Okay, ID may be taught — But you don’t get to teach it!

_{William Dembski
December 16, 2005

Education, Intelligent Design

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Education
Intelligent Design}

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The latest edition of Jeffrey Bennett et al’s astronomy textbook The Cosmic Perspective (4th edition) is now out. Sure enough, “intelligent design” is in the index. Indeed, it gets a full page treatment (p. 714). Below is the scan of that page. Does this text provides a fair representation of ID? Hardly. It appears now that ID will indeed be taught in the science curricula of this nation, only ID proponents won’t be doing the teaching. Life is so unfair.

ID in The Cosmic Perspective

Comments

Renard "Ã¢â‚¬Å“PanspermiaÃ¢â‚¬Â only moves the issue back to an earlier place or time, and offers no explanation." You're wrong. It offers an explanation for events from 4 billion years ago to present. That'll have to be enough for now. You have my deepest apologies that it doesn't provide more than that. So Renard, is the reason you believe chance evolution because it doesn't beg further questions about the nature of life and its origins? That's not a very scientific position. Sometimes partial answers in science lead to even harder questions. Deal with it.DaveScot_{December 18, 2005
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KeithS It might be "about God" for many, but for me it's not. It's about the evidence and following it wherever it leads. I'm just an agnostic computer design engineer. If God did it or some other intelligence, so what? The design remains the same in either case and make no mistake it IS a design and it almost certainly didn't happen by serendipitous bumping together of atoms. DNA is a digital code and codes require coders without exception.DaveScot_{December 18, 2005
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KeithS Reading your comment about an infinite regress to an ultimately supernatural designer was interesting and I can't really disagree, except to say that the supernatural becomes the natural once we know about it. That said, supernatural or not, we remain confronted with the evidence of design, and the evidence of design we have does not require a supernatural force. Is there something wrong with addressing the questions for which we have data even when we know it won't yield a final answer? Of course not. So let's focus on the evidence at hand and leave the ultimate nature of God and the universe to the mystics for now. How's that sound?DaveScot_{December 18, 2005
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Josh stoops to putting words in my mouth again: "It's okay tho, the full 1/3 of the world's population is probably okay with your view that they probably aren't men and women of conscience, considering they could worship such an immoral God." I do think that most Christians are men and women of conscience. I grew up as a Lutheran, my grandfather was a minister in the church, and my mother is still practicing. I have many friends and relatives who are Christian. These are good folks, and I resent Josh's cheap attempt to imply that I doubt the strength of their consciences. As a young Christian I was taught to revere the Bible and to take it literally. I had a crisis of faith when I noticed that the science I was learning was in conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible (See my December 7, 3:22 pm post at https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/553 ). This conflict ended up as an important factor in my eventual loss of faith, but another contributor was my discomfort at what I was reading in the Bible about law and morality. As just about every American kid does, I learned that slavery was wrong and felt the truth of it in my gut. It was therefore a shock to learn that the God of the Bible not only tolerated slavery, but also treated slaves unfairly (and brutally) under his law. This was not the God I had learned to love and worship. My pastor told me that most of the Old Testament laws had been superseded by Jesus, and that I should focus on the new law rather than the old. But I was still uncomfortable with the idea that God had done something seemingly immoral in the past. The pastor told me that what God did was by definition good, and that if what God did conflicted with my moral intuitions, then my moral intuitions needed to be modified in suitable humility. I tried to do that and was successful for a while. In the long run I arrived at the conclusion, as most of us do, that things are not good because a just God defines them that way, but rather that a just God does them because they are good. Having felt a similar urge myself, I sympathize with the need that Josh and some other Christians feel to whitewash the Old Testament and thereby align Jehovah with their morals. They want to take the Old Testament seriously, but they cannot reconcile its seamier parts with their morals except by distorting its words and messages. This takes a toll on them. Many (perhaps most) other Christians don't even know about the strange things in the Bible, like the slavery verses and the serial genocide. They imagine the Old Testament God as a stern but always loving and just deity. I think of this God as the 'Sunday School God'. The God they worship in their hearts is the Sunday School God. He is a far better God than the one described in the pages of the Old Testament. They're simply not aware of any discrepancy between the two. You can hardly fault their consciences for that. Other Christians know about the problematic verses but don't take them seriously. These Christians often see the Old Testament as the all-too-human attempt of a nomadic desert people to personalize and mythologize the ineffable God they were worshipping. These folks have no problem with the God of the Old Testament, because they see him only as a crude approximation to the real God of Christianity. They need not trouble their consciences. Josh cops out: "Keiths, you hate Christianity and you hate the Bible, so you will continue to distort everything you see within it- so I won't even deal with the many items above you confuse." That may be the right strategy, Josh. It's certainly easier to play the hate card than it is to construct a rational argument to show why I am mistaken. It also deflects attention from the fact that you're unable to answer my challenges. And this way you can accuse me of distortion without having to provide any evidence for your charges.