They said it: contrasted introductions to (and definitions of) Intelligent Design at Wikipedia and New World Encyclopedia

LT: I will pause to note, since you are ever so insistent, and in the context where you must know enough philosophy to be aware that you are pushing talking points that have no merit. (And BTW, Wikipedia happens to be by their own admission the no 5 web site in the world [other sources vary but concur that it is an extremely influential site], i.e by far and away the most influential popular reference and education site. So, it is entirely in order to take time to examine what they are doing and to correct them when they have gone as far wrong as this ID article is. A wrong that has been perpetuated for years in the teeth of correction. If you are unable or unwilling to acknowledge the need to correct blatant untruth and slanderous accusation, that speaks volumes, volumes, volumes and none of it to your benefit.) We routinely acquire knowledge of physical reality through common sense reflection on day to day experience, through our senses and perceptions -- as in you don't cross a road if you see an onrushing vehicle, through history, through finance and management, through economics, through psychology and sociology, through any number of disciplines. Just to pick one phil example, it is a philosophical analysis that leads us to understand that anything with a colour is necessarily extended in space, a patently physical matter. And there are many more like this. You cannot be ignorant of such, and this underscores the red herring and strawman character of your remarks, evidently intended to derail discussion of serious malfeasance of the world's leading education and reference site by Wikipedia's own admission. (As in # 5 most popular site in the world.) In short, by your persistent misbehaviour, you have merited being seen in light of the old saying: the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. Noting on the subject of Lewontin et al, the pivotal problem is the ideological imposition of a priori materialism (as noted by Lewontin and as is documented from multiple sources here on which you know or should know about for a long time now . . . ), and the associated rise of scientism that denigrates or dismisses anything but science as an access to truth or knowledge. Indeed, Lewontin almost humourously asserted a philosophical claim that undermines the possibility of such philosophical claims. That science is the only begetter of truth as an accepted concept is a PHILOSOPHICAL view, not a scientific one. Well did Johnson retort to Lewontin and though him to all too many others, as I again clip for record so onlookers can see for themselves:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

That is the issue, and I have good reason to be confident that you know it, that is I have good reason on long interaction to know that you know a lot better than you speak, so it is coming across clearly to me that you are making manipulative talking points designed to take in the unwary or ill-informed. As in, precisely the sort of might and manipulation makes 'right' amorality and ruthless, nihilistic factionism that Plato warned against in The Laws, Bk X, 2350 years ago. So, in the end, it is not unexpected that someone would pop up in a voice like yours, to try to play the red herring drawn away to the strawman caricature soaked in denigratory ad hominems to be set alight by snide suggestions or insinuations or else by flame war rhetoric. Of course, you know or should know that the ghosts of over 100 million victims warn about the rise in the past 100 years of evolutionary materialism dominated regimes of various types and the sort of nihilistic totalitarianism they have imposed. You know or should know that a favourite tactic of those who back the same ideologies was to try to distract and to twist about focus by projecting blame for what they were about to do, unto others. You know or should know of how Hitler in 1939, warned and asked concerning his intentions to the peoples of Europe, attacked Roosevelt and the French and British as hypocrites. Six years and 60 million dead later, we should have learned. We need not go on at length on the classic tactic of the marxist revolutionaries that would blame Capitalists and "Reactionaries" for the world's ills, only to inflict regimes of unprecedented terror and mass murder that exceeded even Hitler's holocaust and war combined. Ah, it is so easy to scapegoat the imagined right wing theocratic creationist conspiracy that intends to re-impose the inquisition, the index of forbidden books and the rack. Indeed, that is exactly what Wikipedia is doing. I should add a note on your foolish dismissal of the possibility of apocalypse. Apocalypse can come. It came to Germany in 1933. It came to Russia in 1917. It came to China in 1949. It came to Cambodia in the 1970's. It came to the world in 1939, it nearly came in 1962 [over Cuba] and again in 1973 [over Israel], it nearly came in 2001, and it is again knocking at our door as Iran moves ever closer to nuclear weapons and as the Islamist winter spreads across the globally pivotal middle east. WAKE UP, MAN! You know or should know that I am a descendant of slaves and that I bear the name of a relative who as one who out of Christian conscience and his own memory of having been a slave, spoke up in the Jamaican colonial assembly on the plight of the freed peasantry. Only to be seized, taken to where martial law was in force, be kangaroo courted in a rush that would not even grant enough time for the physician to come who could testify as to why GWG was missing from a key meeting that was the star bit of the "proof" of his alleged guilt [he was gravely, perhaps mortally ill], then hanged unjustly when the explosion he warned against came. You know or should know that personal history and how your invidious insinuations and hints therefore come across as a monstrous and willfully false characterisation that grates against a very serious bit of personal history literally written into my name. In that light, your persistent misbehaviour is an outright personal insult. Worse, you know of or full well should know that I have addressed at length the challenges of power and the sins of Christendom, which you have allowed yourself to so obsess over that you have failed to attend tot he sins of the secularists over the past 100 years and apparently those4 of the Islamists over the past 1400 years. You know or full well should know, that I have pointed out that the pivotal issue with abuse and oppression is unaccountable power, and so I hold that sunlight is the key antidote to corruption. Hence, in part, the reason for my expose of the sustained slander at Wikipedia. I would therefore draw your attention to the context in which I cited the great professor of the orient, Bernard Lewis in his 1990 article on The roots of Muslim rage, thusly:

. . . The accusations are familiar. We of the West are accused of sexism, racism, and imperialism, institutionalized in patriarchy and slavery, tyranny and exploitation. To these charges, and to others as heinous, we have no option but to plead guilty -- not as Americans, nor yet as Westerners, but simply as human beings, as members of the human race. In none of these sins are we the only sinners, and in some of them we are very far from being the worst. The treatment of women in the Western world, and more generally in Christendom, has always been unequal and often oppressive, but even at its worst it was rather better than the rule of polygamy and concubinage that has otherwise been the almost universal lot of womankind on this planet . . . . In having practiced sexism, racism, and imperialism, the West was merely following the common practice of mankind through the millennia of recorded history. Where it is distinct from all other civilizations is in having recognized, named, and tried, not entirely without success, to remedy these historic diseases. And that is surely a matter for congratulation, not condemnation. We do not hold Western medical science in general, or Dr. Parkinson and Dr. Alzheimer in particular, responsible for the diseases they diagnosed and to which they gave their names.

I think, sir -- speaking out of the context of your insistent personal insult as noted above [and yes, when you stubbornly speak in ways like you have done in the teeth of correction and opportunities to do better, it becomes personal insult after a time, personal in ways that speak volumes about your character and raises the issue that Caribbean people speak of under the label, broughtupcy] -- that you would do well to heed the tone of this man. I am deeply disappointed -- but now not surprised, this is plainly a re-emerging habit -- that it is you. I had hoped for better, but have reason to be disappointed. If you want to play the barking dog, then the caravan will just have to keep rolling, as what Wiki is doing seriously needs to be publicly corrected. Cho man, do betta dan dat! A lot better than that. Good day, sir. GEM of TKIkairosfocus

January 5, 2013

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Wait one minute, KF:

You have already had your answer, and again this morning, which addresses the investigation of empirical phenomena in light of the per aspect causal inference filter as a part of dealing with the demarcation issue Wiki raised. It seems you want to pretend that a serious answer is not there, so you can beat away at an assertion that is based on a willful word game that refuses to acknowledge the significance of the known worldviews context Lewontin alludes to and the well known wider context of evolutionary materialism in the civilisation.

Isn't "the investigation of empirical phenomena in light of the per aspect causal inference filter" an application of science? Your stated problem is the view that science is the only begetter of truth about the material world, as if there were other, non-scientific ways to ascertain facts about physical reality. So now it seems you are conceding Lewontin's point on the matter. You'll object to my tone, no doubt, but I must laugh when I'm accused of word games in the same sentence that gives this: "the significance of the known worldviews context Lewontin alludes to and the well known wider context of evolutionary materialism in the civilisation." In any case, I don't think you have a leg to stand on regarding worldviews and consequences. The larger part of actual historical events is against you. Please, proceed again to tilt at the Wiki windmill.LarTanner

January 4, 2013

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LT, re:

let’s settle the matter of how one actually learns anything about the material world, since that specific question emerged from reviewing Lewontin’s words.

You have already had your answer, and again this morning, which addresses the investigation of empirical phenomena in light of the per aspect causal inference filter as a part of dealing with the demarcation issue Wiki raised. It seems you want to pretend that a serious answer is not there, so you can beat away at an assertion that is based on a willful word game that refuses to acknowledge the significance of the known worldviews context Lewontin alludes to and the well known wider context of evolutionary materialism in the civilisation. Sorry, not chasing that red herring today, enough having been said for a reasonable person. The real issue on the table is Wiki's ID article, and what it implies. I would suggest you address yourself to this if you wish to continue to participate in this thread as a serious part of a discussion in front of the onlookers -- now and later. So far it sounds a lot like, nothing can be said in serious exculpation of Wiki, and distraction games are being played instead. KFkairosfocus

January 4, 2013

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KF:

You know the history of the past 100 years well enough to know the answers to your questions.

