Back to School Part VI

_{Cornelius Hunter

October 14, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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Evolutionists are adamant that science must be free of religion or anything that smacks of religion. And while that sounds good, evolutionists are all-the-while driven by religion. They are sure all of biology is a fluke because of their religious convictions. Religion is both the source of evolution’s certainty and the target of its wrath. While not proclaiming that science must be free of religion, evolutionists make a wide spectrum of religious claims that mandate their theory. Read more

Comments

AMW asks: 'So … Seriously, bornagain77, are you going to give me some examples of what would pass for an increase in functional information, or are you going to just cut and paste some more links?' AMW, I would consider the origination of a new protein fold, or a new gene, as origination of new functional information: Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681 This following video is a bit more clear for explaining exactly why mutations to the DNA do not control Body Plan morphogenesis, since the mutations are the ‘bottom rung of the ladder’ as far as the 'higher levels of the layered information’ of the cell are concerned: Stephen Meyer on Craig Venter, Complexity Of The Cell & Layered Information http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4798685 etc... etc... etc...bornagain77_{October 20, 2010
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G'day AMW, The link between evolution & abiogenesis was much clearer in the past when the namer of this idea, Huxley, noted:"I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from non-living matter." The 'primordial soup' was back then the obvious evolutionary step, but then the tools of science showed through Pasteur that spontaneous generation was a falsifiable and fallacious concept. Has the 'primordial soup' theory gone away? No. But a schism between abiogenesis and evolution has developed. Of course evolution is unworkable when there is nothing to evolve, but the concept that undirected chemicals must be the forebear of all things living is the only framework because of what the religion of evolution dictates. Abiogenesis & Evolution are inextricably linked. Don't despair of BA77! He researches a lot of stuff and provides you with a place to go and see what can't be put here. Have a read and a think ... Anyway, I'm sure others can jump in and add to what I'm saying. I'd prefer to say what ISN'T an increase in functional information. Information content is measured by the specified complexity of a base sequence or protein amino acid sequence. A mutation, being a random change in highly specified information within the nucleic acid base sequence, only cofuses the information. The totality of the information is reduced. Now, a new trait can arise from the loss of information (say a molecile is lost so a new colour arises) but although a new colour may be observed in an individual and be adopted into a species that still doesn't generate an increase in new functional information. The loss of specified complexity is generally deleterious, but even the beneficial loss of wings of a beetle on a wind-swept island giving it more of a chance to live and procreate and produce more wingless beetles is still a loss of functional information. A friend of mine researched antibiotic, herbicide and insecticide resistance and tried to find anything that, at the DNA level/biochemical level, displayed an increase in SC. Nothing. New traits emerged, some very interesting and others quite toxic, but each one was a mutation that lost information. Even gene duplication must be remembered as, say, puchasing two magazines and thinking that you have twice as much information. That's not how it works. It would be easier (!) for you to give an example of where new functional information arises and put us out of our misery forever defending something that we see as quite logically defendable. I really don't know of anything that shows an increase in functional information because everything I have studied, and many much more worthy before me, has never met the criteria. Back at ya!AussieID_{October 20, 2010
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Finally, I would think that most design thinkers or supporters who have taken a few hours to investigate, will be very familiar with the point made in WAC 9, that the inference to design is separate from the question of just what mechanisms and time scale were used to effect the design, and even the degree of common descent involved. For crying out loud, the name of the blog is Uncommon Descent. Uncommon Descent. Uncommon Descent. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AussieID, As far as I'm aware, nobody claims that evolution made something out of nothing. Abiogenesis theories posit that life arose from non-living matter. Evolution says that the earliest life, over the aeons, evolved into all of the diverse forms of life we see today. Neither requires something from nothing. Also, since I'm starting to despair of bornagain77 giving me examples of what would count as an increase in functional information (or some such) in a genome, would you mind stepping into the gap on that one?AMW_{October 19, 2010
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So ... Seriously, bornagain77, are you going to give me some examples of what would pass for an increase in functional information, or are you going to just cut and paste some more links?AMW_{October 19, 2010
