I’ve been thinking about the God of the Gaps argument today.  Proponents of naturalism (of both the philosophical and methodological stripe) use this argument in an attempt to discredit design theory as a means of explaining the physical world.  The argument usually goes something like this:  There are many things we formerly did not understand, such as the law of gravitation.  We might have been content to sit back and say “We don’t understand gravitation and we never will; God must have done it so there is no sense in inquiring further.”  But we were not content to rest in our ignorance, and scientists like Newton kept at it until they discovered the law of gravity.  There only seemed to be a gap that we needed to fill with God.  Similarly today, we can be assured that science will eventually fill in the remaining gaps of our scientific knowledge.  Thus, there is never a need to resort to “God did it” as an explanation for any phenomenon.  Read More ›

The Demiurge appears in Plato’s Timaeus as a human craftsman ([correction]demos = common people; ergo = work; hence a human craftsman). But it is interesting to note what David Hume does to the demiurge. Hume in Dialogues, through his character Philo, attacks the notion that there might be an analogy between the designer of nature and human intelligence. However, in section VII, Philo calls for a belief in copulation and generation from Hesiod’s Theogeny and Plato’s Timaeus. In other words, Hume quotes the Timaeus, in which the demiurge appears, to attack the idea that there is an analogy to human intelligence from design in nature – an apparent contradiction. David Sedley comments in Creationism and its critics in Antiquity that the demiurge should be interpreted metaphorically and gives the game away – as does Erasmus Darwin in Zoonomia. Read More ›

 I will be opening the 2009 series of lectures on ‘Darwin Reconsidered’ at the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture on Tuesday, 20th January, at 5 pm. My topic is ‘Darwin’s Original Sin: The Rejection of Theology’s Claims to Knowledge’. You can find out more about the series here. The talk will deal with the issues of theodicy that I have been raising in this blog.  

In this instalment, I try to make the connection between theodicy and ID tighter, not only to provide some deeper intellectual grounding but also to make quite plain why even religious people have not been rushing to support ID.

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This just in from RichardDawkins.net: Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount, I’m very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Cardiff, Devon, Leeds, Bristol and Aberdeen. Three questions: (1) What exactly is the probability that there is no God? (2) In times past the state was concerned Read More ›

Some of you may know that last year I staged a play at the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, which brought back Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin – who were both born on 12th February 1809 — to reflect on what has taken place since their time. Denyse O’Leary kindly mentioned the play here. It takes the form of a talk show, with all the show biz that entails. At the end Lincoln and Darwin were asked whether they wished to stay in the present or return to the 19th century. One stays and the other goes – but which does which?   The play’s running time is 80 minutes and it covers a host of issues common Read More ›

The BBC is getting excited about Darwin’s 200th birthday with a whole series of programmes on Darwin and evolution. Although a national broadcaster, there doesn’t seem much attempt at balance, preferring for instance to talk about creationists rather than talk to creationists (again – intelligent design is lumped in with creationism). This was the case with the Beyond Belief programme broadcast last night on BBC radio 4 (5th Jan 2009 16:30pm) Beyond Belief in which three Darwinists were brought on from Judaism, Islam and Christianity to tell us what they think creationists and intelligent design supporters believe. Alister McGrath spoke for the Christian faith, informing us that Protestant Christian creationists were in a sort of holy huddle mentality afraid of Read More ›

In case anyone cares, this item generated a dramatic uproar among third- and fourth-rate Darwinist tax burdens because – following a usual practice of file management, I had cross-posted it at the Post-Darwinist. Assuming any reasonable person cares, here it is.

I inserted into that post the following message, which should also do for this post, and justfor the record, really:

Note: This post appears to be exceedingly popular and I want to thank all the generous new donors to my PayPal button. Also, this post has garnered a large amount of attention (assuming site meter stats are accurate) and I am astonished at the number of third- and fourth-rate tax burdens who have written privately, proclaiming their faith in propositions like the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution. No wonder our economy is in the tank, and a thorough housecleaning is needed. I had no idea how bad it all was – but then I have usually had the privilege of working with productive, intelligent, and interesting people. Wow. I have always had the highest respect for my friends and colleagues, but I had no idea how lucky I have been, compared with the current Deleted Items box, mostly from Darwin’s Faithful.)

In “Darwin’s “dangerous idea: Top ten evolution articles,” the inimitable New Scientist advises us,

Scientists continue to respond to the latest attacks from creationists, and at the same time propose profound new ideas about evolution. This year has seen perceptions of the virus change from disease-causing villain to evolutionary hero, and the emergence of a new force of evolution – the absence of natural selection.

In other words, this year has seen the emergence of even more aggressive attempts to just plain make stuff up.

Put another way, everyone except the Darwinists has long since observed “the absence of natural selection.” It’s the presence of natural selection – as a source of new species – that we look for in vain.

A couple of years ago, after I had been following the controversy for several years, I found myself listening to a long lecture by a Darwinist, replete with bafflegab and pretty lame examples. Finally, sensing (correctly) that I was unconvinced, he proclaimed to me, “You just don’t understand how natural selection works, do you?”

And suddenly, the penny dropped. What he meant was that I just don’t believe in magic. I can’t make myself believe in magic; I haven’t been able to since I was a child. And I was no longer going to give the matter any attention. What I really wanted to know then and now is  – how magic became so important a principle in science? And I think I know of at least one reason.

