appendix..."
'Nuf said. I rest my case.
57 - Mr.O
Baronius
Thanks for the comment. Of course we talk about the weaknesses in Scientific Theories in my class. I teach at-risk inner-city kids, they think everything is a conspiracy! I already said that I believe in a higher power, I was raised Unitarian so I do not believe in a personal God, but more of a Deist-set-the-Universe-in-motion-Ominpotent Being. I say look to nature's constants for evidence of design, because here is the problem with Behe's critique of Evolution. He, and most ID proponents, start with some unsound piece of a rather well-developed theory, like the multiple functions of a single cell for example, and say, "look, Evolution may explain the descent of humans from apes but it cannot explain the complexity of a paramecia's cilia, therefore we must conclude that an Intelligent Designer is behind all life-case closed" And this is supposed to be Science?! Look I have the same problem with String Theory. There are holes in Einstein's Theory of Relativity after all. Why does Gravity work? Einstein would have us believe that the mass of objects curves space and causes objects to sort of roll towards each other, and this doesn't seem to jibe well with Quantum Mechanics which is filled with probability and a reliance on particals to hold the Universe together. But no one can find the Graviton! Both theories have many field tests and experiments which seem to suggest their validity in certain instances, but taken together, they seem irreconcilable. Enter String Theory. Its pure Theoretical Physics and high level mathematics all the way. Sure Brian Greene can illustrate on paper how an 11 dimensional hyperspace filled with elegant occilating strings could create something like our Universe, again on paper, but where is the field work?
No ID and String Theory as they exist today are like Ptolomey's Epicycles. Remeber how the Catholic Church refused to accept anything but a Geo-centric Universe, one in which all heavenly bodies revolve around the Earth in perfect spheres. It took one hell of a lot of fancy math to explain why Mars backtracked across the sky half way through the year-forget that the Earth is closer to the Sun and therefore makes a faster revolution-if it cannot be explained by experiment or observation drum up some dogma and crunch the numbers to support your position.
No I am sorry, but the more I think about it the only way to emperically prove Intelligent Design is with an experiment the convinces the old Primary Mover to show herself. I don't see it happening somehow. Its better to look for natural explanations for phenomena. But hey, this line of thinking, "hey, if we poke a small hole in a theory then we can just conjure up some supernatural explanation for everything and call it science," would make my job very easy. Consider:
"Mr. O how does lightening form?"
"Jesus"
"Mr. O how do mountains form?"
"Allah"
"Mr. O what holds atoms together?"
"The hand of God."
You get the picture.
Cheers
58 - dave
"Sure Brian Greene can illustrate on paper how an 11 dimensional hyperspace filled with elegant occilating strings could create something like our Universe, again on paper, but where is the field work?"
This is what John Horgan calls "ironic science." It's amazing that all these science puritans who'd never read Popper in their lives come out of the woodwork screaming "not falsifiable!!!" at Intelligent Design, but somehow string theory and an infinite number of universes are theories get a free ride, peer reviewed, etc.
It's what I call "selective positivism."
59 - dave
"Its better to look for natural explanations for phenomena. But hey, this line of thinking, "hey, if we poke a small hole in a theory then we can just conjure up some supernatural explanation for everything and call it science,"..."
But what if it were nothing like that? What if Intelligent Design opened the door for a broader metaphysic that allows for mind and purpose as an irreducible property of the natural world? What if the discovery of a designed natural entity was the first step in revealing an elegent mind-like structure to the natural world, rather than the essentially dead structure we assume it is with our latent atomistic assumptions?
Aristotle, Leibniz, Berkely, Hegel, Whitehead, Bergson, Jonas...these are just a few of the philosophers over the centuries that have argued against reductionist atomism, in favor of seeing mind as more essential.
The discovery of design does not have to mean we surrender the essential elegance of nature over to an ad hoc, interventionist God kind of scenario. Nature itself can still operate according to consistent laws, but the idea of design might open our understanding to some things we never would have considered otherwise.
Design means intentional action towards an end, which implies mind. Why assume that all of reality must absolutely reduce to mute, determined, dead matter acting on other mute, determined dead matter? The Newtonian/Lucretian/Epicurean assumption about atoms (the a-tom, undivisible particle as the essential, irreducible fact of the universe) doesn't seem to have panned out the way it was hoped. Maybe it's time to move science on to some other ideas.
60 - Susan
Dave: "but the idea of design might open our understanding to some things we never would have considered otherwise."
Such as, what?
Mr. O is right. Design is a dead end. It's doesn't help predict anything. If we could talk to the designer and ask why, well, that would be neat. I'd like that. I could find out about my appendix and why my brother's killed him. But the designer isn't answering my prayers or queries or voice mail. Maybe it's shy as well as somewhat intelligent.
61 - dave
"Such as, what?"