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Actually pushing the materialistic framework solely in schools, while banishing and ridiculing the Theistic framework, in these questions of origins leads to absurdity in the beginning of investigations as well as far greater absurdities when the materialistic framework is pushed to extremes: Dr. Bruce Gordon - The Absurdity Of The Multiverse & Materialism - video www.metacafe.com/watch/5318486/ As well information is shown to be its own unique independent entity in quantum teleportation and entanglement experiments. A unique independent entity that is separate from matter and energy, especially with the falsification of 'local' realism by Aspect and company. i.e. Transcendent Information demonstrates dominion of matter and energy regardless of considerations of space and time.,,, The base layer of the 'physical' universe reduces to information and indeed creates the 'chemical blackboard' upon which another layer of this 'domineering' transcendent information is encoded so as to produce life from the 'inanimate' matter of the chemical blackboard: Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH Excerpt: It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. http://journals.witpress.com/pages/papers.asp?iID=47&in=4&vn=4&jID=19 further note: Is evolution pseudoscience? Excerpt:,,, Thus, of the ten characteristics of pseudoscience listed in the Skeptic’s Dictionary, evolution meets nine. Few other?pseudosciences — astrology, astral projection, alien abduction, crystal power, or whatever — would meet so many. http://creation.com/is-evolution-pseudosciencebornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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"I’m saying ID proponents are mostly religious folks who think that ID has religious implications. So why is it that these same folks call evolution a religion as a means of denigrating it?" Because it's FUNNY! Haven't you got a sense of HUMOR?! Darwinists like Dawkins are people whose whole smug narcissistic persona is based on being "free thinkers" and never darkening the door of a church. AND THEY'RE JUST AS RELIGIOUS AS A FUNDAMENTALIST NUT LIKE MYSELF! Now, that's funny! And come to think of it, your missive is kind of funny. What could be funnier than someone who's dead-bang serious about a joke?allanius_{October 19, 2010
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... from one class to the next ... So, if I were to say that 'God' created someting out of nothing then I would be religiously motivated and that would nullify my statement. If I were to say 'evolution' did it, then I would be congratulated, although my religious motivations should also be obvious. Although neither can show an iota of scientific evidence. Abiogenesis is an interesting area, and I am loathe to make anyone teach a God-did-it, but I would want to also push that the evidence is purely hearsay for a naturalistic approach ... gotta go. Hope some of this makes sense!AussieID_{October 19, 2010
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further note: The GS (genetic selection) Principle - David L. Abel - 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases. This paper parallels Petrov’s papers starting with (66) showing a net DNA loss with Drosophila evolution (67). Konopka (68) found strong evidence against the contention of Subba Rao et al (69, 70) that information increases with mutations. The information content of the coding regions in DNA does not tend to increase with evolution as hypothesized. Konopka also found Shannon complexity not to be a suitable indicator of evolutionary progress over a wide range of evolving genes. Konopka’s work applies Shannon theory to known functional text. Kok et al. (71) also found that information does not increase in DNA with evolution. As with Konopka, this finding is in the context of the change in mere Shannon uncertainty. The latter is a far more forgiving definition of information than that required for prescriptive information (PI) (21, 22, 33, 72). It is all the more significant that mutations do not program increased PI. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces formal function. No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.us.net/life/index.htm "Charles Darwin said (paraphrase), 'If anyone could find anything that could not be had through a number of slight, successive, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' Well that condition has been met time and time again. Basically every gene, every protein fold. There is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in a gradualist way. It's a mirage. None of it happens that way. - Doug Axe PhD. Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies - October 2010 Excerpt: "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve".,,, as stated in regards to the 35 year experimental failure to fixate a single beneficial mutation within fruit flies. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’’ (Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461 Nothing In Molecular Biology Is Gradual - Doug Axe PhD. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5347797 etc... etc... etc...bornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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As to the idea that evolutionary materialistic chemical evo led to life [we only need to figure out the mechanism], I find that utterly incredible. Indeed, you are sounding ever more like a case of a priorism [as I address here], so that something like that MUST have happened, on worldview commitments. I just mean that all biological life is composed of matter. At one point in time, that matter wasn't organized into life. Hence, it got organized into life somehow. That may have been through natural chemical processes, or it may have been through intentional design processes. But one way or another, it happened. If we're going to discuss the origin of life in schools, it's helpful to have some theories about how it might have happened. Mainstream science has a couple of candidates. I'm wondering what AussieID's rival candidate is.AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, "I’m saying ID proponents are mostly religious folks who think that ID has religious implications. So why is it that these same folks call evolution a religion as a means of denigrating it?" Yes, I understand your point and the question you raise, which is a very good one. The reason is because evolutionists do not believe that their theory has underlying religious assumptions, which it does. For them to hark on ID as having the very same underlying religious assumptions seems to be a bit of a double standard. Darwinian religious assumptions come in certain forms. Darwin himself formed his theory based on such an assumption - namely, that teleological arguments are mistaken, because a god would not have designed with the anomalies apparent in biology. This is not a scientific observation, but a religious assertion.CannuckianYankee_{October 19, 2010