Looking over New Scientist’s top ten evolution articles, I am struck by how paltry it all looks, how inadequate to the matter to be explained. I can’t believe that they are still fronting the peppered moth, for example, but they are, and under the windy title, “reclaiming the peppered moth for science.” (= In order to qualify as “science,” the moth must be reinstated as the notorious “peppered myth.”)

Who ever doubted that dark coloured moths might have a selective advantage over their light coloured kin in a polluted environment? The key problem, of course, was that, as Judith Hooper showed in Of Moths and Men, experimenter Kettlewell interfered with the moths’ normal behaviour during his research. So, while the legend blossomed in textbooks and popular science presentations, the very minor fact of a change in population frequencies between the two variants that Kettlewell was attempting to demonstrate may never actually have occurred. And if it did occur, it was soon reversed by widespread industrial cleanup. In other words, to the extent that natural selection does occur, it is apparently easily reversed.

The fact that so many people have put so much energy into defending the peppered myth merely shows how important the popular science myth of “evolution” is to their world view. Following the story, I learned far more about them than about moths.

So now, as to why the magic of Darwinism is so important to some people: Read More ›

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A friend on his lunch break sends me this – the latest nonsense from “evolutionary psychology”:

Google News Alert

Bruce Schneier: More on the Broad View of Security CSO – Framingham,MA,USAFor example, a lot of the seemingly irrational security trade-offs that the behavioral economists have documented can be explained by the evolutionary …See all stories on this topic

Have you heard? Gossip can be good for you Chicago Tribune – United States Gossiping about neighbors, co-workers and, increasingly, celebrities all grows from the same evolutionary root: survival. Back in the day, if you didn’t …See all stories on this topic

Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage? Science a Gogo – USA He found persuasive evidence from a variety of domains – including neuroscience, economics, psychology and sociology – that religious beliefs and religious …See all stories on this topic

Look at that middle story: I wonder whether a study detailing how gossip isn’t good for you – relative to minding your own business and getting on with the job at hand – would see the light of day … ?

One thing to note about EP is its utter predictability. It always seems to be about whatever foolishness is noised about in pop culture. If the talk show circuit likes it, it is definitely science. And who could possibly argue with that? Read More ›

I haven’t been following this debate at Opposing Views although I was invited to participate and am in frequent contact with those people writing for the ID side.  I believe the debate is closed now.  I declined the invitation because I thought it would simply be a rehash of all the old arguments and nobody ever really wins.   The argument from design, unlike what some people here have claimed, is as old as Plato and Aristotle.  It predates the birth of Christ by several centuries and probably much more.  Evidence of order and design in the universe is abundant and clear to any thinking individual and people have been thinking for a very long time.   The appearance of design is abundant and clear but the nature of the designer is not.  Thus in order to explain the where, why, and how of the design a plethora of creator mythologies have been made up out of whole cloth.  The notion that the modern ID movement is creation science in cheap tuxedo is a lie.  Creation science is a relative newcomer on the scene.   ID doesn’t try to find material evidence for and explanations of things like a global flood, a young earth, the parting of the Red Sea, people turning into pillars of salt, or any of that stuff.

Anyhow, all this is evident in the debate. You see our side is all about math, science, logic, and reason. The opposing side is all about accusing us of being nothing but god botherers wanting to get copies of the holy bible placed in all public school classrooms. The usual suspects and the usual arguments…

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In response to an earlier post of mine, DaveScot kindly pointed out this website’s definition of ID. The breadth of the definition invites scepticism: ID is defined as the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. But is there really some single concept of ‘intelligence’ that informs designs that are generated by biological, human, and possibly even mechanical means? Why would anyone think such a thing in the first place? Yet, it is precisely this prospect that makes ID intellectually challenging – for both supporters and opponents.

It’s interesting that not everything is claimed to be intelligently designed. This keeps the phrase ‘intelligent design’ from simply collapsing into ‘design’ by implying a distinction between the intelligence and that on which it acts to produce design. So, then, what exactly is this ‘intelligence’ that stands apart from matter? Well, the most obvious answer historically is a deity who exists in at least a semi-transcendent state. But how can you get any scientific mileage from that?

Enter theodicy, which literally means (in Greek) ‘divine justice’. It is now a field much reduced from its late 17^th century heyday. Theodicy exists today as a boutique topic in philosophy and theology, where it’s limited to asking how God could allow so much evil and suffering in the world. But originally the question was expressed much more broadly to encompass issues that are nowadays more naturally taken up by economics, engineering and systems science – and the areas of biology influenced by them: How does the deity optimise, given what it’s trying to achieve (i.e. ideas) and what it’s got to work with (i.e. matter)? This broader version moves into ID territory, a point that has not escaped the notice of theologians who nowadays talk about theodicy.

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I just got through reading Slaughter of the Dissidents, and I must say, it is fantastic. I was a little skeptical at first, simply because the title of the book was so extreme. After reading it, I still think that the title is extreme (there are real slaughters of people happening in different parts of the world), but I can see why it was chosen – the extent to which Darwin skeptics are being persecuted in academic environments is simply astonishing.
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Read it and try to guess which one: Promise you won’t cheat by Googling this quote. Or if you do, fine, but don’t post an answer that makes it sound like you had figured out the origin using brain power or historical knowledge or such. I’ll find you out eventually, because you won’t be anywhere near that smart later, when Google can’t help you: Improvement of Man. – If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of future generations of men and women on th earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that Read More ›