I do, and that's why I ask the question. I want to know what specific events you see as directly attributable to evolutionary materialism. It seems from your response that you believe the rise of fascism and the National Socialists in Germany is one occurrence for which evolutionary materialism is to blame. You may also see Italian fascism in the same way but I can't tell. I'm not sure that you link Communism in its Marxist, Leninist, or Stalinist guises as byproducts of evolutionary materialism. So, I may know some of the history, but I don't know how you are linking evolutionary materialism to specific occurrences. And then there's that flip-side question: Historically, have “ruthless…power-grabbing factions” been fostered by worldviews or philosophies other than evolutionary materialism? If so, how do you account for this? Now, you have charged that evolutionary materialism is a view that undercuts principles of traditional public morality and decency. This is my reconstruction of your view. Let's say that this is true, for the sake of argument. (I disagree, of course, and I notice we always seem to slide away from Lewontin's materialism as a view restricted to physical phenomena.) Can evolutionary materialism be both correct on facts and detrimental to social stability?LarTanner

January 4, 2013

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LT: You know the history of the past 100 years well enough to know the answers to your questions, and if you don't listen to the ghosts of over 100 million ghosts of victims of radical secularist and Haeckel-influenced, neopagan- aryan man superman cum "scientific" racist myth, cats have no empathy for mice and foxes none for geese regimes. Notice along the way Heinie's prophetic warning. The issue is that as Plato pointed out, evolutionary materialism multiplies the problems of power tending to corrupt by undermining principles and assent to morality and decency as restraints on public action. As in might makes right. Apart from that there is a substantive issue on the table that needs to be addressed, Wiki's hatchet job. KFkairosfocus

January 4, 2013

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KF, Not being coy--or playing games--but what specific historical occurrences do you lay at the feet of "evolutionary materialism"? The flip-side question: Historically, have "ruthless...power-grabbing factions" been fostered by worldviews or philosophies other than evolutionary materialism? If so, how do you account for this? Please feel free not to answer if you find my question to be driving away from the subject of the OP and ensuing discussion. I certainly don't intend to sidestep important question; but of course, I think some of the points I've made here have themselves been sidestepped. As you'll recall, I first posted to look at the actual language used by Lewontin and to assert that his materialism is deliberately constructed as an a priori limit on what science studies and what mechanisms it uses to create explanations. While I agree that Lewontin's approach is open to criticism, even the charge of dogmatism, I challenge the notion that Lewontin--in his famous review--advocates an all-encompassing materialism that extends beyond the scientific enterprise. The flip side of my looking at Lewontin's actual words and usage was to wonder aloud what other begetters of truth there might be for explaining the material world. The source of my wondering is a specific criticism made here, but not fleshed out: the criticism that Lewontin considers science to be "the only begetter of truth" [i.e., truth about the material world]. Where some charge I'm playing word games, I rather think that language matters and that it's important to consider language use and context. The leap from texts to capital-w worldviews and grand historical narratives is mildly interesting, but it always seems to lead to the old disagreement between pessimists and optimists: Pessimist: Things cannot get any worse than they are right now. Optimist: Yes, they can. In short, before we get to wringing our hands over the state of the world--and, you'll admit, such wringing and even apocalyptic fervor has been around just as long as Plato--let's settle the matter of how one actually learns anything about the material world, since that specific question emerged from reviewing Lewontin's words.LarTanner

January 4, 2013

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F/N: The markup continues here: _____________ >>Wiki’s F – - on ID, 3: The pseudoscience false accusation vs the demarcation challenge for origins sciences As we continue to mark up the Wikipedia introductory remarks on ID in its dismissive article, the next focal issue on failure to achieve the vaunted NPOV or carry out responsibilities of truthfulness, warrant and fairness, is:

Intelligent design is viewed as a pseudoscience by the scientific community, because it lacks empirical support, offers no tenable hypotheses, and aims to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes.

I will contend — as can be seen from last time — that: a: on the contrary, the design inference on tested and reliable empirical signs such as FSCO/I is empirically credible and well supported, thus b: it is itself a tenable hypothesis (all laws of science or metrics or criteria are in principle hypotheses under test that could be overturned by a solid counter-instance), and c: it should by now be patent that the contrast between natural vs ART-ificial is so longstanding (dating to Plato) that it is inexcusable to substitute the loaded strawman caricature, natural vs supernatural. But first, we need to pause to deal with the issue of the demarcation challenge and the dismissive notion and epithet that Wiki’s anonymous ideologists tried to use as a skewer to spit ID on like a piglet to be roasted, “pseudoscience.” What is science and what is pseudoscience or simply non-science? Is methodological naturalism (which Wiki’s ideologues tried to impose as a defining criterion) a legitimate rule of what is or is not scientific, especially on matters of origins? At this level, what is lurking here is the Judge Jones Dover ruling on what marks the border between science and pseudoscience, on p. 139. Bradley Monton’s remarks in his dissection of the Dover ruling just one month after it was issued, are very appropriate:

Jones’s ruling holds that that intelligent design (ID) counts as religion, not science, and hence the teaching of ID in public school is unconstitutional. In Jones’s 139 page decision, he gives an answer to the contentious demarcation question – what criteria can we use to demarcate science from non-science? . . . . For example, as I will show, a consequence of Jones’s criteria is that the aim of science is not truth. While this may be the case, one would expect this to be established by philosophical argumentation about the aim of science (along the lines of e.g. van Fraassen 1980), not by a specification of demarcation criteria to distinguish science from pseudoscience. My position is that scientists should be free to pursue hypotheses as they see fit, without being constrained by a particular philosophical account of what science is . . . . Larry Laudan got the answer right:

If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like “pseudo-science” and “unscientific” from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. (Laudan 1983, 349)

If our goal is to believe truth and avoid falsehood, and if we are rational people who take into account evidence in deciding what to believe, then we need to focus on the question of what evidence there is for and against ID. I recognize that, if we can’t declare ID unscientific, this makes it harder to exclude ID from pubic school. But we first need to figure out the right thing to think about the scientific status of and the empirical evidence for ID; only then can we take up the very different question of what should be included in public school curricula. [IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN SCIENCE? DISSECTING THE DOVER DECISION, Jan 18, 2006 ]

In short, the game being played here by Wiki’s ideologues intent on a hatchet job — see how the shoe pinches on the other foot, and worse, I have shown all of this to be true already — is little more than definitional gerrymandering, multiplied by name-calling. In a context where the demarcation of science from non-science (much less pseudoscience) is widely known to be extremely problematic. Feyerabend is acidly apt:

The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for -ranted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only ‘rule’ that survives is ‘anything goes’. [Opening words, Against Method, 1975]

In short, and on a serious study of the actual history of scientific breakthroughs, methodological gerrymandering by imposition of the sort of question-begging rules we have seen that demand materialism as an a priori or insist that science must explain by naturalistic mechanisms of chance and necessity to the exclusion of ART, is not a promising approach. At least, if we are actually concerned to find out the truth about our world by empirically grounded investigations, insofar as that is achievable. Nowhere is this more the case than on matters of origins, where we simply cannot directly observe the remote past. So, we are forced to infer on best current explanation, in light of comparing reasonable alternative hypotheses. So also, imposing a priori materialism by the back door of a claimed longstanding methodological constraint on what science is about, is actually censorship that turns science into a handmaiden of materialist ideology, exploiting its prestige as a vehicle of discovery to advance a cause that seems to be in serious difficulty advancing openly on its own merits as a philosophy. As Haldane aptly summarised, we are looking at a case of sawing off the branch on which we must all sit, here:

“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]

