ID is not science because…

_{September 27, 2008

Intelligent Design}

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ID is ineligible for consideration as science because theories that allow for the possibility of forces outside of nature can’t be tested or falsified.

In light of that let’s look at what Ernst Mayr had to say in the introduction that appears in “Origin of Species”, Harvard University Press edition, 1964, p. xii:

In Darwin’s day the prevailing explanation for organic diversity was the story of creation in Genesis. Darwin himself had subscribed to this when he shipped on the ‘Beagle,’ and he was converted to his new ideas only after he had made numerous observations that were to him quite incompatible with creation. He felt strongly that he must establish this point decisively before his readers would be willing to listen to the evolutionary interpretation. Again and again, he describes phenomena that do not fit the creation theory.

Huh. It appears like Darwin was testing scientific creationism and found evidence contrary to it.

So what is it. Is ID science or not science? It seems our opponents want to have their cake and eat it too by saying:

“ID is not science because it cannot be falsified or verified. And by the way, ID has been repeatedly tested and shown to be false.”

Comments

AB the information you seek to publicize does not enjoy the amount of publicity you would like it to Google your name. Second hit. :lol:DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham Barda, "You want your point proven by appealing to the most fanatic faction of the Darwinist camp, how typical. You know well what the result would be, and you also know well that their reactions, as always, would teach us only about themselves." How typical? You put off quite a smug and self-assured aura. Yes, I'm well aware of the extreme personalities of Myers and Dawkins both. But to be frank, I don't think most scientists would take the idea of a grand designer purposefully arranging comet strikes to better order planetary orbits as 'In no way an exception to the laws of nature'. If you're going by that kind of reasoning, then any kind of proposed agent interaction in the universe, no matter how large or small, is 'in no way an exception to the laws of nature'. You've kicked open the door to miracles writ large, limited only by proposed "technology". "You have a flair for cheap shots, and arrogance to match it. In fact, I am disappointed (but not surprised) to find here, that many who complain of ill-treatment under the Darwinist establishment are quick to mete out the same to those who challenge their notions." Pot and kettle. But you missed something, again: I'm essentially a TE around here. I routinely argue with some of the regulars over the scientific status of ID, even if I have great sympathy for the philosophy, and recognize what frankly are considerable double-standards in their treatment. You rolled in with a bold and, as near as I can tell, poorly-considered claim about the compatibility between science and theism - and not without quite a lot of arrogance. If you don't like the equivalent in response, take on some humility. I have no interest in ego games, from any direction. "It is obvious that my thesis, that science has been evil and corrupt from its very inception and not since recently, is not welcome here." You made no judgment about "evil and corrupt" until just now. You argued that 'science' has always been incompatible with 'theism', which is an inane an empty claim most often repeated by the likes of the two men you brand as extremists. Let me offer you an olive branch: I can agree to this, put another way. Namely, I could respect the view that "science" has likely never been a pure intellectual construct, not even in the ideal. It has always had social aspects attached to it, usually grafted onto philosophies, (a)theologies, political aspirations, and otherwise. So no, there's no 'recent problem' with science. It's been the name of the game for awhile. However, that is very different from claiming that science and theism is innately hostile and always has been. That smacks of a completely different argument, one I thought you were making before, but can be convinced of otherwise. There has been plenty of cooperation between scientific enterprises and theistic/design-centric thought. Plenty of fruitful observations and otherwise as well. Conflicts between science and theism are not innate, but are due to side commitments of the practitioners on one or both ends depending on the issue. And with that, I'm off for the night anyway.nullasalus_{September 27, 2008
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In post 39 I referred to DaveScot as opposing ID. Not sure why I did that... I must have been thinking of someone else. Sorry DaveScot.Beretta_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham, With all due respect, your last post displays a level of density that is simply divorced from reality.
…the information you seek to publicize does not enjoy the amount of publicity you would like it to.
I would expect that a new scientific discovery would have zero publicity prior to its discovery. I would consider the same about a controversial documentary prior to its release. Is this somehow not clear to you? Prior to releasing a new story, should the media conduct some research to confirm the story is receiving an appropriate level of publicity, and can therefore go on the air? Perhaps I am not being generous enough to you. Your move is, once again, to personalize this so that it is dismissible. We understand each other.
You wish mainstream science to publish your findings, just as everyone would like the Mainstream Media to publish their ideas.