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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Comment relating to the original topic at the top of the page.... Did anyone notice there's a bright side to the fact that Jeffrey Bennett included a page about ID in his new textbook? It's severalfold. 1) Until now, as far as I know, ID has been completely ignored in textbooks prior to this. 2) Now that ID is in a textbook, the textbook hawks at Discovery Institute can file their objections along with supporting materials TO GET THE WORDING CHANGED before a state like Texas will adopt it. The 3rd edition sells on Amazon for $103!!!!! BUT IT WON'T SELL IN TEXAS after DI gets through with it!!!! Unless they make changes. 3) Even if the book sells as is, now that ID is IN the textbook, a kid can raise his hand and ask for more information about ID. Once again, the only way the high priests of Darwin know how to counter the claims of ID is to misrepresent the claims. Fantasy, magical thinking, evolutionary logic and insanity are defended with fantasy, magical thinking, evolutionary logic and insanity.Red Reader_{December 17, 2005
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Four words for evolutionists: Ignorance is the best policy I mean, its got them pretty well thus-far climbing the social ladder so why stop there ? CharlieCharliecrs_{December 17, 2005
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"The God who gave those commands is immoral. The God of the Old Testament is not worthy of worship by people of conscience." ----------- Keiths, you hate Christianity and you hate the Bible, so you will continue to distort everything you see within it- so I won't even deal with the many items above you confuse. Nothing anyone will say is going to change your disgust with the Bible, you make that much clear with your comments. It's okay tho, the full 1/3 of the world's population is probably okay with your view that they probably aren't men and women of conscience, considering they could worship such an immoral God.Josh Bozeman_{December 17, 2005
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It's obvious keiths is using the how-keiths-reads-the-Bible hermeneutic rather than scholarly sources. Unless he wishes continual willful ignorance, I'd advise him to check out http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html to get everything straightened out.Dane Parker_{December 17, 2005
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Josh writes: "You need to look at the Bible in context and not stop at one verse." Josh, I've read the whole thing. Shouldn't that count as "context"? "Slavery in this time was not slavery we know of today. It was almost always voluntary..." Yeah, voluntary in the sense that if you ran out of money and were starving to death, you could "voluntarily" sell yourself into slavery. You could also sell your daughter (see Exodus 21:7), in which case it was hardly voluntary for her. "...it was servitude in the sense that the Ã¢â‚¬Å“slaveÃ¢â‚¬Â lived with the family as a family member and did chores for the master of the houseÃ¢â‚¬Â¦" Josh, when someone buys you, and you're considered their property, and you have to do what they want, and they can beat you, and you can't leave no matter what, that's called 'slavery'. "the master, in turn, was instructed...to free this person in a certain amount of time." Not true. Hebrew slaves had to be freed after six years, but the others were slaves for life. "The Bible doesn't endorse slavery, nor does God- it simply says if you do take part in the practice, you are bound to treat these people in this manner (a positive manner)." Yeah, I guess owning someone is "positive". It means you were willing to pay money for them, after all. It's a compliment. And beating someone, but not to death, shows real mercy. [Josh then quotes the eye/tooth verse] If your master knocks out a tooth or gouges your eye out, you go free. Broken bones, concussion, internal bleeding, or trauma -- sorry, you're still a slave. And you have to stay with the master who did this to you. "We're not talking God here, we're talking Jewish law and custom." Josh, someone once told me that you need to look at Bible verses in context. If you examine this verse in context, you'll see that it is one in a long list of commands given directly by God to Moses. This is God's law, not Jewish custom. "God set forth the punishment for abusing others, he didn't institute slavery." Let's suppose you're right, and that God did not institute slavery. How does that help? He knew that the Hebrews had slaves. He knew that people would keep slaves for the next 3000 years (he's omniscient, right?) and that they would justify slavery on the basis of Scripture. He could have added one little verse to the Bible saying "Thou shalt not keep slaves," but he didn't. That is immoral. And if for some perverse reason you don't fault him for that, then what about the original verses? You can beat a slave so badly that he dies after a week in a coma. But hey, if he doesn't die in one or two days, no punishment for you; after all, as the verse says, he's your property. The God who gave those commands is immoral. The God of the Old Testament is not worthy of worship by people of conscience. Let's hope that the real God, if he exists at all, is quite different, or at least has been through anger management training.