So, now, let us examine in steps of thought: 1 –> “[T]he scientific community” that views the design inference as pseudoscience, of course is being constrained by a “no true Scotsman [scientist]” rule. 2 –> That is, as can be directly seen, those qualified and practicing scientists who accept that empirical investigations on reliable, tested signs can and do lead to the ability to detect design as causal factor, are being artificially excluded from the community of “true” — a priori materialism adhering — scientists by imposing a pejorative label: pseudoscientists. 3 –> this is also a case of censorship and improper appeal to authority. In science, the only thing that should be decisive is empirical evidence and associated reasoning. 4 –> But one cannot beg the question too blatantly, so one has to trot out some “evidence” of failure to dismiss those who disagree. Thus, the cluster of assertions: [ID] lacks empirical support, offers no tenable hypotheses, and aims to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes 5 –> Let us remind ourselves of just what the design inference on reliable sign does as we look at aspects of an object: [Image is at the linked article] [Caption] The per aspect explanatory filter that shows how design may be inferred on empirically tested, reliable sign 6 –> Observe, the default is that phenomena or objects are first shaped by natural regularities tracing to forces acting in accordance with in principle discoverable natural law3s such as F = m*a or E = m*c^2, etc. On seeing a low contingent, consistent pattern under similar circumstances, we go hunting for descriptive then dynamical laws and seek to embed in theoretical frameworks and go on to further aspects of the object or phenomenon that are of interest. That has been a major feature of science since Galileo, as a student, timed a church candelabra viewed as a pendulum with his pulses, on seeing that within a certain range, faster wider swings and slower shorter ones both seemed to have the same period. 7 –> Now, there are other cases that under similar initial circumstances, show considerable diversity of outcomes; such as the dropping of a die. For such cases, the default is chance acting by some known or unknown distribution and showing itself in a pattern that may be sampled through observations. In short, high contingency leads us to suspect chance as first likely explanation. This too is a longstanding scientific approach, and is the root of say the field of statistical thermodynamics. 8 –> But now, suppose we cane upon a long linear tray of about 200 dice [6 ^200 ~ 4.268*10^155 possible arrangements], all of which showed 1, or 1, 2, 3,4,5,6 in succession then repeat. Would we infer to chance as best explanation? Would we be justified to infer that we can only explain scientifically by blind chance and blind mechanical necessity so to infer that such dice were probably intelligently arranged, is “pseudoscientific”? Patently, not. 9 –> Now, suppose we had a code by which the six die states in string arrangements, could express English sentences etc. Now, suppose we came across a pattern that has no simple orderly repetition, but then saw that it is in fact was organised in accordance with the code, to spell out say the opening sentences of this post. 10 –> I think that any reasonable person would conclude that the organised pattern was contrived, on the principle that the possible arrangements that fit such a tight criterion of functional specificity are deeply isolated in the field of possibilities, so much so that intelligently directed configuration is the only reasonable, empirically warranted explanation. 11 –> Now, suppose, we had another similar string, and found out that it was arranged in the object code for a computer program that carried out a definite procedure on a specific machine. I am sure the reasonable person would conclude the same, and would continue to do so unless and until it could be shown per observations that blind chance and mechanical necessity writes computer code. 12 –> This is of course the exact case we have with protein-coding DNA. 13 –> I would therefore say, that the world of digitally coded strings in books, blog posts, the Internet, the IT industry, the related world of CAD drawings for functional objects, computer generated imagery etc etc all stand in empirical support of the empirically grounded inductive generalisation that functionally specific, complex information and related organisation are reliable signs of design as cause. 14 –> I would go on to say that there are no credible exceptions to the observation that such FSCO/I is an empirically tested, reliable sign of design as cause. (That includes Genetic Algorithms and the like, which are not only intelligently designed and organised on intelligently devised algorithms, but work within strictly limited islands of function in the space of possibilities for items of that much complexity.) 15 –> Q: Why then is there such a bold assertion that “Intelligent design . . . lacks empirical support”? ANS: Selective hyperskepticism that refuses to acknowledge the force of the chain of reasoning above, and is multiplied by the sort of Lewontinian hostility and a priori materialism seen already, that refuses to accept that something could count as evidence of design in an origins context. Ideological censorship, in one short phrase. 16 –> Similarly, it is obvious that the design inference can be tested on the reliability of such observable signs: if we were to see an object with 500 – 1,000 or more bits of functionally specific complex information in it that was known — per observation, not a priori assumptions — to have come about by blind chance and mechanical necessity, FSCI would at once collapse and with it the whole intelligent design inference on complex specified information. 17 –> So, given that design is a feasible and empirically grounded– directly observed –process for the creation of objects exhibiting FSCI, it is a false assertion that ID is not subject to tests, has no empirical warrant and so “offers no tenable hypotheses.” 18 –> Now, finally, look at the steps of thought above. Do you see any inference to “the supernatural” as an explanatory category or cause? Not one. 19 –> What you will see is plenty of inferences to something we routinely observe and exhibit: intelligence acting by ART and skill to effect complex, functionally specific entities, which then often show signs that point to design as most credible causal explanation. 20 –> So, the accusation “Intelligent design . . . aims to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes” is willfully false (as for twenty five and more years leading design thinkers have repeatedly taken public pains to point out that inference to intelligent design as causal factor is not the same as inference to any particular designer much less a supernatural one), erecting a conveniently polarised strawman to be pummelled. 21 –> What is really going on instead is little more than appeal to -prejudice and a priori materialism imposed by the back door through a questionable — and patently question-begging — methodological constraint. Just as Feyerabend warned against. 22 –> To wit, inference to intelligence on sign that is empirically testable, falsifiable on counter-example and the like are not at all the same as appealing to some untestable supernatural entity. 23 –> And, indeed, if such a supernatural entity is intelligent and would manifests signs of such in its work, then there is no good reason why such action of intelligent design by a suggested supernatural entity would be inherently and inescapably untestable on signs that are known to be reliable per empirical testing! (Such would be problematic only if we KNOW otherwise that supernatural entities are impossible, which plainly is not the case.) 24 –> What comes out in the end, is that what is really going on is a thinly disguised appeal to prejudice against God, embedded in a priori materialism that then assumes that the supernatural is impossible in any case and suggests ignorantly that a world in which a supernatural God has acted as creator and sustainer would be a chaos not a cosmos, making science impossible. 25 –> Which is directly contradicted by the sheer fact that modern science was birthed in a world that operated under just such a worldview. 26 –> Let one of those founders of modern science, therefore speak, in light of his discoveries of mechanics and universal gravitation as well as optics, i.e. Newton in his General Scholium to Principia:

. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler . . . . We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. [That is, implicitly rejects chance, Plato's third alternative and explicitly infers to the Designer of the Cosmos.]

____________ So, clearly, something is very, very wrong with the Wikipedia article on Intelligent Design. It should be severely corrected and a permanent notice of apology should be affixed, given what has been done in the teeth of easily accessible corrective information, and what has been sustained in the teeth of repeated attempts to correct the record. >> _____________ It is time that Wiki fixed its editorial and moderation policies, as this shows abject failure and worse than mere failure, indoctrination in the false name of education. Indeed,t he "pseudoscience" taunt can be turned back on these ideologues. For, if they have locked up science in a materialist circle by gerrymandering rules, they are preventing any possibility of acknowledged falsification. As in, they are trying to secure immunity to empirical test. Oops. KFkairosfocus

January 4, 2013

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F/N 2: Plato, of course, long ago saw through evolutionary materialism and e particularly highlighted the consequences of its amorality and radical relativism that tend to foster the rise of ruthless, nihilistic power-grabbing factions. The Laws, Bk X, speaking in the voice of the Athenian Stranger:

Ath. . . . [[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [[In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view! Notice also, the trichotomy of causal factors: (a) chance/accident, (b) mechanical necessity of nature, (c) art or intelligent design and direction.] . . . . [[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT.] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny], and not in legal subjection to them.

We are reprising again a very old play, with very predictable consequences. Why do we so often insist on ignoring the grim lessons of history? KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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F/N: Lucretius, in The Nature of Things, C1 BC:

[[Bk I, Ch 4:] . . . All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they’re set, and where they’re moved around. For common instinct of our race declares That body of itself exists: unless This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not, Naught will there be whereunto to appeal On things occult when seeking aught to prove By reasonings of mind . . . . Again, whate’er exists, as of itself, Must either act or suffer action on it, Or else be that wherein things move and be: Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on; Naught but the inane [[i.e. void] can furnish room. And thus, Beside the inane and bodies, is no third Nature amid the number of all things . . . [[Ch 5:] Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs. And those which are the primal germs of things No power can quench; for in the end they conquer By their own solidness . . . .

This first goes to underscore that materialism is primarily a philosophical worldview, not a product of science.(This is of course what is driving ever so much of the evolutionary materialism and scientism above. Ideology, not truly science.) Next, it highlights the astonishing blind spot in such materialist thinking. On one hand we see the world envisioned as matter under blind forces of chance and necessity, leading to a sort of chance affected determinism on such blind forces. But on the other hand, lo and behold by poof magic, the knowing, reasoning observer. But, if we are looking at matter-energy in space-time under forces tracing to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity, whence the credibility of knowing, reasoning minds? Or, as Haldane put the issue:

"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. ]

(Cf discussion of the challenge of grounding reason on evolutionary materialist premises, here.) KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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Information is neither matter nor energy. How do materialists deal with information?Joe

January 3, 2013

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Very well. Lucretius, by the way, is excellent. I recommend Stephen Greenblatt's book The Swerve on the remarkable re-discovery of Lucretius, although Greenblatt needs to brush up on his views of medieval Europe.LarTanner

January 3, 2013

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LT: Pardon but this is too serious for word games as usual. We all know the context of the dominance of evolutionary materialism and scientism from hydrogen to humans, and -- grab a bite of lunch -- and the issues this puts when a priorism is inserted. From that view, from Lucretius to today, the physical world defines reality and science since the days of the positivists has been pushed as THE path to knowledge. It is time to bring that ideological imposition -- as can especially be seen in the wiki hit piece on ID that is being vivisected here -- to account. KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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KF, I don't have much time either. Lewontin does indeed establish a priori materialism with respect to that which interests him--"matter, energy, space and time." Although he might agree it's possible the cosmos is not encompassed by these four categories, he's not interested in professionally studying anything beyond the material cosmos. It's a separate question as to whether there are gateways to truth about the material world in addition to science. Here's one of the famous paragraphs of Lewontin's review:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

The first two sentences don't make science or scientists sound too great. Lewontin talks about "patent absurdity," "failure," and scientific laziness. That third sentence is key: science does not, Lewontin says, compel materialistic explanations. Materialistic explanations have to be constructed; they have to be willed. One has to have the discipline in materialism "to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations." On the flip side, one has to resist the urge to "allow a Divine Foot in the door," which is to say to cease the pursuit of a material explanation. The final sentences explain why this local resistance is so important: to cease the pursuit of a materialist explanation is tantamount to admitting that the universe is essentially unknowable, that "the regularities of nature may be ruptured" at any moment. Through all of this, Lewontin never closes the door to the possibility there's more to the cosmos beyond what you call a "physicalist frame." On the other hand, he slams the door on extra-materialist explanations of the material world. If there are such viable extra-materialist explanations of the material world, well...never mind.LarTanner

