From Laszlo Bencze:
First off, I maintain there can be no science telling us how an intelligent designer creates. That process is not only mysterious when applied to a supernatural agent; it is mysterious when applied to us. We have only the dimmest of comprehension about our own creativity. Can writers trace the source of every word that pops into mind as they write? Can chemists fully explain why they choose one approach to analysis over another? Can engineers completely justify all materials choices? Can photographers explain precisely why they chose to frame an instant in time as they did? Of course if you pressure these people they will come up with what seem to be cogent answers related to education, an influential book, the memory of a poem, habits instilled by a strict professor, a crucial experiment, or a great work of art studied years ago. These answers are interesting and insightful, but they are hardly comprehensive. Nor can any “science” be derived from such ambiguous, incompletion.
As far as I can tell, the work of the most rigorous ID proponents like Bill Dembski and David Berlinski is mathematical. They labor hard to explain why complicated things are statistically impossible. Such statistical exploration is indeed useful. But telling us why something cannot be does not tell us why it is. It’s fairly easy to understand why a gang of children fooling around in a junk yard circa 1885 will not create a functional motor car. Their actions are playful, random, inexperienced, and unguided by a goal. But it’s impossible to explain precisely how Otto Benz actually developed the concept of and built the first car. What choices was he rejecting? How many did he try out mentally without so much as doodling a scribble on a napkin? Was there a pivotal point or was it merely a succession of little ideas? We have no way of knowing. And even if he were alive and could be quizzed on the topic, I doubt he could offer the comprehensive logical progression of thought we’d like to have.
Thus it appears that ID is restricted in its power to explaining only why certain things don’t, can’t, won’t, or never did happen.
But then neither can Darwinism explain how things come to be for instead of an intelligent designer (which intuitively makes sense) it offers random mistakes filtered by natural selection which is just another layer of randomness (which makes no sense at all). The details of why random mistakes would show up in a useful progression such that tremendously complicated structures get built up are never provided, nor explained, nor quantified in any way that science demands. Nor is it at all clear how each mistake could provide instant benefits even though a fully functional transformation remains in the distant future.
But wait— it gets worse. Darwinism (unlike ID) doesn’t even exclude anything. It allows for convergent evolution (statistically impossible), stagnant evolution (you mean to tell me that for 500 million years there could be no improvement to the horseshoe crab?), punctuated evolution (everything stays the same for a real long time and then evolution kicks into high gear and it all happens so fast there’s no record of it having happened at all), neutral evolution (the blueprints for marvelously useful structures get created in unexpressed DNA by random shuffling, until one day voila, the gene is turned on and the structure appears fully formed). In evolution anything goes and contradictions live in happy harmony with one another. This is science? It’s not even a sound religion.
Well, if Karl Giberson is any example, Darwinism is an unsound religion
Can ID be science then?
But there’s supposed to be a positive case for ID . . .
There is an interesting ‘coincidental’ pattern to inventions and discoveries, ‘coincidental scientific discoveries’ are far more prevalent than what would be expected from a random materialistic perspective,:
Also of interest, even the co-discover of Natural Selection held that, because of math and art, man had a ‘soul’:
Professor Wallace has some pretty strong clout backing up his ‘intuition’:
It is interesting to note that even though, as was shown in the Godel-Turing video, Alan Turing believed humans were merely machines, much like the computers he had envisioned, Turing failed to realize that his entire idea for computers came to him suddenly, ‘in a vision’ as he put it, thus confirming Godel’s contention that humans had access to the ‘divine spark of intuition’. A divine spark which enables humans to transcend the limits he, and Godel, had found in the incompleteness theorem for computers, mathematics, and even for all of material reality in general (Jaki).
Moreover, this mathematical ability is at a very deep intuitive level:
Even autistic children have demonstrated a deep mathematical intuitiveness:
I think Berlinski, as only Berlinski can, sums this mathematical mystery up in excellent fashion:
Of related note:
Verse:
of note: ‘the Word’ in John1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos is also the root word from which we derive our modern word logic
Such an interesting OP, and BA77 your replies are always educational & inspirational – many times startlingly so. Thanks:)
This old quote from Pope B. relates to the Logos:
“The Christian idea of the world is that it originated in a very complicated process of evolution but that it nevertheless still comes in it’s depths from the Logos. It thus bears reason in itself.”
-Joseph Ratzinger
Where does this material come from? It does not seem to be on his site.
Jerry, the “material” comes from my mind. My website is devoted to my photography business and bears no relation to my interest in Intelligent Design.
Laszio,
I understand about your website. But how does Denyse get a hold of your mind? She links to your website.
Anyway, interesting thoughts.
Well, I maintain there can be no science telling us how gravity attracts.
Uh…
The problem with ID has exactly zero to do with science. The problem with it is how it forces the boundaries of the scientifically-explicable into conformations that divest the priests of scientism of their authority.
Which is exactly what all the hysterical caterwauling is all about, and nothing else.
To Laszlo and Jerad (#1):
I think you both misapprehend just what it is that the science of ID claims. It is not that ID allows us to understand the mysterious process of creativity. Rather, it is that there exist objective criteria which allow us to conclude from scientific evidence when the best explanation for the existence of a given structure or phenomenon is that it is or was the product of a designing intelligence.
The science of ID can tell us neither who the designer was, what his, her, or their motive was, the processes by which the design was executed, nor the process by which the design was created.
It doesn’t sound like much, but really to draw a firm conclusion that something was designed rather than having arisen from natural processes has enormous consequences. Witness the tenacity and passion with which materialists fight the idea.
Reality dictates that in the absence of designer input or direct observation the only possible way to make any determination as to the who, how, why, etc., is by studying the design and all relevant evidence. That is how it is done in archaeology and forensic science. And if SETI ever receives their sought after signal, that is how they would also proceed.