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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Sorry Renard, but what I said is, in fact, supported by the evidence we have. The verese referred to here are in regards to those acting in servitude which was usually voluntary...I quoted verses thatmade it clear you are to protect your servants, as the bible even puts forth punishment for those who harm their servants. Exodus is a form of theocratic law for the Jewish nation, and it's quite fair if you look at the entire in context, not pick a verse here and there and claim God is amoral somehow. The servitude itself wasn't started by God, as is clear. He merely put up the rules in dealing with manmade institutions. It's like claiming the US is an evil nation because of the prison abuse scandal. We, in fact, have laws in place that demand a particular treatment of prisoners, and sometimes people refuse to obey these rules- so the government brings them to court and punishes them justly. That's not to say that the US created the abuse situation, nor does the nation or the govt approve of the actions. The Bible says that there are servants, that it's a manmade system...but, men will follow these fules to make sure that the servants are treated fairly and humanely. Treat them like your own famly members, after 6 years if they wish to go you must free them from the servitude, you shall not kill them lest you yourself be killed, you shall pay a tooth for a tooth if you injure them, etc. Nowhere does it say that God created/initiated or approves of the manmade system, rather simply that he demands certain things of people in their lawful treatment of others.Josh Bozeman_{December 17, 2005
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On the other hand, Josh, you are very familiar with the non-sequitur.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Clearly renard has never heard of a prison. Nor has he heard of a chain gang. Nor has he heard of prisoners of war. He's never heard of maid or butlers either. Gardeners are a thing of mystery in his world.Josh Bozeman_{December 17, 2005
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Thanks, Renard. As Someone once said, Blessed are the indefatigable, for they...they shall... oh, crap -- that one's not in there. Dang. By the way, your occasional pithy one-liners are a real morale boost.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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Josh, from your post #28 Slavery in this time was not slavery we know of today. It was almost always voluntary... You are almost priceless.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Renard, you clearly didn't read my comment. I said it wasn't considered slavery, it was considered SERVITUDE. Slavery is INVOLUNTARY servitude. Voluntary servitude was common in this time period. When you had no resources, no way to take care of yourself, you voluntarily put yourself into service to be taken care of. Or if you owed a debt you had no way to pay, you could put yourself into the service of another to pay off the debt and have you needs met that way.Josh Bozeman_{December 17, 2005
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Oops, scuse double post.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Voluntary slavery! Josh,, you are priceless.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Voluntary slavery! Josh, you're priceless.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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DaveScot I doubt we would agree on much of anything, but I certainly and totally agree with you that abiogenesis is an apparently intractable problem. "Panspermia" only moves the issue back to an earlier place or time, and offers no explanation. (Parallels with who designed the designer). At some time and at some place life had to get started, because life is here and now. Should evidence of life elsewhere emerge via SETI or other means, then given the age and size of our universe, one can assume abiogenesis is commonplace. Whilst we appear to remain unique in the universe we can freely speculate. That all development information for you and I was packed into the nucleus of an oocyte is also undeniable. Bleprint is the wrong word. Coincidentally Pharyngula has an article about HOX genes and the rÃƒÂ´le they play in development of the embryo by controlling cell growth and differentiation. Where we really part company is where you invoke front-loading. It seems merely to avoid asking real questions and moves things back to who did the loading.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Keiths- you need to look at the Bible in context and not stop at one verse. Slavery in this time was not slavery we know of today. It was almost always voluntary and it was servitude in the sense that the "slave" lived with the family as a family member and did chores for the master of the house...the master, in turn, was instructed by Jewish law in the Bible to treat that person like his family member, to protect the "slave", to look after him, to free this person in a certain amount of time. The Bible doesn't endorse slavery, nor does God- it simply says if you do take part in the practice, you are bound to treat these people in this manner (a positive manner). A few verses later, you see this:
Exodus21:26 "If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth.