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bornagain77, I guess you're assuming that an intelligence automatically qualifies as "life" as we would recognize it via biology. I'm not sure that's the case. But if an intelligence (e.g., God) counts as life, then your distinction is accurate: the materials from which life in the universe arose were non-living, while the intelligence was. I wasn't making that distinction. At any rate, can you tell me what you would count as "functional prescriptive information increasing in a genome," so I can see if I can find an example? You may have included that in your most recent posts, but I'll be honest: I stop reading them once I get to the notes. AMWAMW_{October 19, 2010
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PS: Finally, I would think that most design thinkers or supporters who have taken a few hours to investigate, will be very familiar with the point made in WAC 9, that the inference to design is separate from the question of just what mechanisms and time scale were used to effect the design, and even the degree of common descent involved. For just one instance [without advocating it], front-loaded common descent and designed adaptation is a proposed mechanism, at many different levels. (Indeed, one Young Earth Creationist objection to contemporary design thought pivots on precisely this compatibility with use of evolutionary mechanisms to effect design across deep time.) That we may infer design on reliable signs is entirely compatible with the point that there is more than one way to skin a cat[-fish]. Gkairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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AMW ,, More on point: Here is a peer-reviewed paper that points out the fact that many arguments for Darwinian evolution turn out to be primarily theological arguments at their core: The role of theology in current evolutionary reasoning Excerpt: A remarkable but little studied aspect of current evolutionary theory is the use by many biologists and philosophers of theological arguments for evolution. http://www.springerlink.com/content/n3n5415037038134/ On the Vastness of the Universe Excerpt: Darwin’s objection to design inferences were theological. And in addition, Darwin overlooked many theological considerations in order to focus on the one. His one consideration was his assumption about what a god would or wouldn’t do. The considerations he overlooked are too numerous to mention here, but here’s a few:,,, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/on-the-vastness-of-the-universe/#comment-362918bornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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F/N 2: Forgot to add: I have separate grounds for seeing that evolutionary materialism is not only a question-begging imposition on science, but also outright self-referentially incoherent. It is necessarily false. As to the idea that evolutionary materialistic chemical evo led to life [we only need to figure out the mechanism], I find that utterly incredible. Indeed, you are sounding ever more like a case of a priorism [as I address here], so that something like that MUST have happened, on worldview commitments. Gkairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, this statement of yours is false: 'In any event, life did come from non-life. Only the mechanism is in question, and that holds whether one is a theist or an atheist' The first life on earth may have been made out of 'lifeless' matter, but the central question of whether the first life was intended by an Intelligence or not is what dramatically separates Theists and atheists. notes: By the way, there is a one million dollar 'Origin-of-Life' prize being offered: "The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. http://www.us.net/life/index.htm To reiterate, the problem for the origin of life clearly turns out to be explaining where the information came from in the first place: “The problem of the origin of life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information.” Origin of life theorist Bernd-Olaf Kuppers in his book "Information and the Origin of Life". Book Review - Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Excerpt: As early as the 1960s, those who approached the problem of the origin of life from the standpoint of information theory and combinatorics observed that something was terribly amiss. Even if you grant the most generous assumptions: that every elementary particle in the observable universe is a chemical laboratory randomly splicing amino acids into proteins every Planck time for the entire history of the universe, there is a vanishingly small probability that even a single functionally folded protein of 150 amino acids would have been created. Now of course, elementary particles aren't chemical laboratories, nor does peptide synthesis take place where most of the baryonic mass of the universe resides: in stars or interstellar and intergalactic clouds. If you look at the chemistry, it gets even worse—almost indescribably so: the precursor molecules of many of these macromolecular structures cannot form under the same prebiotic conditions—they must be catalysed by enzymes created only by preexisting living cells, and the reactions required to assemble them into the molecules of biology will only go when mediated by other enzymes, assembled in the cell by precisely specified information in the genome. So, it comes down to this: Where did that information come from? The simplest known free living organism (although you may quibble about this, given that it's a parasite) has a genome