This comment is, well, juvenile in its attempt. What exactly are my findings, or ideas? Are you speaking of Mike Behe’s ideas? His book “Darwin’s Black Box” is currently #9038 out of 170,000 titles overall on Amazon, and is 10 years old. On what grounds should his ideas be limited on the occasion that a movie premieres that his book is central to? What is the mass media’s responsibility as you see it? Perhaps it is Michael Denton’s ideas? Anthony Flew’s? Stuart Kaufmann’s? Bill Dembski’s? Stephen Myer’s? Or, is it David Berlinski’s ideas that should be tested for public acceptability prior to being publicized? Are you in possession of information that the public is not interested in modern scientifically-based data related to origins? What other kinds of stories do you suggest the media practice this policy on? Please don’t try to personalize the data; it is unbecoming to your argument (which at this point needs saving).
Under the wing of rich enough a patron, you can get yourself a trumpet equal to that of the mainstream establishment..
This is, once again, non-intelligible. When we sit down to produce a newscast, the topic of “patrons” never comes up in the meeting. Perhaps the gulf of knowledge that apparently exists between us about the inner workings of the mass media is a fundamental impediment to continuing this conversation.
Science has not the slightest thing to do with this issue.
We finally agree. It’s completely socio-political (my original post).Upright BiPed_{September 27, 2008
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AB you might just as well call Theistic Evolution a theory of Intelligent Design Most of us do in fact insist that Theistic Evolution is a theory of intelligent design. The bone of contention is they say design can't be detected. We say it can. I don't have any particular problem with a clockwork universe set up like dominoes to yield rational man. It fits all the evidence just perfectly and was embraced by many great thinkers including Albert Einstein. Einstein instinctively knew the universe was finely tuned. We now know as well as we know anything that the universe is fine tuned. It's a huge problem in physics trying to explain it. Here's a good description of the problem: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/after-40-years-of-silence-analog-magazine-finally-tackles-intelligent-design/ DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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I recently did a podcast episode on this very issue, actually (http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/?p=200). I have absolutely no problem with people like DaveScot in this thread saying that ID is not *true* and who are willing to debate the truth value of ID with its proponents. What I do object to is the pseudo objection of making ID not exactly false, but somehow "against the rules" by failing to measure up to something called "science." Basically, people are swapping their scientist hats (if there are such things) for philosophers' hats and making papal-like declarations about what counts as science, using rules that (whoops) end up actually excluding things that we already accept as science (e.g. competing theories of time within special relativity). I've yet to encounter an opponent of ID actually putting forth one criteria for being science that a) is remotely plausible, b) ID clearly fails to meet, AND c) all other scientific theories clearly do meet.Beretta_{September 27, 2008
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nullasalus, You want your point proven by appealing to the most fanatic faction of the Darwinist camp, how typical. You know well what the result would be, and you also know well that their reactions, as always, would teach us only about themselves. You have a flair for cheap shots, and arrogance to match it. In fact, I am disappointed (but not surprised) to find here, that many who complain of ill-treatment under the Darwinist establishment are quick to mete out the same to those who challenge their notions. It is obvious that my thesis, that science has been evil and corrupt from its very inception and not since recently, is not welcome here. As the Darwinists are wedded to naturalism, not seeing how it impedes the acceptance of revealed religion, so the ID movement is wedded to the same fundamentally Greek-pagan science, only with a little fewer restrictions, but not so fewer as to enable revealed religion to reassert itself. You will win converts to the New Age, to Panspermia, to the Raelian UFO cult, and maybe a few to revealed religion. It is obvious that you haven't thought of the consequences of your enterprise. "Some designer designed life some time ago using some method." What a theory! Darwinism, bad as it may be, purports to tell us what happened in the past, just like the Bible. ID is above such nonsense, it seems. StephenB, Science ever since Greek times has been predicated upon the existence of constant, never-changing laws of nature. Otherwise you can't do even a simple experiment, because sodium plus chloride might then not always yield table salt. I don't recall ever saying a word about "functionally complex specified information." As far as I am concerned (and I follow traditional Jewish theology in holding so), the idea of an intelligent designer is evident just from seeing the sun rise and set, and the burden of proof is not on those who assume ID, but rather the burden of disproof is on those who deny ID. DaveScot, If those intelligent beings did not design that which they transported, then they are not intelligent designers and therefore Panspermia is not a theory of intelligent design. I don't see what's so difficult to understand. And if those intelligent beings directed the evolution of life, then you might just as well call Theistic Evolution a theory of Intelligent Design. Which I know you don't. So please be consistent.