We're not talking God here, we're talking Jewish law and custom. God set forth the punishment for abusing others, he didn't institute slavery.Josh Bozeman_{December 17, 2005
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Renard The most difficult job for random chemical processes to accomplish is the first cell. Once you have this self-contained self-modifying self-replicating free-living organic factory wrapped up in cell membrane on the scene things get a lot easier and there's a lot more time for the easier stuff to happen. The first cell appears to have come onto the scene around 4 billion years ago when the earth was still a violent, inhospitable place, as the solar system was very young then. Solar systems like ours, in this galactic neighborhood, had been around at least 4 billion years prior to ours forming according to GHZ reseachers. Organic molecules can also form in interstellar dust clouds which probably pushes back some possible pre-biotic chemistry more billions of years and more importantly drastically increases the size of the space where this random chemistry could be happening. Thus it appears likely that the first thing you could call "alive" evolved elsewhere and either by chance infected the earth or was planted here on purpose. There have been some studies showing that the earth is such a tiny target in the vastness of space that life originating elsewhere getting randomly transported here is virtually nil. In any case, life originating elsewhere and then finding its way to the earth is called panspermia. Now then, if you at least assume panspermia is a possibility then the question is begged "how complex was the first bit of life that landed here". It could have been exceedingly complex. It might have even been a purposely designed "seed" that contained genetic blueprints for irreducibly complex things like flagella. Irreducible complex structures like that being contained in a seed that diversified over time is called "front loading". We have examples of front loading today. You and I and every complex multicellular organism begins life as a single cell that is front-loaded with all the blueprints needed to unfold and diversify into trillions of cells of hundreds of different types organized into dozens of major organ systems. This all happens in a span of less than a year for individual humans. Now imagine a similar process of unfolding and diversifying in a pre-programmed manner happening over 4 billion years, starting out from a single cell and becoming all the diversity of life we see today. This makes perfect sense. Omne vivo ex ovum - everything comes from an egg. Phylogenesis and ontogenesis appear to be the same process only over different timescales. Sort of like a fractal - repeating patterns at different scales - nature loves a fractal.DaveScot_{December 17, 2005
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Indeed, if CSI could not reasonably have arisen by unintelligent processes, arriving at the conclusion of a supernatural designer seems unavoidable - at least in our own universe. Maybe the physical constants of another universe are such that CSI could reasonably have originated, and maybe we are some sort of experiment of that intelligence. Even within our own universe, how do we know that CSI would not have a resonable shot at arising on some other world? Maybe another world exists within our universe on which life was given more time to self-assemble. Maybe CSI exists elsewhere in our universe that is not carbon-based, and perhaps *that* form of life has a significantly better chance of arising sans intelligent intervention. I don't say that ID is atheism-friendly - it unquestionably poses serious problems for atheism; maybe that's why there are no leading proponents of the theory who are atheists. But to say that ID logically precludes atheism would be incorrect.crandaddy_{December 17, 2005
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keiths You have the patience of a saint.Renard_{December 17, 2005
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Benjii writes: "Keiths may I ask you to check out Ã¢â‚¬Å“http://www.Christian-thinktank.com ... The old testament God certainly doesn't endorse the slavery you envision." Benjii, I checked out the website's handling of what must surely be one of the most disturbing quotes about slavery in the Bible: Exodus 21:20-21, NKJV: 20 Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if a man beats his male or female servant with a rod, so that he dies under his hand, he shall surely be punished. 21 Notwithstanding, if he remains alive a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his property. The website has no explanation for this except to say, in summary, that other ancient near eastern cultures treated their slaves even worse than the Hebrews did. How this excuses a God who is supposed to be morally perfect is beyond me.