of 582,970 base pairs, or about one megabit (assuming two bits of information for each nucleotide, of which there are four possibilities). Now, if you go back to the universe of elementary particle Planck time chemical labs and work the numbers, you find that in the finite time our universe has existed, you could have produced about 500 bits of structured, functional information by random search. Yet here we have a minimal information string which is (if you understand combinatorics) so indescribably improbable to have originated by chance that adjectives fail. http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_726.html Natural selection cannot explain the origin of life Excerpt: “DNA is not a special life-giving molecule, but a genetic databank that transmits its information using a mathematical code. Most of the workings of the cell are best described, not in terms of material stuff — hardware — but as information, or software. Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won’t work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level.” Paul Davies http://creation.com/ns-origin-of-life “The existence of a genome and the genetic code divides the living organisms from nonliving matter. There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.”,,,"The belief of mechanist-reductionists that the chemical processes in living matter do not differ in principle from those in dead matter is incorrect. There is no trace of messages determining the results of chemical reactions in inanimate matter. If genetical processes were just complicated biochemistry, the laws of mass action and thermodynamics would govern the placement of amino acids in the protein sequences.” Hubert P. Yockey: Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, page 2 and 5 H.P. Yockey also notes in the Journal of Theoretical Biology: It is important to understand that we are not reasoning by analogy. The sequence hypothesis applies directly to the protein and the genetic text as well as to written language and therefore the treatment is mathematically identical: "Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and Information Theory," J. Theoret. Biol. "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day." Norbert Weiner - MIT Mathematician - Father of Cybernetics The main problem, for the secular model of neo-Darwinian evolution to overcome, is that no one has ever seen purely material processes generate functional information. The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: "Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration." A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis. http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/pdf Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work http://mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/ag etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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F/N: AMW, my acceptance of the design inference has much more to do with my scientific background and interests in the question of empirical warrant than my particular relationship with God, which stands on far more direct grounds: I am a living case of many, many miracles in action in answer to prayer, or I would not even be alive. From my studies and work as an applied physicist, I know what information and digital systems look like, and what they take to be put together. that such could come about by chance plus mechanical necessity, on the gamut of our observed cosmos is frankly absurd, given that experience. So, my agreement with and eventual advocacy of the design inference is not a case of seeking confirmation or looking for a bulwark to shore up a faith that otherwise lacks warrant. Gkairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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Enjoy class, AussieID. I don't remember abiogenesis in any of my high school or college science classes, but I didn't take that many of them. In any event, life did come from non-life. Only the mechanism is in question, and that holds whether one is a theist or an atheist. So I guess the question is, what alternative theory would you offer to the going theories of abiogenesis? And if I can get an example of what "counts," I'll see if I can furnish an example. Cheers, AMWAMW_{October 19, 2010
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CannuckianYankee, I think I'm being misunderstood here. I'm not arguing that ID=Religion and therefore IDScience and therefore IDtruth. I'm saying ID proponents are mostly religious folks who think that ID has religious implications. So why is it that these same folks call evolution a religion as a means of denigrating it? If we define religion such that Religion=Dogmatically Held Beliefs, then that cuts against the religious convictions of ID proponents, too.AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, Wasn't Machu Picchu built by aliens? OH! I understand where you are coming from, but then imagine that a school was to teach that life could arise from non-life! Oh, wait, they do! Scientific evidence? None. As BA requests at 42, please give an example. This is the heart and soul (Pardon the religious overtone there)of the argument. No time to talk. Back to teaching!AussieID_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, Dembski's famous statement comes from an article he wrote for Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue 4: July/August, 1999 entitled "Signs of Intelligence: A Primer on the Discernment of Intelligent Design." I'm not certain if the article is at all available online. However, Dembski has since published an expanded version of the article in book form available here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587430045/qid=1022180232/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/102-7058451-2588967 Regarding your comments, William Dembski as both a mathematician, philosopher and theologian is quite free to use ID as a tool to promote theism. I think you are conflating implication from invokation here. ID does not invoke a deity, the results