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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AB What Crick & Orgel said, 'Directed Panspermia' suggests that life may be distributed by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization Crick and Orgel argued that DNA encapsulated within small grains could be fired in all directions by such a civilization in order to spread life within the universe. Their abstract in the 1973 Icarus paper reads: "It now seems unlikely that extraterrestrial living organisms could have reached the earth either as spores driven by the radiation pressure from another star or as living organisms imbedded in a meteorite." "As an alternative to these nineteenth-century mechanisms, we have considered Directed Panspermia, the theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings on another planet." "We conclude that it is possible that life reached the earth in this way, but that the scientific evidence is inadequate at the present time to say anything about the probability. We draw attention to the kinds of evidence that might throw additional light on the topic." My emphasis above. This is more than Intelligent Transport. It describes intelligent agents. Richard Dawkins then admits that life on earth could have been designed by extraterrestrials. Materialists are forced to admit this if they are honest and have a good enough grounding in basic sciences. The question then becomes one of the origin of the upstream intelligent agency, and so on up the line. There is no law of physics demanding that intelligent agency must have a stochastic origin. Furthermore, there is a law of physics stating that closed systems increase in entropy (decrease in order). Therefore, if matter is ordered enough in the modern universe for mind to emerge from that order it must by physical law have contained as much or more of that order since the origin of the universe. DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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-----Abraham: The debate between “primarily natural causes” and “exclusively natural causes” is a religious one, and only a religious one. You know why? Because those who say “primarily” do so only to retain the miracles of which revealed religion speaks. No, it is not. Religion has nothing to do with it. To say that science is “primarily” about natural causes is to say that it is about natural causes most of the time. To say that science is “exclusively” about natural causes is to say that nothing else may be investigated in the name of science. That is a novelty. ------Otherwise, for such occurrences as sunrise, sunset and rainfall, there is no debate. Both sides sweep God aside and make him out to be like Deism’s absentee landlord. Compare to the pagan Greek worldview of a constantly regular cosmos, and contrast to my description of traditional Jewish theology above, which holds that there is no such thing as “laws of nature”, that even the sunset is a miracle performed by God every day. Your analysis is incomplete. You are considering only [A] There are no laws of nature and [B] The laws of nature are everything. There is yet a third alternative: [C] The laws of nature are not everything. There is also intelligent agency. -----Abraham: The term “methodological naturalism” may date to the 1980’s, but that does not preclude the existence of the concept well before that. Analogy: I can talk of “fascist Sparta” even thought the term “fascism” was only coined in 20th-century Italy. Methodological naturalism is a RULE established by the academy which holds that anyone who presumes to follow evidence that could lead to design in nature is, by definition, not doing science. No one in history has ever made such a rule. It is inherently anti-science and you do not seem to be aware of its significance. Also, you have yet to answer my question about “functionally complex specified information.” Observing it does not require the assumption of a designer. You labor under the misconception that it does.StephenB_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham Barda, "It was pointed out (by “jerry”) that Newton theorized that God would sometimes send comets to stabilize an orbit. That is in no way an exception to the laws of nature, any more than “God guiding evolution” (what theistic evolutionists hold) is an exception to Darwinism." Oh really? By all means, tell the physicists that a divine agent interacting with planetary orbits via direct comet strikes is "in no way an exception to the laws of nature". Indeed, go tell darwinists - tell PZ Myers, tell Richard Dawkins - that God-guided evolution is no exception to Darwinism. You're backing off considerably from your original claims here. If God intentionally directing and hurling comets is not a violation of the laws of nature, then ID truly is a full-fledged scientific enterprise. Point of clarification: I'm pretty much a TE myself, though I have strong admiration for much of the ID project and otherwise. But the very fact that you can bring up TEs and similar highlights my own point - that there is no innate conflict between science and thoughts of (divine or otherwise) agency. "The situation in the middle ages was not a harmonic living between science and theism, but an uneasy compromise, a detente. That detente ended with the Renaissance and Galileo, once Greek-derived science had begun to throw away the reins of theological constraint. There was never friendliness. It was either science as handmaiden or science as shrew." First you didn't know much about Christendom. Now you know exactly what the relationship was between natural philosophy and Christendom? Interesting change - you're having a lot of those here. You claim there was a detente, a 'theological constraint'. My response is that there was more than even a mere cooperation - there was a strong development of science, above and beyond what the greeks ever achieved, owing to an inherently theistic worldview of nature as being so-ordered by a powerful mind that it could be understandable by lesser minds. Science was directly related to this view of nature as the product of a mind, and that the leaving of miracles outside the purview of science was originally related to two understandings. One, that miracles were irregular, maybe even singular events in an otherwise mechanistic world, and thus were outside the scope of science. Two, that the mind behind nature was so powerful that miracles were deemed unnecessary - not because nature had no need of a mind, but because said mind developed a nature that had no need of