January 3, 2013

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LT: Pardon, I don't have a lot of time just now. Lewontin is in the same context establishing a priori materialism, and we know the context of that. The scientism in that context is saying the cosmos is matter, energy, space and time -- the physicalist frame -- and the only gateway to truth about ti is science. he is also dismissing anything else beyond that world as superstitious "demons" to be exorcised by science. Please go back and read again. More later, gotta run. KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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Ah, WJM (and BA): I am here back in the local library, but from the angle of asking whether we need to think seriously about different building technologies than the ones fat cat contractors are used to (steel reinforced concrete beams & columns with block & mortar curtain walls), as one of my former students built it with H beams with a 25-year corrosion warranty out of the factory. I am pausing for the moment. Y'know, back in my day, too, I did not have the sort of exposure you assume, either in schools (with scant exceptions) or in church including Sunday schools. As to what was commonly available in the bookshops I then knew about, let's not even bother. The media -- print, radio, TV, even shortwave -- we had were a joke, a worse joke. But what happened was, we ran into an era of radical socialist political messianism that brought the radical socialist solutions you all are beginning to foolishly experiment with in the US (if you don't know the lessons of history . . . ) to the fore. I also had had an interest in the history of the 2nd World War and its precursors. And, my mom had had courses in media including logic [the books by and large were inaccessible, a lot of stuff on non sequiturs poorly presented from my perspective now). Then, after my folks moved to Barbados, we had some bits and pieces in a leading high school there, especially from an old anglican canon. Back in Jamaica for university, I walked into a revival, connected to the rising Charismatic renewal of those days, and with a section of people who had hit on a Name: Francis Schaeffer, and another: C S Lewis. Eventually, I would -- especially in early grad student days -- haunt the Uni Library history, general studies and logic sections. (At that time, I was often reading five books in parallel, in addition to my academics.) Then, there was a bookshop that I did not know it, but was maybe the best serious Christian bookshop for maybe 400 miles in the nearest direction ( I am assuming Miami has something to match, somewhere . . . ) and for 1,000 miles or more in just about any other direction in English. Plus when I visited at home in Barbados, there were some second hand bookshops that had some books that I was not seeing anywhere else. Along he way, I began to ask serious questions and restructure my thinking for myself. Not least, to understand the idolatry of political messianism in its fascist, socialist, neopagan and old fashioned crony patronage forms. Including, working out why the economics fails. I t helped to have one of the best economists in the Caribbean for a dad. (As a result of which, I am a sort of heretical austrian in economics. Eventually, I picked up an MBA along the way to be able to use the studies and extensions, as well as reinforcing strategic analysis and planning ability.) Hitting the relativity-quantum wall in physics helped. here we saw a revolution, and I had to come to see how something radically different from the Newtonian paradigm I had been taught from 4th form on, could become superior. At some point I also was a de facto hanger on around the uni philosophy department. (Tiny.) Then, I became a tertiary level sci-tech educator and also taught in secondary school (including being asked to teach general studies to 6th formers, roughly comparable to college freshmen), and eventually a curriculum developer/architect and sustainable development consultant. All of this brings us back to the engagement we are now in. Notice, almost none of this was from formal studies or from what was accessible in churches or the like. All of this brings us to what we are up against. Our civilisation is mortally wounded and bleeding out. From within, we have had a radical secularist revolution led in key part by scientism, skepticism, atheism and the like, which by capturing science especially origins studies, has gradually eaten out the heart of the worldview that built out civilisation. What is left is a facade, like furniture that has been eaten out by termites. It may look as it always did, but just poke it and see how it breaks, crumbles and sawdust etc pour out. Those who are doing this, don't even know they are setting up the REAL threat, fascism. The ideology of the desperate, who see unprecedented bewildering crisis and collapse, maybe including collapse of financial systems and life savings. Hyperinflation driven by out of control government can easily do that in a few years, and there is little left to resist. Now, look at identity groups who see themselves as threatened by unprecedented crises in waves. They want safety and order in the face of crisis after crisis. here comes political messiah, the media golden boy, smart, hip, articulate, different. He is above lesser mortals and their tawdry, decrepit notions of right and wrong. Too many don't know enough to spot a nietzschean superman political messiah when they see it, and what that means, and how fast the collapse into a dark night of totalitarian dictatorship can come. Go poke around and ask the few who knew someone who went through Germany, post WW I. No prizes for guessing why that is not in our history books. Then, there is the other major threat we deliberately have been kept from understanding aright. The neo-marxist post colonialist narrative is so seductive, that people -- eleven and more years after the 9/11 attacks, don't know about the Jihads that took Mohammed and successors from one town, Yathrib, to knocking on the doors of Paris, Rome and the Indus valley in a tad more than 100 years. We don't understand Islamist genocidal, global conquest mahdism, we haven ot got a clue what the "black flag army from Khorasan" is about, we don't know about the gharqad tree hadith that is embedded in the Hamas covenant article 7. And so forth. Terms such as Jihad have been twisted into pretzels, dawah we don't know what that is, and mahdi is meaningless to us. We don't know why Ahmadinejad sees Iran as vanguard of mahdi's army, and why Afghanistan-Pakistan are so important. As in that is the zone of Khorasan from which the all conquering black flag army comes. As a matter of fact, when we saw the black flags in play over the past few months in Egypt etc, we did not see what that meant. Not even the one that is specifically al qaeda's version. We have been dumbed down. Willfully. Then, we look at the game being played by Wikipedia with the ID article. If I have ever seen a live piece of Goebbels big-lie propaganda, that is it. Look, to lie is to speak with disregard to the truth and to do so in hopes of profiting by what we know or should know is false, being taken as truth. Never forget, Hitler's game was, that ordinary people know about little lies, and will smell them out. but they cannot get their minds around the idea that presumably trustworthy and honourable leaders or persons of influence would brazenly, barefacedly, without ducking a head or hesitating, lie through their teeth, in the sweetest tones of seeming sincerity. That is why warrant is so crucial, and it is why we need to learn the simple point that arguments persuade by (a) emotions, (b) the credit of apparent authorities, (c) the apparent weight of facts and reasoning. And that is the backdrop for my NCSTS unit on worldviews and grounding of worldviews, here on. Notice, the part on grounding worldviews here on. Note how I move on to the reason why I am a Nicene creed orthodox Christian, here on (also, cf here). But note too, the build-on to what I have distilled from Schaeffer on reformation here on. (BTW, I just got the DVD set for How should we then live, it is in Youtube in bits and pieces, some I link, but I want the vids.) KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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I had been provided no fundamental concepts about sufficient warrant, necessary premises, etc.

The time we spend on philosophy here at UD is time well spent.Mung

January 3, 2013

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kairosfocus:

As the explanatory filter aptly summarises, when we look at low contingency regularities, we explain by — hopefully quantitative — law and underlying consistent forces of nature. When we see stochastically distributed contingencies we identify and seek to explain the factors behind distributions.

Thanks for this fresh insight into the Explanatory Filter. It's not that all regularity can be explained by natural law, but when we see a regular pattern in nature we do attempt to find an explanation for it in terms of natural laws. And when there is no discernable pattern at all, we look for explanation in terms of certain distributions, which are themselves a sort of pattern. (This might be worthy of additional comment.) But there are things out in the world that need a different explanation. Where is the science that covers them?Mung

January 3, 2013

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Lewontin asserts science as the only begetter of truth about the material world:

to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads we must first get an incorrect view out. People believe a lot of nonsense about the world of phenomena, nonsense that is a consequence of a wrong way of thinking. The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of, for that vast project is, in its entirety, hopeless. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatuof nature is not that they are ignorant of this or that fact about the material world, but that they look to the wrong sources in their attempt to understand. [Emphasis added]

Lewontin does not seem to claim that science is the one and only begetter of all truth: the boldface items in the quote above should show why. He's not talking about truth relative to psychological or social phenomena, for example. Now, Lewontin sure seems to privilege the material (phenomenal) world, but I read him as being very deliberate about which domain of truth he's speaking about. See, for another example, his summary of Sagan's argument in The Demon-Haunted Word:

Sagan's argument is straightforward. We exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena are the consequences of physical relations among material entities. The vast majority of us do not have control of the intellectual apparatus needed to explain manifest reality in material terms, so in place of scientific (i.e., correct material) explanations, we substitute demons. [Emphasis added]

And one more quote from Lewontin for good measure:

Most of the chapters of The Demon-Haunted World are taken up with exhortations to the reader to cease whoring after false gods and to accept the scientific method as the unique pathway to a correct understanding of the natural world. To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality, and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test. [Emphasis added]

Now, I don't think there a claim being made here that there are "begetters of truth" about physical reality in addition to science. I think it warrants clarification to see the domain that Lewontin quite deliberately marks out in his review essay. Or perhaps I've asked the question wrongLarTanner

January 3, 2013

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William J Murray as to "Had I a pastor like BA77 or KF,," While I'm flattered to be in the same breath as KF, I simply can't hold a candle to his, nor many other contributors on UD, command of the knowledge. (even your ability to communicate knowledge effectively greatly surpasses mine).,,, I'm sure that I will probably make some simple gaff on the basic facts in the near future, be corrected on it, and you will have a much more realistic, restrained, view as to put me in the same breath as KF.bornagain77

January 3, 2013

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I am a prime example of the "dumbed down" masses when it comes to understanding what has been wrought by decades of media and academia promoted materialism/scientism. I had been provided no fundamental concepts about sufficient warrant, necessary premises, etc. However, this is not only the fault of the materialist agenda (which I correlate with the modern progressive/marxist agenda), but also of a complicit religious base that allowed these social forces to marginalize them and move them out of the realm of the physical world. After all, I went to church when I was young, but nobody there taught introduced me to Aquinas, CS Lewis, first principles, or the rational arguments for god. When I was a young adult leaving home I was utterly unequipped to handle what I encountered in the real world. I'm sorry, but reading Bible stories and sermons about hellfire doesn't cut it for many people like me; we need sufficient grounds, rational arguments, principles that hold up to scrutiny other than a generic "it's in the Bible." (Had I a pastor like BA77 or KF or others here, my story would be quite different, I'm sure.) It was only when I stumbled across the ID movement (and I came across it as a many-years hardcore atheist) that I realized how unsupportable my position was and how profoundly inadequate my reasoning skills were. I'm just lucky that I was still open to reasonable argument.William J Murray

January 3, 2013

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MS: Hi, hope your new year will be great. I will comment on points: 1] I don’t think it matters much if it is allowed that science is defined as the search for natural explanations to phenomena , as long as it is acknowledged and kept in historical context. On the contrary -- as has been shown -- Lewontin's a priori materialism (which is deeply entrenched) begs the question and warps science away from being a disinterested, objective, evidence led search for the truth about our world. It marks the ideological captivity of science. 2] Christian and other God worshipping scientists acknowledged this as a matter of practical benefit. When doing science we purposely decide to become operational atheists when seeking answers. Newton as a prime example sought immediate practical and material explanations and causes. Not so. As the explanatory filter aptly summarises, when we look at low contingency regularities, we explain by -- hopefully quantitative -- law and underlying consistent forces of nature. When we see stochastically distributed contingencies we identify and seek to explain the factors behind distributions. But, when we see things that are only known -- per large bases of observation -- to be caused by design by art (and design is an observed process in our world) do we then shut our eyes and say, no, it must be chance and/or necessity? More than this, the Newton you appeal to saw the order of the world as reflecting its design by the cosmic architect. Let's clip his General Scholium to Principia:

. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler . . . . And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done . . . . In him are all things contained and moved [i.e. cites Ac 17, where Paul evidently cites Cleanthes]; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where . . . . We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final cause [i.e from his designs]: we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. [i.e necessity does not produce contingency] All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.