of design detection implies a deity for many. So it is quite within the purview of a theologian to speak on these issues. And even without a theological degree, since human authority is not necessarily the purveyor of truth, any Christian or non-Christian theist is quite free to use the implications as a tool for that purpose, as are Darwinists free to use Darwinism as a tool to promote atheism. And furthermore, if ID lends itself to atheism, the atheist is also quite free to use ID for such a purpose. This does not render ID as a scientific theory void, since it lends itself to a particular metaphysic. This is why I suggested you read the other two threads I mentioned. We've been engaged there in much discussion on this very topic. Dembski is quite right that ID does not identify the designer as the God of any particular faith - nor can it. Those issues are up to theology and philosophy to determine. This is why he states that ID is "modest theologically and philosophically." It doesn't have a particular theological or philosophical POV. But on the other hand, a theologian can look at ID and find parallels with her/his particular theological POVs in certain areas. Try to look at it like this: In Genesis we read that the Earth at one time was "formless and void." While this may strike us as a rather primitive statement, it is a POV, which seems to agree with science. We don't discount the science simply because it agrees with something from a religious text. Neither do we discount any scientific theory because it agrees with a religious text. If we did, we should have to do away with a whole lot of science, not just ID. In reference to his statement regarding the Logos; it has meaning on several levels - sort of like how certain cartoons are entertaining to children, yet have layers of meaning that only an adult would understand (Rocky and Bullwinkle, for example). There are many layers of meaning with the logos reference. There may be an underlying religious layer of meaning - and that would certainly be the most obvious, since he mentioned John's gospel, but there is also a very subtle secular layer of meaning as well. That layer runs deep into philosophy, and in fact, has been a central issue of philosophers for millennia, as well as for scientists when grappling with the metaphysical implications of nature. In fact, as I pointed out, John seems to have borrowed from the ancient Greeks his concept of the Logos. Now when we apply this to ID, logos begins to lend an even deeper layer of meaning, which philosophical sensibilities have grappled with from antiquity. That is: could information be the key to life and the cosmos? We can get into the theological issues here, and I'm certain they would be very interesting, but I think you can see that it's not as simple an issue to say that ID is merely for example, a new form of religious Creationism, invoking a Creator, and then fitting the evidence into such a paradigm. It is not in the least. I doubt if you will find an in-depth discussion of Dembski's reference to the logos (well perhaps - I haven't read the entire article myself to know). However, the statement is largely subtextual, and the average person who knows the subtext of logos would seem to understand apart from him having to spell it out. If you know what ID implies about information, you sort of know what he means by logos, and he mentions that it is the logos "in the idiom of information theory." As soon as I read this statement initially, I knew exactly what he was referring to, and I did not associate it as particularly religious, even though he tied it to a religious text. The Darwinists are the one's who have made this statement famous as a quote mine - you can find it on Wikipedia, Rational Wiki, and many articles by Darwinists in order to show that there is an underlying religious motivation behind intelligent design. However, they are discounting the science of ID based on that, and they are ignoring the underlying subtext, as well as the issue of discounting science because it agrees with a religious text. It's a form of fallacy called association.CannuckianYankee_{October 19, 2010
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So...Can I take that as a "yes" to my question?AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AMW: The empirically based design inference stands on its own merits as an epistemic, scientific procedure. As a Christian, I am unsurprised to see the book of nature lining up with the doctrine of God as taught in say Jn 1, Rom 1, Col 1, Heb 1 etc. I also see precisely the point of a risky affirmation in Jn 1, confirmed by empirical science. But the core warranting argument of the Christian faith is the living witness of millions, starting with the 500 in 1 Cor 15:1 - 11, who have come to personally know God in the face of Christ. Knowing God in life-transforming, miracle working power. You might find the account of Pascal of his encounter with God Nov 23, 1654, a good case in point of how this has so often intersected with the path of history. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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F/N: Excerpting Ruse in his own words, from the linked article in Canada's National Post: _______________________ >> I still remember arguing in the Arkansas court house with one of the most prominent of the literalists (now generally known as creationists). Duane T. Gish, author of the best-selling work, "Evolution: The Fossils Say No!," resented bitterly what he felt was an unwarranted smug superiority assumed by us from the side of science. "Dr Ruse," Mr. Gish said, "the trouble with you evolutionists is that you just don't play fair. You want to stop us religious people from teaching our views in schools. But you evolutionists are just as religious in your way. Christianity tells us where we came from, where we're going, and what we should do on the way. I defy you to show any difference with evolution. It tells you where you came from, where you are going, and what you should do on the way. You evolutionists have your God, and his name is Charles Darwin." At the time I rather pooh-poohed what Mr. Gish said, but I found myself thinking about his words on the flight back home. And I have been thinking about them ever since. Indeed, they have guided much of my research for the past twenty years. Heretical though it may be to say this -- and many of my scientist friends would be only too happy to chain me to the stake and to light the faggots piled around -- I now think the Creationists like Mr. Gish are absolutely right in their complaint. Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it -- the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today . . . . Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity. It stressed laws against miracles and, by analogy, it promoted progress against providence . . . . The important point is that we should recognize when people are going beyond the strict science, moving into moral and social claims, thinking of their theory as an all-embracing world picture. All too often, there is a slide from science to something more, and this slide goes unmentioned -- unrealized even. >> ________________________kairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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On a side note, according to WAC 9, the theory of evolution (including universal common descent) is completely compatible with ID. I doubt many of the bloggers and commenters here at UD have read that one. Shoot, now I don't even know what there is to argue about around here.AMW_{October 19, 2010
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Hi, kairosfocus. I'm open to the possibility that Dembski's quote is taken out of context. Unfortunately, the preview version of the book you linked to doesn't include pages 88-89. But I believe I own a copy of it, so maybe I can look that up at home. But beyond that quotation from Dembski, do you doubt my central contention that the ID community is predominantly made up of religious (i.e., theist) individuals who see ID as a good way of bolstering their religious beliefs?AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AMW: Please look up Weak Argument Corrective no 7, on exactly this point. The book preview is online here. (Cf pp. 88 ff) The original First things article is listed in the archives for that magazine here, but there is no hot link. Idea Center's discussion here gives more details. What is really going on here is that a comment is taken out of its own context -- a theological reflection on the worldview level implications of ID thought, and projected onto the empirical methodology, which is separately established on its own merits. Dembski, aside from his PhDs in Math and Phil, has a Masters in theology. A remark in the WAC 7 is worth pondering:
Dembski’s reference to John 1:1 ff. underscores how a worldview level or theological claim may have empirical implications, and is thus subject to empirical test. For, in that text, the aged Apostle John put into the heart of foundational era Christian thought, the idea that Creation is premised on Rational Mind and Intelligent Communication/Information. Now, after nineteen centuries, we see that — per empirical observation — we evidently do live in a cosmos that exhibits fine-tumed, function-specifying complex information as a premise of facilitating life, and cell-based life is also based on such functional, complex, and specific information, e.g in DNA. Thus, theological truth claims here line up with subsequent empirical investigation:a risky empirical prediction has been confirmed by the evidence. (Of course, had it been otherwise – and per track record — many of the same critics would have pounced on the “scientific facts” as a disconfirmation. So, why then is it suddently illegitimate for Christians to point out from scientific evidence, that on this point their faith has passed a significant empirical test?)
A very similar game has been played with the so-called wedge document. In fact, what is going on is little more than a turnabout strawman caricature based accusation by those whose own imposition of evolutionary materialism on origins science they would not wish to have critically examined, as I have done in brief here at UD today. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{October 19, 2010
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bornagain77, They probably refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence for design because they (like most theist scientists in the relevant fields) don't find it so overwhelming. And for every PZ Meyers there's a Francis Collins or Ken Miller who accepts the science while rejecting the atheism. So it really doesn't give me pause at all. And before I try to offer an example of "functional prescriptive information increasing," could you please provide me some guidelines of what would count? New structures, new abilities, etc? Also, are you talking about an increase to a single genome in a population, or to the population's aggregate genome?AMW_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, Do please present just one example of 'functional prescriptive information increasing in any genome.bornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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AMW, Perhaps you would mind explaining to me exactly why Dawkins, Meyers et al. refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence for design if it is not for personal 'religious' reasons? Does not the heavily 'anti' Christian rhetoric coming from such 'luminary figures', contrasted against the charlatan science they promote, give you pause to at least ask,,"What in the world are these 'scientists' thinking if not hatred for God?" As for myself, I can think of nothing more fascinating than ascertaining our true origins with rigorous evidence, and since I find compelling evidence that God is the true source for origins science, does that make me any more or less religious than Dawkins or Meyers who insist that we are accidents???bornagain77_{October 19, 2010
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