miracles. "As we’ve elucidated here, “designers” is not necessarily synonymous with “theism”. Greek-derived science is hostile to the traditional religious concept of design" "Traditional religious concept of design" is and has been a multifaceted affair for a very long time - something discussed among orthodox theologians, and extremely far from "poof" whatever the case. One could easily argue that computer simulations provide a wonderful and naturalistic model for design on so grand a scale, whether one wants to call it theistic or not. Charles Babbage recognized as much. Nick Bostrom and David Chalmers hesitantly recognize as much as well. If you mean to say that there's a divide between science and theism insofar as theists don't concern themselves with the particulars science is dedicated to, I'd agree. But that's no more a hostility between theism and science than there is between theism and cooking, just because cookies can be made without invoking a Grand Designer.nullasalus_{September 27, 2008
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DaveScot, By your own definition, and further confirmed after checking with the link you gave, my argument about Crick and Hoyle stands: this is not a theory of Intelligent Design, this is a theory of, shall we call it, Intelligent Transportation. The aliens did not design life here, according to Crick and Hoyle; they merely transported its building blocks to our planet. Upright BiPed, You have acknowledged another option of mine, namely that the information you seek to publicize does not enjoy the amount of publicity you would like it to. You wish mainstream science to publish your findings, just as everyone would like the Mainstream Media to publish their ideas. Surely you know that these all are privately-owned bodies (mainstream science too, because it needs grants and receives those from private bodies usually). It's an economic problem. Under the wing of rich enough a patron, you can get yourself a trumpet equal to that of the mainstream establishment. Science has not the slightest thing to do with this issue.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham,
If you say (as you did above) that information flows much more freely and abundantly than in the past, then any talk of “controlling information” becomes very, very suspect.
What has become suspect is your ability to understand the world around you. Here’s a clue: Despite anything to the contrary you may believe, scientific information related to origins is distributed at the pleasure of the media, not the practicing scientist. In other words, if science uncovers that the Darwinian paradigm (of simple life growing into complex life over time) has become refuted, or likely refuted, by the empirical observation of the genetic data for complex life being conserved within the genome of simple organisms – then that information will be subject to colored presentation, limited availability, and summarily passed over by the mass media. When the movie “Expelled” came out I tried to set up a news story to introduce a larger audience to the controversy surrounding the movie. I had made some contacts with (and was in hot pursuit of) commentary from David Berlinski, Mike Gene, and Michael Behe in order to give the story a more substantial grounding. When it finally became clear what the bottom line of the controversy was about, the proverbial plug was pulled on the entire idea. Please, can you give up on the idea that the playing field is level, or that this is somehow personal (I didn’t set the cosmological constants and didn’t discover them, if you get my drift).
A third option, which is the one that I raised first post, is that the system works fundamentally in such a way that certain type of ideas cannot be accepted even in theory.
Then I return you to my previous point. An industry that says that we can only follow the information up until it meets our priori is a violation of the true search for knowledge - in that the search for knowledge is based on rationality, not an imposed limitation to rational discourse. Could we agree that among reasonable people, it is almost universally believed that science should be, first and foremost, the search for truth. That particular idea immediately brings up a second idea, one that completely supports the first idea. Wisdom, then, pools around the idea that the search for truth must also follow the evidence wherever it leads. The current practice, as you seem to defend it, excludes this wisdom. Oddly enough, the profound problem that this practice creates has been pushed to the surface by nothing less than science itself. The significant discoveries in modern biology (and cosmology) over the past 100 years strongly suggest that there is, in fact, design in the universe. This is exactly the claim that is being made by the scientific critics of materialist Darwinism. It is also the theory that does not tow the party line, and so its proponents have become the target of what amounts to a professional mugging. And the mass media is complicit, whether you’d like to acknowledge it or not. You are free to do as you wish.Upright BiPed_{September 27, 2008
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AB Your ignorance of Crick & Orgel's hypothetical "Directed Panspermia" is showing. Crick made the reasonable determination that biologic materials had no reasonable chance of being transported from one solar system to another without intelligent direction. Blogged it here with a reference several times. A member of UD, Rob Sheldon, (who has yet to make a first post) did however suggest an interstellar biologic transport mechanism that could git 'er done stochastically. Read about it here.DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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nullasalus, It was pointed out (by "jerry") that Newton theorized that God would sometimes send comets to stabilize an orbit. That is in no way an exception to the laws of nature, any more than "God guiding evolution" (what theistic evolutionists hold) is an exception to Darwinism. The situation in the middle ages was not a harmonic living between science and theism, but an uneasy compromise, a detente. That detente ended with the Renaissance and Galileo, once