3] This fact also does not offer us and was never intended to offer a definition of all of reality and the meaning of life. The problem here is that "science" is held captive to scientism, which in effect sees it as "the only begetter of truth." That may be nonsense to those who know better, but that is the problem, there has been a sustained dumbing down that robs people, including many "educated" and "intelligent" people, of the base to see the fallacy. And if such can then be poisoned against those who will point it out, they will not listen. Until it is too late. That is why NSTA's crime is in some ways worse than NAS' and it is why Wikipedia's crime is just as bad as NSTA's. And, this is quite pervasive in adherence or influence, so that people do not even understand that what is knowledge and what grounds knowledge are philosophical not scientific questions. (Lewontin didn't even realise that he had made a philosophical claim that philosophical claims are invalid. Oops.) And that traces to a negligent or in some cases quite willful dumbing down of education across generations. 4] this is based on blindness and historical ignorance which amounts to prejudice and a gross and blatant bias that materialist are blissfully unaware of due to one sided education. That is by the way the charitable view. Yup. Sadly. KFkairosfocus

January 3, 2013

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Michael Servetus you state:

I hope you do not find my comments and understanding in disagreement with your’s because I don’t.

Michael Servetus a few notes: Recently quantum entanglement/information has been found in molecular biology on a massive scale:

Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA - Elisabeth Rieper - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/ DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows - June 2011 Excerpt: -- DNA -- can discern between quantum states known as spin. - The researchers fabricated self-assembling, single layers of DNA attached to a gold substrate. They then exposed the DNA to mixed groups of electrons with both directions of spin. Indeed, the team's results surpassed expectations: The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others. The longer the molecule, the more efficient it was at choosing electrons with the desired spin, while single strands and damaged bits of DNA did not exhibit this property. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331104014.htm Does DNA Have Telepathic Properties?-A Galaxy Insight - 2009 Excerpt: DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to.,,, The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/04/does-dna-have-t.html Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature - Elisabetta Collini & Gregory Scholes - University of Toronto - Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73 Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state. http://www.scimednet.org/quantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein/ Testing quantum entanglement in protein - November 2011 Excerpt: The authors remark that this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems.,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.,,, In summary, the authors say that they have demonstrated that entanglement can recur even in a hot noisy environment. In biological systems this can be related to changes in the conformation of macromolecules. http://www.quantum-mind.co.uk/testing-quantum-entanglement-in-protein-c288.html Life Uses Quantum Mechanics - September 25, 2012 Excerpt: it looks as if nature has worked out how to preserve (quantum) entanglement at body temperature over time scales that physicists can only dream about. http://crev.info/2012/09/life-uses-quantum-mechanics/ Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/

The trouble that quantum entanglement/information presents for methodological naturalism, Michael Servetus, is that there simply is no 'naturalistic', within space and time, explanation for quantum entanglement:

Looking Beyond Space and Time to Cope With Quantum Theory – (Oct. 28, 2012) Excerpt: To derive their inequality, which sets up a measurement of entanglement between four particles, the researchers considered what behaviours are possible for four particles that are connected by influences that stay hidden and that travel at some arbitrary finite speed. Mathematically (and mind-bogglingly), these constraints define an 80-dimensional object. The testable hidden influence inequality is the boundary of the shadow this 80-dimensional shape casts in 44 dimensions. The researchers showed that quantum predictions can lie outside this boundary, which means they are going against one of the assumptions. Outside the boundary, either the influences can’t stay hidden, or they must have infinite speed.,,, The remaining option is to accept that (quantum) influences must be infinitely fast,,, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm

Thus Michael Servetus, though I appreciate you diplomatic efforts to make MN more palatable to Christian Theists, it simply is 'not even wrong' to presuppose a naturalistic solution to the question of, 'What is the 'non-local' beyond space and time cause for the non-local quantum entanglement within molecular biology?' Verse: John 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.bornagain77

January 2, 2013

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Born Again, I hope you do not find my comments and understanding in disagreement with your's because I don't. I think the key to understanding this issue is the remembrance and acknowledgement by scientists that the naturalism in science is not absolute and shouldn't be dogmatic but rather is as they love to say about science in general, provisional and in a sense artificial. There just is no basis or need warrant or excuse for atheistic hostility. Science is not and never was the provenance or province of atheism only a provisional operational method that some mistook for such. Atheists are the ones that need to separate their beliefs from science.Michael Servetus

January 2, 2013

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What the artificial imposition of methodological naturalism onto origins science really means: Treasure Island http://bevets.com/ti.htm Methodological Naturalism in a nutshell: - cartoon http://ow.ly/i/15DCL/original If one restricts science to the natural, and assumes that science can in principle get to all truth, then one has implicitly assumed philosophical naturalism. - Del Ratsch, philosopher "The presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science." Richard Dawkins https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/free-to-think-why-scientific-integrity-matters-by-caroline-crocker/ If you exclude the supernatural from science, then if the world or some phenomena within it are supernaturally caused -- as most of the world's people believe -- you won't be able to reach that truth scientifically. Observing methodological naturalism thus hamstrings science by precluding science from reaching what would be an enormously important truth about the world. It might be that, just as a result of this constraint, even the best science in the long run will wind up with false conclusions.— Alvin Plantinga, philosopher More on How We Can Know Intelligent Design Is Science - Casey Luskin - November, 2012 Excerpt: ID Doesn't Offend the Spirit of MN (Methodological Naturalism): Proponents of MN often justify this rule by arguing that it ensures that science uses only testable, predictable, and reliable explanations.11 However, as we have seen, intelligent design generates testable hypotheses based upon our knowledge of how the world works, and can be reliably inferred through the scientific method. In this way, intelligent design does not violate any mandates of predictability, testability, or reliability laid down for science by MN. In fact, ID and neo-Darwinian evolution are methodologically equivalent. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/more_on_how_we_066841.htmlbornagain77

January 2, 2013

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I would like to add that operating as atheist and seeking natural explanations as a matter of design in no way proves or suggests that there is no God nor does it invalidate long standing reasons for believing in God and Creator. The way science operates is a decision to focus on nature it is not a statement of belief or unbelief or the result of unbelief or atheism or proof or evidence of anything it is simply a practical decision to focus on immediate material questions in order to get immediate material answers and leave higher and less immediate questions answers alone. Again the purposely decided methodology of the natural sciences in no way invalidates reasons for believing in God nor is it the result of some discovery that there is no God or supernatural, it was something decided within the context of belief in God and so is not in anyway the special province of atheism. Perhaps it is the idea that since we decided to investigate in a sort of objective material manner in order to discover natural causes,some thereby erroneously draw the conclusion that decision was based on some real atheism as contrasted with the operational sort of atheism in science. Yet only someone who is ignorant of the history of thought and adopts a popular near vulgar view of science separated from its historical context could think such a thing.Michael Servetus

January 2, 2013

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A few scattered observations I don't think it matters much if it is allowed that science is defined as the search for natural explanations to phenomena , as long as it is acknowledged and kept in historical context. Even the Christian and other God worshipping scientists acknowledged this as a matter of practical benefit. When doing science we purposely decide to become operational atheists when seeking answers. Newton as a prime example sought immediate practical and material explanations and causes. Acknowledging this is no way hurts the case of ID and in no way proves anything that atheistic scientists wish. This fact also does not offer us and was never intended to offer a definition of all of reality and the meaning of life. That was and still is a further step than was decided and agreed upon. It is also unwarranted and is exactly the point where materialism has taken a quasi religious leap of faith. To the thoughtful, intelligent and historically informed person none of the above can be understood as an argument against ID or Creation belief. ID, regardless of its implications or affinities seeks to discover natural signs of intelligence through empirical process which is in line with the above definitions of science as practiced by Newton or Einstein or any scientist, by laying aside personal beliefs and proceeding as a matter of consensus 'atheistically' as a matter of design and purpose which is to discover immediate and natural causes and data. What some don't like is the thing that ID, as they understand it is trying to prove, but that is not a right concern of scientists, namely what a scientist chooses to investigate, as long they follow the rules agreed upon by consensus. Atheistic scientists can't seem to separate these two. I agree with KF that this is based on blindness and historical ignorance which amounts to prejudice and a gross and blatant bias that materialist are blissfully unaware of due to one sided education. That is by the way the charitable view.Michael Servetus

January 2, 2013

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++++++ What, then, lies behind what Wiki is doing, and what Lewontin, the NAS and the NSTA did? Let us look in steps: 1 –> The attempt to tag Intelligent Design as a form of Creationism promoted by the Discovery Institute, is a case of Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals name-calling and polarisation by selecting, framing, freezing and polarising a target; including by misleading labelling. 2 –> Indeed, the very Creationists reject the idea that ID is Creationism — and they think it SHOULD become creationism. Not exactly the vaunted NPOV. ( . . . See how it pinches when the polarisation tactic is on the other foot? And, never mind, my observation is patently accurate, as I will go on to show.) 3 –> What the naive reader would not know is what I just had reason to highlight in a UD comment response to the “ID is Creationism in a cheap tuxedo” type accusation so often promoted by Ms Barbara Forrest of the NCSE and the Lousiana Humanists, and co. (Yes, motive mongering also pinches tightly when it is on the other foot.) Namely, the actual roots of design thought in developments in astrophysics, cosmology, molecular biology and origin of life research since the 1940?s and 50?s; pardon my details:

>>Thaxton . . . working with Bradley and Olsen, in 1984 — three years before the relevant US Supreme Court decision that is usually cited in “Creationism in a cheap tuxedo” narratives — developed the first technical design theory work . . . . As in The Mystery of Life’s Origin, in which argumentation on thermodynamics, Geology, and related chemistry, polymer science, information issues and atmosphere science etc in the context of a prelife earth led them to conclude based on the unfavourable equilibria, that formation of relevant information-rich protein or RNA polymers in such a pre-life matrix was maximally implausible? Then, who went on to discuss the various protocell theories at the time critically and concluded that none of them were plausible? Thence, concluded that the best explanation of formation of life was design, refusing to infer whether there was a ‘Creator” of such life within or beyond the cosmos, on grounds that the empirical evidence did not warrant such? So, we are left to infer from Forrest’s graph [where, BTW, the relevant publishers of TMLO were not allowed to speak for themselves in the courtroom . . . ], that the only plausible explanation is an attempt to avoid the implications of a court ruling? . . . . But if one is committed to the notion championed in the Wikipedia article I am currently marking up, that there is no technical merit to design arguments, there only remains sociological-psychological and political ones to account for its rise . . . . I guess I should start at the level that Thaxton et al did not address as beyond the scope of their investigations, which is the level [of design theory] that does [appropriately] point beyond the cosmos [i.e. cosmological design theory]. For this, let me cite here a certain scientific hero of mine, the lifelong agnostic, Sir Fred Hoyle:

From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? . . . I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect [--> as in, a Cosmos-building super intellect] has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. [F. Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.]