Such as a universe that is not made of dead, mute, inert matter. I'm saying it's possible that modern physics since newton might have been operating on a fruitful but false analogy -- the analogy with dead objects: the universe is essentially made up of dead things, like rocks are dead, and that the living is just a type of what is dead.
For more see Hans Jonas' The Phenomenon of Life.
"I could find out about my appendix and why my brother's killed him."
I can't help you there, but a simple prayer would be a start. You don't have to have all the answers in the universe to offer up a prayer. All that takes is a little humility and a willingness to let go of anger, assumptions, demands...and actually it's funny how little faith it takes. That seems to come afterward.
62 - Baronius
Mr. O - I don't know if you've ever seen the Simpsons episode with the Movementarian cult, but you practically quoted it. One of the best Simpsons ep's, and that's saying something.
I've never heard anyone try to explain the graviton vs. warped space discrepancy. The 'brief history of time' guy (I can't remember his name offhand) seems to accept both ideas. There's a common saying among ID proponents that we should 'teach the debate', and I have no idea if that's possible, or even done with other debated issues. It should be, of course, but teachers are up against plenty of challenges (in case you hadn't heard) and there are lots of problems with curricula.
My gut says that ID can be taught as 'the debate', or as a critique of contemporary evolutionary theory, but it doesn't posit a complete scientific theory. That's its point, in fact. It says that random mutations would take too much time, and that there's no scientific explanation to account for it. How can there ever be an experimental way of confirming that? The closest thing is to cite a wall of statistics which oppose the current evolutionary timetable.
That's one of the reasons that I'm a big fan of Behe. Where most ID'ers present a problem of degree, he presents a problem of kind. The structure that can't gradually evolve. A thing which doesn't work with one part missing would have to emerge more-or-less intact, which isn't gradual, or develop gradually, which wouldn't provide any advantage in terms of natural selection. So it couldn't occur through random mutation and natural selection.
63 - D.C.
There seems to be a lot of HATE here being expressed by people of the evolutionary point of view. Of course since they believe in a fairytale, it is understandable that they think they came from monkeys.
64 - adam
Susan says: "I could find out about my appendix and why my brother's killed him."
Dave answers: "I can't help you there, but a simple prayer would be a start. You don't have to have all the answers in the universe to offer up a prayer. All that takes is a little humility and a willingness to let go of anger, assumptions, demands ... and actually it's funny how little faith it takes. That seems to come afterward."
Dave, does that sound like science or faith? Now that you've advocated prayer as a tool for finding things out, it's obvious your agenda is faith not science.
Thanks for finally making yourself clear.
65 - adam
Baronius: I've decided to draw the line at Christian Radicals -- when they advocate putting religion on science curriculums, killing stem cell research, or murdering foreign heads of state. I don't want to include them in anything until they repent their sins.
66 - Susan
Dave: "but the idea of design might open our understanding to some things we never would have considered otherwise."
Susan: "Such as, what?"
Dave: "Such as a universe that is not made of dead, mute, inert matter."
Dave, you think that ID is what opens our understanding that some things on this planet are living?
I was going to comment about your prayer advocacy solution, but Adam already did. Dave, should we teach prayer in school?
I just heard Behe speak yesterday on talk radio. He had a hard time distancing himself from 10,000 year-old earth believers (they comprise most of his support). There was time for animal eyes to form from light-sensitive patches of skin to the eyes we have to day (which will continue improving if we don't go extinct). I'm still curious about our appendices. They are poorly designed (a leftover from our ancestors). Evolution can account for an underused organ, but it turns ID into an oxymoron.
67 - dave
"Dave, does that sound like science or faith? Now that you've advocated prayer as a tool for finding things out, it's obvious your agenda is faith not science."
Susan seemed to be looking for Meaning rather than facts. Science is good at the latter but not so good at the former. Prayer and Meaning have tended to go hand-in-hand for me. But that's just me responding honestly to Susan's statement.
I'm curious, though Adam. You seem to be implying that someone who has faith would never be interested in science. I wonder how you reconcile that with people like, say, Issac Newton, Galileo, Rene Descartes, and, oh, Neils Bohr for instance. Faith was an important part of all of these men's lives. Does that mean that their "agenda was faith not science?"
"I'm still curious about our appendices. They are poorly designed (a leftover from our ancestors)."
There is still so much we don't know about how all organs interact as a whole. And even if they are inefficient, so what? There's a whole lot of unjustified value judgements in asserting that if a designer made us, he would HAVE to have made us with perfect physical efficiency. What if the designer's goal wasn't efficiency but a particular kind of humanity? What if the very inefficiency and limitations of our bodies is an integral part of what drives our creativity, our passions, the essence of what makes us human?
How strong and efficient would be enough? Should we all be Schwartezeneggers? Alien-type indestructable super-beings? What kind of existence would that be?