Greek-derived science had begun to throw away the reins of theological constraint. There was never friendliness. It was either science as handmaiden or science as shrew. As we've elucidated here, "designers" is not necessarily synonymous with "theism". Greek-derived science is hostile to the traditional religious concept of design ("God said... and it was so," or, in the derogatory terminology, "poofing"), but not so (or less so) to naturalistic design (nanotechnological creation as DaveScot brings in the book he linked to, and Raelism). DaveScot, You ask what requires a supernatural designer to design life. To design life on earth, there is no requirement (you and the Raelians are proof of that). To avoid infinite regress (mind out of matter out of mind out of matter, and so on ad infinitum), a supernatural creator must be assumed. StephenB, The debate between "primarily natural causes" and "exclusively natural causes" is a religious one, and only a religious one. You know why? Because those who say "primarily" do so only to retain the miracles of which revealed religion speaks. Otherwise, for such occurrences as sunrise, sunset and rainfall, there is no debate. Both sides sweep God aside and make him out to be like Deism's absentee landlord. Compare to the pagan Greek worldview of a constantly regular cosmos, and contrast to my description of traditional Jewish theology above, which holds that there is no such thing as "laws of nature", that even the sunset is a miracle performed by God every day. The term "methodological naturalism" may date to the 1980's, but that does not preclude the existence of the concept well before that. Analogy: I can talk of "fascist Sparta" even thought the term "fascism" was only coined in 20th-century Italy.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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-----Abramam: “ID by necessity assumes a designer above the cosmic order” Explain to me why observing "functionally complex specified information" in a DNA molecule ASSUMES a designer. Do you even know of what a scientific inference to design consists?StephenB_{September 27, 2008
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----Abramam: "The change from primary to exclusive cause is not a leap but only a slight logical modification of the Greek pagan rule that the cosmic order can’t ever be broken. The seeds were there; only the Renaissance and Galileo were require in order for them to fully sprout." You are missing the point and you are changing your thesis to accomodate objections to your original thesis. Originally, you stated that "corruption" is not possible because there has been no change. Now you acknowledge the change and want to trivialize it. The difference between science being "primarily" about natural causes, and the novelty idea that it must be "exclusively" about natural causes is the difference between ID being legitimate science or illegitimate science. That is nothing less than the whole ball game. Evidently, you are unaware that this distinction was arbitrarily conceived solely for the purpose of disfranchising ID from the scientific community. It has a history that can be traced back to the 1980's. The academy introduced "methodollgical naturalism" as a social tool to persecute ID scientists. In other words, they "corrupted" science by insisting that it is no longer permissible to follow where the evidence leads. Put another way, your thesis is uninformed.StephenB_{September 27, 2008
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Borne, Rael's model, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is an Intelligent Design model. Crick's and Hoyle's model, which assumes evolution of life, just not on earth as Darwinists do, is not an Intelligent Design model at all. Crick and Hoyle are impertinent to the ID/Darwinism debate. Creationists did develop modern science, yes. Creationists at the same centuries of Copernicus and Galileo, beginning with Sir Francis Bacon, developed the methodology which was later the downfall of creationism. There is not much to take pride in here. As for understanding ID, I understand ID unless expedience forces the change of its definition (which is: once every couple of years). In addition, I would have thought that condescension toward the less knowledgeable was a monopoly of the materialists. I am not anti-ID, nor exactly pro-ID (if "ID" is taken in its specific sense, as here); more a third party with a wish to be as objective as possible. ID is fine, I just wish it was more definite on things. There is too much vagueness, a lot of things left undefined.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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Biped Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins Actually I don't agree with that. I think materialistic ideology itself has been corrupted. That corruption takes the form of axiomatically rejecting any possibility of intelligent agency superior to mankind having played any role whatsoever in the course of organic evolution. MET is thus self-contradictory. We have intelligent agents right now (humans) altering the course of evolution through genetic manipulation. According to MET these agents arose via material processes. Obviously then, according to the theory, intelligent agency is a natural part of the material universe. So what prevents an earlier emergence of intelligent agency through natural means? Nothing is what. Richard Dawkins is on the record agreeing that life on this planet could have been engineered by an outside agency (in the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed). Does that make Richard Dawkins a Raelian? In a way, certainly. He was simply forced to acknowledge that it is physically possible. If any scientist rejects the possibility he's either lying or sorely lacking in a solid grounding of basic science. Of course that raises the perfectly valid question of who designed the designer. But if we presume that mind is an emergent property of matter (materialist presumption) we must at the same ask where the matter came from which enabled the emergence. Surely matter didn't create itself. In such infinite regressions both mind and matter run into the same brick wall called "The Big Bang" wherein science tells us that all the matter & energy in the universe suddenly appeared everywhere at once. So does mind predate matter or vice versa? No material answer exists. We do have some tantalizing clues though from quantum mechanics which informs us, with experimental confirmation, that matter exists in an etherial state of probability waves which don't collapse into physical reality until an observer comes along. Strange but true. So there's some scientific substance to supposing that the Big Bang could not have happened without an observer. "God" is a good, or as poor, an answer as any other to who or what the universal observer is. Heck, maybe the observer is composed of so-called "dark energy" which comprises some 70% of the stuff which makes up the universe and is thought to homogenously permeate everything everywhere. We really don't know. All I know is that we don't know at all enough about the nature of nature to reject intelligent agency anywhere and at any time. Add to this the so-called "illusion of design" which just keeps getting stronger as we learn more - from the intricacy of life at the molecular scale (biological ID) to the fine tuning of the physical constants of the universe (cosmological ID) - the appearance of design just won't go away. Yet all this perfectly material evidence, most of it from the hardest of hard sciences (physics) the MET continues to reject it out of hand. Materialist ideology is what has been corrupted. On the one hand it claims that intelligent agents capable of genetic engineering (humans) are the natural result of a random dance of atoms then on the other hand claims that genetic engineering predating the emergence of humanity is strictly forbidden because it posits a supernatural designer. Say what? Show me what requires a supernatural designer to design life.DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham Barda, "So where are Newton’s “famous” exceptions to his Theory of Gravity?" Now who is putting words in whose mouth? It was already pointed out that Newton himself made allowances for divine intervention with regards to the orbit of planets. You then switched gears to mentioning Newton was 'almost there'. Like it or not, that's quite a thing to miss when you're talking with such stern confidence about science and its relation to theism. "A theism-friendly science would never have given rise to the demiraculization of the Creation that has slowly but steadily crept in ever since the Renaissance." First of all - of course it would have, if it's assumed that miracles are outside of science's proper sphere anyway. Or more than that, that an agent's (whether it be God or otherwise) efforts can be within and through, rather than contrary to, nature. The very fact that you say.. "but ever since Galileo, more and more holes have appeared in the dam, until we arrive at today’s total denial of any deviation from the laws of nature." ..illustrates the past friendliness between theism and science. If there was no such cooperation, why did 'more and more holes' show up in your words? They would have already been there from the start. As another has recommended, John Lennox (among others) have pointed out the tight history between science and thoughts of design, to put it mildly. You're likely mistaking people of different philosophical motivations above, beyond, and beside science pushing in certain directions with science itself. The fact is that theism, and design-concepts in general, have had a long history with science, and not one of animosity. And the current stage is one where even those against intelligent design (And I'm on record around here as being very skeptical about the ability of science to rule on questions of design) primarily argue not that design is not present in nature, but that science cannot test for it. I don't doubt there are many materialists involved in science (naturally), and that a few of them may be taking cues from some partly-inspired specific greek school of thought. But the idea that science and designers ("theism") are concepts inherently hostile to each other is bunk.nullasalus_{September 27, 2008
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Av :
"ID by necessity assumes a designer above the cosmic order"
... Wrong. ID assumes no such thing. What ID assumes is that we are capable of detecting patterns in nature that require intelligent origins. Like DNA.
"I cannot rise to your challenge, because the only model that comes to my mind of unsupernatural ID is the Raelians’ version"
You ought to forget Rael and refer to either Francis Crick or Sir Fred Hoyle. They were both advocates of evolution from space - even going so far as suggesting life was shipped here on rocket ships. Why? In Cricks case he recognized that there is simply not enough time for the highly improbable complexities and nano-machinery found in life systems for it to have been evolved by RM + NS. Hoyle recognized that the probabilities of life forming in a Darwinian fashion were astronomically low. Hoyle's "Evolution from Space," ... In which he discussed the overwhelming improbability of getting the enzymes needed for even the simplest form of life to function by chance. ...
The difference between an intelligent ordering, whether of words, fruit boxes, amino acids, or the Rubik cube, and merely random shufflings can be fantastically large, even as large as a number that would fill the whole volume of Shakespeare's plays with its zeros. So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that bio-materials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of in pondering this issue over quite a long time seems to me to have anything like as high a possibility of being true. (27-28)

"Older folk in the know told me that selection didn't operate to make complicated things out of complicated things, only to make complex things out of simple ones. I couldn't understand how anything of the sort could be true, because, unlikely as it was, it would surely be less difficult to make a rabbit out of a potato than to make a rabbit out of sludge, which is what people said had happened, people with line after line of letters after their names who should have known what they were talking about, but obviously didn't."
(Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p.2) As far your 'Greek' thing goes you ought to know that valid science existed long before the Greeks. The modern western world's view of science came in part from greco-roman influences of course. However the role of creationists throughout the centuries in establishing, indeed in opening the door to the possibility of modern science, has been crucial. Indeed, it was creationists who founded the scientific method. Imo, you simply do not understand ID. And your Raelien references are not pertinent. Materialist education can do that to ya.Borne_{September 27, 2008
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Let me just add a note. I have so far detailed the problem posed by Hellenistic thought to the other side of the equation. For me, that other side is not Christendom (the lack of knowledge of which is here a shortcoming, I admit), but Judaism. It is my wish to tell you where I am coming from, in order to facilitate understanding. Traditional Jewish thought does not recognize the concept of "laws of nature." In traditional Jewish thought, "nature" has the following definition: "Miracles to which we have grown accustomed." The parting of the Red Sea is a miracle, and since it does not happen every day, we call it such. But the setting of the sun is also a miracle, but we call it "nature" only because we've gotten used to it. The Jewish morning service every sunrise blesses God for causing the sun to rise (or the earth to move on its axis; mere quibbling). The Jewish evening service every nightfall blesses God for causing the sun to set. Traditional Jewish theology believes God to actively cause the sun to rise and set every day. Those are miracles. There is no natural law. God may work through agents (such as a plague on Sennacherib's troops besieging Jerusalem), but God leaves nothing to natural law. Jewish theology is as far removed from Deism and front-loading as could possibly be conceived. Now, as I said, all this is just so that you understand my initial objections. I understand now that those objections are not so relevant to the methodology of the fellows of Uncommon Descent. Thank you for your patience.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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InterestingPannenbergOmega_{September 27, 2008
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nullasalus, So where are Newton's "famous" exceptions to his Theory of Gravity? Or earlier, where are Kepler's exceptions to his Laws? Do they even allow for exceptions? Science ever since the Greeks never allowed for exceptions in the cosmic order; the only change is how much the term "cosmic order" encompasses (less in modern science than it did for the Greeks). A theism-friendly science would never have given rise to the demiraculization of the Creation that has slowly but steadily crept in ever since the Renaissance. What little I know of Christendom and its relationship with science is, that it managed to stem the tide of Greek paganism through an uneasy compromise with Aristotle (the medieval cosmology), but ever since Galileo, more and more holes have appeared in the dam, until we arrive at today's total denial of any deviation from the laws of nature. StephenB, The change from primary to exclusive cause is not a leap but only a slight logical modification of the Greek pagan rule that the cosmic order can't ever be broken. The seeds were there; only the Renaissance and Galileo were require in order for them to fully sprout. DaveScot, If I understand rightly, the Intelligent Designer is like a human in all but knowledge of the basics of existence, which is much greater. A materialist has already conceded that a natural creator, bound within the natural universe, can be a valid scientific proposal. The fact that the Raelians have not been accepted as valid scientific theoreticians by the mainstream establishment is, I admit, an argument in favor of this site's thesis that there is opposition to ID in general and not just to its religious versions. I commend your attempts to meld Intelligent Design with the constraints of Greek (or Greek-derived) methodology. I had misjudged this site and been less open-minded than I should have been. Great work. My only reservation is that the success of your enterprise could lead people to construe the Intelligent Design movement as part of the New Age. I admit, however, that that is not a scientific objection. Upright BiPed, If you say (as you did above) that information flows much more freely and abundantly than in the past, then any talk of "controlling information" becomes very, very suspect. I do not know, perhaps it may be a feeling and no more, but the prospect of "controlling information" has a 1984-ish sound to it; surely not in present-day America you believe in the ability to stop anything from leaking? Or is "control of information" in your eyes the mere fact that the information important to you does not receive the amount of exposure you would like it to receive? Either you are right, or perhaps you need the patience of Alfred Wegener, whose theories did not become mainstream overnight. A third option, which is the one that I raised first post, is that the system works fundamentally in such a way that certain type of ideas cannot be accepted even in theory. I know for certain that supernatural ("poofing") creation as theorized by YEC organizations has not a snowball's chance in hell of being even considered, because of the Greek, anti-Biblical, anti-supernatural nature of science. idnet.com.au, If he is versed in Greek philosophy, then I will surely be able to evaluate the merit of his ideas.Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham Barda, welcome! I strongly suggest that you read John Lennox (Oxford mathematician) "God's Undertaker. Has science buried God?" He is very well versed in the origins of what we call science, and I don't think he would be in full agreement with your sentiments.idnet.com.au_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham, I can easily concede that science has, at least some, of its foundational rules in whatever form of antiquity that you care to study. I can make this conclusion for a simple reason - it doesn't matter. If I can find in my imagination a pair of ancient tribal leaders standing on the bank of a river that feeds their people, wondering why the river flows most at the first sign of the warming time of year - to me they are on a search for knowledge. Their success in that search will be tied to how rational they can form their questions and then provide answers that best fit the evidence they observe. In any case, their search is not owned by the rules of a, perhaps distant, culture - It’s simply a search for understanding (in its purest form). We may agree that the search can be narrowed or refined by using a set of rules - but that set of rules does not constitute ownership of the information, nor the process by which the information attained. My comment was that “the definition of science has been highjacked by a materialist ideology”. My comment is a reflection of the statement (“Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins”) which adorns the header of this website. I stand by it. As far as your question of proof of an info-control “conspiracy” (your chosen and loaded term) – I can assure you that if you would need a memo from the Department of Information Control, I won’t be able to produce it. On the other hand, I too have a career to call upon, a career of thirty years in the American media. I have seen plenty of information control. More to this particular discussion (dealing with science, and rules by which information may be attained) I believe I covered that in my original post.Upright BiPed_{September 27, 2008
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AB Does the posited designer have hands? Test tubes? A whole laboratory at his/her/its disposal? What is the real-world meaning of “not needing supernatural abilities in order to create”? The data don't give us many clues about methods. We can however make some minimal assumptions regarding the designer(s) of life on earth: 1) a deep understanding of chemistry and physics 2) capable of abstract thought 3) ability to manipulate matter to bring abstract thought into physical reality With the exception of item 1 humans have all the requisites and judging by the pace of innovation in genetic engineering it isn't unreasonable to presume that humans will have that capacity as well if discovery and innovation proceeds apace for some period of time. Even if that period of time is a million years that's still an eyeblink in geologic timeframes. The real world meaning of "supernatural" is "unconstrained by the laws of physics". For a good grounding in of what's physcially possible and what isn't in this regard I recommend starting with this book: Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler which can be read free of cost online at the link above. I read it in hardcover in 1987 and to this day consider it the single most important tome on the future I've ever read. DaveScot_{September 27, 2008
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Abraham: Where did you get your definition of science and how does is compare to that which rules the academy today? ----You wrote: The Greeks did not write out a formal definition, but worked the same way (that is, they too assumed constancy of laws). Their details are not the same as modern-day one, because they allowed for spiritual existence. I did mention this change right in my first post." But that doesn't solve the problem. Even the early scietists of Christendom, the ones who said "we are thinking God's thoughts after him," understood that science was PRIMARILY about natural causes. Modern science, according the academy insists that science must be EXCLUSIVELY about natural causes. It is called "methdological naturalism," and it is a change. It was not always that way.StephenB_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham Barda, Considering your first claims involved declaring that Newton believed in "unbreakable cosmic regularity" when he clearly and famously did not, my following the evidence where it leads indicates you're not much of an authority on the question of the philosophy and practicality of science. Particularly when you declare that science has never been friendly to theism, while at the same time admitting you really don't know all that much about Christendom. It's worth noting that most of the critics of ID only consider science hostile to theism in the most roundabout, social ways. Most readily admit (hell, they insist) that science is powerless when it comes to addressing design-related (theistic or otherwise) questions. That isn't hostility - at best, it's neutrality.nullasalus_{September 27, 2008
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Upright BiPed, I go where the evidence leads. As a researcher of Greek philosophy and its relationship to traditional Jewish theology, I think I am in a good position to determine how much influence, if at all, Greek pagan philosophy has had on science thru the ages. Based on my findings, I've concluded that modern science is reworked Hellenistic philosophy. I could be wrong, of course, but the evidence so far tells me I am right. On the other hand, your talk of "controlling information" reeks of conspiracy theory. Please supply proof that there has been a conspiracy to subvert science?Avraham Barda_{September 27, 2008
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Avraham, Let's be adults here. It's the year 2008. There has been an explosion of information and access on a global scale that is a game changer. Information is a commodity that is processed, reprocessed, owned, sold, legalized, banned, and controlled. Have all the motives to control information existed since antiquity? Yes, but appealing to Greek paganism in an attempt to explain away the ability to control and subjugate scientific information in the modern world is weak (IMO) even if your explanation gives you a sense of intellectual satisfaction.Upright BiPed_{September 27, 2008
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