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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Benjii writes: "Just because the designer is Ã¢â‚¬ËœGod' doesn't mean ID falls apart." I agree. In fact, I've argued elsewhere on this blog that ID supporters should come clean, admit that God is being discussed, and delineate his attributes sufficiently to make the designer thesis falsifiable: https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/557 They don't want to do this, for the reasons I mentioned before.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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Logan asks: "Why does a chain of designers have to end in a prime designer? Why couldn't there be a chain of designers stretching all the way back to infinity, i.e. with no beginning?" In a finite universe, you'd run out of the matter and energy needed for an infinite chain of non-supernatural designers. You might think that an infinite universe could conceivably contain such a chain, but the problem is that the speed of light limits the volume of the universe which is causally connected to ours, so you run out of matter and energy anyway. Cosmological inflation doesn't help, because conditions during inflation are unlikely to permit the operation of natural designing intelligences. Another problem is time. An infinite chain of natural designers cannot operate in a finite time, given that time cannot be subdivided beyond the Planck time. Logan again: "ID is not committed to the claim that the designer of life on THIS planet is 'supernatural'." True. As I noted, the proximate designer of life on Earth need not be supernatural. But the point of my argument is that a supernatural designer is implied at the end of the chain. Logan: "There could, for all we know based on ID theory, be other material constituents that give rise to conscious life as easily and naturally as water molecules give rise to snowflakes." As far as I can tell, Dembski holds that CSI in this universe always requires an intelligent cause. If so, this would rule out the spontaneous emergence of conscious life, even from "other material constituents." If he reads this exchange, perhaps he'll respond. Good questions, Logan.keiths_{December 17, 2005
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"Logically, there could even be a chain of designers: life's designer, life's designer's designer, life's designer's designer's designer, etc. Eventually, no matter how long or short the chain is, it must end with a Ã¢â‚¬Å“prime designerÃ¢â‚¬Â who is the ultimate source of the complex specified information that is being passed down the chain." Why does a chain of designers have to end in a prime designer? Why couldn't there be a chain of designers stretching all the way back to infinity, i.e. with no beginning? Some such possibility is presented in the typical responses to the cosmological argument. ID is not committed to the claim that the designer of life on THIS planet is "supernatural" (whatever that means). ID is also not committed to the claim that life could not have evolved anywhere: just that the probability of it developing on THIS planet (given the time and material resources available) is too low to make it reasonable. There could, for all we know based on ID theory, be other material constituents that give rise to conscious life as easily and naturally as water molecules give rise to snowflakes. However, this is clearly not true of the materials WE are made of.Logan_{December 17, 2005
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I just played the Panda game. These people represent the pandas: Philosopher Panda-Barbara Forrest and Robert Pennock The Upstanding Gentle Panda-Nick Matzke(He coined the phrase)... I think? The Activist Panda-Barbara Forrest and other like-minded atheists. The Sickly Panda-Ken Miller The Clown Panda-Eugenie Scott and Co. The Miner Panda-The Pandas thumb and Co. The Publisher Panda-Eugenie Scott and Barbara Forrest The Police Panda-Eugenie Scott and The Smithsonian The Pulpit Panda-Robert Pennock and Eugenie Scott The Constitutional Panda-All mentioned above ...And the winner for most outspoken and confused ID critic goes to...Eugenie Scott. Congratulations Eugenie for confusing people and making all kids of all ages ignorant on ID. You win absolutely nothing at all!Benjii_{December 17, 2005
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Replace the words "merits or demerits" with 'implications'.Benjii_{December 17, 2005
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Remember this Keiths: Intelligent design only discerns and infers whether something is designed. It can't take the scientific leap into venturing,insofar, the identity of the designer. Just because the designer is 'God' doesn't mean ID falls apart. Conversely, since Darwinian evolution is guided by an atheistic approach, it's merits or demerits don't make it stand or fall. It's where the evidence leads. And it surely doesn't lead into a materialistic outcome.Benjii_{December 17, 2005
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