This seems to have been part of the conclusion of a talk he gave at Caltech in 1981. Let’s clip a little earlier:

The big problem in biology, as I see it, is to understand the origin of the information carried by the explicit structures of biomolecules. The issue isn’t so much the rather crude fact that a protein consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properties, which other orderings wouldn’t give. The case of the enzymes is well known . . . If amino acids were linked at random, there would be a vast number of arrange-ments that would be useless in serving the pur-poses of a living cell. When you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of perhaps 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link,it’s easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more than the number of atoms in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. This is for one enzyme, and there are upwards of 2000 of them, mainly serving very different purposes. So how did the situation get to where we find it to be? This is, as I see it, the biological problem – the information problem . . . . I was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe. So try as I would, I couldn’t convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes – by what are called the blind forces of nature . . . . By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes would be by thought, not by random processes . . . . Now imagine yourself as a superintellect working through possibilities in polymer chemistry. Would you not be astonished that polymers based on the carbon atom turned out in your calculations to have the remarkable properties of the enzymes and other biomolecules? Would you not be bowled over in surprise to find that a living cell was a feasible construct? Would you not say to yourself, in whatever language supercalculating intellects use: Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. Of course you would, and if you were a sensible superintellect you would conclude that the carbon atom is a fix.

OF COURSE, IT IS WORSE THAN THIS. It turns out that on many dimensions of fine tuning, our cosmos spits out the following first four atoms: H, He, C, O. with N nearly 5th overall, and 5th for our galaxy. That gets us to stars, the rest of the periodic table, organic chemistry, water, terrestrial rocks [oxides or oxygen rich ceramics] and proteins. That I find is a big clue. Where, we must then see what Hoyle also said:

I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. [["The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12]

In short, the numbers do not add up as Ms Forrest would have us believe, and the personality who is actually pivotal — evidently including for Thaxton et al — is not by any means a Christian, but a lifelong agnostic. And remember, the cosmological ID thinking emerged first, from the 1950?s to 70?s. It ties naturally into the issues being run into by OOL researchers who had by the 1970?s realised they had to account for functionally specific complex information in biology. Here we need to remember Orgel and Wicken (it’s all there in the IOSE, folks):

ORGEL, 1973: . . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [[The Origins of Life (John Wiley, 1973), p. 189.] WICKEN, 1979: ‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [[i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [[originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [[“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65. (Emphases and notes added. Nb: “originally” is added to highlight that for self-replicating systems, the blue print can be built-in.)]

The source of my descriptive term, functionally specific complex information [and related organisation], per the conduit of TMLO, should be obvious. In short, [the] whole complex collapses, collapses on the grounds that its timeline is wrong and the forebears of intelligent design thought as a scientific research programme are not as [Wiki and others of like ilk] imagine.>>

4 –> So, clearly, we are seeing the willfully negligent — at the level of Ms Forrest (or even Wiki, given how influential it is as a reference web site) there are pretty serious duties of care to truth and fairness — substitution of a false history for an actual one, in order to enable rules for radicals polarisation, framing and smearing tactics. 5 –> That would already be enough to indict the article as irresponsible and in need of severe correction and permanent acknowledgement by a prominent notice of apology that they have had to be corrected. (Not that I am holding my breath in expectation of acting in light of basic broughtupcy.) 6 –> What about “theistic realism” or “theistic science”? In another article, Wiki informs: >>Theistic science, also referred to as theistic realism[1], is the viewpoint that methodological naturalism should be replaced by a philosophy of science that is informed by supernatural revelation[2], which would allow occasional supernatural explanations particularly in topics that impact theology; as for example evolution.[3] Supporters of this viewpoint include intelligent design creationism proponents J. P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Stephen C. Meyer[4][5] and Phillip E. Johnson.[1][6]>> 7 –> Notice, first, the label and dismiss tactics, where there are no movements that would accept the label “intelligent design creationists” as an accurate or fair or “neutral point of view” characterisation. That is, we see just how far and wide the rules for radicals polarisation and well poisoning tactics are spread in Wiki. 8 –> But when we see a red herring distractor led away to a strawman caricautre soaked in ad hominems and set alight, clouding, choking, poisoning and polarising the atmosphere, we need to go looking for the inconvenient truth that must be distracted from by any means deemed “necessary.” 9 –> And, it is not too hard to find: methodological naturalism — the backdoor a priori imposition of Lewontiniana priori materialism through the seemingly innocuous suggestion that this is the long term, successful method of science — has to be guarded at all costs. 10 –> But obviously, if you a priori rule that science can only operate in an evolutionary materialist circle of naturalistic explanations, you are begging big questions. The very word “science” gives a warning, as it is a slightly modified form of the Latin for knowledge: warranted, credibly true beliefs. 11 –> That is, what is being sacrificed here is the key concept that science should as far as possible be an open-minded, fair investigation of the truth about our world, in light of empirical evidence from observation, experiment, logically (and wherever possible, mathematically) driven analysis and open, uncensored but respectful discussion among the informed, etc. 12 –> That is, science is being taken captive to a priori, question-begging materialist ideology. 13 –> So, it is unsurprising to see that eminent philosophers of the ilk of a Plantinga (or even a Moreland etc), would point that out. To tag and dismiss them with a pejorative label is thus inexcusable. 14 –> The obsession with projecting the “Intelligent Design Creationism” smear by mis-labelling, then leads on to a strawman caricature of the purpose of empirically based, design detection methods. Not, to “support . . . the existence of a designer,” but instead to identify whether and how reliably, we may detect from observable characteristics of objects and phenomena, to what extent they were produced by processes traceable to the default — chance and/or mechanical necessity — on the one hand, or design on the other. That is, as the contrasted NWE online encyclopedia article begins: >>Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection” . . .>> 15 –> In short, the issue here is, whether there are features of objects and phenomena in nature that may be empirically investigated and which will — per inductive testing (with potential for falsification) — reliably indicate that they are caused by design. These signs, of course, include specified complexity and irreducible complexity, among others. 16 –> Which immediately puts them in Wiki’s cross-hairs: >>The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,[n 3][n 4][6][7] and has rejected both irreducible complexity and specified complexity for a wide range of conceptual and factual flaws . . .>> 17 –> “No true Scotsman [Scientist . . . ].” Of course, the evolutionary materialism dominated school of thought rejects CSI and IC as credible indicators of design, but in a context where the methods used to make that determination are tainted by a priori materialism, such an appeal to consensus is immediately tainted. 18 –> On a more objective view, it should be clear that especially functionally specific complex organisation and associated information is a well-known, reliable and strong indicator of design as causal process. 19 –> For simple instance, consider the text of this post — it is complex, specific and functional as script in the English Language. No-one in his or her right mind would dream of assigning it by definition to chance and necessity spewing forth lucky noise that then propagated across the Internet and voila, on pain of deeming those who dare suggest such “pseudoscientific.” 20 –> So, why is it that, once the question of origins is on the table, to say look at the functionally specific digital code in the genome of the living cell and notice that it is a linguistic and algorithmic fact, which cries out for proper explanation on causes known to be adequate to write code to execute algorithms, leads to such accusations? (Where algorithms are step by step finite procedures that work to practically attain specific targetted end states. That is, they are purposeful. Goal-targetted behaviour being a well-known characteristic of mind.) 21 –> Do we have credible cases where from scratch and without intelligent design and direction (even, coded in a genetic algorithm or the like), purely by blind chance and mechanical necessity, cods, algorithms and data structures have organised themselves out of the chaos of odds and ends that are just lying around and have in so doing exceeded 500 – 1,000 bits of complexity? 22 –> Despite a lot of huffing and puffing, puffs of smoke and flashing mirrors with abracadabra hand waving to the contrary, NO. 23 –> What we do have is a growing global industry where skilled and knowledgeable designers are paid very well thank you, to create such coded algorithms and data structures to carry out algorithms. 24 –> In addition, we have a world full of libraries and a whole Internet full of billions of further cases on the point. Namely, such FSCO/I — especially digitally coded functionally specific, complex information (dFSCI) as we have focussed on is indeed a reliable sign of design. (And one that can be tested and in principle overturned by contrary observations, though the related needle in the haystack analysis shows why that is going to be quite hard to do.) 25 –>The FSCI in or implied by an object matter can be quantified and measured as well, e.g the simplified Chi metric that has often been discussed here at UD:

>> Chi = Ip*S – 500, in bits beyond a “complex enough” threshold NB: If S = 0 [--> the default, it is only where there is positive and observable reason to infer that something is functionally specific that S = 1], this locks us at Chi = – 500; and, if Ip is less than 500 bits, Chi will be negative even if S is positive. E.g.: a string of 501 coins tossed at random will have S = 0, but if the coins are arranged to spell out a message in English using the ASCII code [[notice independent specification of a narrow zone of possible configurations, T], Chi will — unsurprisingly — be positive. Following the logic of the per aspect necessity vs chance vs design causal factor explanatory filter, the default value of S is 0, i.e. it is assumed that blind chance and/or mechanical necessity are adequate to explain a phenomenon of interest. S goes to 1 when we have objective grounds — to be explained case by case — to assign that value. That is, we need to justify why we think the observed cases E come from a narrow zone of interest, T, that is independently describable, not just a list of members E1, E2, E3 . . . ; in short, we must have a reasonable criterion that allows us to build or recognise cases Ei from T, without resorting to an arbitrary list. A string at random is a list with one member, but if we pick it as a password, it is now a zone with one member. (Where also, a lottery, is a sort of inverse password game where we pay for the privilege; and where the complexity has to be carefully managed to make it winnable. ) An obvious example of such a zone T, is code symbol strings of a given length that work in a programme or communicate meaningful statements in a language based on its grammar, vocabulary etc. This paragraph is a case in point, which can be contrasted with typical random strings ( . . . 68gsdesnmyw . . . ) or repetitive ones ( . . . ftftftft . . . ); where we can also see by this case how such a case can enfold random and repetitive sub-strings. Arguably — and of course this is hotly disputed — DNA protein and regulatory codes are another. Design theorists argue that the only observed adequate cause for such is a process of intelligently directed configuration, i.e. of design, so we are justified in taking such a case as a reliable sign of such a cause having been at work. (Thus, the sign then counts as evidence pointing to a perhaps otherwise unknown designer having been at work.) So also, to overthrow the design inference, a valid counter example would be needed, a case where blind mechanical necessity and/or blind chance produces such functionally specific, complex information. (Points xiv – xvi above outline why that will be hard indeed to come up with. There are literally billions of cases where FSCI is observed to come from design.) xxii: So, we have some reason to suggest that if something, E, is based on specific information describable in a way that does not just quote E and requires at least 500 specific bits to store the specific information, then the most reasonable explanation for the cause of E is that it was designed. The metric may be directly applied to biological cases: Using Durston’s Fits values — functionally specific bits — from his Table 1, to quantify I, so also accepting functionality on specific sequences as showing specificity giving S = 1, we may apply the simplified Chi_500 metric of bits beyond the threshold: RecA: 242 AA, 832 fits, Chi: 332 bits beyond SecY: 342 AA, 688 fits, Chi: 188 bits beyond Corona S2: 445 AA, 1285 fits, Chi: 785 bits beyond xxiii: And, this raises the controversial question that biological examples such as DNA — which in a living cell is much more complex than 500 bits — may be designed to carry out particular functions in the cell and the wider organism.>>

26 –> We are entitled to take such results seriously in scientific investigations, and accordingly it is reasonable to view the process of inferring to best, empirically grounded scientific explanation in that light, e.g.: [Explanatory Filer flowchart] [Caption] The per aspect explanatory filter that shows how design may be inferred scientifically on empirically tested, reliable sign (NB: such inferences are in fact routine in many applied science fields, e.g. forensics such as arson investigations and in statistics. In telecommunications, the concept of distinguishable signal and noise, enshrined in the key metrics signal:noise ratio, noise figure/factor, and noise temperature, depend on making just such an inference.) 27 –> What is happening on matters of origins, especially of cell based life and of body plans, is that there is an a priori imposition of materialism, so the materialists are committed to the idea that here CANNOT be a designer present. So, they see no harm in locking in that idea through imposing the methodological constraint that science must explain naturalistically, seeing only the despised, suspect possibility, “the supernatural.” 28 –> But obviously, this sort of question-begging only leads them to lock out the evidence before it can speak. And in particular, they need to ask themselves whether they have listened to the point made ever since Plato in The Laws, Bk X, 2350 years ago, that there is another alternative to “natural” (= blind chance plus mechanical necessity acting on matter and energy in space and time) in causal explanations, i.e. the ARTificial. That is, design. 29 –> Design is obviously and empirical phenomenon, and it often leaves characteristic traces, such as FSCO/I. So, why not allow the evidence to speak for itself, through its characteristic signs? Surely, if science were concerned to discover the truth about our world in light of observable, factual evidence evaluated fairly and logically — which is a big part of the reason why the public respects it — that would be a no-brainer. 30 –> Sadly, and obviously on what we have already seen, that is not the case today. 31 –> Which is another way of saying, science has been taken ideological captive, and is being corrupted by that captivity. In turn, that implies that what is at stake in the design theory debates, is the restoration of the integrity of science. 32 –> But, what about irreducible complexity? 33 –> This concept is closely connected to the idea — easily confirmed by anyone who has had to put together a complex circuit board or troubleshoot a car with a mysterious fault – that when we have multiple part-based function that is strongly dependent on how the parts are arranged and coupled together, it means that for a complicated object, not just any and any old way of dashing bits and pieces or sub-assemblies together will work. That is, complex, specific, multipart function dependent on well-matched and properly arranged parts naturally comes in deeply isolated islands of function within broader spaces of possible configurations. 34 –> That poses a serious challenge for proposed mechanisms of evolution that depend on creating novel function based on such configurations, for the intervening seas of non-function between relevant islands could well make it all but impossible to practically bridge from one working island to another. 35 –> And, the sort of incremental changes within such islands of function as we find in body plans, do not answer to this problem. That is, an explanatory mechanism that plausibly accounts for varying proportions of white and black moths in an area or the size of finch beaks or the loss of eyes in blind cave fish, does not easily account for the origin of the body plans for moths, birds and fish by simple extrapolation of gradually branching incremental changes tracing back to some remote unicellular organism. (And the complex arrangements of molecules to make such a living cell with metabolic and replication facilities also needs to be accounted for.) 36 –> Why that is so, can be seen from Menuge’s criteria C1 – 5, which highlight the iconic case of the bacterial flagellum but are broadly applicable:

>> C1: Availability. Among the parts available for recruitment to form the flagellum, there would need to be ones capable of performing the highly specialized tasks of paddle, rotor, and motor, even though all of these items serve some other function or no function. C2: Synchronization. The availability of these parts would have to be synchronized so that at some point, either individually or in combination, they are all available at the same time. C3: Localization. The selected parts must all be made available at the same ‘construction site,’ perhaps not simultaneously but certainly at the time they are needed. C4: Coordination. The parts must be coordinated in just the right way: even if all of the parts of a flagellum are available at the right time, it is clear that the majority of ways of assembling them will be non-functional or irrelevant. C5: Interface compatibility. The parts must be mutually compatible, that is, ‘well-matched’ and capable of properly ‘interacting’: even if a paddle, rotor, and motor are put together in the right order, they also need to interface correctly. ( Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science, pgs. 104-105 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). HT: ENV.)>>

37 –> That is, the irreducible complexity issue challenges darwinists to provide empirical warrant for the detailed pattern of rooting — OOL — and major branches — origin of body plans — for the tree of life promoted ever since Darwin as the best explanation for the origin and diversity of life forms: [Tree of life figure] [caption] The Smithsonian’s tree of life model, note the root in OOL 38 –> On fair comment, this classic icon of evolution — it is in fact the ONLY illustration in Darwin’s Origin of Species — presents as through it were established fact the incremental pattern of rooting and branching that would be necessary to actually empirically ground the macroevolutionary picture, but fails to provide actual empirical warrant. It makes plausible what is not — after 150 years — actually shown as so. And, particularly, it fails to show that blind chance variations and differential success in ecological niches accounts for the body plan level diversity of life. 39 –>To overturn IC, of course, all that would be needed is to actually provide observational evidence of the incremental origin of such body plans. But ever since the days when Darwin puzzled over the Cambrian life revolution, that evidence has been conspicuously missing. Never mind the 150 years of scouring the relevant fossil beds, which have simply underscored the pattern that was already evident in Darwin’s day. and which has been aptly summarised by Gould in a classic citation:

>>“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps [[ . . . . ] He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory.[[Cf. Origin, Ch 10, "Summary of the preceding and present Chapters," also see similar remarks in Chs 6 and 9.]

Darwin’s argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never “seen” in the rocks. Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” [[Stephen Jay Gould 'Evolution's erratic pace'. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI95), May 1977, p.14. (Kindly note, that while Gould does put forward claimed cases of transitions elsewhere, that cannot erase the facts that he published in the peer reviewed literature in 1977 and was still underscoring in 2002, 25 years later, as well as what the theory he helped co-found, set out to do. Sadly, this needs to be explicitly noted, as some would use such remarks to cover over the points just highlighted. Also, note that this is in addition to the problem of divergent molecular trees and the top-down nature of the Cambrian explosion.)] [[HT: Answers.com]>>

___________________ So, we can easily see that the concluding dismissal of design theory in the wiki article is quite misleading and tendentious: >>Intelligent design is viewed as a pseudoscience by the scientific community, because it lacks empirical support, offers no tenable hypotheses, and aims to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes.>> These claims are simply not true, are lacking in proper warrant, and run counter to the evident facts as summarised at introductory level above. They should be withdrawn, apologised for and a permanent notice of that need to retract and apologies should be affixed at the head of the article. ++++++ DV, more will follow over the next few days, point by point. KFkairosfocus

January 2, 2013

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F/N: I have continued the markup of the Wiki article on ID, here, this morning focussing on corrupting he definition of science and its methods, with significant discussion of CSI and IC, highlighted by Wiki as pseudoscience. In parts: ++++++++++ Wiki’s F – - on ID, 2: Wiki’s ideologically driven corruption of the definitions of science and its methods As we continue to mark up the Wiki article on ID, the next thing to notice is how the anonymous contributors have projected unto ID, an accusation of trying to redefine science and its methods in service to supernaturalistic creationism:

>>Intelligent design (ID) is a form of creationism promulgated by the Discovery Institute . . . . Scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design would require redefining science to allow supernatural explanations of observed phenomena, an approach its proponents describe as theistic realism or theistic science. It puts forth a number of arguments in support of the existence of a designer, the most prominent of which are irreducible complexity and specified complexity.[5] The scientific community rejects the extension of science to include supernatural explanations in favor of continued acceptance of methodological naturalism,[n 3][n 4][6][7] and has rejected both irreducible complexity and specified complexity for a wide range of conceptual and factual flaws.[8][9][10][11] Intelligent design is viewed as a pseudoscience by the scientific community, because it lacks empirical support, offers no tenable hypotheses, and aims to describe natural history in terms of scientifically untestable supernatural causes.>>

This is a target-rich environment (and things are so polarised that too many will be disinclined to listen until real damage has been done), so, we are going to have to take some time to look at this in steps of thought. Perhaps the best place to begin is probably to point out that this set of assertions are a part of a much broader cultural agenda of imposing a priori materialistic scientism and secularism, dressed up in the prestigious — one could even say, holy — lab coat. For instance, we can very clearly see this in the well-known cat-out-of-the-bag 1997 Lewontin NYRB review of Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: >>. . . the problem is to get [the general public] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth . . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists, it is self-evident that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [[--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [[--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.>> In attempting to defend this a priori ideological imposition, Lewontin then cites the eminent philosopher Lewis White Beck — oops, we thought that “science [is to be seen as] the only begetter of truth” — to the effect that: >>. . . anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen>> Of course, C S Lewis, in his famous essay, Miracles (and in several other places), long ago pointed out why this is patent nonsense. A world in which miracles are possible is not a chaotic world, but one ruled by an observable and intelligible general order. For, if all were chaos, something that is extraordinary — classically and pivotally, the resurrection of Jesus in fulfillment of prophecies and as witnessed by 500 who could not be shaken by dungeon, fire or sword (and which was recorded as history in multiple sources within their lifetime) — could not stand out as a sign pointing beyond the usual order to the intervention of a higher order of reality, UNLESS there is precisely that: “a usual order.” That is why, as Dan Petersen recorded in his well-known article on ID (What’s the big deal about Intelligent Design?) from several years ago:

>>The attempt to equate science with materialism is a quite recent development, coming chiefly to the fore in the 20th century. Contrary to widespread propaganda, science is not something that arose after the dark, obscurantist forces of religion were defeated by an “enlightened” nontheistic worldview. The facts of history show otherwise. IN HIS RECENT BOOK For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark argues “not only that there is no inherent conflict between religion and science, but that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science.” (His italics.) While researching this thesis, Stark found to his surprise that “some of my central arguments have already become the conventional wisdom among historians of science.” He is nevertheless “painfully aware” that most of the arguments about the close connection between Christian belief and the rise of science are “unknown outside narrow scholarly circles,” and that many people believe that it could not possibly be true. Sometimes the most obvious facts are the easiest to overlook. Here is one that ought to be stunningly obvious: science as an organized, sustained enterprise arose only once in the history of Earth. Where was that? Although other civilizations have contributed technical achievements or isolated innovations, the invention of science as a cumulative, rigorous, systematic, and ongoing investigation into the laws of nature occurred only in Europe; that is, in the civilization then known as Christendom. Science arose and flourished in a civilization that, at the time, was profoundly and nearly exclusively Christian in its mental outlook.>>

That little bit of history is a big hint. He continues:

>>Recent scholarship in the history of science reveals that this commitment to rational, empirical investigation of God’s creation is not simply a product of the “scientific revolution” of the 16th and 17th centuries, but has profound roots going back at least to the High Middle Ages. The development of the university system in medieval times was, of course, almost entirely a product of the Church. Serious students of the period know that this was neither a time of stagnation, nor of repression of inquiry in favor of dogma. Rather, it was a time of great intellectual ferment and discovery, and the universities fostered rational, empirical, systematic inquiry . . . . WHEN THE DISCOVERIES of science exploded in number and importance in the 1500s and 1600s, the connection with Christian belief was again profound. Many of the trailblazing scientists of that period when science came into full bloom were devout Christian believers, and declared that their work was inspired by a desire to explore God’s creation and discover its glories. Perhaps the greatest scientist in history, Sir Isaac Newton, was a fervent Christian who wrote over a million words on theological subjects. Other giants of science and mathematics were similarly devout: Boyle, Descartes, Kepler, Leibniz, Pascal. To avoid relying on what might be isolated examples, Stark analyzed the religious views of the 52 leading scientists from the time of Copernicus until the end of the 17th century. Using a methodology that probably downplayed religious belief, he found that 32 were “devout”; 18 were at least “conventional” in their religious belief; and only two were “skeptics.” More than a quarter were themselves ecclesiastics: “priests, ministers, monks, canons, and the like.” Down through the 19th century, many of the leading figures in science were thoroughgoing Christians. A partial list includes Babbage, Dalton, Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell, Maxwell, Mendel, and Thompson (Lord Kelvin). A survey of the most eminent British scientists near the end of the 19th century found that nearly all were members of the established church or affiliated with some other church. In short, scientists who were committed Christians include men often considered to be fathers of the fields of astronomy, atomic theory, calculus, chemistry, computers, electricity, genetics, geology, mathematics, and physics. In the late 1990s, a survey found that about 40 percent of American scientists believe in a personal God and an afterlife — a percentage that is basically unchanged since the early 20th century. A listing of eminent 20th-century scientists who were religious believers would be far too voluminous to include here — so let’s not bring coals to Newcastle, but simply note that the list would be large indeed, including Nobel Prize winners. Far from being inimical to science, then, the Judeo-Christian worldview is the only belief system that actually produced it.>>

In short, the notion that “supernaturalism” is inimical to science is simply false, false on grounds of sheer raw historical fact and related worldview trends. But, those who have been indoctrinated in the name of education in today’s schools probably will not know that, so the well-poisoning tactic Wiki and Lewontin indulged will not ring false to the already indoctrinated. But it is not just a matter of Wikipedia or Richard Lewontin. The debates over the definition of science to be taught in Schools in Kansas brought to bear a joint letter from the US national Academy of Sciences (NAS) and National Science Teachers Association (NSTA). In key excerpts: >>“. . . the members of the Kansas State Board of Education who produced Draft 2-d of the KSES [[Kansas Science Education Standards] have deleted text defining science as a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena, blurring the line between scientific and other ways of understanding. Emphasizing controversy in the theory of evolution — when in fact all modern theories of science are continually tested and verified — and distorting the definition of science are inconsistent with our Standards and a disservice to the students of Kansas. Regretfully, many of the statements made in the KSES related to the nature of science and evolution also violate the document’s mission and vision. Kansas students will not be well-prepared for the rigors of higher education or the demands of an increasingly complex and technologically-driven world if their science education is based on these standards. Instead, they will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world.” [[Source: excerpt of retort. Emphases and explanatory parentheses added.]>> Boiled down, parents and politicians in Kansas were being told their children were being held hostage to a secularist, a priori materialist definition of science, and were also expected — under threat of blacklisting their children, notice — to pretend that the obvious, that evolutionism has been controversial as a theory for many reasons for 150 years, is not so. No, no, no, science has proved — when, where, how, by the way? — that the world is matter and energy moving by forces of chance and necessity ins pace and time, and so the very definition of science must reflect that, and while we are at it, you will not be ready for higher education or good paying jobs unless you toe this party-line. What was it that elicited such a harsh, threat-laced retort? The 2005 corrective definition of science that sought to restore a more traditional, historically balanced and less ideologically loaded view than the one that had been imposed in 2001: >>2001 novel definition then in force: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations of the world around us.” 2005, proposed corrective: “Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.”>> So, we see here institutions at the highest level in science and science education trying not only to impose a priori materialism on the definition of science [cf here also], but to pretend that an attempt to restore a more balanced definition would so cripple children that they could not function in jobs or in College. To put this in balance, let us examine typical definitions of science from high quality dictionaries (yes, yes, science is broader and deeper than such definitions can convey, but that is a challenge faced by all basic science education, so I will provide a sample of what an informed summary looks like . . . ) in the years before the design controversy: >> science: a branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles involving the systematized observation of and experiment with phenomena, esp. concerned with the material and functions of the physical universe. [Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990 -- and yes, they used the "z" Virginia!] scientific method: principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge [”the body of truth, information and principles acquired by mankind”] involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses. [Webster's 7th Collegiate Dictionary, 1965]>> These in turn trace back to the sort of thoughts Newton famously put on record in his 1704 Query 31 to his Opticks:

>>As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations. [[Emphases added.]>>

The language is more complex (and points to deep underlying issues) but the pattern reflected in the 2005 KSES definition and the high quality dictionaries is obvious. Science seeks to describe our world and its phenomena of interest accurately and systematically, understand/explain reliably, predict correctly, and guide sound technology and policy. To do so, we use “O, HI PET” — observe, hypothesise, infer & predict, make empirical tests. The resulting provisional but tested and found reliable body of knowledge has, for over 350 years now, made increasing contributions to development and prosperity. Obviously, successful science simply does not need to make question-begging a priori ideological commitments to doctrinaire materialism. [Cont'd] +++++++++kairosfocus

January 2, 2013

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Gregory:

Joe is simply being foolish and crude in his view that “evolution is just change.”

Stuff it, Gregory as THAT is how evolutionists use it.

No, evolution is a particular type of change.

Reference please. To support my claim: evolving universe evolution of galaxies evolution of the solar system IOW Gregory is the fool and everyone sees that...Joe

December 31, 2012

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My apology for being the kind of guy who rewrites dictionaries, KF. Instead of regurgitating the American Heritage Dictionary, I choose to question the logic of their narrow definition. There should be much that you could find congenial to your general position in my move. And the last 1/3 of my #7 is obviously dead-on wrt the OP and its purpose. But your thanks for this contribution is not needed. You won't hear from me again in this thread.Gregory

December 31, 2012

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