You can't separate any one particular aspect of our existence from everything else. We are what we are -- human, with a lot of qualities that from one perspective look like frailties and vulnerabilities, but in actuality turn out to be the very thing that drives an essential part of our humanity.
Beyond that, in many religious accounts that include a designer, there is a doctrine of the "Fall" or some other catastrophy that has affected all of creation. Many believers might say that the imperfections you see all around you are the result of this catastrophy.
That's not an argument for any one worldview, but just to say that Darwinism's "descent with modification" isn't the only worldview that can account for ineffecient or underused biological entities.
68 - Baronius
Adam, you're right, of course. My interest in ID theory isn't scientific, it's religious. Everyone who questions contemporary evolutionary theory (even Gould) is working for Pat Robertson. We also have secret meetings when the "unholies" aren't around.
There are two sides to every argument, the right one (which is also inclusive) and the wrong one (which is espoused by shiteating idiotic viruses). You are fortunate to be (1) right, (2) inclusive, and (3) able to recognize that your opponents are shiteating morons.
Sorry, dude, but this is just too easy.
69 - dave
"Dave, you think that ID is what opens our understanding that some things on this planet are living?"
No, I'm saying that the modern reductionist worldview, for the most part, sees all of reality as essentially dead. Living things are an anomaly. Life is an accident -- a random assemblage of matter that might just as well never have occured. Nietzsche states this idea succinctly in The Gay Science: "The living is just a type of what is dead."
If design, or purpose/telos, is an essential part of reality, an irreducible fact of existence, as many, many philosophers have argued, then the modern/reductionist worldview is no longer viable. "Mind" or "Life" would be much more fruitful concepts to use to describe reality if telos (or purpose) is the irreducible fact, not death.
70 - gonzo marx
fascinating thought there dave...but one not proven out by the facts at hand
if "Mind" or "Life" is the baseline paradigm...then where is it?
not anywhere else in the solar system we have found so far...as far as a statistical analysis of the quantity of space/time observable the phenomenae you speak of constitue an infintesmal fraction
i understand that, being alive, one can have a prejudicial viewpoint...but this seems to render your prime postulate fallacious
Excelsior!
71 - adam
Dave, the more you comment about ID, the more it sounds like metaphysics -- not faith or science. And that would make a terrific debate. There are those who think that human intelligence will eventually spread throughout the universe -- and that is where we are heading, seeding all of creation with our intelligence. An unintended result (or maybe intended) of evolution.
Baronius: I'm happy to be inclusive about Kerry, Bush, Limbaugh, Al Franken, Baptists, Episcopalians, liberals, conservatives, communists, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Flat Earthists, environmentalists, capitalists, etc. even though I like to argue with all of them.
But not Christian Radicals. They're a blight on our nation. They hold us back. Their ilk was a blight when I grew up under apartheid in South Africa. I guess childhood conditioning just turned me against them.
When it comes to New Agists and buyers of self-help books, I'm still not sure. They drive me crazy on some visceral level that interferes mightily with the DNA of my inclusionary porject. I don't want to exclude them like Christian Radicals, but what do I do about how annoying they are?
72 - dave
"Dave, the more you comment about ID, the more it sounds like metaphysics -- not faith or science."
Everything is metaphysics.
"if "Mind" or "Life" is the baseline paradigm...then where is it?"
No a reflective mind, like sentience, but a super-rudimentary "awareness." See: Berkeley and Leibniz through Whitehead, Bergson, Jonas.
Descartes made the dogmatic assertion that all of reality is divided into "thinking things" and "extended bodies." What if the two were not as radically istinct as he assumed?
"There are those who think that human intelligence will eventually spread throughout the universe -- and that is where we are heading, seeding all of creation with our intelligence."
That sounds like Kurzweil or similar nutcases. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about a very rudimentary notion of "mind" as a way to describe the simple interactions of matter. The simple, unreflective "awareness" and reciprocal interaction between, say, electrons might best be described in terms of "mind" (which isn't to say "rationality") or "life," as opposed to the persistent billiard-ball, Rube Goldberg metaphor that seems to be the base metaphor that modern science operates from, no matter how sophisticated it gets.
73 - dave
The above should have read "radically distinct"
74 - dave
"But not Christian Radicals. They're a blight on our nation. They hold us back. Their ilk was a blight when I grew up under apartheid in South Africa."
The problem with them is not the "Christian" part, but the "Radical" part, which is to say the part of them that defines themselves as what they are NOT as opposed to what they ARE.
If you define yourself by what you hate, then you end up becoming hateful. Nothing could be less Christ-like.
Some of your rhetoric, Adam, however well justified by your horrible experience in South Africa, demonstrates the same kind of negativity.
75 - ss
Dave:
You can try to dismiss Adam's satire as negative, but you got in a nice little huff when Susan crushed you with that house analogy.
And I do mean crushed you.
And you know it too, or you wouldn't have started calling her dense.